9.1 - Narrative Medicine with Dr. Anthony Weiss

In this episode, Dr. Anthony Weiss reveals the importance of narrative in medicine. He describes how the narrative of the patient not only gives insight into the patient's affliction, but also humanizes the patient by revealing how the affliction is impacting the patient's life. By understanding the narrative of our patients, we can more personally engage in the healing process.

41 minutes • Published Aug 25, 2025 • Download • Transcript

Transcript

[Intro music]

Hi and welcome to the Hippocratic Society Podcast. This podcast is a project of the Hippocratic Society.

In the podcast, we aim to reflect on deeper questions in medicine, all with the aim of rediscovering the ideals that brought us to medicine in the first place in order to better serve our patients and colleagues.

Thank you for joining us and we look forward to engaging with you through this podcast.

Hi and welcome back to the Hippocratic Society Podcast. My name is Michael Egan and I'm joined today by Dr. John Rhee and Dr. Anthony Weiss.

Dr. Rhee is a neurologist, neuro-oncologist, and palliative care specialist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and instructor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.

He co founded the Hippocratic Society and serves as its executive director.

Dr. Anthony Weiss is the Chief Medical Officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical center and an Associate professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Additionally, he serves as a faculty member for the HMS center for Bioethics, where his interests center around the impact of technology and change on the doctor patient relationship,

as well as the tension between physician autonomy and regulatory oversight in managing these changes.

Thank you both very much for joining us on the show today. It's an honor to have you here and I'm looking forward to our discussion.

Thanks, Michael.

Great to be here. Thank you.

Wonderful. So given Dr. Weiss's expertise,

we wanted to discuss a topic that is essential to medicine and that is narrative stories and ethics in medicine.

And so I wanted to frame the discussion loosely in three parts. Going over what is narrative medicine?

And then asking what is the value that narrative medicine provides to ethics and medical practice that other approaches do not?

And then how do we practically use this in clinical practice and our understanding of medicine as a whole? So why don't we jump right in? So what do we mean by narrative or narrative medicine and narrative ethics?

What do these topics encompass?

That's a good question.

I think it probably has different meanings depending on who is using the term.

The concept of narrative in medicine is almost part and parcel of doctoring and the stories that we hear and tell about patients or how we make sense of a patient's presentation, their condition.

And so for me, clinically,

the narrative is critical for understanding what the patient might have,

I guess, is impacting their life. I don't know, John, if that's resonant with you. I mean, I think when I think of narrative, I think initially about the patient's narrative about their life story and what they're bringing to to the office or the bedside.

Yeah, I agree. And I think there's also an aspect of how patients stories can then interweave with our own stories.

And how when we encounter the stories of patients,

we more deeply encounter their sense of identity and who they are. And I think that that is an important aspect of also the humanizing aspect of medicine, why it's so important to hear patients stories.

And I think there are a lot of initiatives in medicine now to try really bring that more to the forefront. So there's this initiative at the VA or the Veterans Administration hospitals that started there, but is now in different places called My Life, My Story, where it's trying to also include,

even in the medical record,

a patient's more the story of their life or aspects that they felt are important in order so that we can then get to know this person at a human level.

Not just think about what their illness is, but how it's impacting all of their life.

Yeah. As I think about why I even went into medicine, and especially why I went into psychiatry or neuropsychiatry, because I do behavioral immunology as well.

Oliver Sacks had a big influence on me in my career choice,

his writings. And I thought.

I mean, I still go back to his books. And I had a chance to meet him and as a guest lecturer at the University of Wisconsin. Cause I sat on a committee that invited guest lecturers.

So I kind of put in the pitch to invite him.

But he had a real way, a real knack for getting at both the clinical aspects of someone's illness, but also the human behind the disease. And I don't know, I mean, there are other writers certainly, that have.

Have had that gift.

But his work, Oliver Sacks, his work was very, very influential on me.

And I loved thinking about psychiatry in that context. Just because the way in which psychiatric illness manifests is almost by definition kind of unique for each individual person.

You know,

an MI,

apologies to any cardiologists out there, but an MI presents similarly,

you know, clinically.

