Donor Diaries

About Donor Diaries

Donor Diaries is a podcast that delves into the beauty and complexity of living organ donation. Tune in to hear extraordinary stories of people who choose to share their organs and give the gift of life. The world of kidney and organ donation is a powerful testament to kindness, love, and the human spirit. With over 90,000 individuals on the kidney transplant waitlist and about 13 people dying each day while waiting, the urgency is real. One in three Americans is at risk for chronic kidney disease, and one in nine already suffers from it, often unknowingly. Donor Diaries offers unfiltered narratives from living donors and candid insights from transplant experts, aiming to elevate the conversation around organ donation. Our goal is to bring this crucial issue to the forefront, so no patient has to wait in vain or suffer needlessly.

Publisher

Laurie Lee

Category

health & fitness · health & fitness · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

31 May 2021

Latest episode

1 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

3 of 54 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   1 Sept 2026

   How Do you See the World? The Power of Loving a Stranger | EP 44

   Send us Fan Mail For the Season 4 finale of Donor Diaries, Laurie sits down with Abundant director and co-producer Donald Griswold to talk about what really happened behind the scenes of making a documentary about living kidney donation. Abundant started with an idea: What if we told the story of living donation in a way that felt less like a medical story and more like a story about people, relationships, and connection? That simple idea turned into a four-year journey. Laurie and Donald tal...

2. 

   4 Aug 2026

   Eyes on Second Chances: Why One Transplant Center Said No, and Another Said Yes | EP 43

   Send us Fan Mail A living donor says "yes." The transplant center says "no." What happens next? This week on Donor Diaries, we sit down with Diane Hollingsworth, President and CEO of Eversight, a longtime leader in organ and tissue donation, and a two-time kidney transplant recipient. Diane has spent decades helping restore sight through cornea donation while also navigating the transplant journey herself, giving her a perspective that's both deeply personal and professionally unique. Diane's...

3. 

   7 Jul 2026

   Why People Say Yes to Living Donation | EP 42

   Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Donor Diaries, we sit down with Dr. Amy Waterman, a national leader in transplant health services research and patient engagement at Houston Methodist, to talk about what we know about living donors, and what we are still learning. Amy has spent her career studying how to help patients and living donors make informed, confident decisions. We talk about why long term living donor research takes decades, why comparison groups matter when studying donor outcom...

Inside a recent episode

DOVE: Changing How Veterans Find Kidney Donors | EP 40

Published 5 May 2026 · Transcript excerpt

[…] Why are those rates lower, do you think, Sharon? So there's a well-known high incidence of kidney disease. But as far as the access for transplant, I think that some of it could be due to the structure of the transplant programs in the VA. There's a very limited amount of transplant programs that a veteran can choose from. At least when I was there, we were going to be the seventh VA transplant program in the system in the country. So that meant if you were a VA patient, you needed to go to one of the six other transplant programs across the country in order to be evaluated and to undergo the transplant. […]

Who has been a guest on Donor Diaries

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Sue Rees
• Dr Michael Rees
• Jim Pearl
• Jeff Barker
• Josiah Wolfson

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.9 / 5

40 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

13 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 35 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

26

Social presence

0

YouTube

63

Engagement

51

Contact Donor Diaries

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

Questions about Donor Diaries