Medical Humanities Podcast

Making Space

Ciara Breathnach (@CiaraBreath) is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Limerick, Ireland. She is a current Irish research Council Laureate holder and her research focuses on Irish social history of medicine and health. In this conversation with Brandy Schillace, she also talks about the upcoming Association of Medical Humanities meeting MAKING SPACE, which will take place in Limerick in June 2020.
The conference website is https://www.amh2020ireland.com/. Email address: The email is amh2020Ireland@gmail.com

The Power of Poetry

In this podcast, Clinical Psychiatrist and poet Owen Lewis (Columbia) and Sue Spencer, Associate Editor at Medical Humanities, discuss both the power and “disruption” of poetry in and out of healthcare curriculum.

Nurturing artistic talent in children with autism. A conversation with Hana Makki

In this podcast, film maker Hana Makki revisits her memories of making the documentary film ‘As one: The Autism Project’ working with ten children with Autism and their families. The film project was supported by Sheikha Shamsa bint Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the daughter of the crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, in an effort to raise awareness about ‘Autism Spectrum Disorder’ in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Over the course of ten weeks, these children made a musical show working alongside a specialist team of musicians, and performance artists, with the guidance of an Applied Behaviour Analysis therapist. The children come from various nationalities including the United Arab Emirates, Philippines, U.S.A, Palestine, UK, Ghana, India, and Ethiopia. Hana captured the journey of these children while rehearsing, till the night of the musical show, and also shares with the audience what happened to them afterward.
Read the accompanying blog post: https://blogs.bmj.com/medical-humanities/2016/09/13/film-review-x-y/

Creating father-son bonds through film: Tom Browne and his son Frankie

In this podcast, Tom and his son Frankie discuss how their experience of making short films together supported their relationship as a father and son. Tom talks about the films ‘Bokx’, ‘Beyond’, and ‘Aston Gorilla’, and reflects on how watching the films after many years can say a lot about his two boys, George and Frankie; how different they have become and yet how similar they have remained! ‘Aston Gorilla’ was a direct response to a phase in George’s life when he was suffering from nightmares and Tom’s insecurity about his role as a father. ‘Bokx’ and ‘Beyond’ were responses to Frankie’s world of imagination; at times he seemed to completely disappear into his fantasies, perhaps as a reaction to the fact that he was born blind with glaucoma. Whilst his sight was restored, he was not able to participate in the world as other children do. These films were a way of trying to feel what life was like within Frankie’s imagination, and the cruelty of having vivid fantasy replaced with mundane normality. Frankie participated in making the films when he was ‘seven’, and was oblivious to their sub-plot, darker themes. Tom talks about his fascination by the way in which films can create a community of collaboration and an intensity of endeavour. He wanted his sons to share his fascination, to witness the hard work undertaken by a film team and to gain different invigorating perspectives. Frankie now makes short films independently whilst George runs a film club at school. Tom believes that they both look back at the experience with pride and pleasure.

Bridges of hope: Supporting women and youth through economic empowerment

In this podcast, Dr El Beih, Egypt’s country director of Drosos Foundation talks about her journey from a hospital doctor to becoming a pioneer in the use of art and creativity in healing. She was behind the making of the Egyptian film ‘Asmaa’ which highlighted the stigma and discrimination faced by women living with HIV in Egypt (https://blogs.bmj.com/medical-humanities/2011/11/03/khalid-ali-film-review-asmaa-directed-by-amr-salama-star-rating/). The film was inspired by the real life story of a woman living with HIV that Dr El Beih met as a patient while working as the UNAIDS Country Director in Egypt. Dr El Beih continued to support the human rights of socially-disadvantaged children and people with physical disability in national raising-awareness campaigns using short films with eminent Egyptian film makers. She explains her vision in engaging with several charitable organisations such as ‘Banati (My daughters) Foundation’ to support homeless girls (https://en-gb.facebook.com/Banati.Foundation/) With an extensive experience of more than 25 years in managing development projects in Health, Gender and Education in the Middle East, in North and East Africa and the United States, Dr El Beih led several joint health and social projects supporting the sectors of entrepreneurship, economic empowerment and creativity for youth and women.

Death and dying, Italian style

In this podcast Valeria Golino talks about end of life issues; assisted suicide, the common practice of some Italian people withholding the true diagnosis of terminal illness from their affected relatives, and doctor-patient relationships in these emotionally challenging circumstances. Such themes were explored in her award-winning films as a director ‘Miele’ (2013), and ‘Euphoria’ (2018).
Ms Golino neither demonizes nor endorses controversial practices around death; she invites the viewer to reflect on such ethical and moral dilemmas. In ‘Miele’ she provokes the audience to think about the motivations driving some people to request assisted-suicide, namely depression.
In ‘Euphoria’ she tells the story of two brothers coming to appreciate each other’s life style and decisions at a time when one of them is dying of terminal illness. An important factor that inspires Ms Golino to make films is her desire to tell real human stories that the audience can empathise with. A relationship of understanding, trust and love must exist between her and the actors and actresses in her films to tell a believable story.
Previous film festival podcasts:
https://blogs.bmj.com/medical-humanities/2015/09/15/khalid-ali-film-review-me-and-earl-and-the-dying-girl/
https://blogs.bmj.com/medical-humanities/2016/01/04/khalid-ali-taxi-ride-to-eternity-review-of-dry-hot-summers/
https://blogs.bmj.com/medical-humanities/2016/03/31/khalid-ali-lets-talk-about-death-a-review-of-last-cab-to-darwin-australia-2015/
https://blogs.bmj.com/medical-humanities/2016/11/07/film-review-doctor-strange/

History Lessons: Immigration, the NHS and fear of the other

On today’s podcast, Professor Roberta Bivins, Centre for the History of Medicine University of Warwick, speaks to unfounded fears of immigrants underpinning rhetoric surrounding the inception of the NHS.

Making History Matter: Julian Simpson on migration, social issues and the role of history

Freelance author and historian Julian Simpson, author of Migrant Architects of the NHS, joins Editor-in-Chief of Medical Humanities Brandy Schillace (@bschillace) to discuss the role and responsibility of historians. How do we create a space for history that addresses itself to contemporary concerns including #immigration? This is about who gets to write #history, who gets to make decisions about funding, who recruits, who decides who can speak to #policy concerns.

A New Outlook on Psychosomatics?

Join us for a preview of the new June special issue on Biopolitics, Psychosomatics and "participating bodies" and read it on the MH website: https://mh.bmj.com/.
June's issue is specially dedicated to the many ways of looking at psychosomatics. In this conversation with Brandy Schillace, guest editor Dr. Monica Greco explains why a different outlook on our bodies is much needed. Listen to the full conversation and keep an ear out for the buzz word that brings together nature and politics.

Interrogating Medicine: a podcast on humanities and pain

Medical Humanities editor-in-chief, Brandy Schillace, speaks to Dr Sara Wasson about her work on chronic pain and gothic transplantation.
For more information read: https://mh.bmj.com/content/44/2/106.