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Bioethics gained a foothold in Western Medicine during the 1950s and 1960s as advancing medical technologies and practices raised questions about how, when, why, and for whom they should be used among others. Health care consumers began demanding involvement in health care decisions affecting them as well. As medicine became more specialized, bioethics specialties formed in fields such as human subject research, organ transplantation, blood safety and availability, gene therapies, human cloning, and fair access to health care services. Now comes artificial intelligence (AI) and its rapid adoption into health care, including applications in clinical decisions for individual patients.

We are joined by professor and ethicist Arthur Caplan, who has been involved in or has instigated many of the important developments in bioethics. We discuss how the bioethics field has responded to past changes in health care, and how it should respond now to AI adoption in patient care decisions.

Links

Biosketch for our guest Professor Arthur Caplan

Russell Teagarden’s essay on Shannon Valor’s book here at medhum.org.

Citations and attributions

Vallor S. The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 2024.

Audio clip: I, Robot [film]. Proyas A, director. Los Angeles, CA: 20th Century Fox; 2004.

Episode image:

A patient performs a self-administered history at a cathode ray tube.

Credit: Navy Medicine, No restrictionsvia Wikimedia Commons

Thanks to Professor Arthur Caplan for his insightful contributions to this episode.

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to fan mail link above, or email to: russell.teagarden@gmail.com.

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.

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For thousands of years, the value of medical treatments of the day was disparaged with some frequency mostly in the form of quips from prominent people in health care, the arts, government, and social commentary. More recently, the quips evolved into formal philosophical arguments conveying a view that the likelihood of any new medical treatment becoming a major breakthrough is low. The term “medical nihilism” is now associated with this view.

In this episode, with the physician and philosopher Dr. Ross Upshur, we cover medical nihilism conceptually and assess how well the term fits the arguments underlying it. We discuss some of the components comprising the arguments, which are generally real, and how they can contribute to medical nihilism, and validate the uncertainty existing in medicine for some. We talk further about how to accept this uncertainty and manage our health care decisions as providers, educators, and consumers without falling into the despair of medical nihilism.

Note that throughout the episode, we mention Jacob Stegenga and his book, Medical Nihilism, and also Jonathan Fuller and his book, The New Modern Medicine. We mention Ross Upshur and Maya Goldenberg’s article, Countering Medical Nihilism by Reconnecting Facts and Values in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. Citations for each are listed below.

Primary Sources

Upshur, Ross, and Maya J. Goldenberg. "Countering Medical Nihilism by Reconnecting Facts and Values." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, vol. 84, Dec. 2020, pp. 75–83. (Available as pdf at Maya Goldenberg’s website.)

Stegenga, Jacob. Medical Nihilism. Oxford University Press, 2020.

Fuller, Jonathan. The New Modern Medicine: Disease, Evidence, and Epidemiological Medicine. Oxford University Press, 2025, academic.oup.com/book/61541. (Available as open access at Oxford University Press.)

Links

Biosketch for our guest Dr. Ross Upshur

FDA list of recalls, market withdrawals, and safety alerts.

Attributions

For audio clip:

From Atonement by Ian McEwan, read by Jill Tanner. Audiobook. [Recorded Books, 2002]. Accessed via Spotify.

Episode image:

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr

Credit: Oliver Wendell Holmes. Colour lithograph by Sir L. Ward [Spy], 1886. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection. License: Public Domain Mark.

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to fan mail link above, or email to: russell.teagarden@gmail.com.

Thanks to Dr. Ross Upshur for his interesting and insightful contributions to this episode.

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.

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The diagnosis and clinical management of various mental disorders are aided by knowing the predisposing, precipitating, and perpetuating factors in a given case. Both the themed album and the full-length movie of Pink Floyd’s, The Wall, depict these factors in the course of the main character’s—"Pink’s”— mental health deterioration through music and film. In this episode, we draw from selected songs on the album and from selected scenes in the movie connecting the three factors with particular behaviors Pink manifests. In the process, we show how they are used in medical education and training in real time.

