Joy, a Podcast. Hosted by Craig Ferguson - Dr. Maija Cheung

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

Dr. Maija Cheung is currently a surgeon at Yale University and the Chief Medical Officer for Kids Operating Room – the world’s leading children’s surgery charity. During her residency at Yale, she started working with group that would become Kids Operating Room (KidsOR). She became the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for KidsOR in December 2023 as well as the CMO for the KidsOR commercial subsidiary Global Hospital which develops healthcare infrastructure and solar powered solutions in low-resource settings with all profit going to KidsOR to create capacity for children’s surgery around the world. Dr. Cheung has spearheaded numerous projects aimed at improving healthcare infrastructure, increasing training opportunities for the health workforce, and promoting access to care in underserved areas. She's currently working on two major projects as a part of her work to build operating rooms for children in Ukraine and a collaboration with NASA and American Oxygen to develop new technology for providing oxygen in low resource settings around the world. I hope you learn something new and enJOY!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart podcast. Hi, I'm Kristin Davis, host of the podcast. Are you a Charlotte? Sarah, Jessica Parker is here and she is sharing stories from the very beginning. Like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode. I remember some things about shooting the pilot. Right. I have some memories I can fill you in.

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That's why I'm here now, because I talk to people that grew up like me, have sensibilities like me, and have loyalties like me. Listen to this. I's why I'm here now because I talk to people that grew up like me, have sensibilities like me, and have loyalties like me. Listen to Math and Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I want you to ask yourself right now, how am I actually doing?

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Listen to The Psychology of Your Twenties on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is me, Craig Ferguson. I'm inviting you to come and see my brand new comedy hour. Well, it's actually about an hour and a half, And I don't have an opener because these guys cost money. But what I'm saying is I'll be on stage for a while. Anyway, come and see me live on the Pants on Fire tour

in your region. Tickets are on sale now and we'll be adding more as the tour continues throughout 2025 and beyond. For a full list of dates, go to thecraigfergusonshow.com. See you on the road, my dears. My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to interesting people

about what brings them happiness. Today, my friends, my guest on the podcast is Dr. Maya Chung, who is a pediatric surgeon at Yale. That's pretty impressive in itself. She's also the chief medical officer of a group called Kids OR, which provides pediatric surgical opportunities for children that need it in areas where it's kind of difficult to get. So, I'm going to let you talk to her through me and I'm going to talk to her. I really like this woman, she's very impressive. Enjoy. Hello, Maya. How are you? I'm great, Craig. How are you? I'm good. Are you in Yale today? Are you in New Haven today?

I am. I'm just outside, actually. We're in Brantford. All right. Now, before we get into that, I just want to talk to you a little bit about it because you're a surgeon at Yale, right? Yes. I've been for many years, actually. Now, I want to talk to you a little bit about Yale before we talk about you, and we talk about kids who are, and we talk about surgery, because Yale, I've done stand-up shows at Yale, and I've stayed in New Haven, and the best description I can give of Yale is

it's Hogwarts in the middle of downtown Detroit. Does that seem like a reasonable? It does. It seems perfect description there. It's an interesting place. It's an interesting campus for sure. Yeah. The campus seems very lovely and collegiate and all sorts of beautiful young people walking

around with scarves sewn and stuff like that and performing magic. But then you go outside and get a little crackier in New Haven I noticed. A little bit more lively. You know, it was one of the reasons I actually chose to come here back in the day for residency because I wanted to take care of a lower resource population and really be in a little more urban area, but not be in New York City or Boston. Now that's interesting because two things, I want to ask you why you wouldn't want to be in New York City and Boston. Let me ask you why you wouldn't want to be in New York City or Boston.

Well I'm from Kansas originally. Got it. Got it. Is that enough? Yeah, yeah, I get it. Yeah, it's a little lively. So but what about, why were you drawn? Well, I know this about you, but I'm kind of leading the witness a little bit.

But why were you interested in working with, with lower income people? And does that actually happen at Yale anyway? Do people come in and did they get out there? Yeah, no, absolutely. Yale and one of our sites in Bridgeport are really high numbers in terms of people who are on some type of assistance or who are maybe migrant workers, unemployed, lower income, socio-economic backgrounds. So we do have a lot more than certain areas. I had worked with

kind of lower resource populations for many years when I was in medical school. Um, and before that I spent some time abroad in the middle East and Asia. And it was just really found a lot of fulfillment in being able to provide care or help of any kind to populations that maybe didn't have certain types of access. I mean, one would presume, and I'll get on to the KidZoR charity in a minute, which both you and my wife are involved in, but the idea of going into a lower resource population,

I assume for a surgeon, that would mean there's a lot of, none of the fancy equipment that you get in Yale Hospital, right? I mean, there's a very big difference, yes, between what I have access to at Yale versus when I'm operating in, let's say Kenya or Uganda. Um, my main clinical practice right now is actually at the Veterans Hospital in West Haven. And the VA hospital is also an interesting place in terms of minimized resources. Because obviously as a government institution, right, there's a lot of restrictions and things.

