Medicine Unboxed

Sam Guglani talks to journalist, essayist and literary critic Mark O’Connell, author of ‘To Be a Machine’ (Granta 2017, winner of the Wellcome Prize) and ‘Notes from An Apocalypse:  A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back’ (Granta, 2020). ‘To Be a Machine’ explores transhumanism - using machines to optimise human cognition and extend human life, and the Silicon Valley belief that the h...

Samantha Harvey is Reader in creative writing at Bath Spa University and is the author of four novels, 'The Wilderness', 'All Is Song', 'Dear Thief' and 'The Western Wind', and of a memoir, published in January 2020,  'The Shapeless Unease'. Her novels have been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Guardian First Book Award, the Walter Scott Prize and the James Tait Black Prize, and l...

In this episode of Medicine Unboxed: VOICES, Sam Guglani talks to Jenn Ashworth, author of 'A Kind of Intimacy',  'Fell' and most recently 'Notes Made While Falling'. In this discussion, Jenn talks to Sam about her encounters with doctors as a child raised in a Mormon community and about the role of fiction in her understanding of the world and of illness. Jenn talks about her experience of becomi...

Sam Guglani talks to Professor Dame Sue Black OBE about her early childhood experiences, how they shaped her future career and about how important her teachers have been to her - and why we have a duty to let others who have changed our lives know the impact they have had on us. Sue talks about how forensic anthropology is changing, about her work in identifying perpetrators of child sexual abuse...

Richard Horton is Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet. He was born in London and is half Norwegian. He qualified in physiology and medicine from the University of Birmingham in 1986 and joined The Lancet in 1990, moving to New York as North American Editor in 1993. Richard was the first President of the World Association of Medical Editors and he is a Past-President of the US Council of Science Editors....

Deborah Bowman is Professor of Ethics and Law at St George's, University of London. In this episode of Medicine Unboxed VOICES, Deborah talks to Sam Guglani about ethics, law and the tensions between them in the context of medical ethics and about her own experience of illness. Executive producers: Sam Guglani, Peter Thomas Music: Butterfly Song by Jocelyn Pook, vocal by Melanie Pappenheim, from '...

Kit de Waal has received numerous awards for her writing including the Bridport Flash Fiction Prize 2014 and 2015, the SI Leeds Literary Reader's Choice Prize 2014 and the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year. Her first novel, 'My Name is Leon', was published in 2016 and shortlisted for the Costa Book Award. In this episode of Medicine Unboxed VOICES, Kit speaks with Sam Guglani about My Name is Le...

Richard Holloway was Bishop of Edinburgh and Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church. He is the award-winning author of On Forgiveness, Looking in the Distance, Godless Morality, Doubts and Loves, Between the Monster and the Saint and Leaving Alexandria. In this episode of Medicine Unboxed VOICES, Richard speaks with Sam Guglani about ageing, his draw to and ambivalence around religion, the shared...

Sarah Perry is the award-winning author of three novels—After Me Comes the Flood, The Essex Serpent and Melmoth. Her work interrogates matters of faith, science and human suffering, and she is an extraordinary storyteller. In this episode of Medicine Unboxed VOICES, Sarah speaks with Sam Guglani about her own encounter with illness and medicine, the value of fiction, the vagaries of moral judgment...

Danny Dorling is a social geographer and is the Halford Mackinder Professorship in Geography in Oxford. He has studied and published extensively on issues concerning housing, health, employment, education and poverty. His collaborative work on the Worldmapper project has resulted in collection of world maps or ‘cartograms’, where territories are re-sized according to a subject of interest, for ins...

Max Porter is an English writer, formerly a bookseller and editor, best known for his critically acclaimed debut Grief is the Thing with Feathers. Prior to his writing career, Porter managed the Chelsea branch of Daunt Books and won the Bookseller of the Year Award in 2009. He was Editorial Director at Granta and Portobello Books until 2019.

Richard Holloway, FRSE is a Scottish writer, broadcaster and cleric. He was Bishop of Edinburgh from 1986 to 2000 and Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church from 1992 to 2000.

Eley Williams is a British writer. Her debut collection of prose, Attrib. and Other Stories (Influx Press, 2017)was awarded the Republic of Consciousness Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 2018. She teaches at Royal Holloway, University of London and supervises Jungftak, a journal for contemporary prose poetry.

Bruce Miller is a palliative care specialist at UCSF and executive director of San Francisco's Zen Hospice Project.

Satish Kumar is an Indian British activist and editor. He has been a Jain monk, nuclear disarmament advocate, pacifist and is the current editor of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine.

Helen Jukes is a writer, writing tutor and beekeeper. Her writing has appeared in many publications, including Caught by the River, BBC Wildlife, Resurgence, the Junket and LITRO. She tutors on the creative writing programme at Oxford University, and also works with the Bee Friendly Trust, a London-based charity founded by beekeeper Luke Dixon to promote our understanding of honeybees and help nur...

Jason Barker is an actor and director, known for A Deal with the Universe (2018), Silly Girl (2016) and Boys on Film 18: Heroes (2018).

Preti Taneja teaches writing in prisons and universities. Her novel We That Are Young (Galley Beggar) won the 2018 Desmond Elliot Prize for the year's best debut.

Mark G. Thomas is a human evolutionary geneticist, Professor of Evolutionary Genetics at the Research Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London.

Eley Williams is a British writer. Her debut collection of prose, Attrib. and Other Stories (Influx Press, 2017)was awarded the Republic of Consciousness Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 2018. She teaches at Royal Holloway, University of London and supervises Jungftak, a journal for contemporary prose poetry.

Havi Carel is a professor of philosophy at the University of Bristol. Her research interests include philosophy of medicine, phenomenology, philosophy of death, epistemic injustice and health, illness, and children, and film and philosophy. Carel is best-known for her work on the phenomenology of somatic illness.

Daniel Trilling is a British journalist, editor and author. He is the editor of New Humanist magazine.

Raymond Tallis is a philosopher, poet, novelist, cultural critic and a retired medical physician and clinical neuroscientist. Iona Heath was president of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) from 2009–2012.

Will Eaves is a novelist, poet and teacher. He was Arts Editor of the Times Literary Supplement and is Associate Professor in the Writing Programme at the University of Warwick.

Daniel Locke is an artist and graphic novelist. His most recent graphic novel Out of Nothing, was published in November 2017 by Nobrow Press. Daniel’s work is featured in many anthologies of contemporary comics, and in 2016 his novella Pneuma was published in the USA by Tinto Press.