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When the British band, The Who, released their double album, Tommy, in 1969, many of the songs in it became instant classics and served as anthems for the Baby Boomer generation ever since. The album was characterized as a “rock opera,” because when connected, the songs told the story of the “deaf, dumb, and blind kid,” Tommy. The storyline made possible subsequent musicals, first as a movie in 1975, and then as a Broadway play in 1993 and as a revival in 2024. Underlying the storyline in each of these genres are the psychiatric consequences of childhood trauma Tommy experiences. In this episode, we consider the psychiatric conditions Tommy exhibits through selected songs from the original Broadway production, and how they are used in education and training.

Joining us for this purpose is Dr. Anthony Tobia, who is the regional chair in the Department of Psychiatry at the Rutgers School of Medicine and is also the Service Chief of Psychiatry at Robert Wood Johnson Barnabas Health in New Brunswick, NJ. Dr. Tobia also holds a secondary appointment in the Division of General Internal Medicine there. His interests and scholarly work include the value and application of merging popular culture and psychiatry. The Who’s Tommy is among the many cultural works he has found helpful in depicting psychiatric problems for purposes of teaching health professions students and practitioners, and others in roles helping people with mental illness.

Links:

Original Broadway cast album of The Who’s Tommy, 1993

Background on The Who’s Tommy movie, 1975.

The video of Dr. Tobia’s psychiatry grand rounds on the Phantom of the Opera mentioned in the podcast.

Reddit 31 Knights of Halloween didactic at Rutgers during October.


Thanks to Benedict Teagarden, podcast music and culture director, for pointers on how the harmonization in See Me, Feel Me contributes to the meaning of the lyrics.

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: russell.teagarden@theclinicandtheperson.com.

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts, or visit our website.

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Greek tragedies often concern identifiable and universal problems humans have confronted over the millennia. Among these problems are those illness and suffering create. In this episode we draw from Sophocles’ play, Philoctetes, and in particular, how it depicts illness as exile. With our guest, Professor Paul Ranelli, we first cover the characteristics of Greek tragedies that are applicable to illness and suffering (i.e., enduring relevance, catharsis, empathy). We then cover the play, Philoctetes, what it tells about illness as exile, and how it connects to more recent writings on the concept (e.g., Virginia Woolf and Susan Sontag). Lastly, Paul Ranelli talks about an initiative he was involved in with the University of Minnesota Department of Theater Arts and Dance, the Center for the Art of Medicine, the College of Pharmacy Center for Orphan Drug Research, and the playwright Kevin Kling. This collaboration developed and staged an adaptation of Philocteteshighlighting challenges rare diseases pose. Paul describes how it was conceived, developed, produced, and performed. He also talks about how patients, families, students, health care professionals, and others received it. Spoiler alert: they loved it and saw great value in the endeavor.


Primary source

Sophocles. Philoctetes; In The Complete Greek Tragedies, Sophocles II, translated by David Grene; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1957.


Secondary sources

Virginia Woolf. On Being Ill; Ashfield, Ma: Paris Press, 2002.

Susan Sontag. Illness as Metaphor; New York: Doubleday, 1990.

Drew Leder. Illness as Exile: Sophocles’ Philoctetes; Literature and Medicine. 1990(1):1-11.

Vassiliki Kampourelli. Historical empathy and medicine: Pathography and empathy in Sophocles’ Philoctetes. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy. 2022:25:561–575.

Cynda H Rushton, Bryan Doerries, Jeremy Greene, Gail Geller. Dramatic interventions in the tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Lancet. 2020 (Vol 396):305-306.


Links

Russell Teagarden’s blog piece on Philoctetes as prologue to current day issues involving illness as exile, pain, ethics, and moral injury.

Video of Theater of War Productions dramatic reading of Philoctetes performed January 9, 2923.

Video of the play RARE, the University of Minnesota adaptation of Philoctetes.

Video of documentary on development of the play.


Thanks to Dr. Paul Ranelli for his contributing is knowledge, expertise, and wit to this episode.

