In the Same Vein

With co-host Diana Herrmann - family medicine physician and Health Humanities and Bioethics master's student - we speak to historian Helen Frisby, primarily about her chapter "Smelling Death" in the book Religion, Death and the Senses (2024). In this episode, we explore the smellscapes of Victorian funeral rituals, discussing olfactory experiences as diverse as funerary cakes, bee hives and beeswa...

This discussion - co-hosted by undergraduate Bioethics and Psychology double major Nanki Nagpaul - dives into the ethical quandaries of AI pediatric therapy chatbots. We do this with Dr. Bryanna Moore , focusing most on her recent article (co-authored with Jonathan Herington and Şerife Tekin), "The Integration of Artificial Intelligence-Powered Psychotherapy Chatbots in Pediatric Care: Scaffold or...

We go philosophical in this episode, co-hosted by Ashley Labodda, a Philosophy PhD student at the University of Rochester. We have a discussion that is largely focused on David DeGrazia’s 2021 book A Theory of Bioethics , co-authored with Joseph Millum, PhD. We speak about what new elements and approaches this book brings to the field of bioethics, as well as how many of these ideas apply to philo...

This episode - co-hosted with medical student Priya Mandava - features physician and author Jay Baruch . We take his 2022 book Tornado of Life: A Doctor's Journey through Constraints and Creativity in the ER as our starting point to then discuss narrative and emergency medicine, the role of the humanities in medical education, chaos narratives and patient stories, and the role of compassion in med...

In this episode, medical student and historian of medicine Michael Healey, PhD serves as co-host as we interview Marsha Wittink, MD, MBE, academic chief of the Medicine in Psychiatry Division and medical director of the Medicine in Psychiatry Unit at the University of Rochester Medical Center. We discuss the collaborative and interdisciplinary work that occurs on medicine in psychiatry (med-psych)...

Welcome to Season 2 of "In the Same Vein"! In this episode, Jan Gao - a recent graduate from the MS in Health Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Rochester - serves as co-host. We talk to the historian Agnes Arnold-Forster about her recent book Cold, Hard Steel: The Myth of the Modern Surgeon (University of Manchester Press, 2023). In addition to many other topics, we discuss persistent...

The second season of "In the Same Vein" launches soon, with six episodes being published from October to December 2025.

In this episode, philosopher Jonathan Herington and PhD student Adam DeDobbelaere interview physician, data scientist, and ethicist Erika Ramsdale . They start with a discussion of the 2024 article “ Large Language Models in Medicine: The Potentials and Pitfalls ,” before discussing a range of topics: ethical quandaries now and in the future of AI, automation bias, the use of AI by both patients a...

In this episode, we talk to Jonathan Herington, PhD about the recent article “Investigating Ethical Tradeoffs in Crisis Standards of Care through Simulation of Ventilator Allocation Protocols.” We discuss ventilator allocation, the Covid-19 pandemic, racial disparities in resource allocation, and the difference between saving lives and saving life years. We also dive into big questions about this...

In this episode, we speak with Julie Starr about her book Modified Bodies, Material Selves: Beauty Ideals in Post-Reform Shanghai (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2023). Our student co-host for this episode, second-year medical student Piper Schneider, is interested in pursuing plastic surgery and wanted to know more about how and why women think about beauty and body modification – and t...

In this episode of “In the Same Vein,” we chat to historian of medieval medicine Nichola Harris about her subfield: lapidary medicine, or, the use of stones and minerals for medicinal purposes. Harris talks us through how objects like coral, pearls, diamonds, amber, loadstones, and eaglestones were utilized in the medieval period (and ancient and early modern periods) as cures and for general heal...

In this episode, second-year medical student Spencer Mehdizadeh chose to speak to the historian of medicine Michael Brown, PhD about his 2022 book Emotions and Surgery in Britain, 1793-1912 . We discuss anesthesia, pain, emotions, surgery, history, and the experiences of both patients and surgeons in the nineteenth century and today. Other Scholarly Work Mentioned Joanna Bourke, The Story of Pain:...

Welcome to the first episode of our new podcast “In the Same Vein”! In this premiere, our student co-host is the second-year medical student Isabella Cantor, whose personal experiences as a reader and as a healthcare provider led her to want to chat with the remarkable Danielle Ofri , MD, PhD. In this episode, we primarily talk about Dr. Ofri’s 2020 book When We Do Harm: A Doctor Confronts Medical...

Welcome to In the Same Vein! Full episodes coming soon!