Joining us is Dr. Anthony Tobia, who is the campus chair in the Department of Psychiatry at the Rutgers School of Medicine and is also the Service Chief of Psychiatry at Robert Wood Johnson Barnabas Health in New Brunswick, NJ. Dr. Tobia is certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and is certified in internal medicine and psychosomatic medicine. He also holds a secondary appointment in the Division of General Internal Medicine at Rutgers. Dr. Tobia is the Director of Graduate and Interprofessional Education at Rutgers University Behavioral Health and has received the Outstanding Clinical Faculty Member Excellence Award in 2018 and 2019. He is an active contributor to the medical literature with publications, reviews, and abstracts. Dr. Tobia’s educational interests include the merging of popular culture and the field of behavioral medicine, which is evident from this episode and from his previous appearance on the podcast episode featuring The Who’s Tommy. Along with Dr. Tobia for this episode is Kevin Frederiks, who at the time of recording, was a fourth-year medical student at Rutgers.

Citations

For the recorded album: Pink Floyd. The Wall. Columbia Records, 1979.

For the movie: Parker, Alan, director. Pink Floyd The Wall. MGM, 1982. (The movie has been available on YouTube.

Image Attribution

Pink Floyd The Wall Exhibit - Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Cleveland Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: russell.teagarden@gmail.com.

Thanks to Dr. Anthony Tobia and (by now) Dr. Kevin Fredriks for their interesting and insightful contributions to this episode.

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Clinic & Person podcast returns, and this short episode recounts the reasons for its return and what can be expected.

The general objectives of the podcast remain the same in that we will still draw from certain works such as literature, art, film, music, etc., but source content will also come from certain ideas or disciplines such as philosophy, ethics, sociology, economics, history, and the like. We talk briefly about episodes we have in the works, which derive from these and various other content sources

You can see the list of our previous 30 episodes here. You can also listen to them from there or from many established podcast providers. They can also be accessed at https://medhum.org/, where there is also a curated forum of reviews, interviews, and opinion pieces on the types of subject this podcast considers in addition to many more.

Get in touch

We would love to hear from you with any suggestions, comments, or questions. You can use the “Send us Fan Mail” link above, or to russell.teagarden@gmail.com

We hope you will join us again for new episodes, follow us where you get your podcasts, and tell all your friends and colleagues about us. Our next episode will be posted soon.

Episode image: One Open Window, Chris Downer (source: Wikicommons)

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We end the podcast after thirty episodes over three years. In this brief, last episode, we announce the end of this series, explain our reasons for ending it now, summarize what we covered over the thirty episodes, and express our appreciation for our listeners and the guests who came on the podcast. We also reveal what is next for us, which will involve similar interests but we will expand our sources beyond humanities in a narrow sense to encompass broader ideas relevant to health and biomedicine, such as philosophy, ethics, sociology, history, and religion, among others. While we will continue to produce audio programming, we will also produce written works such as essays, reviews, critiques, and reflections. Most of this work will be available through MedHum.org.

MedHum.org is an independent, online, multidisciplinary, and multimedia collaborative for identifying and generating critical thinking in health, culture, and the arts. It began in early 2024 following the discontinuation of the NYU Literature, Art and Medicine Database (LitMed), which had been a respected and consulted source around the world for perspectives on health and biomedicine drawn from the humanities. MedHum.org builds on the LitMed model and expands on the content sources and media used for its work. Look for us there, and subscribe to the MedHum.org newsletter for announcements of new contributions.

Links

• The Clinic & The Person episodes
• Russell Teagarden’s blog post with summary of each podcast episode
• http://medhum.org site
• MedHum.org newsletter

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to russell.teagarden@gmail.com

Thanks to all the listeners and to all our guests.

Image credit: Oscar Maugsch (1857–?) (architect); Beautiful Buildings Pics (photo), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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Note: The story and the images in the book we cover in this episode could bring back memories of unhappy and traumatic events for some people who have experienced cancer in some way.

