Imagine two people with the same disease, same treatment, same relative social class. But one gets well, and the other doesn’t. A mystery? A coincidence? A situation with multiple explanations? It’s a question for which science has no ready answers. Now it appears, we can finally explain it.

We’ve been exploding some commonly-held assumptions on this show. And that makes for rather provocative stuff. None of us likes our belief systems challenged completely, especially when we feel the challenge impacting one of our bedrock philosophies of life.

But the work of Dr. Norberto Keppe does exactly that. Like Socrates addressing universal values and challenging the thinking of the citizens of ancient Athens, Keppe’s work causes us to examine what we know about ourselves. But Keppe also leads us to discover what we don’t know about ourselves – and this is a much dimmer journey. Most of us don’t know that we are dominated by what we don’t know. In this consideration, strongly held views are best not held to with all you’ve got. Better to remain open and explore what you don’t know yet.

Keppe’s work has had a profound effect on many people, including Roberto Giraldo, a Colombian medical doctor and specialist in infectious and tropical diseases. Giraldo is the author of Aids and Stressors, and is currently working at the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. But he’s beginning the move to Brazil to study more with Dr. Keppe and develop his understanding of the psychological roots of disease.

In this podcast, we explore some of his thinking about the connection between the mind, body, society … and disease.

Click here to listen to this episode

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