We want to draw attention out to something really admirable that my colleague Allison Stewart

and her team at all of it are doing the show is celebrating its fifth anniversary now.

And rather than just have a party and cake and pat themselves on the back, Allison and

company are staging a blood drive right on the premises at WNYC. It's this Monday,

October 30th, as listeners and employees here at the station will donate much needed blood

in a time where the country is facing a shortage. I don't know if you've heard new stories about

the blood shortage in America right now. It doesn't get as much coverage as probably it should.

And I will say that most of the slots for Monday are filled, but I urge you to see if you can sign

up because there are some open last I looked at WNYC.org slash give blood. And even if you can't

participate at WNYC in person, you can give blood any time of course in multiple locations

around the city. The other reason for this as their anniversary celebration and another reason

to love Allison as many of you do already know is that Allison bravely donated a kidney this year

to her sister. And through that process, she says she learned that she has a rare blood type.

And after getting used to the needles and the prodding that was involved in kidney donation,

she resolved to promote the idea of giving blood. So we want to take these few minutes

on this show to amplify the good deed that they're doing over it there. So if you've never donated

blood before, we know it can be a scary prospect. And so what we're going to do now is take a few

minutes in Allison and the blood drives honor to talk about how it works and the situation in our

health care system that doesn't get much press. So we're very happy to have with us now Dr. Bruce

Sekis chief medical officer for the New York blood center. Thanks so much for coming on Dr. Sekis

and for your work. Welcome to WNYC. Thanks Brian. Thanks for having me and thank you and your

colleagues for hosting a blood drive. Really appreciate that. And I see that last month the Red Cross

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