This episode centers on the fictional story of a forty-three-year-old woman’s course with recurrent, metastatic breast cancer. She has a coming-of-age-daughter and a treasured husband. The story is a common one in literature and in real life, but the way it’s told in Maddie Mortimer’s novel, Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies, is not common in that a lot of the narration—variously in first-, second-, and third-person forms—comes from the cancer itself, as that can be inferred. Nor is it common in Mortimer’s use of a variety of written and graphic forms. While these and many other aspects of the novel are worthy of attention, our interest was limited to what the cancer narration offers to the story and the understanding of cancer from the pathological to the personal.

Mortimer’s writing style and the literary forms she used made it possible for us to differentiate scenes and scenarios we described as clever, affecting, compelling, gorgeous, or beautiful from events and realizations we described as awful, obscene, terrible, scary, or hard. We worked to reconcile these antipodes as necessary for the complete and poignant portrayal of the course this cancer took and the effects it had on the characters. The distinction also assisted us in considering whether or not all or just parts of the book could be interesting and useful to various constituencies (e.g., patients, family, students, support groups, etc). While doing so, we often expressed astonishment that Mortimer, who was in her mid-twenties when she wrote the novel, and has no formal training in medicine, could possess such sophisticated and technical insights into the molecular biology, pathology, and pharmacology of cancer, and in the emotional torments and practical realities accompanying it.

We were joined by Dr. Laurel Lyckholm from West Virginia University Cancer Institute, who started her medical career as a registered nurse and later became a physician board certified in medicine, medical oncology, hematology, and hospice and palliative medicine. She has formal training and experience in medical ethics and medical humanities, and has a particular interest in support programming for adolescents and young adults with cancer and their families. Her work and dedication have won her many awards for teaching, leadership, and patient care. We were fortunate to have her with us and we thank her profusely for her valuable time and thoughtful perspectives.

Links

• Publisher (Simon & Shuster) website for Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies
• Video interview with Maddie Mortimer in which she describes how she created the novel.
• Russell Teagarden’s blog piece on doxorubicin infusion effects as the cancer describes them.

Audio source

Audio clips were from Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies audiobook available on Spotify.

Episode Image Credit

Greco, L.; Rubbino, F.; Morelli, A.; Gaiani, F.; Grizzi, F.; de’Angelis, G.L.; Malesci, A.; Laghi, L.; CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: russell.teagarden@gmail.com.

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Michael Pollan, a journalist long known for his work in food and nutrition, and as the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, shifted his attention to psychedelics when they were beginning to win favor again after having been shunned—legally and culturally—for three decades. Pollan’s interest took the form of “immersive journalism,” meaning he tried some of the psychedelics himself, and directed his investigation into “the potential for these molecules as a tool for both understanding the mind and, potentially, changing it.” The result was his 2018 book, How to Change Your Mind, and a companion documentary film. Taking our lead from his book, we focus on: consciousness, spirituality, and mysticism as what is at work in the effects psychedelics produce, and how they may delineate limits to biomedicine (rational or not), that is, how they brighten or blur the line between classic biomedicine and whatever isn’t.

Links

• Michael Pollan's website
• Trailer for Netflix documentary film based on How to Change Your Mind
• The UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics cofounded by Michael Pollan
• Russell Teagarden’s blog pieces on his book, How to Change Your Mind, and on his book, This is Your Mind on Plants
• Video of Timothy Leary at Golden Gate Park Human Be – In (Jan 14, 1967)

Our next episode will feature Maddie Mortimer’s novel, Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies. We are interested in this common, but tragic story of a mother and wife with terminal cancer and a daughter coming of age, told in an uncommon way with cancer cells serving as narrators at times and the use of graphics, poetry, and other forms of storytelling. Joining us will be Dr. Laurel Lykholm, who is a medical oncologist and who also works in medical ethics and medical humanities.

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: russell.teagarden@gmail.com.

Thanks for listening, and please follow The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.

Episode image: Psychodelic Spiral: marcello from potenza, italy, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Susan Sontag has said, “Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.” Author Lina Meruane challenges the idea that people with illnesses are necessarily separated into a different kingdom than those who are not sick, asserting instead that illness can be part of anyone’s normality. She makes this case through her novel, Nervous System. The novel tells the stories of four family members and a boyfriend who, at one time or another, develop a serious illness or help take care of one of the others with a serious illness: it’s all illness, it’s all the time, it’s normal. We talk with Dr. Meruane about her idea of illness as normality as she presented it in the novel, and about how its atypical structure and its evocative and memorable prose contribute to the stories told and the ideas offered.

