Down the Wormhole

Medical Ethics Part 5 (Death)

Episode 89
Despite the fact that all living things die, most people refuse to talk about it until it directly affects them. That's too bad, because planning for death can make living so much more vibrant. In this episode, we talk about physician assisted dying, guerilla funerals, the importance of ritual, and the nature of life itself. 
 
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produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.
 
 
 
Zack Jackson 00:05
You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week our hosts are
 
Adam Pryor 00:15
My name is Adam Pryor. I work at Bethany College in Lindsborg Kansas. I hope that when I die, someone will put me in the mushroom burial suit invented by Jim Ray Lee
 
Ian Binns 00:27
Ian Binns Associate Professor of elementary science education at UNC Charlotte. And see I would be cremated and put into the hilt of the first real lightsaber.
 
Rachael Jackson 00:41
Rachael Jackson Agoudas, Israel congregation Hendersonville, North Carolina, and after I die, I want a traditional Jewish burial. So buried in some sort of decomposing box, I don't really care if it's pine or cardboard. And, yeah, just to be buried in the ground, nothing just simple.
 
Zack Jackson 01:06
Zack Jackson, UCC pastor and Reading Pennsylvania, and when I die, I want to be composted.
 
Rachael Jackson 01:13
Kendra Holt-Moore, PhD candidate at Boston University, and when I die, I want half of my body to be pressed into a gemstone that will become an heirloom of my family. And the other half of my body will be buried in one of those tree pods that grows into a forest. I can't remember the name of the person who invented these tree pods. But it's a similar idea, I think, to the mushroom suit, but you become a forest of death.
 
Adam Pryor 01:44
That is oddly specific.
 
Zack Jackson 01:48
Yeah, yeah. It's a wonderful story in Greek mythology about that,
 
Ian Binns 01:52
with the force of a point out that all of you all y'all came up with something? Like somewhat reasonable. I mean, I just wanted to play. How cool would that be, instead of being like, displayed on someone's, you know, mantle in a box, or an urn that can be displayed as a lightsaber hilt?
 
Zack Jackson 02:14
There you go. Or I can just give my carbon back to the earth that sustained me. Yeah, see, I
 
Ian Binns 02:20
mean, that's probably what will happen. But I wanted to fantasize
 
Adam Pryor 02:23
I'm hung up on the gemstones.
 
Ian Binns 02:26
Okay. Kendrick, Tell us. Tell us about
 
Zack Jackson 02:29
death. And which, which half of you is going to be a gemstone I want? I'll leave that up to
 
02:36
the left half.
 
Adam Pryor 02:37
Is it like? Like, certain parts? Are you? The person chopping you up? I thought they would like, without the ashes. That's not what I envisioned no harm. And how about foot?
 
Zack Jackson 02:59
That's absolutely the way this has to go. Now. It's like, Don't cremate and turn you into a diamond. Let's just take like your arms or legs and squish them.
 
Ian Binns 03:08
Yeah, let's just squeeze them all together. You're going to create a gemstone,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 03:12
whichever parts would make the best gems.
 
03:22
Oh, yeah. I guess
 
Rachael Jackson 03:28
it's as good as it's gonna get. Um, yeah, so we're talking about death today. And there's so much that we could talk about. So let me just say that. I think that death is a pretty fun subject to talk about, mostly because a lot of my own work is about at least implicitly. So it's just so a lot of the stuff that I do comes out of this social psychological theory called terror management theory. And that's terror. Not what people often Yeah, terror. Some people hear me say that and they think I am saying Tara, marriage management theory or like Tarot management theory. But no, it's terror. t e r, r o r, like, you're terrified.
 
Ian Binns 04:19
I do like to Taro. Sounds kind of cool.
 
