Medicine Beyond Medicine with Alicia Ashorn & Anthony Thigpen
The Nocturnists
Emily Silverman
4.8 • 614 Ratings
🗓️ 11 December 2025
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Community health workers Alicia Ashorn and Anthony Thigpen share their personal stories—Alicia's journey through addiction and recovery, and Anthony's path through grief, transformation, and reentry work—and how these experiences shape their care for people returning from incarceration. In the conversation that follows, they reflect on the power of storytelling, the emotional complexity of supporting clients in crisis, and the wisdom required to balance compassion with boundaries. Through vivid anecdotes from the field, they illuminate the essential yet often unseen role of community health workers as bridges between the clinic and the community, offering trust, dignity, and hope to people navigating systems that routinely fail them.
Alicia and Anthony originally told their stories at Journeys of Healing: Stories of Resilience and Transformation, a storytelling event presented by Transitions Clinic Network in Los Angeles in 2025. The event was made possible by a generous grant from the California Health Care Foundation in support of our program, The Nocturnists Satellites.
The Nocturnists is made possible by the California Medical Association and donations from listeners like you.
This episode of Stories from the World of Medicine is sponsored by The Physicians Foundation. and our friends at the podcast Unleashed: Redesigning Health Care.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Listeners, if you enjoy the nocturness, then you'll also enjoy Unleashed, Redesigning Healthcare, |
| 0:06.2 | a new podcast about clinician-led innovation on the front lines of care. |
| 0:10.7 | The featured guests are the clinician innovators themselves, their stories, their voices, |
| 0:15.1 | their ingenuity, their commitment to their patients, and their humanity, and even the deeply |
| 0:20.0 | felt gains in their own well-being. |
| 0:22.7 | Unleashed is from our friends at the Dartmouth Institute, one of our sponsors for this episode. |
| 0:28.1 | Learn more in today's show notes or search for Unleashed, redesigning health care anywhere you listen |
| 0:34.0 | to podcasts. Support for the Nocturness comes from the California Medical Association. |
| 0:40.3 | At the nocturness, we are careful to ensure that all stories comply with health care privacy laws. |
| 0:45.6 | Details may have been changed to ensure patient confidentiality. |
| 0:49.0 | All views expressed are those of the person speaking and not their employer. |
| 0:56.5 | This is the nocturnous. I'm Emily Silverman. |
| 1:01.0 | Today's episode is a little different from our usual format. |
| 1:04.8 | We'll be featuring two stories instead of one. |
| 1:09.2 | Alicia Ashhorn and Anthony Thigpen are both community health workers with the Transitions Clinic Network, |
| 1:15.2 | an organization that employs people who were formally incarcerated as community health workers |
| 1:20.1 | who support others as they transition out of prison. |
| 1:24.7 | Earlier this year, both Alicia and Anthony told personal stories on stage in Los Angeles |
| 1:30.1 | at a nocturnous satellites event, hosted by TCN, with the generous support of the California |
| 1:36.3 | Healthcare Foundation. |
| 1:38.2 | That evening featured stories from six community health workers, all drawing on their personal |
| 1:43.7 | histories and their work alongside |
... |
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