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Our guest today is Suzanne O'Sullivan, the author of the book The Age of Diagnosis: Sickness, Health and Why Medicine Has Gone Too Far. Suzanne is a neurologist, clinical neurophysiologist, and writer. She has been a consultant since 2004 and has been at The National Hospital for Neurology and The Epilepsy Society since 2011. Her specialist interests are in epilepsy and in improving services for people who suffer with functional neurological disorders.

Suzanne qualified in medicine in 1991 from Trinity College Dublin. In addition to academic publications in her field, she is an author of award-winning non-fiction books, each focusing on her medical casework.

Her 2016 book, It's All in Your Head: True Stories of Imaginary Illness, won the Wellcome Book Prize, and the Royal Society of Biology's General Book Prize, for "for an accessible, engaging and informative life sciences book written for a non-specialist audience". Her book, The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness, was shortlisted for the 2021 Royal Society Science Book Prize.

We talk about:

• Is there an epidemic of overdiagnosis
• Extending the definitions of disorders
• The rise of ADHD and Autism diagnosis
• The impact of this on either end of the spectrum
• Has this had a positive or negative effect on mental health
• Medicalising natural mood swings and differences
• Illness as identity
• Cancer screening and proactive surgery

Let’s analyse

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Twitter: @whrshallwemeet
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Our guest today is Nick Lane, who offers fresh insights on the theories of the origins of life. He is a Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London.

Nick’s research is on the way that energy flow has shaped evolution over 4 billion years, using a mixture of theoretical and experimental work to address the origin of life, the evolution of complex cells and downright peculiar behaviour such as sex.

He has received many awards for his work. Among them the 2015 Biochemical Society Award for his outstanding contribution to molecular life sciences and 2016 Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize and Lecture, the UK’s premier award for excellence in communicating science.

Nick is the author of five acclaimed books on evolutionary biochemistry, which have sold more than 150,000 copies worldwide, and been translated into 25 languages.

We talk about:

• How it all began deep in the ocean
• The similarity between a cell and the planet
• Is the earth only a giant battery
• How there are no clear definitions of what life is
• How cloning is boring and sex creates difference
• The innovation of multi- over single cell life
• How Genes shouldn’t be in the limelight, while chemistry is doing all the work
• The three domains of life

Let’s go back to the beginning!

Web: www.whereshallwemeet.xyz
Twitter: @whrshallwemeet
Instagram: @whrshallwemeet

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Our guest this week is Guy Standing, who is a British labour economist. He is professor of Development Studies at SOAS and co-founder of BIEN, the Basic Income Earth Network.

He is best known as a long-standing and prominent advocate of Basic Income, but he is also responsible for redefining and revitalizing the term ‘precariat’.

Guy has written extensively about capitalism and labour market policy. Among his many books are Basic income: and how we can make it happen, A plunder of the commons, a manifesto for sharing public wealth, The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay, The Blue Commons: Rescuing the Economy of the Sea.

We talk about:

• A brief history of capitalism
• Rentier capitalism
• The emergence of a precariat
• Plutocracy and Trump
• Will AI liberate us after all
• The dignity of a basic income for everyone
• Realisation and execution of basic income pilots

Let’s debate!

Web: www.whereshallwemeet.xyz
Twitter: @whrshallwemeet
Instagram: @whrshallwemeet