The Marian Flaxman Network Podcast

Welcome back to the Marian Flaxman Network Podcast. On today's episode, Marian visits White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Georgia, and speaks with their owner and operator, Will Harris. Will is a 4th generation farmer, who spent many years farming industrially, before an "aha" moment caused him to change his entire operation. White Oak Pastures is now a fully integrated regenerative farm, growing and...

Welcome back to the Marian Flaxman Network Podcast. On this episode, Nadine Clopton talks about her impactful work in the regeneration movement, and how it all connects to her lifelong interests in, and passion for, human health and healing. From a childhood in which she dreamed of wearing many professional hats, to a life where she indeed does just that, Nadine walks us through how her education,...

Welcome back to The Marian Flaxman Network Podcast. On today's episode, a conversation with chef, innovator, and food as medicine advocate, Kendra Nicole Stephens. Kendra has been a chef for more than 20 years, following her passion for experimenting in the kitchen as a child, to running her own cookie business after college. She rose in the ranks of the pastry world, before pivoting to focus on h...

Welcome back to The Marian Flaxman Network Podcast. On today's episode, a conversation with public health policy consultant, Melissa Maitin-Shepard. Melissa has worked in the health, public health, and nutrition policy space for nearly two decades, first joining large organizations to support their work, and now working as an independent consultant. Through her firm, MMS Health Strategies, Melissa...

Welcome back to The Marian Flaxman Network Podcast. On today's episode, Marian sits down with author, scientist, fermenter, advocate, and chef, Rich Shih. They discuss Rich's path to the kitchen, how and why he first learned to cook, and how he came to discover that fermentation could be harnessed to make food more delicious, more nutritious, and more sustainable. Marian and Rich met at The George...

Welcome back to The Marian Flaxman Network Podcast! On today's episode, Marian speaks with Dr. Brad Moore about the current healthcare landscape, the future of "food as medicine", and the importance of shifting a patient's overall lifestyle to promote healing. Dr. Moore is passionate about being a doctor and supporting his patients. Years ago, he noticed that his patients were not getting better w...

Welcome back to The Marian Flaxman Network Podcast! On today's episode, a conversation with Melissa L Jones, aka The Edible Activist. Back in the early 2000's, Melissa had an experience that changed her entire perspective on food and health. In her words, she realized she had been "duped" by the food system. This experience started her on a journey of understanding where her food comes from, how i...

Welcome back to the Marian Flaxman Network Podcast. On today's episode, Marian speaks with Kristin Sukys, a strategist and consultant who has spent nearly a decade working on the development of food as medicine policies. Kristin once thought she wanted to be a doctor, and her desire to help and heal people has led her down various paths, including forays into working with food, agriculture, and ev...

Welcome back to the Marian Flaxman Network Podcast. On today's episode, Marian speaks with Dr. Janel Gordon, MD. Dr. Gordon is Board Certified in Family Medicine, Obesity Medicine, and Lifestyle Medicine, and she is also the medical expert for WISH-TV. Dr. Gordon always knew that she wanted to be a doctor, but it wasn't until medical school that she chose family medicine. As she witnessed the many...

Welcome back to the Marian Flaxman Network! On today's episode, Marian speaks with Emily Callahan RD MPH. Emily is a consultant working in the "food is medicine" research and policy development space. he currently works with the Food is Medicine Institute at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University to advance the conversation about integrating food and nutrition into...

Welcome back to The Marian Flaxman Network Podcast! We are kicking off season two, committed as always to reintroducing personal narratives into critical public health topics. Perhaps the most critical public health topic, broadly speaking, is food. Food touches so many areas of human life and society. It fuels our bodies, provides the building blocks for our minds, entertains us, drives the econo...

Welcome back to The Marian Flaxman Network Podcast. On today's episode, Marian speaks with the Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer at Viome Life Sciences, Momo Vuyisich. When he was in graduate school, Momo struggled with a mysterious autoimmune disease. He realized that doctors and drugs did not offer him any solutions and, empowered by his background in scientific research, got curious about th...

