Medicine and the Healing Arts

About Medicine and the Healing Arts

A podcast from the MIT Global Humanities Initiative tapping into historically rooted medical knowledge as a resource to think about medical practice and public understanding of health and well-being. Hosted by Michael Stanley-Baker and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, the series brings together scholars and practitioners to discuss what history can teach us about the big challenges faced by medicine in the world today. www.asianmedicinezone.com (https://www.asianmedicinezone.com/s/medicine-and-the-healing-arts?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Hosted by Michael Stanley-Baker and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, and presented by the MIT Global Humanities Initiative

Category

education · health & fitness

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

5 May 2026

Latest episode

18 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

5 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   18 Sept 2026

   Pandemic Medicine: A Conversation with Prof. Kathryn Ibata-Arens on Innovation, Biodiversity and Global Health

   In this episode of Medicine and the Healing Arts, hosts Profs. Michael Stanley-Baker and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim speak with Prof. Kathryn Ibata-Arens about pandemic medicine, pharmaceutical innovation, traditional medicines and the politics of access to care. Prof. Aarons is a political scientist whose work explores biomedical innovation, entrepreneurship and science and technology policy across Japan, China, India and beyond. Her book Pandemic Medicine: Why the Global Innovation System is Broken and How We Can Fix It examines the business and politics of global health, asking why the current system produces enormous profits for some while failing to deliver equitable access to essential medicines for many. The conversation begins with Prof. Aarons’ own journey into the study of medicine, innovation and political economy. She reflects on her experiences as a Japanese American conducting research in Japan, where Kampo and other traditional medicines are integrated into everyday healthcare, and on a life-changing encounter in China with Dr. Liu, a traditional Chinese medicine doctor whose intervention during her husband’s cancer treatment became one of the seeds for Pandemic Medicine. Together, Michael, Ronit and Kathryn discuss the place of traditional and plant-based medicines in global health, and the ways in which these forms of knowledge are often excluded, undervalued or absorbed into pharmaceutical systems. They explore the role of patents, intellectual property, vaccine nationalism, evergreening and the global innovation system, asking who gets to own medical knowledge and who benefits when healing becomes a source of profit. The episode also turns to biodiversity, medicinal plants and the future of biopharmaceuticals. Kathryn reflects on the risks of overharvesting, extinction and the loss of traditional medical expertise, while also considering the promise and danger of new technologies such as digital sequence information, biologics and AI-assisted drug discovery. At the heart of the episode is a question that runs throughout the series: what would it mean to think of medicine not only as an industry, but as a common good? How might scholars, practitioners, policy makers, communities and companies imagine more ethical systems for sharing knowledge, protecting biodiversity and supporting human flourishing? Subscribe to Medicine and the Healing Arts wherever you get your podcasts for thoughtful conversations with scholars and practitioners on Asian medicine, religion, history, healing and the questions they raise for health today. Links and resources: * Medicine and the Healing Arts pillar, MIT Global Humanities: https://comparativeglobalhumanities.mit.edu/pillars/healing-arts-and-human-well-being/ (https://comparativeglobalhumanities.mit.edu/pillars/healing-arts-and-human-well-being/) * Prof. Kathryn Ibata-Arens: https://www.kathrynibataarens.com/ (https://www.kathrynibataarens.com/) * Ibata-Arens, Kathryn C. Pandemic Medicine: Why the Global Innovation System Is Broken, and How We Can Fix It. Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2021. https://www.rienner.com/title/Pandemic_Medicine_Why_the_Global_Innovation_System_Is_Broken_and_How_We_Can_Fix_It (https://www.rienner.com/title/Pandemic_Medicine_Why_the_Global_Innovation_System_Is_Broken_and_How_We_Can_Fix_It) * Typology of Innovation System Architectures (TISA) framework: See Pandemic Medicine, Chapter 1. * Ibata-Arens, Kathryn C. Beyond Technonationalism: Biomedical Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Asia. Stanford University Press, 2019. https://academic.oup.com/stanford-scholarship-online/book/31573 (https://academic.oup.com/stanford-scholarship-online/book/31573) * China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences: https://en.cacms.ac.cn/ (https://en.cacms.ac.cn/) * Tu Youyou and the discovery of artemisinin: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2015/tu/facts/ (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2015/tu/facts/) * On the regulation of Kampo medicine in Japan: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25043783/ (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25043783/) * Nelson Mandela, South Africa and the 1998 pharmaceutical companies lawsuit: https://msfaccess.org/1998-big-pharma-versus-nelson-mandela (https://msfaccess.org/1998-big-pharma-versus-nelson-mandela) * Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-sharing: https://www.cbd.int/abs (https://www.cbd.int/abs) * Max Planck–NTU Centre for Biocultural Worlding: https://ntu.ccasingapore.org/researchs/max-planck-ntu-singapore-centre-for-biocultural-worlding/ (https://ntu.ccasingapore.org/researchs/max-planck-ntu-singapore-centre-for-biocultural-worlding/) Resources available for download on asianmedicinezone.com: * Diagram showing Typology of Innovation System Architectures (TISA) framework * Ibata-Arens, Kathryn C. Pandemic Medicine: Why the Global Innovation System Is Broken, and How We Can Fix It. Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2021 (excerpt). * Ibata-Arens, Kathryn C. Beyond Technonationalism: Biomedical Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Asia. Stanford University Press, 2019 (chapter 1). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.asianmedicinezone.com (https://www.asianmedicinezone.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