And that population especially is one that really seeks access through the VA because they don't necessarily have a lot of other options. So again, a population of maybe more homeless people than one would traditionally think about. And what kind of surgeries are you performing on people that are they trauma surgeries? Are they, you know, like appendectomies? What's going on? So I did training in minimally invasive surgery and bariatric. So I do a lot of belly surgery. That's not cancer is the easy way to put it. Everything from gallbladders, appendicitis, different types of hernias, weight loss surgery.

I do a lot of robotics actually. That was one of my specialized trainings. So yeah. Do you use AI in the robotics now? Do you use that for surgery? So we use AI in a couple of ways more, I think on the kind of academic side and looking at metrics that AI can help us learn from what we're doing in the operating room or what other people are doing in terms of kind of maximizing our efficiency with movement, stuff like that. But thankfully so far... So you don't go to chat GPT and say, take that gallbladder out?

Take that gallbladder out. Not yet. I'd be out of a job for sure. I don't think that's coming anytime soon, but maybe it is. I don't know. I mean, when you go into a low resource population though, like say for example, I know about the charity, obviously Kids Award, and I know they have pediatric surgical sites in Uganda in particular. And some of these places are in rural Uganda, is that right? But to say it's outside of Kampala?

Yeah, absolutely. So what are you dealing with there? I mean, are you able to get appropriate levels of sanitation? Are you able to get, you know, you know, decent equipment? What are you doing? It's really a spectrum. So some of the places I've been, you actually have minim equipment, what are you doing? It's really a spectrum. So some of the places I've been, you actually have minimally invasive surgery, laparoscopy. I was teaching some of that in Kenya last year, which was really phenomenal to work

with the teams there. Other places you might have very minimal equipment, not the right equipment, not a great opportunity to sterilize equipment, for example. So you're up against a lot of challenges. But I'm sure we'll get into this, but a lot of what we're doing at Kids' Operating Room is trying to bridge that gap so that people in Uganda don't have to be doing without and can really provide the best, safest care they can to kids around the world. And what kind of, I mean, like the pediatric operating rooms that you're working in, in

Uganda or in other parts of low resource areas, are they, what kind of surgeries are you seeing? Are they emergency things? Are they? Both. So there's a lot of emergency operations that are happening. There's a lot of wait lists. You know, kids here might get a hernia fixed in a couple of weeks.

It might take years and a lot of other places. And the impact on the child's life and a family's life, if that's the case, can be really devastating. We also see a lot of complex surgeries. So it's amazing. There's so much talent in all of these other places. They're able, I mean, Uganda is a perfect example where they've been able to separate conjoined twins.

And we think of that as something that's so highly specialized, but the technique is there, the training is there. It's really just the equipment and a little bit of probably solar power, because that's another problem operating in these places, power outages, that can really make a difference. I know Dr. George Youngston, who is a friend of mine. George is one of the pioneers of the work getting done out there. That George said that when I first talked to him about kids who are, he said that

cleft palate for some reason was something that a lot of people, they were dealing with a lot of kids with, with a cleft palate surgery they were fixing. Is that true? Yeah. Cleft palate, club feet. And, you know, those are things that a quick, simple surgery can be a one-time fix, simple on the spectrum, right? But it's really life-changing. I mean, we have case studies out of Kenya is one place a refugee camp that we worked and there was a child there who was born with cleft feet and that would have been fixed within a matter of months and some

simple procedures in the US or the UK. His parents carried him. You know, they physically carried him for years everywhere he had to go and finally he was able to get care in one of our operating rooms and now he plays on his local soccer team and runs around with that Man U jersey on. Yeah. Well, I'm not sure that I'm completely a fan of his sartorial choice. Of his team.

But yeah, but I mean, that's an amazing thing to me. So I mean, hearing about the people who are walking, because I did hear stories about this about women who were carrying their babies 20, 30, 40 miles and more, physically walking through, I don't know if it's jungle or what kind of area it is, but walking to get to an operating room for the kids. Yeah and I mean if you think about what that does to a family also, the impact on them. Sure. We did a lot of studies a while ago looking at how much families had to sell, like sell cattle, sell home goods, things like that to be able to even make the trip. I mean, that impact on a

family and yeah, if it's only 30 miles, they're pretty lucky in a lot of these places. There might only be one or two centers in the entire country that can address their child's needs. So I think you're a parent. I only have dogs, but the impact and the devastation that must be felt. I know I'd feel that for my puppies. Well, it's an interesting thing because I was going to ask you about this anyway. You see some thing because I was going to ask you about this anyway, that you see some stories by the nature of the work that you're drawn to. I mean, look, pediatrics of any kind is going to break your heart. And, you know, it's a calling which I'm, you know, is beyond me. I admire it. And I, I don't know if I, how are you emotionally equipped to deal with, with the bad news diagnosis involved around children?

