On this episode of The Karol Markowicz Show, Karol sits down with Jonathan Hammel—physician, novelist, composer, and host of the Blood Flow podcast—to discuss his powerful new novel, The Jewish Hospital.
Inspired by the real-life experiences of Hamill's grandmother, who served as a nurse in Berlin's Jewish Hospital during World War II, the conversation explores one of history's lesser-known stories: how a Jewish hospital continued operating in Nazi Berlin while doctors, nurses, and patients lived under constant threat of deportation.
Jonathan explains how years of research, family interviews, and historical records shaped the novel, while also examining the difficult ethical questions medical professionals faced under unimaginable circumstances. He also discusses why the book is being taught in medical bioethics programs, what modern healthcare can learn from history, and why he believes authentic human creativity will remain essential—even in the age of artificial intelligence.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, and welcome back to Carol Mark Woods Show on iHeartRadio.
My guest today is Jonathan Hamil. Jonathan is a Paris
based position and novelist whose debut I'm going to try
not to butcher this today post E Company won the
Hippocrates Book Prize. His excellent new book, The Jewish Hospital,
was inspired by the wartime experiences of his grandmother, who
(00:28):
served as a nurse at the institution during the Second
World War. In addition to his medical work, Hamil is
a pianist, composer, and host of the Blood Flow podcast,
where he interviews leading creators and performers from around the world. Sorry,
from around the world. Hi, Jonathan's so nice to have
you on.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Hi, Carol, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
You're a busy guy. I reading your bio, I was like,
how did he find time to write not one, but
two books? How do you do it?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Truly asking so to Actually this is the fourth book,
but it's because I don't do everything at once, to
be honest. You know, the first book was well twenty
years ago, so it's been a while. Yeah, and you
know it's sequencing basically, but yeah, I think for the
(01:17):
last ten years I've been really focused on this last book,
so it was it really took a long time and
the rest. Yeah, basically, if you all put it in
one sentence, it seems like a lot, but it's not
all at the same time, not all at.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
The same time. So how did you decide to write
the Jewish Hospital? What was the impetus?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
So, as you said in the bio, my grandmother on
my mother's side was a nurse in this Jewish hospital
during the war, and growing up, I grew up in France.
I still live in France, and we used to go
and visit my grandparents in Maine every summer, and I
always kind of remember hearing those words, you know, the
(02:00):
Jewish hospital here and there, going up, and little by little,
as time went by and I went to medical school
and started to be interested in writing and researching more
about the Second World War, I came back to this
story and I got to talk to my grandmother about it.
I got to read nonfiction books, listen to a lot
(02:24):
of interviews. I founded the tapes from my grandmother still
VHS tapes that I got to transform and to digitalize
them and listen to hours and hours of these amazing stories,
and that really gave me the basis for this story,
and little by little I came to this idea that
(02:44):
this should be a novel. Just even though it's based
very largely on true stories, either from my grandmother or
from nonfiction. There's a great book called Refuge in Hell
about the hospital that is really super well research and
what are well written? That was so just. I just
had a lot of material and I decided to really
(03:07):
bring it together to write it as a novel would
be the best way to go to really get to
the truth of these characters.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Did you find anythings surprising in your research that you
didn't know before?
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Most things were very surprising, just the fact that this
Jewish hospital was allowed to exist during the war, with
Jewish patients, Jewish doctors and nurses in Berlin in the
middle of Nazi Berlin. And then going deep into the research,
you know there was a prison ward with where the
(03:41):
Nazis would bring prisoners from prisons or concentration camps or
that were too sick to be, you know, to to
live in those great environments, so they would bring them
to the hospital for them to be fixed up and
then they could go back to being prisoners. In other
(04:03):
parts of the country. So they these these patients were
handcuffed to their beds. So that was something I had
no idea about. So there's a big part of the
book taking place in the prison ward with one patient
that singled out and has a great role, who is
also based on real life character of a doctor who
(04:26):
was actually a patient slash prisoner in this ward, who
was doctor Arthur Eischen, who was the one who sympathized
the first stable version of aspirin I believe it or not.
