Searching for Medicine‘s Soul: Recent Episodes
Ethics and Public Policy Center
Hosted by Dr. Aaron Rothstein and featuring expert guests, Searching for Medicine’s Soul explores medicine’s purpose: Why do physicians do what they do? How does the practice of medicine relate to scientific progress and human flourishing? The result is an in-depth analysis of the history and aim of medicine, and its collision with a thrilling and sometimes tragic age of discovery.
In this episode, Aaron is joined by investigative journalist Charles Piller, who writes for Science and covers public health, biological warfare, and infectious disease outbreaks, among other topics. His most recent book, Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's is a bombshell story about fraud within the field of Alzheimer’s research.
In this episode, Aaron is joined by Dr. Carl Elliott, author and philosophy professor at the University of Minnesota. They discuss how medical education can corrupt character, Dr. Elliott’s experience as a whistleblower, and his latest book, The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No, which explores the history of medical experimentation.
On this episode, Aaron is joined by Charlotte Bismuth, author of Killer in a White Coat: The True Story of New York's Deadliest Pill Pusher and the Team That Brought Him to Justice. Bismuth discusses the profit motive behind the opioid crisis and her decision to prosecute Dr. Stan Li, whose criminal medical practice in New York led to 16 overdoses from prescription drugs.
“On this episode, Aaron is joined by Dasha Kiper, author of Travelers to Unimaginable Lands: Stories of Dementia, the Caregiver, and the Human Brain and a clinical trainer at Renewal Memory Partners. Aaron and Dasha discuss the impact dementia has on caregivers. Through cultural pressures, family dynamics, and a lack of support, caregivers have become what Dasha calls “invisible victims.”
Episode description: On this episode, Aaron is joined by Dr. Marc-David Munk, author of Urgent Calls from Distant Places: An Emergency Doctor’s Notes about Life and Death on the Frontiers of East Africa. Dr. Munk discusses his travels to the Middle East and Africa, Christianity’s role as a trusted institution in places where government has failed, and how to bring the focus back to patients in the American healthcare system.
On this episode, Aaron is joined by Doron Gothelf, a professor of child psychiatry at Tel Aviv University and an integral member of the medical team involved in treating Israeli children hostages who have been released. Aaron and Doron discuss childhood trauma, how traumatic events affect the young, and Doron’s work with the victims of Hamas’ violence.
On this episode, Aaron is joined by Lewis Grossman, professor of law at American University and author of the book Choose Your Medicine, to discuss the history of drug regulation and medical freedom.
On this episode, Aaron talks with Dr. James O’Connell, author of Stories from the Shadows: Reflections of a Street Doctor. Dr. O'Connell discusses his work providing medical care for the homeless in Boston, his experience working as a doctor for the homeless during the AIDS crisis, and the perverse incentives of the medical profession.
In this episode, Aaron is joined by psychiatrist and novelist Samuel Shem, who wrote the satirical novel House of God. Aaron and Samuel discuss Samuel’s latest and final novel in the House of God series, Our Hospital. The book serves as a reflection of the truth of medicine during COVID in which hospitals are driven by profit over humanity.
In this episode, Aaron is joined by Drs. Christopher Worsham and Anupam B. Jena, professors at Harvard Medical School and authors of Random Acts of Medicine: The Hidden Forces That Sway Doctors, Impact Patients, and Shape Our Health. The three discuss natural experiments and the biases and outside forces that impact doctors and health policy.
In this episode of Searching for Medicine’s Soul, Aaron was joined by Dr. Ronald Dworkin, a 30-year practicing anesthesiologist, professor of political philosophy at George Washington University, and author of Medical Catastrophe: Confessions of an Anesthesiologist. Aaron and Ronald discuss the importance of medical physicians having a liberal arts education and the consequences of a lack thereof.
What we choose to measure can distort our organizations, impact our workforce, and hijack our attention and resources. In this episode shared from the Moral Matters podcast, Simon Talbot and Wendy Dean talk to Jerry Muller, professor emeritus of history at the Catholic University of America and the author of The Tyranny of Metrics, about how that happens and how to create metrics that matter.
Listen to more episodes from Simon and Wendy here.
