It’s always been a fight — and maybe a joy

Hey there —

On the podcast this week, we’re bringing back the story of ‘The People’s Hospital’ — that’s the nickname Dr. Ricardo Nuila gives to the institution where he has practiced for more than a dozen years.

It’s a favorite story of mine, and it’s never been more relevant.

Nuila’s 2023 book, The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine, is a clear-eyed love letter to Houston’s publicly funded Ben Taub Hospital.

As Nuila describes it, Ben Taub isn’t perfect — no place is — but it delivers care much more cheaply, and often more effectively, than “normal” institutions.

“You see this model, and you wonder, can things be different in health care?” Nuila said when I met him.

But the part of Ben Taub’s story that strikes me most powerfully today — the part that our episode spends the most time on — is Ben Taub’s origin story: how long and hard people had to fight to create it and get it funded.

The struggle took years. For a long time, the project’s most ardent advocate didn’t seem to get anywhere. If anything, opposition seemed to keep intensifying — even after an unexpected, powerful ally came aboard to help. It took a fight to get a referendum on the ballot. It failed. But a second referendum passed.

That was more than sixty years ago — during a notoriously divisive decade.

There are no perfect parallels, no perfect examples, no perfect places. But revisiting the story of the People’s Hospital reminds me: Better places are possible, they exist, and impossible fights can sometimes be won.

Revisiting this story also reminded me of something else: the joy our team experienced working on this episode, even the parts about struggle.

Which connects to another book I’m revisiting this week, published around the same time as Ricardo Nuila’s book about Ben Taub Hospital: Inciting Joy by Ross Gay, whose poem ‘Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude’ is a touchstone for me.

Gay’s first order of business is to undermine the idea of joy as an escape from trouble, worry, struggle, or sorrow — personal or global. Early in the first chapter, he asks:

Then he goes on to imagine befriending your sorrow — like it was a person — and throwing a party for everyone you know (even your enemies) and their sorrows. A party that becomes impossibly raucous, joyful — out of hand in the best way.

I can’t begin to capture Gay’s funny, moving, and yes, inspiring work here. I just want to send you to it. So:

• You can read the first chapter here, at the Rumpus.
• You can listen to an interview with Gay about the book on this episode of the podcast It’s Been a Minute (or read the transcript).
• You can buy the book from a local bookseller, from bookshop.org, or you can see if your local library has a copy.

I’ll leave you with this, from that podcast interview:

That’s a big part of what we’re trying to do here, in An Arm and a Leg, and this newsletter.

We’ve been taking some time to re-tool and plan how to do that more effectively this summer — so First Aid Kit is taking a short break for the rest of August. Maybe you can read some Ross Gay (or The People’s Hospital), or just find your own incitements to joy.

And we’ll catch you soon. Till then, take care of yourself.

— Dan