Dr. Nathan Riley is a board-certified OB-GYN who trained in conventional hospital medicine before stepping away from institutional practice after recognizing what he describes as an irreconcilable tension between what the system incentivizes and what patients actually need. He now focuses on home birth support, education, and advocacy. Not for home birth as an ideology, but for the sovereignty of each woman to birth in the way that feels right to her.
I invited Dr. Nathan Riley onto the podcast with the initial intent of discussing obstetrics and home birth. As a complement to the conversation I had with Dr. Stuart Fischbein - an Ob/Gyn who practiced hospitalized birth for decades before conducting home births.
But, it quickly became a conversation between two doctors who walked away from institutional medicine after being fired by an industry that doesn’t seem to care about the people it serves, nor the providers which do the serving. Neither of us planned to end up here. But we are both grateful we did.
What follows is a more philosophically rich conversation ranging from Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences and what it reveals about who we select into medicine, to the three traits that might actually make someone a good doctor: humility, curiosity, and courage. The conversation ends on a nuanced discussion on the value of giving newborns vitamin K.
Beneath all of it is a shared conviction: that medicine has become a discipline of technicians operating on behalf of administrators, and that recovering the art of medicine requires doctors who are willing to say ‘I don’t know.’
This was my first conversation with Nathan, but certainly will not be the last! We have so much more to discuss…
Topics Covered
How pregnant women and couples find physicians like Nathan Riley
The difference between home birth, free birth, and what Nathan actually advocates: listening to what the woman wants
Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences and what it reveals about who gets selected into medicine
The type of intelligence medicine selects for
Descartes, Bacon, and the separation of body from soul: how the pendulum swung and never came back
Newton as alchemist, Paracelsus as philosopher
The three traits of a good doctor: humility, curiosity, courage
Paul Farmer, and the physician who brought a dying patient a six-pack of beer
Saying ‘I don’t know’ in medicine
Doctors in the home birth space
COVID as a proof of concept for medicine’s failure of courage
The physician fired for prioritizing patient autonomy in a vaginal breech birth
Nathan Riley fired for removing his mask to sit with a dying man who hadn’t seen a face in 18 months
The physician as partner, guide, and fellow traveler — not source of healing
Vitamin K for newborns: why we give it, what the actual risk numbers are, and the argument that neonatal blood may be thin for a reason
Nathan can be found here:
Website: www.bornfreemethod.com/
There is no paid content below the paywall, it is simply here so people can read what this podcast is about (above). The conversation will be available for everyone in a week’s time.
