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Conor
Hi everyone. I'm Conor, head of Programming at Intelligence Squared. As we head into the festive season, what is for many of us, a time of comfort, celebration and gatherings round a table. Most of us won't think twice about the clean water running from our taps that make it all possible. But for millions of people around the world, this is something they simply don't have. That's why here at the Intelligence Squared podcast, we're proud to partner with WaterAid, a charity working to change this and to shine a spotlight on something that connects us all. In a special episode of our podcast, journalist Coco Khan speaks to Amica Godfrey, Water AIDS Executive Director of International Programs. Amica has spent more than 25 years working across the world in the water, sanitation and hygiene sector. She shares powerful stories about how clean water keeps children in school, helps mothers support their families or run businesses and and unlocks potential for entire communities. To hear the full conversation, just search Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts and listen to the episode titled Everything Starts with water released on 17th December. Listen to the full episode now on the Intelligence Squared podcast. Right now, there are talented people out there who could take your company to the next level. Do you want to hope they see your job post before your competitors or do you want to match with them with Indeed Sponsored Jobs Hiring Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other sites. Give your job the best chance to be seen with Indeed sponsored jobs. They help you stand out and hire quality candidates who can drive the results you need. Sponsored Jobs Boost your posts for quality quality candidates so you can reach the exact people you want faster and it makes a big difference. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed are 90% more likely to report a hire than non sponsored jobs because you reach a bigger pool of quality candidates. Join the 1.6 million companies that sponsored their jobs with Indeed. When we're hiring, we find being specific about what we need really matters. With Indeed sponsored jobs, you can set detailed requirements such as experience, level, skills, industry background and actually get candidates who meet them. Instead of sifting through applications that don't fit, we end up with people who've done the work before and can prove it. That precision is what makes the difference for us. Plus, with Indeed sponsored jobs, you only pay for results. No monthly subscriptions, no long term contracts. Just a boost whenever you need to find quality talent fast. People are finding quality hires on Indeed right now in the minute I've been talking to you. Companies like yours made 27 hires on Indeed. According to Indeed Data worldwide, spend more time interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. Now with Indeed Sponsored jobs and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves@ Indeed.com IntelligenceSquared just go to Indeed.com Intelligence Squared right now and support our show by sending saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com intelligencesquared terms and conditions apply. Hiring do it the right way with Indeed.
Mia Sorrenti
Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. Today's episode is part one of our recent live event with palliative care doctor, author and broadcaster, and the winner of the 2025 Women's Prize for nonfiction. Rachel Clark Clarke joined us live at the Kiln Theatre to discuss her Women's Prize winning book, the Story of a Heart. Rachel Clark became widely known for her writing from the frontline of the COVID 19 pandemic, illuminating both the pressures facing the NHS and the humanity at its core. Her latest book tells the profoundly moving story of a heart transplant, how one child's death saved the life of another. Let's join our host, actor and comedian Rob Rob Delaney, now with more.
Coco Khan
Hi, everybody. I'm thrilled to be here tonight with Dr. Rachel Clark. I was thinking it says like intelligence squared. I mean, that's a bit much, don't you think? I mean, and then where great minds meet and us. And also us. Isn't that fun? Rachel is my friend and a palliative care doctor and best selling authority times four. Incredible. Outrageous. Squared.
Conor
Squared.
Coco Khan
But no, it isn't, right? Okay, yeah. Whoops. I gotta call your doctor, boss. Her first book, you, Life in My Hands, chronicles her life as a junior doctor. That was followed by Dear Life, a book exploring death, dying and end of life care. Do you remember when that came out? I sent you a song by Beck called Dear Life and was like, did you know this? And you were like, no, I didn't. Fun fact. And in 2020, she wrote breathtaking, a book about the first wave of COVID in the uk, which was later adapted for a television series. Tonight, we're going to be talking about her remarkable book, the Story of a Heart, the incredibly moving, humane story about a heart transplant between two children. When it won the Women's Prize for nonfiction this year, the judges said, this is a book where humanity shines through on every page. From the selfless act of the parents who gift their daughter's heart in the depths of despair to the dedication of the NHS workers. It is unforgettable and will be read for many years to come. It's a very special book. Raise your hand if you've read it. All right, before I ask my first question, we're going to be talking for around an hour, but we want to hear from you too. So do start thinking about your questions for Rachel and we'll come to you later for the Q and A session. So, Rachel, tell us about the origins of this book and what first led you to the story.
