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About Rachel Pagones

I am a licensed acupuncturist, educator and author with a background in journalism. My greatest clinical interests are older adults and cancer patients, and my primary academic interest is how Chinese medicine and acupuncture can benefit underserved populations. My book, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (Brevis Press) was published in 2021.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England.

NBN Episodes hosted by Rachel:

Medicine June 9, 2023

The Curious Human Knee

Han Yu

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
Listen:
Where would we be without the knee? This down-to-earth joint connecting the thigh and the lower leg doesn’t receive the attention it deserves. Yet, as The Curious Human Knee (Columbia UP …
Medicine April 2, 2023

Aging in America

Deborah Carr

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
The aging of America will reshape how we live and will transform nearly every aspect of contemporary society. Renowned life course sociologist Deborah Carr provides a lively, nuanced, and timely …
Medicine February 26, 2023

Embodied Injustice

Race, Disability, and Health

Mary Crossley

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
Black people and people with disabilities in the United States are distinctively disadvantaged in their encounters with the health care system. These groups also share harsh histories of medical experimentation …
Medicine February 17, 2023

Capitalizing a Cure

How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicines

Victor Roy

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
Capitalizing a Cure: How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicines (U California Press, 2023) takes readers into the struggle over a medical breakthrough to investigate the power of …
Medicine January 27, 2023

Habit Forming

Drug Addiction in America, 1776-1914

Elizabeth Kelly Gray

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
Habitual drug use in the United States is at least as old as the nation itself. Elizabeth Kelly Gray's book Habit Forming: Drug Addiction in America, 1776-1914 (Oxford UP, 2023) traces the …
Environmental Studies January 7, 2023

Natural Consequences

Intimate Essays for a Planet in Peril

Char Miller

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
A collection of 42 essays meditating on both California’s natural gifts and its natural disasters, Natural Consequences: Intimate Essays for a Planet in Peril (Chin Music, 2022) urges readers to …
Medicine November 28, 2022

Where They Need Me

Local Clinicians and the Workings of Global Health in Haiti

Pierre Minn

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
Haiti is the target of an overwhelming number of internationally funded health projects. While religious institutions sponsor a number of these initiatives, many are implemented within the secular framework of …
Medicine November 22, 2022

Accidental Kindness

A Doctor's Notes on Empathy

Michael Stein

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
We will all be patients sooner or later. And when we go to the doctor, when we're hurting, we tend to think in terms of cause and condemnation. We often …
Film November 15, 2022

Hollywood at the Races

Film's Love Affair with the Turf

Alan Shuback

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
Today I talked to Alan Shuback about his book Hollywood at the Races: Film's Love Affair with the Turf (UP of Kentucky, 2019) A love of the slapstick film duo Laurel and …
Medicine October 31, 2022

The Perfection of Nature

Animals, Breeding, and Race in the Renaissance

Mackenzie Cooley

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
The Renaissance is celebrated for the belief that individuals could fashion themselves to greatness, but there is a dark undercurrent to this fêted era of history. The same men and …
Medicine October 21, 2022

Bio-Imperialism

Disease, Terror, and the Construction of National Fragility

Gwen Shuni D'Arcangelis

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
Gwen Shuni D'Arcangelis's book Bio-Imperialism: Disease, Terror, and the Construction of National Fragility (Rutgers UP, 2020) focuses on an understudied dimension of the war on terror: the fight against bioterrorism. This …
Medicine September 21, 2022

Tik Merauke

An Epidemic Like No Other

John Richens

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
A medical doctor with an inquisitive mind and a traveling spirit, John Richens thought he had hit upon an exemplary public health case study – the story of donovanosis among …
Medicine September 9, 2022

Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession

Global Perspectives

Sarah Lamb

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
In recent decades, the North American public has pursued an inspirational vision of successful aging—striving through medical technique and individual effort to eradicate the declines, vulnerabilities, and dependencies previously commonly …
Medicine September 7, 2022

Model Systems in Biology

History, Philosophy, and Practical Concerns

Georg Striedter

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
Biomedical research using various animal species and in vitro cellular systems has resulted in both major successes and translational failure. In Model Systems in Biology: History, Philosophy, and Practical Concerns …
Medicine August 9, 2022

Building Schools, Making Doctors

Architecture and the Modern American Physician

Katherine L. Carroll

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
In the late nineteenth century, medical educators intent on transforming American physicians into scientifically trained, elite professionals recognized the value of medical school design for their reform efforts. Between 189 …
Medicine July 20, 2022

Our Transgenic Future

Spider Goats, Genetic Modification, and the Will to Change Nature

Lisa Jean Moore

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
The process of manipulating the genetic material of one animal to include the DNA of another creates a new transgenic organism. Several animals, notably goats, mice, sheep, and cattle are …
Medicine June 29, 2022

Partial Stories

Maternal Death from Six Angles

Claire L. Wendland

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
A close look at stories of maternal death in Malawi that considers their implications in the broader arena of medical knowledge. By the early twenty-first century, about one woman in …
Medicine June 2, 2022

Medicine in the Talmud

Natural and Supernatural Therapies Between Magic and Science

Jason Sion Mokhtarian

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
Despite the Talmud being the richest repository of medical remedies in ancient Judaism, this important strain of Jewish thought has been largely ignored – even as the study of ancient …
Medicine May 30, 2022

The Quest for Sexual Health

How an Elusive Ideal Has Transformed Science, Politics, and Everyday Life

Steven G. Epstein

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
Since the 1970s, health professionals, researchers, governments, advocacy groups, and commercial interests have invested in the pursuit of something called “sexual health.” Under this expansive banner, a wide array of …
Medicine May 13, 2022

Difference and Disease

Medicine, Race, and the Eighteenth-Century British Empire

Suman Seth

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
Before the nineteenth century, travelers who left Britain for the Americas, West Africa, India and elsewhere encountered a medical conundrum: why did they fall ill when they arrived, and why …
Medicine May 12, 2022

The Cage of Days

Time and Temporal Experience in Prison

Michael G. Flaherty and K. C. Carceral

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
Prisons operate according to the clockwork logic of our criminal justice system: we punish people by making them “serve” time. The Cage of Days: Time and Temporal Experience in Prison …
Medicine April 20, 2022

First Patients

The Incredible True Stories of Pioneer Patients

Rod Tanchanco

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
When Dr. Rod Tanchanco, a busy internist and clinical researcher, began digging into old journals looking for a deeper history of renowned medical innovations, he wasn’t planning to write a …
Medicine March 2, 2022

There Are No Accidents

The Deadly Rise of Injury and Disaster—Who Profits and Who Pays the Price

Jessie Singer

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
We hear it all the time: “Sorry, it was just an accident.” And we’ve been deeply conditioned to just accept that explanation and move on. But, as Jessie Singer argues …
Medicine February 18, 2022

Africanizing Oncology

Creativity, Crisis, and Cancer in Uganda

Marissa Mika

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
Thousands of stories are given voice by Marissa Mika in Africanizing Oncology: Creativity, Crisis, and Cancer in Uganda (Ohio UP, 2021), a fearless, warm, and humane history of the Uganda Cancer …