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 deeper, more healing relationships.

Our guest on this episode is Dr. Farr Curlin, a hospitalist and palliative care physician at Duke University School of Medicine. Dr. Curlin holds joint appointments in the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine and Duke Divinity School, where he studies the intersection of medicine, ethics, and religion.

From a young age, Dr. Curlin was intrigued by the moral dimensions of medicine. As a medical trainee, he began to study how the religious backgrounds of physicians inform their practice. He is the co-author of The Way of Medicine, in which he challenges the modern “provider of services” model and calls for a recovery of medicine’s spiritual foundations as a healing profession. Now, at Duke Divinity School, he spends significant time helping physicians re-center their practice around the question: “What is Good?”

Over the course of our conversation, we discuss attitudes toward religion in the medical profession and how many medical professionals worry that being openly religious may make them seem retrograde — or worse. We explore striking the balance between offering physician wisdom while respecting patient autonomy, consider whether the project of medicine makes sense when viewed through the lens of secular humanism, and reflect on how the physician attributes of humility and respect enable physicians to productively bring their full selves to the bedside, all while practicing medicine within a morally pluralistic society.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

2:48 - Dr. Curlin’s path to medicine and what drew him to a career at the intersection of religion and medicine

19:30 - Dr. Curlin’s thoughts on why doctors often feel they cannot be openly religious

35:45 - How Dr. Curlin would change medical training to create a deeper focus on personal commitments and moral conviction

41:15 - Exploring the limitations of artificial agnosticism at the patient’s bedside

51:50 - How fostering a spiritual connection to the work of healing can mitigate burnout

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

Copyright The Doctor’s Art Podcast 2025

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?

Our guest on this episode is Dr. Jessica Zitter — a physician, author, and filmmaker who has spent her career at the fault line between intensive care and palliative care. Dr. Zitter was initially drawn to the technical choreography in the ICU: numbers to chase, procedures to perform. Yet, along the way, she began to notice the danger we rarely name — that in our devotion to protocol, we might drift away from the person in front of us.

Over the course of our conversation, Dr. Zitter shares personal experiences that have shaped her approach to medicine. We talk about moral injury and how it compounds: when systems push us to act against our values, care gets worse, and the hurt deepens. We talk about how bias slips in when power meets prejudice at the bedside and why chaplains — so often sidelined — can be essential guides back to the human being we’re treating. Her prescription is simple: treat patients as you’d want your own loved ones to be treated. Ask for the story. Reconstruct the person we’ve taken apart into smaller pieces.

Dr. Zitter is the author of her memoir Extreme Measures, appears in the Academy Award-nominated short film Extremis, and is the director of several documentaries, including 2025’s The Chaplain & the Doctor.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

2:45 - Dr. Zitter’s path to a career in intensive care medicine

4:52 - A day in the life of an intensivist

17:42 - Dr. Zitter’s unexpected pivot to prioritizing palliative care in her work

26:41 - The inspiration for Dr. Zitter’s film The Chaplain and the Doctor

38:36 - How chaplaincy attends to the soul of the patient and what doctors can learn from this perspective

42:51 - Navigating internalized bias as a doctor

49:42 - Dr. Zitter’s advice for her younger self

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

Copyright The Doctor’s Art Podcast 2025

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 the podcast hosts and our guest will reflect this timing.

Elephants rarely get cancer, ants quarantine when sick, and altruistic pigs have a higher pain tolerance. In this episode, we discuss insights from the animal world that shed light on human health and wellness, as well as the power of data driven narratives in effective public health education.

Our guest is Dr. David Agus, founding CEO of the Ellison Medical Institute and professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California. As a CBS news contributor and author of three New York Times best selling books on health, Dr. Agus emphasizes the need for experts who are willing to explain rather than tell.

Having experienced the politicization of public health during the pandemic, he highlights the importance of data transparency and the urgency for more physician leaders. With technological advances making data collection and analysis ever more accessible, Dr. Agus shares a vision for the future of medicine, where patients bring their own health data to the clinic and physicians act as educators guided by the values of their patients.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

2:30 - Dr. Agus’s journey to medicine and how he found his way to focusing on preventative health and public education

6:50 - Navigating the politicized nature of public health as a public health educator

14:17 - Dr. Agus’s viewpoint on the controversial nominations of RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz

19:51 - How the education of doctor needs to change to adapt to our newly data driven world

24:20 - The current state of nutrition science and how people can make the best choices with the current data available on the topic

32:12 - The potential benefits of making big data in electronic medical records available to physicians

32:48 - The inspiration behind Dr. Agus’s new book, The Book of Animal Secrets, and what the animal kingdom can teach us as humans about living a more fulfilling and healthy life

52:11 - A vision for empowering patients with their personal medical data in the age of AI

54:31 - Dr. Agus’s advice to clinicians on supporting patients with their preventative health

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

Copyright The Doctor’s Art Podcast 2025