Rachel Clarke
So it was back in 2017, and that was back in the day when you could go onto Twitter and get your news from Twitter instead of abuse. And this story popped up on my Twitter feed in the Mirror newspaper about a little boy who needed a heart transplant, whose face was on the front page of the Mirror because the newspaper was running a campaign to change the law around organ donation. There's a huge problem with shortages of organs and it's particularly difficult for children. And Max was desperately sick, waiting for a heart transplant, and his parents agreed to share his story to help the campaign. So I read this story and thought, gosh, that's incredibly sad. This little boy who just looked. Looked so, so ill. Then about a month or two later, there was another story and he was there again on the front page, and now he was pink cheeked, rosy, and he had received a heart. And, you know, as a doctor, I thought, that's a wonderful example of what the NHS can do. That's great. Very desperately sad, because we know what the mathematics of transplant is. For somebody to be given the gift of life through an organ, somebody else has to die. And then a few months after that, I read the story. That was the thing that just stopped me in my tracks and made me think about this book. And this was a story that arose because Kira, the little girl whose heart saved Max's life, and Kira's two sisters, Caitlin and Keely, are actually in the audience tonight and so are Max's parents, which is really wonderful. So Kira's family, her mum had seen the publicity around Max and had worked out that probably Kira's heart had gone to him. And she sent Emma, Max's mum, a message that said, I think you may have our daughter's heart and it's the most beautiful heart in the world. And that set off a train of events that led to Kira's family meeting Max's family. And one by one, with a stethoscope, they listened to her heart beating inside the chest of this beautiful little boy whose life Kira had saved. And she had saved another child and two adults as well. And when I read that, I just thought that right there is everything that human beings are capable of, that is us at our best. That is the miracle of altruism. That is the start of every transplant. So thank you, Keely and Caitlin and all of Kira's family, because they didn't hesitate to say yes to donation, and I wanted to write about it.
Coco Khan
Now, you contacted the families before you began writing the book. Telling a story like this requires a special kind of care. How did you approach it, and what was their reaction when you said you wanted to write it?
Rachel Clarke
Well, I was really nervous approaching Loanna, Kira's mum, because I knew how desperately distressing this experience had to have been for both families, but particularly for Kira's family. And I decided that I wanted to approach this not exactly as an author, as a journalist, but really as a doctor and with my ethical code as a doctor. So if anybody was to entrust me with a story that was as sensitive as that, they had to know they could trust me completely. And so I said to Loana and Joe, Kira's father, when I met the family for the first time, that if they felt like they wanted to do this, at any point, if they changed their mind, we would throw away that manuscript. And I wanted them to read it, and they needed to have that trust. And I said the same to Max's family. And it didn't seem like a risk because if I couldn't write a book that they felt happy with, then it shouldn't be a book that was published. So very nervously, I met Kira's family and they welcomed me into their home. And I remember so vividly, in their living room was a huge sort of display cabinet that was just filled with pink and orange and Kira's life, her riding hats, her rosettes, her soft toys, pictures, letters. And it was as though she was in the room with us. It was as though she was sort of living in that cabinet and she was living on in the lives of the people she'd saved. And it was an extraordinary meeting. And then everything stemmed from that. And very tentatively, I started to talk to all of the doctors, surgeons, nurses, play specialists, the people who'd been involved in this amazing story of her heart.
Conor
Wow.
Coco Khan
You start the book with the line, this is a tale of a boy and a girl and the heart they share. It's the story of a heart transplant. Can we start by introducing both children at the center of the story? Can you tell us a little bit about Kira.
Rachel Clarke
So everybody I have ever spoken to about Kira has said the same thing. So she was renowned for being this kind, caring little girl. So physically sort of blonde, ringlets, blue eyes, loved animals, loved children. And her dad said to me, you know, Kira, she was so soft that if she walked past a snail, she had to pick it up and rescue it and put it in a jam jar because she didn't want anyone stamping on it by mistake. And she would have rescued snails in her bedroom. And she loved horses and she had her own pony that she was devoted to. I just had this impression of one of those young children who is just sort of brimming with life and kindness and caring about other people and loved music, loved dancing. Her nickname was Bob a Lob, a Ding Dong, which may we never quite got to the bottom of why that was. And she was just vivacity. She was a little kid full of the joy of living and other people and this gorgeous world around her. And Max, in some ways, was very similar. Before he started to get sick, he was hyper and in the school football team, he was a live wire. He loved his music, his. His speakers. He was obsessed with technology and sound and techno. And Emma and Paul, his parents, painted this picture of this incredibly mischievous boy who was always pranking his teachers and his brother. And that didn't stop when he was in hospital. He pranked all of the doctors and nurses as well and was just again, this sort of hyperactive, just the life exploding out of him. So you had these two children who I think were very different in character, but united by being just fabulously lit with the joys of living.