It must be devastating. Yeah, it is. I think, you know, as a surgeon, that type A personality, we like to help people. We like to see a problem, solve it, feel like we had an impact that keeps you going. Yeah. The, um, the harder things in surgery and, and probably medicine more broadly are when you can't help. So either, you know, the right equipment isn't there, the tools are broken,

the oxygen ran out, or maybe the patient gets there too late because their tumor has grown too much, or maybe because the mom had to walk, you know, for two days and so the child has gotten so much sicker. And I think that in those moments, it's that helplessness and just standing by the family where you know, you feel like if they just gotten there earlier, if you just had a few more, a little bit more oxygen or a little bit more equipment that maybe you'd be able to have a different outcome. And it is that helplessness that stays with you. But ultimately that's why we do the work we do.

And trying to fill that gap again so that no one has to feel that way. But surgeons, we have that need to see a problem, fix it. And I think it's that desire to ultimately alleviate suffering and make that impact that just keeps you going even when you have one bad thing or you know it obviously changes you it stays with you. Yeah I mean most surgeons that I've met and I've met quite a few and I know quite a few most of them are quite sporty people which I wasn't surprised with quite a few and I know quite a few. Most of them are quite sporty people, which I wasn't surprised.

They're kind of jocks a lot of the time. First of all, are you a jock? Are you a sporty person? Well, I'm the wife of a baseball coach. So I think by definition, I'm probably pretty sporty. But surgery is shockingly physical. We stand for hours. We twist in different ways.

I actually herniated my back moving a patient a couple of years ago and had to have surgery myself. So there's a definite, you're dehydrated all day, you're tired, you don't sleep that much. So there's a definite physical toll. And I think both kind of mental health as well as physical health is really important to extend the longevity of one's career. And I think we're now starting to acknowledge that, which we didn't do for a long time. Yeah, I was going to say the idea of acknowledging the mental health impact on surgeons, because

even if you approach a problem in a sort of slightly more engineering frame of mind, like this is a problem in the human body, I'm going to fix it or approach it like this is a challenge for me, there's got to be a point where if there's almost like a sporting mentality in a surgeon, you're going to lose sometimes, you've got if it, if there's a like a almost like a sporting mentality in the surgeon, you're going to lose sometimes. You got to learn how to lose. And it's a team, right? So like trusting in my team, my nurses, my anesthesiologist, the patients trust in us, the families trust in us. And sometimes you lose. You know, in sports they watch a lot of game tape and learn from maybe mistakes or also successes.

With robotics, that's one way for sure. We have the ability to record our surgeries, to watch them back. If there's a complication postoperatively, we could actually review that tape and see is there some mistake that we made technically. We spend a lot of time as a community reviewing what we used to call morbidity and mortality conferences, which we now call quality improvement, which are, you know, when things don't necessarily go according to plan, but taking an opportunity to really holistically examine the pathway of what happens so that we can all learn from it.

So I'm not just learning from, you know, my mistakes, but I get to learn from my colleagues. They can learn from me. That way, hopefully, we're not all making the same mistakes. Right, repeating the same thing. I mean, I think it's a smart thing. I mean, you mentioned post-operative care there as well. And I thought that's quite interesting, because I remember talking again to George Youngston years ago

about why don't we just fly a bunch of doctors in the G4 down to Uganda and fix all these problems and then they can all leave and he said well we we can because we tried that and it doesn't work because there's you got to do follow-ups right you got to you got to figure out what's going on you have to have surgeons who are there all the time absolutely first of all to select the patients and figure out who are there all the time. Absolutely. First of all, to select the patients and figure out who are the patients that actually need care urgently or maybe who maybe need more specialized care from someone who's coming in.

The follow-ups for sure. But I think, you know, in the world we live in today, there's another reason why investing in the local teams and supporting them to do the work is important. And that's if you look at all of the conflicts. So, you know, kids operating room now, we've installed a hundred operating rooms, 35 countries, some really challenging places like the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, Congo, Afghanistan, Haiti. And Haiti is a perfect example where, you know,

all the aid organizations left with the current conflict. A lot of them don't have teams on the ground. So if you were only sending in teams, you'd have a whole cohort of children who wouldn't be able to get surgery. But in fact, our operating rooms in Port-au-Prince are two of the only that are still working because they're staffed by local teams. Because what we've done is support and empower them. And so that means in all of these places where global aid organizations can't go, the local teams still have the capacity to care for those kids. And ultimately, you know, that strengthens the entire country and the country's GDP. And so there's that component as well, which I think, you know, in today's

world is even more important to recognize. Hi, I'm Kristin Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode. I remember some things about shooting the pilot. Right. I have some memories I can fill you in. And that you're going to fill me in. Yes. But then you forgot about it? I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.

