In this episode, I discuss so-called Victorian era diseases and their relevance to today with Professor Keir Waddington, Professor of History at Cardiff University, and Professor Andrew Mangham, Professor of English at the University of Reading.

Image credit: "A court for King Cholera." Illustration by John Leech. From the Wellcome Collection

In this episode, I discuss the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental and physical health of students and faculty at colleges and universities. 

Episode image: “Coronavirus Brain” by Gordon Johnson

In this episode, I talk with Kim Adams, a postdoctoral scholar in the core curriculum at New York University, about the medical novel The House of God, a cultural artifact of the 1970s and a text still relevant to critiques of the health care system today.

Episode image the cover of The House of God from the first edition published by Richard Marek Publishers.

In this episode, I talk with Jennifer Higgins, Vice President for Government Affairs at Guardant Health, and Chloe Brown, a final-year medical student at the University of Toronto who’s researched voting and its relationship to health. We discuss how health impacts your ability to vote and what health-related issues we should be thinking about in the United States as we go to the polls.

For more on Chloe Brown’s research, please see her co-authored article with Danyaal Raza and Andrew D. Pinto, “Voting, Health, and Interventions in Healthcare Settings: A Scoping Review,” which can be found here.

Episode image by Amber Zen.

In this episode, I talk with Katherine Burke, Director of the Program in Medical Humanities at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, and Alicia Nordstrom, Professor and Chair of Psychology at Misericordia University. We discuss the role of theatre in medicine and health, discussing ways in which reflective writing and performance can help develop future physicians and reduce stigma.

For more on the Medical Humanities Program at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, visit: https://portals.clevelandclinic.org/lcm2/Academics/Curriculum/Humanities

For more information on The Voices Project, visit: https://www.misericordia.edu/psychology/voices-project

Logo image by Andreas Glöckner.

In this episode, I talk with Drs. Stacy Gallin and Eden Wales Freedman about the recent allegations of forced hysterectomies at the Irwin Detention Center in Osilla, Georgia. Dr. Gallin is the Founding Director of the Maimonides Institute for Medicine, Ethics and the Holocaust and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Biomedical Ethics and Humanities Program at New York Medical College. Dr. Wales Freedman is Associate Professor and the Vice Provost of Faculties and Academic Affairs at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota. Our opinion piece on these allegations is forthcoming in The Globe Post.

Episode image: Logo from the Second International Congress of Eugenics, 1921. Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)

An overview of what the health humanities is and why the field is relevant to health care today.