Second Acts: How Does a Writer Become a Physician?

In a special five-episode mini-season of Working, we talk with people who have had “second acts,” that is people who made a dramatic career pivot at some point in their working lives.

Adriane Fugh-Berman was a writer and reproductive-rights activist when she decided to go to medical school. She is now a professor in the department of pharmacology and physiology at Georgetown University and the director of PharmedOut, a Georgetown University Medical Center project that promotes rational prescribing and researches the effects of pharmaceutical and medical device industry marketing on prescribing behavior and therapeutic choices.

Fugh-Berman talks about how her earliest work in the family restaurant influenced her current career, the importance of good writing, and why she maintains a garden on the Georgetown campus.  You can email us at working@slate.com.

Podcast production by Jessamine Molli.

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