So I kind of play played with that and make
him a character making So there was so much to
(04:48):
play with that I had to really pick and choose.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
So why was there in Jewish hospital in Berlin even
before the war? What's the story behind it?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Well, before the war it was it was just the
hospital for the Jewish community, which you know, the nonfiction
book goes back hundreds of years, hundreds of years to
the beginning of how the Jews were not allowed inside
Berlin and they were allowed inside Berlin and they were
allowed to build this Jewish hospital. But before the war
(05:19):
it was a hospital that was treating Jews and non
Jews alike. Of course, with the Nazi laws, little by little.
Jewish doctors were not allowed to treat non Jewish patients
and vice versa, so it became more and more restricted.
Then why it was able to and authorized to survive
(05:42):
the war and go through the war as a hospital,
obviously I don't have the answer. I don't think anybody
has real answer, but one can only speculate. And some
of the ideas were that maybe it was used as
a way to because the people were deported from the
hospital on regular basis during the whole war. My grandmother
(06:04):
tells about seeing Eischmann come in pretty often, just you know,
picking and choosing prisoners from the patients, the doctors, the nurses,
you name it. He would smell this, she says in
her interview. He would smell cigarette breath on one of
the nurses. That was enough, so he had. They lived
(06:26):
in constant fear, so people were reported and sometimes little
by little. She describes that the personnel was missing because
they wanted to keep it going for some reason, so
they would they would put in some half choose what
they would call the Mischlinger in the terminology because sometimes
(06:50):
in the beginning of the war, deportation had started, but
they were not feeling so at ease at supporting people
whose some members of the family were in the German army,
so they would put them there with the idea, of course,
of deporting them at the end of the war.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Did your grandmother know that you were going to do this?
Did you ever talk to her about it?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Yes? I was very lucky to have her a living
and well for a very long time. So she lived
I think until ninety six, and she was really all there.
So she supported me, and at the end of her
life she didn't want to spend as much time talking
(07:32):
about the past that as she had. She was. After
the war, she became a first a librarian that she
also helped my grandfather, who was a physician. Then she
became an educator, writer, and actually started the Holocaust Center
in Maine, which is still active today. So she did
(07:53):
a lot of conferences educating about the Holocaust. Towards the end,
she didn't want to talk too much about it, but
she did. She'd give me some pointers here and there,
so it was really special.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
So your book is set to be used in a
bioethics graduate course at Case Western this fall, and you'll
also be guest teaching at UPenn Medical school. Also in bioethics,
what is the connection there? How does that come about?
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Yeah, So that was really what I discovered after writing
the book, which was really surprising to me. I was
trying to find people who would be interested and kind
of dove back into my book as a reader, trying
to find themes, and what I noticed is that as
(08:38):
a physician myself, some of the themes and situations that
these healthcare practitioners, even though they were practicing under extreme
circumstances and extreme stress, you can kind of translate some
of these situations to today's medical world, and particular in
the world of bioethics, for example, poll there's a dual loyalty,
(09:02):
which is a concept of bioethicists bioethics sorry, where one
is torn between two loyalties. It can be a bit
for the patient when you're a doctor or nurse, but
it can also you have to be loyal to the
institution within which you are working. And when I gave
some talks at hospitals and for the book release in
(09:24):
my monodis in Brooklyn, a lot of the physicians there,
some of them worked in the er, others didn't, but
in different departments. But a lot of them gave the
examples of dual loyalty towards the patient and towards the
insurance companies. So they want to give this medication, but
it's not going to be paid for by the insurance companies,
(09:45):
so they you know, these are issues, and there are
many other examples. A lot of literature is written about
this in prisons or in military ethics.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
What's dual loyalty at the Jewish hospit at all?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Well, when one of the examples that I use is
a scene which is really brilliantly told by my grandmother,
so I kind of transcribed it. As a very young nurse,
she was asked to go work in the emergency room,
which was not her usual place where she was working
because at the time they were starting deportations from Berlin,
(10:25):
and a lot of the Jews would get these deportation
slips with the telling them they would be deported the
next day, you know. And in some cases people were
so desperate even though they didn't know what would happen
to them, a lot of them tried to commit suicide
and they would be brought to the Jewish hospital and
(10:46):
to the emergency room, and a lot of the times,
you know, the Gestapo would come and linger around and
wait for these people to be revived so they could
then deport them, which it makes obviously no sense when
you say it this way. And the dual loyalty in
this case is is the loyalty of the healthcare practitioners
(11:10):
towards the patients, but also which you know, you want
to do the best, what is best for the patient,
so you want to treat them, but knowing that they're
going to be deported, you also don't want to treat them,
but you have to be loyal to the to the
hospital which is under the supervision of the Gestapo so
(11:31):
doesn't have the best outcome of the patient at heart.
