Podcast
Bedside Reading
Hosted by Bedside Reading Podcast · EN
A medical humanities podcast where we explore themes from fiction, memoir and other non traditional non-textbooks which help to make us better at what we do.
Hosted by Dr Tara George, a GP and medical educator, in each episode a different guest explores a book that has changed their practice. Follow us on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/bedsidereading.bsky.social Facebook or Instagram @bedsidereadingpodcast. If you'd like to recommend a book or to come on the podcast as a guest please email: bedsidereadingpodcast@gmail.com. Episodes hosted by Tara George, edited by Levi Gee
16episodes
Episodes
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The Child Who Never Grew - International PKU Day Special
6d ago00:35:46Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailA very warm welcome today to Emma Vardy to talk about Pearl Buck's The Child Who Never Grew, a memoir. I'm releasing it this week because this week on 28th of June, it is International PKU Day. As you will find there is a lot to think about in terms of phenylketonuria and also the fact that eventually, after the end of this book, and and and when science had advanced, Pearl S. Buck's daughter, Carol, who she writes very movingly and beautifully about in this book, was recognized to have PKU. In a time when nobody really knew about it, nobody knew about low protein diets, there weren't the drugs, and the outcomes for children with PKU was incredibly, incredibly different to how it is at the moment.Many of us have heard of PKU. We think of it as an autosomal recessive condition. We know that it's tested for in the newborn blood spot test. We know that it's something to do with protein. And every so often you pick up a can of a fizzy drink and it says "a source of phenylalanine" and we think, "oh, what's all that all about?" I hope that not only might I persuade you to read The Child That Never Grew and and to think about Pearl's experiences, and but also hoping my conversation with Emma will give you some really good going accidental CPD on the subject of PKU.https://www.espku.org/2026/05/04/international-pku-day-2026-breaking-the-silence-on-mental-health-in-pku/https://nspku.org/
Transcribe →Waiting on a Friend
2w ago00:36:26Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailNatalie Adler's debut novel, Waiting on a Friend, is a joy. It is a story about a young woman, Renata, living in New York's East Village in the early 80s during the AIDS crisis.There are stories of people. There is injustice. There are ghosts. I don't normally like ghosts but I love the ghost angle of this book. If you're looking for a novel, which is a cross between The Great Believers, Rent, and It's a Sin, this is the book for you. It is brilliantly funny. It is moving. There's so much to think about. And it's been an absolute joy to talk to Natalie herself about it today for one of my Pride Month special episodes.
Transcribe →The Revenge of The Tipping Point
3w ago00:34:16Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailIt's a real pleasure today to welcome back Sarah Marwick, GP and Portfolio Career Doctor, to talk about Malcolm Gladwell's The Revenge of the Tipping Point. Malcolm Gladwell is such a brilliant and entertaining writer, and it is such a great book. There are so many stories. focusing on epidemics and social contagions. I've thoroughly enjoyed talking about the book with Sarah and thinking about those themes which are really relevant to us as clinicians working in the health service.
Transcribe →6 1/2 Days in the City
4w ago00:32:43Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailI've got a special episode today as part of June 2026, Pride Month. A warm welcome to Isaac Grivalja We're talking about his debut novel, Six and a Half Days in the City, which is a very quick and compelling read, which follows a young Latino bisexual EMT as he gets on a plane from his home in California to New York for a week of leave.He's going to spend it with two of his oldest friends. And we have a real sense of his unmasking and freedom. And then, unfortunately, the unravelling that ends up coming with that and really thinking about his need to express himself and get away from the pressures of his work and life and the expectations of him at home.It's a really interesting book. And I've really enjoyed talking to Isaac about how he wrote it. How much of himself is in Cameron? and the reasons for making sure that we are all seen in fiction because you can't be what you can't see.
