The Checkup with Doctor Mike - The Most Famous (TV) Doctor Of All Time | Noah Wyle

Episode Date: June 15, 2025

I'll teach you how to become the media's go-to expert in your field. Enroll in The Professional's Media Academy now: https://www.professionalsmediaacademy.com/Watch The Pitt on HBO Max and follow Noah Wyle on instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/therealnoahwyle/00:00 Intro01:28 His Education07:41 His Impact In Medicine10:12 The Pitt vs. ER15:27 Medicine vs. Acting18:58 The Pitt’s Accuracy22:41 15 Episodes In 15 Hours24:49 AI In Season 227:17 Noah’s Collections28:47 Nurse Dana / Subject Matter Experts32:23 Distrust In Experts / RFK Jr.35:55 Pitt Storylines Based On True Stories / Season 241:10 Health Insurance45:04 Being Typecast / Being On Friends48:06 How We Met / AntivaxxersHelp us continue the fight against medical misinformation and change the world through charity by becoming a Doctor Mike Resident on Patreon where every month I donate 100% of the proceeds to the charity, organization, or cause of your choice! Residents get access to bonus content, an exclusive discord community, and many other perks for just $10 a month. Become a Resident today:https://www.patreon.com/doctormikeLet’s connect:IG: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/instagram/DMinstagramTwitter: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/twitter/DMTwitterFB: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/facebook/DMFacebookTikTok: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/tiktok/DMTikTokReddit: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/reddit/DMRedditContact Email: [e-mail] Producer: Doctor MikeProduction Director and Editor: Dan OwensManaging Editor and Producer: Sam BowersEditor and Designer: Caroline WeigumEditor: Juan Carlos Zuniga* Select photos/videos provided by Getty Images *** The information in this video is not intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. All content, including text, graphics, images, and information, contained in this video is for general information purposes only and does not replace a consultation with your own doctor/health professional **

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When Dr. Mike hit me up on Instagram and was in my DMs, I went to the set the next day. and showed Issa Rionis, and I was the coolest kid on set that day because you're a rock star. Oh, my goodness. On this episode of The Checkup, we're joined by the one and only Noah Wiley.

In case you missed the last 30 years of medical dramas, let me fill you in. Noah Wiley is an award-winning actor who gained nationwide recognition for Dr. John Carter on ER, a role he played for well over a decade, which literally helped define modern medical TV dramas. But now he's back in the hospital

with HBO's hit new series The Pit, where he also serves as executive producer and writer. The show has quickly become your doctor's favorite medical show, known not only for its medical accuracy, but also for its authenticity with frontline healthcare workers. Given that our medical reviews of the show have also garnered some attention, I was lucky enough to visit Noah and the team on set

a few weeks ago and discuss our shared admiration for each other's work. It's also worth noting, beyond his screen work, Noah's actively involved in humanitarian and medical causes, supporting organizations that aim to improve global health and the well-being of frontline health care workers. In this episode, we dive into a range of juicy topics from his medical expertise as a Hollywood trained doctor to what we can expect from season two of the pit. Cannot be more excited to welcome Noah Wiley to the Checkup Podcast. Let's get started.

Well, look, you've mastered the art of being a doctor on television. I mean, if we're being honest about it, you have more medical training than I do. During residency, you're spending three years in the hospital. I've been practicing for 10 years, but in terms of seasons, you have more years spent in a hospital than I do. What's that like? Yes. It's when I think about how that time could have been applied in a trajectory that actually would have landed me some sort of degree, It seems kind of pathetic how much time I've spent in hospitals and around doctors and how little I actually know. But yes, it's gratifying. It's also incredibly ironic given my academic record.

Were you not a good student? I was, you know, it's funny, recently we had our nine-year-old tested because she's had some issues in math. We were wondering if there were some cognitive things. And it came back that she was very mildly ADHD. and as the doctor was describing her findings from the test to us on a Zoom, my wife and I, about 10 minutes in, I noticed that my wife and I were getting really jittery and nervous and just sort of fancy. And I realized, oh, my goodness, I think I'm self-diagnosing myself at the age of 54,

somebody's got mild ADHD. And when I reverse engineer that back of being in school, it just tracks that if I had any interest in it, then I had the ability to deep dive focus on it like a laser beam. And if I didn't, then getting me to pay attention was just like pulling teeth. So, yes, math and science were difficult struggles for me. I appreciate them. I'm more interested in them now than then. What change that you've become more interested?

I think I stopped looking at things in a linear way and started looking at systems and started looking at things and how there's cross-pollination and interconnectedness. and all these different things. Somebody would, you know, you take a drama class and they talk about the mathematics in a poem. And you're like, what, mathematics in a poem? And suddenly they unlock math for me in a different way, you know. Or I want to learn more about aviation.

So suddenly physics doesn't intimidate me anymore because it's a goal to get to understanding the mechanics of flight, right? So it had to align with something I was actually interested in. Well, isn't that just a description of why our education system perhaps isn't the best? One of the many. Because if you think about it, a good educator,

we'll find a way to motivate a student. Yes. By making math artistic or the other way around. And I remember I had a mathematician on this show who was telling me how beautiful math is in her mind. And I've never been someone who loved math, even though my mom was a math professor, PhD, and it loved it, tried to pass it on to me.