Source

Nervous System by Lina Meruane, translated by Meghan McDowell, Graywolf Press, 2021.

Links

• Lina Meruane’s bio
• Russell Teagarden’s blog piece about the novel, Nervous System, and his blog piece about the MRI scene in the novel.
• Russell Teagarden’s blog piece about Lina Meruane’s novel, Seeing Red.
• Video conversation between Lina Meruane and Meghan McDowell about Nervous System.
• Interview with Lina Meruane in LALT magazine about Nervous System.

A big thanks to Lina Meruane for sharing her thoughts on illness as normality and her writing processes.

Our next episode will draw from the journalist Michael Pollan’s books investigating the prospects for psychedelics in the management of various mental health problems, or even to make individuals and communities better than well.

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: russell.teagarden@gmail.com.

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.

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Four movies released between 1997 and 2002 picked up on the anger and resentment building among people encountering increasingly aggressive managed health care tactics aimed at reducing costs during that time. The four movies are: As Good As It Gets; The Rainmaker; Critical Care; and John Q. We talk about how they caught and depicted the rage as it was just reaching the surface of broad societal notice and concern. We note how the rage persists despite efforts on many levels to address it over the years, and wonder if it has reached its apogee with the gunning down of a health care insurance executive.

Links

Trailers for featured movies:

• As Good As It Gets
• The Rainmaker
• Critical Care
• John Q

Other movies mentioned:

• Damaged Care (no trailer available)
• Sicko

Russell Teagarden’s blog posting on the featured movies, with more about what is behind the managed care practices generating anger and frustration.

Russell Teagarden’s published article on proper uses and improper uses of prior authorization. If not available and of interest, contact him at russell.teagarden@gmail.com.

Previous podcast episodes mentioned:

• Consumptive Heroines: Opera and TB with Drs Linda and Michael Hutcheon (Episode 26)
• Life Imitates Art: Covid-19 Edition (Episode 16)

Additional Background

• Daniels N, Sabin JE. Setting Limits Fairly: Learning to Share Resources for Health. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
• Wynia MK, Schwab AP. Ensuring Fairness in Health Care Coverage: An Employer’s Guide to Making Good Decisions on Tough Issues. New York: AMACOM, 2007.
• Pearson SD, Sabin JE, Emanuel EJ. No Margin, No Mission. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
• Daniels N, Teagarden JR, Sabin JE. An ethical template for pharmacy benefits. Health Affairs 2003;22:125-137.

Our next episode will focus on illness as normality as we can grasp it from the inventive novel, Nervous System, and with the help of its author, Lina Meruane. Our discussion could lead to the question: Why can’t biomedical writing be more interesting?

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: russell.teagarden@gmail.com.

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.

Episode image: Film Set (ProScreenMedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

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The trajectories of tuberculosis (TB) and opera met in the mid-nineteenth century most notably with the production of La Traviata in 1853, and then La Bohème near the century’s end. With eminent scholars Linda and Michael Hutcheon, we talk about how these trajectories converged and how these resulting two operas then brought attention to the medical effects of the infection and the sociocultural influences on its spread. We also discuss how the discovery of germ therapy during the time between the staging of these operas affected the way social behaviors changed accordingly, that is, from understanding TB as hereditary to understanding it as infectious. We play audio clips from parts of the operas pertinent to perspectives provided.

Links

• The combined bio for Linda and Michael Hutcheon.
• The New York Metropolitan Opera on-demand video service where you can get access to high-quality video productions of La Traviata and La Bohème among many other operas and performances. (There could be a 7-day free trial available).
• Homer Simpson performing as Rudolpho in La Bohème singing Oh Dio! Mimi!
• We covered the effects of TB as an aesthetic ideal of beauty during the nineteenth century as represented in paintings earlier in episode 5.