Coco Khan
This is a difficult question to ask, but I think it's important. Can you tell us what happened to Kyra?
Rachel Clarke
Yeah. So in the summer holidays, she finished school, and before she finished school in the summer term, her junior school teacher asked everyone in their class to write a letter to themselves that they would open at the start of the new school year. So one of the last things Kira did was write this letter to herself, which her family still have, and obviously was opened not by her, but by her family. She was involved in a very serious car crash. She was in the car with her younger brother, Bradley, her mom, Loanna, on a very, very dangerous road in Devon, where they live, where there had been multiple fatal car accidents at that time and in fact continued to. To occur afterwards. And they were in a collision with another vehicle. That was one of those awful freak occurrences. You know, the summer holidays. Everything's unfolding beautifully. And suddenly, in the blink of an eye, you're in a crash. And she suffered very serious head injuries in the crash.
Coco Khan
Thank you. I've written down here. Well, I got to meet Caitlin and Keely right before we started. And I wanted to say, you know, the way we met is because I wrote a book about my son Henry, who died of a brain tumor in 2018. And I, you know, in my book, I made sure to talk almost as much about his brothers because when a kid gets sick, when a kid dies, you know, they're kind of the star of the story. And of course, you know, all kinds of attention is heaped on the parents as well. But you were very, very careful to include the siblings in your book and talk about the importance of their relationships. And so I just wanted to say, as a bereaved parent, one of the things that touched me most about your book was the love that you showed Kira and Max's siblings, who are obviously really wonderful people, and you render them very clearly and lovingly. And I'm sure that their parents read that with incredible pride. And so just wanted to mention those siblings because they're very special people and it's important to not forget about them because you don't, you know, their parents don't love them any less than the, you know, and it's just. It's so. And I can't even imagine, you know, these guys, what is that like, if that happens to your sibling, I mean.
Rachel Clarke
Well, one of the things that really struck me talking as. Sorry, it feels very strange. Keely and Caitlin, I hope you don't mind me talking about our conversation when you're there listening. But when we talked about all of these events, one of the things that really struck me almost more powerfully than anything else was how these two little girls who are now young women in this audience, how they responded to their beloved little sister lying in intensive care. And one of the incredibly hard things about a serious brain injury is you don't look like there's anything wrong with you. You look like you're sleeping. You're just going to open your eyes and wake up, but you can't because your brain is dead. And these two little girls, 11 and 13, were sort of plunged into this situation. Kira was breathing with the help of a machine, a ventilator. And what I was astonished by, and this is in the way that the nurses who were caring for Kira and their family described it, these girls came in and basically love bombed the hell out of this room and bombarded sleeping apparently sleeping little Kira with love and joy, and immediately set up her favorite song on the mobile phone. Painted her fingernails orange because she loved orange. It was her favorite color. Brought all her fluffy toys and just talked to her as though she was their living sister. And the main organ donation specialist nurse, a woman called Sarah Crosby, who supported Kira and her family, said when she walked into the room, she couldn't believe it because she thought it was going to be somber and bleak. And she walked in, and because of what the girls had done, she felt like she was walking into this bath of love. It was just pure love. And I know as a doctor who cares for adult patients who often have children coming in to visit them, it's so easy to underestimate kids in hospital. But whether they're the patient or they're the sibling or son or daughter, and they often sort of get forgotten about, kids don't understand. We won't talk to them because, you know, they're just kids. And it was so obvious that these two little girls knew exactly what was happening with their sister. And they weren't behaving like this because they didn't understand what was happening. They were behaving like this because they understood what was happening. And that moved me. And it seemed terribly important to write about that.
