To the best of our knowledge, humans appear to be unique among animals in our awareness of mortality — at least in our capacity for existential reflection about death in an abstract, cultural, and symbolic sense. With this capacity comes profound psychological experiences, from our search for meaning, to our struggle with grief, to a yearning for the spiritual. 

Our guest on this episode is Dr. Rachel Clarke, a palliative care physician based in the United Kingdom who entered medicine after an initial career in journalism. As she would discover, her love for language and storytelling has turned out to be one of the most important ways she helps patients heal in some of the most devastating moments of their lives. As a writer. Dr. Clarke is the author of multiple best selling books, including Dear Life: A Doctor's Story of Love and Loss (2020), Your Life in My Hands: A Junior Doctor's Story (2017), and Breathtaking (2021), which was adapted into a TV series of the same name. Her writing, imbued with both grace and grit, invites readers to confront difficult truths about mortality, suffering, and the inequities of the healthcare system, while also offering a vision of medicine that is as deeply human as it is healing. Over the course of our conversation, we discuss her journey to medicine by way of journalism, her reflections on the moral imperatives that drive her work, the power of storytelling in comforting patients, why suffering is inextricably connected to love, and more. 

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

3:12 - Why Dr. Clarke switched careers from journalism to palliative care

9:46 - The challenge modern doctors and patients face when it comes to thinking about mortality 

15:09 - Supporting a patient’s psychological suffering through conversation 

20:31 - Grappling with what Dr. Clarke calls the “essential paradox of being a human being” — our awareness of mortality

33:41 - The experience of watching a person die and the reverence we hold for the bodies of the dead 

43:05 - The doctor’s dual responsibilities of navigating both science and human emotions

Dr. Rachel Clarke is the author of four books, including most recently, The Story of a Heart (2024). 

Dr. Clarke can be found on Twitter/X at @doctor_oxford.

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