Big Think
@bigthink·8.8M subscribers·10.1K videos
Lesson 2: Influence People With Story | Atul Gawande
Posted
November 11, 2025
Likes
2
November 11, 2025
2
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
4:38Now PlayingHarvard University professor Dr. Howard Gardner once said, “Stories constitute the single most powerful weapon in a leader’s arsenal.” Why? Because stories capture hearts and minds in a way that facts and figures can’t. Surgeon Atul Gawande knows this. He appreciates the power of stories to move people.
In this video lesson, he shares what stories can offer your organization and how to make them compelling.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Go Deeper with Big Think:
►Become a Big Think Youtube Member
Get exclusive classes and early, adfree access to new releases without leaving Youtube.
►Become a Big Think Web Member
Get the entire Big Think Class library, premium print issues, live events, and more.
►Subscribe to Big Think on Substack
Get all of your favorite Big Think content delivered to your inbox.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About Atul Gawande:
Atul Gawande, MD, MPH is a renowned surgeon, author, and public health leader whose work explores how humans design and improve systems for better outcomes in complex environments. He is Professor of the Practice of Surgery at Harvard Medical School and holds the John and Cyndy Fish Chair in Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He also serves as Distinguished Professor in Residence at Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation at Brigham and Women’s and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, which he co-founded and formerly chaired.
From January 2022 to January 2025, he served as Assistant Administrator for Global Health at USAID. Gawande also co-founded Lifebox, a nonprofit organization making surgery and anesthesia safer worldwide. From 2018-2020, he was CEO of Haven, the Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase healthcare venture.
A longtime staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, Gawande is the author of the best-selling books Complications (a National Book Award finalist), Better, The Checklist Manifesto, and Being Mortal. He is the winner of two National Magazine Awards, AcademyHealth’s Impact Award for highest research impact on healthcare, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the Lewis Thomas Award for writing about science.
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