Rachael Jackson 04:24
Yeah, that's a different thing. But terror management theory is a theory that was first proposed in the 80s by a social psychologist, and the whole there's, there's a lot that has been done over the last several decades on it. But the basic idea is that when people are primed to think about death, or they're exposed to some kind of trigger that causes them to reflect on death, and there are explicit and implicit ways of doing this, but basically, these Death triggers or what they would call mortality salience triggers. And they they make us more defensive. And these defense mechanisms can look a lot of different ways. But the basic idea is that like, people don't want to die, whether we're talking about physical death, or even like, a more like metaphorical figurative kind of death. So think, you know, apart from dying in your body, maybe you're also another kind of death would be like, total social isolation and exclusion, that's the kind of like social death. So there's something that is not, we're not just talking about, like physical death, even though that's a huge part of it. But also, you know, a kind of ego death, if you will, where, what it means to be human, the connectedness we feel in community, like there are ways of dying, that disconnect us from those pieces of what it means to be human as well. So anyway, terror management theory is something that touches on all these different kinds of death, and shows how people become more defensive of the things that are meaningful to them, or the things that make us feel like we have a purpose and a sense of significance in the world. And when we don't have those things, those ties of significance, those like foundational building blocks of meaning and community and purpose, that we are a lot more vulnerable to, like psychological dysfunction, and other forms of dysfunction and even death. And so there's, you know, all kinds of ways of, of testing this, but just to give like, one example of what this means is, there was a study years ago, where a group of researchers, they, they took a group of Christians, and they divided the Christians and half and half of the Christians were exposed to some kind of mortality salience, or like death trigger. And usually, that's a couple of questions where you're being asked explicitly to reflect on what you think about death, like what you think will happen to your body when you die, stuff like that. And then the other half of the Christians, were not asked those questions. And then all of the Christians were brought back together and given a series of questionnaires in which they were asked to evaluate an out group, in this case that outgroup was another separate group of Jewish people. And what they found was that the Christian group who had been exposed to the mortality salience trigger, that they had a slightly harsher evaluations against the the Jewish group, than the the half of the Christians that were not exposed to a death trigger. And so this is like, first of all, just say, this has nothing to do with like, like, implicit, like, inherently being like Christian or Jewish, like you could have put in like, Canadian American, like any kind of like identifier. But this goes to show that, like, religion is often a very, like salient and important and strong form of identification for people. But what this showed was that, you know, whenever we're threatened in some way, with these, like ideas of data that we really, we want to like, strengthen our in group markers, and we become a little bit more suspicious of ideas or people or communities that are different from us, or that threaten what we see as like the nature of the universe, the order of the cosmos. And so this is just like one example and hundreds of studies that have been done at this point that that show this idea, and like I said, you could do this with a number of things, but I chose the, the religious example because of, well, what are conversations usually turned to so the point though, is just to say, like, we, as people, we think about death a lot, and we a lot of what we do in our lives, we're trying to like, make, you know, make meaning and like find a sense of belonging in the world, and that death is just like part of being human. And it's something that at some point, we will have to think about more explicitly, and have to really reckon with and so that is just like some background I guess, into like, why this this last episode. In our What is the serious medical ethics? Is that loosely That is correct. But yeah, just to give a little background unto like, how to like orient to this conversation about like the nature of death, the concept of death and how it how it can be a really powerful motivator of, of human behavior. And so, yeah, I guess, like one of the, one of the stories that I was thinking about, and this is sort of transitioning to a slightly different direction than what I was just talking about, but I was thinking a lot about the Death with Dignity movement, this week. And that, for those who don't know, like, there's a lot of, I think, every year, there's still like, ongoing discussion and debate about how this looks in policy. But the state of Oregon was the first state to implement a policy, I can't remember the year, if anyone knows that off the top of their, their head, for Feel free to say, but we can find that later. But they, Oregon was the first state to implement a policy in which people who were terminally ill were are able to ask for a lethal dose of medication to end their lives, so that they don't have to suffer. And that they, you know, the The purpose of this policy was to give terminally ill patients a sense of control, and a sense of, you know, dignity and normalcy in their last days with family. And so the, the story that I had read long ago was a woman named Brittany Maynard, or main art, I'm not sure exactly how to say her name, but she, she died by this voluntary lethal dose of medication on, I think, in 2014. But before that, she had been diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer, and she was 29. And she and her husband, you know, they were young, and there, they knew that there was nothing that was going to save her. And brain cancer is, you know, just, it's a, like a horrifying thing to go through, and would lead to a lot of suffering and a lot of deterioration in her body and in her, like, mental capability and personality, and she didn't want her family to have to watch her suffer that way. And she didn't want to, sorry, my mind's going on here. And she had didn't want to suffer that way. And so she and her husband established residency in Oregon, so that she could participate in the death with dignity. Act. And so anyway, this, this has led to a lot of conversations, and in a lot of different like religious communities and, and medical communities about like, what this means, like, what are the implications of something like this? And this is just like one example in, in medicine have like, conversations about death. Like, there are other things that, you know, we could talk about, like, defining what death even is, because that has changed over the years as well. But I was thinking a lot about this conversation, because there's something that seems almost like paradoxical I guess about it, you know, and I think that's part of what the controversy brings out is, we feel like, you know, especially many people from religious communities who say, well, all life is sacred, and we should, you know, stand by the sanctity of human life and things like that. And so how does something like the Death with Dignity act, violate that principle, or even, you know, uphold it? And, and so, I just wanted to, like, make that our example and to maybe see, especially like, the clergy in the room, what if, what this has looked like in your communities, if this is something that you've come across, and how that conversation has, has played out? Because when I think about it, I, I think a lot about how, you know, and in, you know, like my academic work, what it means to look at something like the death of dignity, like assisted suicide issue and how that is a way of, like fighting death, or, like, Is it a way of fighting death or giving into death? I think that's sort of the Controversy here and that there's like, a lot of different ways to sort of analyze and interpret what this very personal decision actually means. And it's just so interesting because you, you can, you can really understand it, I think from several different angles, that it, it's like a fight against the suffering and the humiliation that the dying process can bring. So that you, you know, maybe like, remain in your friends and family's memories as a vital, like healthy person. Whereas other people see it as like maybe as a kind of giving up. And it's just like, so it's such a personal issue. And so, so yeah, that's, that's what I wanted to just sort of set on the table to get us get us going.
 
16:02
These are really great things that you're talking about Kendra. And I will say that I have taught about dignity and death from a Jewish perspective. And I want to throw in a couple couple, you post a couple of dichotomies. And I think there's far more there, there's several others dichotomies as well. And so just want to look at that, when we think about death, dignity in dying, right, which is a better terminology than physician assisted suicide. Right, we're giving somebody dignity? Well, we asked, we have to ask ourselves the questions that in the last 100 years, we have progressed and our medical intervention in such incredible ways that we prolong people's lives. Right, I mean, that's vaccines, antibiotics, surgery, right, just simple things like that, that have prolonged people's life. So from from my perspective, there's really this question of our way of prolonging suffering and the suffering part of life and what part of it right so those those pieces and I, I feel I have to live into the roles that I have set up for myself, and I want to share a story. If that is okay, this comes from comes from Tom but of course, because that's where I like to quote a lot of and everyone wants the full full citation Babylonian Talmud traffic to boat page 104 eight. And this, this will lead into part of the conversation that I was thinking. I made servants of Rabbi Yehuda hanasi went through the roof and said, the upper realms are requesting the presence of Rabbi Yehuda hanasi. And the lower realms are requesting the presence of Rabbi Yehuda hanasi. May it be the will of God that the lower world should impose their will upon the upper worlds. However, when she saw how many times he would enter the bathroom, remove his phylacteries exit, put them back on and how he was suffering so with his intestinal disease, she said, may it be the will of God that the upper world should impose their will upon the lower worlds, and the sages, meanwhile, would not be silent, meaning they would not refrain from begging for mercy so that Rabbi Yehuda hanasi would not die. So she took a jug through it from the roof to the ground. And due to the sudden noise, the sages were momentarily silent and refrain from their begging of mercy. And at that moment, Rabbi Yehuda hanasi died. So we use this and modernity we use this story to say, Who are we doing this for? Who are we prolonging the life and therefore the suffering for? Is it because we can't bear to let this person die? Or is it because that's what is necessary? So that's, that's one way we use this story. The second way we use this understanding is from an ethical standpoint. medical ethics has this idea of personal autonomy, resources, my use of adequate resources and do no harm non maleficence. If a person is clearly suffering, is it not the job of the physician to do no harm? Right? So we really ask we really have to under Stand are we causing harm by allowing someone to live? So having said that, a couple of case questions that I was thinking about, if there is a person who has, you know, the example that Kendra gave, right? So this woman has a brain tumor. Let's say she now develops completely Incidentally, just randomly has nothing to do with the brain tumor, she develops severe bronchitis that turns into aspirational pneumonia. Right? Do you treat the pneumonia? Not rhetorical. Do you treat the pneumonia? Not we're not again, we're not touching the brain. We're not doing anything, do you treat pneumonia?
 
