Jonathan Reisman

Jonathan Reisman was born and raised in Closter, New Jersey.⁠[1]

He studied mathematics and philosophy at New York University, then lived in Russia on and off for about two years researching its timber industry and spent five months on the Kamchatka Peninsula among indigenous reindeer herders.⁠[2]

In 2002 a volume he co-edited on public participation in environmental impact assessment in Russia and the US appeared in St. Petersburg, and he later published articles with Maria Tysiachniouk on Russian civil society and environmental protection.⁠[3]

He graduated from Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and trained in internal medicine and pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital, then worked mostly in remote emergency rooms in Arctic Alaska and on the Pine Ridge Reservation.⁠[4]

He has also practiced medicine in Antarctica, at high altitude in Nepal, in rural Appalachia and in the urban slums of Kolkata, India.⁠[5]

He has researched altitude sickness in Nepal and public health in India, Tanzania and Alaska, focusing on newborn health in low-resource settings.⁠[3]

In March 2013 he published the travel essay “Koryak Cultural Loss” in Russian Life, describing a visit to Korf Bay in northern Kamchatka and how Indigenous Koryak people were making a living by illegally selling salmon caviar amid post-Soviet economic change.⁠[6]

In 2014 he published essays in The New York Times on what a medical-school visit to a slaughterhouse taught him about the body and on the cognition shared by diagnosing disease and identifying wild mushrooms.⁠[7]

In May 2015 he wrote in Discover Magazine about diagnosing an infant struggling to breathe at a clinic in a roadless village in northern Alaska, without an X-ray machine or pediatric intensive care nearby; he wrote that he had by then been a pediatrician for five years.⁠[8]

In August 2016 he wrote in SlateSlate AutoSlate Auto is a U.S. electric vehicle company established in 2022 that is developing a customizable all-electric pickup with a starting price of $24,950, to be assembled in Indiana.Open the full entry that he had loathed the chopped liver on his family’s holiday table since childhood until anatomy, pathology and biochemistry classes in medical school made him fascinated by the organ and he learned to enjoy the dish.⁠[9]

In October 2017 he wrote in Slate about Inupiat elders at a nursing home in the Arctic Alaskan town of Kotzebue, where federal nutrition and food-safety rules kept traditional foods such as seal oil and whale blubber off the menu and the home took up the issue with federal agencies.⁠[10]

In March 2018 he published an essay in The Washington PostThe Washington PostThe Washington Post is an American daily newspaper founded in Washington in 1877, known for its role in the Pentagon Papers case and the Watergate investigation. Run by the Meyer–Graham family for eighty years from 1933, it has been owned personally by Jeff Bezos since 2013.Open the full entry about prescribing opioid painkillers and discussed it on the NPR program Radio Times.⁠[11]

On October 26, 2021, Flatiron Books published The Unseen Body: A Doctor’s Journey Through the Hidden Wonders of Human Anatomy; a review said its 15 chapters mix personal experience with anatomy lessons and quoted his line that most of the practice of medicine is “plumbing.”⁠[12]

He has described each chapter as covering one body part or fluid and combining stories from his medical training and work with stories of nature, travel and food; characters include an Inupiat whaling captain in Alaska and a Tibetan Buddhist lama living in a Himalayan cave.⁠[1]

The UK publisher Hachette UK says the book uses a trip to the Alaskan Arctic to show fat as a hero rather than an enemy, a stint in the Himalayas to probe where the brain ends and the mind begins, and his eating of a sheep’s head in Iceland.⁠[13]

In December 2021 he discussed the book on Science Friday, whose introduction says that in medical school it struck him that each organ is like a species thriving in its own habitat within the body’s larger ecosystem.⁠[14]

In March 2022 he appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air, where host Terry Gross introduced him as an internist, pediatrician and ER physician and discussed the book’s chapters on the throat, heart, feces, genitals, liver, brain, skin, urine and blood.⁠[15]

The same month Slate ran an excerpt from the book’s chapter on mucus, in which he writes that the body makes mucus, as many animals, plants and fungi do, for protection.⁠[16]

He appeared on episode 297 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast; topics included hands, sex, the future of medicine, the throat, the heart and blood, the emergency room, the liver, living in the Far North, war and medicine, Antarctica, artificial organs, the history of medicine, Paul Farmer, and mortality and the meaning of life.⁠[17]

In November 2022, as a pediatric emergency physician at Cooper University Health Care, he gave its annual Berkowitz Family Foundation lecture.⁠[4]

In January 2023 he petitioned the US Department of Agriculture and its Food Safety and Inspection Service to amend 9 CFRCouncil on Foreign RelationsThe Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is a nonpartisan, independent U.S. membership organization and think tank founded in 1921 and based in New York, which has published Foreign Affairs since 1922 and takes no institutional positions on policy; Michael Froman has been its 15th president since 2023.Open the full entry 310.16(a), which bars livestock lungs from being sold as human food; he noted that the rule stemmed from studies around 1969 that found contaminants such as spores, dust and pollen in the airways, not lung pathology.⁠[18]

He argued there is no medical reason to think the small amount of contaminants poses a health risk, saying, “Food policy should be evidence-based and scientific, and this rule is neither.”⁠[19]

If granted, the petition would also allow authentic Scottish haggis to be sold in the United States; Pennsylvania family physician James Chlebowski submitted a comment supporting it.⁠[20]

He runs Anatomy Eats, a dinner series with chefs that explores anatomy and physiology through dishes from around the world made with offal and other unusual body parts; one Philadelphia dinner was held with chef Ari Miller, and he planned dinners in Austin in March 2023 and Los Angeles in April 2023.⁠[21]

In March 2023 he discussed on The Doctor’s Art podcast the parallels between exploring nature and the human body, the strengths and limits of the physical exam, and how artificial intelligence will complement physicians.⁠[22]

In October 2024 he wrote in The New York Times that artificial intelligence can have a bedside manner, perhaps even a better one than human doctors.⁠[7]

As of October 2026 he runs a nonprofit dedicated to improving healthcare and education in India, and is married and lives in Philadelphia with his family.⁠[2]

He also teaches wilderness survival and prehistoric crafts, and discussed the book in conversation with Mütter Museum curator Anna Dhody.⁠[5]

His website lists interviews including Fresh Air, Science Friday, MeatEater and Gastropod.⁠[11]

Personal website: Public link: https://www.jonathanreisman.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[17]

X: Public account: https://x.com/jonreismanMD (opens in a new window)⁠[17]

Cooper University Health Care: Official website: https://www.cooperhealth.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[4]

Anatomy Eats: Official website: https://www.anatomyeats.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[2]