Coco Khan
I will say that I found many sessions of the book acutely painful to read, very difficult, but anytime you got to the siblings, I just wanted to like. It was just such beautiful expressions of love. So thank you for that. One of the things that comes across so vividly is that an organ transplant still feels like a kind of miracle. There's so much tension and jeopardy in the story you tell. You write about the many things that need to go right and could easily have gone wrong, starting even with the doctor who happens to be on the scene at Kara's accident.
Rachel Clarke
Yeah. So this is remarkable. And we didn't really know this. I discovered this during the course of the research for the book. So the accident took place on a dual carriageway, and it just so happened that a very junior doctor, who hadn't even finished his first year as a doctor, had been on holiday in Cornwall, so happened to be on his motorbike with his girlfriend coming back from his holiday. And because he was on a motorbike when they saw a plume of smoke and realized that this stationary traffic, they suddenly hit the jam must have been caused by a car crash, he thought, I'd better weave through the traffic to see if I can help. If he hadn't been on a Motorbike, he wouldn't have been able to do that. When he got there, Kira's heart was not beating. And he organized the public and told them how to safely get her out of the car. So literally, there were members of the public, as, you know, probably most people in the room would be standing, thinking, how do we help? What do we do? And he organized them and got them doing roadside cpr, chest compressions, rescue breaths to try to keep Kira alive. And if that hadn't have happened, her organs would not have been oxygenated and she would have died at the roadside. And Max and the other people whose lives were saved, that probably never would have happened. So the serendipity, all the little things that had to go right are extraordinary. And then beyond that, any transplant, there are literally hundreds of people in the NHS behind every transplant. And we're really used to hearing these bad news stories about the nhs. You know, there's lots of things going wrong, but, boy, does it work well in a crisis. And hundreds of people in different hospitals were just going the extra mile. Absolutely. Trying to do their best to support Kira and her family once they had made the decision to donate her organs, to do everything to keep these organs healthy. Because that heart in a freezer box, and it literally looks like the kind of box you might have filled with beers to go to the beach. That heart was the promise of life for Max. So it's amazing to think of everything that's happening behind the scenes.
Conor
Hi, everyone. I'm Conor, head of programming at Intelligence Squared. As we head into the festive season, what is, for many of us, a time of comfort, celebration and gatherings round a table? Most of us won't think twice about the clean water running from our taps that make it all possible. But for millions of people around the world, this is something they simply don't have. That's why here at the Intelligence Squared podcast, we're proud to partner with WaterAid, a charity working to change this and to shine a spotlight on something that connects us all. In a special episode of our podcast, journalist Coco Kahn speaks to Ameca Godfrey, WaterAid's executive director of International programs. Amica has spent more than 25 years working across the world in the water, sanitation and hygiene sector. She shares powerful stories about how clean water keeps children in school, helps mothers support their families or run businesses, and unlocks potential for entire communities. To hear the full conversation, just search Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts, and listen to the episode titled Everything Starts with water, released on 17 December. Listen to the full episode now on the Intelligence Squared podcast. If you've shopped online, chances are you've bought from a business powered by Shopify. You know that purple shop pay button you see at checkout? The one that makes buying so incredibly easy? That's Shopify. And there's a reason so many businesses sell with it. Because Shopify makes it incredibly easy to start and run your business. Shopify is the commerce platform behind 10% of all e commerce in the US. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today@shopify.com promo. Go to shopify.com prom.
Mia Sorrenti
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Rachel Clarke
So good, so good, so good.
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Coco Khan
I was just reminded of the fact that when I was 24 years old and I was moving New York to Los Angeles, the plane pulled away from the Jetway for me to move across the country. And we pulled away and then the captain goes, oop, We've been asked to return to the Jetway and fly a human heart to Los Angeles.
Rachel Clarke
Amazing.
Coco Khan
Yeah. Okay. The medical history and innovations behind organ transplants, as well as telling these personal stories so sensitively, you also weave in lots of medical research and history to show how this transplant was made possible. One fascinating innovation is stitching. Can you talk about how surgeons learned to stitch blood vessels and stitch a heart into a human body?