Audio Credits

La Traviata

Preludio (National Philharmonic Orchestra; Richard Bonynge cond London Records 1979)

Prendi, Quest’È L’Immagine (Orchestra of the Opera House, Rome; Tullio Serafin cond; Victoria de los Angeles (Violetta); EMI Records Ltd 1960; digitally remastered 1992)

La Bohème

O Soave Fanciulla (Berlin Philharmonic; Herbert von Karajan cond; Mirella Freni (Mimi); Luciano Pavarotti (Rudolfo); Rolando Panerai (Marcello); London Records 1972)

Si. Mi Chiamono Mimi (ibid)

Mimi È Una Civetta (ibid)

Mimi È Tanto Malata! (ibid)

A big thanks to Drs Linda and Michael Hutcheon who in addition to providing their expertise and perspectives during the podcast, also contributed ideas for the production.

Our next episode will feature four movies that picked up early—latter half of 1990s—on the building rage to managed care policies and practices in the US that recently took the form of deadly gun violence.

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: russell.teagarden@gmail.com

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.

Send us Fan Mail

The renowned English social realist and portrait painter, Luke Fildes (rhymes with “childs”), created The Doctor in 1891 after Henry Tate commissioned a painting from him for his new museum, the Tate Britain. The subject of the painting was Fildes’ choice. Despite a poor reception among art critics when it was first exhibited, the painting quickly became iconic as the physician ideal. Over its 133-year history, the painting has been used for a variety of purposes, including inspiration, education, propaganda, and politics. During that time, the ways in which the painting represents the physician ideal changed. We talk about these aspects of the painting with Hannah Darvin from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. She has conducted extensive research into the painting and its creator.

Links

• About Hannah Darvin at Queen’s University.
• Hannah Darvin’s description of her research for the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
• John Brewer Eberly’s diptych rendering a modern version of The Doctor in which computer technology is interjected between doctor and patient.

The next episode will feature opera and how as an art form it can render illnesses in ways that elaborate on bioscience texts and teachings. For examples, we will draw from two operas featuring female characters with tuberculosis (“consumptive heroines”), namely, La Traviata and La Bohème. Joining us will be Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon, who have combined their expertise in comparative literature and medicine, respectively, with their love for opera into an expansive body of scholarly work making both opera and medicine more interesting and better appreciated.

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: russell.teagarden@gmail.com

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.

Episode image: The Doctor , Luke Fildes, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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The scope and intensity of health care products and services available today make it necessary for us to have thoughts about how much of our way of life we would be willing to give up for them. Finding the balance that works for people is a daunting task. They feel the gravitational pull of health care providers and related industries, and they face the pressures family, friends, and cultural attitudes and expectations can put on them to use all the health care services available. We consider this subject as three essayists thought about it. The essayists are Barbara Ehrenreich, Ezekiel Emanuel, and Michel de Montaigne. We identify some of these forces and discuss how the essayists reacted to them in their writings.

Primary Sources:

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer; Twelve, 2018.

Emanuel, Ezekiel J. "Why I Hope to Die at 75." The Atlantic, Oct. 2014.

de Montaigne, Michel. The Complete Works. Translated by Donald M. Frame, introduction by Stuart Hampshire. Everyman's Library; Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.

Links:

• Website for the Hartford HealthCare Elevate Health “series of 1-minute informational segments about health topics” heard on Connecticut Public Radio.
• The recently-published novel from which the last audio clip was taken is Blood Test, written by Charles Baxter and published in 2024 by Pantheon Books. Russell Teagarden's blog piece on novel.
• Russell Teagarden’s blog piece on Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer.
• Russell Teagarden’s blog piece on Montaigne’s essays covering his thoughts on doctors and health care services.
• Ezekiel Emanuel’s website.
• Ezekiel Emanuel’s 2014 article in The Atlantic (behind paywall).
• Ezekiel Emanuel’s appearance on news show where he updates his position on how he manages his health care.
• PDF of Montaigne’s collected essays (Project Gutenberg)

Episode image: Portrait of Michel de Montaigne; Antoine Maurin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The next episode will feature Luke Fildes’ painting, The Doctor (1891) with Hannah Darvin from Queen’s University in Toronto, Canada. Here is the link to the painting from the Tate Britain Museum in London, England. We will focus on how the painting has been viewed as a work of art and how it has served as an ideal of medicine when it was created and since.

