Cancer Survival, Wild Swimming & Eurovision S3E2

10 May 2023

Welcome back to Hope & Anchor - We get wild about open swimming, share Eurovision’s collective joy, and ponder the worldview of cancer survivors with the wonderful Dr Liz O’Riordan!

Liz has saved lives as a Breast Surgeon, and details her experience as both a doctor and patient this week in a powerful account of her remarkable story.

Elsewhere in this latest episode, we touch on the spiritual beauty of wild swimming, a Divine Day Trip celebrating sea diving, and ‘The Gospel According to AI’.

This episode covers:

- Not beating ourselves up for getting things wrong

- Helping those with cancer to not just survive, but to truly live

- Whether our bodies are a part of discovering the true self

- Togetherness in music at Eurovision

- The spiritual connection unique to wild swimming

Episode highlights

“I’m not a surgeon, I’m not a politician. But we put ourselves in a position where we can’t get it wrong. Then we beat ourselves up for getting it wrong. The next time we come to a situation we have guilt about, we’re trying to move away from something rather than towards something.” - 7:45 - Jaz Ampaw-Farr

“I was very good at giving people pretty scars. doing the best of my craft. But when the doctor says ‘Goodbye, see you in five years’, we don’t help people to truly live.” - 13:05 - Liz O’Riordan

“So many people make massive life changing decisions when the s**t hits the fan. I wish the s**t didn’t have to hit the fan for you to realise that you’re actually not happy, there are other things you can do.” - 16:55 - Liz O’Riordan

“In the spiritual journey, lots of people talk about finding our true self or our real self; not the totally artificial construct itself, not the filter, but the true self, the deep self. I’m really interested in how we think about our bodies as part of ourselves.” - 21:00 - Trey Hall

“With Eurovision, everybody comes together. It’s like Hope and Anchor, everybody’s invited.” - 26:30 - Jaz Ampaw-Farr

“If you can train a computer to see what a cancer will look like, and a computer can see hundreds of 1000s of images in seconds, it can give you results in hours, rather than two or three weeks for a human to do it.” - 34:20 - Liz O’Riordan

“I was just in this river and the moon was above. It was that spiritual connection of feeling that mum’s up there in the stars, and I’m here in the water, and just you can’t think of anything else - you just… be.” - 40:30 - Liz O’Riordan