[Unedited] Atul Gawande with Krista Tippett
b'We are strange creatures. It is hard for us to speak about, or let in, the reality of frailty and death \\u2014 the elemental fact of mortality itself. In this century, western medicine has gradually moved away from its understanding of death as a failure \\u2014 where care stops with a terminal diagnosis. Hospice has moved, from something rare to something expected. And yet advances in technology have made it ever harder for physicians and patients to make a call to stop fighting death \\u2014 often at the expense of the quality of this last time of life. Meanwhile, there is a new longevity industry which resists the very notion of decline, much less finitude. \\n\\nFascinatingly, the simple question which transformed the surgeon Atul Gawande\\u2019s life and practice of medicine is this: What does a good day look like? As he has come to see, standing reverently before our mortality is an exercise in more intricately inhabiting why we want to be alive. This conversation evokes both grief and hope, sadness at so many deaths \\u2014 including our species-level losses to Covid \\u2014 that have not allowed for this measure of care. Yet it also includes very actionable encouragement towards the agency that is there to claim in our mortal odysseys ahead.'