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: russell.teagarden@gmail.com

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Personwherever you get your podcasts.

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When the British band, The Who, released their double album, Tommy, in 1969, many of the songs in it became instant classics and served as anthems for the Baby Boomer generation ever since. The album was characterized as a “rock opera,” because when connected, the songs told the story of the “deaf, dumb, and blind kid,” Tommy. The storyline made possible subsequent musicals, first as a movie in 1975, and then as a Broadway play in 1993 and as a revival in 2024. Underlying the storyline in each of these genres are the psychiatric consequences of childhood trauma Tommy experiences. In this episode, we consider the psychiatric conditions Tommy exhibits through selected songs from the original Broadway production, and how they are used in education and training.

Joining us for this purpose is Dr. Anthony Tobia, who is the regional chair in the Department of Psychiatry at the Rutgers School of Medicine and is also the Service Chief of Psychiatry at Robert Wood Johnson Barnabas Health in New Brunswick, NJ. Dr. Tobia also holds a secondary appointment in the Division of General Internal Medicine there. His interests and scholarly work include the value and application of merging popular culture and psychiatry. The Who’s Tommy is among the many cultural works he has found helpful in depicting psychiatric problems for purposes of teaching health professions students and practitioners, and others in roles helping people with mental illness.

Links:

Original Broadway cast album of The Who’s Tommy, 1993

Background on The Who’s Tommy movie, 1975.

The video of Dr. Tobia’s psychiatry grand rounds on the Phantom of the Opera mentioned in the podcast.

Reddit 31 Knights of Halloweendidactic at Rutgers during October.

Thanks to Benedict Teagarden, podcast music and culture director, for pointers on how the harmonization in See Me, Feel Me contributes to the meaning of the lyrics.

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: russell.teagarden@gmail.com.

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.

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Greek tragedies often concern identifiable and universal problems humans have confronted over the millennia. Among these problems are those illness and suffering create. In this episode we draw from Sophocles’ play, Philoctetes, and in particular, how it depicts illness as exile. With our guest, Professor Paul Ranelli, we first cover the characteristics of Greek tragedies that are applicable to illness and suffering (i.e., enduring relevance, catharsis, empathy). We then cover the play, Philoctetes, what it tells about illness as exile, and how it connects to more recent writings on the concept (e.g., Virginia Woolf and Susan Sontag). Lastly, Paul Ranelli talks about an initiative he was involved in with the University of Minnesota Department of Theater Arts and Dance, the Center for the Art of Medicine, the College of Pharmacy Center for Orphan Drug Research, and the playwright Kevin Kling. This collaboration developed and staged an adaptation of Philocteteshighlighting challenges rare diseases pose. Paul describes how it was conceived, developed, produced, and performed. He also talks about how patients, families, students, health care professionals, and others received it. Spoiler alert: they loved it and saw great value in the endeavor.

Primary source

Sophocles. Philoctetes; In The Complete Greek Tragedies, Sophocles II, translated by David Grene; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1957.

Secondary sources

Virginia Woolf. On Being Ill; Ashfield, Ma: Paris Press, 2002.

Susan Sontag. Illness as Metaphor; New York: Doubleday, 1990.

Drew Leder. Illness as Exile: Sophocles’ Philoctetes; Literature and Medicine. 1990(1):1-11.

Vassiliki Kampourelli. Historical empathy and medicine: Pathography and empathy in Sophocles’ Philoctetes. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy. 2022:25:561–575.

Cynda H Rushton, Bryan Doerries, Jeremy Greene, Gail Geller. Dramatic interventions in the tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Lancet. 2020 (Vol 396):305-306.

Links

Russell Teagarden’s blog piece on Philoctetes as prologue to current day issues involving illness as exile, pain, ethics, and moral injury.

Video of Theater of War Productions dramatic reading of Philoctetes performed January 9, 2923.

