Bryant Y. Lin

So I really have had a good time talking with a variety of people who are producing literature, producing memoirs, while also doing something else with their lives, and I really greatly respect one's ability to do that.

On this show, I have a really special opportunity to interview a former Stanford colleague.

Well, let me rephrase that.

He's not a former colleague.

He's a still a colleague, but I'm no longer at Stanford where he works, and so, uh, we'll be able to reminisce and connect through some, uh, mutual friends.

But this is a really special person and a really special book that I want to, uh, bring to your attention today.

The author is Dr. Bryant Lin.

He's been the leader of medicine and humanities.

The process of writing a letter for loved ones can be a potent therapy for the patient and a legacy for those left behind.

Our guests on this episode are Dr. Bryant Lin and Frish Brandt.

Bryant is a recurring guest on the show and a primary care physician, educator, and researcher at Stanford University who was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer in 2024.

Frisch is a letter midwife who began her work helping palliative care and hospice patients write letters for their loved ones.

Thank you.

I think that that idea of distillation or clarification or boiling something down to its essence, that is a great deal of what both writing and medicine and even living are about, right? It is that process of figuring out what really matters the most.

And just to say them out loud one more time, the books which both in their different ways focus very much on that and associated themes are Sunshine by Bryant Lin and Unfinished Business by Frish Brandt.

We were lucky enough to get copies of both of them.

Certainly there are some patients that can't wait and we need to start chemotherapy like we discussed, but I think actually understanding that it's okay to wait those few weeks while you're waiting for the biomarkers to come back so that you really can start the best therapy first.

We just did a podcast recently with Dr. Bryant Lin, who not only is an oncologist and a physician and all kinds of other things, but he also was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.

So he's got this perspective as both a patient and as a physician.

Then the whole goal is about treating someone sick.