Obviously, the impact on the person's life is going to be different.

But the uniqueness of personality and the uniqueness of the filter of humanity that the mental illness kind of comes through makes it very, very interesting for me, and it's special.

Thank you both for that. And thank you, Dr. Weiss, for sharing a bit of your story and what brought you into medicine. I know Oliver Sacks is a big part of it.

I think of many psychiatrists and neurologists journey into medicine.

And so I wanted to follow up with a question about how does it specifically relate to ethics, the more ethical side of things. Where does narrative come in in that case?

John, do you want to kick us off? What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah.

There's this French philosopher, Paul Ricoeur,

who would say that when we read a story or encounter a story,

it's not actually in the text itself that transforms the reader, but in the sense that the composition is not completed in text, but rather within the reader.

And so when the reader encounters the story at a deeper level, it allows for the story to reconfigure the life of the reader.

And it's when the stories are incorporated into our own stories that we are potentially changed.

And I think that that is one aspect of how stories directly interweave or interact with our own stories as clinicians, when we inter with the stories of patients, and how we also become changed with how we interact with each of those stories of our patients.

And I think that one aspect in which it interacts with ethics is that this specific idea of how there is in these stories a bi directional relationship that develops that through these relationships within the biographies of people as they're telling us their stories,

that we as clinicians are also interacting and influencing or also reconfiguring the stories of patients and them with us.

And because we are interacting in the sense of deeper identity and formation of one another,

that that also touches on a lot of ethics questions,

including perhaps most interested, or what I'm most interested in is this formation or deepening of this sense of virtue. And I think that the reason why I think that that's so important is that it's through stories that we more deeply understand specific contexts.

So for example, when we are all born into a story, right? So we go through life and experience various life experiences, and then within those contexts,

we are writing our story.

And it's in very particular contexts and situations that we then understand how we can grow in a particular aspect of ourself, our ideals, our virtues.

And so when we encounter those contexts deeply in another,

and within,

of course, that context, their individual humanity,

then we also more deeply understand like what in their particular situation,

what they are trying to grow in, where their story arc is,

and how they are trying to overcome the aspects that are challenging or difficult in those situations and grow in those aspects of those aspects of things that patients are suffering in.

And I think whenever we're touching on aspects of identity,

anthropology,

meaning, which is really what's happening in the arc of stories, because when we look back on stories, what we're trying to do Also is to try to understand, like, why is this particular thing happening to me?

Like, why is this illness happening to me and what is the meaning that I'm also trying to develop or understand from this.

All of those touches on deeper perhaps metaphysical or ethical questions within oneself in order to try to understand the context in which all of these things are happening. And whenever we're talking about things like meaning or the purpose or why,

I think it touches on these questions of like, what then does it mean to be human? Like, what are or maybe should be the most important things in my life?

How am I living my life in a way in which I align with those things that are most important to me? And in that way, I think aligns a lot with these deeper ethical questions that may come up in a patient, but also the clinician's life.

Yeah, I mean, you said a lot there, John, that resonates. And I,

maybe I put a pin on the ethic implications. What I want to come back to is kind of that bi directional conversation and how the interaction with patients affects me as a physician as well as hopefully the patient and what I bring into that relationship.

And that's important, that's really important.

And I found that as a physician, as a psychiatrist,

if I'm close minded or if I'm approaching this patient with a checklist approach or trying to pigeonhole them into a categorical.

That's not when I'm at my best in terms of being a physician or a psychiatrist or just another person.

It's when I'm open minded and interested in learning both about the clinical aspects of what they're bringing,

but also learning about their life and then learning about what does that mean for me? Like what can I take away from that, that,

you know, has implications for me in my life? That's when I'm, that's why I'm at my best, I've found, you know, I think I'm at my best.

And that's where I've gotten great joy out of medicine, is in those moments where I am touched by something that a patient has struggled with or has overcome or is managing or is experiencing.

And I, and I think about its relationship to me.

And that's maybe what separates us as physicians, humans as physicians from ChatGPT or AI or, you know, checklists or, you know, and so probably is a timely conversation for our field that makes a lot of sense.