Welcome back to the Marian Flaxman Network Podcast. On today's episode, Marian speaks with the founder and owner of Simple Kneads Gluten Free Sourdough Bread, Tristaun LeClaire. As a child, Tristaun faced a series of traumatic setbacks that led him to feel angry at the world. He turned to self-indulgent, self-destructive behaviors as a coping mechanism, before having a wakeup call that changed the...

Welcome back to the Marian Flaxman Network Podcast. Today's guest is Gabriele Nicolet, a professional speech language pathologist and parenting coach, and the host of the Complicated Kids podcast. This conversation brings together nutrition and neurological function, behavior and survival instincts, and discussions about walking a winding path through life, and finding your passion and purpose. Ga...

Welcome back to The Marian Flaxman Network Podcast, a podcast dedicated to reintroducing personal narratives into critical public health topics. On today's episode, a conversation about consumer product safety with "professional myth buster" Keith Rhoades. When Keith was a kid, he knew that he either wanted to be an astronaut, or a product safety professional. Grounded here on earth, he has thrown...

Welcome back to The Marian Flaxman Network Podcast. On today's episode, a conversation with author and researcher, Dr. Ian Myles, MD, MPH. Dr. Myles runs a lab at NIH where he investigates the link between environmental contaminants, the skin microbiome, and eczema. He is a trained allergist and immunologist, who also has a fascination with the nervous system, and during this conversation he detai...

Welcome back to The Marian Flaxman Network Podcast. Today's episode is a quick introduction to "food as medicine". Have you heard this phrase circulating in the news, across social media, or on previous episodes of this podcast? What does it mean? Who does it impact? Why is Marian so passionate about this topic? The answers to these questions, and much more, can be found within this brief episode....

Welcome back to The Marian Flaxman Network Podcast! On today's episode, a conversation with Taylor Winkleman, MPH, DVM. Dr. Winkleman is a military veteran, and a doctor of veterinary medicine. She is passionate about making the world a better place, and she achieves this mission through a wide variety of personal and professional means. As a consultant, she works for organizations such as the WHO...

Welcome back to The Marian Flaxman Network Podcast! On this episode, Marian speaks with Dr. Sona Vasudevan, the Program Director of the Systems Medicine master's program at Georgetown University. They discuss Dr. Vasudevan's background, including her lifelong interest in science, and how her journey through education, research, and life, brought her to the DC area, and to Georgetown. She explains...

Welcome back to the Marian Flaxman Network Podcast! On today's episode, Marian speaks with political strategist, foreign policy expert, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Joel Rubin. Joel fell in love with history, politics, and policy at a young age, spending time in the library researching world events while most kids were home watching cartoons. Raised in Pittsburgh, PA, his family...

Welcome back to the Marian Flaxman Network Podcast. What do farmers worry about, and what is the relationship between agricultural policy, nutrition access, and the health of society? Over the course of this episode, you will hear interviews with three people who work intimately within the food and agriculture space. Heather Sanford is a former full-time farmer, who now works as a consultant and a...

Welcome back to The Marian Flaxman Network Podcast. Today, 2/21, is World Kombucha Day, and we are celebrating by wrapping up a three part series of episodes about kombucha, and the people who produce and promote it. Today's conversation is with Hannah Crum, the founder of Kombucha Kamp and Kombucha Brewers International. Hannah dives into her history with kombucha, explains why she is so passiona...

Welcome back to the Marian Flaxman Network Podcast. Keeping with our February theme of kombucha producers leading up to World Kombucha Day on 2/21, today's episode features a conversation with the owner and brewer at Boochy Call Kombucha, Eric Kelchlin. Eric was an avid beer brewer until he realized that he had developed a dangerous addiction, and needed to quit drinking completely. He got sober,...

Welcome back to The Marian Flaxman Network Podcast. Today Marian speaks with Sid Sharma, one of the three founders of Wild Bay Kombucha. Sid has an amazing story, which took him from studying environmental science and working as an energy analyst, to brewing kombucha in the back room of a juice bar with his friends, and gradually scaling that business to the successful regional company it is today...

Welcome back to The Marian Flaxman Network Podcast. On today's episode, Marian presents a basic overview of the human microbiome. She describes what the microbiome is and establishes why it matters not only to individual human health, but to public health, environmental health, the future of healthcare, and social equity. For more information on all of the sources referenced in this episode, pleas...