Ian Binns 20:50
I would still defer to the patient's wishes. I said, if the patient says, Hey, I don't want you to treat my pneumonia, and then argue against that? Well, probably, especially if I've made the decision that I'm going to continue on with my life as long as I possibly can until the cancer finally gets me, then yeah, I would treat it
 
Zack Jackson 21:20
as a doctor, you do what the patient wants. But if it were me, I don't know if I would, I might see that as a grace. Pender Adam,
 
Rachael Jackson 21:33
I guess it depends how much time I thought I had left. But I'm inclined to answer I guess similarly to to Zack, that maybe I would if I, if I still had like a good bit of quality of life left. So yeah, I guess I would lean more towards Yes.
 
Adam Pryor 21:57
I don't have enough information to decide. No, I do like information you have. So no, like. So like, what I think about are the answer I might give to that question look very different when I am 29 versus 39 versus 49. versus 59. It looks really different depending on what my familial situation looks like. And to me, it also looks really different based on the this specific type of brain cancer and its prognosis. So there's, there's a spectrum of I might answer yes or no.
 
22:44
could go either way. What about you, Rachel? Either way, if I were the patient, in this case, I would not treat the pneumonia.
 
Ian Binns 22:55
Can you explain why?
 
22:57
Yeah. If I know I'm going to die soon, right? We're all going to die. But if I know that I'm going to die, and it's going to be a terrible dying experience. I wouldn't want to leave that for anyone including myself. Pneumonia is considered old man's friend. Right?
 
Zack Jackson 23:19
Right. That's why I mentioned it. I see it as a grace. Yeah, but I would still want it. Not to be cured. But I feel like I would want some kind of comfort, at least in it. Recently drowning
 
23:33
you aren't? Yeah, you I mean, that's the difference, right? You can cure most people. I shouldn't say most times, pneumonia has the ability to be cured. Right. It's not an automatic death sentence if you get pneumonia, but there are plenty of symptom relief things that you can also take, you know, also just like, have enough morphine that you don't care for feel any of it. I bring this up because there are real life examples. Right there real life, right? There's a there's a response that that we look at responses, the Jewish way of saying, Hey, I have this question that doesn't actually have an answer. Hey, rabbis, can you give me an answer, where it talks about a 95 year old woman who has Alzheimer's, severe, severe Alzheimer's? And they compare that to a 16 month old who has severe cannabis disease? Right, both of them will die within the year. What do you do with them? Does their happiness matter does how long they live matter? What matters when we make these decisions? And who is making these decisions? Right in the case that Kendra provided for the death and dignity, the patient themselves is making the call. Oftentimes, when we are faced with questions like this, the patient themselves is not the one capable of making that call, for one reason or another again, in terms of the death, they did In Oregon and Washington, Oregon, I just looked at my notes that was 97. Washington was oh nine. So both those two states habit, and in those cases, the patient themselves must be the one it cannot be a guardian. And there's lots of doctors involved and psychologists and it has to be a hospice situation of six months or less verified by multiple doctors. I mean, it's really above board. This is not the 1990s Kevorkian questions, which is a different question entirely. But I know that that's clouded. Those of us that remember those years very differently than these laws in Washington and Oregon, Washington State and Oregon? Um, I think it's, I think it's all of those pieces. And then when we look at the question of what are we doing for prolonging life, if someone you know, what is death? And I so let me just answer that real quickly. I know I'm jumping all around. And for our listeners, I apologize that I'm just sort of chunking my statements here, I unfortunately will have will have to exit and leave this wonderful conversation. So I just want to put in a couple more thoughts.
 
Zack Jackson 26:08
Without Rachel, it's gonna turn dark,
 
26:10
it's gonna get dark, it might turn it gets dark. So I'll have to listen to your statements when they come out, then.
 
26:22
Um, what what do we classify as death A long time ago, it was when you stopped breathing, and then it became when you stopped having a heartbeat. And then it's when your brain ceases to have brainwaves. Right. And that's where that's where we're at now, is brainwave death. So if your heart is still beating, your body is technically living alive. But your brain is not and cannot be, we don't have a way to resurrect that. So what do we understand death to be. And this is where I see hope in our society. This is where I'm hoping we will get to go that rather than asking these questions of being that we're removing the sanctity of life, we're redefining what life can be. So here's the optimism that you're just going to have to hold on to for just a little bit, because I can't, I can't end the episode this way, because I'm not going to be there. But it's optimism that rather than being afraid of death, which is what so much of our society is dealing with. And as a clergy person facing one's mortality is a question that we face a lot. And I know other third year the same way, and recognizing that, you know, bring on the Lion King, it's the circle of life, it's the circle of life where we're really looking at life, and that death is just a part of that. So getting down and drilling down, what are the things that we're afraid of, and it's, it's often a fear of difficulty and dying, or it's often a fear of an afterlife for some people. So that's not which it's not just death that we're afraid of, in our society with all these medical techniques, we have the ability to, to say, Okay, now we have the control. Right, we have the ability to Yeah, how are we using that control? How are we taking ownership of ourselves and our life, which includes this portion of?
 
28:27
So that's all for me.
 
28:33
Good luck.
 
Zack Jackson 28:55
I'll jump on the religious aspect, because the United Church of Christ actually has made Yeah, you have statements about this topic? Because of course, we have
 
Ian Binns 29:09
a lot of topics. That's not a complaint.
 
Zack Jackson 29:15
No. And you know why we do that is because the United Church of Christ is a congregational denomination, which means that the national setting has no power to enforce anything on local churches. So when we get together every other year for General Synod and we make these grand statements of, of witness and whatnot, there's no actual accountability that has to come with that. We can just say these things and then send it to a committee to make a study on it and send out materials to churches. And so unlike other denominations, where when they say something, they actually have to do something about it, we can just say a lot of things. So that's kind of nice, but we did in 2007 have For a resolution on the sea, the resolution was called legalization of physician aid in dying. And as a result of that, they, they voted in to affirm this, which sent it to a committee to do research on the topic and to create a six week study guide for small groups and churches. It was designed to be used during Lent, which is the time in which traditionally, we imagine ourselves in the tomb with Christ. And looking forward to resurrection. And so it's very theologically focused. I will put a link in, in in the show notes. But, you know, one of the things that it really focuses on is that Christians should not be afraid of death, death, and resurrection is kind of our thing. Like, it's, it's an important part of the Christian tradition and story. And so if we believe that death is not a final thing, but a transition into something else, then how one's life ends, his lesson is not all that important. And so whether that person dies by natural causes or dies, in physician assisted ways, the it is still a transition into into what is next. And we believe that people are more than just their physical bodies. And so keeping a physical body alive is not inherently more virtuous than allowing a physical body to die. And so we came down on the side of supporting, but also in an informed way.
 
