Ezekiel Emanuel
Bioethicist and health policy expert
This episode will air on Thursday, January 15 at 7:00 p.m. ET
Wellness is a lifestyle, and you’re going to have to continue it for decades. If all you’re doing is punishing yourself, it ain’t going to stick.
Summary
In this episode of “Leadership Matters,” Alan Fleischmann sits down with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the nation's most influential voices in bioethics and health policy. The world’s most cited bioethicist and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Zeke brings a rare combination of medical expertise, philosophical rigor, and policy experience to conversations about how Americans can live longer, healthier, and more meaningful lives.
Over the course of their conversation, Alan and Zeke discuss his upbringing in a high-achieving Chicago family, the many mentors who shaped his journey through both an MD and PhD, and his tenure as the founding chair of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health. The two also spend substantial time discussing Zeke’s latest book, Eat Your Ice Cream: Six Simple Rules for a Long and Healthy Life. In the book, Zeke makes a compelling case against perfectionism, self-deprivation, and biohacking extremes when it comes to wellness, arguing instead for a balanced approach grounded in a few practical rules. The episode also touches on the state of American healthcare, the remarkable advances in biomedicine over the last few decades, and Zeke's concerns about the future of American medical innovation. Throughout, Alan and Zeke explore a philosophy of wellness that recognizes its integration with the rest of life and prioritizes the well enough over the pursuit of perfection.
Mentions & Resources
Guest Bio
Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD, is the Vice Provost for Global Initiatives, the Co-Director of the Healthcare Transformation Institute, and the Diane v.S. Levy and Robert M. Levy University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
Emanuel is an oncologist and world leader in health policy and bioethics. He is a Special Advisor to the Director General of the World Health Organization, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was the founding chair of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health and held that position until August of 2011. From 2009 to 2011, he served as a Special Advisor on Health Policy to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and National Economic Council. In this role, he was instrumental in drafting the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Emanuel also served on the Biden-Harris Transition Covid Advisory Board.
Dr. Emanuel is the most widely cited bioethicist in history. He has over 350 publications and has authored or edited 15 books. His recent publications include the books Which Country Has the World’s Best Health Care (2020), Prescription for the Future (2017), Reinventing American Health Care: How the Affordable Care Act Will Improve our Terribly Complex, Blatantly Unjust, Outrageously Expensive, Grossly Inefficient, Error Prone System (2014) and Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family (2013). In 2008, he published Healthcare, Guaranteed: A Simple, Secure Solution for America, which included his own recommendations for health care reform.
Dr. Emanuel regularly contributes to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and often appears on BBC, NPR, CNN, MSNBC and other media outlets.
He has received numerous awards including election to the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association of American Physicians, and the Royal College of Medicine (UK). He has been named a Dan David Prize Laureate in Bioethics, and is a recipient of the AMA-Burroughs Wellcome Leadership Award, the Public Service Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation David E. Rogers Award, President's Medal for Social Justice Roosevelt University, and the John Mendelsohn Award from the MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Emanuel has received honorary degrees from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Union Graduate College, the Medical College of Wisconsin, and Macalester College. In 2023, he became a Guggenheim Fellow.
Dr. Emanuel is a graduate of Amherst College. He holds a M.Sc. from Oxford University in Biochemistry, and received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and his Ph.D. in political philosophy from Harvard University.
Episode Transcript
Transcript will be uploaded following the episode’s premiere.