So correct me if I'm wrong, but what I'm hearing is that it sounds like narrative and stories are really essential for flourishing in medicine, both for doctors and patients,

as we understand truly the full aspect of what it means to be human, of what they're suffering,

of how we as practitioners play a role in addressing their suffering.

It seems that the only way to really, as you were saying, Dr. Weiss, find true joy and fulfillment in medicine is to really, is to bring it into a place where we're seeing the whole person,

not just some disease or a checklist mentality, as you were saying.

Yeah.

I don't know if that's the only way to find true joy, but I do find for me personally that that's been important.

And I,

I mean,

I actually think that the narrative ends up being critical in terms of honing one's diagnostic acuity. I mean, I think it's actually really important clinically, like, medically, like to capture all of this story, the narrative.

So when, when did this happen? What happened next and how did what happened then? Or, you know,

and it's easy to kind of paint that with a broad brush. And I think you lose a little bit of the diagnostic acuity in doing that. And the more you're able to split out and learn and appreciate the narrative, the clinical narrative, the presentation, the history of present illness,

I actually think that that's meaningful clinically.

And I think it's beneficial in terms of feeling as though you're doing something that is distinct from what a checklist or an AI bot could,

could do. Right. You know, and I think that's that bi directional piece I see.

Yeah. That seems intuitive, but also very profound that the history of present illness is one of the most important parts that you really have to look into that for.

Short strip. I mean, it's easy to again, kind of say, oh, you know,

patient here with change in mental status, or, you know, patient here with left sided weakness, or patient here with, you know, and all of a sudden that the complex narrative gets boiled down into,

you know, three words. Right.

Or a,

what do you call it, A chief complaint. Right. And there is value in chief complaint. And chief complaint actually has potential implications for algorithmic approaches to medicine. And in fact, I think a number of AI based tools, especially in emergency medicine, use chief complaint to help stratify and triage and consider diagnoses.

But it's not the same as the full history of present illness.

Yeah.

As you were talking about that, Tony, it made me just think about a patient that I had where this aspect of story was so important for diagnostics. And I think that oftentimes this happens more clearly, although it happens in all cases, but more clearly in my mind where there is that overlap of neurology and psychiatry.

And so there was a patient that I had once who was middle aged man who was coming in for repeated seizures and he was having seizures like once an hour.

It was like happening super frequently.

And in our diagnostic workup we realized that actually though he does have a seizure disorder, that many of the seizures that he was having were non epileptic spells and so were related to things that are not truly like electrophysiological seizures.

Right. But rather perhaps more psychological in origin. Right. And the treatment of that is like totally different because it's like DBT in order to help people with not having the nonepileptic spells.

Right. Whereas for epilepsy you would need to use medications.

But really how we also came to understand both how that was happening, but also why that was happening. As I was exploring the patient's story of a new life circumstance, I happening a lot of recent stressors,

somebody having recently passed away in his life and him actually not realizing that this was what was happening.

And it was like a fairly profound moment where actually in my counseling just helping him connect the dots that these were not epileptic spells. It was so profound because suddenly this doesn't always happen, but suddenly he stopped having those spells.

So he was having like a spell every hour.

And then with just a revelation of this, the fact that these were non epileptic spells and helping him see the context of his life and his story and how they were coming together actually was the treatment plan for the patient and helped treat what was happening, which was very debilitating for him.

And so that all actually came from sitting and hearing the patient's story of what's going through his life. And the treatment plan also came from helping to see and help him see what was happening there.

Yeah, that's a really powerful story. And it's not unique in the sense that interview taking in and of itself, the act of listening to another person's story in and of itself can be therapeutic.

And there's value in allowing. This was a particularly dramatic case, but even in other cases where it may not be quite as dramatic is allowing the person to kind of clarify what that narrative is in and create some meaning, like how this fits in with their life helps to identify for themselves like what they're going through.

Not saying that quite, quite so well, but.

And there's value in that as well as just unburdening someone, you know from.