Rachael Jackson 31:58
Zach, just to get out of like a clarifying question, maybe, because I think what a lot of what we've been talking about is, you know, the policies and statements that are for this kind of, you know, choice in deliberating like how someone wants to die, but just in case, there's any confusion for people who didn't like grow up in, in a community where there was a lot of opposition to this. I just wanted to, like, put out there some of the ways that people have been thinking about, like, aid and dying, and, and I personally didn't grow up with a ton of conversation around this. So I'll just say, like, from, from what I understand, like some of the verses, I guess, that were, that could be used to, like, deny someone the ability to have, like their own, like authority in determining when they could die if they were terminally ill, or versus, like one in or several, I guess, in the New Testament, but I'll just read one, which is in First Corinthians 316 through 17. And it says, Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you, if anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him, for God's temple is holy, and you are that temple. And so it's like, versus like that, that I have these vague memories of people sort of using that as like, the theological argument of like, Well, someone shouldn't have should, someone shouldn't be able to make the decision to die before their time. Because, you know, like, the idea that your body is not your own, and that you just have to, like live until, like, God decides that it's not your time anymore. And so that's, that's, that's my memory of like that how that discussion went, but I like it. What else is there Zack? I feel like you probably have more like experiences and memories of how people have maybe argued this does that sound pretty? Pretty right to you? It does.
 
Zack Jackson 34:27
I was taught as a kid that taking any human life is a sin. And so taking your own human life is a sin. And because you took the life and then died with that sin, having not the opportunity to repent from it, then anyone who took their own life whether in this setting or in you know any other way would end up in hell was what I was taught in no uncertain terms. Yeah, which I think I've mentioned in a previous episode before, that my mom's explanation to me was that anyone who takes their own life, their brain typically has some issues going on. And God would see that in the same way that God would see the brain of someone with down syndrome who doesn't have the mental capacity to understand the ancient Creed's or, like, something like that. And it's also, as I reflect back now, I think about how those same people who would tell me that taking a life is a sin. Also found ways of getting around it when it was the death penalty or war. They found ways of theologically explaining those things, but not typically suicide, whether physician assisted or otherwise, or abortion, those were the two that were like, there's no way around that. But war and death penalty, they often found theological ways around it. And that's usually what we do, isn't it? when we, when our worldview supports something, we find a way of making our theology support it.
 
Ian Binns 36:15
So we cherry pick? Yeah, this this part supports my my conclusion. So I'm going to love this part, even if many other parts don't support it, I'll ignore this. Yeah, and I think that
 
Rachael Jackson 36:30
what you just said back to like that, that also resonates are I remember, some of my, like early conversations, saying that exact thing like about people going to hell when they make that decision. And I think what is what was always absent from those conversations, though, those like theological interpretations, it seemed like there was a conflation of all the circumstances in which someone might choose to, like, take their life. And obviously, it's like a super sensitive subject and really complicated, but I think that, like, a lot of what we've been talking about here, right now is, you know, the idea that, like, we're talking about a reduction in suffering, or like the attempt to reduce suffering and, like, focus on like, quality of life, rather than quantity of life. Which, you know, still still tricky, still controversial, but that that's really, I think, the core of what people are are thinking about when they like support something like the Death with Dignity act, and it's, it's, I think it does in in a lot of cases come down to are you are you emphasizing quality, or quantity? And it's not always easy to like separate those things out but that's where I see the difference and maybe like the the core of some of the disagreements about like whether this is a good thing.
 
Zack Jackson 38:11
I think I would be really interested in hearing different points of view based on profession. Yeah. Cuz I think a couple of years ago, this whole topic would have made me very uncomfortable. But I'm death is just such a part of my life. As a pastor of a primarily older congregation. All all day, all week all year, I'm, I'm with the dead and the dying and it has lost its staying. death itself is no longer something that really terrifies me. It's it's become this kind of more beautiful part of being alive. This transition that it's hard to explain, because then it makes you sound callous, and a little dead inside. But I think it's one of the most beautiful experiences when I can be present with someone at the end of their life. It is this holy and sacred thin space when somebody is breathing their last breaths. So I'm not afraid of it anymore. You know? Plus, I live with a pastor who used to be a hospice chaplain. So like, we talk about death around the dining room table.
 
Rachael Jackson 39:34
Just your everyday dinner conversation.
 
Zack Jackson 39:38
Yeah, so I almost kind of like the idea of getting to choose when you go because then you're not, then you're not worrying about the process of dying. Adam. Oh,
 
Adam Pryor 39:51
Zach, what you mean like death became a part of life. You said that, which is only interesting to me because Rachel said it too. Is that? Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what I'm after.
 
Zack Jackson 40:07
All right, so. So I did a CPE, which is clinical pastoral education at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. And my very first day, I was training with one of the chaplains, I walked into a room, because she had given called in, and the woman had died. Just maybe 15 minutes before we got there. And I didn't know that. And I'm standing in the room, and somebody mentions that she's dead. And I looked over at this person laying there that could have just been sleeping. But then suddenly, I was aware that this person had died. And I felt so weird. And I felt so creepy because this person wasn't prepared and dressed up and you know, the whole, like, Oh, they look just like they're, they look so good. The way you do it a viewing. This is a person that was still hooked up to machines and looked pretty bad, and was dead. And it was horrifying. And there's a certain smell that comes with death. And I thought about that for days and weeks. And then I just kept going and doing it. And as a chaplain being called when people were at the end, and sitting down with people, and you kind of I don't know, you do a scary thing a couple of times, and you get through it, and it's not as scary. And then once you're less afraid, you start to notice the more holy aspects of it. You know, for example, when a person is dying, and they know that they're dying, and they have disavowed themselves have the this mythology that they will live forever, and they know that the end is near, do you know the kinds of conversations you can have with a person in that state? They are the most honest conversations that that person has ever had in their life. And to be able to just speak openly about like, what do you think it's gonna be like, later on? Today? Maybe even? What do you think? those spaces, those conversations, it's almost like talking with an astronaut before they they go off into the great expanse, you know, you're, you're about to go see something that I'm not gonna see for a long time. And I want to talk with you about how you're feeling about it. And so I do this, and I've done this for years. And yeah, this is why most pastors were telling me they prefer funerals to weddings. There's less drama, and there's way more honesty, and it's a much more sacred and holy place that, that thin space at the end of life.
 
