12 - Uncertainty in Medicine: The Good Life
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What is Ben Slater’s “Examining the Good Life” class and why does it matter for uncertainty in medicine?
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Ben Slater is a high school English teacher in San Francisco. He teaches everything from Dostoevsky to Yagyasi to Adrian Rich. But his favorite class to teach is not an English class at all. It's called Examining the Good Life, based on Socrates' famous quote, the unexamined life is not worth living.
I actually wanted to just call it the good life because that was the central philosophical concept. But then the administrator was like, that just sounds like you're all just going to be having fun. So let's keep examining in there.
And what they're examining are different ways of understanding what makes a good life.
It was sort of a general philosophy class and I shifted the focus to be like what makes for a good life. So like what makes us happy, how to deal with suffering, uncertainty, freedom, like in the broadest sense, like how should you live?
The syllabus is broad. They talk about everything from Simone de Beauvoir's Death of the Serious World.
I kind of wish I could go back to the serious world, to be honest. I liked having blind faith in something.
To the work of Friedrich Nietzsche.
He's super, super dramatic, and that's what I loved about him. Be the poet of your own life. Here's how you can live a good life while accepting uncertainty. And it wasn't just become a monk and meditate for 25 hours a day.
All the way back to ancient philosophies like Taoism.
At that time, I was dealing with a friend who had been really grating on me for a long time. A Daoist would say, you're in your own boat. You can't ask them to change. You just need to go with the flow.
One thing we've noticed about medical training is how much it emphasizes the certainty piece of medicine. Multiple choice tests, for example, don't really prepare students for the reality that some things just can't be known. That's why we were so intrigued by Ben, who's asking his high school students to confront uncertainty head on. He quotes from Nietzsche to emphasize this embrace of uncertainty.
Here's the Nietzsche quote. He says, the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is to live dangerously. Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius. Send your ships into uncharted seas.
Or, for example, the modern Tibetan Buddhist Pema Chodron.
She says, what keeps us unhappy and stuck in a limited view of reality is our tendency to seek pleasure and avoid pain, to seek security and avoid groundlessness, to seek comfort and avoid discomfort. This is how we keep ourselves enclosed in a cocoon. The mind is always seeking zones of safety, and these zones of safety are continually falling apart. We spend all our energy and waste our lives trying to recreate those zones of safety, which are always falling apart.
What both Nietzsche and Pema Chodron seem to be saying is have courage. Step out of the cocoon. Let go of the need for absolute safety and learn to live fully despite the uncertainty. This is a message that we've been hearing from the clinicians and patients who contributed their voices to this series.
How do Nietzsche’s ideas about living dangerously connect with Buddhist teachings on uncertainty?
They're all people trying to figure out how to live well inside the unknown. We noticed there seemed to be a spiritual undercurrent coursing beneath these stories. So today, we're talking to two women, both spiritual teachers in the Buddhist tradition, who guide their students toward a more secure relationship to uncertainty, just as Ben is doing with his students. The practice of Buddhism sits at the center of each conversation. But I think uncertainty is actually the fulcrum on which both stories turn. This, of course, is something that the teens in Ben's class know well.
I really liked the idea that in Zen, nirvana is realizing that there is no nirvana because it's being certain in uncertainty.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is Ben Slater’s “Examining the Good Life” class and why does it matter for uncertainty in medicine?
0:00–3:28
2
How do Nietzsche’s ideas about living dangerously connect with Buddhist teachings on uncertainty?
3:28–7:57
3
What does Pema Chödrön say about the mind’s search for safety and how can clinicians apply this?
7:57–13:21
4
Why does the episode focus on Buddhism as a practice of uncertainty rather than a belief system?
13:21–17:26
5
How did Jill Eggers (Venerable Ling Hao Su) become a Buddhist teacher and what insights does she offer for health‑care workers?
17:26–21:59
6
How does Beth Smith’s disability‑rights journey illustrate a Buddhist approach to chronic illness and the social model of disability?
21:59–26:22
7
What practical Buddhist tools (e.g., koans, making space) can clinicians use when facing clinical uncertainty?
26:22–31:19
8
How does the guided meditation on impermanence help listeners cultivate comfort with uncertainty?
31:19–38:05