In the Same Vein

Three interviewees in one episode! Kelly Spahr, a chaplain and a master's student in health humanities and bioethics, co-hosts this interview in which we talk to Jeffrey Breau, Tara Deonauth, and Paul Gillis-Smith about their article "Ketamine Integration Chaplaincy: A Novel Spiritual Care Approach to Psychedelic Integration," published in 2025 in the journal Anthropology of Consciousness. This is our first episode focusing on chaplaincy, so we initially discuss what chaplains do before diving into how chaplains interact with patients taking ketamine for treatment-resistant depression. Within this broader topic, we talk about meaning-making, the history of chaplaincy, and the guiding ethics of interactions between patients and chaplains. 

With co-host Alan Finkelstein at the helm, we talk to Arthur Caplan about transplant ethics, particularly the ethics around xenotransplantation (using animal material in transplants) and exogenic chimeric humanized organs (organs grown inside genetically engineered animal hosts). Throughout this conversation, we cover the diverse terrain of transplant ethics, talking about human-animal relationships, payment in transplants, the problem of publicity with certain types of transplants, the dead donor rule, and defining death.

Welcome to Season 3 of "In the Same Vein"! In this episode, Raquel Arias-Camison - a recent graduate of the University of Rochester's School of Medicine and Dentistry and current plastic surgery resident - serves as co-host. Alka Menon's recent book Refashioning Race: How Global Cosmetic Surgery Crafts New Beauty Standards serves as the focus for this episode, and we talk about race and cosmetic surgery in the United States and Malaysia, sociological methods, plastic surgery advertising, the ebb and flow of beauty ideals, and the entanglement of medicine and society.

The third season of "In the Same Vein" launches soon! New episodes will be coming every two weeks from October to December 2026. Topics of these episodes include race and cosmetic surgery and transplant ethics.

With co-host Diana Herrmann - family medicine physician and Health Humanities and Bioethics master's student - we speak to historian Helen Frisby, primarily about her chapter "Smelling Death" in the book Religion, Death and the Senses (2024). In this episode, we explore the smellscapes of Victorian funeral rituals, discussing olfactory experiences as diverse as funerary cakes, bee hives and beeswax candles, decaying corpses, and rosemary sprigs. We talk about how smell can be a fleeting memento mori, as it is tied incredibly strongly to memory and nostalgia. We also discuss what we might learn about ourselves and about how we deal with death by looking at (and smelling with) the past.

This discussion - co-hosted by undergraduate Bioethics and Psychology double major Nanki Nagpaul - dives into the ethical quandaries of AI pediatric therapy chatbots. We do this with Dr. Bryanna Moore, focusing most on her recent article (co-authored with Jonathan Herington and Şerife Tekin), "The Integration of Artificial Intelligence-Powered Psychotherapy Chatbots in Pediatric Care: Scaffold or Substitute?" We also discuss Dr. Moore's Psychology Today column, "A Therapist in Every Pocket: Why Access Isn't Everything." Using these pieces as starting points, we talk with Dr. Moore about the potential risks and rewards of this type of technology, the unique needs of children, and what we don't know about the role of AI in mental health care for both adults and children.

We go philosophical in this episode, co-hosted by Ashley Labodda, a Philosophy PhD student at the University of Rochester. We have a discussion that is largely focused on David DeGrazia’s 2021 book A Theory of Bioethics, co-authored with Joseph Millum, PhD. We speak about what new elements and approaches this book brings to the field of bioethics, as well as how many of these ideas apply to philosophy and to ethics beyond bioethics. 

This episode - co-hosted with medical student Priya Mandava - features physician and author Jay Baruch. We take his 2022 book Tornado of Life: A Doctor's Journey through Constraints and Creativity in the ER as our starting point to then discuss narrative and emergency medicine, the role of the humanities in medical education, chaos narratives and patient stories, and the role of compassion in medicine.  

In this episode, medical student and historian of medicine Michael Healey, PhD serves as co-host as we interview Marsha Wittink, MD, MBE, academic chief of the Medicine in Psychiatry Division and medical director of the Medicine in Psychiatry Unit at the University of Rochester Medical Center. We discuss the collaborative and interdisciplinary work that occurs on medicine in psychiatry (med-psych) units, as well as how and why the health humanities and bioethics are intrinsic to that work. We also discuss the biopsychosocial model of medicine, paying attention to patient perspectives, and designing healthcare spaces for patient care.
 
Articles that we read for this interview:  
 
Marsha Wittink et al., “Undervalued Potential of Medical Psychiatry Units to Improve Care for People with Severe Mental Illness,” Psychiatr Serv 74, no. 9 (September 2023): 991-993.
 
Frances K. Barg et al., “A Mixed-Methods Approach to Understanding Loneliness and Depression in Older Adults,” J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci 61, no. 6 (November 2006): S329-339.
 
Marsha Wittink, Paul Duberstein, and Jeffrey M. Lyness, “Late-Life Depression in the Primary Care Setting: Toward a Patient-Centered Future,” in Late-Life Mood Disorders, edited by H. Lavretsky, M. Sajatovic, and C. F. Reynolds III (Oxford University Press, 2012), 500-515.
 
Paul R. Duberstein and Marsha N Wittink, “Person-Centered Suicide Prevention,” in Psychology and Geriatrics: Integrated Care for an Aging Population, edited by Benjamin A. Bensadon (Academic Press, 2015), 153-181.
 
Marsha Wittink et al., “Patient Priorities and the Doorknob Phenomenon in Primary Care: Can Technology Improve Disclosure of Patient Stressors?” Patient Educ Couns 101, no. 2 (February 2018): 214-220.
 
Marsha Wittink et al., “Psychosomatic Medicine in the USA – A Systemic Biopsychosocial Approach in Practice,” in Psychosomatic Medicine, An International Guide, edited by Kurt Fritzsche and Michael Wirsching, 3rd edition (Springer, 2020).

Welcome to Season 2 of "In the Same Vein"! In this episode, Jan Gao - a recent graduate from the MS in Health Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Rochester - serves as co-host. We talk to the historian Agnes Arnold-Forster about her recent book Cold, Hard Steel: The Myth of the Modern Surgeon (University of Manchester Press, 2023). In addition to many other topics, we discuss persistent myths about and stereotypes of the modern surgeon, how historical work can influence health practice and policy, and how those who don't "fit" the stereotype can benefit from learning about surgical myths in culture and practice.