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on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Bob Pitman, Chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia. On this week's episode of Math and Magic, I'm sitting down with the one and only Bobby Bones. We're exploring the power of audio. The word on the street then was he's too country for pop. But then once I got to country it was he's too pop for country. So I kind of never really had a place to fit in, but that's exactly how and why I fit. I just embraced that. Like, yeah, I don't fit into one specific hole.

I think that is what endeared me to listeners. That's why I'm here now, because I talk to people that grew up like me, have sensibilities like me, and have loyalties like me. Listen to math and magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I have a question for you and I want you to be honest with me.

How are you? It's a really hard question to ask. It's a harder one to answer, but taking care of our mental well-being has never been more important. All of May is Mental Health Awareness Month and on the Psychology of Your 20s podcast we are taking a vulnerable look at why mental health is so hard to talk about and all the science and psychology behind some of life's hardest moments and transitions. Prepare for our conversations to go deep, Everything from grief to heartbreak, career burnout, anxiety,

all of the things that you would only talk about with your closest friends. I spent the majority of my teenage years and my twenties just feeling absolutely terrified. I had a panic attack on a conference call. Knowing that she had six months to live, I was no longer pretending that this was my best friend. So this Mental Health Awareness Month, take that extra bit of care of yourself and your brain. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position.

Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at ThisIsPretirement.org, brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. Hello. This is Craig Ferguson, environment.org brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. To watch the special, just go to my YouTube channel at The Craig Ferguson Show and it's right there. Just click it and play it and it's free. I can't look, I'm not going to come around your house and show you how to do it. If you can't do it, then you can't have it. But if you can figure it out, it's yours.

It's an interesting thing because you talk about today's world, which is, you know, there are a lot of very intense and very opposing political stances in all of the areas, pretty much all of the areas you're talking about. If you're going into a war-torn area, people are so mad at each other that they're killing each other. So there's conflict going on. How easy or difficult is it to navigate the political fundraising side of things? Like if you're raising money for kids who are, which I don't think there's anybody on any side of any debate would say, you know, we don't want

hospitals in there to look after children. Boo, that's a bad thing. But everything is politicized. So how do you cope with it? How do you deal with it? I mean, it's a real challenge in certain places. Obviously, government agendas set a lot of the dictates. We have always been an apolitical organization and try to work wherever there's a need. Ukraine is a perfect example of that. We're finishing up fundraising now for six operating rooms in western Ukraine. And, you know, we work with the local teams, the ministries of health there, and we just try to focus on what you said, which is taking care of kids.

Ultimately, I hope most people in the world are in favor of children and supporting kids getting access to care. And so we just try to maintain that real laser focus and explain that what we're doing also is, strengthening health systems and creating security and empowering the economies and the families and all of the downstream effects that one actually has by being able to provide a child with surgery. They can go back to school, their parents can work. You know, there's a lot of things.

So trying to focus on the societal impact and focus away from the political one is I think what we have to do right now, but it's always a challenge. Do you ever find yourself losing your temper when you're there? I find myself losing my temper with well meaning but poorly thought out plans. Oh my god you'd hate me. Why don't we just all fly down there? We'll all get air tickets. Yeah right I mean as a surgeon you don't like surprises.

When I go into a belly I want to know what I'm gonna find and what my plan is and I think my patients want that plan as well Sure But I mean well that you mentioned that if you're going in like if you're in a low resource area You haven't presumably you're not getting the scans that you would get in Yale You're not looking at all the you may or even get the blood work that you want. So, you might really be getting a surprise, it might be, you know, cut and find out, right? Yeah, you might, although hopefully, you know, you're working with a local team who's used to

working under those limitations. So, there are lessons we can learn from them about how they work up or manage with very few resources without a CAT scan, for example, and implement that in a safe way. I think that's really where the criticality of having local partners comes in because they know what they're used to doing and what's worked in their own environment. And there's a lot of innovation that comes out of that as well, right? Like I've learned a lot of lessons about what they've done that I've put into my own practice, especially during the pandemic when we all had to really think about what the resources were that we were using here. Did that have a major impact on what you were doing in Yale during the pandemic, where you could see and what you could do?

