Oprah Winfrey opens new horizons while reflecting on 'powerful things in world'

Oprah Winfrey in her new six-part series of Super Soul podcast examines the distinction between healing and curing.

The media mogul, 68, and bestselling author Dr Abraham Verghese discuss his book The Covenant of Water, the newest selection to her book club, in the series, which starts on June 21.

The Covenant of Water is a South Indian novel that explores themes of medical innovation as well as other topics as it follows three generations of a family from 1900 to 1977 as they look for answers to a number of questions.

Verghese, a doctor and professor of medical theory and practice at Stanford Medical School, is described by Winfrey as "a doctor who deeply cares about his patients." To him, they are not merely ailments that require treatment, but actual individuals.

"And he understands that even when a disease cannot be cured, the person with the disease can be healed," Winfrey tells People magazine. "I think that is just the most powerful thing in the world."

Verghese, an expert in infectious illnesses, tells the outlet that while performing home visits for HIV patients years ago, he came to comprehend and preach this idea.

"Watching them decline, I began to see that even when you could not cure, you could heal," he says. "And by that I mean even when you could not cure, it didn't mean you stepped away from the patient. It meant that you did everything you could to help them come to terms with the illness, to make them feel that they were not being abandoned."

Verghese, 68, thinks that while modern technology is often excellent and essential in healthcare, it may also offer a "cold, unhealing front" when what is actually best for a patient is empathy and personal connection.

"Sometimes what the patient needs is some sense of a human being saying, ‘I care, I'm so sorry, and I'll be with you on this journey,'" he says.

Winfrey claims that the podcast's discussion of The Covenant of Water and the book it was based on gives listeners "a greater perception of life."

Winfrey adds, "This idea of seeing the patient as a real person and not just as a bunch of stats or information on a computer screen, and validating them in their illness, is what everybody's looking for. Everybody's looking for a doctor like that."