Your waiting room does what social media cannot

What happens when patients from opposite ends of the political spectrum sit together in your waiting room and start talking like neighbors? Psychiatrist Farid Sabet-Sharghi explores why the medical office remains one of the last spaces where shared humanity overrides division. Based on his KevinMD article, "Physician neutrality: a beacon of ethics in a divided world", this conversation moves from the exam rooms of a polarized America to the prisons of Iran, where physicians and nurses risked torture and death to treat wounded protesters. Sabet-Sharghi shares the story of his father, a pediatrician arrested for his Bahai faith, who opened a clinic inside the very prison that held him. He draws a line from that radical moral courage to the quieter tests physicians face every day: speaking up when colleagues are mistreated, pushing back when systems reduce healers to "providers" and "prescribers," and refusing to let financial stratification erode the dignity of primary care. You'll hear why he now prefers "unbending moral integrity" over neutrality, how physician burnout connects to a lost sense of calling, and what younger doctors need to hear about why their work still matters. This is a conversation that will remind you why you entered medicine in the first place.

Tune into our episode "2026 Cholesterol Guidelines: LDL goals, lipoprotein(a), and coronary calcium scoring," brought to you by Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation.

For the first time in eight years, LDL cholesterol goals have changed, and preventive cardiologist Seth Baum says the new guidelines are a long-overdue course correction. He breaks down the new LDL targets for your highest-risk patients, why the LDL hypothesis should be retired in favor of the LDL fact, why lipoprotein(a) screening finally belongs in every patient's workup, what a coronary calcium score over 300 really means for how aggressively you treat, and how to talk to statin-skeptical patients without losing their trust. Listen now at KevinMD.com/cholesterol.

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