Adam Pryor 42:51
So I mean, I'm kind of sad, Rachel is not here, because I think it's like, probably the like place where like, we were gonna line up more than she would want to give credit for. I mean, I'll still still poke at her. But especially cuz she's not here to defend herself. But I'm an academic, that's what we do. So what I'm thinking about Zach is like, I think this language that both you and Rachel use, I think it comes from a very, like, pastoral. I mean, that in the broad sense, right, a sense of care place, to delimit to expose a place of scientific overreach, I don't think is like what we would describe it as doing, but I think it's implicitly what, what's happening, right? Which is, in a sciency way, right? Life is not dead. How do you define life? It's the persistence of not dying. Right? And if life is taken as that it's terrifying to die. But that's a very, I think, particularly in the 20th 21st century, right? Like, that's a very scientific way of getting at this right. It's this sense of saying, science has described for me, the ways in which something is living. Right, called biology. And, and what I think like, what I think is interesting, is that the pastoral approach that I think both you and Rachel want to take, wants to put the brakes on that for a second and say, hold up. what we think of as living might not line up directly with a definition Have the mechanics of a body or thing, trying to continually self perpetuate itself. And, on the one hand those sound like, like, Okay, so that's how religion is going to do this. And on the other hand, there are these sciency things that you can do, which are great. And, you know, sometimes great, and sometimes we should use them. And sometimes we shouldn't, but, but I think what, what I would push on is that, I think how we decide when to use and when not to use those medical and scientific interventions, lines up with, not how we think about death. But how we've defined life. Like, by bringing death into a part of life, right, you've reframed the conversation in a way that you can't, in the scientific context, because for somebody to be dead, be fundamentally not to be alive. Right, whereas that binary gets broken down. If you make death part of life.
 
Zack Jackson 46:27
at its best, one of the things that religion is supposed to do is to suppress the ego. And a person. Religion is a way of connecting a person to something larger than themselves. And one of the ways that my personal religion my faith does that is through knowing how interconnected that I am, that I mean, in my faith, I'll call that the Holy Spirit. I will also from my, you know, scientifically, I'll talk talk about the the atoms and molecules in my body, that are constantly being introduced and sent back out and you know, re forming and fighting back against entropy in order to create this thing. But that, you know, stars exploded A long time ago. And those those star pieces made this, and they made countless other living creatures before me, and they will make so many more after me. And so the me I see as a we, I don't, I'm not so worried about the death of my ego, because my religion has helped me to kill most of it anyway. And so, you know, people talk about having leaving a legacy, how will people remember me? How will I be remembered, they build these pyramids in the desert, because they want to be remembered, the ego has to live on well afterwards, which completely misses the entire point of the interconnectedness of the universe, and just the miracle of life, you know, Carl Sagan said that we are a way for the universe to know itself. And I love that I think that's has such, so spiritually profound. Those, those atoms that were created in those supernova are now able to know themselves because of this brief instance that we call Zack Jackson. And I love that, and I, so I think of death. And this is why I said at the beginning, that when I die, I want to be composted. Because I, when you cremate someone, you'll lose a lot of a lot of that organic material to the combustion. When you bury someone in a, like, traditionally, you know, you don't give back and I want 100% of, of what I am to go back, because I want it to live on as it lived on before me.
 
Rachael Jackson 49:13
And when you're pressed into a gemstone, similarly, you also live on
 
Zack Jackson 49:19
100%. I mean,
 
Adam Pryor 49:24
I think I mean, there's no segue from pressing people's bodies into gemstones that I can that I can make. I so yeah. I I'm also thinking about the question that Rachel asked Dan. And like, where that falls into this and like how I would think about it, and to not give the like snarky I need more information answer. Like Well, I I'm gonna stick with my snarky, like, I need more information, but not in the like, not in the sense of like, Okay. In an almost snarky or sense, don't worry, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go deeper, which is to say like, even if you gave me the information, okay, I don't know if I could answer the question one for anyone but myself. And two. For me this sort of like I, I'm very sympathetic to this idea that that like death is part of life right to overcome that dichotomy, right and that it has this, that making that movement and using religious traditions to make that movement de centers as in really, really important ways. So, I am 100%, on board there, it still leaves me with a big, long polling question, right, which is almost I think, harder, which is then to say, like, we will, but then how do you define that living thing? Like, how do you find that living thing that can be subject to death? And now, it's not just living by being a proxy of not being dead? Like, that's the question that that for me, comes immediately after the very pastoral movement that I heard you and Rachel making. And I mean, I think it's exciting because I don't think there are great answers to it. But also, I would take a stab at answering it, which is, I think what makes Rachel's predicament so difficult to deal with. So, I, I would play a language game, unsurprisingly. Right. Which is to say that we when we when we say something is living, or what it means to live, right, we can meet it in two senses, grammatically, and in transitive and a transitive sense. So we can mean it as something is alive. Right? as a state of situation, or we can mean it as the experience of living. Right? So that it's this this lived experience that one has not a state of being something, right. So it has these two senses when we use it. And for me, I think it's getting in to and being cognizant and about that sense of the lived experience, that's really important. Can I identify a set of experiences that living stuff house, that's essential to how I would think about whether or not I'm not actually ending my life is that 29 year old with the brain tumor who now has pneumonia. But as the 29 year old with a brain tumor, who's now got pneumonia, was I already dead? Because I had ceased to do the things by which I would constitute having living experience. So I'm not actually dying. And doing that no one's assisting me in dying, I was already dead. Even everybody that looks around me says, aha, you're alive because you have a heartbeat, or brain function, or this or that other thing. I mean, don't get me wrong, I know this goes down like a, an ethical, good. gray area might not be the right description, ethical terror, then that that can result. But I do think it's really I think it's really important to shapes the way that I think about life in what it means to live in really, really critical ways. I'm so sorry. Now I'm monologuing. Right? But like my, my bit here would be to say like, my cheeky answer of like, I need more information. Is that like, when Rachel puts that scenario forward? What I think about is me at 29. And at 29. I've got a three year old kid. And there are a vast number of things that I desire to have in relationship to the people who are in my life at 29 that says, Hell no, go treat that pneumonia. But I can also imagine a 29 year old for whom those desires for relationships which would be really critical to how I would define life are really gone. And then the pneumonia is, is the friend that makes a death that is already realized for that person available to everyone else to mourn?
 
