I sit down with Laurel Braitman - well, she is actually phoning in from the Alaskan wilderness! What an amazing human. Laurel Braitman PhD is a New York Times bestselling author, historian and anthropologist of science. She is the first Writer-in-Residence and the Director of Writing and Storytelling at the Medicine & the Muse Program at the Stanford University School of Medicine where she is helping medical students and physicians communicate more meaningfully--for themselves and their patients. She holds a PhD in Science, Technology and Society from MIT, is a Senior TED Fellow and a 2019 National Geographic Explorer. Her last book, Animal Madness, was a NYT bestseller and has been translated into eight languages. Her next book House of the Heart, (forthcoming, Simon & Schuster) is about growing up, mortality and how we might live with the perspective of a terminal disease without the dire prognosis. Her work has been featured on the BBC, NPR, Good Morning America and Al Jazeera. Her stories have appeared in The Guardian, on Radiolab, in The Wall Street Journal, Wired, National Geographic and other publications.

Laurel and I connected easily and instantly. Listen in as we talk about her work and soon to be published book about growing up with a father facing a dire prognosis and how this shaped the way she lives her life.