Rachel Clarke
Yes. And this is very dear to me, the story of stitching, because it's fair to say that cardiothoracic surgery is a very male dominated medical specialty. And in the kind of 1950s, 1960s, when people were really getting heroic with heart surgery, it was all men. It's one of the big ultimate machismo specialties. But at the start of the last century, nobody would even consider, consider attempting to operate on the heart for a very simple reason. It is constantly moving. The whole heart is doing that all the time. So how on earth do you operate safely on something that's moving? Maybe you can stop it, but then the patient's going to die. So you've got all these particular problems. But one of the particular problems was a very mundane one. Apparently, if you cut a blood vessel and it's a big blood vessel, then that person's going to bleed to death, unless you can somehow repair it, stitch the blood vessels together. And at the turn of the century, in 1903, the French prime minister was assassinated by someone who stabbed him, severed a blood vessel in his abdomen, and he just slowly bled to death because no surgeon in France could stitch together his blood vessels. And there was one surgeon called Alexis Carol who was appalled by this and just thought, we are rubbish if we can't do this. We have to be able to work out how to stitch together blood vessels. And so he decided, I am going to do this. And he ended up winning the Nobel Prize for medicine for working out how to stitch together blood vessels. They're very fragile. If you stick anything into them, they start to clot. So it's really complicated.
Coco Khan
I can't do it.
Rachel Clarke
No, no. I mean, I'm sure you're great at darning your kids socks though, right? So he, he, he, he decided, right, I need to go to the experts. And the best expert was a woman called Madame Le Roudier. And she was A famous world famous embroiderer in Paris and produced all these amazing embroideries. And he went to her and said, tell me your secrets. How do you do this? And she revealed the special haberdashery shops where she got her little new. And she taught him how to coat his silks in vaseline so they didn't damage blood vessels. And he practiced and practiced and practiced and eventually became the first person successfully to stitch together blood vessels. Won the Nobel Prize, which obviously should have been shared by Madame Le Roudier.
Coco Khan
No question, no question. Just a technical question. So this book has a tremendous amount of history in it. I wonder, when you're researching and, you know, getting towards a final draft, how do you determine sort of the amount of history you want to put in it? Do you have a formula or do you just follow your heart, so to speak?
Rachel Clarke
So there's. It's a complicated. It was complicated, this book to structure because there's almost three timelines, there's a hundred year timeline of the medical history and these amazing stories of what led to all the innovations that enable us to transplant organs. There's Max's story that takes place roughly over a year. And there's Kira's story that takes place over a tiny number of days. And I found as I was writing, there were points in Max and Kira's story where almost the act of writing became physically traumatic. And I needed to kind of take a step back and go out and walk the dog because there were moments in this story that are very emotional and very intense. And I realized that the historical story was almost a way of enabling the reader to kind of come out of this intense clock ticking, everything becoming more and more urgent. We could step out of that and learn some of this extraordinary history that added to the real time, the modern story, and weave in and out. So it was almost respite for the reader. And I just intuitively tried to find points in the story where naturally I could step out and tell the next stage of the historical story in a way that hopefully made both more interesting.
Coco Khan
It's really expertly done. I'm sure the organizers are like, please stop asking her technical questions, but I'm gonna keep going.
Rachel Clarke
You've got all the power.
Coco Khan
I do. So did you do all that sequencing yourself? Do you have an editor you like? Did you say, hey, what do you think?
Rachel Clarke
Well, I do have an editor I like. And he's in the audience too. Everyone's in the audience. But I just, I think when I started writing books, I was 100% doctor. And I sort of felt as though writing. The only writing I did was an academic paper where you knew every single word you were going to write before you set pen to paper, you had done your research. You know, it was all structured according to a formula. And I found with writing a book, I discovered it was very important to let go of all of that and just accept that you didn't know where the writing was going to take you, because if you tried to work it out in your head before you started, it just wouldn't work. And you had to almost live with uncertainty in a way that, as a good, obsessive, compulsive doctor, I found really difficult. And I found a really large glass of Malbec was very, very helpful in that respect. So sometimes I would kind of start, have my first glass of Malbec, and then suddenly, at 3am, it was flowing and it helped the words, not the wine. Malbec, of course. But, yeah, you have to sort. Did you find that writing your book that you had to kind of allow yourself to go with the story?
