The Things Not Named

"A lot of what makes [memoir] good is what you leave out. You can’t interpret things for the reader." Dr. Sandeep Jauhar, author of “My Father’s Brain” Today, on “ The Things Not Named ,” I speak with Dr. Sandeep Jauhar , a cardiologist and the author of several books, including Intern , Doctored , Heart: A History, and My Father’s Brain: Life in the Shadow of Alzheimer’s. Below is an edited trans...

"I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve walked into a patient’s room and their chart tells me they should be dead and they’re not, and I don’t know why. And I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve walked into a patient’s room where the chart says they should be fine, and they are very, very much not fine, and you have to figure out why. And I don’t know that I would have ever really been able...

“What we now consider modern diagnosis, and the literary genre of detective fiction, arose around the same time and mutually influenced each other. We cannot understand the way we do diagnosis today without tracing this prehistory.” — Dr. Lakshmi Krishnan Today, on “ The Things Not Named ,” I speak with Dr. Lakshmi Krishnan , physician, scholar, and director of medical humanities at Georgetown Uni...

“That's what a storyteller's job is. What do you relay and what do you withhold? And frankly, that's the chronic illness storyteller's mode as well. What am I going to tell this doctor in front of me and what am I going to withhold?” Dr. Michael Stein, author of “A Living: Working-Class Americans Talk to Their Doctor” Michael Stein is a physician, a health policy researcher, and author of 15 books...

“Some things can’t be healed. They just need to be held. Narrative medicine does a great job with this — sometimes the healing is in the holding.” Kimberly Warner, author of “Unfixed” Thank you to Mr. Troy Ford , Annette Laing , , Jill Swenson , and many others who tuned into my live interview with Kimberly Warner last week. Kimberly Warner Bio: Kimberly Warner is a filmmaker, author, and patient...

Thank you Kae , Lori , Michelle Ray , and many others for tuning into my live video with Damon Tweedy ! Damon Tweedy Bio: Dr. Damon Tweedy, is a psychiatrist, author, and leading voice on race, medicine, and mental health. He’s a professor of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine and a staff psychiatrist with the Durham Veterans Affairs Health System, where he co-leads an integrated pri...

Thank you Natalie Lago , Michelle Ray , and many others for tuning into my live video with Istiaq Mian, MD yesterday. Istiaq Mian Bio: Dr. Istiaq Mian is a hospitalist (an internal medicine physician who works exclusively in the hospital) in Madison, Wisconsin. His Substack, The Substaq of Istiaq , explores narrative medicine through memoir and essays about what it means to care for people at the...

Welcome back to The Things Not Named. I’m Joshua Doležal. This year I’ve been asking writers how they know high-quality writing when they see it and how their own sensibilities have been forged. My guest today is Holly Starley. Holly is the author of “ Holly Starley’s Rolling Desk ,” which she writes from her DIY van, AKA Vivian. She’s got solar panels on the roof, steadily changing views out the...

Joshua Doležal: Welcome back to The Things Not Named. I’m Joshua Doležal. This year I’ve been asking writers how they know high-quality writing when they see it and how their own sensibilities have been forged. My guest today is Sam Kahn. Sam Kahn writes literary-minded essays, short stories, reviews, and political commentary at Castalia and is an editor at Persuasion . He is also Founder and Edit...

Most of my content in 2025 is free, but I appreciate the support of readers who make my interviews possible. Upgrading your subscription unlocks my monthly essays from a memoir-in-progress , as well as the entire archive. I’m also proud to be a Give Back Stack. 5% of my earnings in Q3 will go to the State College Food Bank . See my accountability page, with receipts for Q1 and Q2, here . The Thing...

Most of my content in 2025 is free, but I appreciate the support of readers who make my interviews possible. Upgrading your subscription unlocks my monthly essays from a memoir-in-progress , as well as the entire archive. I’m also proud to be a Give Back Stack. 5% of my earnings in Q3 will go to the State College Food Bank . See my accountability page, with receipts for Q1 and Q2, here . The Thing...

Most of my content in 2025 is free, but I appreciate the support of readers who make my interviews possible. Upgrading your subscription unlocks my monthly essays from a memoir-in-progress , as well as the entire archive. I’m also proud to be a Give Back Stack. 5% of my earnings in Q2 will go to Centre Volunteers in Medicine , a free clinic for those with no health insurance and annual income unde...

