No matter how difficult life becomes, there is always hope.

It's bizarre to me that you can have political commentators, sports commentators, weather commentators, but with medicine, people go, "You can't do that."

We need more physicians on air. We understand the human being, experience and condition, and we need to be using media to deliver that. We cannot be afraid to entertain. Experiential phenomenon that entertains, educates. It changes peoples' ideas and culture. I believe that strongly.

I'm climbing into a vehicle that has a powerful influence on our culture. I'd like to make it do something good. The media is populated with attorneys, psychologists and pundits but there are only three physicians: me, Dr. Oz and Sanjay Gupta. We are the only MDs who practice medicine and have board certifications in one or two fields. That's it.

There's never been a blueprint, I just keep exploring doors as they open. But whenever people would ask me what's my favorite thing to do, it was sitting in for Larry King.

I'm not a Twitter fan. I do it because I feel responsible to the two million people that follow me, but Twitter to me is just another thing I have do. And it's mostly a place for people to attack and abuse you. I don't really get much out of it, personally. I get hundreds of demands to answer the kind of medical questions that require three years of treatment to assess, yet people are furious when I don't solve their problems in 140 characters. It's really stunning.

I have a little theory about that, too. It's clearly envy. It's bringing people down to your size. It's a narcissistic impulse that didn't used to exist, but we've become increasingly narcissistic as a society, and envy is one of those outcomes.