Welcome to the Madden America podcast, your source for science, psychiatry, and social justice.

Welcome to the Madden America podcast. My name is Justin Carter, and I'm the research news editor for the

Madden America website.

You can read our articles there under the Research News tab on the front page.

And today I'm very fortunate to be interviewing a Vest Aftab, who's a psychiatrist in Cleveland,

Ohio and a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University.

He is a member of the Executive Council of the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry

and has been actively involved in initiatives to educate psychiatrists and trainees on the intersection of philosophy and psychiatry.

He leads the interview series as well called Conversations in Critical Psychiatry

for the Psychiatric Times, which explores critical and philosophical perspectives in psychiatry,

and he's engaged with some of the most prominent commentators within and outside the profession

who have made meaningful criticisms of the status quo. He is also a member of the Psychiatric Times Advisory Board.

Welcome to the Mad in America podcast.

That's great to have you here.

Thank you, Justin.

I'm pretty happy to be here talking to you.

Thanks.

So to get started, we want to learn a little bit about your background

and what led you to a career in medicine and psychiatry.

Oh, wow. That's a long time ago. So I think a lot of people might not know that I'm from Pakistan.

That's where I was born and grew up and did my medical school as well. Before I went into medical school, I was really interested in philosophy,

and I was seriously considering the idea whether I could pursue that on a professional

...