I've been struggling with X or Y or Z. And I want to share that with another human who listens to my story, listens to what I'm struggling with,

doesn't flinch,

accepts that, and helps me, you know, and I think just that process of eliciting the narrative can in and of itself be therapeutic. And we,

we don't often,

you know, again, we don't often think of it in that way. It's. It's like a means to an end. Not an end in and of itself, but it actually can be an important end, which,

you know, is the case in the patient that you just described.

Yeah. And so I think this transitions perfectly. I think we've understood a bit of what, what narrative is. And through the conversation it's clear the value that narrative provides in medicine and ethics.

But I want to dive deeper into the clinical implications, especially with this last part of the discussion that we've been talking about as assuming. If we assume that AI will take a greater role in medicine moving forward, or things will become more efficient, maybe more, possibly more automated,

what is the argument, I guess, or what is the role, looking forward,

of holding on to narrative as a diagnostic tool, as the core part of the physician patient relationship,

especially in specialties such as cardiology, or maybe one of these specialties where it's less interview based than psychiatry or palliative care?

Where can we hold onto the narrative and where can we continue to practice this, assuming things become more efficient and AI based?

I'll say a few words and then, John, I'm interested in your perspective and I do want to get back to the ethics piece and maybe that's a separate podcast conversation, I don't know, because I think we've been talking about the patience narrative, and I think there's a lot to unpack there.

But fictional narrative actually can be really valuable itself, literature in helping to understand nuance of human experience or virtue.

And so maybe, maybe we'll touch on that at some other point on your question right now, Mike, you know,

I think it's the distinction between humans as digital versus analog at some level. You know, is there, can we reduce this person, this patient, this other human being that I'm interacting with into a set of algorithmic kind of parameters?

Or is there something a little bit more three dimensional or I guess analog or, you know, I'm not sure what the best way to say it is about this other human.

And narrative helps us to get a little bit more at that latter piece.

And I think ultimately,

ultimately that's still very, very important,

you know, and I think back to,

you know, we have a lot of tools now that help people. We have a lot of treatments that do help people,

but we still don't fully understand the nature of human suffering and all of the ways in which that can manifest. And some of that is amenable to medication. A lot of it is not.

And if we simplify people and digitize them and focus in on,

you know, they have this or this medicine or this pill,

I think that's really not a path that will be beneficial for humanity, but certainly not for the field, the profession of medicine.

I don't know. John, what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I love the fact that you brought up this idea of fictional or fiction or literature,

because I think there's a sense in which when we talk about.

And especially because I'm working in this area, right. Psychosocial oncology or supportive oncology or supportive care,

we are often talking about perhaps the specific psychological or mental health aspects in which we could improve somebody's clinical care and the different supportive aspects in which we do that.

Right. Whether that's through the psychologist, the social worker, the psychiatrist, the palliative care clinician.

But there's also this larger aspect that all of the supportive care fields touch on,

but are still not necessarily literally meant as, like, their end goal, which is, I think, the existential suffering part.

And I think about this a lot as. Especially as a neuro-oncologist, because I think there's like, a lot of existential suffering in brain tumor patients because not only is there this cancer, but there's also.

Which causes existential suffering itself, but there's also a neurologic deterioration that happens which touches that on, like, personality, memory, et cetera.

Right.

And how we understand and truly enter into the perspective of another,

I think happens when we're able to enter into the lives of others and stories and also literature,

I think, helps us to do that, to be able to enter into this, like, perspective and world of another.

And when we try to treat existential suffering, though all of our fields, like psychiatry, palliative care, do touch on it,

I think ultimately existential suffering is this question of why. It's like a fracturing of a sense of one's own identity.

And that itself can really only be,

I think, in a certain sense, truly treated through a deep encounter with another human being. Like, so, of course, I'm coming to this patient as a physician, and there's not really a way to disentangle the fact that I'm a physician.

But oftentimes, when I'm talking about the questions of why with the patient and helping them really think through it. I find that really where I'm drawing from is like my also experiences as a fellow human being and what is like, important to me, like my life experiences,

also sharing that and couching that within patients experiences.

