5. Books, Poetry, Scandal, Writing

Joining Kiri this week in a literary special recorded at the Hay Festival is comedian Ignacio Lopez who heals family wounds through writing. Dr Paul Craddock explains how one of the most prestigious medical journals started as a scandal magazine, Miss Shabnam Parkar shares how poetry helps her perform surgery, and Professor Neil Frude walks Kiri through library bookshelves for mental health treatments.

Best Medicine is your weekly dose of laughter, hope and incredible medicine. Award-winning comedian Kiri Pritchard-McLean is joined by a funny and fascinating panel of comedians, doctors, scientists, and historians to celebrate medicine’s inspiring past, present and future.

Each week Kiri challenges a panel of medical experts and a comedian to make a case for what they think is 'the best medicine', and each guest champions anything from world-changing science, an obscure invention, an everyday treatment, an uplifting worldview, an unsung hero or a futuristic cure.

Whether it’s origami surgical robots, life-changing pineapple UTI vaccines, Victorian scandal mags, denial, sleep, tiny beating organoid hearts, lifesaving stem cell transplants, gold poo donors or even crying - it’s always something worth celebrating.

Hosted by Kiri Pritchard-McLean

Featuring: Dr Paul Craddock, Professor Neil Frude, Ignacio Lopez, Miss Shabnam Parkar

Written by Edward Easton, Mel Owen, Pravanya Pillay, Kiri Pritchard-McLean, Nicky Roberts and Ben Rowse

Producers: Tashi Radha and Ben Worsfield

Theme tune composed by Andrew Jones

A Large Time production for BBC Radio 4