"Travel builds the environment where your meaning finds you." — Dr. Calvin Sun

Dr. Calvin Sun is one of the youngest people who has traveled to every country on earth, an emergency medicine physician and clinical assistant professor in New York City, and the founder of The Monsoon Diaries, a blog-turned-travel-community that has brought everyday travelers to more than 190 countries and territories — including North Korea, Nauru, Greenland, and Antarctica. His memoir, The Monsoon Diaries, was published by HarperCollin. He was a front-line physician through the worst of COVID in New York City. 

Calvin Sun was nineteen the summer everything changed. His father died of a sudden heart attack, hours after they had an argument. Earlier that summer, his mother was diagnosed with Parkinson's. He walked out of the emergency room alone. The next morning he woke up with no idea what the next step was supposed to be, and in that fog he started asking the question that would shape the rest of his life: why am I doing any of this, and does it lead somewhere that matters?

If you grew up with the script of studying hard, picking something stable, becoming the doctor or the lawyer, you already know the quiet question underneath it: is there a version of my life that's actually mine? Calvin went back to medicine. But he came back having learned the difference between wanting something and, in his words, wanting the want, the convenient version you cling to because it's easy. 

What We Cover

• The summer everything changed: losing his father suddenly at nineteen and his mother's Parkinson's diagnosis in the same season
• Walking away from medical school, becoming a bartender, and the $650 plane ticket that sent him to Egypt
• "Is this a sign or a test?" — the question Calvin uses to read the moments that turn a life
• Why he says his purpose found him, not the other way around, and how travel built the conditions for it
• "You want the want": the difference between wanting something and wanting the convenience of it
• Coming back to medicine on his own terms, and why how he walked the path mattered more than the path itself
• Becoming, by his own count, one of the youngest people to reach nearly every country in the world while finishing med school and residency on time
• The kindness of strangers, and why he calls the United States the riskiest place he's ever traveled
• Working as a street medic during Black Lives Matter and the wave of anti-Asian hate, and what it costs to be the one who stays
• The COVID front lines: working 35 of his first 50 days, the moral injury that followed, and the excuses we make to run toward the fire

Notable Quotes

"Is this a sign or a test? And sometimes, if you're lucky, the answer is both."

"You want the want. That's a huge difference.”

"I dare you to be stronger than your excuses."

"I don't really see myself as saving lives. I just want to be there for someone on the worst day of their life. Saving lives is a bonus."

"It's not about what I signed up for, it's how I signed up for it."

Mentioned in This Episode

Calvin's Work 

The Monsoon Diaries — monsoondiaries.com 

Calvin's site — calvindsun.com 

Follow Dr. Calvin Sun

Instagram — @monsoondiaries 

The Monsoon Diaries (brand) — @themonsoondiaries