In the second installment of a two-part conversation, Aaron is joined by Dr. Norman Doidge, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who served on the faculty at Columbia University's Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and the University of Toronto's Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Doidge is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Brain that Changes Itself, and The Brain’s Way of Healing. Aaron and Norman turn their conversation to mainstream medicine, which in Dr. Doidge’s view, has neglected the human soul through the deification of science. They also discuss the corruption of the scientific method by industry and government overreach.
The US went from small scale, local healthcare institutions to multibillion dollar megaproviders in barely a generation. In this episode shared from the Moral Matters podcast, Simon Talbot and Wendy Dean talk to Lawton R. Burns, MBA about his perspective on how it happened, what the true costs are, and what we all can do about it.
Listen to more episodes from Simon and Wendy here.
In the first installment of a two-part conversation, Aaron is joined by Dr. Norman Doidge, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who served on the faculty at Columbia University's Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and the University of Toronto's Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Doidge is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Brain that Changes Itself, and The Brain’s Way of Healing. Aaron and Norman discuss the mind-body problem and how the brain’s ability to change provides a different perspective to the age-old debate.
In this episode of Searching for Medicine’s Soul, Aaron was joined by Dr. Ilana Yurkiewecz, a physician practicing oncology and internal medicine at Stanford University, published medical journalist, and author of Fragmented: A Doctor’s Quest to Piece Together American Health Care. Aaron and Ilana discuss how America’s healthcare system functions in a way that blocks physicians from possessing complete knowledge of a patient’s medical history, and the detrimental effects of physicians being partially blindfolded as they practice.
In this episode of Searching for Medicine's Soul, Aaron was joined by Dr. Wendy Dean, a physician trained in surgery and psychiatry who is now focusing on finding innovative ways to make medicine better for both patients and physicians through her nonprofit, Fix Moral Injury. She is the recent co-author of If I Betray These Words: Moral Injury in Medicine and Why It's So Hard for Clinicians to Put Patients First and co-host of the podcast Moral Matters, Moral Injury of Healthcare. Aaron and Wendy discuss the difference between moral injury of doctors and physician burnout, as well as how the healthcare system contributes to symptoms of moral injury.
In this episode of Searching for Medicine's Soul, Aaron was joined by ethicist Dr. Simon Whitney, author of From Oversight to Overkill: Inside the Broken System That Blocks Medical Breakthroughs—And How We Can Fix It. Aaron and Simon discussed the system of Institutional Review Boards that has come to dominate and distort our system of medical research.
In this episode of Searching for Medicine's Soul, Aaron was joined by Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal, senior contributing editor at Kaiser Health News, former New York Times reporter, and New York Times Best Selling author of An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back. Dr. Rothstein and Dr. Rosenthal talked about the failures of the American healthcare system and the untenable costs and burdens it foists on patients and doctors.
In this episode, Aaron was joined by Dr. David Yaden, who studies the measurement and experimental manipulation of mental states called altered states of consciousness. The two discussed spiritual experiences, religion, psychedelics and mental illness, and the ability to embrace a positive worldview through psychedelic substances.
In this episode of Searching for Medicine's Soul, Aaron was joined by fellow EPPC scholar Dr. Aaron Kheriaty. Drs. Rothstein and Kheriaty discussed the biomedical security state, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In this episode of Searching for Medicine's Soul, Aaron is joined by Jim Capretta, Senior Fellow and Milton Friedman Chair at the American Enterprise Institute. In the face of rising healthcare costs, the pair discuss the government's role in healthcare policy with an eye for providing patients with meaningful choice in quality treatment.
On this episode of Searching for Medicine's Soul, Aaron interviews Dr. David Slusky of the University of Kansas. David is the Executive Director of the American Society of Health Economists as well as the De-Min and Chin-Sha Wu Associate Professor of Economics at KU. He is a co-founder and co-organizer of the Electronic Health Economics Colloquium, for which he recently successfully negotiated a partnership with ASHEcon for the spring. He is also the founder and the lead organizer of the Kansas Health Economics Conference, for which he was awarded a multiyear National Science Foundation grant. Slusky is also a co-editor at the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, serving in a managing editor capacity.
