Undisciplinary

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We talk with philosopher Marilyn Stendera about grief as a disruption of lived time and why AI griefbots raise questions that go beyond simple “deception” claims. Stendera talks us through how Heidegger’s world time and clock time can help us to reconceive bereavement, digital legacy, and the pressure to grieve on a schedule. 

Other topics and questions discussed:

• What griefbots and deathbots are, including large language model chatbots trained on the dead 
• Why world time is social, practical, and meaning-laden compared to clock time 
• How death can break shared routines so the clock keeps ticking but time stops making sense 
• Griefbots as a short-term holding pattern that makes the next moment bearable 
• The deeper risk of temporal reduction, smoothing grief into a flatter, easier narrative 
• How chatbots’ constant availability and low friction can reshape memory and future planning 
• Prolonged grief disorder and the norm that grief should fit a standard timeline 
• Seasons, place, and desynchronization, including why grief can feel spatially out of step 
• Consent and curation in end-of-life planning, digital replicas, and posthumous identity 

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Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health. 
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" [email protected] 

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We talk with Órla O'Donovan about how medical museums and university heritage spaces can hide violence in the display cabinets while still shaping what we treat as knowledge, normality, and progress. We discuss with the limits of consent, erasing records, and why real repair demands ongoing reckoning with the past. 

References to topics discussed:

• Órla O'Donovan, University ‘dude walls’ must fall, Community Development Journal, Volume 60, Issue 1, January 2025, Pages 13–17, https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsae050 
• O’Donovan, Órla. "“The Irish giant” and the questions haunting medical museums." bmj 381 (2023). 
• Tasmania government apologises for display of autopsy body parts in museum without consent
• Vial episode over after precious blood comes home to Elcho Island

Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health. 
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" [email protected] 

Send us Fan Mail

We talk with Professor Jon Jureidini about why AHPRA’s adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism alarms many Australian healthcare workers, academics and students. We discuss how a narrow regulatory move can chill speech, fuel vexatious complaints, and sideline collective and intersectional anti-racist strategies in healthcare.

Considering signing the “Joint letter from healthcare workers & those in training to AHPRA regarding adoption of the IHRA definition”. 

Things discussed

• IHRA – Working definition of antisemitism 
• Eliminating antisemitism in healthcare: Joint statement from Ahpra and the Special Envoy
• Antisemitism case of two NSW nurses
• Fiona Stanley ‘ashamed’ after hospital bearing her name cancelled event featuring Palestinian Australian doctors
• 'I was doxxed': UK doctors welcome BMA protections for criticism of Israel
• Human Rights Commission report Racism@Uni Report
• Jon Jureidini’s advocacy for asylum seekers and Obituary for David Isaacs noting his advocacy for refugees.

Some evidence to support claims made

• Two thirds of Israeli’s believe there are ‘no innocents’ in Gaza.
• Kenneth Stern – ‘I drafted the definition of antisemitism. Rightwing Jews are weaponizing it’

Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health. 
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" [email protected] 

Send us Fan Mail

We talk with Peter West-Oram about his new book - Justice, Solidarity and Global Health: From Globalisation to Collaboration - and discuss why solidarity is not automatically virtuous and how it can contribute to exclusion, coercion, and violence. 

We use COVID-19, vaccine conflict, and global injustice to ask what a minimal pro-social solidarity looks like and who gets counted inside the circle of moral concern. 
• solidarity as morally neutral rather than inherently good 
• exclusionary solidarity and the “lone wolf” story that hides communities 
• a minimal threshold for getting along in pluralist society 
• fat positivity as a case of pro-social community under outside hostility 
• three antisocial solidarities: hostility, mistaken, non-malicious exclusion 
• vaccine hesitancy as solidarity with harmful external effects 
• vaccine hoarding and partial policy choices that damage global health equity 
• mandates, reactance, and why trust building is long-term work 
• relational health beyond infection: infrastructure, climate change, and antimicrobial resistance 
• Gaza, “who counts,” and what solidarity demands when people are denied moral standing 

Don't forget to like and subscribe, folks. 

Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health. 
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" [email protected] 

Send us Fan Mail

Dr Lisa Mitchell and A/Prof Diego Silva join us to discuss Netflix’s “Don’t Die” and use Bryan Johnson’s longevity regimen to talk about fear, meaning, and the politics of health. We ask what gets lost when anti-aging turns into an identity, a moral badge, or a business model. 
• Brian Johnson’s “don’t die” project as a story about wealth, control, and death anxiety 
• the tedium of optimization and the way routines become moral signaling 
• longevity culture’s overlap with masculinity aesthetics and looksmaxing 
• confusion between health, longevity, beauty standards, and virtue 
• mind versus body authority and what it means to distrust the mind 
• where philosophy and existential dread sit alongside “longevity science” 
• ageism debates and the gap between chronological age and health 
• level-one basics of preventive medicine versus extreme protocols 
• paranoia, environmental toxins, and auditing everyday life 
• ethical criticism of calling death the “greatest humanitarian challenge” 
• what community, love, and friendship look like across a very long life 

Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health. 
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" [email protected] 

Send us Fan Mail

We chart how social media turns low testosterone into a crisis, selling masculinity, anxiety, and medical fixes to healthy men while skirting regulation. Emma Grundtvig Gram joins us to unpack overdiagnosis, celeb MRI scans, and the manosphere’s grip on health norms.