So this is a case, you know, even though they
didn't really have the choice, they didn't They had to
They had to do their job, and they didn't know
exactly what would happen to people, obviously because you never can,
but there's you know, they had an idea that it
was not amazing, but they still had to do their best.
(11:52):
So that one of the examples.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Yeah, so give us a preview of what you're what
you would tell a bioethics class, what what's the what
the message.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
So for the case Western, actually the professor is doing
her class basic alone and she's going to focus on
pain for you pen It's next week, so I think
I will focus on do a loyalty and give examples
and ask students because it's going to be students in bioethics, nursing, medical,
(12:24):
so it's kind of a diverse group if they've encountered
these sort of problems and how they've dealt with them.
And then we also talk about decision making and decision
making under duress and extreme pressure, which also applies to
modern day medicine, and try toanalyze how you make decisions
(12:48):
and if you are making them in the moment or
are you trying to give yourself a little time, And
if you've made it in the moment, are you going
to analyze it after and talk to colleagues about it?
You know, staff staffed some some which we do in
ar clinic every Wednesday. You know, we have the difficult
cases and we try to talk about them. So there's that,
(13:11):
and we also go into the therapeutic lie and the
role of truth in healthcare, which is which also applied
in the George Hospital kind of in the same scene
because one of the doctors lets it slip to the
character of Elena, who's loosely based on my grandmother, when
(13:31):
she's having trouble putting in an IV and he's under
his breath. And this happened to my grandmother, and she said,
she said she heard the doctors. His older doctor said,
it doesn't matter because all these people will be guessed
know about no matter what. So she said, is it
says it in German, which I don't speak, in her interview,
(13:52):
and the way she describes it is she didn't really
understand what it meant. She had she had no point
of reference. The point of the of the therapeutic lie
being in medical medical world that you don't have to
tell all the truth to the patient if you think
(14:13):
it's going to be harmful to the patient more harmful,
or you don't have to tell it all at the
same time or at the same moment. Maybe you can
say it later, maybe maybe you can say it in
a different way if you think truth will harm more
than withholding the truth that you know goes into discussions
of are you lying? Are you are you breaking the
(14:36):
trust that you have with the patient. So these are
all things that I want to explore, and the professor,
the real professor, will be there to help and make
this souse.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
I think you can be a physician and a novelist
and a pianist and a lecturer too.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Yeah, I'm trying.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
We're going to take a quick and be right back
on the Carol Marcowitch Show. A question I asked all
of my guests, and I'm curious which way you're going
to take this, but what are you most proud of
in your life?
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Well, so my first answer, which will not be very
interesting here, is my daughter. But that's not there. And
so in this case, no, I think in this case
and what we're talking about, I'm pretty proud if that's
(15:33):
what you want to use of believing that I could
get to the end of this project, because, you know,
in the beginning, I have so many pictures taking of
me reading my grandmother's book and on vacation, you know,
on my computer, writing outside writing, inside writing, you know,
and it's hard to believe that you can actually get
(15:55):
to the end of a especially historical novel in the beginning.