Video of the play RARE, the University of Minnesota adaptation of Philoctetes.

Video of documentary on development of the play.

Thanks to Dr. Paul Ranelli for his contributing is knowledge, expertise, and wit to this episode.

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: russell.teagarden@gmail.com.

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.

Episode image: Philoctetes (Jean Germain Drouais, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Executive producer: Anne Bentley

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“Should we worry about the reliability of medical knowledge?” asks philosopher John Huss (University of Akron). We consider this question from the perspective of Thomas Kuhn’s classic, 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn explains how science does not evolve incrementally, one step following another, but rather undergoes wholesale revolutions disconnected from all that came before. He called these revolutions, “paradigm shifts” (to his everlasting regret). While Kuhn draws mostly from astronomy to make his case, we draw from recent and past medical examples to show how his concept applies to medicine as well. We talk about how various groups dependent on reliable medical knowledge (e.g., patients, health care professionals, educators) can be affected by the possibility of major shifts in established approaches to health care at any time. There’s no escape from reality, as the song goes.

Primary Source Citation

Kuhn T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press; 1996.

Links

Russell Teagarden’s related blog posts on According to the Arts:

• Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolution
• Michel Foucault’s book, The Birth of the Clinic

Dr. Barry Marshall’s story of how he and Dr. Robin Warren engineered the change in peptic ulcer disease from acid based to infection based.

The Clinic & The Person Episode 12 (September, 2023), featuring the paradigm shift from lobotomies and other forms of psychosurgery to psychopharmacology.

Sir Brian May’s bio (guitarist for Queen and PhD astrophysicist).

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: russell.teagarden@gmail.com.

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.

Executive producer: Anne Bentley

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People can have certain desires stemming from their illnesses, for the arts, health, companionship, serenity, and meaning among other possibilities. The scholar, writer, and teacher David B. Morris considers these desires a form of eros that should be taken into account as a part of what people go through with their illnesses and what could potentially help them. We speak with David Morris about the relationship between eros and illness, and evaluate it using examples from art, literature, and theater. We muse about possible applications.

Primary Source Citation

Morris D. Eros and Illness. Cambridge MA; Harvard University Press, 2017

Links

Russell Teagarden’s relevant blog pieces:

• David Morris’ book, Eros and Illness
• Anatole Broyard’s book, Intoxicated by My Illness
• The play, Farinelli and the King
• Montaigne’s essays about his kidney stones

Modigliani’s reclining nude series:

• Reclining Nude, 1917
• Reclining Nude (Nu Couché) 1917–1918
• Reclining Nude (Le Grand Nu) 1919
• Nude on a Blue Cushion 1917

David Morris’ CV

Thanks to David Morris for coming on this episode and providing his thinking on the role of eros in illness.

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: russell.teagarden@gmail.com.

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Executive producer: Anne Bentley

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Andrew Leland is a major figure as a writer, editor, producer, teacher, and podcaster across the mainstream American cultural landscape. He has contributed to the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Believer, McSweeney’s, Radiolab, The Organist, and 99% Invisible among other respected sources, and has taught at prestigious universities. Amidst it all, he has been progressing towards blindness as a result of retinitis pigmentosa. As his sight diminished to the extent he needed assistance, Leland became motivated to investigate what the world would be for him when his sight was all but gone. In his book, The Country of the Blind, he reports his findings and conclusions. He shares this title with the H.G. Wells story he uses as a touchstone and through line. Cohosts Russell Teagarden and Dan Albrant talk about what can be drawn from Leland’s experiences and from the writers and artists he calls mentors, and how he expects his world will be the same when he is blind as it was before.

Citation:

Andrew Leland, The Country of the Blind, New York, Penguin Press, 2023. (The paperback edition will be available on July 23, 2024).

Links:

• Andrew Leland’s website.
• Russell Teagarden’s blog piece on Andrew Leland’s book, The Country of the Blind.
• A pdf of H.G. Wells’ story, The Country of the Blind.
• Trailer for the Apple TV+ series, See.
• Video clip from Seinfeld featuring Kramer acting as patient for medical students.
• Video clip from Monty Python and the Holy Grail about burning the witch.