Rachael Jackson 55:11
Yeah, I see a lot of what you're saying, Adam, as relevant to, like, the way that we kind of started and talking about, like, what, what are these different kinds of deaths and that we have, understandably, like an over emphasis maybe on like, the physical death. Because, you know, that's like, our physical bodies are a threat everyone, like sees and experiences immediately and, you know, I guess it's like, easier to make policies that affect those physical.
 
Adam Pryor 55:53
Like, I can measure the thing that I just,
 
Rachael Jackson 55:55
exactly. And that's what it like, the the scientific piece is, um, you know, it's far from simple, but it is simpler. And some cases, when you're dealing with, like, the physical stuff, but that there is, you know, we can talk about social death, or whatever other kind of death, but I think like, what you were just elaborating is, like, what I would call a social death of being totally disconnected, having like, no support system and no drive or capacity to be connected to a community or to a support system. And, you know, I get that that can like sound a little dramatic, I guess, to say, like, you're socially dead if you don't have those things. But, I mean, there's no, there's no denying that that makes an impact on people's lives, and all sorts of measurable ways that like social science has been measuring for, you know, many, many decades. And so that there's something about that feels really intuitive to me, even though, yeah, like you said, there's also like all kinds of other ethical conundrums that come up. But also,
 
Adam Pryor 57:13
let me just say, I mean, I'm cheating. I did write part of my dissertation on like, phenomenologies of life and death. So like, it's not like I just like came out with this quickly, like, I mean, I've been thinking about it for a decade. So yeah, I just, I feel like I should I want to do research,
 
Ian Binns 57:39
that I should all do research. I don't really wish you'd come up with these answers totally on the fly. So I'm gonna have to just dismiss everything you said?
 
Zack Jackson 57:49
Well, I learned all of my lessons about death from the school of hard knocks out on the front lines.
 
Adam Pryor 57:57
I mean, I will say too, though, I, I do think about it in personal ways, right? Like by my mother has pretty severe dementia. Right? Which has an interesting place within how people talk about death with dignity, right? It doesn't fit the legalistic framework that's been set up for like the Death with Dignity movement. And I think that's, its mean, a sound super cold. And I don't mean it that way. But it's like, in some ways, sort of interesting to see the ways in which working with a person who loses mental faculties illustrates the ways in which one's life is not one's own.
 
Ian Binns 58:47
Well, what is the difference? I feel like I know the answer to this, but the difference between death with dignity and a living will
 
Zack Jackson 58:55
a living well just says what you want to happen to you.
 
Ian Binns 59:00
Right? So you know, if you're,
 
Zack Jackson 59:03
if you're in a state where that sort of thing is legal, then you could put that in your living well,
 
Ian Binns 59:09
right. Well, you make that but I mean, if you're in a situation like that's where you write down, you don't want any extraordinary measures are taken that kind of stuff.
 
Zack Jackson 59:18
Right? Which listener if you don't have a living will, it's not hard to do and you should, you should definitely do it. My wife and I both have it you never know. You never know and it is always better for the people who are trying to take care of you if they know your wishes ahead of time and then every hospital
 
Adam Pryor 59:35
chaplain will thank you Yep.
 
Ian Binns 59:38
In my having written down Yes, every hospital chaplain will take you haven't officially written down and a living will takes away all those questions.
 
Zack Jackson 59:48
Write and right let it let everyone know what you want for your funeral for my mom has been making a playlist for her funeral for years, which includes Zombie by the cranberries which I told her is in bad taste
 
Adam Pryor 1:00:07
that decision
 
Zack Jackson 1:00:14
Yes, she at one point wanted time if your life by green days she was going through something in the 90s until I told her that the name of the song is actually good riddance. And then time of your life, it's a tongue in cheek song. Despite the fact that every single graduating class in the late 90s, early 2000s used it in their graduation. It is not what you think when you talk
 
Ian Binns 1:00:39
about like, for some reason, maybe think about this. But Did you all hear the story of the Irish man who died in 2019? And he set it up so that when his casket was being lowered into the grave, he had recorded himself? Oh, he was a prankster. As it's going down, all sudden, you hear his voice being like, hey,
 
Adam Pryor 1:01:06
let me out. Let me Oh, stuff like that. That they put out, right? Yeah. The soul Bell like, you know, because sometimes they got it wrong. You weren't really bad, or people were afraid that they got it wrong, or that you weren't really dead. So you could ring a bell and they would open the casket real quick. And you know, usually that was gross.
 
Rachael Jackson 1:01:25
Yeah, no, that is terrifying. Which is why if you get pressed into a gemstone and then have the rest of your body buried as Dustin of death, you can, you don't have to worry about that.
 
Zack Jackson 1:01:39
This is the reason why Thomas the campus is not a saint, despite the fact that he wrote the second best selling Christian book of all time, the imitation of Christ, when they zoomed his body, they found claw marks on the top of the coffin because he had been buried alive and they said a real saint would have just accepted his debt instead of fighting it. And so they never canonized him, which is Bs, which is why I think I call him a saint when I when I think about my bookie and that's all that matters, right? Oh, boy.
 
Ian Binns 1:02:13
So yes, dear listener, if we don't have in our notes, look it up Irishman pranks his family funeral, it was hilarious to watch. But the thing is that everyone expected it. Yeah. Okay, so first read it. They all tell everyone to do stuff like that. If you don't know, I don't think. I don't think he told them that he was gonna do that. I think maybe if you knew, but at least they knew he was a prankster. Right? And tell the funeral director telling jokes. And oh my gosh, it's so funny. To see all those people just chuckling. So, yeah, I think I'm gonna put some like that. So everyone
 
Zack Jackson 1:02:58
wants that everyone wants people to laugh at their funeral. Everyone I've ever talked to about this, they always go, I don't want people to cry and be sad at my service. I want people to be happy and tell stories and laugh. And every single person said this, I always tell them, do you think there's anyone out there who wants their loved ones to cry? No. But we're going to, because we're going to miss you. You're not going to be there. So you really don't get a say in this. And I'm going to cry at your funeral. And there's nothing you can do to stop me. And if you want to haunt me, go ahead. I'd actually kind of like that, I think, at least for a little while. Don't do anything weird and creepy. So like, my grandma told me, she doesn't want to serve us because she doesn't want people crying. And I said, I don't care, grandma. And she looked at me and she was like, might you wait, no, this is what I want. And I said, I don't care, because you're not going to be here. And these services are for the living and not for the dead. And there have been too many times people didn't want to burden someone else by you know, they don't want them to be sad, and then they don't get closure. So I'm all for respecting people's wills and wishes and all of that. But I am not above throwing a gorilla funeral service. When I need to
 
Ian Binns 1:04:13
fly I want to be I like in the various cultures around the world that treat it more as a celebration of life. Where they still have the moment and the funeral or somewhere where it is sad and things like that. But that it is a I remember, when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Jamaica, that was what they were. Someone was explaining to me it's it's a celebration of that person's life.
 
