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🧠 A conversation with CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta
By Leighton Rowell Lima
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CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta |
Breaking news and neurosurgery might appear to be worlds apart, but for CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, both produce an adrenaline rush.
“There’s nothing like being out in the field,” Gupta said. “The dust, the dirt, the fact that you're always running toward something that everyone else is seemingly running away from.”
For more than 20 years, Gupta’s reporting from the frontlines of natural disasters and humanitarian crises has earned the trust of CNN viewers around the world.
While helping the audience navigate the Covid-19 pandemic, Gupta found a new way to connect with them: podcasting. From “Coronavirus: Fact vs Fiction” to “Chasing Life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta,” Gupta has answered listeners’ most pressing questions and explored his own deepest curiosities, while interviewing guests such as public health experts and even his parents.
We caught up with Gupta to hear more about the newest season of “Chasing Life,” which is all about the brain — a subject that is a “real joy” for the practicing neurosurgeon. He also told us how his background in medicine has enhanced his reporting and how his experiences as a journalist have helped make him a better doctor.
Based on reader feedback for your “Results Are In” newsletter, we know your audience trusts you. How do you maintain that trust as a doctor and as a journalist at a time when there is so much distrust in both (and all) institutions?
In our world of science, health and medicine, we do a lot of homework. We're constantly reading and preparing. I think that people don't realize that even for a two- or three-minute segment on television, we may spend hours — if not days — working on that. It's crucially important to have the real accuracy of what we’re saying and really nail that down.
A lot of times, I've used some of the same skills and some of the same tone that I use as a doctor when I'm in a reporting mode. I think that means being very, very honest about what you know, but even more so about what you don't know — and what is not yet known. I think it’s an irony for a lot of people — that you would build trust by being very honest about what you don't know. But it actually works. After 20 years of doing it, it's just how I approach being a doctor. And I think for journalists, there are some of the same notes to strike there.
You’ve talked before about interpreting new information in science and medicine through your lens of a doctor, but also as a parent. How has your background in medicine helped you as a parent — and when has it presented challenges, if any?
You know, the funny thing is that I'm the only doctor in my family, and if any of my kids have a medical problem, they go to mom — a lawyer — which is just funny to me because it’s not so much a challenge as it is an observation. Because I practice medicine and report on medicine, sometimes I know way more than they need me to know about things. They just need to know, Band-Aid or no Band-Aid? Ibuprofen or no ibuprofen? And I'm talking about the clotting cascade.
When I report on medicine, there's almost always a personal angle to it. That's the nature of medical and health reporting — you can imagine your own kids in that situation. I think in many ways, being a reporter has made me a better doctor as well, because I'm more aware of telling the story of these patients — not just thinking of them in terms of their diagnoses.
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In an episode of “Chasing Life,” Gupta gets to experience how different yoga exercises affect brain waves. |
Your podcast, “Chasing Life,” just kicked off a new season with this alarming fact: Our attention spans really are getting shorter. What’s behind that, and can we do anything to regain our ability to focus?
First of all, doing a podcast on the brain as a brain surgeon is a real joy. I was really taken with a study that came from Gloria Mark, author and professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, where she looked at attention spans over 20 years. In 2003, the average attention span was two and a half minutes, which struck people as very low until they realized by 2012 it was 75 seconds — and now it’s 47 seconds. A lot of things have happened in the world over the last 20 years, but I think a big part of it is certainly how much we consume content using our devices.
Gloria defines four different types of focus or attention, based on how engaged you are and how challenging the task is. The ideal thing is to be highly engaged and highly challenged. That’s called focus. So how do we get there? I think you’ve got to find things in your life that both engage you but are also very challenging. Gloria also makes a really important point that there is a tremendous amount of joy that comes with being able to be focused. If you can find that flow state, it's a joyful place to be. You find that your brain is humming better. You have more dopamine surges. You actually have genuine happiness from focused attention. Think about that. Out of all your life, what are the things that engage you the most and challenge you the most? Now choose to spend more time there, because you're most likely to develop your focused attention.
With social media, it seems like anyone can claim to be an expert. As a result, we’ve seen a growing trend of people diagnosing themselves with ADHD, autism and more based on content they see online. Does that concern you?
When it comes to things like social media and teens, there is this sentiment — “look how bad this could go” — which I think is a very fair position. But you also realize that you don't have to catastrophize things. We’ve taught our kids well — how to be good humans, how to make good decisions, how to be kind to each other and themselves. So hopefully they take those same broad skills that we've given them as parents and apply them to (social media).
I do have concerns about this, but I think there could be real benefits as well when it comes to something like mental health, for example. There is still such a stigma, so when people can find high-quality resources online, it might help them. It might be an avenue for a young person who otherwise would not have really had a way to be able to seek help.
What happens when you have teenagers grow up where most of the content that they're consuming, they sort of instinctively believe is not true? We didn't grow up like that. That's my biggest concern with the misinformation and disinformation. I am not at all surprised that it exists. But when you carry out the equation, the idea that it somehow is going to taint all knowledge out there, that nothing is going to be verifiable or regarded as true, that's a real problem. That creates a very suspicious society. And I don't want my kids to grow up like that. There will be deep fakes. That is happening already. It’ll become much more common. At CNN, my kids will have a place to go that, regardless of whether they agree with it, will know that’s a locus of truth. That’s part of what I am — and you and people who work in a place like this are — trying to contribute to society.
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🎧 New episodes of “Chasing Life” are available on Tuesdays. This season, Sanjay is tapping his decades of experience as a neurosurgeon to explore the many states of the brain — distracted, nourished, concussed, frightened and more. |
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You’ve taken a very personal look at aging by interviewing members of your family on “Chasing Life.” Is there anything that you were surprised to learn while making the podcast?
I'm really close to my parents. We talk all the time, but when you do a podcast with somebody, you end up having a different conversation. I think you end up asking questions that maybe you were always curious about but you never asked. So by its very definition, there are lots of surprises — and maybe even more so with people that you know well. But I think with aging, there is a similar sort of thing to what I was saying with kids and social media, and that is that we tend to catastrophize. You imagine a sort of a later life where you're going to be in and out of hospitals and care facilities and unable to do the things that you once did. What you realize is that when you actually talk to older people, for many of them, that's actually not the case.
My mom sleeps eight to nine hours a night. She's very happy. She plays tennis. She’s 81 years old. One of the things that really surprised me was when I asked her, what are the aches and pains of old age like? She said: “I don't have any aches and pains. I bound out of bed in the morning, and pain is not a thing.” I assumed that the types of pain that I have now in my knee or something just progressively get worse. And at least for my mom, and it turns out a lot of people who have responded to the podcast, that's not the case.
So what we believe about old age — what we think is preordained — is probably really not the case, and the way that you learn this is to talk to older people. Really spend time talking to older people in your life. Ask them about what their lives are really like, and I think the answer will surprise you. They surprised me.
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💳 CNN insider rec of the week |
Brought to you by CNN Underscored
Apple's new iOS 17 software update is here, bringing several new features, enhancements and improvements. If you're wondering whether to install the new update, our tech expert walks us through all the changes, along with the pros and cons.
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✍️ we want to hear from you |
Got an idea for this newsletter? Let us know what you'd like to read about or what you've enjoyed so far. You can reach the team at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you. |
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- Edited and produced by Kyle Almond, Tricia Escobedo and Kimberly Richardson |
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