And I think that literature helps us to both enter into those different perspectives, but it's almost like a whole shift in perspective itself,

because it's not like about one particular literature or one particular book, but how it cultivates the sense of these existential questions and how we are living our lives within the context of thinking about them in these existential questions.

And how good literature, I think, raises a lot of these questions in our lives and overall moves our perspective in the direction in which we're seeing our life within that context.

Yeah, the other aspect of that, I totally agree with you, and I think another way in which literature can help with that perspective taking is oftentimes people who are new,

like students who are trying psychiatry rotation, they can get very frustrated because the anamnesis, the elicitation of the history, is almost by definition impaired. In a patient with a neurologic or psychiatric condition.

Their ability to provide a very linear, clear narrative of first this happened, then this happened, then I felt like this can completely fall apart. They may not be able to express themselves well, or their memory may be impaired, or their sense of connection with their own internal emotions may be off.

And it's hard to convey that. It's hard to teach that. Whereas sometimes literary devices,

kind of unreliable narrator, for example,

in a short story, or ways in which the story bounces around from character to character or perspective to perspective,

can actually be really valuable in allowing the reader, slash, clinician, slash, you know,

learner, to understand.

Hmm. Yeah. Well, that. That must be a little bit like what this patient was trying to describe. How foggy things seemed, or how murky or how uncertain or how scary things felt to them.

Maybe that's what I was hearing when I saw this is X, you know,

and so I think there's value in literature from that perspective as well.

Yeah. As you were talking about that, Tony, the other thing that I was thinking about is this idea of, as I mentioned before, the story arc,

or as other people who study narrative and literature and medicine talk about, which is this idea of the hero's journey,

where in a typical novel you have this protagonist who's starting on some type of journey, which is the story itself.

And there's a story arc that happens where there's this climax that's reached where the patient, the person, sorry,

their character, or the protagonist has to make some type of big decision or there's some really big thing that happens in their life. And the rest of the book is a resolution of that climax.

And I think that literature also helps us to see in real life, like where patients are at in their hero's journey, like in the arc of their story,

that this illness oftentimes is that for many, like this kind of climax of this intense moment that could indelibly change the rest of their story. Right.

And this itself is also another way in which narrative or literature helps us to be able to contextualize or be able to see where people are in their journey. And coming back to Paul Ricoeur, this idea of reconfiguration.

So for all of us, when a major event happens in our life, for example, we get married or have a child or get into medical school, whatever those big moments in our life are, it's not like a series of and then this happened, and then this happened and this,

and then this happened. Rather, each of those moments,

moments indelibly, like, changes our life, but then also actually changes. Even the way that we've seen our life up until that moment. Like, so, for example, when we get married, like the purpose or the meaning or have a kid, like, all of that changes.

And all the things that have happened up until now actually take on a different lens. Like, our life is actually like, reconfigured.

And I think, again, this is like what happens, in a certain sense, assumed happens. When as we're going through a story, we see how the character changes, we expect the character to change and grow.

And so, and we don't always think about that in the same way when we see patients as they're going through life as well. And, and that, I think literature helps us to give that, get that perspective in which, yeah, this illness process, but also this, like, amazing experience that this patient had with their family on this,

like, weekend trip was something that like, reconfigured their story a little bit and therefore helps us to gain insights, I think, deep, more deeply into how each of those moments, including even interacting with the clinician, can be reconfiguring that patient's story.

That's a very beautiful point, John, and I think also perfectly exemplifies your earlier point about how reading literature can shape our perspective. I imagine that sort of hero's journey idea came also from your own reading

of literature as well.

And so using that as sort of a transition to Dr. Weiss, which you were bringing up just before, about ethics. So how.

How does this all fit into ethics? How can we use narrative to approach or even learn ethics?

I guess I think there's a number of ways.

And John and I actually are going to be teaching a class and we're excited about co teaching a class in the fall in the center for Bioethics here at Harvard,

using literature and ethics. I guess we can put a pitch in for that,

using literature and narrative as a tool for ethics.

But there's a number of ways in which you could. You could use it as a tool. One of the ways I like to think about ethics is as a tension,

that it's not an ethical issue unless there's some sort of tension. Like if we know what the right thing to do is 100% of the time, it's not an ethical issue.

We just do what the right thing is. But it's when there's some tension or when there's some debate or some differences of opinion or perspective taking,

that there's an ethical issue. And oftentimes, just as the narrative of the patient can get oversimplified,

that tension can get kind of brought down to a black and white kind of.

You're either on this side or that side, and that ultimately is not that beneficial.

And usually, especially in clinical bioclinical affects, let's say, here in the hospital,

it's very rarely that cut and dry or that black and white, you know, and there's a lot of nuance.

And so good literature can sometimes paint those ethical tensions in a way that give you insights into the different aspects, why someone might think X or why someone might appreciate Y and helps the reader,

slash clinician,

ethicist to start to learn how to maybe engage more fully in that dilemma.

And.

But there are a number of other approaches. I mean, I know, John,

you've liked the use of narrative or literature in terms of its way of manifesting various virtues, you know,

in the characters or lack of virtue, I guess, in some cases.

Yeah.

I think one of the things that we do in the Hippocratic Society is to use stories, so clinical cases which are based in stories,

in order to cultivate this virtue of phronesis, which no one could argue is maybe the most important virtue in clinical practice. Phronesis being practical wisdom.

So, like, what is the good to be pursued in this particular situation and circumstance that I find myself in this context of this patient and their family? Right.

And part of, I think, how it cultivates phronesis is that we can't always experience all of the varied experiences that our patients go through and also cannot experience fully all the experiences that our colleagues go through.

But we can again enter into this perspective of the other through this story or clinical case and be able to through that ignite. And it's a podcast that we also touched on before with, with Meg Chisolm.

But this cultivation of the moral imagination.

So by entering into, like, the perspective of another,

can we also have a shift in our own perspective of understanding at a deeper level, like, what this other person is going through,

this personal lived experience of another?

And a lot of, like, moral development, I think, doesn't have to always happen through our own direct experience.

So, for example, like, I don't need to use cocaine to understand, like, that cocaine can be addictive. In fact, I could learn that through the story of another and how perhaps this drug has been extremely harmful in just the relationships of this person who's become addicted to this particular drug.

Right. And so stories can also help us grow in our moral sense of understanding of that which is good.

And those types of questions then help us draw deeper into then, sure, what are the most important things, like why is not using this a good thing? And maybe at its core, then it's about relationships, for example, which is another thing we come back to a lot in the Hippocratic Society.

Right.

But this idea of relationships perhaps being a core or one truly deeply meaningful aspect of how to live our lives. And so I think in those ways there is this cultivation, both of this, like, practical wisdom or phronesis, which is a unique virtue because it's both intellectual and moral,

because it has an end that is moral, like, in the sense that it's like, realized in particular context where we're trying to pursue the good. But then you have to use the intellect in order to try to apply it to this particular clinical situation for this particular context of this patient.

Yeah. The other thing that I like about literature is it can help time travel.

We've been talking a lot about history and history taking and going back in the past. But good literature,

especially science fiction, which is what I really love,

allows us to do some time travel, which is to kind of do some thought experimentation about, well, what would a future in which X was occurring be like? And would that be a future that we would think is a.

Is a good, Is that. Is that morally good? Is that, is that healthy for society?

You talked about addiction, I think about the book Synthajoy. I think it's dg Compton,

I might be getting that wrong, but this idea of, well, what if we could directly stimulate the brain and create, like, stimulation, you know,

positive. Like,

I'm not sure that that's such a good thing, you know, and so. But you can see. Okay, well,

what would that be like, you know, and rather than just,

you know, having a kind of a brief kind of. Well, you know,

you've got a whole narrative with character and character development,

which allows you to kind of think about that. So I like that aspect of literature as well. This concept of thought experiments. And in fact,

thought experiments have been really important in ethics overall. Like, you think about kind of unconscious violinist concept. It's like creating analogies or ideas that allow you to think about ethical conundrums without,

you know,

dealing specifically with an individual case,

you know, And I think that's certainly something we're going to emphasize in the class, that for these group of budding ethicists, they need to develop those skills to create those sort of analogies themselves, if possible.

