Episode 25: Jim Phelan & Rita Charon — George Saunders’ “Puppy”

Project Narrative

In this episode of the Project Narrative Podcast, Jim Phelan and Rita Charon discuss George Saunders’ short story, “Puppy.” Rita Charon is Bernard Schoenberg Professor of Social Medicine and Professor and Founding Chair of the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics at Columbia University. Charon also inaugurated and teaches in the Master of Science in Narrative Medicine graduate program at Columbia. She is the author of Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness and is co-author of the Perkins Prize winning Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine with Sayantani DasGupta, Nellie Hermann, Craig Irvine, Eric R. Marcus, Edgar Rivera Colón, Danielle Spencer, and Maura Spiegel. Charon was chosen by the National Endowment for the Humanities to deliver the 2018 Jefferson Lecture, “the highest honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.”