What if the most important skill a planetary health researcher could develop isn't statistical literacy — it's imagination?
In this episode of The Lancet Planetary Health In Conversation, host Matteo Simonetti sits down with Alastair Brown, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet Planetary Health, to discuss a viewpoint published in the journal: "Health Punk: Speculative Methods for the Future of Planetary Health." The paper documents a course in which students were challenged to write science fiction as a way to break out of siloed disciplinary thinking. Many found it genuinely difficult.
Alastair argues that this difficulty is the point — that resistance to imagining radically different futures is not a neutral stance, but a political one. He draws a straight line between constrained thinking and the gap between what the evidence demands and what institutions are willing to attempt. The conversation also touches on AI, energy systems, the Wade-Dahl-Till valve, and why the punk in "health punk" matters as much as the health.
Click here to read the full viepoint article:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(26)00009-4/fulltext
And if you are curious about it and saw the original patent drawings, click here to read about the Wade-Dahl-till valve:
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(64)92294-9
The Lancet Planetary Health in conversation with... is part of the Lancet Group podcast offering.
Editorial team: Editor-in-Chief Alastair Brown, deputy editor John Carlson, and senior editor Haoyu Wang
Podcast editing: Matteo Simonetti
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