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: russell.teagarden@theclinicandtheperson.com.

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts, or visit our website.

Executive producer: Anne Bentley

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“Should we worry about the reliability of medical knowledge?” asks philosopher John Huss (University of Akron). We consider this question from the perspective of Thomas Kuhn’s classic, 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn explains how science does not evolve incrementally, one step following another, but rather undergoes wholesale revolutions disconnected from all that came before. He called these revolutions, “paradigm shifts” (to his everlasting regret). While Kuhn draws mostly from astronomy to make his case, we draw from recent and past medical examples to show how his concept applies to medicine as well. We talk about how various groups dependent on reliable medical knowledge (e.g., patients, health care professionals, educators) can be affected by the possibility of major shifts in established approaches to health care at any time. There’s no escape from reality, as the song goes.

Primary Source Citation

Kuhn T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press; 1996.

Links

Russell Teagarden’s related blog posts on According to the Arts:

• Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolution
• Michel Foucault’s book, The Birth of the Clinic

Dr. Barry Marshall’s story of how he and Dr. Robin Warren engineered the change in peptic ulcer disease from acid based to infection based.

The Clinic & The Person Episode 12 (September, 2023), featuring the paradigm shift from lobotomies and other forms of psychosurgery to psychopharmacology.

Sir Brian May’s bio (guitarist for Queen and PhD-level astrophysicist).


Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: russell.teagarden@theclinicandtheperson.com.

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts, or visit our website.

Executive producer: Anne Bentley

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People can have certain desires stemming from their illnesses, for the arts, health, companionship, serenity, and meaning among other possibilities. The scholar, writer, and teacher David B. Morris considers these desires a form of eros that should be taken into account as a part of what people go through with their illnesses and what could potentially help them. We speak with David Morris about the relationship between eros and illness, and evaluate it using examples from art, literature, and theater. We muse about possible applications.

Primary Source Citation

Morris D. Eros and Illness. Cambridge MA; Harvard University Press, 2017


Links

Russell Teagarden’s relevant blog pieces:

• David Morris’ book, Eros and Illness
• Anatole Broyard’s book, Intoxicated by My Illness
• The play, Farinelli and the King
• Montaigne’s essays about his kidney stones

Modigliani’s reclining nude series:

• Reclining Nude, 1917
• Reclining Nude (Nu Couché) 1917–1918
• Reclining Nude (Le Grand Nu) 1919
• Nude on a Blue Cushion 1917

David Morris’ CV

Thanks to David Morris for coming on this episode and providing his thinking on the role of eros in illness.


Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: russell.teagarden@theclinicandtheperson.com.

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts, or visit our website.

Executive producer: Anne Bentley

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Andrew Leland is a major figure as a writer, editor, producer, teacher, and podcaster across the mainstream American cultural landscape. He has contributed to the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Believer, McSweeney’s, Radiolab, The Organist, and 99% Invisible among other respected sources, and has taught at prestigious universities. Amidst it all, he has been progressing towards blindness as a result of retinitis pigmentosa. As his sight diminished to the extent he needed assistance, Leland became motivated to investigate what the world would be for him when his sight was all but gone. In his book, The Country of the Blind, he reports his findings and conclusions. He shares this title with the H.G. Wells story he uses as a touchstone and through line. Cohosts Russell Teagarden and Dan Albrant talk about what can be drawn from Leland’s experiences and from the writers and artists he calls mentors, and how he expects his world will be the same when he is blind as it was before.


Citation:

Andrew Leland, The Country of the Blind, New York, Penguin Press, 2023. (The paperback edition will be available on July 23, 2024).


Links:

• Andrew Leland’s website.
• Russell Teagarden’s blog piece on Andrew Leland’s book, The Country of the Blind.
• A pdf of H.G. Wells’ story, The Country of the Blind.
• Trailer for the Apple TV+ series, See.
• Video clip from Seinfeld featuring Kramer acting as patient for medical students.
• Video clip from Monty Python and the Holy Grail about burning the witch.

