The Doctor's Art

According to our guest on this episode, Gail Gazelle, MD , there has never been a more difficult time to be a doctor. Whether or not you agree with this statement, it's true that clinicians today are expected to see more patients in less time than ever before, spend hours on the electronic medical record, and manage countless administrative and organizational pressures. Dr. Gazelle is a physi...

"All dying is a spiritual process," says our guest on this episode, hospice chaplain Kerry Egan . By this, she means that each person's death is more than just a biological event; it's an opportunity to reflect on the culmination of our human experiences, the lessons we’ve learned, and the impact we've had on others. The recognition of our impermanence prompts us to grappl...

A lung transplant—taking some or all of one person's lungs and putting them into someone else, giving the recipient years of additional life—sounds nothing short of miraculous. Today, over 2500 lung transplants are performed every year in the US. Still, it's among the most medically and ethically complex areas of medicine. Joining us in this episode is David Weill, MD , former director o...

It’s no longer a surprise that the race and ethnicity of a patient influence their health outcomes. But back in the 1990s, when Lisa Cooper, MD first documented and published findings that supported the role of patient race on the quality of physician-patient interactions, these were groundbreaking, even radical ideas. Today, Dr. Cooper, a physician and social epidemiologist, is the Director of th...

Though often invisible in our society, studies have shown that more than seven out of ten people experience trauma at some point in their lives, whether it's physical, sexual, or emotional abuse or a life-threatening accident or illness. In this episode, we speak with Bessel van der Kolk, MD , a psychiatrist and pioneering researcher on post-traumatic stress. His 2014 book, The Body Keeps the...

We live in a culture that vilifies stress. Stress, we are told, is unhealthy both physiologically and emotionally, and something to be avoided at all costs. But Stanford University health psychologist Kelly McGonigal, PhD believes that by suppressing or ignoring it, we're missing out on the benefits of effective stress management. Kelly is also a bestselling author whose work focuses on the m...

For over 50 years, the National Eye Institute (NEI) has been a driving force for cutting-edge vision research, education, and public health guidance. In this episode, we speak with Michael F. Chiang, MD , Director of the NEI . A pediatric ophthalmologist by training, Dr. Chiang's work focuses on the application of biomedical informatics to ophthalmology, in areas ranging from telehealth to ar...

Awe is a feeling we've all experienced but often struggle to articulate. Whether it's the sheer scale of a skyscraper, the infinite expanse of a starry night sky, or the miracle of childbirth, moments of awe can strike us at unexpected times, leaving us speechless, inspired, and even profoundly transformed. In this episode, we speak with Dacher Keltner, PhD , a psychologist at UC Berkele...

First used in the context of Vietnam war veterans, the term "moral injury" refers to the psychosocial, behavioral, and spiritual distress that comes from perpetuating or witnessing events that contradict deeply held moral beliefs. In recent years, moral injury has increasingly been used to describe one of the main challenges clinicians face in modern medicine — the challenge of knowing w...

When COVID-19 rapidly emerged, the World Health Organization (WHO) was thrust into an unprecedented challenge. The global pandemic response was in disarray; health care resources were limited and inequitably distributed; and misinformation burgeoned. At the center of this maelstrom was Soumya Swaminathan, MD , who served as the WHO’s first Chief Scientist, from 2019 until 2022. Dr. Swaminathan not...

Navigating the unforgiving hours and ethical challenges of medical training while holding onto humanism; the medical and cultural history of the human heart; the moving journey of a doctor as he wrestles with his duties as a son and caregiver for a father with dementia. These are just some of the diverse subject matters our guest in this episode, Sandeep Jauhar, MD , has written about. Dr. Jauhar...

Since 1938, the Harvard Study of Adult Development has followed the lives of hundreds, and eventually thousands, of American adults, with the goal of discovering what enables people to live healthier, more meaningful lives. Joining us in this episode is Robert Waldinger, MD , professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the current director of the study. He is the author of the book The G...