I viewed it as work as something I'd, to sit and drill and do over and over, and she's viewing it as a garden of numbers. And the way she's describing it just becomes so motivating and exciting to learn as opposed to a chore. So I think really it's the educator. I'm rereading Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for somewhat creative reasons having to do with season two and Robbie. But he breaks that down into the world between a romantic viewpoint versus a classical viewpoint. One appreciates the aesthetics and one is more interested in and sort of you know components and what makes it up and it's very rare that you find the combination of both of those sensibilities that's what i've been

trying to figure out for myself as how to combine those is that because you see how medicine is as much science as it is an art yeah absolutely yeah absolutely people miss that a lot and i think that's a big reason for why misinformation is so prevalent on social media because in order to practice good medicine, you need to be able to hedge your bet every time, which makes you look a bit uncertain. If you come in with abdominal pain, I say, well, it might be appendicitis, but also might be these three other things. I'm being a good doctor because I'm telling you the truth. I can't, with 100% certainty, tell you what's going on. And then even treatment-wise, I can tell you what is the first line of treatment, but then also if it doesn't work, what's

the second, third, fourth, and fifth. So again, we're hedging. Whereas a lot of these influencers on social media, people on television who have done snake oil stuff, they come in, they say, you have headaches, you're not consuming enough pink Himalayan sea salt. That's the problem. So you look at it and you're like, wow, one seems way more confident than the other who's constantly hedging his bet. But in reality, that hedge is way more honest. Well, they go even farther to say, doctors will tell you. Yeah, doctors didn't tell you. It's because of the Pinkoleans. But they don't want you to know. Big pharma doesn't want you to know. Have you ever fallen victim to any misinformation that you've seen, where you're like on a show and then you learn something?

Do you know how many ab exercisers I purchased in my life? Fast abs, like one of those? I have a whole room in my house that's just dedicated to, it's like a museum to every ab device ever invented. Rollers and wheels and electrostimulations and I'm like, I'm such a sucker. If there's a quick way to good abs, man, I'm on it. Well, they say abs are made in the kitchen. I make a lot of abs.

So maybe the room where you chose to build the abs was the wrong room. Why abs? Was that always a goal for you? Or was that a role that you were preparing for? It was just the, you know, we all have our own body dysmorphia. That's the one area of the body that I'm like, genetically. It doesn't seem like wildly men ever got them. And then I have a son who's 22.

and a bit of an adonis and completely dispelled the theory that wily men can't put on dense muscle. Okay, there you just didn't have the right tool. Yeah, you got to ask them what's moving. Or motivation, perhaps, or discipline. That's fair. Well, look, you were talking about almost downplaying the idea

that instead of going to medical school or getting a proper education, you chose this path. But you've actually done a tremendous service to medical providers, potential medical providers, people who ended up in the field because of you. I know you tell stories frequently of folks coming up to you. How does that happen? How does someone watch ER, the pit, and then change their life trajectory on it?

How does that feel for you? It's pretty heady, you know, very, very flattering and gratifying. It was most profoundly felt for me during the pandemic when I was receiving a lot of mail from first responders who were just saying, you know, everything from we could really use Carter out here to, you know, thanks for getting me into this or keeping me inspired while I'm going through it. And I felt really gratified and also so useless, so skillless at that moment to really be able to help in any meaningful way, that that was the catalyst for wanting to explore a show around what was happening in health care again.

And I reached out to John Wells and said, you know, maybe we should get into this again. And that's where the pit kind of came from, was feeling like I wanted to be contemporary and relevant in these practitioners' lives with what they were going through now and not just be anecdotal to what they did in the 90s. And so that's what we ended up doing.

But to answer your question even more specifically, like it's amazing. It's amazing to think that you've done something with your life that inspired someone to go into a service industry where they may have had a hand in saving countless lives. Again, discrediting yourself. It's pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, the amount of people who use ER as the reason why they went into medicine

is huge. And I'm not talking about this from a philosophical standpoint. I interview residents for our residency program. And it's referenced so often. And now that conversation is shifting to the pit with med students being excited about it. I speak very frequently at colleges, medical associations, and the pit comes up almost every time. At a necessity, we needed to have another show to inspire a new generation to go into these fields. Now, tell me why did it go to the pit versus ERV2?

Well, originally, that was the delivery system we thought would be easiest to employ. And then we got into a little bit of a rights debacle with the Crichton camp and it became a non-starter. And then, you know, while we were licking our wounds and kind of doing a post-mortem on where it went wrong, we actually found that it was probably better that it didn't come as an ER reboot because it would have had so much attendant narrative baggage, you know, so many Easter eggs you'd want to pay off for fans and who's going to come back, that it would have, I think, muddied the waters of the message we were trying to say about what's going on right now. This allowed us to take the same Trojan horse, but put a whole new cast of characters inside of me and then, you know, start

fresh. What I liked about the character of John Carter is I related to him to some degree. He came in happy go lucky maybe not the sharpest doctor as an intern and then really had a turnaround where there was a skill setler there was a person who was very capable at their job did you realize that that would happen with his character arc or was that something that developed organically well you never have a crystal ball and how long shows are going to run for and there was no guarantee that you were always going to get past the pilot but i did recognize in the pilot script that where all the other doctors were proficient, second, third, and fourth years, you know, I was the med student. So the arc ahead of me would have been the largest if the show

