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A warm welcome back today to GP Kirsty Shires, who's here today to talk with me about Jacqueline Harpman's 1995 novel, I Who Have Never Known Men.

This is an absolutely astonishing book. It is dystopian fiction at its best, I think. It is human, it is connected, it is thought-provoking, it is bizarre. There's so much to think about packed into 200 very short pages. I've thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It's definitely a book I'm going to go back to, and I've really enjoyed talking to Kirsty about it.

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Educated by Tara Westover is one of those books which has really stayed with me since I first read it back in 2018. It's also a book that I just assumed when I started this podcast that somebody would approach me and want to talk about.

It feels astonishing that we've got as far as season 11 before anybody has asked to come on and discuss it. I'm glad I waited, though, because I've thoroughly loved my conversation with Syba Sunny today about the book and about some of the themes.

We think about acceptance. We think about education. We think about self-motivation in learning. The ideas of hiding in plain sight. What is safeguarding? What is not safeguarding? And how do you norm reference a family? It's a brilliant book, and I've really enjoyed thinking about it.

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Welcome to  November 2025 and season 11 of the podcast,. We are celebrating our 4th Birthday in November and my guest today, Claire Le Day aka GP Steph celebrates her 40th birthday in November. Claire/Steph is here to talk about her fabulous med school diaries which have been published as Fear and Loathing in Plymouth. If you are looking for a book to make you think, to take you on a trip back down memory lane, to remember what it was like to be a teenager, to cringe alongside Steph as she recalls some of the excesses of her first and second year at Peninsula Medical School, really this is a great book to be picking up.


So Happy birthday, Claire. Welcome to season 11 of the podcast and Fear and Loathing in Plymouth. Let's go.

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To celebrate the end of season 10 and our 4th birthday, today's episode is a little bit different. I've chosen a small snippet of each of the most downloaded episodes from seasons 1-10.

I hope you'll enjoy a trip down memory lane!

Episodes featured:

S1 Jo Stewart and I discuss Instrumental by James Rhodes

S2 Ed Pooley joins me to discuss Counselling for Toads

S3 Emma Cunliffe and I explore Victoria Cilliers' chilling memoir of abuse I Survived

S4 The most downloaded episode of all time, Ellie corse and I discuss This Winter by Alice Oseman

S5 Kathleen Wenaden and I explore Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

S6 Kirsty Shires and I talk about the anthopological classic medical humaities text The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

S7 Rebecca Henleywillis and I talk about Fern Brady's excellent memoir  Strong Female Character

S8 It's the turn of the memoir of everyone's favourite vicar, The Rev Richard Coles, The Madness of Grief which I loved talking about with Lynsey Bennet

S9 Time for a poem and Beth Osmond guides us through "Ode to Dalya's Bald Spot" by Ahgel Nafis

S10 It's The Anxious Generation and Laura Spells and I talk about Jonathan Haidt's book, the smartphone-free-childhood movement and the great rewiring of childhood

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It is a huge pleasure today to welcome doctor and writer, Majid Parsa. We're talking about The Ayatollah's Gaze: a memoir of the forbidden and the fabulous, which is his first boook. What a book and what a memoir it is. I absolutely loved it. 

I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I picked it up. It has a phenomenal pink cover. It is wise. It is insightful. It is moving. It is very, very funny in places and it was a real window into a world which I might not otherwise ever have known about. This is Majid's story. but it's also the story of a generation of young men in Tehran.

It has really, really made me think, and I loved talking to him about it

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It's a real treat today to welcome one of the authors of Ultra Women, Emma Wilkinson to the podcast. Ultra Women, written by Emma Wilkinson and Lily Canter, is a book which rather defies classification. It is a book about women doing extraordinary things in the fields of endurance sport, but it's very much not a "sports book".

We've got wonderful stories. We've got sociology. We've got history. We've got physiology. We've got a good dose of "invisible women" in there as well.

It's a really, really fascinating, thought-provoking book, which I absolutely loved reading. And it's been absolutely fantastic to talk to Emma today about the book and what we can take away from it.

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Suzanne O'Sullivan's The Age of Diagnosis was hotly awaited and has received a lot of discussion on social media and in the national press.  Ben Tyler and I had both really enjoyed her former books and looked forward to this book.  Overdiagnosis is a bit of a hot topic lately, but as I hope we manage to explore, keeping curiosity and compassion at the forefront of what we do are much more important than making hard judgements.

We mention John Harris' brilliant substack on the book https://maybeimamazed.substack.com/p/why-new-book-the-age-of-diagnosis

and Elke Housmann's BJGP review of the book https://bjgp.org/content/75/754/228

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John Harris' excellent book Maybe I'm Amazed has been one of my non-fiction top reads this year. It was a huge pleasure to welcome James Booth to the podcast to discuss it, and share some of our experiences.  We are both GPs, we are both parents of autistic young people and we both found John's book relatable, funny, warm, moving and necessary.

If you want to know more about the book, here's what the publisher's say:

"In this extraordinary memoir, a father tells the story of how music has opened up the world to his son, one song at a time. Obsessed with music since he was a child, John Harris had no idea that he was in fact preparing himself for the greatest challenge of his life. But so it transpired. When his son James was born, and three years later diagnosed with autism, music became a source of precious connection and endless wonder for both of them.

Maybe I'm Amazed describes how the music of The Beatles, Kraftwerk, Funkadelic, The Velvet Underground, Amy Winehouse and many more were soon woven into the fabric of James's life, becoming an essential part of who he is. It takes us through the struggles of raising an autistic child in a prejudiced world, and uncovers a hidden history of neurodivergence and creativity that casts new light on why notes, chords and lyrics speak so powerfully to the human mind.

Anyone who has fallen in love with a band or heard their life reflected back to them by a song will recognise themselves in the story of this father and his son. And in considering the intense and transcendent way James absorbs and connects with music, it has lessons in listening and living for us all."

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A warm welcome today to Dr. Ahmed Handy, who is here to talk about his memoir, Quacks. We've recorded today my favourite bookshop, which is Scarthin Books in Cromford, near Matlock. If the sound is a little bit different to how you might expect the podcast to sound, I hope you'll bear with us. There were a few people in the background. There were loads of people looking at books, thinking about books, and drinking cups of tea and eating cake in this absolute gem of a place.

It felt like far too good an opportunity to miss to be talking about the book in the most wonderful independent bookstore I can think about, so please enjoy and bear with the sounds of teaspoons and teacups!

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Medication, Mental Illness and Murder. What Really Killed the Crespi Twins? sounds like the title of a true crime book or a thriller. I suppose you could call this a true crime. This is an incredibly good book, which has really, really challenged me. I'm delighted to be welcoming Ed Jones, the author to the podcast today.


It's quite a hard read in places. It's a story about father who was significantly unwell, who was struggling with side effects from medication and who took the lives of his two children and pays the price of consecutive life sentences in US s jail. Not in any way cheerful reading. But I think a really important book. And I've thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Ed today about how we perceive illness, about the role of pharmaceutical companies in marketing drugs in particular ways, about spin and propaganda and really the importance of listening to people, particularly when they perceive that they or somebody else might be at risk.