By Josh Katzowitz, WCI Content DirectorFifty-six years ago, some of the coolest people ever born did one of the coolest things anybody could possibly do. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, instantly becoming Cool Dude Hall of Famers. To celebrate those non-MD astronauts and all of those who made it possible to take one giant leap for mankind (and to let you know about a trio of MDs who actually ARE astronauts), let’s return to a column I wrote 10 months ago when I shouted out 5 Times When Doctors Were the Coolest People Ever.
We know that doctors oftentimes don’t present themselves as “cool.” They might say that they were a nerd in high school or that they weren’t part of the popular kids’ clique. But these days, so-called “nerds” are in style anyway.
As I wrote last September, we should revel in the coolness of doctors. Despite how annoyingly smart they were when acing their AP classes or how much D&D they played or how many swirlies they might have experienced in middle school or how many times they were given an atomic wedgie in the locker room or how often they wore their New Kids on the Block gear when NKOTB had long passed their expiration date, physicians are some of the coolest people on the planet (and beyond).
And yes, I have (even more) proof.
More Examples of Doctors Being Totally Cool
It’s moon-landing day, so let’s start with a couple of physicians who traveled beyond this world and got to explore space for all humankind. If you’re a doctor, here’s how you know you’re groovy . . .
When You Orbit the Earth More Than 100 Times
Even before entering the space program, Mae Jemison was busy. She received degrees in chemical engineering and African American studies before earning her medical degree and becoming a Peace Corps officer, in charge of the health of American workers in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
“On call 24 hours a day, seven days a week for 2 ½ years, in a place that could be so unforgiving of mistakes, I gained flexibility, knowledge, interpersonal relationship skills, and an appreciation of the challenges life poses to so many people on this planet . . .” Jemison said, via the National Women’s History Museum.
She also worked as a GP in Los Angeles, but when she saw Sally Ride, the first woman to enter space, take her shuttle ride in 1983, Jemison applied to be an astronaut with NASA. Less than a decade later, after becoming one of the 15 people chosen out of more than 2,000 applicants, Jemison made history as the first African-American woman in space when she rode space shuttle Endeavour for 127 orbits around the earth during an eight-day mission, where she helped conduct experiments in biotechnology and animal and human physiology and behavior.
As she later wrote in her book, Find Where The Wind Goes: Moments From My Life, Jemison wrote, “Strange, but I always knew I’d be here. Looking down and all around me, seeing the Earth, the moon, and the stars, I just felt that I belonged right there, and in fact, any place in the entire universe.”
She apparently felt that way back to when she was a kid growing up in Chicago.
When You Might Eventually Reach the Moon
Here’s how Jonny Kim thought of himself when he was a child. Apparently, he believed he was anything but cool.
“I was the epitome of that quiet kid who just lacked complete self-confidence,” he told Annals of Emergency Medicine in 2018. “I was used to getting picked last on the baseball and basketball team. High school was a complete nightmare for me. I never showed up for my yearbook picture. I didn’t go to prom. I was scared of a lot of things. And a lot of that was childhood hardships I was going through at the time.”
But he, much like Jemison, eventually took an interest in space. And in his first year of his emergency medicine residency, he, much like Jemison, applied to NASA. Much like Jemison, he was one of 12 selected among thousands of applicants.
After high school, Kim joined the Navy, which he said “was the best decision I ever made in my life because it completely transformed that scared boy who didn’t have any dreams to someone who started to believe in himself.” He also grew to appreciate the Naval doctors who took care of him and his colleagues who suffered injuries in Iraq. Kim was in his mid-20s before he went to college, and then he found his place at medical school at Harvard.
Though he didn’t practice medicine long before he got accepted to NASA, he said “it’s not a goodbye” to being a physician but “more of a pause. . . I’m still going to be a representative of emergency medicine. I take that responsibility very seriously.”
In April 2025, Kim finally blasted into space, serving as a flight engineer for Expedition 73. And as you read this, that’s where Kim is right now, living on the International Space Station and doing whatever else cool doctors do as they hurtle through space.
Before starting this piece, I wasn’t aware a physician was currently circling above our heads. But as one commenter wrote on my initial list of cool doctors: “Don’t forget Jonny Kim, Navy SEAL sniper, naval aviator, ER physician, and now NASA astronaut at age 37, with a shot at the moon within this decade. He was cool before and after he became an MD. As a meme would say, ‘Dr. Kim can kill you, bring you back to life, then take you for a joy ride in space.’”
When You Take a Space Ride a Few Months After Writing for WCI
OK, one more physician turned space traveler. Dr. Gretchen Green, a radiologist who recently retired from practicing medicine, has written for WCI about How to Actually Get Paid as an Expert Witness and What (Not) to Do If You’re Sued. She was one of the first teenagers to bicycle across the US from east to west to end world hunger, and in 2022, she reached the North Pole on a Polar Class II icebreaker.
