Voices: An hour with Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Last month, I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Anthony Fauci. We had a great conversation centered around his memoir On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service. Among the questions I asked were several that were suggested by Inside Medicine subscribers, so thank you for those!

We spoke for nearly an hour. MedPage Today has published a lot of this in sections already (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, with transcripts). Below is the complete interview all in one place, trimmed down to 47 minutes for transitions and smoothness.

A couple of thoughts.

First, I found Dr. Fauci profoundly rested and cheerful, compared to the last time we spoke in December 2022, right as he was retiring from his role as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the NIH, and chief medical advisor to the President. (This was well before he came down with a case of West Nile Virus, which required him to be hospitalized for nearly a week, and from which he is now recovering from at home.) He literally looks younger now than last I saw him on Zoom during his “retirement” press. It’s amazing what sleeping more than four hours per night will do for a guy.

Second, while Dr. Fauci remains ever-careful in choosing his words, I found him to be more willing and able to go beneath the surface in this interview. This clearly reflects the freedom that comes from being officially out of public and government service, and his answers were more thorough than I’d heard from him in the past, when the pressure was higher due to the relentless spotlight on him. He was also in less of a rush. The last time we spoke, he had a tight time budget and when my alotted window was up, he was on to the next thing.

The result is a much deeper conversation than we’ve ever had, and I truly felt that I got to know him much better during this interaction.

I very much enjoyed this chat—and I hope you will as well.