When we hear about people with cancer, the stories often end when the treatments end—either the battle has been won and the cancer cured, or in more tragic circumstances, the cancer takes the patient's life. But for patients who survive, that's not where the story ends. Cancer has fundamentally transformed their lives. How are they to make sense of the existentially threatening experienc...

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Sabbath is a day of rest during the week. Our guest in this episode, Judith Shulevitz , is a journalist and literary critic who has thought deeply about what the secular world can learn about meaningful rest from the practice of the Sabbath. In her book The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time , she explores how, despite our culture of workahol...

We are joined in this episode by Eric Reinhart, MD , an anthropologist, psychoanalyst, and psychiatry resident at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. While Dr. Reinhart is the first resident-in-training we've had on this program, his path has been far from straightforward. Prior to residency, Dr. Reinhart conducted ethnographic work in Chicago's South Side, India, South...

The wellness industry saturates our cultural consciousness, with juice cleanses, organic skincare, and spa retreats flooding our social media feeds. But what does this plethora of dazzling — and often-expensive — lifestyle products all amount to? Not much, argues Pooja Lakshmin, MD , a psychiatrist who specializes in women's mental health and clinical assistant professor at George Washington...

Approximately 1 in 700 babies in the United States are born with Down Syndrome . Yet, despite how common this condition is for people, we don’t often have the chance to hear their stories. In this episode, we are joined by Dashiell Meier , a young aspiring filmmaker and disability advocate who has Down Syndrome. Over the course of our conversation, we have the wonderful opportunity to explore how...

From Tanzania to India, from Tibet to Antarctica, Jonathan Reisman, MD , our guest in this episode, has practiced medicine in truly diverse regions of the world. Dr. Reisman's talents and passions are unparalleled in their variety; he is, among many things, an emergency physician, naturalist, food writer, travel writer, and wilderness survival expert. He is the author of The Unseen Body, an e...

For all the deeply rewarding moments medicine offers, it is also a profession often intensely challenging on both systemic and personal levels. Our guest in this episode is Caroline Elton, PhD , an occupational psychologist who has devoted her career to counseling doctors and medical trainees in the National Health Service and various medical schools in the UK. She is the author of Also Human: The...

The American Medical Association (AMA) is the largest professional association of physicians in the United States, comprising more than 270,000 clinicians across all medical specialties. It is involved in all aspects of American medicine, from establishing standards of care, to reforming medical education, to lobbying for health care policies. Our guest in this episode is Jack Resneck Jr., MD , ch...

Matters of faith and spirituality are seldom openly discussed in medicine. But for our guest in this episode, pediatric palliative care doctor Elisha Waldman, MD , these issues are a daily fixture of his work. Dr. Waldman is former associate chief of the Division of Pediatric Palliative Care at Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and former medical director of pediatric pal...

The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) is an independent organization that provides expert evidence-based guidance on issues of health, biomedical science, and health policy. Election to the NAM is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine, recognizing individuals who have shown exceptional professional achievement and commitment to service. In this episode, we are...

While this podcast has largely featured clinicians sharing the joy they have found in medicine, in this episode—breaking with tradition—we speak with a physician left disenchanted by her experiences working in medicine. Our guest is Arghavan Salles, MD, PhD , a minimally-invasive and bariatric surgeon who conducts research on gender equity and implicit bias in medicine. At Stanford Hospital, she a...

In the first half of 2020, New York City quickly became the American epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, with over 200,000 cases reported in the first few months. The city came to a standstill as thousands of people died alone in hospitals and bodies piled up in freezer trucks that could not transport them away fast enough. In August 2020, amid this cataclysm, Dave Chokshi, MD  assumed position as...

In 2015, New York Times journalist John Leland set out to follow the lives of six people over the age of 85. What John learned shattered his preconceived notions about aging, loneliness, and loss. The resulting 2018 book, Happiness is a Choice You Make , became an international bestseller and delved into how these older individuals found wisdom and joy in the later stages of life. In this episode,...