2. 

   17 Aug 2026

   Making Modern Ayurveda: A Conversation with Prof. Projit Mukharji on Ayurveda, Race and Medicine

   In this episode of Medicine and the Healing Arts, hosts Profs. Michael Stanley-Baker and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim speak with Prof. Projit Bihari Mukharji about Ayurveda, colonialism, race science and the making of modern medical knowledge in South Asia. Prof. Mukharji is a historian of science and medicine whose work explores how medical traditions are shaped through encounters between people, institutions, technologies, political movements and forms of knowledge. In the conversation, he reflects on his own intellectual trajectory, from growing up in West Bengal and studying in India, to working with David Arnold at SOAS, teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, and returning to India to join Ashoka University. Together, Michael, Ronit and Projit discuss how we might think about traditional medicine beyond simple oppositions between “modern” and “traditional”, or “Western” and “non-Western”. They explore Ayurveda not as a fixed inheritance from the past, but as a living and changing field shaped by print culture, markets, practitioners, bottles, pocket watches, stethoscopes and other small technologies. The episode also looks at Projit’s idea of “braided sciences”: a way of understanding medical knowledge as something made through the creative weaving together of different strands, rather than through the meeting of two separate and unchanging systems. From Ayurvedic pulse-taking to medicated hair oil bottles travelling from Calcutta to Philadelphia, the conversation asks how objects can transform the ways bodies, medicines and healers are understood. In the second half of the episode, the discussion turns to race science, nationalism, genetics and the politics of remembering and forgetting. Projit reflects on his book Brown Skins, White Coats, the afterlives of colonial categories, and the ways scientific knowledge can become entangled with national identity, exclusion and claims about who belongs. At the heart of the episode is a question that runs throughout the series: how can the history of medicine help us think more carefully about knowledge, power, healing and the many ways human beings have understood the body? Subscribe to Medicine and the Healing Arts wherever you get your podcasts for thoughtful conversations with scholars and practitioners on Asian medicine, religion, history, healing and the questions they raise for health today. Links and resources: Prof. Projit Mukharji:https://hss.sas.upenn.edu/people/projit-bihari-mukharji (https://hss.sas.upenn.edu/people/projit-bihari-mukharji) Prof. Projit Mukharji’s blog:https://web.sas.upenn.edu/mukharji/ (https://web.sas.upenn.edu/mukharji/) Projit Mukharji, Brown Skins, White Coats: Race Science in India, 1920–66:https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo183632345.html (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo183632345.html) Projit Mukharji, Doctoring Traditions: Ayurveda, Small Technologies, and Braided Sciences:https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo23996931.html (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo23996931.html) Projit Mukharji, Nationalizing the Body: The Medical Market, Print and Daktari Medicine:https://anthempress.com/books/nationalizing-the-body-hb (https://anthempress.com/books/nationalizing-the-body-hb) Actor-Network Theory:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%e2%80%93network_theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%e2%80%93network_theory) Subaltern:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaltern_(postcolonialism) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaltern_(postcolonialism)) Prof. David Arnold:https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/people/staff_index/d_arnold/ (https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/people/staff_index/d_arnold/) David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India:https://www.ucpress.edu/books/colonizing-the-body/paper (https://www.ucpress.edu/books/colonizing-the-body/paper) Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks :https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/313127/black-skin-white-masks-by-fanon-frantz/9780241396667 (https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/313127/black-skin-white-masks-by-fanon-frantz/9780241396667) Saidiya Hartman - critical fabulation:https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/298/4088 (https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/298/4088) India’s Ministry of AYUSH:https://ayush.gov.in/ (https://ayush.gov.in/) Prof. Judith Farquhar:https://anthropology.uchicago.edu/directory/Judith-B-Farquhar (https://anthropology.uchicago.edu/directory/Judith-B-Farquhar) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.asianmedicinezone.com (https://www.asianmedicinezone.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

3. 

