Co-hosts Ian Sabroe and Dieter Declercq talk with Dr Brandy Schillace about medicine and its engagement with the humanities. This episode explores how the humanities engage and reflect critically upon the practices of health, as well as shape conversation and lead the way for social justice and change. Brandy also discusses the new global initiatives launched by BMJ’s Medical Humanities.

Dr. Brandy Schillace (skil-AH-chay) is a critically acclaimed author, historian, and editor in chief of BMJ’s Medical Humanities Journal. Her recent book, Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher – described by the New York Times as a “macabre delight” – explores Cold War medicine, bioethics, and transplant science. Dr. Schillace’s next book, The Intermediaries, will tell the forgotten, daring history of the interwar Institute of Sexology in Berlin: trans activists, the first gender affirming surgeries, and the fight for LGBTQ rights in the shadow of the Nazi Third Reich. She writes regularly for WIRED, Scientific American, Globe and Mail, WSJ Books, and Medium. Her YouTube series, Peculiar Book Club, features livestreamed chats with bestselling authors of unusual nonfiction, from Lindsey Fitzharris and Mary Roach to Carl Zimmer and Deborah Blum. Dr. Schillace has appeared on Travel Channel’s Mysteries at the Museum, NPR’s Here and Now, and the History Channel.