continued. And then because I was the stumbling, bumbling medical student and somewhat the comic relief, that character's maturation and an embracing of his own manhood, his own skill set as a physician, and in his particular case, his own blue-blooded upbringing, which he was sort of living and both guilt and denial about all kind of paced out beautifully over 15 long years and afforded me an opportunity to play a character in a way that very few actors are ever given a chance to, which is to basically grow up inside of it. Yeah, that's 12 seasons with, because you took some time off. I did the first 11 seasons, a few episodes of the 12th, and then took 13th and 14th off

and came back and did sort of half or eight or eight episodes in the 15th season. I mean, you sort of know what a doctor is going through because that wasn't filmed in Los Angeles, right? ER was filmed in L.A. Oh, it was. Yeah, we filmed at Warner Brothers, the same studio where we were shooting the pit.

I can see the sound stage where we filmed ER from where we work across 300 feet and 15 years, 15 pounds and, you know. So when you were referencing earlier that the last 10 or 15 years, you weren't filming in LA, these are future projects that you were working on after ER? After ER, everything I did.

I worked on a series that shot in Portland, Oregon. I worked on a series that shot in Toronto. I worked on a series that shot in Vancouver. I worked on a series that shot in New Orleans. So when the idea of the pit came about were you like, please film it here or not. Yes, well, the benefit of working with John Wells and Scott Gemmills were all old men

who were getting sort of fussy about not wanting to be away from home much. So that was the first flag we planted was what's planted in L.A. And I've also become a bit of outspoken advocate for keeping work in L.A. Because we've had a real exodus the last few years. We lost 21,000 jobs in Los Angeles between 2021 and 23, between the pandemic and the strikes.

It's been devastating to our industry. And then these latest fires were even more crippling because a lot of the people that lost homes were people that have been working in our industry for generations. So I've become part of it. of a grassroots campaign called Stay in L.A. that's trying to get both the tax credit lifted for production in California and to ask studios and streamers to allocate a little bit more of their budgets to keeping work in the epicenter of where it all started. Wow. So you're advocating

not just for doctors, but also for everyone. I'm advocating for everybody. I'm actually going to D.C. at the end of the next week with the nurses union to speak to a couple members on the hill about a few pieces of legislation aimed at both equal pay and workplace protection. Which is important given the fact that health care abuse is so underreported, sometimes completely neglected, and there is no policy on the books of mandatory sentences. It's a federal crime to assault a bus driver. The idea that you can assault a practitioner for frontline worker without penalties is egregious. and the incidents, I'm sure you know,

they're happening more and more frequently. As a byproduct of patients waiting longer and longer and coming in sicker, as a byproduct of overcrowding. And, you know, the whole thing is systemic, but at the end of the day, it's the people that are taking care of us that are getting hurt. Yeah.

What difference in your life from taking care of your own health have you changed in playing these roles as a doctor for so long? Like any doctor, I don't think about my own health at all. we're immortal aren't we might yeah well that I love that we're ironically we're almost both dr. Mike yeah so yeah that that makes sense it's like two doctors in our white sneakers and her cross the legs doppel ganging each other um but doctors are the worst hypocrites yes and I think it's partially for dark reasons the fact that we've seen so much that our tolerance of what bad

is is so much more broad than the person who oh no my stomach hurts is it something terrible whereas we've seen someone's just bowels come out and we say oh well that's fixable i also think and this is speculation because again i'm not a real doctor um but you have to compartmentalize to such a degree true that i find the same thing's true when doctors you know misdiagnosed their own children frequently and there's ethical rules about not treating somebody that you have an emotional relationship with for that reason i think that bleeds compartments for physicians. When you take that focus that's always outward gazing and apply it inward in any way, it throws the calibration off a little bit. So I think it, you can say

it's darkness, but I think it has more to do with self-protection. Once you open that door a little bit to your own vulnerability and admit that you have the same potential to fall prey to everything that you're treating, it's sort of slippery slope. I think, there's a stage in medical school that from what I've read that people go through this hypocondriatic stage exactly you know where suddenly you get this education you realize holy shit all this could happen to me I think I have all of this all the time and then you kind of have to tamp that down and put it in its proper perspective right does that happen with acting as well yes I think any it's sort of you know like chess playing when you learn how to play something that is infinitely complex the more you

realize the variables you'll never learn the more you get humbled by the prospect of the education you know uh i think that's true with acting that you learn mechanics and then that just frees you to learn how much more there is to play with right right it's frequently the line that folks say about the smartest people in the room are not who know the most but who have the best questions i try to preach that to my kids all the time just be curious yeah just be curious and all the doors were open. Yeah. Was that your strategy for your success? I think I've been really sort of mercurial in the way that I look about, I get turned on by all sorts of different things, you know, and because of that, and occasionally I'll find a reason to draw from it. Writing

has become a really significant part of my life, and writing on the pit was one of the great achievements I've had so far. It was the first time I realized that as I was running a medical show, I was pulling in things that were interesting to me about philosophy or things that happened when I was a kid when my grandmother died or something that, you know, a joke that I have always loved. And you realize this is all there for a reason. I've collected it all. I didn't know why, but there is a practical use for it eventually if you get there long enough. Well, for someone who's writing the pit, acting on the pit, EP. EP. EP, and I'm going to direct this season as well.

And direct. I met you in the writer's room a few weeks ago. You guys are not just taking this seriously from a fictional standpoint. You're also taking it seriously from a factual standpoint. And that is rare. As someone who, I guess my career has become reviewing medical dramas, it's amazing how accurate and it's not even truthful. It's almost written by someone who's been there before.

It is. We have board certified ER docs. So tell us about the process of how you incorporate people's experiences, knowledge, in addition to making it a functional show. We have on our staff several secret weapons. The biggest one is a man named Dr. Joe Sachs, who was the technical advisor on ER, and also a writer and producer, board-certified DR doc.

And Joe has what he preferably calls his tickle truck. And we say, Joe, we need a really, you know, heroin case. And Joe goes, clam shell. And he brings to bear all of his medical career, as does Dr. Mel Herbert, as do our three onset technical advisors, as do all the trauma nurses that we employ as our background. There are so many experts floating around that we mind not just for their cases, but we ask the more uncomfortable questions, which is to sort of open their hearts and tell us how it felt and what they were afraid of and when they were most confident,

least confident. And those are the things that we sort of are more interested in. And I think those are the things that people are responding to more is the medicine is the soundtrack but right what you're watching is energy behavior relationship hierarchy confidence you know those are the things that are most relatable to people to other shows not hire this level of staff to make sure I think other shows don't care as much to make that the point of the thesis you know we came into this to be the most medically accurate show ever made that was the strategy yes wow okay that was what what we were doing was trying to make a love letter to front line workers and first responders to say, we see in here what you've been going through the last several years, and we're going to

build a show around a really great doctor who's having the worst day of his life because of it, and everything else will fall suit from there. We pass around pictures from other shows. There was one where they'd intubated somebody with a yank hour and taped it in. There's a lot. There's people with brillo pads. As defibrillators, there's a lot of... We pass those pictures around as a point of pride that we take it as seriously as we do. All the gear on set when I saw...

It's crazy, right? You guys have a functioning hospital on the set? I hope we can donate it to a real ER when we're done. I mean, I hope that they won't be some, like, practical issue of, oh, it's not certified, is... Oh, it works great, you know. It's really impressive our set. It's so impressive.

It didn't impress my nine-year-old who walked onto it thinking and it looks like a hospital. I was expecting Hogwarts and you're showing me. I'm like, look, this is a real hand soap dispenser. You're like, this is an x-ray machine. It's a portable chest x-ray. You didn't care.

Wow. Well, how did the premise for the 24 hours or the 15 hours come about? Was that an initial point that you wanted to start with or did that come about? That was Scott Gemmell. Scott Gemmell's contribution

right off the bat was, I want to do something that re-invents the genre that we know so well. And he brought two sort of pillars along with that. One was I want to do it in real time and build a pressure cooker that takes place over a full shift where you're embedded like you would be with a combat unit

or in the backseat of a squad car on a ride-along where you can turn your head but you can't get out of the car. You're just going to have to ride it. And I don't want there to be any music. I don't want there to be any external artifice that could take a viewer out and say, oh, now I'm supposed to cry because I hear violins or now I'm supposed to get excited because I hear percussion. I just want the soundtrack to be the technical jargon, the machines in the room,

and maybe a little accentuated sound design, heartbeats, and so forth. It's palpable. And the last time I got the same feeling that I got watching the pit was probably saving Private Ryan. I don't know if that played a role in your thought process, but do you see the symmetry between the... Yeah, it was the opening sequence in Private Ryan, just that unrelenting, that's the beach, here we go. Yeah, because it also, if you think about what the story is,

it's guys going to get another guy, but the characters, their feelings, the friendships, the emotions, similar to what the pit is. Like the medicine, as you said, is the soundtrack. It's the background for what actually is happening to these humans. And a lot of times, health care workers are just thought as, oh, they're just there, they're robots, they're well compensated, forget about it, no big deal. But without health care workers, we're in a really big place, a really bad place.

I've been saying that the strength of our health care system is commensurate with the strength of our health care workers, the degree to which we support them. Do you think Bill Gates' prediction that in 10 years, AI will replace doctors is an accurate one? I think as a certain, as an augmentive tool, it's going to be a game changer. You know, we're sort of playing around with it a little bit now because it's so much part of the conversation. There's a company called a bridge that does almost dictation software. You can walk in the room and put my cell phone down and do my whole exam while I'm talking to you and looking at you. and it's not just talk texting,

it's putting it into the format of the chart that we use in the department of the hospital that we happen to be sitting in while I'm doing the exam, which allows us to have much more one-to-one contact. It takes all the typing out of your day of having to chart, and you just have to check it for inaccuracies.

You have to just make sure that... You have to make sure the AI is not being AI. Yeah, that there's no hallucinations that you're not giving zoophrand instead of Zoloft or whatever. Right. And that's the part that, you know, is still a little wonky is you can have a 9.9.9% accuracy rate, but that one percentage or the 10th of a percentage point is still important.

So much, so many breakthroughs in diagnostic research, you know, brain and heart, cancer detection. We keep talking to experts that say we're right on the precipice of incredible breakthroughs. That said, I do think you lose something from not. having human to human contact. I think humans need to have human to human contact. I think there's something quantifiable about person-to-person care that you lose when you outsource it to anything technological. But, you know, that's just my opinion. Yeah, I think analog manual is going to have a resurgence in the AI world. Are we going to have, like, you know, they have GMO-free labels on food at AI-free productions and AI-free movies.

Well, actually, I was sort of pausing that during the writer's strike while we were all marching around trying to think about what the industry was going to look like. I started thinking, as they were predicting more and more AI-generated programming, there's going to be a resurgence in live theater that people are going to start craving a temporal, live, human, emotional experience that only exists in this room at this moment and is totally analog, you know, that these things tend to rise in correlation with each other. I hope. Well, I also believe that you have a little bit of a bias there. You're quite a collector, as I've heard, of some unique artifacts. Indeed. What's some fun artifacts that you've

collected over the years? Collect the us such a kind word. Horting is the one that's thrown at the most off. Well, I try not to make a medical diagnose. Self-diagnosed. But I have a big enough house. that you can't really tell how bad the problem is. Okay, good. But my wife, basically, every time we bring something new and she goes, you know, that would look great in your office, which my office is now starting to look a lot like Russell Crow's shack and a beautiful mind.

I collect everything, you know. It's a form of therapy for me to identify something that interests me and then just I'm sort of a tactile guy, so I like to, if I get interested in 19th century walking canes, I need to have them all. And memorabilia from shows? I keep a lot of memorabilia from shows I've worked on. I grew up in L.A. as a big movie buff, big Hollywood buff,

so I have a lot of film and television memorabilia. I've collected medical apparatus. I've got a, you know, I've got a beautiful salesman case full of glass eyeballs from the 1800s. I've got an early, early wooden prosthetic. hand that articulates all the different joints, kind of all sorts of weird shit. In thinking about the pit and how accurate it is, I actually want to show you a photo. So you have a great relationship. I know you're Robbie, but I'm going to call you Dr. Mike.

As Dr. Mike and your charge nurse, you're going to laugh. This is out of the ICU, out of Overlook Medical Center, where I did my residency training. That's my charge nurse. It's Robbie and Dana. Isn't that nuts? Although it looks more like Carter and Dana. Yeah, yeah, the age, right? Yeah, and the scrubs and the coat.

But it's funny how accurate, like, this is... Didn't Catherine Linosa just nail it? Nail it. I mean, like, the personalities are exactly the same. She is such a wonderful actress, and she did such an incredible, detailed research. And she hung out with a woman named Kathy Griffin, who's been a charged nurse at SC County forever, and is a bit of a legend in her own right.

And Catherine just picked up just, got that got it down yeah you also to make it more accurate bring in subject matter experts for per episode what what's the goal of doing that and what uh what experience have you had there it ranges you know sometimes you want to you know honor the city that the show is depicted in pittsburgh pittsburg has got a great medical history dr safer and a father of CPR but it also is where the ms service started you know the freedom house ambulance service It's a great story to tell. And in researching Pittsburgh, you come across something like that.

And it's just like, ah, this is great. It's educational. It's relevant. It's dramatic, thematic. And so that's one way you do it. The other way is you want to have a bit of a crystal ball because these shows aren't going to air for a year. Right. So we kind of need the experts to tell us, look around the corner for us and tell us what you're most afraid of, what you most want to see on TV.

guide us, guide us from your expertise. So in a lot of ways, we could get a relevant storyline like our measles storyline towards the end of the season seem prophetic because we were talking to vaccination experts who were looking at trending rates

and saying, you're going to see this, this, or this in the next year. And we got lucky by choosing measles or neuros cystic sarcosis. Like we had no idea that was going to suddenly become a thing. But occasionally, you can get lucky. they also tell you about things that aren't being spoken about in media or perhaps in medical

dramas and i feel like that's a big component because you're talking about subjects that are taboo where people need to hear them and what i like about the pit is that it takes entertainment but then it adds that value that substance that has largely been missing from entertainment at one point er was like the primary source of health care for most americans huge i labeled it as the number one most accurate show before the pit. And we took that very seriously. So if we said it, you know, it was pretty much verifiably accurate. The fact that we don't have an objective fact in medicine anymore, that we all feel very

nervous about stating something as an empirical fact makes me so uncomfortable. And I wanted to show where you could say, if they're saying it, your doctor's going to say, yes, that's accurate and you can have confidence in that again. That's been missing from TV. It's been missing from the conversation with our doctors. You know, the fact that that level of distrust has been inserted in this very sacred relationship, I think, is really extremely dangerous. Reading, playing, learning.

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Are those from winners? Ooh, are those beautiful gold earrings? Did she pay full price? Or that leather tote? Or that cashmere sweater? Or those knee-high boots? That dress, that jacket, those shoes. Is anyone paying full price for anything?

Stop wondering. Start winning. Winners, find fabulous for less. What do you think has led to the distrust? Like anything, you'll find a kernel of truth, right? that then metastasizes into something really unhealthy. Truth wrapped in a lie. Yes.

You get, I just recently heard this thing that was unbelievable to me that, you know, there's a movement talking about that empathy is a sin. Empathy is a sin. Why? Well, because if I'm trying to warm you by lighting myself on fire, I'm not doing you any good. If I take on your problems to an unhealthy degree, we're not serving either one of us. I need to be objective and I need to be, right? But what you're taking is something that has a kernel of truth to do.

which is you can get compassion fatigue. You can get caretaker fatigue. You can get empathy fatigue from overextending yourself into someone else's role. You do need to have a certain sort of objectivity. And compassion is maybe a better word than empathy there. But to call empathy a sin is serving a whole other set of masters. Well, what happens is with medical misinformation is they'll use the right terminology in the wrong application.

Yes. or they'll take a study out of context, like as a prime example, not to get political, because I think this is more clinical than political, RFK Jr., when he talks about the rotavirus vaccine, which has saved 100,000 plus lives globally prevented tens of thousands of thousands hospitalizations even here in the U.S. for children, a vaccine that I've been giving my entire medical career, he looks at the pamphlet in which the vaccine comes that compares those who got placebo versus the vaccine and only looks at the negative impacts that someone that got the vaccine ended up having, but fail to compare it to the placebo group. Because if a person has a headache,

it could be they just had a headache or they got a headache because of the vaccine. So you have to look at both groups. Correct. Where if you just look at one group and say, look how many people got a headache after the vaccine, well, people get headaches. Yes. So your chair picking for adverse effects, but that's not how mass vaccination works. There's going to be outlier cases, but that's not the point. I feel like it's brave of the pit to take on these issues during this politically turbulent time. No? It probably is. But, you know, is it brave to just say what's accurate and what's true? Absolutely. Right now it is. I suppose it is. Yeah. Do you have any fears of government pushback on things you're talking about,

language you're using, stories you're covering. So far we have not been given any kind of censorship at all. And we've been encouraged to continue to do what we've been doing. Wow. You know, I think while I may be guilty occasionally of writing a character with a bias, like when I wrote an episode where Dr. Langdon talks about mask efficacy, You know, it makes a joke saying,

do you want your surgeon to have mask or no mask? Because I don't want to step on your belief system. That's me as a writer making a sort of political joke, but I'm doing it through a character that would definitely have that opinion. And I'm showing counterbalance argument. Most of the time we show just presentational. This is what it looks like. And these are the equal weighted arguments that you're going to see in a hospital,

and you can draw your own value judgment from it. It's a bit of a Rorschach test. And in that, we have a little bit of, safety because we're we're just saying this is what we hear this is what's being reported this isn't polemical this isn't dogmatic this is accurate fair were there any episodes or perhaps lines that impacted your understanding or relationship with life and death certainly the mr spencer storyline the the aging father who has two adult children episode four was the first one I wrote, and I was so lucky to land on that one because I really loved

being able to talk about the Hooponopono for things that matter most sort of end-of-life ritual. And as we were researching that and as I was writing it, it took on personal relevance because I was thinking a lot about how my grandfather died and how my mother and my uncle attended his death. And those last few minutes that they witnessed, my mother shared with me and I verbatim wrote them into the script. Wow. He woke up at the very end and he looked around the room and he said my grandmother's name who had died many years earlier and then he got kind of a smile in his face and he just went to sleep and I just put that all in there. So that one was personally, you know, invested for me, but I also loved the response that we got where we took

something as ubiquitous as a death, which we see all the time on TV, all the time. And we slowed it down to real time and it became impactful again. And that to me was really gratifying that we could take a birth and a death, the two most common experiences that we go through, which seemed to be the two most taboo subjects to talk about. And we showed them for all their accuracy and the world went nuts. I find that amazing, ironic, and gratifying that we got away with it. Yeah, it's absolutely beautiful.

What do we expect for season two? You guys are in the process, right? Season two is a lot about recognizing that audiences identified almost one-to-one with these characters. And so we need to be very faithful to that identification and now say, where would they be 10 months later, having been through what they've been through? In the first season, Robbie has an Adamson that is on his shoulder. But in season two, everybody has an Adamson on their shoulder. How does everybody get through a mass casualty event? 10 months on the other side of it and move on.

Answering those questions for every character as thoughtfully as we can has been the thesis of season two. It's almost as if the first season was about diagnosing the problem and season two is about finding a method of treatment. Will there be a continuation of the mental health focus that's been so prevalent on the show? Yeah, particularly through my character.

You know, Robbie's recognition that he has an issue is undeniable after season one. I think he goes home after that shift and can't lie to himself anymore that he's fine. So then he's got to be a bit of a leader in advocating for some mental health, but whether he takes it on himself will be an interesting journey.

As we were discussing earlier, physicians don't make the best patients, and I really find that interesting. So I find that's going to be a big part of this, the doctor knows that he's sick, but will he get the help? Based on that premise, I'm sure you've had outreach, but you are very vocal in supporting medical institutions. You're working with the Nurses Association.