Yeah, a bit. So, you know, New Haven, not that far from New York city. And there was a lot of overflow. I was based in Bridgeport, Connecticut, which is a partway between New Haven and New York. And we had a ton of overflow. We actually had a huge medical tent set up in the courtyard of the hospital. And it sounded a lot like a big airplane hanger because of all the ventilation. And it sounded a lot like a big airplane hanger because of all the ventilation.

Right. And we were really just trying to triage and save the lives that we could save. And we didn't have a lot of resources then. We also didn't know a lot about COVID then. And so there was a lot of fear and anxiety in general, but it definitely made us more conscious about what resources are we using, everything from PPE to blood, how should we think about prioritizing or

triaging resources as well. So there was a lot of things that we all learned and were able to implement into our own practices for good and for worse. You know you make mistakes, that's how you learn, I guess. But when the stakes are that high where you're dealing with the mortality of human beings, it's terrifying to me. The idea of, you've talked a lot about local, using local people when you're in a low resource area. If there are local teams, the question I've got to ask is, what do they need from you when you go in there? local teams, the question I've got to ask is what do they need from you, you know,

when you go in there? If there's a doctor who's a pediatric surgeon in Uganda, or is there? Is there a doctor? I mean, are there doctors? Do you train them? Do you, do kids who are, you know, do you guys go in and, I think you mentioned earlier that you were training people there. Is that like a teaching hospital situation? So we do a variety of different things. We provide scholarships to train more surgeons and anesthesiologists. So when you and Megan first engaged with us back

in Uganda 10 years ago, there was only one pediatric surgeon in the country. Now there are nine. There are still other countries that might have zero or one or two for an entire population of like 40 million children. So we do offer scholarships. It's worth stopping for a minute and saying there was one pediatric surgeon in the whole country.

Yeah. That's, that's- And no operating room for him. So he was working after hours. He was working whenever he could get space. And a lot of these countries, right, we look at a population and in the U S or the UK, we're very used to kind of like a very even curve, but in a lot of these places, more than 50% of the population are children.

So we're not really talking about pediatric health. We're talking about the nation's health and the issues with that. So, but you know, we also offer a lot of training courses. So I've taught training courses myself in Uganda and Chad. We have developed partnerships with nursing programs to teach nurses, an incredibly important part of the post-operative care that you spoke about, right? We all see what a critical role nurses play here,

especially for like families, when the kids go home. So we do a lot of hands-on training. We do a lot of, we have an e-learning program that a lot of our collaborators work with. And ultimately our goal is to just help maybe provide a little bit of upskilling or some opportunities to learn about some specialized things like laparoscopy or that minimally invasive equipment I talked about. But there are really great providers in all of these countries and each country is a little different. So sometimes we need to provide more scholarships, sometimes we don't. Ukraine has a huge health workforce, but they don't have space.

They need more operating rooms to care for their children. And so we, you know, really direct our focus in that country more on the infrastructure side. It's fascinating to me. I mean, talking about you as a doctor, like you, you come from Kansas, right? Yeah. And do you come from a medical family? Do you come from, you know, definitely not. No. My, my, because you went, you went? Definitely not. No. So what happened? Because you went a deep cut. I mean, it's not just like,

oh, I'd like to be, you know, a small-time doctor. I mean, you're a surgeon at Yale. You know, I mean, you're the chief medical officer for kids who are in dangerous parts of the world. What draws you to that?

A little bit of luck, a little bit of timing, I think. You know, my, definitely not a medical family. My mom and dad were the first in their families to go to college and get advanced degrees. Um, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do leaving high school. I wanted a liberal arts education. So I went to Middlebury in Vermont and wanted to explore a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Was always kind of peripherally interested in medicine, but you know, the second day of school for me as an undergrad was September 11th, 2001.

And I thought, gosh, I know nothing at all about the Middle East. And a lot of us really didn't at the time. There was no such thing as a Middle Eastern Studies major. So I was studying Italian and architecture and then started studying Arabic and Middle Eastern studies, a lot of political geography. And then I was abroad in the Middle East after I graduated and I worked at a women's and children's health clinic there and started to see some of the issues of healthcare in low resource settings.. I had spent some time in China also as a kid. My dad's from Hong Kong. So I traveled a lot and seeing kind of health care in different countries. And then after I came back from the Middle East, I thought,

oh, I want to be involved in human rights and I want to work with people. So I decided I would be a paralegal at a law firm doing international law for a year and realized that actually that is just paperwork and bureaucracy. So not the kind of like hands on helping I wanted to do. So I ended up going back to do a post back and then to med school. And the luck that comes into it was just kind of the opportunities that I found. I think I always tell people the worst thing anyone's going to do is just say no to you. So Tony Fauci gave a talk when I was doing a post back and I didn't really know who he

was and he wasn't that famous then. But I managed to go up to him afterwards and I did an internship for the year and then spent some time abroad and had some great opportunities that just kind of all connected in a way that I started to see this path forward and even connecting with you know what became Kids Operating Room was really just luck. I was working in Uganda doing some work and teaching a trauma course and that was back in the day when that first operating room was being installed that you and Megan were involved with so everything's just kind of it happens you know.

