Submission Medium: audio

The Nocturnists

Podcast series created by physician Emily Silverman that focuses on humanizing medical practice through healthcare workers' storytelling. Some topics: interview with author of a book on forced sterilization, "Black Voices in Healthcare" and "Post-Roe America". Episodes run 35-55 minutes.

Please See Me

Online literary journal that features health-related stories in the form of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and art, as well as the occasional film and interview. Issues include multiple works around a specific theme (e.g., Pain, Hope, Mental Health, Women's Health). Work features voices of patients, providers and "healthcare consumers" from their own experiences and perspectives. Written submissions are 4000 word maximum. Examples of featured works include: A mixed media art piece on pain, grief, and hopelessness from an artist dealing with loss and addiction (lil peep in Issue #2: Pain), a poem about medical debt ("Johns Hopkins Sues Patients, Many Low-Income, for Medical Debt" in Issue #9: Open Call), and a mother’s experience raising a son with intellectual disabilities and grappling with an Alzheimer’s diagnosis (Forgetting Aiden in Issue #1: Conversation).

Meditating on Death

80 minute podcast that discusses Buddhist notions of death and dying. Emphasis is on being happy about life, noticing its impermanence and questioning the value of always seeking more (money, time, status, things). Provides a detailed contrast point to Western perspectives that could be comforting, reassuring or simply intriguing for a discussion of death and dying.

El único intérprete

"El único intérprete" describes a Colombian, Jhon who became a sign language interpreter because he saw an opportunity to improve the legal system from within the prosecutor's office. Could be relevant to (pre-) law students, legal Spanish classes, more general upper division courses, to show the struggles of those with disabilities in systems not designed with them in mind. In Spanish with both Spanish and English transcripts available. 44 minutes.

Call me Francisca

Francisca had always had difficulty getting pregnant. That is why she was exhilarated when she found out the news that she was having a baby. However, after some tests, Francisca was informed that she was HIV positive. Her doctors gave her antivirals and frequent checkups to keep her viral load low, but they did not inform her about much else. She felt guilt-ridden. When the time came for her birth, she had a C-section performed by a different doctor. After her son was born, a nurse informed her that her sterilization went well. Francisca later sued the hospital for a violation of rights. This narrative is available in a Spanish transcription and as an English translation. It originates from Chile in 2002. As a patient, Francisca's trust and rights were violated. Accessible to upper intermediate Spanish readers; transcription helps with audio. Useful for discussion of reproductive rights, women's health.

240 Birds

Juan Pablo Culasso was born blind, but until the age of 5 or 6 this had little effect on him because his family encouraged him to explore and be as active as any other child. Once he started school, an educational system that was unprepared to incorporate him into learning environments built around sighted children created significant barriers to receiving any education at all. His family took over his education and he learned rapidly, including mastering the piano and guitar. One day Pablo informed his father that his guitar is out of tune, off by a hertz or two. This is how they learned he had perfect pitch. He began listening to birds and memorizing each call, eventually being able to identify 240 bird calls. He won a national competition for "The smartest person in Chile" and now works in an ornithology lab in Canada. This podcast can work for upper intermediate learners of Spanish, or higher. The speaker uses a dialect from Uruguay. It could spark discussion on what constitutes a "disability" and how rare talents - like perfect pitch - can be obscured behind that label. Spanish transcript and English translation of the transcript are available.

Una carta para mama

Carla tells her story of how her mother's disposition changed after her father's hospitalization with diabetes. One day, Carla came home to see her mother, Jaquelina, on the floor. She shook her and slapped her awake. Jaquelina finally woke up to say she wished she had aborted Carla. This is only where the physical and verbal abuse began. Years like this went on and Carla moved out, cutting off all ties. However, after hearing about Jaquelina attending AA, they both began rekindling their bond. Carla comes from Argentina. The audio may be fit for intermediate Spanish learners. This podcast features themes of physical and verbal abuse and therefore may be suitable for an upper level undergraduate course or medical school student.

On Witness and Respair: A Personal Tragedy Followed by a Pandemic

Ward describes losing her 33-year old husband in the early days of COVID when transmission wasn't well understood and treatments were non-existent. The essay opens with a loving tribute to his individual attributes, a useful move to personalize the statistics on COVID deaths. She puts her loss in conversation with the plot of a novel she is writing about an enslaved woman who loses family and with protests in response to the murder of George Floyd. The short essay is accompanied by a 14:27 minute audio reading. This essay could be used in a course to prompt discussion about health disparities in COVID and the connection between those and a larger history of systemic racism. It also gives insight into grief and loss, both individual and communal, and the ways in which story is a way of processing and acting upon it.

Hello, Goodbye

Steve Jobs' last words were: "Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow." Oscar Wilde went with: "Either that wallpaper goes, or I do." (At least, that's how the story goes.) But the way most of us part company with language at the end of our lives is more halting and gradual. Even when a dying loved one is unable to speak clearly, other forms of communication often take over: noises, gestures, touch and eye contact. We have stories in this episode from a hospice nurse, from journalists covering mental health and internet culture, and from language writer Michael Erard who is writing a book about last words and their relationship to first words. The author mentioned in the abstract talks about "biological death" vs "social death" and how living people are involved in both. Dying alone seems like the definition of a "bad death," which led him to write the book about last words - even though they aren't usually any more profound or meaningful than first words. This is a linguistics-focused podcast so there's an orientation to language acquisition that will make this useful to a language class - Spanish or English - without being too distracting for a non-language class.