Rory Cellan-Jones and five other people living with Parkinson’s disease accompanied me as I strode along on my lunchtime walk today. The “Movers and Shakers” podcast’s inaugural episode wasn’t how I had imagined it. I’d recently completed a course on the neurology of Parkinson’s, but I had no real idea of what day-to-day living with the condition meant. So I feared it would be a depressing listen, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The podcasters were three journalists, a writer, an academic, and a High Court judge, and they were hilarious. Laugh out loud, hilarious. While I didn’t learn much about the latest science and treatments for Parkinson’s, I’ve got Rory’s substack for that. But I learned a lot about the wide range of symptoms, the variety of ways the disease can progress, and its impact on the sufferer.
With a panel made up of:
- Rory Cellan-Jones - retired BBC technology correspondent
- Gillian Lacey-Solymar - Senior teaching fellow at UCL
- Mark Mardell - retired BBC journalist, presenter, and editor
- Paul Mayhew-Archer - writer, producer, and actor
- Sir Nicholas Mostyn - High Court Judge
- Jeremy Paxman - broadcaster, journalist, author
the conversation is always going to be interesting. If you want to learn about the impact of Parkinson’s on the sufferer, their families, friends, and colleagues, then this has all the makings of a must-listen series. Search for “Movers and Shakers”, produced by Podot, on your favourite podcast app.