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 health care 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.

When we gaze at the stars and marvel at our small place amid the expanse of the universe,

or when we witness the birth of a child and are struck by a sense of awe about the miracle of existence itself, or when

we listen to music that seems to touch our soul.

There are moments in life when we feel a transcendent connection to things larger than ourselves.

But how are we to make sense of these experiences

in our increasingly empirical and scientific world?

In this, perhaps our most meditative episode yet, we speak with Dr. Alan Lightman, a theoretical physicist and

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