#20 - Re-visioning breast cancer care (with Bettina Wolfgarten)

#20 - Re-visioning breast cancer care (with Bettina Wolfgarten)

Dr. Bettina Wolfgarten is a third generation radiologist specialising in breast cancer. As we unpack what this means, it turns out the technology has changed so much that the job would be unrecognizable to her grandfather. But the throughline remains strong, in Bettina’s telling: a fundamental drive to look into the body as deeply and precisely as possible, embracing emerging technologies in an entrepreneurial way. The courage required to be decisive, and the importance of human trust even when the work is deeply technical. What stands out is how Bettina insists that the way she and the team (including her husband, indefatigable Dr. Matthias Wolfgarten) work should always help the whole person. Their combined practice and complementary offering at Forum Wolfgarten seeks to model what humane, holistic care along the entire patient journey could look like. Beyond their clinical work, they have founded the inter-disciplinary non-profit f.em to promote education, best practices, and civil society engagement at the interface between acute healthcare and healing. It’s truely astonishing what Bettina and Matthias do every day to better diagnose and cure this disease, which affects 1 in 8 women. It’s a passion project of theirs to enlist everyone else to help patients not just to survive, but to experience treatment in an environment of trust, and then to re-enter their lives and thrive again. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrie802897.substack.com [https://carrie802897.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

#19 - Marie & me (a reverse interview)

My very dear friend Marie-Theres Strauss challenged me to trade seats for this one. I think I agreed to talking about the pod, but ended up answering questions about myself. Marie felt that anyone following these conversations is entiteld to know more about where I am coming from. So it’s a bit different and I’m not sure my bio is inherently interesting, but I’ll offer it. What is true though: I believe in live dialogue as a uniquely rich format for learning because there are two subjectivities involved. People always communicate at multiple intellectual, emotional, and embodied levels, briefly mixing their worlds with a third, shared reality. That’s what makes talking to another human being different to chatting with an LLM… Engagement goes both ways. We can be intrigued, or triggered, or bored, or actually inspired. If the conversation is any good, it isn’t controlled by either of us. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrie802897.substack.com [https://carrie802897.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

#18 - Tango: the generous performance of gender (with Soroa Lear, again)

Why do people enjoy conventional couple dances even when they eschew conventional gender roles in real life? Is there some broader virtue that is cultivated in this highly codified, chivalrous language? What’s satisfying about setting aside important aspects of identity for the duration of a dance, and instead, pracitcing a kind of whole-body-listening with a stranger? Soroa Lear is a professional dancer, though she’ll hasten to say that Tango is not her area of expertise. I’ve spoken to her about free-form dancing more generally (episode #4). This conversation is a follow-on from that, in response to popular demand :) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrie802897.substack.com [https://carrie802897.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

#17 - Non-dual reality: the experience & the science (with James Cooke)

What are the stories we tell about the boundaries of Self - and why should we interrogate them with science, contemplative practice, and psychedelics? Dr. James Cooke believes that any deep first-principles understanding of the human condition requires us to tackle the fundamental construct of separateness. He’s not denying that everyday narratives of reality are predictive, rather he’s interested in the psychological wellbeing that exists on the other side of these stories of self. James is a neuroscientist and director of a new contemplative science research programme at Oxford University. He also teaches contemplative practices that draw from non-dual traditions, as well as being an author and podcaster. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrie802897.substack.com [https://carrie802897.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

#16 - Wolfgang, death doula

Nobody isn’t going there, nobody’s parents aren’t going there—and yet so many of us show up at the threshold surprised and unprepared. Modernity seems at a loss when it comes to the dying process. Among the oldest evidence of human meaning making are artefacts to mark this passage, but today we often find ourselves without any conceptual frame that dying doesn’t break. It’s outside the event horizon. Wolfgang Schmidt Ulm Dos Santos is a trained Death Doula. He’s done many other things - men’s fashion, startups - but it is in this work that he now finds joy. We’re old friends, and it was wonderful to hear him speak about this unexpected calling. Not entirely inappropriate in the run-up to Easter perhaps. To see how an appreciation of mortality is at the root of both the contemplative and the poetic impulse, and maybe all true delight, here’s One Or Two Things by Mary Oliver. In the conversation, we touch briefly on Rilke’s Todeserfahrung. 1 Don’t bother me I’ve justbeen born. 2 The butterfly’s loping flight carries it through the country of the leaves delicately, and well enough to get it where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping here and there to fuzzle the damp throats of flowers and the black mud; up and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes for long delicious moments it is perfectly lazy, riding motionless in the breeze of the soft stalk of some ordinary flower 3 The god of dirt came up to me many times and said so many wise and delectable things; I lay on the grass listening to his dog voice, crow voice, frog voice; now he said, and now, and never once mentioned forever, 4 which has nevertheless always been, like a sharp iron hoof, at the center of my mind. 5 One or two things are all you need to travel over the blue pond, over the deep roughage of the trees and through the stiff flowers of lightning --- some deep memory of pleasure, some cutting knowledge of pain. 6 But to lift the hoof! For that you needan idea. 7 For years and years I struggled just to love my life. And then the butterfly rose, weightless, in the wind.“ Don’t love your life too much,” it said, and vanished into the world.” ― Mary Oliver This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrie802897.substack.com [https://carrie802897.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]