   10 Jul 2026

   Traditional Medicine on the World Stage: Reflections from the WHO Global Summit in Delhi

   In this episode of Medicine and the Healing Arts, hosts Profs. Michael Stanley-Baker and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim reflect on their visit to Delhi, India, where they took part in the Second WHO Global Summit on Traditional Medicine. The summit brought together practitioners, scholars, policy makers, ministers of health, healers and delegates from around the world to consider the place of traditional medicine in contemporary health systems. For Michael and Ronit, it was an opportunity to see many of the questions at the heart of this podcast playing out on a global stage: can mainstream biomedicine and traditional medical systems work together? What happens when different ways of knowing and treating the body meet? And can history help us think more clearly about the future of medicine? Together, they discuss the atmosphere of the summit, the diversity of people and practices represented there, and the challenge of thinking across different medical traditions without reducing them to a single model of evidence or efficacy. They reflect on examples from India, China, Iraq, Brazil, Canada, Mongolia and beyond, asking what it might mean to become not only medically bilingual, but medically polyglot. The conversation also explores the role of history in understanding medicine today. Michael and Ronit consider how the movement of medical knowledge across regions, traditions and time periods can help us rethink the relationship between traditional medicine, biomedicine, policy, intellectual property, data, and lived experience. At the heart of the episode is a question that runs throughout the series: how can different cultures, histories and knowledge systems help us imagine more open, ethical and plural ways of thinking about health, healing and human flourishing? Subscribe to Medicine and the Healing Arts wherever you get your podcasts for thoughtful conversations with scholars and practitioners on Asian medicine, religion, history, healing and the questions they raise for health today. Links and resources: Second WHO Global Summit on Traditional Medicine - full summit recordings:https://tm-summit.org/2025/ (https://tm-summit.org/2025/) WHO Traditional Medicine Global Library - a global resource including multimedia documentation, peer-reviewed articles, policy papers and more: https://tmgl.org (https://tmgl.org/) First WHO Global Summit on Traditional Medicine: https://tm-summit.org/2023/ (https://tm-summit.org/2023/) WHO Global Traditional Medicine Centre, Gujarat: https://www.who.int/teams/who-global-traditional-medicine-centre/overview (https://www.who.int/teams/who-global-traditional-medicine-centre/overview) International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine(IASTAM): https://iastam.org/ (https://iastam.org/) WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy 2025–2034: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240113176 (https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240113176) Medicine and the Healing Arts pillar, MIT Comparative Global Humanities: https://comparativeglobalhumanities.mit.edu/pillars/healing-arts-and-human-well-being/ (https://comparativeglobalhumanities.mit.edu/pillars/healing-arts-and-human-well-being/) MIT Comparative Global Humanities: https://comparativeglobalhumanities.mit.edu/ (https://comparativeglobalhumanities.mit.edu/) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.asianmedicinezone.com (https://www.asianmedicinezone.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

4. 

