Best Medicine

Joining Kiri this week is comedian Laura Smyth who discovered the importance of sleep as she underwent cancer treatment. Historian Subhadra Das celebrates the incredible medical pioneer of blood transfusion Dr Charles Drew, Professor Lindsay Hall uses golden poo donors to cure serious infections, and Professor Nicholas Embleton’s life is saved by a stem cell transplant.

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 or an obscure invention, to 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: Subhadra Das, Professor Nicholas Embleton, Professor Lindsay Hall and Laura Smyth

Written by Laura Claxton, Edward Easton, Charlie George, 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