Thanks to Andrew Leland for permission to use a clip from the audio edition of his book, The Country of the Blind.

Episode image: The Country of the Blind (opening illustration); Frank R. Paul, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: russell.teagarden@gmail.com.

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.

Executive producer: Anne Bentley

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Four years after the Covid pandemic began, as daily life has returned in large measure to its pre-pandemic shape, assessments and reflections about how the pandemic was able to wreak such havoc and how it could be prevented from occurring again are coming forth. Many are technocratic in nature and assume our aims and pursuits will remain the same as before. Micheal O’Siadhail (pronounced mee-hawl o’sheel), in his new book of poems, Desire, says that in addition to technocratic responses to the pandemic (and other threats to civilization covered in the book), we should give serious thought to what we desire. We talk to O’Siadhail about this idea and he reads selected poems from the book that characterize many aspects of what the pandemic put people through collectively and individually. He also talks about how the forms of his poetry convey his thoughts just as his words do, and how poetry, through syntax, sound, meter, and intensity, can add clarity and effectiveness to prosaic prose communicating complex concepts.

Citation:

Micheal O’Siadhail. Desire. Waco, Tx; Baylor University Press, 2023.

Links:

Micheal O’Siadhail’s website.

Russell Teagarden’s relevant blog pieces in According to the Arts:

• Desire
• One Crimson Thread

Previous podcast episode with Micheal O’Siadhail featuring his poems recounting his late wife’s final years with Parkinson’s disease.

Thanks to Micheal O’Siadhail for bringing his enlightened perspectives on what we experienced with Covid through the piercing poetry in his book, Desire.

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: russell.teagarden@gmail.com.

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Personwherever you get your podcasts,.

Executive producer: Anne Bentley

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We return to the subject of how terrible the HIV/AIDS crisis was at its peak. The first time (Episode 9) we drew from a memoir, documentary film, and a literary novel. This time we feature the graphic memoir, Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371 with the author MK Czerwiec. She created a memoir of her time as a nurse in an HIV/AIDS using the comic medium. Since then, Czerwiec has become a leading figure in Graphic Medicine. We talk to her about the Graphic Medicine field and its many applications, and about the many illustrative and poignant insights her book offers about the AIDS crisis in ways biomedical texts and few of the other arts can do nearly as well.

Links:

Website for Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 372

MK Czerwiec’s website

Graphic Medicine organization website

Russell Teagarden’s blog piece on Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 372 in According to the Arts

Thanks to MK Czerwiec for opening our world to graphic medicine and expanding our understanding of the AIDS crisis through your graphic memoir.

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: russell.teagarden@gmail.com.

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.

Executive producer: Anne Bentley

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Human behaviors in many segments of society during the Covid-19 pandemic could have been predicted based on literary texts from the past and right up to the moment the pandemic began. In this episode, we compare excerpts from selected literary texts imagining or depicting human reactions to plagues ranging from as far back as 700 years to just one month after the pandemic began with statements made or actions taken during the pandemic. The similarities are uncanny. Russell is inclined to think this means we’re doomed; Dan is not so inclined.

Links:

Links to Russell Teagarden’s blog pieces in According to the Arts on the sources discussed in episode:

• The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio, New York, Penguin Classics, 1972 (written in 1351-1353)
• The Pandemic’s Impact on NYC Migration Patterns, New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer, Bureau of Budget, November 2021.
• Arrowsmith, Sinclair Lewis, In: Sinclair Lewis: Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, Dodsworth, Library Classics of the United States, New York, 2002 (first published in 1925)
• The Betrothed, Alessandro Manzoni, Penguin Books, New York, 1972 (first published in 1827)
• The End of October, Lawrence Wright, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2020

Links to sound clips:

• Romeo & Juliet, Act 5, Scene 2 – Shakespeare at Play
• Contagion (2011) – Steven Soderbergh, director; Scot Z. Burns, writer

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: russell.teagarden@gmail.com.

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.

Image Credit:
Art Imitates Life!
Frank Kovalchek from Anchorage, Alaska, USA, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Executive producer: Anne Bentley