Andrew Weil

And by the time I left high school, I knew I wanted to be a psychiatrist, but it was mainly because that seemed like the best vehicle to study consciousness.

And then at the University of Arizona in the sort of early 70s, I happened to show up not long after Andrew Weil showed up there.

living in a sort of remote cabin out in the desert.

And when I started to propose my thesis to my professors who were studying rats and mazes at the university, they said, I don't really know anything about this, but there's a guy out in the desert on our faculty who you might want to hook up with.

So I connected with Andrew Weil.

He was just out of Harvard in the psychedelic scene.

He's actually the one that got Leary and Ram Dass kicked out of Harvard because he wrote an article in the Harvard Crimson newspaper that he was the editor of about them giving psychedelics to students.

Made a mistake of giving it to some undergraduate students.

And the editor or the columnist for the student newspaper at Harvard, Andrew Weil, you know, who's probably made more money in the New Age movement than anybody else.

He was a columnist and he was mad that they wouldn't give him any psilocybin.

So he took out, and it's fascinating to go back and read in the Harvard Crimson the things that an undergraduate, Andrew Weil, was saying.

And he absolutely blew the whistle on those guys.

And they got kicked out.

And I'm talking about the one and only Dr.

Bob Weil.

Let me tell you a little bit about him.

He has been a sports podiatrist for five decades.

So that's one of the messages.

Pay big attention to the role of the foot Gee, the kid's got high arches, just like his dad and grandma.

Hey, Dr. Weil, I heard you operated on 75-year-old grandma for bunions.

You operated on her 45-year-old daughter for bunions.

I just didn't know what it was.

So I had been in the Peace Corps and read a book by Dr. Andrew Weil, Spontaneous Healing, and wanted to learn as much as I could about natural health.

And I actually, when I got back, moved to Seattle to potentially go to Bastyr.

I still had to do all my prerequisites.

So I ultimately went to allopathic medical school, but I did all my electives in integrative health.

I was the president of the Complementary and Alternative Interest Group.

I actually went and did a rotation with Dr. Andrew Weil my fourth year.

And after that, I just realized like that... still wasn't really getting down to the root, although it was holistic and open-minded, it really didn't get to the root of what was going wrong with you.

And I started listening to – there weren't podcasts back in the day.

This was like 2002, but I think I was downloading interviews on Napster with Dr. Andrew Weil, who was a big – figure in the integrative medicine world.

And he had started an integrative medicine fellowship program at University of Arizona.

And I was like, you know what, maybe I should do that where I go to medical school and primary care and then do an integrative fellowship at University of Arizona.