Yeah. I think the other thing that makes literature so attractive and the same with art or music, is that it allows for this a medium through which to have these discussions.

Right. And so sometimes when we are in the midst of an ethical conflict, a lot of our full self can be also within that conflict. And it can be really challenging, like from both an emotional standpoint, but also like a personal standpoint of, like, trying to figure out, like,

what should I be doing here? Right.

And what stories or literature can do is that it provides this medium that's more neutral in which we could reflect all together about this thing that this person is going through in this story,

but be able to have this external view, which I think is also like a really important aspects of ethics formation. Right. Is to try to step out of the story itself or what's happening in this ethical case,

to be able to try to have this view where one is trying to weigh in an unbiased way all of the different things that are happening in this particular scenario.

And with that, to try to really apply the intellect and weigh those things in the right way in order to reach the conclusion and not let just the emotions of it drive how we're making decisions,

but really trying to integrate the will and the intellect into making those decisions.

So what I'm hearing is that literature basically helps you in all aspects of ethics.

It sounds like it really helps both create a moral framework and then help you dive into the specifics and also look forward and have hypotheticals and bring you out of the emotions and fraught.

Yeah. States that might make ethics decisions even more difficult. But yeah, it's very, very clear that those are some great analogies and I really loved that.

And unless if you have some other comments, please. But I think we are wrapping up on time. I did want to ask just one brief last question specifically about literature and narrative.

Do either of you have recommendations for our readers for specific literature or narrative? That would be a great way to dive into this field.

There's too many to kind of point to, like one story,

I'll mention a book that I just read by a musician,

Brian Eno,

who is someone I've actually deeply, deeply appreciate in his career. For those of you who don't know. Brian Eno,

musician,

music producer and now writer, he wrote a book called what Art does.

And I actually love this book. It's very, very succinct. He co wrote it with another author whose name maybe we can put somehow into the podcast, but I'm going to be blanking on it right now.

But it talks a little bit about why. Why art?

Like, why art. Because when you think about, and take a step back and think about this from a neuroscience standpoint, the brain wants to conserve energy.

And so it actually creates habits. It creates a lot of things. It does a lot of things to try to conserve energy.

And why would the brain expend energy?

Like, why, why do I have a, like this green sport coat? Why do we, why do we have different colored sport coats or different colored ties or, you know,

pocket square, like, why did I put a pocket square?

Eno considers all of this as kind of art. Right.

And talks a little bit about why would humanity actually create art.

Why would. And thinking about art very, very broadly as anything that's not absolutely necessary.

And it's an interesting book, and I think he brings up some.

I'm not going to spoil it in terms of saying why exactly he thinks we do that.

But I think there is, as we've heard today, there's, there's a lot of meaning in literature, a lot of meaning in art that has for time immemorial been important to humanity.

And I don't think that goes away with new technology like AI.

Yeah, I also agree, Tony, that I'm not sure if there's one particular book that I'm thinking about just because there's so many to choose from.

And I would say maybe it's more about the approach,

whether it's more classical literature like Tolstoy, which is one of the short stories that we're going to use.

Or maybe it's more like even fantasy, like Harry Potter. Michael knows that I'm a huge Harry Potter fan, but Harry Potter or even biographies, we come to know others in biographies.

So I'm also reading this biography of Tolkien right now, slowly. But any of these, I think, are ways in which we could grow in this perspective, taking in this moral imagination.

And I think that it's in a certain sense more important, like how we're consuming the information, how we're consuming and how we're approaching the literature or literature itself or narrative.

And therefore,

as we're being intentional about it,

we could then apply that approach to also the stories and how we care for patients.

Wonderful. Well, thank you for those recommendations, both practical and explicit. And yeah, this was a really wonderful conversation. Thank you both very much for joining us and we look forward to seeing you next time on the Hippocratic Society podcast.

Thanks, Michael.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you very much for joining and reflecting with us today.

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And as always, we'll see you next time on the Hippocratic Society podcast.

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