Medical Humanities Podcast

In this podcast, the director Anu Menon talks to the Medical Humanities' Screening Room Editor Khalid Ali about her latest film 'Waiting'. The film explores the relationship between doctor and patients' relatives as well as the bonds established through coma. This is the second of two Medical Humanities' podcasts about the Indian film 'Waiting', which was part of the London Asian film Festival (LAFF), Tongues on Fire, in March 2016. It will be released internationally on the 26th of April, in India and Singapore.

In this podcast, Dr James Ruzicka talks about the connection between the story of the film 'Waiting', which he co-wrote, and the real life of a doctor. ‘Waiting’ is directed by Anu Menon and explores the bond established between two people whilst their spouses lie in coma in an hospital. This is the first of two Medical Humanities' podcasts about the Indian film, which will be the closing night gala of the London Asian film Festival (LAFF), Tongues on Fire, on Sunday, 13th March 2016. It will be released internationally on the 26th of April, in India and Singapore.

In this podcast, Khalid Ali talks to Simon Field, producer of "Cemetery of Splendour", a film about a lonesome middle-age housewife who tends a soldier with sleeping sickness and falls into a hallucination. The film is the starting point of a conversation about the work of the director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, which legacy is being showcased in the UK: Film retrospective, Tate Modern, 6-8 April; 'Cemetry of Splendour' film, BFI Southbank, April 2016; Visual installation 'Primitive' - The Tanks, New Tate Modern, June 2016.

The 93 year-old retired doctor Sharif Hatata, Egyptian political activist born in the UK, tells MH Screening Room editor Khalid Ali about his novels, "resistance", junior doctors strike, "poor health care" in Egypt and his film passion. This interview was recorded in Cairo, during The Panorama of the European Film, in November 2015. See the full program of the festival at http://panoramaeurofilm.com/

The president of The Panorama of the European Film, Marianne Khoury, explores the new possibilities opened by the last edition of the festival in Cairo, including the new technologies allowing cinema for those with visual impairment. The film-maker introduced the event in Egypt more than a decade ago, presenting alternative cinema to the country. In this podcast, Marianne Khoury tells Khalid Ali about the other films in this festival, including her own 'Shadows-Zelal', which explores the dark reality of Egypt’s mental asylums. See the full program of The Panorama of the European Film at http://panoramaeurofilm.com/

How is positive psychology being used as a coercive strategy in UK government workfare programmes? What effect does this have on the people who receive unemployment benefits, and how have psychologists responded? In this podcast, Lynne Friedli (Hubbub) and Robert Stearn (Birkbeck) discuss their research with BMJ Medical Humanities Associate Editor Angela Woods. “Positive affect as coercive strategy: conditionality, activation and the role of psychology in UK government workfare programmes” appears in “Critical Medical Humanities,” the first special issue of Medical Humanities mh.bmj.com.

Khalid Ali, screening room editor at Medical Humanities, talks to Mohamed Khan, screen writer and actor, and one of the leading directors of of neo-realist cinema in 80s Egypt. They discuss his range of films and the parallels with, and lessons for, practicing medicine.

Khalid Ali, Screening Room editor, reports from the Postgraduate Medical Humanities Conference in Exeter. Here he speaks to Laura Habbe, a PhD student at Trinity College Dublin. Her research focuses around the figure of the mad scientist, often taking the shape of a doctor, in popular fiction of the last two decades of the nineteenth century. She is interested in the question of how the mad scientist became firmly established as a stereotype in our culture and how this relates to questions of science communication and the public understanding of science.

Khalid Ali, Screening Room editor, reports from the Postgraduate Medical Humanities Conference in Exeter. Here he talks with Sarah Jones, a final year PhD student affiliated with the Centre for Medical History at the University of Exeter. Her thesis, which looks at free love and sex radicalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is funded by Great Western Research and supervised by Professor Kate Fisher. She co-organised the new annual Postgraduate Medical Humanities Conference, and is also co-editor of the Postgraduate Journal of Medical Humanities (the first edition of which will be released this Autumn) alongside Jess Monaghan.

Khalid Ali, Screening Room editor, reports from the Postgraduate Medical Humanities Conference in Exeter. Here he speaks to James Fallon, a specialist registrar in General Adult Psychiatry working in Brighton, about medical education and medical humanities, in particular how the two can be used together to improve training.

In this first podcast from the journal Medical Humanities, editor Deborah Bowman introduces members of her new editorial team: editor of The Screening Room, Khalid Ali, and editor of The Reading Room, Georgia Belam. Together they discusses the vision for the journal. It is an exciting time for Medical Humanities, and the creation of The Reading Room and The Screening Room represent the first stage in a process of developing and refreshing the journal, its blog and social media. You can read some of the contributions we have already received for The Screening Room on the Medical Humanities blog: http://blogs.bmj.com/medical-humanities/. Watch out for more posts in the coming months. The first copy of the journal to feature The Reading Room and The Screening Room will be the December 2014 issue. The sections in the journal will be more editorially-led and include commissioned essays from scholars, writers and producers. You'll be able to read long-form and thematic reviews, as well as analyses and empirical