01 / recommendation
Likes Sphere.
“Sphere is my favorite book of his. He was also a brilliant art collector. He bought a lot of Jasper Johns before other people .”
- Speaker
- Tyler Cowen
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
Conversations with Tyler / episode intelligence
Atul Gawande on Priorities, Big and Small
Speakers in the public record
Claim mix
recommendation 4belief 4preference 3evaluation 3prediction 2
Evidence policy
Every row below preserves an exact excerpt. Identified speakers are linked; unresolved voices are labeled and excluded from people counts.
Claim ledger
The useful parts, with receipts.
16 published records
02 / recommendation
Likes Sphere.
“Now you’re sounding like underrated. Sphere is my favorite book of his. He was also a brilliant art collector.”
- Speaker
- Tyler Cowen
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
03 / belief
I think part of it is that I’m pretty clear about my goal, which is I’m trying to have impact and to try to do stuff that feels cool along the way.
“I think part of it is that I’m pretty clear about my goal, which is I’m trying to have impact and to try to do stuff that feels cool along the way.”
- Speaker
- Atul Gawande
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
04 / belief
What I might go to is going back to that era. So Songs in the Key of Life, I would say, bring that back.
“What I might go to is going back to that era. So Songs in the Key of Life, I would say, bring that back.”
- Speaker
- Atul Gawande
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
05 / belief
Hmmm. I think he’s now become underrated. He might have been overrated at one point, but now he is significantly underrated.
“Hmmm. I think he’s now become underrated. He might have been overrated at one point, but now he is significantly underrated.”
- Speaker
- Atul Gawande
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
06 / belief
The fact that he graduated from medical school, and then a year into his residency, left to do everything from directing movies like Coma to writing The Great Train Robbery, and then onward to Jurassic Park. But as a kind of influence on medical writing and on writing writ large, I think that his power is waning.
“The fact that he graduated from medical school, and then a year into his residency, left to do everything from directing movies like Coma to writing The Great Train Robbery, and then onward to Jurassic Park. But as a kind of influence on medical writing and on writing writ large, I think that his power is waning.”
- Speaker
- Atul Gawande
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
07 / recommendation
I think a lot of lessons about when the HIV community became involved in the FDA process to drive approaches that smoothed and sped up the decision-making process, and also got the public enough involved to be able to say .
“I think a lot of lessons about when the HIV community became involved in the FDA process to drive approaches that smoothed and sped up the decision-making process, and also got the public enough involved to be able to say .”
- Speaker
- Atul Gawande
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
08 / preference
[laughs] In neurosurgery, they’re actively part of the operation because they’re often speaking and telling you things so that you know if you’re causing any difficulties.
“[laughs] In neurosurgery, they’re actively part of the operation because they’re often speaking and telling you things so that you know if you’re causing any difficulties.”
- Speaker
- Atul Gawande
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
09 / evaluation
Like the experiment we just finished with the state of South Carolina: five years of working with them to see whether you could get the surgeons in the state to adopt the safe surgery checklist without regulations because it’s a red state and they didn’t want to mandate it, but without financial incentives because they didn’t have the money to pay for pay-for-performance.
“Like the experiment we just finished with the state of South Carolina: five years of working with them to see whether you could get the surgeons in the state to adopt the safe surgery checklist without regulations because it’s a red state and they didn’t want to mandate it, but without financial incentives because they didn’t have the money to pay for pay-for-performance.”
- Speaker
- Atul Gawande
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
10 / preference
I chose surgery, and I wrote in the passage you might be reflecting on that I chose surgery, in part, because I was drawn to the character of people who had that kind of decisiveness, took action when inaction was the worst thing, and then lived with the consequences.
“I chose surgery, and I wrote in the passage you might be reflecting on that I chose surgery, in part, because I was drawn to the character of people who had that kind of decisiveness, took action when inaction was the worst thing, and then lived with the consequences.”
- Speaker
- Atul Gawande
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
11 / evaluation
That is a tremendous power. And the ways in which we see that just the payment incentives alone dramatically affect whether my tendency is to give you overtreatment in certain situations and undertreatment in others, is a reflection of our failure to follow through on being able to deal with the variability in that, and how we use that asymmetry of information.
“That is a tremendous power. And the ways in which we see that just the payment incentives alone dramatically affect whether my tendency is to give you overtreatment in certain situations and undertreatment in others, is a reflection of our failure to follow through on being able to deal with the variability in that, and how we use that asymmetry of information.”
- Speaker
- Atul Gawande
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
12 / prediction
The CRISPR capability is just another bullet in the holster that can be fired, but we are narrowing that neurotypical range in lots and lots of different directions, whether it’s how we employ people, what kinds of options we put out there for people to have their aberrant thinking recognized and taken advantage of, to the ways we medicate and control people. And I think CRISPR—it actually will be exceedingly difficult to be able to pick many of these capabilities out, in part because they’re multigene.
“The CRISPR capability is just another bullet in the holster that can be fired, but we are narrowing that neurotypical range in lots and lots of different directions, whether it’s how we employ people, what kinds of options we put out there for people to have their aberrant thinking recognized and taken advantage of, to the ways we medicate and control people. And I think CRISPR—it actually will be exceedingly difficult to be able to pick many of these capabilities out, in part because they’re multigene.”
- Speaker
- Atul Gawande
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
13 / preference
I’m totally absorbed and loved them. But I feel like Elena Ferrante is an example of someone who was doing much the same—deeply mining the territory of somebody over a history of time—but managed to do it by fixing them in a place and a time and a history, and a dramatic change in social conditions, and everything else that took it to this whole another level in my mind.
“I’m totally absorbed and loved them. But I feel like Elena Ferrante is an example of someone who was doing much the same—deeply mining the territory of somebody over a history of time—but managed to do it by fixing them in a place and a time and a history, and a dramatic change in social conditions, and everything else that took it to this whole another level in my mind.”
- Speaker
- Atul Gawande
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
14 / prediction
The way to think about it, though, is that we have a certain speed with which we have accelerated passage through the FDA.
“The way to think about it, though, is that we have a certain speed with which we have accelerated passage through the FDA.”
- Speaker
- Atul Gawande
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
15 / evaluation
We had done a case control study of this problem of surgeons leaving sponges inside people, and got it published in the New England Journal [of Medicine], partly because of our whole method of going about solving this problem, which was, we studied 60 people who had sponges left inside them, compared to 240 people at the same institution at the same time with the same operation who didn’t have sponges left inside them.
“We had done a case control study of this problem of surgeons leaving sponges inside people, and got it published in the New England Journal [of Medicine], partly because of our whole method of going about solving this problem, which was, we studied 60 people who had sponges left inside them, compared to 240 people at the same institution at the same time with the same operation who didn’t have sponges left inside them.”
- Speaker
- Atul Gawande
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
16 / recommendation
What they point out is that they, the clinicians of the future, really need to be oriented in a counselor mode, where they are not just telling you what the options are, but also eliciting from you very clearly what your goals are, and then making a recommendation about what most matches your goals.
“What they point out is that they, the clinicians of the future, really need to be oriented in a counselor mode, where they are not just telling you what the options are, but also eliciting from you very clearly what your goals are, and then making a recommendation about what most matches your goals.”
- Speaker
- Atul Gawande
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler