On Sunday, January 31st, 2021, I received a text message from my friend,  Reza Manesh.  Reza informed me that he was 'almost done with his book' and would like me to "review with a critical eye and provide feedback to make it better."  

I did review the draft. But it was the book that made me better at finding joy in life through the fantastic work that is part reflection and part memoir.

Today Reza (as he likes to be called) is a leading voice in medical education.  As he tells in his recently published book - Finding JOY in Medicine - the journey was not easy.  But through learning and developing three essential attributes humanism, humility, and desire for growth - he has discovered joy in medicine, and I would argue in life too.  

(Watch Reza's Journey)

Finding JOY in medicine is not about any particular destination.  Having read the book several times, I am convinced it is not just about medicine.  It is about authenticity, humanity, humility, and vulnerability.  Reza reminds me of Walt Whitman's quote, "I am large. I contain multitudes."  This is a story of multitudes of our shared humanity, humility, and wisdom through the story of Reza.  The wisdom that I have noticed is the one that embodied moral elements out of Reza's very own moment of suffering and learning, which comes from compassionate regard for the fragility of others.   

Finding Joy in Medicine should be required reading for everyone, particularly my generation.  It is a reminder that we should not chase: a job for money, compliments, imitations, job titles, influence, or shortcuts to learn.  Reza reminds us to pursue: quality time with loved ones, a healthy lifestyle, work that brings joy, ways to help others, opportunities to learn and grow and show gratitude.  

The main character in the book is not Reza, or his patients, or other doctors.  It's AGHA JOON (Persian-Farsi for grandfather - Reza's grandfather).  He was not a doctor.  He was an ordinary man, and there was just something extraordinary about him.  

The book starts with AGHA JOON's poem.  This is just a reminder that we read poetry because the world is more than the facts, laws, and realities.  Life is indeed way too short, and AGHA JOON and Reza remind us that perhaps poems will make it last a bit longer. So we can all find JOY...

​We all can gain from reading great writers.  Some of the most successful business people and entrepreneurs do a lot of reading and thinking.  

Visionary business minds like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, or Peter Thiel teach us something that is often ignored by most of us. They all read a lot.   The compelling ideas from history, philosophy, literature, and other humanities disciplines can be valuable sources for innovation and success as the more measurable fields of economics, science, and technology.  

The humanities brim with lessons and models for anyone ready and willing to examine them.   

Suppose we want to learn more about effective decision-making. In that case, we can study how President Lincoln kept the  Union together during the Civil War, or perhaps why Ceasar crossed the Rubicon, or how JFK kept the world out of nuclear Armageddon during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  

Suppose we are looking for a fantastic manual on leadership. In that case, we should consider Martin Luther King Jr.'s writing on civil disobedience in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" or Machiavelli's discussion on the nature of power in The Prince. 

This summer, I'll be reading and re-reading the following books, and let me tell you why.

Plato, Apology (c. 399 BC)
I frequently ask myself about my core principles or how I can develop a guiding set of ethics that no promise of money or power can corrupt?  In fact, these are some of the questions that Plato's Apology answers, as it tells us the story of how Socrates faced his accusers at the trial that would end in his death sentence.  Socrates teaches us all about how to craft a thoughtfully considered code of ethics that is the ultimate source of what Socrates called the "good life."

Machiavelli, The Prince (published in 1532)
It is a fantastic text on political power that can help us all in the modern world.  The Prince is written at a time of remarkable change in Florence, and Machiavelli tried to fix the broken political system by whatever means required.    It gets to the core of questions like, is it better to be feared or loved?  or perhaps more advantageous actually to be powerful, or to seem powerful?

Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603)
Shakespeare's legendary Othello is a reminder for all of us that to understand anyone; we must try first hearing his or her particular story.  

Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor (published in 1924)
I won't spoil the story, but in life, at some point, we all face a terrible decision like Captain Vere.  Should we follow our hearts? Should we not?

These are the four classics I'll be reading this summer.  Perhaps it might seem unusual, even counterintuitive, that each of these books was written decades and centuries ago.  But I believe the best books remain indispensable for the long haul.  

That is why, as forward-thinking global citizens, we should engage with great writing.  And that is why Plato believed that 'storytellers rule the world."

We read great writings because they teach us; humility, curiosity, collaboration, and perspective.

That's is something we can't learn from Instagram, Twitter, or Netflix.

I remember reading a news headline in 2018 that grabbed my attention. The story of twin girls Lulu and Nana that were delivered in a Chinese hospital. It was big news because the twin girls were the world's first gene-edited babies. Nine months earlier, He Jiankui, a Chinese scientist, edited their embryos to protect them from being infected with HIV, using gene-editing mechanisms called CRISPR. The news was met with horror and outrage in the scientific circles, and He Jiankui lost his job and was sentenced to 3 years in prison.  

I didn't give biotech much attention as a university student. However, this past week, I eagerly woke up around 3 a.m. every day so I can read about the potential and far-reaching consequence of gene-editing technology that was the main themes running through Walter Isaacson's new book The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race.

The book is a real page-turner and served as my morning caffeine in the early hours of the day. Coming in at nearly 500 pages, it dives into the essence of life and the exciting world of genomes and genetic coding, in what the author calls "the 3rd great revolution of modern times," following the atom and the bit which led to the digital revolution. 

Learning the new frontier in the science of DNA and RNA can be a tad challenging. RNA is a molecule in living cells similar to DNA, but it has one more oxygen atom in its sugar-phosphate backbone and a difference in one of its four bases. RNA plays a vital role in the book. The book's main character, Jennifer Doudna, was the co-recipient - with Emmanuelle Charpentier - of the 2020 Noble Prize for Chemistry to discover the CRISPR gene-editing technology.

Some of the book's most exciting parts feature how CRISPR scientists rose to the COVID challenge by developing rapid test methods and vaccine strategies and posted them to an open database to benefit the global scientific community.

The Code Breaker's central point was about genetic destiny. Jennifer Doudna and other scientists delivered us the first practical tools to shape it. If we had the power to free future generations of diseases such as schizophrenia or Huntington's disease, would we? The immoral choice would be not to, clearly? What if we could improve healthy human beings by editing out imperfections or flaws? But could we also lose something along with those diseases and deficiency and weaknesses, in terms of wisdom, kindness, compassion, and, in some way, more challenging to define humanity?​

The Code Breaker is a true page-turner. But Isaacson's main subject is CRISPR and not Jennifer Doudna. Isaacson lets Charpentier have the last words: "At the end of the day, the discoveries are what remain. We are just passing on this planet for a short time. We do our job, and then we leave, and others pick up the work."

Today, CRISPR is the most potent DNA-editing tool humankind has ever controlled, and figured out if and when to edit our genes will be one of the most consequential questions of the 21st century.  

The Code Breaker left me with more questions than answers. The ethical predicaments that CRISPR could unleash if people start editing our very own DNA. The honest discussion is about the tension between individuals and society. Overall, we might believe that society benefits when it includes "people who are short and tall, gay and straight, placid and tormented, blind or sighted." But if CRISPR gave parents the ability to eliminate one option in each case, it's not hard to imagine what would happen. Most of us today, including most geneticists, probably hope to kick these ethical issues down the road and to the next generation.

Coronavirus pandemic will accelerate the acceptance and deployment of CRISPR. After all, CRISPR began long ago as a virus-fighting tool in bacteria, and after more than 120 million COVID cases globally, engineering our bodies to resist disease appears far less radical. If nothing else, CRISPR might have provided the cheap, accelerated testing we lacked last spring to nip the pandemic in the bud.  

We, as a species, step by step, are discovering the secret of how we work. Now that secret has given us a fantastic tool, which is the ability to understand the code of life but with a little bit of discretion, and I hope a lot of wisdom and rewrite the code of life when we need to... Can we do that? Is it playing God? or is it like Prometheus snatching fire from the gods? 

Will the power of genetic modification and CRISPR undermine our experience of life as a gift? Will it produce a loss of humility? An unacceptable increase in human responsibility? a decay in solidarity as the species begin to diverge?  

The Code Breaker is a must-read. It is a story packed with the greatest of questions, from the origins of life to the human race's future. The tale is genuinely gripping, and the implications mind-blowing.

In Greek mythicism, the ancient gods lived on top of Mount Olympus (the highest mountain in Greece).  Empowered with extraordinary capabilities, they convened on the summit and looked down on the ordinary people underneath.  Suppose the humans at the bottom were exceptionally valiant or distinguished. However, they also could become like gods:  in a process the Greeks called apotheosis, they would climb the mountain and take their seat on the summit.  This is what happened to the Greek hero Hercules, for instance.  At the end of his life, he was brought up to Olympus to live alongside the gods, left to continue unhampered and ageless for all his days.  