In this episode of Searching for Medicine's Soul, Aaron is joined by Avik Roy, the President of the Foundation For Research on Equal Opportunity, a non-profit think tank focused on expanding economic opportunity to those who least have it. He trained as a scientist at MIT and as a physician at Yale Medical School. In 2012, Avik joined Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign as a health care policy advisor. By 2014, Avik was Forbes’ Opinion Editor. In 2015, Avik ran the foreign and domestic policy shops for Texas Governor Rick Perry’s presidential campaign. He writes frequently about healthcare economics and healthcare policy for numerous publications including Forbes and National Review. He serves on the Boards of Advisors of the Bitcoin Policy Institute and Sats Center, and on the Board of Directors of the Texas Bitcoin Foundation. Avik, thanks for joining the podcast.
In this episode of Searching for Medicine's Soul, Aaron is joined by Jeffrey P. Bishop, M.D., Ph.D. Jeffrey is Professor of Philosophy and Theological Studies at St. Louis University where he also holds the Tenet Endowed Chair in Bioethics. He is the author of The Anticipatory Corpse and most recently the co-author of Biopolitics After Neuroscience: Morality and the Economy of Virtue. The two discuss the confluence of medical practice and human mortality in light of Jeffrey's research and experience.
On this episode of Searching for Medicine's Soul, Aaron is joined by Meghan O'Rourke. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness and The Long Goodbye, as well as the poetry collections Sun In Days, Once, and Halflife. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and The New York Times, and more. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship, and a Whiting Nonfiction Award, she resides in New Haven, where she teaches at Yale University and is the editor of The Yale Review. The two discuss the place of chronic illness and pain in a wholly human anthropology.
On this episode of Searching for Medicine’s Soul, Aaron is joined by Wes Ely, the Grant W. Liddle Endowed Chair in Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, physician-scientist, and author of Every Deep-Drawn Breath, a work chronicling the human element active in ICU medical practice. The two discuss Wes’ humanistic approach to his patients and how it shapes his views on the ethical use of sedation, cognitive rehabilitation from neurological diseases, changing treatments acute cases of COVID-19, and more.
Note that all proceeds from Every Deep-Drawn Breath will be paid into a fund for Covid and ICU survivors.
See also:
Every Deep-Drawn Breath
Wes’ article on ‘long-COVID’
On this episode of Searching for Medicine’s Soul, Aaron is joined by EPPC President Ryan T. Anderson and Fellow Alexandra DeSanctis. Ryan and Alexandra’s expert testimony from years of work in the pro-life movement and co-authorship of Tearing Us Apart: Why Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing sheds light on the philosophical and medical grounds for the pro-life cause, common pro-abortion objections including the famous fetal violinist argument, and how the handling of the abortion issue has hurt public life in America in the last fifty years.
See also:
Tearing Us Apart: Why Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing
On this episode of Searching for Medicine’s Soul, Aaron Rothstein is joined by Danielle Ofri, Clinical Professor of Medicine at the New York University School of Medicine and founder of the Bellevue Literary Review. The two discuss Ofri’s work chronicling the challenges to the relationship between doctor and patient: administrative creep in the medical field, nonprofit hospital (mis)behavior, and the application of the adversarial patient compensation system to unintended medical errors.
See also:
Danielle’s website
When We Do Harm, Danielle’s latest book
The Bellevue Literary Review
Charles Piller joins Aaron to discuss his latest investigative reporting for Science on potentially fraudulent Alzheimer's research.
Dr. Margaret Chisolm joins Aaron to discuss her book, From Survive to Thrive, as well as human flourishing, the field of psychiatry, and the importance of visual arts in medicine.
Dr. Tom Catena joins Aaron to discuss his experience as a physician in the Nuba Mountains in the Sudan.
Samuel Shem joins Aaron to continue their conversation about The House of God, and its recent sequel, Man's 4th Best Hospital.
Dr. Mary-Frances O'Connor joins Aaron to discuss her book, The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss
Samuel Shem joins Aaron to discuss his book, The House of God, and its recent sequel, Man's 4th Best Hospital.