I know, if I could, if I could, if I
had the right to to write a novel about you know,
the holocaust of World War two. So many people have
done it brilliantly. I didn't know if I could do it,
but I was just so passionate about the story, right
that I kept going. And then getting published once you
(16:17):
think the book is finished is also a whole other story,
you know, finding an agent, finding a publisher. That took
also months and months. So I think I'm just happy
to I have believed in it, and now that getting
some emails from on my website from readers. I just
got one the other day from a reader in New
(16:39):
York City telling me that he he he sobbed during
the whole epilogue and went to bed at three in
the morning and thanking me for writing the book. You
know that, You know, that's great and what more can
you ask for?
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Right, That's what it's all about. It's the connecting of
people in your book. It's it's really magical. A five
year out prediction, and it could be about anything at all.
You could tie it back to your book. You can
give us something completely different, whatever you want.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Well, obviously the movie will be out.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
From now. The movie will be a hit, yes.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Of course. Now I was thinking that with the rise
of Ai and AI generated text. It's possible it will
take longer, but I think people are gonna want more
because obviously I'm sure the first AI books are already
published and out there, no question. I get some emails,
(17:37):
you know, you know how it is immediately know oh
this was written by AI. I think people will want
more like true brain, human brain made sentences and thoughts
more and more, even though it's a wonderful tool. Nobody's
going to argue that. But I think, you know, or
(17:59):
an just even physical books. I mean, my editor made
a beautiful hardcover, and you know, it's just great to
I was lucky to get to sign some and people
go away with the physical book and I have one
in here in my in my apartment, and it's just I
think it's just great to still have them, even though
you know, they are more expensive than the kindle, and
(18:21):
they take take them some room and some space, and
you know, but I think, you know, there's going to
be more desire for this as time goes by.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Interesting, that's a very optimistic take because a lot of
the people who answer something a I related. You know,
I asked the five year question, and I get a
lot of like AI is going to take over everything.
AI is going to you know, not only write the
books for us, but read the books for us and
sum it up. You know that basically all of this
stuff is on the way out, and you think it's not.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
I mean, I think it's there's going to be some pushback.
I hope.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
I mean, I'll be reading books till the end, but
I feel like, I mean, my daughter reads, my sons
do a little bit too, but I after them. Is
there another generation of readers? As an Atlantic story right now?
Cover story the end of reading. I don't really believe optimism.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah, I think there's always going to be appetite for
you know, man made stories.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
And just because you think the AI can't do it
well enough or do you think no, I think the
AI will do it, my humanity in it.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
I think. I yeah, I think even though it can
do it, you know, in five seconds and brilliantly, it's
still going to lack you know, the soul or whatever
you want to call it. I mean, I'm just giving
the example of emails, but you can just tell and
like I plead guilty, I've used AI to like write
(19:49):
the core of emails, but I've noticed that I get
many more answers when I actually write them myself, because
I think people just notice, you know that this is
a human writing. So that's why I think there's more.
I mean, it's great tool and I use it every day,
but I think you know it's going to keep it
its space and humans will as well. I mean, no,
(20:12):
it's obviously just an opinion.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Yeah, no, it's a good one, and I hope you're right. Jonathan,
You're super interesting. I am recommending Jewish Hospital to everybody
I know. I enjoyed this conversation. Leave us here with
your best tip for my listeners on how they can
improve their lives.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Well, from my experience, it would be to find the
passion project and stick with it for you know, however long.
