Welcome. I'm Dr. Vinay Prasad. I'm a hematologist, oncologist, and I'm associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. In my professional life, I see patients, I teach trainees, and I do research in health care policy. This is plenary session.

Plenary session is a podcast at the intersection of medicine, oncology, and health policy,

and you're listening to Season 3 on this week's episode. I'm back in Plenary Session and this time

we're on the road. We are in Dr. Bob Walker'ser's office, and I have a discussion with Bob Wachter about many aspects of medicine,

leadership, SARS-CoV-2, social media. You won't want to miss this discussion. Stay tuned.

You know, normally every week you hear me say, if you're fan of this show, go support us on

Patreon, you get access to the slides. I got something new to say this time. I think the good old days are over. We're living in

a unique time where people are very happy to extinguish voices and ideas that they deem

unfit for consumption. And so I personally have gone on Patreon. I've supported a number of people

who I listen to, the podcast that I love.

And I'm encouraging you to do the same.

The only way we can combat this growing force of illiberalism is to support with our dollar

bills podcast we enjoy.

So that's my plug.

I'm back in plenary session. I'm joined in person with Dr. Bob Walker.

Dr. Walker is the chairman of medicine here at the University of California, San Francisco.

And he has had a distinguished career in academic medicine, and we're going to talk about that.

Dr. Walker, thanks so much for doing this.

It is a great pleasure.

Thanks for having me. It's my pleasure. Listeners will probably know you, obviously, from your long

career in medicine, but also from the last year where you've taken a role in sort of talking

about COVID policy. We'll come to that. But I wanted to start in the beginning so I was reading

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