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October 28, 2025 edition
Dr. Sunita Puri returns to talk about what it really means to practice medicine at the edge of life. A palliative-care physician and author of That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour, Sunita has spent her career helping patients and families navigate the gray zone between “doing everything” and doing what actually matters. We talk about why our health-care system struggles to tell the truth about prognosis, the difference between extending life and extending dying, and the cultural pressures that make it so hard to talk about death—even among doctors. Sunita also shares how she counsels patients to think about their values before a crisis hits, and how clarity, far from being cruel, can be the most compassionate act of all.
Guest Bio:
Dr. Sunita Puri is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, where she is the Director of the Inpatient Palliative Care Service. She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Atlantic, among other publications. She is the author of That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour, a critically acclaimed literary memoir examining her journey to the practice of palliative medicine, and her quest to help patients and families redefine what it means to live and die well in the face of serious illness.
Sunita’s previous visits to the podcast
Housekeeping
👩🏫 I’m teaching a Zoom writing workshop in Memoir and Personal Essay, Jan 6 through Feb 24, 2026. Apply by Dec 6. Info here.
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