DOCTOR HANDSOME aka James Hamblin (the Preventive Medicine doctor above) and Nervous Nelly aka Katherine Wells (executive producer of many creative things) join me many mornings as I walk our Bedlington Terrier on a tightly constrained two km radius of our home in Ireland. I listen to their prescriptions for Social Distance, because their podcast from The Atlantic seems to drop into my podcatcher around sunrise many mornings just as our dog announces it's time. This morning, I reinforced my prejudice against being admitted to the hospital for something as critical as COVID-19. Actually, I became more acutely aware of underlying conditions that erode my health.
The on-air chemistry between Hamblin and Wells during their podcast sparks memories arising from the years I spent as an trans-Pacific air evacuation pilot. In the 80s, I flew sick people in my airborne hospital from remote locations to land-based hospitals in the Philippines and Hawaii. To my ears, the engaging conversations between Dr Handsome and Katherine Wells reminds me of the banter I enjoyed with air evac nurses. As a pilot, I got used to the sardonic intercom conversations I would have with the hospital staff in the back as the crew in the pointy end of the plane tried to fly routes free of turbulence. It seems we could never find a smooth enough ride. And it seemed we never arrived fast enough.
There are segments in the Social Distance podcast that remind me of the tension I often felt as we tried to reach a critical care facility before a sick person's luck ran out. There are more hope-filled minutes on the Social Distance podcast than sad stories. I'm happy to have plugged into them. And when we're free to talk over the counter to the staff of O'Mahony's Books, I'm getting Clean: The New Science of Skin.
[Bernie Goldbach listens to 12 different podcast shows every week so he's better prepared when asking creative students from the Clonmel Digital Campus about what they see as Emerging Trends in Games and Tech.]
