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
165 episodes
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...
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Episode 164
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1:07:56
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 ...
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Episode 163
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53:42
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...
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55:01
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...
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53:50
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...
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Episode 160
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53:24
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...
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Episode 159
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56:31
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...
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Episode 158
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58:15
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...
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Episode 157
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1:01:57
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...
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Episode 156
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52:56
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 ...
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Episode 155
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59:10
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...
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Episode 154
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1:00:24
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...
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Episode 153
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54:44
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,
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Episode 152
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47:00
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,
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Episode 151
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54:58
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
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Episode 150
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1:01:36
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...
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Episode 149
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1:01:58
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...
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Episode 148
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55:18
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 ...
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Episode 147
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57:03
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...
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Episode 146
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58:42
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...
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Episode 145
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53:41
All Physicians are Leaders | Peter Angood, MD
Physicians are trained to diagnose and treat disease, but they're not always taught how to lead. Yet in an era of increasing administrative burdens, evolving healthcare policies, and growing physician burnout, leadership skills have never been ...
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Episode 144
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56:41
How Not to Die | Michael Greger, MD
The American diet is the leading cause of death among Americans. Accumulating medical evidence now shows that poor diet not only contributes to heart disease, diabetes, and stroke, but also to cancer, Alzheimer's disease, liver disease, and muc...
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Episode 143
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54:15
A Prescription for Connection | Julia Hotz
In recent years, it has become evident that loneliness is one of the most pressing public health challenges of our time — so much so that the US Surgeon General has labeled it an epidemic with far reaching consequences. The pain of isolation do...
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Episode 142
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1:05:00
Personalized Medicine — A Threat to Public Health? | James Tabery, PhD
We have featured many techno-optimists on this show — healthcare leaders who believe that precision medicine and emerging technologies promise to revolutionize and democratize medicine in the best of ways. But look under the glossy veneer of th...
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Episode 141
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57:57
Navigating the Wear and Tear of Living | Vincent Deary, PhD
Life can be hard when we are sick. But even when we aren't, life can still wear us down in quiet, surprising ways. Indeed, major traumas are relatively rare, and it's the moments when too many things go wrong at once, or we are exposed to prolo...
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Episode 140
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1:03:25