• harms of screening and the right to balanced information
• direct-to-consumer tests, devices, and influencer advertising
• celebrity-promoted full-body scans and overdiagnosis risk
• low T marketing as a lifestyle and masculinity product
• gendered parallels with menopause messaging and diet culture
• regulation gaps on social platforms and undisclosed conflicts
• cultural costs: emotions framed as failure and narrowing norms

Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health. 
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" [email protected] 

Send us Fan Mail

We return after a hard pause to sit with grief, public safety, and how quickly politics moves to claim tragedy. We point to real solidarity work, reflect on bioethics beyond the moment of death, and share plans for more focused conversations next year.

• pause explained and schedule intentions
• Bondi tragedy and the ethics of listening
• Australia’s uneasy multicultural story and safety
• grief, silence, and limits of social media
• solidarity via Jewish Council of Australia petition
• conference highlights on post-death values
• Luddite lens on AI governance in healthcare
• universities in crisis and ethical refusal
• last year’s themes of love, grief, empathy
• plans to follow up with guests and topics

Go to JewishCouncil.com.au and read the petition about not allowing this to divide us

Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health. 
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" [email protected] 

Send us Fan Mail

Dr. Nanette Ryan discusses gender open parenting, a model allowing children to determine their own gender in their own time without imposing gender expectations based on assigned sex at birth. According to Dr Ryan, this approach creates space for autonomy and protects children from potentially harmful patriarchal gender norms while providing them with knowledge to navigate gender in society.

• Gender open parenting involves non-disclosure of a child's assigned sex at birth except to immediate caregivers
• The approach differs from gender-neutral parenting and gender abolitionism by embracing plurality of expressions
• Three key elements: non-disclosure, creating inclusive environments, and education about gender norms

This conversation is based on Dr Ryan's recent paper:

• Ryan, Nanette. 2025. “Autonomy and Gendering in Childhood”. Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 11 (2). https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/fpq/article/view/21632.

Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health. 
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" [email protected] 

Send us Fan Mail

Dr. Andrea Ford, cultural and medical anthropologist, explores the fascinating world of femtech and period tracking apps, revealing how these technologies are transforming our understanding of bodies, health, and gender. The conversation examines how these digital tools function within surveillance capitalism while promising personal empowerment through data collection.

• Period tracking has evolved beyond fertility planning to become a comprehensive approach to "hormonal health"
• Femtech represents a $50 billion industry that includes apps, wearables, and AI-driven health platforms
• Users track not just bleeding but hundreds of metrics including mood, energy, and physical symptoms
• Post-Roe v. Wade concerns about data privacy have prompted many to delete tracking apps
• "Cycle syncing" encourages planning work and social activities around hormonal phases
• Female tech founders face significant barriers in the male-dominated venture capital world
• Period tracking sits at feminism's central tension: celebrating biological differences versus transcending them
• Newer approaches to menstruation frame it as inflammatory rather than hormonal
• The menopause tech boom reflects changing attitudes about women's health across the lifespan

Check out Dr. Ford's Wellcome Trust-funded research investigating the femtech industry, surveillance concerns, and how digital health is reshaping our relationship with our bodies.

Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health. 
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" [email protected] 

Send us Fan Mail

Five years after COVID-19 upended our lives, we've developed a curious collective amnesia. When was the last time you seriously reflected on playground closures, door-to-door testing teams, or the "disappointing Dan" press conferences? These once-extraordinary interventions now seem like strange artifacts from another era.

Jane Williams shares how COVID researchers now apologetically preface their ongoing work with self-deprecation, as though examining one of history's most significant social and medical disruptions is somehow passé. "I've made the decision to quite actively try not to be rude about my own work," Jane explains, pushing back against this strange cultural shift to minimize the pandemic's continued relevance.

Contrary to prevalent punditry suggesting public trust has been irreparably damaged by pandemic measures, Jane's research with participants across multiple Australian states revealed something surprising: most people would accept similar interventions again if needed – with the crucial caveat that communication and respect must improve. "We'd do it all again, as long as there was a bit more transparency... as long as we were treated better than we were last time," participants consistently stated. This challenges the narrative that procedural justice, rather than the measures themselves, represents the path forward for public health emergency management.

The conversation explores how working patterns have permanently shifted, creating flexibility for some while highlighting inequities for others. The concerning trend of sick days transforming into "work from home while sick" days indicates how pandemic adaptations have sometimes eroded traditional boundaries between work and personal life. Meanwhile, students who experienced educational disruptions during formative years continue navigating the ripple effects alongside broader challenges facing younger generations.

By excavating these pandemic memories and examining their lasting impact, we gain valuable perspective on our changed world. What other aspects of this transformative period deserve more thoughtful reflection before they fade completely from our collective consciousness? Join the conversation by reaching out on Instagram or emailing [email protected].

Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health. 
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" [email protected]