you and Megan were involved with. So everything's just kind of, it happens, you know. It's a funny thing though, the idea of being drawn into medicine from liberal arts is kind of a reach. It's like, I don't know how a person makes that jump. I mean, were you squeamish when you, I mean, like the first time you go into an operating room, do you like, like, I mean, like the first time you go into an operating room, do you like, like, to operate? I mean, I couldn't handle it. I just could. Some people can't take blood. No. I've always liked working with my hands. You know, I played the violin. I was always interested in the intricacies of like when we did anatomy in high school, dissecting frogs and things like that. So that never really bothered me. And I think I just really liked the idea that I could help solve a problem directly in front of

me. And that for me was really appealing. It's an interesting thing. You graduated from Dartford Medical School? Yeah, that's right. That's a pretty swanky school. It's a bit swanky. I think your wife knows the area. Yeah, she does. But it's kind of like, it's an interesting thing for me

because I would have thought that the trajectory of someone going through that level of, of Ivy league education and stuff would have been actually New York or Los Angeles. You know, that these kind of like, but clearly there is a, another side that pushes you to it's not just problem solving, it can't be, or you wouldn't be putting yourself in these situations because presumably some of the places you go to are,

there's personal jeopardy involved as well. Yeah, there is. And we try to minimize that. Obviously, for women, there's probably more. You know, I was lucky. My parents had spent a lot of time traveling in the nature of their own work and were incredibly supportive, sometimes shockingly. So I'm not sure how many parents would have allowed their, you know, freshly graduated daughter to go to the Middle East and kind of have a one week hotel reservation and then not really know what she was going to do after that. But you know But my family was always really involved in different types of initiatives and nonprofits.

When I was in high school, my mom started a nonprofit with a colleague that looked at solar powered cookers in Tibet. So they were produced in Tibet and they allowed children to not have to gather yak dung, which is what was the traditional source of fuel. And then the kids could actually go to school and they got an education. So again, the kind of like downstream effects of what some other nonprofits

we've been involved in were able to do. Um, and I think that I was just really lucky to be exposed to a lot of those things globally and feel like there was a place to be able to, and also I think a responsibility to contribute. If I could. Are you a religious person? Or is your family religious? Is that the impulse from there?

No, not at all. It's interesting to me. So it's the desire to be. What do you mention that your parents that traveled a lot for the work they were in, what did they do if you, unless they were spies in which case you probably shouldn't tell me. Wouldn't that be fun? My mom was an archaeologist. So she was on a dig over in Europe when I was born, I was born in Switzerland, but she spent a lot of time in the former USSR and in Europe. And my father was born and raised in Hong Kong, came to the US for college, and he worked

for the National Animal Disease Center. He was a scientist, but he spent a lot of time, again, after the breakup of the USSR, working and mentoring former Soviet scientists and creating a lot of mentorship opportunities and working on different projects. So they traveled a lot for both conferences as well as work and really I think you know wanted to expose us to other parts of the world. When I was in, my mom was on a dig in China when I was in second grade. So we actually lived in Beijing for a year when she was doing archaeological work there. So, you know, experiences that not everyone gets. Yeah, no, it's a fabulously glamorous, almost like Wes Anderson type childhood.

But there seems to be an altruistic impulse that, you know, particularly if your father's doing, you know, help mentoring people coming out of the fall of the Soviet Union, then, and what you ended up doing. And it seems like there is a, I mean, I don't want to push you to it, but is there a spiritual need for it? Is there a need for it that goes beyond? Because I find it hard to accept that it's just about the mechanics of solving a problem in front of you. Yeah. I mean, there's not a spiritual impulse. We are, I think my dad's family is kind of Buddhist. You know, my mom was raised some type of Christianity that she never practiced, not Catholic, some

type of Protestantism. And I think if anything, it was that like spirituality that was probably just instilled by them and then probably their upbringing in terms of like both coming from incredibly, you know, poor backgrounds, really having to make everything that they did for themselves and then believing that because they succeeded, they needed to give back. And if we succeeded, we needed to give back as well. My dad was one of like 10 or 11 kids and he used to sleep under the table in Hong Kong. That's where he slept. My mom, her mom passed away when she was young and

she ran the whole farm and the farm was to survive. It wasn't like a high producing dairy farm or something. So I think it was really that. Hi, I'm Kristin Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode. I remember some things about shooting the pilot. Right.