It tastes to think you've gained something from it. Not money,
I mean just you know, getting to the bottom of things,
(20:58):
because yeah, I think there's really value and sticking with
whatever it may be, just you know, horseback riding or
whatever whatever it is. But with attention deficit going really
higher and higher as we go with iPhones and AI
and whatever it is, I think there's real value, like
(21:19):
turning off your phone and like even just reading for
half an hour, a real book. You know, that's something
even I do have trouble doing more and more because
you're always.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Distracted, right, But you got to keep doing it otherwise
your five year predictions then come true exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
So it's mainly for me. This is my tip to myself.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
He's Jonathan Hamill. Check out his books The Jewish Hospital
sold anywhere you buy your books. Thank you so much
for coming on, Jonathan.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Thank you
Hi, and welcome back to Carol Mark Woods Show on iHeartRadio.
My guest today is Jonathan Hamil. Jonathan is a Paris
based position and novelist whose debut I'm going to try
not to butcher this today post E Company won the
Hippocrates Book Prize. His excellent new book, The Jewish Hospital,
was inspired by the wartime experiences of his grandmother, who
(00:28):
served as a nurse at the institution during the Second
World War. In addition to his medical work, Hamil is
a pianist, composer, and host of the Blood Flow podcast,
where he interviews leading creators and performers from around the world. Sorry,
from around the world. Hi, Jonathan's so nice to have
you on.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Hi, Carol, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
You're a busy guy. I reading your bio, I was like,
how did he find time to write not one, but
two books? How do you do it?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Truly asking so to Actually this is the fourth book,
but it's because I don't do everything at once, to
be honest. You know, the first book was well twenty
years ago, so it's been a while. Yeah, and you
know it's sequencing basically, but yeah, I think for the
(01:17):
last ten years I've been really focused on this last book,
so it was it really took a long time and
the rest. Yeah, basically, if you all put it in
one sentence, it seems like a lot, but it's not
all at the same time, not all at.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
The same time. So how did you decide to write
the Jewish Hospital? What was the impetus?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
So, as you said in the bio, my grandmother on
my mother's side was a nurse in this Jewish hospital
during the war, and growing up, I grew up in France.
I still live in France, and we used to go
and visit my grandparents in Maine every summer, and I
always kind of remember hearing those words, you know, the
(02:00):
Jewish hospital here and there, going up, and little by little,
as time went by and I went to medical school
and started to be interested in writing and researching more
about the Second World War, I came back to this
story and I got to talk to my grandmother about it.
I got to read nonfiction books, listen to a lot
(02:24):
of interviews. I founded the tapes from my grandmother still
VHS tapes that I got to transform and to digitalize
them and listen to hours and hours of these amazing stories,
and that really gave me the basis for this story,
and little by little I came to this idea that
(02:44):
this should be a novel. Just even though it's based
very largely on true stories, either from my grandmother or
from nonfiction. There's a great book called Refuge in Hell
about the hospital that is really super well research and
what are well written? That was so just. I just
had a lot of material and I decided to really
(03:07):
bring it together to write it as a novel would
be the best way to go to really get to
the truth of these characters.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Did you find anythings surprising in your research that you
didn't know before?
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Most things were very surprising, just the fact that this
Jewish hospital was allowed to exist during the war, with
Jewish patients, Jewish doctors and nurses in Berlin in the
middle of Nazi Berlin. And then going deep into the research,
you know there was a prison ward with where the
(03:41):
Nazis would bring prisoners from prisons or concentration camps or
that were too sick to be, you know, to to
live in those great environments, so they would bring them
to the hospital for them to be fixed up and
then they could go back to being prisoners. In other
(04:03):
parts of the country. So they these these patients were
handcuffed to their beds. So that was something I had
no idea about. So there's a big part of the
book taking place in the prison ward with one patient
that singled out and has a great role, who is
also based on real life character of a doctor who
(04:26):
was actually a patient slash prisoner in this ward, who
was doctor Arthur Eischen, who was the one who sympathized
the first stable version of aspirin I believe it or not.
