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A warm welcome back today to Greater Manchester GP, Zalan Alam. Today we are talking about Shattered Lands by Sam Dalrymple, which is an incredibly readable and very accessible, though enormous book about the five partitions of British India.


It is something that really captivated me. There are so many brilliant human interest stories and it's really made me understand some parts of history much, much better than I ever did before. It's undoubtedly given me a lot of food for thought. So it's a really, really good nonfiction book, which I would thoroughly, thoroughly recommend and from which there is undoubtedly some accidental CPD.

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A really warm welcome to neurodevelopmental forensic psychiatrist Claudia Camden-Smith today, where we're talking about Patric Gagne's memoir, Sociopath.


This is such an interesting book, which really gripped me, made me think an awful lot, challenged a lot of my thinking, and it's something I've thought a lot about since I finished it. So it has been a real joy to be talking to Claudia today about the book and about some of her own professional reflections around psychopathy. Particularly how prevalent psychopaths. we talk about not reconising female psychopaths of whom the author Patric Gagne obviously is one.It's been a really really interesting conversation and it's an absolutely great book for accidental CPD.

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I'm really, really delighted today to be talking to Selina Flinders about an absolutely wonderful book, These Heavy Black Bones, by Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell.

This is a memoir written someone that some of you may have come across as a very high-level swimmer who swam originally for Kenya and then started to swim for Great Britain and crashed out of professional swimming just before the London 2012 Olympics.

This is a memoir. It has themes of growing up, of being different. There's racism. There are adverse childhood experiences. There is boarding school syndrome. There is safeguarding. There is "safeguarding in affluence". There is abuse masquerading in plain sight as concern and sports coaching. Oh my goodness, there was so much to talk about and I have absolutely loved talking to Selina today about it.

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Welcome to season 12 of the podcast!!! What a season I've got lined up for you this time round. We are starting today with an astonishing book written by an astonishing woman and it is such a treat today to be talking to Maria Milland. Danish obstetrician gynaecologist who has been deployed many times on humanitarian missions in the world. Her book Born at the Gates of Hell is a memoir of her experiences in the Al-Hol camp in Syria.

This is a truly, truly unputdownable memoir. I have gained so much from having read it and it has been a astonishing privilege to meet the incredible human that is Maria.

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I'm taking a little break from recording podcasts over Easter, and I'm really excited that I'm actually going away for a few days. I've got a lot on my to-read pile, which I'm going to be taking with me. Some electronically to avoid filling up my suitcase too full, and some fabulous hard copies of some novels that I am absolutely desperate to read.

So what's coming up in season 12? There's an eclectic selection so far. I've had some amazing emails from publishers and agents about books which are coming out over the next few months. And I am looking forward to reading a book called Six and a Half Days in the City by Isaac Grijalva. This looks to be a really exciting novel written by somebody who is a paramedic in the the USA based in the world of emergency care and I really love the idea and of thinking about a bisexual burnt out EMT called Cameron preparing for a much needed New York City trip, staying with his two best friends whilst exploring the city. His vacation is shadowed by unresolved trauma... N

I was also approached by a fabulous publicist and who often puts me in touch with some really, really cool authors. A big thank you to Ana for recommending to me a novel which comes out in May, which is called Waiting on a Friend by Natalie Adler. This is 1980s historical fiction looking at the AIDS crisis in 1980s New York and particularly thinking about the role that lesbians played in the crisis and that sort of unsung role of friends and carers. The final new book and author that I'm really, really excited about and is a work of nonfiction, which is called Born at the Gates of Hell by obstetrician Maria Milland, who spent nine months working in the Al-Hol refugee camp in Syria. Born at the Gates of Hell, is her book detailing that experience. It's just been published. and And I am really, really looking forward to reading it and talking to Maria.

Of course, I've got lots of non-author guests coming on. I'm really delighted to be welcoming back some old friends and as well as some new people. So I really love Malcolm Gladwell and I was really excited when Sarah Marwick got in touch and asked me if I'd like to talk about The Revenge of the Tipping Point. So that's definitely coming up.


There are a couple of fabulous novels that people want to talk about. Most particularly, I'm really looking forward to talking to Alice Deasy about Cutting for Stone by Abraham Vergese which I think must be one of the novels that's really stayed with me and one of the ones that I just assumed when I started the podcast that someone would want to come on and talk about. . I know i have talked about his amazing second novel, Covenant of Water, but it's really exciting to be able to be talking about Cutting for Stone with Alice.

We've got some nonfiction and the really fascinating book Sociopath by Patrick Gagne, which I very much enjoyed reading. And I'm really excited and to have psychiatrist Claudia Camden-Smith coming on to talk about that.

I'm also welcoming a couple of people who I feel that know through some online education work, much less through podcasting, and who are going to come on and talk about some books which I think sound fabulous. So I'm really looking forward to talking to Lee David about a book called Defy, which I think is really going to be something that is going to have a lot of themes in it and that are really going to work for us. And Lee has got her own podcast, which is called The Choice Space, which I have thoroughly enjoyed exploring. And so I'm really excited to get her to guest with me. I'm also really looking forward to talking to Michael Killshaw about Radical Candor. I know that Kim Scott'd book has really changed a lot of people's lives, par

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A warm welcome today to Ellen Basuk and Daniel Schoonover, the authors of Between Two Worlds, a wonderful mother-son memoir of Daniel's mental health difficulties and diagnosis at the age of 19, schizophrenia, and his mum, Ellen, a psychiatrist's approach to enabling Daniel to live a good life and get the support that he needed. It's a book which really made me think a lot about recovery-oriented care, about children who are seen to be different. about the confines of the school system and recognising that Ellen, a psychiatrist, fought and battled and did things her own way and eventually got elements of care that were going to work for her son. It really made me think about all of the other children growing up with challenges who are not well served by the terribly underfunded and rigid systems that we are currently expecting of people.

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I'm delighted to welcome Shannon Ivey to Bedside Reading today. We are talking about her wonderful memoir, Welcome to the Shit Show, her story of being diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer 10 years ago at the age of 42. It is brilliant to know that Shannon is still with us, still making people laugh, still full of energy and vitality.

I absolutely loved her book. It made me laugh. It made me cry. It made me think. I think most important is Shannon's message that rates of bowel cancer in young and middle-aged women are rising really, really fast. The demographic that we expect to have bowel cancer is not the demographic that does have bowel cancer. Sadly, in the States, far too many women are dying from bowel cancer and are presenting very, very late.

It's been a real pleasure to meet Shannon and talk to her about her book and about some of the work that she is doing to try and change those statistics.

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Sunday 8th of March was International Women's Day and so today, Tuesday 10th is our special International Women's Day themed episode where I am talking to Charley Baker about the horrifying, eye-opening and thought-provoking book that is The New Age of Sexism by Laura Bates.


This is a book which has really changed me. It has opened my eyes to so many aspects of technology which worry me. It has made me think about systemic inequality and gender inequity, society, the world of AI and technology in a way that I had never really considered before. It is an absolutely superb read and I have so enjoyed talking to Charley about it and unpicking some of my feelings about the topic.

Find Charley on X: https://x.com/CharleyBaker1

and on instagram https://www.instagram.com/charleybakerthebookpusher/