Zack Jackson 1:04:32
I learned recently that Church, The Orthodox Church has an annual Feast on the day of a person's death for the first couple of years. So you get your family back together. You have a big meal and you share stories of that person on the anniversary of their death. And I think that's
 
Rachael Jackson 1:04:48
spectacular here. The dead one that's a great opportunity to hot people.
 
Adam Pryor 1:04:54
Absolutely. So efficient and catterall. There. That's what everybody longs for.
 
Zack Jackson 1:05:03
Just get them all in one place takes a lot of energy to haunt Adam.
 
Ian Binns 1:05:08
Yeah, I will have to say, Zack that I do feel like this conversation was probably a little bit more uplifting than the conversation about middle age,
 
Zack Jackson 1:05:21
which is hilarious, right? And a part of that, I think is because I wasn't there. I
 
Ian Binns 1:05:25
feel I feel happier. After this one than I did the last one,
 
Zack Jackson 1:05:30
the middle aged conversation was about the fear of death. And this one is about the acceptance of accepted it. It's great.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 1:05:41
Yeah, I was gonna, I was gonna end with a quote that was gonna bring us back down. But I guess I'll just leave that off. Because I feel like we're in a good place. Oh, God, go
 
Ian Binns 1:05:49
ahead. Go ahead. Bring it No, I
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 1:05:50
don't know that it fits. It also takes us back to like terror management theory, which we've kind of not really been talking about. So this is good.
 
Zack Jackson 1:06:00
Okay, well, we can end our series with an announcement then, that this is the last episode in this mini series, which will bring us to, I think just about our two year anniversary. And so in celebration of that, and also because we have a whole bunch of professors that are going to be doing a lot of transitioning in this period, and a rabbi who will be entering into high holy days, and me who's just doing stuff. We're gonna we're gonna put up some of our favorite episodes from the first two years. And so if you missed them, or if you just want to listen to him again, because I've been listening to some of the older episodes, and there's some they're made of Kendra in there. And then after that, when we're gonna What's that? Yeah, they're made Oh, cuz they're gem gems. Ah, that was a call back I gotcha. Very well played. So when we come back from that, we've got a whole slate of new interviews and a new format for the show that will focus around storytelling, and a variety of new segments, which we're excited to bring you, which may or may not include books we've read or demons that we've loved or dead Christians. We want to tell fun stories about
 
Rachael Jackson 1:07:29
and listener questions gonna leave you
 
Zack Jackson 1:07:31
with that and listener questions. Oh, yeah, that's the important one. So we've got a lot in store for year three, and we're excited to bring it to you. gonna end it with that.

Medical Ethics Part 4 (Hairs in Places They're Not Supposed to Be)

Episode 88
Our exploration of medical issues along the span of our lives has reached the middle age. That strange period of time whose goalposts are constantly shifting because the people on the lower end don't want to admit it's beginning and those on the other end, don't want to admit it's over. This period is marked by an awareness of our body's limitations and our stubborn refusal to get that weird new ache checked out by a doctor. It can be a time of self-realization, honest introspection, and spiritual awakening or it could also mean a new sportscar and expensive vices. People do funny things when they start to discover hairs in places they're not supposed to be! 
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
 
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
Transcript 
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.
 