Joshua Doležal: Welcome back to The Recovering Academic Podcast. I’m Joshua Doležal and my guest today is Anne Trubek . My interview series this year is called “The Things Not Named.” It takes its title from a passage in Willa Cather’s essay “The Novel Démueblé,” one of her craft manifestos. I’ve been asking writers how they know high-quality writing when they see it and how their own sensibilitie...

Joshua Doležal: Welcome back to The Recovering Academic Podcast. I’m Joshua Doležal and my guest today is Ross Barkan. My interview series this year is called “The Things Not Named.” It takes its title from a passage in Willa Cather’s essay “The Novel Démueblé,” one of her craft manifestoes: Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there—that, it seems to me, is created. It...

Joshua Doležal: Welcome back to The Recovering Academic Podcast. I’m Joshua Doležal and my guest today is Kern Carter . My interview series this year is called “The Things Not Named.” It takes its title from a passage in Willa Cather’s essay “The Novel Démueblé,” one of her craft manifestoes: “Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there—that, it seems to me, is created. I...

The Hedgehog There exists a great chasm between those who relate everything to a single central vision and those who pursue many ends. —Isaiah Berlin He knows the shadows on the moon are deep valleys, skylines as jagged up there as these, but even in daylight, moon half erased, he sees the full arc of a sphere. If you're not done reading, you can find a meditation on Quakerism at Inner Life . This...

Friends, I have a few things left to say about facts and feelings after last week, but I’ll let those thoughts simmer a little longer. Today I’m sharing what will likely be the last of my 2024 interviews. John Pistelli is the author of the forthcoming novel Major Arcana (Belt Publishing, 2025) and the bestelling Substack Grand Hotel Abyss , home of a regular newsletter called Weekly Readings and t...

Friends, This post is a conversation between Dee Rambeau and me about sobriety. It comes on the heels of National Recovery Month, and you’ll see that it begins with a question: can anyone claim to be sober, even if they haven’t struggled with addiction? I’ve done a few of these email exchanges, and they are a little different from a podcast interview in that we each take more time to think about a...

A Conversation with G.V. Loewen Joshua Doležal: I’m Joshua Doležal and welcome back to The Recovering Academic Podcast. My guest today is Dr. G.V. Loewen, or, for our purposes, Greg. Greg has been one of my readers for a while, though he’s only rarely ventured into the comment threads. Before he proposed that we share our conversation with you, I only knew of him as a prolific Canadian scholar. Bu...

Dear Friends, This post is a conversation between Liz Haswell and me. If you haven’t discovered Liz’s Substack, Unprofessoring , I urge you to check it out. Liz and I both left tenured faculty positions two years ago. Liz was a Biology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and I was an English professor at Central College, in Iowa. While we both left because we’d lost faith in higher ed...

Joshua Doležal: I’m Joshua Doležal and this is The Recovering Academic. My guest today is Samuel Lopez-Barrantes . Samuél Lopez-Barrantes: We know, we feel it. You feel it when you've written something that means something to you, and it's kind of beyond... I always think of this quote by Rilke, which is, “Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and there is nothing so useless as criticism. Only...

I’m grateful to Brevity Magazine for first publishing this essay in Fall 2005. A Hot Bath in April This cold snap in late spring has brought much needed rain, and it has given me back my morning ritual. All winter, I rose early and drew a scalding bath first thing, smothering toast with apricot jam while water drummed in the tub. When the weather warmed then turned hot, I began sleeping beneath a...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit joshuadolezal.substack.com Don’t miss the latest at Inner Life , where James F. Richardson shares an excerpt of his forthcoming book “ Our Worst Strength: American Individualism and Its Hidden Discontents .” A Conversation with Leslie Wang Joshua Doležal: I’m Joshua Doležal and this is The Recovering Academic. My guest today is Dr. Lesl...

The marriage was a shovel so full it broke. Tell the children, so they may know strength can snap in the ablest hands when a load is too eagerly thrown. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joshuadolezal.substack.com/subscribe

Joshua Doležal: I’m Joshua Doležal and this is The Recovering Academic. My guest today is Dr. Kate Rogers.  Kate is a psychologist by training. Her B.A. is from Wake Forest, she completed her Ph. D. at the University of British Columbia, and she was Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga for four years. Her story is a little different from others in this serie...