So I kind of play played with that and make
him a character making So there was so much to
(04:48):
play with that I had to really pick and choose.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
So why was there in Jewish hospital in Berlin even
before the war? What's the story behind it?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Well, before the war it was it was just the
hospital for the Jewish community, which you know, the nonfiction
book goes back hundreds of years, hundreds of years to
the beginning of how the Jews were not allowed inside
Berlin and they were allowed inside Berlin and they were
allowed to build this Jewish hospital. But before the war
(05:19):
it was a hospital that was treating Jews and non
Jews alike. Of course, with the Nazi laws, little by little.
Jewish doctors were not allowed to treat non Jewish patients
and vice versa, so it became more and more restricted.
Then why it was able to and authorized to survive
(05:42):
the war and go through the war as a hospital,
obviously I don't have the answer. I don't think anybody
has real answer, but one can only speculate. And some
of the ideas were that maybe it was used as
a way to because the people were deported from the
hospital on regular basis during the whole war. My grandmother
(06:04):
tells about seeing Eischmann come in pretty often, just you know,
picking and choosing prisoners from the patients, the doctors, the nurses,
you name it. He would smell this, she says in
her interview. He would smell cigarette breath on one of
the nurses. That was enough, so he had. They lived
(06:26):
in constant fear, so people were reported and sometimes little
by little. She describes that the personnel was missing because
they wanted to keep it going for some reason, so
they would they would put in some half choose what
they would call the Mischlinger in the terminology because sometimes
(06:50):
in the beginning of the war, deportation had started, but
they were not feeling so at ease at supporting people
whose some members of the family were in the German army,
so they would put them there with the idea, of course,
of deporting them at the end of the war.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Did your grandmother know that you were going to do this?
Did you ever talk to her about it?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Yes? I was very lucky to have her a living
and well for a very long time. So she lived
I think until ninety six, and she was really all there.
So she supported me, and at the end of her
life she didn't want to spend as much time talking
(07:32):
about the past that as she had. She was. After
the war, she became a first a librarian that she
also helped my grandfather, who was a physician. Then she
became an educator, writer, and actually started the Holocaust Center
in Maine, which is still active today. So she did
(07:53):
a lot of conferences educating about the Holocaust. Towards the end,
she didn't want to talk too much about it, but
she did. She'd give me some pointers here and there,
so it was really special.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
So your book is set to be used in a
bioethics graduate course at Case Western this fall, and you'll
also be guest teaching at UPenn Medical school. Also in bioethics,
what is the connection there? How does that come about?
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Yeah, So that was really what I discovered after writing
the book, which was really surprising to me. I was
trying to find people who would be interested and kind
of dove back into my book as a reader, trying
to find themes, and what I noticed is that as
(08:38):
a physician myself, some of the themes and situations that
these healthcare practitioners, even though they were practicing under extreme
circumstances and extreme stress, you can kind of translate some
of these situations to today's medical world, and particular in
the world of bioethics, for example, poll there's a dual loyalty,
(09:02):
which is a concept of bioethicists bioethics sorry, where one
is torn between two loyalties. It can be a bit
for the patient when you're a doctor or nurse, but
it can also you have to be loyal to the
institution within which you are working. And when I gave
some talks at hospitals and for the book release in
(09:24):
my monodis in Brooklyn, a lot of the physicians there,
some of them worked in the er, others didn't, but
in different departments. But a lot of them gave the
examples of dual loyalty towards the patient and towards the
insurance companies. So they want to give this medication, but
it's not going to be paid for by the insurance companies,
(09:45):
so they you know, these are issues, and there are
many other examples. A lot of literature is written about
this in prisons or in military ethics.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
What's dual loyalty at the Jewish hospit at all?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Well, when one of the examples that I use is
a scene which is really brilliantly told by my grandmother,
so I kind of transcribed it. As a very young nurse,
she was asked to go work in the emergency room,
which was not her usual place where she was working
because at the time they were starting deportations from Berlin,
(10:25):
and a lot of the Jews would get these deportation
slips with the telling them they would be deported the
next day, you know. And in some cases people were
so desperate even though they didn't know what would happen
to them, a lot of them tried to commit suicide
and they would be brought to the Jewish hospital and
(10:46):
to the emergency room, and a lot of the times,
you know, the Gestapo would come and linger around and
wait for these people to be revived so they could
then deport them, which it makes obviously no sense when
you say it this way. And the dual loyalty in
this case is is the loyalty of the healthcare practitioners
(11:10):
towards the patients, but also which you know, you want
to do the best, what is best for the patient,
so you want to treat them, but knowing that they're
going to be deported, you also don't want to treat them,
but you have to be loyal to the to the
hospital which is under the supervision of the Gestapo so
(11:31):
doesn't have the best outcome of the patient at heart.