In May 2025, she joined the 12th human flight for Blue Origin’s New Shepard program. See the liftoff below, and you can fast forward to Green emerging from the capsule at 55:10.
With her arms raised to the sky and then with her hands-on-the-hips pose following her exit from the capsule, Green was the epitome of cool. Afterward, she said, “It was perfection.”
When You Battle the Flames
What a day it was in mid-January 2025 when 62-year-old Dr. Chester Griffiths performed brain surgery, and then, a few hours later, battled the Pacific Palisades fire that devastated Los Angeles.
After his medical shift, Griffiths, his son, and his neighbor saw how houses were “coming down like dominoes.” They decided to try to save the six homes in their cul-de-sac.
As the BBC wrote:
“Connecting four hoses to hydrants, Dr Griffiths, his son, and Mr. [Clayton] Colbert positioned themselves on nearby roofs to spray water on the flames, and used dirt to put out embers on the ground.
‘There were burning embers coming down on us for about 12 hours,’ said Dr. Griffiths.
The trio were only joined by firefighters in the last few days of their week-long ordeal because resources were ‘so widely stretched’ due to the number of blazes in the Los Angeles area.”
This went on for four days and five nights, but Griffiths said he was determined not to let his house burn to the ground. Luckily, he and his firefighting partners succeeded—thanks to their courage and preparation.
“I’m a surgeon,” he told Pacific Neuroscience Institute. “You train and you prepare, and then when you’re in the thick of it, you rely on your training and your preparedness.”
More information here:
How a Morally Dubious Dentist Changed The Beatles’ Sound
The Most Athletic Doctor Ever
Money Song of the Week
Nearly four decades after breaking into the cultural zeitgeist with its still-powerful Cult of Personality, Living Colour recently participated in an episode of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert. Though Living Colour has put out some strong albums in the last two decades or so, the band’s popularity, at least when it comes to MTV and FM radio, peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s (though it also has gotten a boost in the last several years from pro wrestler CM Punk using Cult of Personality as his entrance music).
(The foursome also still puts on a strikingly good live show. I’ve seen Living Colour three times this century, and my favorite interaction with the band came after a show when I told guitarist Vernon Reid that my then-4-year-old daughter thought Living Colour sounded like heavy metal group Mastodon (even though it doesn’t). Vernon laughed and then asked where he could get some late-night sushi.)
Still, the socially conscious band’s songs are meaningful, especially when vocalist Corey Glover sings about injustice or the struggles that minorities face. It’s the 35th anniversary of the band’s second album, Time’s Up, and one of my favorite songs from that record is This Is the Life, which shows you the perspectives of somebody who has a great life and somebody who wishes they did.
I adore songs that seamlessly skew from one dichotomy to the exact opposite in the middle of the tune (songs like Guns N’ Roses’ Rocket Queen and NOFX’s The Man I Killed are two good examples), and that’s what This Is the Life accomplishes.
In the first half of the song, Glover sings about a potential white coat investor . . .
“In another life all your jokes are funny/In another life your heart is free from fear/In another life you make a lot of money/In this other life everything is clear.
In another life you’re always the hero/In another life you always win the game/In another life no one ever cheats you/In another life you never have to change.”
But then Glover offers something different.
“In another life you’re always the victim/In another life you’re always the thief/In another life you are always lonely/In this other life there is no relief.”
So, what’s the point of these two opposing viewpoints? One, I suppose, is to be thankful for what you have, because in another life, you might not be so lucky. Here’s how Reid saw it in 2015 when talking to The Vinyl District.
“A song like This Is The Life is a weird song to live with, because it was a song written when the band was savoring real palpable success. But it was talking about how in another life, things are better,” Reid said. “In another life, you sold even more records and had even more fame, because for Americans it’s never enough. Nothing is ever enough . . .
“This Is The Life, when that song was written, we were doing well . . . When you’re on the outside looking in, you imagine what it is. You’re outside of the party, looking at all these fabulous people. Champagne is flowing, there’s a conga line, and you’re on the outside.”
Even though much of the rock music from Living Colour’s 1980s/1990s contemporaries hasn’t aged well (either sonically or lyrically), much of what the band was singing about (as the Houston Press mentions “its themes speak directly to matters of race, police brutality, the value of science, who controls information . . .”) is still relevant today.
Which is probably why its NPR concert already has more than 500,000 views less than a month after it premiered.
More information here:
Every Money Song of the Week Ever Published
Facebook of the Week
My teenagers have Roth IRAs. Though they still only have a little bit of money in there, here’s hoping that, one day, all that compounding will make them wealthier than they ever could have imagined when they were originally depositing their babysitting and pet-walking money in their accounts.
What do you think? What other instances have you found of physicians being super cool?
[EDITOR’S NOTE: For comments, complaints, suggestions, or plaudits, email Josh Katzowitz at [email protected].]