Though raised as a Latter-day Saint in Utah, Samuel M. Brown was an atheist from an early age and proud of it.

Yet, by his own account, God became an undeniable presence in his life.

Now a faithful Latter-day Saint, this practicing research position narrate some of the waypoints on his journey into believing and belonging.

Some are dramatic, his wife's cancer diagnosis or working in a hospital during the

COVID-19 pandemic. While many are simple yet profound, being mistaken for a homeless person while a student

at Harvard, growing to like little children in opera, and learning to bake cookies for others.

On this episode of the Maxwell Institute podcast, we speak with Sam Brown about his book entitled Where the Soul Hungers, One Doctor's Journey from A. The Atheism to Faith from the Living Faith series at the Neely Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship.

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Maxwell.

Now, let's get to our conversation with Dr. Brown.

Welcome Sam Brown to the Maxwell Institute podcast.

Thanks, Joey.

It's good to be with you.

Well, we have been looking forward to speaking to you for a long time, but your work

has made it a little bit difficult to get a hold of you. What do you do for work, Sam? Yeah, I'm sorry

about that, Joey. It's been really frustrating to feel like I'm an accidental prima donna with the

scheduling. I'm a physician scientist and expert in ARDS, the acute respiratory distress syndrome. And that means I'm a

specialist in both treating and studying the problems that COVID-19 causes. So back at the

beginning of the pandemic and the end of March, early April 2020, I shut down all of my research

and committed 100% to COVID and have been working on COVID,

mostly on research, trying to find and validate treatments for people with COVID, but in addition

to have been pitching in on the clinical side as well. I've never worked this hard in my life,

...