Hi, I'm Henry Bear.

And I'm Tyler Johnson.

And you're listening to The Doctors Art, a podcast that explores meaning in medicine.

Throughout our medical training and career, we have pondered, what makes medicine meaningful?

Can a stronger understanding of this meaning create better doctors?

How can we build healthcare institutions that nurture the doctor-patient

connection? What can we learn about the human condition from accompanying our patients in times of

suffering? In seeking answers to these questions, we meet with deep thinkers working across health

care, from doctors and nurses to patients and health care executives, those who have collected

a career's worth

of hard-earned wisdom.

Probing the moral heart that beats at the core of medicine, we will hear stories that are by turns

heartbreaking, amusing, inspiring, challenging, and enlightening.

We welcome anyone curious about why doctors do what they do.

Join us as we think out loud about what illness

and healing can teach us about some of life's biggest questions.

We often confuse happiness with the absence of sadness or a meaningful life with a productive

one. The result might be a life that runs smoothly, but feels strangely flat,

as if something essential is missing from the story. What if a truly good life isn't just happy

and meaningful, but also interesting? Our guest on this episode is Shige Oishi, a professor

of psychology at the University of Chicago, an author of Life in Three Dimensions.

Dr. Oishi pioneered the idea of psychological richness, the notion that a good life requires

...