10 - Uncertainty in Medicine: Trusting the Process with Leila Simon Hayes
The Nocturnists
Emily Silverman
4.8 • 614 Ratings
🗓️ 5 June 2025
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, we step inside the studio of visual artist Leila Simon Hayes, whose bold, shape-driven designs are born from a process rooted in imperfection, intuition, and trust. Through her story, we explore how Leila's creative practice helped her navigate decades of chronic pain and medical dismissal, eventually leading her to healing not through certainty, but through listening—both to her art and her body. Her journey invites us to reconsider our own relationship with uncertainty, and to ask: what happens when we stop demanding answers and start embracing the unknown?
Find show notes, transcripts, and more at thenocturnists.org, and subscribe to our substack.
The "Uncertainty in Medicine" series is generously funded by the ABIM Foundation, by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, and the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation.
The Nocturnists is supported by The California Medical Association and donations from listeners like you.
Host: Emily Silverman, MD
Uncertainty Correspondent: Alexa Miller
Series Illustrations by Eleni Debo
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Support for the Nocturnist comes from the California Medical Association. |
| 0:04.3 | At the Nocturnist, we are careful to ensure that all stories comply with health care privacy laws. |
| 0:09.6 | Details may have been changed to ensure patient confidentiality. |
| 0:13.1 | All views expressed are those of the person speaking and not their employer. |
| 0:20.3 | Okay. This is the Nocturnists. Uncertainty in Medicine. I'm Emily Silverman. |
| 0:36.9 | And today, we're stepping inside the studio of |
| 0:39.7 | Lila Simon Hayes. Lila is a visual artist and award-winning designer in Boston. Her work |
| 0:49.3 | explores color, shape, and movement, and takes the form of rich, bold patterns printed on textiles, |
| 0:55.8 | wallpapers, homewheres, book covers, and other household objects. |
| 1:00.3 | Central to Lila's process is that she starts all her work without a plan. |
| 1:07.1 | I mean, most of what I'm making comes from a practice of worshipping imperfectionism |
| 1:13.6 | and really letting things unfold as they unfold. |
| 1:18.6 | Starting with shapes, usually from black ink. |
| 1:23.6 | I use a lot of sumi ink. |
| 1:26.6 | I fell in love. It's just the most opaque, smooth, |
| 1:33.4 | delicious substance to paint with. Today we jump into Leela's world to learn more about what |
| 1:41.3 | her artistic process, dedicated to the inevitability of spontaneous |
| 1:45.8 | beauty, can teach us about navigating uncertainty in medicine. |
| 1:50.8 | Because for Lila, when she's in the studio, it's about making work, but it's also about cultivating |
| 1:56.7 | the skills of sitting with uncertainty and trusting her gut. |
| 2:07.6 | Both skills that she's relied on to navigate her own journey of diagnostic uncertainty and physical pain. Since she was a teen, Lila's been dealing with food sensitivities that severely impact her health, |
| 2:14.6 | most notably an extreme reaction to sugar, which when she was 19, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Emily Silverman, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Emily Silverman and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.