Stories from a Pandemic

The Nocturnists is an independent medical storytelling community founded in San Francisco in January 2016. We have produced over a dozen live shows in the Bay Area and New York City. Stories from those shows are featured on our podcast, followed by a conversation with our founder and host, Emily Silverman, who is a doctor at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.

When our team started looking for “a handful” of people to keep an audio diary about their experience with COVID-19, we never expected be met with such a tremendous response. In retrospect, we're not surprised. As we face down this pandemic, having an outlet for self-expression is more important than ever. While it can be deeply empowering to care for patients during these uncertain times, it’s also terrifying. We are putting ourselves at risk. Institutions are creaking under stress. Some of us are being silenced; censored; punished for telling the truth.

For us, the waves of anxiety come and go at a moment’s notice, mixed in with adrenaline upon seeing the patient distribution e-mails in the morning, excitement about how the bureaucracy has fallen down at our safety net hospital, rage and frustration about the lack of a coordinated response in our country, and boredom when sitting at home between shifts. It’s a complex psychological landscape, and it’s worth capturing — for ourselves, for each other, and for history.
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The Nocturnists is an independent medical storytelling community founded in San Francisco in January 2016. We have produced over a dozen live shows in the Bay Area and New York City. Stories from those shows are featured on our podcast, followed by a conversation with our founder and host, Emily Silverman, who is a doctor at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.When our team started looking for “a handful” of people to keep an audio diary about their experience with COVID-19, we never expected be met with such a tremendous response. In retrospect, we're not surprised. As we face down this pandemic, having an outlet for self-expression is more important than ever. While it can be deeply empowering to care for patients during these uncertain times, it’s also terrifying. We are... Show full description