How do we avoid scams? Why are there so many out there, so many people spending their time preying on others?
Easy answer: it's lucrative, obviously. Those letters about the remote family member who died and left you money, the fake banking calls, your package held up at the border needing duty fees. It's easy to be deceived. And the scammers have upped their games: the phone might display the actual business name (like the Canada Revenue Agency), the website might look completely legitimate unless you check the URL. Artificial intelligence can now be used to imitate voices--your grandson, your spouse, your parent. Many scams prey on the elderly, people with disabilities, those who are lonely. People who sometimes have very little to begin with, or who have saved their entire lives to have a nest egg, a home, a car, only to have it all pulled out from under them. It feels unfair. How can we avoid it?

Being September, I’m thinking about teachers.
          I was at a medical conference and the speaker’s topic was clinical teaching. Most of us in the room were world-weary medical teachers, but some were bright-eyed new grads looking for ideas, inspiration, or advice. The interactive question posed by the speaker: “tell the people at your table about a moment when a teacher made a big difference for you.” You’d think the incident would be a life-or-death situation, a huge, serious event, but immediately I thought of Dr. Hope.