What do they tell you based on these characters? What feedback have you gotten directly? Pretty uniformly that we're hitting the nail on the head, you know, especially when it comes to things like burnout and when it comes to things like moral injury. you know, the idea that you could go to work every day with the best of intentions and have all of your skills and all of your intentions still not matter in making a difference and having the tide be unending

and going home every day feeling like you barely move the needle at all for reasons that aren't your fault is, you know, I think so that's what's out there. We had an evening the other night with UCLA resident second years where we kind of have some dinner and we have some drinks and we say, tell us your stories. And usually those nights are fun. These artis were a different,

they're going through a different thing right now. Yeah. And the conversation started off being like, you know, I hate urology or I hate it when my attending won't sign off on my treatment course or I hate this and I hated that. And then this one, Artu goes, can I just say that I think that this is part of the problem?

We're all pointing at each other as if our interdepartmental issues are the problem or individuals are the problem. We're trying to make sense of something that's a systemic failure and we're pointing fingers at each other. Can we at least acknowledge that that is not helpful? And it changed the whole tone of the conversation, right? Because then everybody realized that they spend so much of their day out of necessity trying to assign blame for the things that they're feeling.

And blame is always misdirected. It's human, right, to constantly do that. the system is absolutely broken. I mean, I try and function as best as I can within the system. But just yesterday, I had a guest on the podcast, a breast reconstructive surgeon who is currently in the midst of a legal battle with one of the large health care insurers because in the midst of her performing a surgery, she was called out of the surgery to answer a call about an insurance authorization for the stay for that surgery.

and I just don't know if we're getting to that point where's bottom yeah I agree well going back to the conversation about AI like when you're going to get denied a procedure denied coverage or denied care based on an algorithm without being you know really looked at by a human being I think that's a scary. It's scary. When you look at the majority of denials or I don't remember the percentages offhand, a lot of them are based on administrative issues, coding issues, or what they call other. And they're not really because of improper medical necessity or fraud.

It's just an issue with the system. And to me, if you're an insurer and you're doing that, you're turning the knob at where that happens, where the line of that is. And it's in your best interest because you're a financial company at the heart of it all. You're not a health care company. So your responsibilities to your shareholders, not to patients. And when you're turning that knob in the wrong direction, it really messes up the balance of health care where it's perfectly exemplified by your administrator who's constantly putting pressure on you

to improve patient wait times and quotas. And then, I mean, I may be out of my depth here, but ironically, the other side of it is that you make more money off the, of the admit and get them upstairs and do as many tests as possible. So you're denying patients on one side of the scale and you're overcharging and over testing on the other. Well, that's one of the interesting things I talk about on the show that people miss. In the United States, we have two sides of the coin with bad health care. It's understandable to most that if you don't have good access because you're poor, you don't have money to pay for your meds, you will have bad health care outcomes. That makes sense to people. But what they miss is that there's also

a VIP spectrum that is also getting bad health care by overdoing it. Over testing, over supplementing, over-medicating, demanding when they have a virus at their doctor's office to get antibiotics. Michael Jackson is a prime example of that. So these issues all require a balance. And our healthcare system financially requires a balance. We don't want to destroy the industry where there's no more insurers to cover us. But at the same time, we need to make sure that patients are appropriately taken care of. And I feel like that balance is so sorely missing. Especially in the climate of these Medicaid cuts that we might be looking at. Right. You know, you know, but a lot of people don't know that Medicaid at the state level

is what funds all ongoing care. You know, whether it's your child in an assisted living facility or your parent and an age at home, these things are often supplemented by Medicaid. And if you make those cuts, we're going to be seeing some unbelievably draconian outcomes. Yeah. I mean, we're seeing the cuts to NIH with, in Dallas last week, 50 vaccine clinics closed. Dozens more across the country. And if we have dropping vaccination rates, we have spiking infectious disease rates. And it's happening because of people driving vaccine hesitancy or full-on misinformation, creating anti-vaxxers.

I don't know. Like, besides doing it on large scale, social media and on a television show, what else can we do? I don't know. We're doing our part. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Presale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at MX.ca.com. The twisted tale of Amanda Knox is an eight episode Hulu Original Limited series that blends gripping pacing with emotional complexity,

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Hit pause on whatever you're listening to and hit play on your next adventure. This fall get double points on every qual. qualified stay. Life's the trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and conditions. You can get protein at home or a protein latte at Tim's. No powders, no blenders, no shakers. Starting at 17 grams per medium latte, Tim's new protein lattes, protein without all the work at participating restaurants in Canada. I love that you're still connected to your characters very much. Most that play a role like John Carter, get tired of that association.

In fact, we invited Hugh Lory to our show because a lot of folks like when we do HouseMD react. And his staff was, oh, this is a good fit. We're going to reach out to him and see what he thinks. I'm going to read you, quote, unquote, what he said. He is not interested in opportunities like this, frankly, doesn't care about the audience or reliving the show.

That's so baller. It's just such a direct and honest reply. Like, not that he won't do your show. It just he doesn't want to be house MD ever again. I'm a Gemini, middle child pleaser. I'll answer any question you asked me. But you do care about the audience. In fact, it's what's driven you to do this new show and continue season two

and continue crushing it representing for us. I care about certain audiences. Okay. And that healthcare audience falls into that mix. This was scripted as a love letter to first responders and front line workers to say, you know, we recognize what you guys have been going through. And then being embraced by that community and getting the gold seal of approval started the conversation to the rest of the audience is that this is a show to watch.

