Qiological Podcast

Translating Chinese medicine began, for Nigel Wiseman, with a love of language, and it has become a lifelong study of how meaning travels between worlds. His work asks that we stay faithful to what the Chinese actually says, even when it asks something of the reader.
In this conversation, we visit with Nigel and trace the path from a young linguist in early 1980s Taiwan to some of the first English-language texts on Chinese medicine. We look at how terms like “disinhibit” and “deficiency heat” came from refusing to blur distinct concepts, and why a little Chinese goes a long way for any practitioner.
We also explore the Confucian analogies at the heart of the medicine, from the liver as general to the spleen as granary official, and Nigel’s challenge to the idea that Chinese medicine is simply a Daoist art.
Listen in for a discussion on language, metaphor, and translation, and what it means to meet a medicine on its own terms.

Chinese medicine sits at an interesting crossroads, part clinical craft, part philosophical inheritance. Its practice of listening before concluding speaks meaningfully to how we meet the people who come through our doors.
In this conversation with Evan Pinto, we explore the relationship between emptying the mind and seeing a patient clearly. We look at how a few quiet breaths before entering the treatment room door can change what we perceive on the other side.
We also discuss the difference between fixing a patient and holding space for them, and what it means to wait until someone is ready. We also appreciate the humor and playfulness of Zhuangzi as a counterweight to our profession’s tendency towards seriousness.
Listen in for a conversation on integration, trust, depth, and what it means to stay curious about what we don’t yet understand in the practice of this medicine.

Every tradition has an official story, and then it has the people who actually treat patients. In this conversation with James Flowers, a historian, anthropologist, and practitioner of East Asian medicine, we ask a simple question: where did the Saam organ pairs come from? The answer, it turns out, is surprising.
That mystery opens onto what James calls the conundrum of singularity and diversity in East Asian medicine. We follow it from the Confucian kings of the Joseon dynasty, who declared prevention the best medicine, through the Japanese occupation and a century of rebellious Korean doctors, all the way to the treatment of Covid.
Along the way, we weigh standards against clinical experience, consider who holds the authority to say what's right, and ask whether Saam medicine is Buddhist or Confucian at heart.
Listen in for a conversation that moves between royal courts and modern clinics, canon and experience, and the lingering question of what medicine is and who gets to decide.

We often think good treatment begins with certainty: first identify the pattern, then decide what to do. But in the tradition of Dr. Yoshio Manaka, treatment itself can be the means of discovery. The practitioner learns by engaging the body directly and paying close attention to how it responds.
In this conversation, Oran Kivity, Marian Fixler, Brenda Loew, Stephen Birch, and Paul Movsessian reflect on studying and practicing Manaka-style acupuncture. They describe an approach in which the body’s structure emerges through palpation, immediate feedback, and ongoing adjustment—not from a diagnosis fixed in advance.
This is not acupuncture as the application of a preset protocol. It is a disciplined way of paying attention: using touch as both diagnosis and treatment, testing small interventions, observing what changes, and allowing the body’s response to continually reshape one’s understanding of what is needed.

A tradition can feel like a single lineage, but some histories reveal a wider terrain — one that spans discernment, devotion, and the slow accumulation of who gets to call something new.
In this conversation with Volker Scheid, we explore four competing visions of what good Chinese medicine practice actually is, from Zhu Danxi's cultivated discernment to Zhang Zhongjing's devotional authority, and how each answers the challenge of bridging limited tools to unlimited patients.
We also touch on why every historical claim carries its own mythology, and how the arrival of Western medicine reshaped what these traditions were even allowed to become.
Listen in for a conversation that brings historical rigor and clinical insight to a tradition modern practice still draws from.