   12 Jun 2026

   Health, Culture and the Arts: A Conversation with Dr. Nils Fietje of the WHO

   In this episode of Medicine and the Healing Arts, hosts Profs. Michael Stanley-Baker and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim speak with Dr. Nils Fietje about the role of culture, arts and the humanities in shaping health and well-being. Dr. Fietje is based at the Behavioural and Cultural Insights unit at the WHO Regional Office for Europe. With a background in English literature and the cultural history of medicine, he now works at the intersection of culture, public health and policy, asking how cultural contexts affect the ways people understand illness, care, pain, treatment and well-being. Together, Michael, Ronit and Nils explore how someone with a PhD in English literature came to work at the WHO; what culture has to do with public health; and why the humanities matter for medicine today. They discuss the growing field of arts and health, including the evidence that artistic and cultural participation can support mental health, social connection and physical well-being. The conversation also looks at social prescribing, the idea that a GP might one day prescribe a museum visit, a choir, a nature walk or another form of cultural engagement alongside more conventional forms of care. More broadly, the episode asks how culture can help us rethink what counts as evidence, what kinds of knowledge matter in medicine, and how health systems might better respond to the complexity of human experience. Subscribe to Medicine and the Healing Arts wherever you get your podcasts for thoughtful conversations with scholars and practitioners on Asian medicine, religion, history, healing and the questions they raise for health today. Links and resources: Dr. Nils Fietje profile from the Culture for Health project:https://www.cultureforhealth.eu/inspiration/how-the-arts-entered-the-who/ (https://www.cultureforhealth.eu/inspiration/how-the-arts-entered-the-who/) The evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being — scoping review:https://bci-hub.org/documents/what-evidence-role-arts-improving-health-and-well-being-scoping-review (https://bci-hub.org/documents/what-evidence-role-arts-improving-health-and-well-being-scoping-review) The Lancet article on arts, health and well-being:https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)60226-4/fulltext (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)60226-4/fulltext) The BCI Hub, an online resource centre and knowledge repository for emerging research on behavioural and cultural factors that affect health behaviour, in collaboration with the WHO Collaborating Centre at the University of Exeter:https://bci-hub.org/ (https://bci-hub.org/) NHS Social prescribing (England):https://www.england.nhs.uk/personalisedcare/social-prescribing/ (https://www.england.nhs.uk/personalisedcare/social-prescribing/) UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport 2024 report on culture, health and wellbeing:https://www.gov.uk/guidance/culture-and-heritage-capital-research-and-outputs (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/culture-and-heritage-capital-research-and-outputs) Daniel Moerman, Meaning, Medicine and the ‘Placebo Effect’:https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/meaning-medicine-and-the-placebo-effect/C189929ABE972E5D4C7FE32008EE8838 (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/meaning-medicine-and-the-placebo-effect/C189929ABE972E5D4C7FE32008EE8838) Subscribe to be notified when future episodes are released:https://www.asianmedicinezone.com/s/medicine-and-the-healing-arts (https://www.asianmedicinezone.com/s/medicine-and-the-healing-arts) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.asianmedicinezone.com (https://www.asianmedicinezone.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

5. 

   5 May 2026

   Introducing the Medicine and the Healing Arts Podcast: Ancient Medicine, Modern Questions

   Welcome to the very first episode of Medicine and the Healing Arts, presented by the MIT Global Humanities Initiative. In this opening episode, hosts Profs. Michael Stanley-Baker and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim introduce the podcast and reflect on the paths that brought them to the history of medicine and the healing arts. They share how their thinking and scholarly practice have developed over time, the questions that continue to animate their work, and some of the encounters, insights and formative moments that have shaped the way they understand medicine, healing, history and care. Across the series, Michael and Ronit will be joined by scholars, practitioners and thinkers to explore historically rooted medical knowledge as a resource for rethinking health, illness, care and well-being in the present. Together, they consider how different cultures and traditions have understood the body, healing, suffering, environment and the meaning of health. This first episode sets out the central questions of the podcast: what can ancient Asian medicine, global healing traditions and the long history of medical knowledge teach us about the challenges facing medicine today? Subscribe to Medicine and the Healing Arts wherever you get your podcasts for thoughtful conversations with scholars and practitioners on Asian medicine, religion, history, healing and the questions they raise for health today. Links and resources: * MIT Global Humanities Initiative- Medicine and the Healing Arts pillar: https://comparativeglobalhumanities.mit.edu/pillars/healing-arts-and-human-well-being/ (https://comparativeglobalhumanities.mit.edu/pillars/healing-arts-and-human-well-being/) * Life of Breath project: https://lifeofbreath.webspace.durham.ac.uk/ (https://lifeofbreath.webspace.durham.ac.uk/) * Asian Medicine and COVID 19 Special Issue: https://brill.com/view/journals/asme/16/1/asme.16.issue-1.xml (https://brill.com/view/journals/asme/16/1/asme.16.issue-1.xml) * IASTAM: https://iastam.org/ (https://iastam.org/) * IASTAM COVID webinars: https://iastam.org/category/webinars/ (https://iastam.org/category/webinars/) * NTU and Max-Planck Center for Bio-Cultural Worlding: https://ntu.ccasingapore.org/researchs/max-planck-ntu-singapore-centre-for-biocultural-worlding/ (https://ntu.ccasingapore.org/researchs/max-planck-ntu-singapore-centre-for-biocultural-worlding/) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.asianmedicinezone.com (https://www.asianmedicinezone.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

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