So you guys were the ones we cared about the most in the beginning. And then I, you know, it's, I've never been interested in my, in fame. So reach and impact are much more interesting to me than than celebrity. So in order to have reach an impact, you have to have a dialogue and you have to be willing to sort of open up enough of yourself to feel like, you know, you're honest. Yeah. But with fame, you can have impact. Yes, you can. I mean, you had a tremendous impact on me and I know most tell you that they've gone into medicine perhaps because of John

Carter or now the pit. But for me, you actually encouraged my venture into health care, but it wasn't from either of those two characters. It was from the lovely character you played on Friends. What? Stop it. You would think I'm blowing smoke right now, but this is on camera documented five years ago.

I said this. Really? Yeah. I want to be a doctor so I can go out with Rachel. You think that's sick? That's why. Because Rachel thought I was cute. You're like, I need to do this.

As selfish and superficial as that was, when you're 10 years old, that has an impact. I became an actor. And you're a nerd. I got into acting because I wanted to be part of the massage trains. They all look so fun. ER started 94. I wasn't even in America then. So when I came in and I started watching shows, friends, ER, that was the backbone of what I understood America to be.

Wow. So you shaping my worldview was obviously very impactful, but then also connecting with you on Instagram about the show, finding out that you were aware of our work here on YouTube. Let me just say that when Dr. Mike hit me up on Instagram and was in my DMs, I went to the set the next day and showed Issa Brienus

that Dr. Mike had Instagrammed me and Instagramed me. It shows you what generation I'm from. And I was the coolest kid on set that day because you're a rock star. Oh, my goodness. We would watch your show in the little room that we have for the cast. We'd all have one phone. We'd watch you.

And I got to be super cool by meeting you now twice. Yeah. Well, this is obviously a pleasure, and I thank you for your time. Because for me, it's obviously a ton of pressure, making sure I'm doing right by the show. And what's unique about the work that we do on the channel is when I watch the show, That is genuinely my first time watching the episode. So perhaps I'm not aware of certain things. Perhaps I make mistakes while I do it.

But I think it also... Oh, you ring the bell of diagnosis more often than not. Come on, my man. But sometimes you get it wrong, and it's okay, and I misspeak or I have to Google things. And I want that level of transparency for people to see what it's like to talk to a doctor. It's why a few months ago I did a debate against 20 anti-vaxxers, and I sat surrounded by them for three hours. for a show on YouTube, that's not mine.

So I didn't own the footage. I put myself at their mercy. I said, ask me anything, challenge me on anything. Let's have a conversation. So you could see what a doctor does. Because it's usually done behind closed doors. And when it's done in media, it's done through jabs and digs and frustration and emotion.

Watch how we do it with patients, even though they're not my patients. And I think it resonated with people where it's like, whoa, I'm watching someone who's empathetic, who's trying their best, saying what they know, what they don't know. And then I'm watching someone yelling at them with anger because they've experienced something. Were those 20 anti-vexers coming at their opinion from a uniform source or were there?

They were just cast as people who wanted a question a doctor about vaccines. You don't know how they came at their ideology? Well, some of them talked about personal situations. One was a pediatric hematology oncology nurse and was very frustrated at how the COVID-19 pandemic was handled by our government. how certain things were miscommunicated and led to her distrust to some degree. There was one who was a police lieutenant here in New Jersey whose child, because of a divorce, a court mandated that they get a vaccine because the mother wanted it, he didn't want it,

and how that led him to distrust the system because of the data that they used. Some full-on conspiracy theorists believing that I've been brainwashed by the John Rockefeller system of health care. I'm much more interested in where the root of people's, you know, ideas come from. That's the only place you can unravel the knot, right? It's like, where did you hear that? What makes you feel that way? What are you afraid of?

So I approached every conversation that I had in those three hours in that same way. But then I was surprised there were a couple of people where it really didn't matter what I was saying. And I had to ask outright, is there anything I could say that would open up your mind or change your mind? They said, no, because I actually read and study. And at that point Not to speak disparaging about anybody But I think it's really hard for people To walk back a strongly held opinion

Especially if it has consequences That you'd have to own Like maybe people died as a result of you Advocating for a certain point of view To have to own that that may have been A mistake is It's maybe the hardest thing you could possibly do So I have compassion for how dug in people are

I just hope we can all talk again soon Yeah that's the hope because I think that they're, I'm optimistic, maybe not healthy optimistic because it's a little wild, but in the same way to how we started the conversation, I think this is a great bow tie. We started with talking about how a good educator will get someone excited no matter their limitations or frustrations. I think a good doctor can help someone overcome their misconceptions, incorrect beliefs, maybe not in one visit, maybe not in one conversation. but if given enough time, I think that is doable.

Amen. Well, thank you for your time now. I very appreciate you coming over. So awesome. It's my pleasure. Thank you. This was an absolute dream guest on the show. Huge thanks to Noah for not only coming by our studio here in New York, but for reading my

DM on Instagram in the first place. He was really cool off camera. Took pictures of the team, everything. Very generous with his time. If you like my chat with Noah, you might also like the first ever episode of the show that we did with Cal Penn, where we talked about his arc playing a doctor on House MD. Scroll on back to the very beginning to find out one. And if you enjoyed this episode, please don't hesitate to give us a five-star review,

perhaps a comment, as it really helps us find new viewers and listeners for the show. And as always, stay happy and healthy.