Senator Bill Frist, M.D.: A modern Renaissance man's journey through science, politics, and business

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
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Now, without further delay, here's today's episode.
I guess this week is Senator Bill Frist. Senator Frist is a former transplant surgeon. He's a pilot, though we don't even get into that in this episode, it's just a whole other amazing story.
Obviously a politician, businessman, healthcare policy expert. I mean, he's truly a Renaissance man, as you'll see. He graduated from Princeton and Harvard Medical School, went on to study at Stanford, where he learned transplant surgery from the pioneering transplant surgeon of our era, Norman Shumway, before heading over to Vanderbilt, where he created the largest transplant program east of the Mississippi. He did that till the early 90s when he up and ran for the US. Senate in 1994, having never held public office before, and perhaps even more remarkably than that, he was elected as the 18th Senate Majority Leader in 2002, taking him from the single least senior person in the US. Senate to the most senior person.
We spent a lot of time talking about his journey through medicine and ultimately 12 years in the Senate through some of the difficult policy decisions and the controversial decisions that were made.
Since leaving the Senate in 2006, Bill has done a number of things. He sits on the board of more not-for-profits, for-profit companies than you can count on. Probably spent a decade really focused on private equity before now shifting his attention to more venture-based funding. He also hosts a podcast called A Second Opinion. And we get into about two-thirds of what I had wanted to get into here. That's how much I wanted to talk about, but it's really a remarkable discussion. And one of the most interesting things about Bill that we do touch on here is that in 2005, he effectively called the pandemic. He really laid it out through his experience in studying HIV and creating policy around HIV. He was an instrumental part of PEPFAR, which we talk about as well. And also his experience with the anthrax scare post 9-11. And he basically looked at these examples coupled with what he saw on a lot of his travel to Africa, which he had done as a physician, and basically said, look, it's not gonna be a question of if we have a major pandemic, it's a question of when. And these were the things that needed to be in place. And these are the likely things that are gonna happen. And unfortunately, a lot of those things came true and we weren't really ready. So we spend a little bit of time on that. And finally, we talk a little bit about just the current state of politics. And even though this isn't a podcast about politics, I think most people in the current environment can't help but acknowledging that we're in a bit of a strange environment. And we talk a little bit about his optimism as to how things might get better in the future. So, without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Senator Bill Frist.
Bill, thank you so much for making time to sit down with me. I know today was, you had a lot of things going on in your personal life. So, I appreciate that we didn't reschedule this, but it would have totally been understood if we needed to.

**Bill Frist** (3:52)
Great to be with you, Peter.

**Peter Attia** (3:54)
By the way, it feels weird calling you Bill. I always feel like I need to call you Senator Frist, but the first time we spoke, you were adamant that I call you Bill. So, I'll tell you a funny story. When I left residency, I had such a hard time not calling people Mr. So-and-so, just because you talk to your patients that way, right? Like Mr. Jones, Mrs. Smith were here to talk about this, and then when I got out in the real world, people were like, you can just call people by their first name.
Was that a difficult transition for you?