The Doctor's Art

The Doctor's Art tackles something that most medical podcasts avoid entirely: what it actually means to be a physician beyond the clinical knowledge. Co-hosts Henry Bair, a resident physician, and Tyler Johnson, an oncologist, sit down each week with healthcare professionals to talk about burnout, empathy, purpose, and the deeply personal side of practicing medicine. It's the kind of show that makes you stop and think about why you got into this field in the first place. With 165 episodes and counting, the conversations go places you don't expect. One episode features an oncologist discussing what happened when he became his own patient. Another brings in a humanist chaplain to talk about meaning-making at the end of life. The hosts also run occasional panel discussions on topics like technology's impact on the doctor-patient relationship, and these multi-voice episodes have a different energy that works really well. Episodes run about 50 to 65 minutes, and the pacing feels unhurried in a good way. Bair and Johnson are thoughtful interviewers who clearly prepare for each conversation. They give their guests room to tell real stories without steering everything toward a tidy takeaway. Stanford Medicine has highlighted this podcast, and it carries a 4.8-star rating from over 260 reviews. It's not a show that will help you pass your boards, but it might help you remember why passing those boards mattered to you. For physicians feeling ground down by the system, or medical students wondering what their career will really look like, The Doctor's Art offers something genuinely nourishing.