So this is a case, you know, even though they
didn't really have the choice, they didn't They had to
They had to do their job, and they didn't know
exactly what would happen to people, obviously because you never can,
but there's you know, they had an idea that it
was not amazing, but they still had to do their best.
(11:52):
So that one of the examples.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Yeah, so give us a preview of what you're what
you would tell a bioethics class, what what's the what
the message.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
So for the case Western, actually the professor is doing
her class basic alone and she's going to focus on
pain for you pen It's next week, so I think
I will focus on do a loyalty and give examples
and ask students because it's going to be students in bioethics, nursing, medical,
(12:24):
so it's kind of a diverse group if they've encountered
these sort of problems and how they've dealt with them.
And then we also talk about decision making and decision
making under duress and extreme pressure, which also applies to
modern day medicine, and try toanalyze how you make decisions
(12:48):
and if you are making them in the moment or
are you trying to give yourself a little time, And
if you've made it in the moment, are you going
to analyze it after and talk to colleagues about it?
You know, staff staffed some some which we do in
ar clinic every Wednesday. You know, we have the difficult
cases and we try to talk about them. So there's that,
(13:11):
and we also go into the therapeutic lie and the
role of truth in healthcare, which is which also applied
in the George Hospital kind of in the same scene
because one of the doctors lets it slip to the
character of Elena, who's loosely based on my grandmother, when
(13:31):
she's having trouble putting in an IV and he's under
his breath. And this happened to my grandmother, and she said,
she said she heard the doctors. His older doctor said,
it doesn't matter because all these people will be guessed
know about no matter what. So she said, is it
says it in German, which I don't speak, in her interview,
(13:52):
and the way she describes it is she didn't really
understand what it meant. She had she had no point
of reference. The point of the of the therapeutic lie
being in medical medical world that you don't have to
tell all the truth to the patient if you think
(14:13):
it's going to be harmful to the patient more harmful,
or you don't have to tell it all at the
same time or at the same moment. Maybe you can
say it later, maybe maybe you can say it in
a different way if you think truth will harm more
than withholding the truth that you know goes into discussions
of are you lying? Are you are you breaking the
(14:36):
trust that you have with the patient. So these are
all things that I want to explore, and the professor,
the real professor, will be there to help and make
this souse.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
I think you can be a physician and a novelist
and a pianist and a lecturer too.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Yeah, I'm trying.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
We're going to take a quick and be right back
on the Carol Marcowitch Show. A question I asked all
of my guests, and I'm curious which way you're going
to take this, but what are you most proud of
in your life?
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Well, so my first answer, which will not be very
interesting here, is my daughter. But that's not there. And
so in this case, no, I think in this case
and what we're talking about, I'm pretty proud if that's
(15:33):
what you want to use of believing that I could
get to the end of this project, because, you know,
in the beginning, I have so many pictures taking of
me reading my grandmother's book and on vacation, you know,
on my computer, writing outside writing, inside writing, you know,
and it's hard to believe that you can actually get
(15:55):
to the end of a especially historical novel in the beginning.
