The Doctor's Art
The practice of medicine–filled with moments of joy, suffering, grace, sorrow, and hope–offers a window into the human condition. Though serving as guides and companions to patients’ illness experiences is profoundly meaningful work, the busy nature of modern medicine can blind its own practitioners to the reasons they entered it in the first place. Join resident physician Henry Bair and oncologist Tyler Johnson as they meet with doctors, patients, leaders, educators, and others in healthcare, to explore stories on finding and nourishing meaning in medicine. This podcast is for anyone striving for a deeper connection with their medical journey. Visit TheDoctorsArt.com for more information.
Episodes
170 episodes
Immigrant Physicians and American Healthcare | Eram Alam, PhD
The creation of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 enabled millions of Americans to meaningfully access healthcare for the first time — and dramatically increased demand for doctors. The passage of the Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act a f...
Healing the Healers | Mary Brandt, MD
The epidemic of physician burnout isn’t just a personal problem. Burned out doctors are more likely to make mistakes, less likely to follow preventative care guidelines, and more likely to have dissatisfied patients. When a burned out physician...
AI and the Biggest Experiment in Medicine | Robert Wachter, MD
The electronic medical record (EMR) has become an unwelcome interloper in the exam room. Too often, patients find themselves answering questions delivered from behind a monitor by physicians hurriedly typing away. This isn’t the kind of care an...
What is Medicine For? | Devan Stahl, PhD
In recent years, Silicon Valley has imagined for us a new way of life – one where almost anyone can be a twenty or thirty-something-year-old with a supernatural glow, toned physique, understated intelligence, and a superabundance of vitality. T...
The Promise of Value-Based Medicine | Farzad Mostashari, MD
Electronic Medical Records have transformed the way we practice health care, making patient data readily accessible to health care providers, facilitating collaboration within and across large medical teams, increasing transparency, and drastic...
Technology, Medicine, and the Erasure of Suffering | A Doctor’s Art Roundtable
Over the past 160 episodes, two themes that have appeared repeatedly feel as relevant and urgent as ever are 1) the pros and dehumanizing cons of technology and 2) approaching suffering in the human experience. In this episode, we are excited t...
Reclaiming Narrative in Medicine | Suzanne Koven, MD, MFA
Most medical encounters are structured as transactions. The patient comes in with a specific complaint, the medical expert identifies a discrete problem, and a specific intervention is prescribed.But at the heart of a medical ...
The Physician and His Doctor | Bryant Lin, MD & Heather Wakelee, MD
Dr. Bryant Lin is a primary care physician, educator, and researcher at Stanford University. In 2018, he founded CARE – the Center for Asian Health Research and Education. In 2023, CARE beg...
Joyspan and Aging | Kerry Burnight, MD
Many of us quietly accept the idea that our best self lives somewhere in the past — that youth is the ideal and aging is a slow erosion of who we really are. But what if getting older isn’t about losing our identity, but deepening it? What if t...
Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There | Brewer Eberly, MD
Many of the world’s best physicians find it surprisingly difficult to answer the question: Why are you in medicine? In the long, arduous journey of medical training or within the technocratically-minded healthcare system, one can easily get los...
The Three Dimensions of a Fulfilling Life | Shigehiro Oishi, PhD
We often confuse happiness with the absence of sadness, or a meaningful life with a productive one. The result might be a life that runs smoothly, but feels strangely flat — as if something essential is missing from the story. What if a truly g...
A Humanist Approach to Chaplaincy | Greg Epstein
When a religious person is isolated from their community, whether due to hospitalization or military service, they can often rely on a chaplain for spiritual support. But where does a non-religious person turn when facing the same circumstances...
The Morals and Morale of Healthcare Providers | Farr Curlin, MD
Many medical trainees are driven to medicine by their moral or religious principles — only to find that they are expected to check their principles at the patient’s door. When this happens, physicians and patients may lose the opportunity for d...
The Mandate of Medicine | Jessica Zitter, MD
Medical trainees spend years mastering what to do when biology fails — countless protocols, procedures, and split-second decisions. By the end, they’re primed to fix what’s broken. But what if the mandate of medicine is simpler — and more human...
The Power of Data Driven Narrative in Public Health | David Agus, MD
Editorial Note: This episode was recorded in December 2024, after the nomination of Robert F Kennedy Jr as Secretary of Health and Human Services had been announced but prior to his confirmation. Some comments by ...
Medicine at the Margins of Society | James O’Connell, MD
Imagine practicing medicine not within the sterile confines of a hospital, but in the unpredictable world of city streets and shelters, where every patient encounter challenges conventional notions of care, empathy, and human dignity. We explor...
A Collective Voice for All Physicians | Bruce Scott, MD
The relationship between physicians and the larger healthcare system is incredibly complex, raising difficult questions about patient care, advocacy, and the role of doctors in shaping public policy. In this episode, we explore these critical i...
Living a Full Life Amidst Illness | On Site at George Mark Children’s House
George Mark Children's House is a pediatric palliative care center in California that provides respite and hospice for children with serious illnesses and their families. In March 2025,
To Create a Medical School | Sharmila Makhija, MD, MBA
If you were asked to build a medical school from scratch, how would you do it? It's not a chance most of us get — but that was exactly the task given to our guest on this episode,
Artificial Intelligence and the Physician of Tomorrow | Michael Howell, MD, MPH
What happens to the practice of medicine when machines begin to reason, summarize and even empathize — at least in the linguistic sense — better than humans do? In this episode, we meet with
Human Experience in a Digital World | Christine Rosen
If you could be plugged into a machine that simulated the perfect experience — limitless joy, deep connection, a sense of purpose — yet you knew it wasn't real, would you choose to stay plugged in? This isn't just a philo...
Virtue and Good Medicine | John Rhee, MD, MPH
There is something uniquely haunting about many neurological diseases. These conditions often don't only affect the body — they reshape the very foundation of who we are, our memories, our personalities, our language. When the brain begins to f...
A Rebirth of Passion and Compassion | Joseph Stern, MD
Neurosurgery is known as one of the most precise and demanding specialties in medicine. It requires absolute technical mastery in a surgical field where a millimeter’s difference can be the deciding factor between lifelong disability or a life ...
Healing, Presence, and Comfort Amid Child Loss | Shekinah Eliassen
In medicine, we are trained to fight for life — to extend it, preserve it and restore it. But sometimes the goal shifts from curing to comforting. That, in brief, is the essence of palliative care. It compels us to ask what it means to truly ca...
A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine | Damon Tweedy, MD
Medicine is often framed as a meritocracy, where intelligence, hard work, and dedication dictate success. Yet, institutions of medicine are shaped by histories of exclusion, bias, and systemic inequities. And for clinicians coming from marginal...