Transcribe →Cutting for Stone
May 2500:33:01Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailWhen I first really started thinking about medical humanities, torytelling and "accidental CPD", about 14 years ago, I set up the Chesterfield Medical Humanities Book Club, which is still running. The very first book that we talked about was Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, which I had read before when it first came out and which I went back to and loved all over again.So when I started bedside reading, I really thought that someone very early on would say, we must talk about Cutting for Stone. And no one did. I didn't push anybody because I knew it had to be the right time. Obviously it's always the guest's choice of what people talk about when they come on this podcast and it was a great delight to get a message from Alice Deasy a few months ago to say, that she had read Cutting for Stone, that she couldn't stop thinking about it, that she couldn't stop talking about it, that she couldn't stop recommending it to people, and that maybe she could come and talk about it on the podcast. I have had a brilliant time rediscovering this novel and talking to Alice.
Transcribe →Art Cure - Creative Health Special
May 1800:35:19Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailCreativity and Wellbeing Week runs from 18th - 24th May 2026. So this week I am bringing you an episode which is all about creativity in health, basing our conversation on the phenomenal book, Art Cure by Daisy Fancourt. If you haven't come across this book, it is absolutely brilliant. Daisy has managed to distill into a few hundred pages a giant but incredibly accessible meta-analysis of all of the evidence around creative health andthe arts for health, thinking not only about wellbeing, but also about mental and physical health and the tangible benefits which we and our patients can gain from involvement in the arts and creativity.Who better to talk about this book with than the very wonderful Nicola Davis, who has been on the podcast before and who some of you may know from her work with the organisation Creative Clinic?Find the organisation Creative Clinic here: https://www.creativeclinic.org/ and their facebook feed https://www.facebook.com/crxeate and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/_creativeclinic/We mentioned the NCCH GP Special Interest Group, find them here: https://ncch.org.uk/gp-sig-for-creative-healthDaisy Fancourt's profile and contact information https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/44526-daisy-fancourt
Transcribe →Radical Candor
May 1100:36:43Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailKim Scott's Radical Candor had been on my to-read pile for years. I have no idea what it was that was stopping me picking it up. So I was delighted to be given the nudge by the very wise Michael Killshaw to pick it up. I was not disappointed. it is such an accessible and brilliant book, relevant to anybody who works with people in a team, but particularly if you lead a team, particularly if you are a trainer or an educator of some sort, there is so much practical wisdom and a framework which really, truly has changed my life.
Transcribe →Shattered Lands
May 500:36:06Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailA warm welcome back today to Greater Manchester GP, Zalan Alam. Today we are talking about Shattered Lands by Sam Dalrymple, which is an incredibly readable and very accessible, though enormous book about the five partitions of British India.It is something that really captivated me. There are so many brilliant human interest stories and it's really made me understand some parts of history much, much better than I ever did before. It's undoubtedly given me a lot of food for thought. So it's a really, really good nonfiction book, which I would thoroughly, thoroughly recommend and from which there is undoubtedly some accidental CPD.
Transcribe →Sociopath
Apr 2800:32:25Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailA really warm welcome to neurodevelopmental forensic psychiatrist Claudia Camden-Smith today, where we're talking about Patric Gagne's memoir, Sociopath.This is such an interesting book, which really gripped me, made me think an awful lot, challenged a lot of my thinking, and it's something I've thought a lot about since I finished it. So it has been a real joy to be talking to Claudia today about the book and about some of her own professional reflections around psychopathy. Particularly how prevalent psychopaths. we talk about not reconising female psychopaths of whom the author Patric Gagne obviously is one.It's been a really really interesting conversation and it's an absolutely great book for accidental CPD.
Transcribe →These Heavy Black Bones
Apr 2100:32:20Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailI'm really, really delighted today to be talking to Selina Flinders about an absolutely wonderful book, These Heavy Black Bones, by Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell.This is a memoir written someone that some of you may have come across as a very high-level swimmer who swam originally for Kenya and then started to swim for Great Britain and crashed out of professional swimming just before the London 2012 Olympics.This is a memoir. It has themes of growing up, of being different. There's racism. There are adverse childhood experiences. There is boarding school syndrome. There is safeguarding. There is "safeguarding in affluence". There is abuse masquerading in plain sight as concern and sports coaching. Oh my goodness, there was so much to talk about and I have absolutely loved talking to Selina today about it.
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