Today, many of us seem to believe human beings sit on top of their mountain.  We do not think we are gods, but we consider ourselves more capable, intelligent, competent, and able than any other creature in existence.  Many of us also believe that, if a machine at the bottom of the mountain is to join us at the top, it must go through apotheosis as well - not to become more like a god, but to become more like us - human beings.  This implies the purist view of Artificial intelligence.  Once the machine reaches human intelligence, this top capability is achieved, and its rise is over.  

But as the pragmatist revolution has taught us throughout our human history, there are two challenges with this assumption.  The first is those other ways to climb the "Capability Mountains" than to follow the singular path that human beings have taken.  The purist form is just one way to make the ascent;  technological progress has revealed a range of other encouraging pathways as well.  The different vision is that other tips in this mountain range alongside humans proudly sit at the top.  Many of us have become distracted by the view down from the peak:  we spend our time gazing down at the less intelligent machines below or looking at each other and wondering at our abilities, skills, and capabilities.  But if we looked up, rather than downward or beyond, we would see and recognize other mountains towering above us.  

For the moment, we may be the most intelligent machines in existence, but here are a great many other potential designs that machines could achieve.  Imagine a universal warehouse that stores all those different combinations and iterations:  it would be unimaginably big, perhaps infinitely so.  Natural selection has explored one little corner of this vast space, spent its time browsing in one albeit very long course and settled upon the human design.  However, human beings, armed with new technologies, are now examining others.  Where evolution utilized time, today, we employ computational power.  And it is hard to see how, in the future, we will not trip across various designs, uniquely new ways of building machines, ones that will open up mountains and peaks in capability well beyond the reach of even the most competent human beings alive today.

Suppose we assume that machines do not need to copy our intelligence to be highly competent; the vast gaps in science's current understanding of intelligence matter far less than is generally assumed.  We do not need to solve the puzzles and mysteries of how the brain and mind work to build machines that can outperform us.  And suppose intelligent machines and devices do not need to replicate human intelligence to be highly competent and intelligent. In that case, there is no reason to think that what human beings are currently able to do represents a limit on what future machines might achieve.  Yet today, this is commonly assumed - that human beings' intellectual courage is as far as intelligence machines can ever reach.  Nevertheless, it is unlikely that this will be the case.  

​Mohamed Bouaziz was just ten years old when he became the main provider for his family.   When he was 26, he made his money by selling vegetables and fruits off an old wagon in the Tunisian city of Sidi Bouzid.  

Ten years ago this week (December 17, 2010), Sidi Bouzid policemen seized Mohamed's produce for the umpteenth time, but this time the local police also beat and humiliated him in public.  Mohamed walked to the town hall and tried to get his vegetables and fruits back, but no one would talk to him.  He then walked outside, drenched himself in gasoline, and lit himself on fire.  

All around the world, news media and social media started broadcasting Mohamed's story across the  Middle East.  By the time he died on January 4, 2001, protesters who knew the hopelessness and pain that drove Bouazizi to suicide had packed Tunisian streets demanding reform.  Just ten days after Mohamed's death, Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was forced to leave after being in power for over two decades.  The demonstrations spread throughout the Middle East.

Decades of strongman dictatorship in the region left the ground dangerously depleted, but Mohamed Bouaziz lit the match that ignited a revolution.  This week is the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the Arab Spring.  What is the legacy of Mohamed Bouazizi?

Aspirations that "people power" revolutions would yield a democratic awakening in the region have been dashed.  Only in Tunisia, Mohamed Bouazizi's home has created a democracy.  Protests in Egypt overthrew  Hosni Mubarak, and elections were held. Still, Egypt's military toppled the elected president after one year in office and restored control of its politics.  

Yemen, Syria, and Libya were all fallen into civil war.  A staggering half of the Syrian population ten years ago have been killed or forced from their homes, and the resulting refugee crisis capsized politics and societies in Western Europe.  

In the past decade, many protestors of the Arab Spring demanded an end to endemic corruption, freedom of expression, and more and better opportunities for young men and women like Bouaziz.  Sadly, the best available evidence shows that there are just as many crooks in power, more jobless young people, and more journalists in jail a decade later. 

Perhaps the most disturbing story of all is that the tools and technologies that drew attention to Mohamed Bouazizi's tragedy and raised hopes for change have contributed to the ensuing devastation.   From Cairo's Tahrir Square, Facebook, Twitter, and other social medial platforms helped protesters spread their message, organize demonstrations, and capture the world's attention.  Unfortunately, Islamic State militants were soon applying these same tools to recruit terrorists to Syria and Iraq and coordinate attacks in Europe and beyond.  