I have some memories I can fill you in. And that you're going to fill me in. Yes. But then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time. He said he wrote this like I was in his head in some way,

which I found really interesting. And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big? She had inexplicable feelings. Got it. It is a human being that can't explain to her friends why somebody that might be beneath her is dictating the hunt. You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Bob Pipman, Chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia. On this week's episode of Math and Magic, I'm sitting down with the one and only Bobby

Bones. We're exploring the power of audio. The word on the street then was, he's too country for pop. But then once I got to country, it was he's too pop for country. So I kind of never really had a place to fit in, but that's exactly how and why I fit. I just embraced that. Like yeah, I don't fit into one specific hole. I think that is what endeared me to listeners. That's why I'm here now, because I talk to people that grew up like me, have sensibilities like me, and have loyalties like me.

Listen to math and magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I have a question for you and I want you to be honest with me. How are you? It's a really hard question to ask. It's a harder one to answer, but taking care of our mental wellbeing has never been more important. All of May is mental health awareness month. And on the psychology of your 20s podcast, we are taking a vulnerable look at why

mental health is so hard to talk about and all the science and psychology behind some of life's hardest moments and transitions. Prepare for our conversations to go deep. Everything from grief to heartbreak, career burnout, anxiety, all of the things that you would only talk about with your closest friends. I spent the majority of my teenage years and my twenties just feeling absolutely terrified. I had a panic attack on a conference call. Knowing that she had six months to live, I was no longer pretending that this was my

best friend. So this Mental Health Awareness Month, take that extra bit of care of yourself and your brain. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position.

Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. Where does it leave you when you see, you're going to see some pretty heartbreaking things and some pretty unpleasant things. You're going to see some wonderful things too, things that, you know, people would say it's a miracle and stuff. So does it, where does it leave you personally with the idea of where we are in the universe? Is there a, are you an atheist?

Are you a theist? Do you not think about it? Do you just completely steer your mind away from it and stay engineering focused? What do you do? I think I like to believe that there are maybe spirits out there, whether they be ancestral or, or whatnot, who are looking over us or guiding us in some way. You know, there are definitely times in my life where I've prayed to a higher being, maybe in times of like, extreme sadness or anxiety or something like that. So it's not that I don't acknowledge it and I and I would also say that I think sometimes it's really important

for my patients and to acknowledge the beliefs that they have in some presence or being out there that's looking over them and providing safety. But it doesn't really you know come into my mind on a daily basis. Have you ever been in a last resort case with a problem you couldn't solve, asked for some kind of divine intervention? Well, I think that I probably have, but I think that sometimes that divine intervention might come in the way of either asking that question to a mentor or someone calling you or somehow that answer is given to you in the universe and whether it's come to me because I asked for it, you know, that kind of story about the flood and the guy on the roof who's asking for help and

asking God to help him and God keeps sending him boats until finally he drowns. There's a great old joke I love about a priest and a rabbi going to see a boxing match together and before the fight, one of the boxers crosses himself and the rabbi says to the priest, what does that mean when he crosses himself? And the priest says, if he can't fight, not a fucking thing, which I kind of love. But it would seem to me though, that not only your own belief system, but you're going to places. Maybe delivering children or, uh, or performing procedures, which you're going to run into other people's belief systems that might be a problem.

Like, you know, have you run into that where there is a local religion or belief system or tradition that will not allow you to do the work you need to do to help someone? We have, you know, there are plenty of kind of faith healers in different parts of the world and there's definitely been instances where maybe a child shows up with, let's say a very big belly and they're very sick and they might have cuts on their belly. There are some faith healers who believe that, you know, that is a treatment. And I think ultimately the experience that I've had is that when they've come to me

or the people that I'm working with or at our kids operating rooms, they've actually shown up to a health center. They've shown up for care. So the parents have gotten to the point where they have either overtly or not overtly said to themselves, we are willing to set aside our own belief system in the hopes that this other intervention, modern medicine, could actually save our child.

I think that we don't experience it as much on the initial standpoint, right? Because we're only seeing the kids who are brought to us where that decision has already been made. But there's definitely those instances. There's also, I would say, the challenge of kind of gender. And in some parts of the world, for example, you really need a female provider, a female doctor for a female patient.

Otherwise, they might not get care. So there are those things and they can be really challenging and you do the best you can to apply logic to the situation, make that connection with the patient or the family, try to explain to them, meet them halfway, understand where they're coming from, explain to them where you're coming from and ultimately hope in the end that you've instilled enough trust in them to be able to trust in you for what needs to happen. Doesn't always work out. And that can be really... I was going to say, have you ever had, you know, have you ever had that denied to you?

