
Searching for Medicine’s Soul
Hosted by Dr. Aaron Rothstein and featuring expert guests, Searching for Medicine’s Soul explores medicine’s purpose: Why do physicians do what they do? How does the practice of medicine relate to scientific progress and human flourishing? The result is an in-depth analysis of the history and aim of medicine, and its collision with a thrilling and sometimes tragic age of discovery.
Latest episodes

Apr 10, 2023 • 1h 7min
Aaron Kheriaty on the Biomedical Security State
In this episode of Searching for Medicine's Soul, Aaron was joined by fellow EPPC scholar Dr. Aaron Kheriaty. Drs. Rothstein and Kheriaty discussed the biomedical security state, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dec 22, 2022 • 52min
Jim Capretta on Government and Rising Healthcare Costs
In this episode of Searching for Medicine's Soul, Aaron is joined by Jim Capretta, Senior Fellow and Milton Friedman Chair at the American Enterprise Institute. In the face of rising healthcare costs, the pair discuss the government's role in healthcare policy with an eye for providing patients with meaningful choice in quality treatment.

Dec 15, 2022 • 37min
David Slusky on American Health Economics
On this episode of Searching for Medicine's Soul, Aaron interviews Dr. David Slusky of the University of Kansas. David is the Executive Director of the American Society of Health Economists as well as the De-Min and Chin-Sha Wu Associate Professor of Economics at KU. He is a co-founder and co-organizer of the Electronic Health Economics Colloquium, for which he recently successfully negotiated a partnership with ASHEcon for the spring. He is also the founder and the lead organizer of the Kansas Health Economics Conference, for which he was awarded a multiyear National Science Foundation grant. Slusky is also a co-editor at the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, serving in a managing editor capacity.

Dec 8, 2022 • 1h 4min
Economic Opportunity and Healthcare with Avik Roy
In this episode of Searching for Medicine's Soul, Aaron is joined by Avik Roy, the President of the Foundation For Research on Equal Opportunity, a non-profit think tank focused on expanding economic opportunity to those who least have it. He trained as a scientist at MIT and as a physician at Yale Medical School. In 2012, Avik joined Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign as a health care policy advisor. By 2014, Avik was Forbes’ Opinion Editor. In 2015, Avik ran the foreign and domestic policy shops for Texas Governor Rick Perry’s presidential campaign. He writes frequently about healthcare economics and healthcare policy for numerous publications including Forbes and National Review. He serves on the Boards of Advisors of the Bitcoin Policy Institute and Sats Center, and on the Board of Directors of the Texas Bitcoin Foundation. Avik, thanks for joining the podcast.

Nov 24, 2022 • 1h 3min
The Anticipatory Corpse with Jeffrey P. Bishop
In this episode of Searching for Medicine's Soul, Aaron is joined by Jeffrey P. Bishop, M.D., Ph.D. Jeffrey is Professor of Philosophy and Theological Studies at St. Louis University where he also holds the Tenet Endowed Chair in Bioethics. He is the author of The Anticipatory Corpse and most recently the co-author of Biopolitics After Neuroscience: Morality and the Economy of Virtue. The two discuss the confluence of medical practice and human mortality in light of Jeffrey's research and experience.

Oct 27, 2022 • 49min
Reimagining Chronic Illness with Meghan O’Rourke
On this episode of Searching for Medicine's Soul, Aaron is joined by Meghan O'Rourke. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness and The Long Goodbye, as well as the poetry collections Sun In Days, Once, and Halflife. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and The New York Times, and more. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship, and a Whiting Nonfiction Award, she resides in New Haven, where she teaches at Yale University and is the editor of The Yale Review. The two discuss the place of chronic illness and pain in a wholly human anthropology.

Sep 15, 2022 • 49min
Every Deep Drawn Breath with Dr. Wes Ely
On this episode of Searching for Medicine’s Soul, Aaron is joined by Wes Ely, the Grant W. Liddle Endowed Chair in Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, physician-scientist, and author of Every Deep-Drawn Breath, a work chronicling the human element active in ICU medical practice. The two discuss Wes’ humanistic approach to his patients and how it shapes his views on the ethical use of sedation, cognitive rehabilitation from neurological diseases, changing treatments acute cases of COVID-19, and more.
Note that all proceeds from Every Deep-Drawn Breath will be paid into a fund for Covid and ICU survivors.
See also:
Every Deep-Drawn Breath
Wes’ article on ‘long-COVID’

Sep 8, 2022 • 53min
Tearing Us Apart with Ryan Anderson and Alexandra DeSanctis Marr
On this episode of Searching for Medicine’s Soul, Aaron is joined by EPPC President Ryan T. Anderson and Fellow Alexandra DeSanctis. Ryan and Alexandra’s expert testimony from years of work in the pro-life movement and co-authorship of Tearing Us Apart: Why Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing sheds light on the philosophical and medical grounds for the pro-life cause, common pro-abortion objections including the famous fetal violinist argument, and how the handling of the abortion issue has hurt public life in America in the last fifty years.
See also:
Tearing Us Apart: Why Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

Sep 1, 2022 • 52min
The Heart of Medicine with Danielle Ofri
On this episode of Searching for Medicine’s Soul, Aaron Rothstein is joined by Danielle Ofri, Clinical Professor of Medicine at the New York University School of Medicine and founder of the Bellevue Literary Review. The two discuss Ofri’s work chronicling the challenges to the relationship between doctor and patient: administrative creep in the medical field, nonprofit hospital (mis)behavior, and the application of the adversarial patient compensation system to unintended medical errors.
See also:
Danielle’s website
When We Do Harm, Danielle’s latest book
The Bellevue Literary Review

Aug 25, 2022 • 54min
Fraudulent Science with Charles Piller
Charles Piller joins Aaron to discuss his latest investigative reporting for Science on potentially fraudulent Alzheimer's research.