Coco Khan
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, I did. Yeah. I did a weird thing with my book because it was about my son's life and death. I said to my editor, I did a very strange thing, which I did not do, on the first book that I wrote, where I said, you're gonna get stuff from me. At most, seven days will pass and you will have a new sheaf of pages for me. You're gonna see what I'm writing as I'm writing, because this is such difficult stuff to write. So although, yeah, I wrote the whole thing, my editor, Harriet, was very helpful in sequencing it because I felt like I knew how to produce the raw materials for it, but I was so close to it, even chronologically, because my book came out four years after Henry died, which is a nanosecond if it's your child who dies. And so I said, I'd like an extra pair of eyes on this. And, you know.
Rachel Clarke
My poor husband has that role in all my books. So he. I don't think he wants this role in the slightest, but he's forced to have it. So each chapter or each section, I force him to read it real time as it's coming in and edit. And he's. He sometimes sort of begs for mercy and tries to get out of that essential task of marriage and doesn't get out of it.
Coco Khan
Now, how did you go about tracking everyone down in the NHS and getting their stories? I mean, because that's some Serious reportage you're doing there. What was that like?
Rachel Clarke
Well, so I used to be a journalist before I retrained as a doctor, so I had some skills tracking people down. The most important people were the two families. So that was the first step. And I didn't approach anybody else until I had met both families several times. Then I talked to the organization, NHS Blood and Transplant, which is in charge of all organ donation, because, again, I felt if they are not comfortable with the idea of this book, I don't want to write it. So I sat down with them and said, this is what I'd like to do. Are you happy with this? You could read it. In fact, I really want you to read it before it's published. It has to be accurate. And they said yes. And actually, that was very helpful because then when I started to get in touch with all of the NHS staff, staff involved, I was able to say, I already have done this. And everybody's first concern is, are Kira and Max's families happy? And I was able to say yes. And it was really interesting doing the interviews because most of the people I interviewed had never talked about their role in the story in the way that they did to me. And a lot of the interviews were incredibly emotional. And so, to take an example, Sarah, the amazing organ donation nurse, who is just one of those fabulous NHS professionals, she and I sat down and kind of cried for four hours as she told this story, because she loves the whole of Kira's family. You know, she absolutely loves the Ball family, Loved Kira, found it an honor to do the work she did with that family. And it was deeply distressing to her to see what is heartbreaking for all of us, a little child whose life has been cut down at that age. And I think, in a way, it was quite therapeutic for some of the staff to talk about that, because all healthcare professionals, you have a really important job to do. You have to put your emotions to one side. You can't be crying as a doctor if you're supporting somebody who's sick. You need to do your job, but you're still human beings and it still affects you. And you just take that away and think about it away from work. And I think with organ transplantation, especially when it involves children, everybody involved just knows the enormity of this gift that a family is making to try and bring good from a bad situation. And it's humbling and it's amazing. And you know that you're in the presence of the best of human nature. So the interviews were all incredibly emotional.
Mia Sorrenti
Thanks for listening to Intelligent Story Squared. This episode was produced by Ginny Hooker and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings. Become a member@intelligencesquared.com membership and to join us at future events, head to intelligencesquared.com attend to see our full events program. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.
Conor
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Coco Khan
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Conor
Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us?
Coco Khan
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Mia Sorrenti
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Rachel Clarke
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Coco Khan
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Rachel Clarke
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Coco Khan
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Date: December 21, 2025
Host: Intelligence Squared
Guests: Rachel Clarke (palliative care doctor, author, Women’s Prize winner), Rob Delaney (actor/comedian, host), Coco Khan (moderator, author)
This deeply moving live episode features Dr. Rachel Clarke, palliative care physician and acclaimed author, discussing her 2025 Women’s Prize-winning book, The Story of a Heart. The conversation, moderated by Coco Khan and hosted by Rob Delaney, takes place at the Kiln Theatre with members of the families involved in the heart transplant at the center of the story present in the audience. Through personal testimony, medical history, and ethical reflection, the episode explores themes of loss, hope, altruism, and the life-saving miracle of organ donation, focusing on the true story of a young girl whose donated heart saved the life of another child.
Rachel Clarke:
Coco Khan:
This episode is testament to the power of storytelling rooted in compassion, medical science, and ethical care. Rachel Clarke and the host team offer listeners a glimpse into both the medical miracle and the emotional toll of organ donation, highlighting the unsung heroism of families and NHS staff. The intertwining of personal narrative, technical insight, and historical context brings depth and humanity to a story that resonates with audience members and listeners alike.
End of Part One Summary
[Questions from the audience and further reflections expected in Part Two.]