I know, if I could, if I could, if I
had the right to to write a novel about you know,
the holocaust of World War two. So many people have
done it brilliantly. I didn't know if I could do it,
but I was just so passionate about the story, right
that I kept going. And then getting published once you
(16:17):
think the book is finished is also a whole other story,
you know, finding an agent, finding a publisher. That took
also months and months. So I think I'm just happy
to I have believed in it, and now that getting
some emails from on my website from readers. I just
got one the other day from a reader in New
(16:39):
York City telling me that he he he sobbed during
the whole epilogue and went to bed at three in
the morning and thanking me for writing the book. You
know that, You know, that's great and what more can
you ask for?
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Right, That's what it's all about. It's the connecting of
people in your book. It's it's really magical. A five
year out prediction, and it could be about anything at all.
You could tie it back to your book. You can
give us something completely different, whatever you want.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Well, obviously the movie will be out.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
From now. The movie will be a hit, yes.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Of course. Now I was thinking that with the rise
of Ai and AI generated text. It's possible it will
take longer, but I think people are gonna want more
because obviously I'm sure the first AI books are already
published and out there, no question. I get some emails,
(17:37):
you know, you know how it is immediately know oh
this was written by AI. I think people will want
more like true brain, human brain made sentences and thoughts
more and more, even though it's a wonderful tool. Nobody's
going to argue that. But I think, you know, or
(17:59):
an just even physical books. I mean, my editor made
a beautiful hardcover, and you know, it's just great to
I was lucky to get to sign some and people
go away with the physical book and I have one
in here in my in my apartment, and it's just I
think it's just great to still have them, even though
you know, they are more expensive than the kindle, and
(18:21):
they take take them some room and some space, and
you know, but I think, you know, there's going to
be more desire for this as time goes by.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Interesting, that's a very optimistic take because a lot of
the people who answer something a I related. You know,
I asked the five year question, and I get a
lot of like AI is going to take over everything.
AI is going to you know, not only write the
books for us, but read the books for us and
sum it up. You know that basically all of this
stuff is on the way out, and you think it's not.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
I mean, I think it's there's going to be some pushback.
I hope.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
I mean, I'll be reading books till the end, but
I feel like, I mean, my daughter reads, my sons
do a little bit too, but I after them. Is
there another generation of readers? As an Atlantic story right now?
Cover story the end of reading. I don't really believe optimism.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah, I think there's always going to be appetite for
you know, man made stories.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
And just because you think the AI can't do it
well enough or do you think no, I think the
AI will do it, my humanity in it.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
I think. I yeah, I think even though it can
do it, you know, in five seconds and brilliantly, it's
still going to lack you know, the soul or whatever
you want to call it. I mean, I'm just giving
the example of emails, but you can just tell and
like I plead guilty, I've used AI to like write
(19:49):
the core of emails, but I've noticed that I get
many more answers when I actually write them myself, because
I think people just notice, you know that this is
a human writing. So that's why I think there's more.
I mean, it's great tool and I use it every day,
but I think you know it's going to keep it
its space and humans will as well. I mean, no,
(20:12):
it's obviously just an opinion.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Yeah, no, it's a good one, and I hope you're right. Jonathan,
You're super interesting. I am recommending Jewish Hospital to everybody
I know. I enjoyed this conversation. Leave us here with
your best tip for my listeners on how they can
improve their lives.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Well, from my experience, it would be to find the
passion project and stick with it for you know, however long.
It tastes to think you've gained something from it. Not money,
I mean just you know, getting to the bottom of things,
(20:58):
because yeah, I think there's really value and sticking with
whatever it may be, just you know, horseback riding or
whatever whatever it is. But with attention deficit going really
higher and higher as we go with iPhones and AI
and whatever it is, I think there's real value, like
(21:19):
turning off your phone and like even just reading for
half an hour, a real book. You know, that's something
even I do have trouble doing more and more because
you're always.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Distracted, right, But you got to keep doing it otherwise
your five year predictions then come true exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
So it's mainly for me. This is my tip to myself.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
He's Jonathan Hamill. Check out his books The Jewish Hospital
sold anywhere you buy your books. Thank you so much
for coming on, Jonathan.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Thank you
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