Dr. Christine Hancock joins Aaron to discuss how she became interested in medicine and her experience serving an underserved population during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Dr. Hancock is a medical director and family physician at Sea Mar Community Health Centers in Bellingham, Washington, and the clinical director for Sea Mar's opioid initiatives. She is an alumna of the UC Berkley UC San Francisco joint medical program and she completed her residency in Family Medicine at the Santa Rosa Family Medicine Residency. Dr. Hancock's research and teaching focus on rural and community health with an emphasis on chronic pain and opioid use disorders.
- The Pandemic Didn’t Unfold How Dr. Christine Hancock Expected
Please visit the Ethics and Public Policy's Bioethics and American Democracy program page for more information.
Dr. Ariane Lewis joins Aaron to discuss the concept of death by neurologic criteria.
Dr. Lewis is a professor in the departments of neurology and neurosurgery and the director of NYU Langone’s Division of Neurocritical Care. As an expert on end of life social ethical and legal controversies related to death by neurologic criteria, she served on the steering committee for the World Brain Death Project, is an observer on the Determination of Death Act Drafting Committee, and is the international advisor to the Canadian Critical Care Society Definition and Determination of Death Committee. She is also chair of the NYU Langone Medical Center Ethics Committee, the past chair of the Neurocritical Care Society Ethics Committee, and a member of the American Academy Neurology, Ethics, Law, and Humanities Committee. Dr. Lewis has over a hundred publications and is a deputy editor of the Disputes and Debates section of the Neurology Publication and Seminars in Neurology. She's also a fellow in the Neurocritical Care Society.
Please visit the Ethics and Public Policy's Bioethics and American Democracy program page for more information.
Dr. Lydia Dugdale joins Aaron to discuss her book--The Lost Art of Dying--and the place of death and dying in our culture.
Ari Schulman, editor of The New Atlantis, joins Aaron to discuss our mishandling of the pandemic, the faults of the CDC, and our misconceptions about science and scientific authority.
Dr. Paul McHugh joins Aaron to discuss the purpose of psychiatry and psychiatric overreach in medicine.
Ross Douthat joins Aaron to discuss his new book: The Deep Places. They address the difficulties of living with chronic illness and the weaknesses of modern medicine and the medical establishment.
Dr. Kristin Collier joins Aaron to discuss primary care, spirituality, and burnout in the medical profession.
Yuval Levin joins Aaron to discuss scientific urgency and morality, political polarization, and mistrust in the institutions of science and medicine.
Professor Charles Camosy joins Aaron to discuss his new book: Losing Our Dignity. They address religion and medicine, secularized medicine, moral theology, medical ethics and the conundrum of limited resources in healthcare.
Dr. Farr Curlin and Professor Christopher Tollefsen join Aaron to discuss their new book: The Way of Medicine: Ethics and the Healing Profession. They address the purpose of medicine, physician burnout, patient and physician autonomy, conscientious objection, and the future of the profession.
- The Way of Medicine: Ethics and the Healing Profession
Please visit the Ethics and Public Policy's Bioethics and American Democracy program page for more information
On this inaugural episode of Searching for Medicine's Soul, Dr. Aaron Rothstein is joined by Dr. Aaron Kheriaty to discuss his journey as a physician, his work as a bioethicist, and his ongoing lawsuit over the University of California's vaccine mandate.
Dr. Kheriaty is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he directs EPPC’s program in Bioethics and American Democracy. He is Professor of Psychiatry at UCI School of Medicine and Director of the Medical Ethics Program at UCI Health. He serves as chairman of the medical ethics committees at UCI Hospital and at the CA Department of State Hospitals.
- Human Flourishing, Dr. Kheriaty's Substack newsletter
- aaronkheriaty.com
Please visit the Ethics and Public Policy's Bioethics and American Democracy program page for more information
Hosted by Dr. Aaron Rothstein and featuring expert guests, Searching for Medicine’s Soul explores medicine’s purpose: Why do physicians do what they do? How does the practice of medicine relate to scientific progress and human flourishing? The result is an in-depth analysis of the history and aim of medicine, and its collision with a thrilling and sometimes tragic age of discovery.
Please visit the Ethics and Public Policy's Bioethics and American Democracy program page for more information