Have you ever had someone say, you're a woman, you can't treat me, you can't, you can't help me. You can't help my son. Yeah, but I've even had that at the end, the US like at the VA. Yeah, sure. A lot of those biases, they exist in the US as well and in the UK. Right. And I've had patients who have said they don't want one of my residents treating them perhaps because of their gender or because of their ethnicity. And again, we try to use those as teaching moments and explain to the patient why they need care

or why this person can provide excellent care, but you don't win every argument. And I think sometimes those are just ones you at some point have to let go. And same with, you know, preferences for blood transfusions or avoiding blood transfusions. I mean, there's a lot of that in the US as well. Right? Yeah. The idea that you can... Wasn't there a court order done recently? Someone didn't want their kid to have a blood transfusion, which would save the life in the court was like, okay, fuck

it. We're doing it. And you'll just have to deal. I mean, it does seem. I mean, you want to respect people's belief systems, but you do. You also want to believe that like logic and data went out at the end but that is not the case for everyone for everyone i know and also compassion i feel i feel that seems so odd to me that because everything is is so on fire politically or socially, that genuine compassion will be treated with suspicion. Like, what do you want? What do you want? And people are so beat up by, I don't know, their life or the world or what's happened to them that they can't accept the hand when it's reached out to them. Does that happen much? I think maybe initially, but what I've found is that, you know, when you're, I'm one of the things about being a

surgeon, right, especially if it's something that's emergent is that you have to build that trust with the family, with the patient in a matter of minutes, because you're asking them literally to put a life in your hands. And so being able to meet them on a human level, being able to just listen, answer their questions, usually I can get people to the ultimate outcome of like agreeing to let me do surgery.

Um, I think like anyone, if you just push back and are immediately standoffish and patriarchal and demanding, no one responds well to that. I don't think anyone automatically changes their mind, whether you're trying to get them to eat a hamburger or get them to have an emergent surgery. And so that human element becomes really important. And as you said, the humanity aspect of listening to them and understanding where they're coming from and asking questions like, why is this the case?

And sometimes you have to compromise. Sometimes I have to agree that I'm not gonna give the blood transfusion in the case of an emergency, but at least being able to attempt understanding where they're coming from and have them understand where I'm coming from and ultimately making a decision that is hopefully best for the patient. Yeah, I mean, I guess when the because the legalities of it as well, you'll be dealing

with minors a lot of the time who the permission has to come from a parent or guardian and that might gosh, I feel like I don't know how well I would do in that situation. No one's asked me, but I mean the idea of, you know, trying to help a kid and you've got someone in the way, I think must be very frustrating. And I think even when everyone agrees, you know, I always try to make sure, especially teenagers, they should have a voice and I want them to be in agreement with what we're planning on doing, even if they're not the one signing the form. I think if you lose trust in your surgeon or in your physician, you're starting from a really bad place and the possibility of everything going

on from that point on is just huge. It really needs to be based on trust. So even when everyone's in agreement, I will always ask the kid as well, do you understand what we're doing? Do you want to do this? Is this okay with you? You know, you want to have that that trust and rapport. Well, you've got my vote, doctor, and I wish you continued success with with Kids OR. We'll put up a link for everybody here as well if they want to know more about it or maybe help out where they can go to do that. Keep doing what you're doing and it's a pleasure as always to talk to you. Thank you. Thanks so much Craig

for your time. I really appreciate it. Right back at you. Hi, I'm Kristin Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? Sarah Jessica Parker is here and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode. I remember some things about shooting the pilot. Right. I have some memories I can fill you in. And that you're going to fill me in. Yes. But then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it.

Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think it's a sign of great mental health to acknowledge the dark wolf inside you. It's Mental Health Awareness Month, and on a recent episode of The One You Feed, Josh Radner from How I Met Your Mother joins us to talk about fame, self-acceptance, aging, and finding peace in discomfort. That is the mercy of time, that time, it is a healer. To hear this and more on healing, identity, and the wisdom of slowing down, open your free iHeartRadio app, search one you feed, and listen now.

I want you to ask yourself right now, how am I actually doing? Because it's a question that we rarely ask ourselves. All of May is actually Mental Health Awareness Month and on the psychology of your 20s we are taking a vulnerable look at why mental health is so hard to talk about. Prepare for our conversations to go deep. I spent majority of my teenage years, my 20s just feeling absolutely terrified. I had a panic attack on a conference call. Knowing that she had six months to live I was no longer pretending that this was my best friend. So this Mental Health Awareness Month take that extra bit of care of your wellbeing.

Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Bob Pitman, Chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia. On this week's episode of Math and Magic, I'm sitting down with the one and only Bobby Bones. We're exploring the power of audio. Yeah, I don't fit into one specific hole. I think that is what endeared me to listeners.

That's why I'm here now because I talk to people that grew up like me, have sensibilities like me, and have loyalties like me. Listen to Math and Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. You're listening to the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.