About Defining Moments Podcast: Conversations about Health and Healing
Humans tell stories to make sense of birthing and dying and everything in between. Defining Moments Podcast showcases stories about living well in the midst of inescapable illness, suffering, and hardship. Episodes feature an eclectic group of guests who share moments of uncertainty, innovation, and resilience. Co-hosts Dr. Lynn Harter and Dr. Joe Bianco draw on twenty years of experience in health contexts to spark conversations that move between personal anecdotes and societal health challenges. Each segment is accompanied by articles published in Health Communication and other online resources. Defining Moments Podcast disrupts the silence that too often surrounds vulnerability, and allows narrators and audiences to imagine new normals.
When Stories Heal: Women Navigating Uncertainty and Stigma in Healthcare
How do women find their voice when their health stories are met with silence, skepticism, or stigma? In this deeply personal and powerful episode, Dr. Emily Cripe of Kutztown University joins host Dr. Lynn Harter to explore how women transform private pain into public advocacy. Through raw storytelling and thoughtful reflection, Cripe shares her own experiences navigating uncertain medical diagnoses and misunderstood health conditions. Together, Cripe and Harter examine the communication challenges faced by women in medical contexts—from cesarean births to adult diagnoses of ADHD.
You can read articles featured in this episode in the journal Health Communication at: https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2024.2331999 https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2017.1298953
22 Sept 2025
Narrative Mapping: A Visual Storytelling Process from Relational Spaces
How do we give voice to complex stories that defy words and the conventions of language?
These stories, often of trauma or other profound lived experiences, reside not just in our heads and hearts, but in every cell in our body. Embodied stories are layered, complex, and often chaotic. They vie for expression but lack a means or a format to accommodate them.
In this episode of Defining Moments, Dr. Marie Thompson, Professor of Communication at Wright State University, joins host Dr. Joe Bianco to share her pioneering work on narrative mapping. Narrative mapping is a form of visual storytelling born within a carefully cultivated relational setting. Through deep listening and guided questions, Marie creates space for participants to visually map their emerging stories, creating layered representations of their innermost experiences.
You can read Marie’s articles published in Health Communication at: · https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2024.2414471 · https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2020.1733228
You can see “Cracked but Never Broken,” Megan Westerfeld’s narrative map referenced in the episode, here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cracked-never-broken-barbara-geralds-institute-for-stor-bovzc
12 Sept 2025
Behind the White Coat
As medicine heeds the call of patient-centered care, it is easy to overlook the other person in the clinic room. Physicians, like patients, have stories. Within the everyday demands of clinical practice, however, their stories are seldom invited and remain untold.
In this episode of Defining Moments, medical students Libby Hill and Sumedha Kappagantula join host Dr. Joe Bianco to share their experiences as Executive Producers of Behind the White Coat, an annual storytelling event at Ohio University’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine. Founded in 2019 by medical students, Behind the White Coat invites students, physicians, medical educators, and staff to reveal their defining moments on the path toward medicine. The conversation invites us to reimagine the white coat as a blank page, ready to receive and reveal our innermost stories.
You can learn more about Behind the White Coat and view story archives from previous years here: https://www.ohio.edu/medicine/behind-white-coat. To learn more about the Open Book Project referenced in this episode, listen to Lynn Harter’s conversation with Dr. Tracy Shaub: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-moments-podcast-conversations-about-health/id1456643447?i=1000445540298 and read the accompanying Health Communication article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2018.1551302
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