With guidance from Russian engineers, Syria's Bashar al-Assad also used social media to disseminate disinformation and propaganda to tens of millions of people.  The use of bots that didn't exist ten years ago has added to the problem's scale.  

Arab Spring has for now given way to Arab Winter.  The Story of the Middle East is far from over.  The Middle East region has been held together floor centuries by strongmen backed by outside powers -Ottoman, European, American.  With little history of broadly shared power, lasting progress toward individual freedom, if it comes, will take many more decades.  

Mohamed Bouazizi's country, Tunisia, now has a government that, nevertheless imperfectly, must answer to voters.  For now, that's the most I can say for Mohamed's legacy.  

We are truly living in an age of winners and losers, in which the chances are stacked in favor of the already successful and fortunate. In every corner of the world, hampered social mobility and rooted inequality give the tale to American creed that "you can make it if you try."  The outcome is a mixture of anger and disappointment that has fueled populist protest and extreme polarization and led to a profound distrust of both government and our fellow citizens - leaving us morally unprepared to meet the severe challenges of our times.


When the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020, the US, like many other countries, was unprepared. This lack of preparation had multiple sources. Our political leaders, ignoring public health advisors' warnings, downplayed the crisis for several critical weeks. Here in America, decades of outsourcing by businesses had left the country almost entirely reliant on China and other foreign manufacturers for surgical masks and medical gear.  

But beyond our lack of logistical preparation, America was not morally prepared for the pandemic. The years leading up to the crisis were a time of intense divisions - economic, cultural, political. Decades of rising disparity and cultural hostility had brought an angry populist backlash in 2016, resulting in the election of Donald Trump.  

Morally, the pandemic reminded us of our vulnerability, of our mutual dependence;  "we are all in this together."  But living through the pandemic in my hometown of Pittsburgh, this promise that "we are all in this together" did not represent a sense of community embodied in an ongoing practice of mutual obligation and shared sacrifice. On the contrary, it emerged on the scene at a time of nearly unparalleled inequality and partisan acrimony. The same market-driven globalization that had left America without access to the domestic production of surgical masks and medicines had denied a great many working people of well-paying jobs and social respect.  

Meanwhile, those who received the economic prize of global markets supply chains and capital flows had come to rely less and less on their fellow citizens, as producers, and as consumers. Their economic prospects and identities were no longer dependent on local or national communities. As the winners of globalization pulled away from the loser, they followed their own kind of social distancing.  

The political divide that mattered, the winner revealed, was no longer left vs. right but open vs. closed. Success depends on education in an open world, providing ourselves to compete and win in a global economy. This means that governments must ensure that everyone has an equal chance to get the education on which success depends. But it also means that those who arrive on top come to believe that they deserve their success. And, if opportunities are truly equal, it means that those who are left behind deserve their fate as well.  

This way of thinking about success makes it really difficult to believe that "we are all in this together." It encourages the winners to consider their success their own doing and the losers to feel that those on top are looking down with hatred. It helps explain why those left behind by globalization would become angry and resentful, and why they would be drawn to authoritarian populists who rail against elites and promise to reassert national borders with revenge.  

Now, it is these political figures, cautious though they are of scientific expertise and global cooperation, who must fight with the pandemic. It will not be easy. Mobilizing to confront the global public health crisis we face requires medical and scientific expertise and moral and political renewal.  

The toxic mix of hubris and hate that propped populists politicians to power is not a likely source of the solidarity we need now. Perhaps any hope of restoring our moral and civic life depends on understanding how our social bonds and respect for one another came unraveled over the past four decades.  

I have invited my mentorship students to join the conversation with me by reading The Tyranny of Merit - What's become of the common good? By Michael J. Sandel.  He argues that to defeat the crises that are upending our world, we must rethink the attitudes towards success and failure that have accompanied globalization and rising inequality. He shows the hubris a meritocracy creates among the winners and the harsh judgment it imposes on those left behind and traces the dreadful consequence across a wide swath of American life. He offers an alternative way of thinking about success - more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility and solidarity, and more affirming of the dignity of work.  ​

As we are graduating and looking to find a job and build a life, we need to also point toward a hopeful vision of a new politics of the common good with humility. Such humility is the beginning of the way back from the harsh ethic of success that drives us apart. It points beyond the tyranny of merit towards a less rancorous, more generous public life.