Thanks to Andrew Leland for permission to use a clip from the audio edition of his book, The Country of the Blind.

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: russell.teagarden@theclinicandtheperson.com.

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts, or visit our website.

Executive producer: Anne Bentley

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Four years after the Covid pandemic began, as daily life has returned in large measure to its pre-pandemic shape, assessments and reflections about how the pandemic was able to wreak such havoc and how it could be prevented from occurring again are coming forth. Many are technocratic in nature and assume our aims and pursuits will remain the same as before. Micheal O’Siadhail (pronounced mee-hawl o’sheel), in his new book of poems, Desire, says that in addition to technocratic responses to the pandemic (and other threats to civilization covered in the book), we should give serious thought to what we desire. We talk to O’Siadhail about this idea and he reads selected poems from the book that characterize many aspects of what the pandemic put people through collectively and individually. He also talks about how the forms of his poetry convey his thoughts just as his words do, and how poetry, through syntax, sound, meter, and intensity, can add clarity and effectiveness to prosaic prose communicating complex concepts.

Citation:

Micheal O’Siadhail. Desire. Waco, Tx; Baylor University Press, 2023.


Links:

Micheal O’Siadhail’s website.

Russell Teagarden’s relevant blog pieces in According to the Arts:

• Desire
• One Crimson Thread

Previous podcast episode with Micheal O’Siadhail featuring his poems recounting his late wife’s final years with Parkinson’s disease.

Thanks to Micheal O’Siadhail for bringing his enlightened perspectives on what we experienced with Covid through the piercing poetry in his book, Desire.


Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: russell.teagarden@theclinicandtheperson.com.

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts, or visit our website.

Executive producer: Anne Bentley

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We return to the subject of how terrible the HIV/AIDS crisis was at its peak. The first time (Episode 9) we drew from a memoir, documentary film, and a literary novel. This time we feature the graphic memoir, Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371 with the author MK Czerwiec. She created a memoir of her time as a nurse in an HIV/AIDS using the comic medium. Since then, Czerwiec has become a leading figure in Graphic Medicine. We talk to her about the Graphic Medicine field and its many applications, and about the many illustrative and poignant insights her book offers about the AIDS crisis in ways biomedical texts and few of the other arts can do nearly as well.

Links:

Website for Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 372

MK Czerwiec’s website

Graphic Medicine organization website

Russell Teagarden’s blog piece on Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 372 in According to the Arts


Thanks to MK Czerwiec for opening our world to graphic medicine and expanding our understanding of the AIDS crisis through your graphic memoir.

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: russell.teagarden@theclinicandtheperson.com.

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts, or visit our website.

Executive producer: Anne Bentley

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Human behaviors in many segments of society during the Covid-19 pandemic could have been predicted based on literary texts from the past and right up to the moment the pandemic began. In this episode, we compare excerpts from selected literary texts imagining or depicting human reactions to plagues ranging from as far back as 700 years to just one month after the pandemic began with statements made or actions taken during the pandemic. The similarities are uncanny. Russell is inclined to think this means we’re doomed; Dan is not so inclined.

Links:

Links to Russell Teagarden’s blog pieces in According to the Arts on the sources discussed in episode:

• The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio, New York, Penguin Classics, 1972 (written in 1351-1353)
• The Pandemic’s Impact on NYC Migration Patterns, New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer, Bureau of Budget, November 2021.
• Arrowsmith, Sinclair Lewis, In: Sinclair Lewis: Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, Dodsworth, Library Classics of the United States, New York, 2002 (first published in 1925)
• The Betrothed, Alessandro Manzoni, Penguin Books, New York, 1972 (first published in 1827)
• The End of October, Lawrence Wright, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2020

Links to sound clips:

• Romeo & Juliet, Act 5, Scene 2 – Shakespeare at Play
• Contagion (2011) – Steven Soderbergh, director; Scot Z. Burns, writer

Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: russell.teagarden@theclinicandtheperson.com.

Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts, or visit our website.

Executive producer: Anne Bentley