Rachael Jackson  00:05You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week our hosts are
Ian Binns  00:17Ian Binns Associate Professor of elementary science education at UNC Charlotte. And if I were to pursue a midlife crisis, the first thing that hit my head was is I would get tattoos. My name is Adam Pryor,
Adam Pryor  00:29I work at Bethany college. If I were to live out one of my midlife crisis fantasies, it would be to send all of my children to boarding school and buy myself a convertible.
Kendra Holt-Moore  00:48Kendra Holt-Moore, PhD candidate at Boston University, and my midlife crisis would either be get an eyebrow piercing, or get really involved in local theater, and just audition for all the main characters and try to achieve small town fame.
Rachael Jackson  01:08Hi, this is Rachael Jackson, Rabbi at Agoudas, Israel congregation Hendersonville, North Carolina. And if there were a midlife crisis that I would fulfill, I think it would be going off the grid entirely, and just becoming a hermit with my cross stitch stuff, and just sitting there and stabbing fabric for hours on end.
Adam Pryor  01:36So, as the as the question has been to indicate today, we are talking about health care, and particularly the issues of middle age, which is sort of the least exciting period of healthcare is what I've decided, right? No, no violent birth or death, just the long stetic period where everything is supposed to be humming along like normal, and yet you feel worse about yourself every day.
Rachael Jackson  02:05This is totally a year episode. Exactly.
Adam Pryor  02:11does feel like I was built for this. So but it's interesting, right click, because it's hard to find a lot of information about issues in the middle of life, because ideally, things are sort of going along pretty normally. And so there are a couple of things that I found that I thought were really interesting. So most of the material that you find talking about healthy aging, particularly during this period, relates to mental health more than it does physical health. The second thing that I found that I thought was interesting was that folks who tend to be in middle age seem not to go to doctors. They're maybe even worse than their own children who don't want to go to the doctor, but you make them go. But then when you hit this long middle period, you suddenly stop going as regularly. So I have another confessional question for you. I'm just curious when the last time you went to a doctor was
Rachael Jackson  03:07I went to my GP in December.
Adam Pryor  03:11recognize my stats here?
Ian Binns  03:14Yeah, I went 10 to 10 days ago. Sorry.
Adam Pryor  03:20You guys are by representative sample in any way, shape, or form? Not
Ian Binns  03:24at all, because the moment you told us before we started recording that that's what the data tells us. I knew immediately. I'm throwing that out. Yeah. Because I've always been the if I got some wrong and call the doctor.
Adam Pryor  03:36Do you really?
Rachael Jackson  03:38Yeah, I'm the opposite of that. No, I'm the I only got a baseline kind of person. So that's why I went because I I was turning 40 this year. And because health insurance is stupid. It worked out better that I went in December of last year rather than wait until I officially turned 40 this March. So I went last December so I could get a baseline of Okay, this is what I am at 40. Plus it was a pandemic year. So I was super stressed. So what was what did I look like in a super stressed 40 year olds is kind of what why I went I won't be going this year.
Kendra Holt-Moore  04:20I don't have a GP. But I have been a graduate student with my health insurance through Boston University. So I would just go to Student Health Services, and then they might tell me to go somewhere else. So I guess that kind of counts as a GP services,
Rachael Jackson  04:41but you're also technically just just throwing that one out there. You're not also technically middle aged,
Adam Pryor  04:45correct? Yes, correct. Right.
Kendra Holt-Moore  04:48Throw in my throw in my experience there. I do try to avoid the doctor until something urgent happened. See, so and I have been in the last year
Ian Binns  05:00I have had some unusual medical things happen to me over the last 10 to 15 years, that that's another reason why I'm like, you know what something's going on. And I'm kind of like, I'm not really sure about this out. Now what I do is I send them a message to the online system and say, Hey, this is happening. thoughts. And if they want me to come in, I come in, just because, you know, but the running joke when I had that weird infection in my hand that hospitalized me for two days and led to two surgeries, you know, and would have killed me if I had not gone in all the guys I work out with said, Hey, man, it's really good euro was because if it happened, any of us we would have been dead. I was like, exactly. Explaining, you have no idea how much my finger hurt, and they just like did just know, your finger. Does not matter. So yeah, because I went in is a reason why I didn't have to have anything amputated and or end up dying. So you know.
Adam Pryor  06:07So worth the check. So it was worth the check. Absolutely.
Ian Binns  06:14And I've had kidney stones several times. So yeah, when stuff happens, I'm just like, yeah, that's what they're there for. I also I'm under that, I think, mindset because growing up on a military facility in Germany, and even though my parents were divorce, I was still under my dad's medical insurance as a retiree. And so there was never a costs associated with going, you know, our my insurance was, I was fully covered with everything. And when you have something wrong, you just went in, I remember the first time I had to go to the doctor, I was in college, and they asked me about the copay, I just kind of looked at what was he talking about. And it was actually I didn't even know where to go first. Because there was no urgent care. For the most part, it was if he had something wrong, you know, on the military facilities, at least at the time, it was more of like, here's the ER, here's this kind of stuff. And that's where you went. And I remember kind of suggesting that someone and they're just like, what do you know, you don't go to the RFA, you go to urgent care. I didn't know what it was. So yeah, it was big, you know, wake up call. And as Rachel said, insurance is ridiculous.
Adam Pryor  07:27Yeah, I feel like the insurance piece is the like, largest factor of health care and middle age. Like, I, cuz I don't know about you. But anyway, it will everywhere. But but in particular in middle age, because I feel like you're you're kind of healthy enough to sort of roll along, if you so choose. But also, you start to get aware that like, probably somebody should, you know, take a look under the hood and make sure everything's okay. It's like when your car hits 100,000 miles, right, there are just some things you probably shouldn't do. And you also go, I really don't want to, because I know how much this will cost. Maybe not everybody feels that way. I certainly feel that way. Every time my wife looks at me and says you should go to doctor. And I say no, because I'm just too cheap.
Rachael Jackson  08:20Right? No, I think I think you're absolutely right. That it's it's partly our system. So it'd be interesting to see, because you were you were our anecdotal evidence or our anecdotal stories kind of disproved your scholarship article that you were saying that, you know, people have this general age Don't. Don't go. So I'm wondering if if it is a health insurance thing? What about countries that have universal health care if they experienced the same sort of dip in activity at this particular age range?
Adam Pryor  08:56Yeah, importantly, they don't. This is a distinctly and
Rachael Jackson  09:00they know that. Great.
Adam Pryor  09:02Yes. The World Health Organization has looked at that significantly, right. In terms of talking about what, what happens when you provide universal access to health care. Right. And I think it's interesting, right, because like, in some ways, all three of us, I'm going to explode you Kendrick cuz you're not middle aged yet. But the three of us who want
Rachael Jackson  09:25to be associated with you, people.
Adam Pryor  09:26That's right. Hey, now, don't worry. You're gonna feel good about talking about houses soon? Yeah. No, like, there's this, this element that I do kind of wonder like, are we not necessarily good representative samples across the board? One because of education, but to because of access to probably I would assume reasonable health insurance, even if not great health insurance?
Rachael Jackson  09:55If reasonable means that it costs the same as my mortgage then yes, yes. I have actually Access to reasonable health insurance. I,
Ian Binns  10:05we realized and I this was interesting to me, and this is not saying anything bad about where I used to work, but the health coverage in Louisiana was better than it is here in North Carolina, now that the services Yeah, there's no I'm not worried about anything. But when it came to the insurance part, like the premiums that we had to pay every month were lower than, you know, for me and and on it than it would have been for here and I. But then, if we they had a really interesting system there. It was called LSU. First, it was like a three tiered system. And the first year was LSU. First and if provider or hospital was part of the LSU, first, you paid nothing. Like that was part of their system. There was no copay, nothing. It was amazing. And then you had like, then the next tier was is that you had, they were in network, and then you had your deductible, right, and your copay. And then you had out of network deductible copay, which is obviously a whole lot more. But it was just, I remember seeing that when we got down there. And I just like, Whoa, that's amazing. So even when the twins are born, the hospital we did it in was one that was under the LSU first system. So it was considerably cheaper than it would have been if we gone to the other hospital. Which I find fascinating. But I think one of the things that really helped me was all about middle aged stuff, and insurance and all those things that when I did have that issue, that infection in my finger, they weren't sure what was going on. And we were sitting in the earth or the hand surgeon's office, and they were trying to look at it. Like, we don't know what this is. But we know we have to do an immersion surgery tonight. And this was at three o'clock in the afternoon telling us this. I do remember and then having to call the hospitals to make sure they took my medical insurance. Now I'm on the state health plan. So ended up not being a problem. But I do recall also to either the PA or the doctor or somebody suggesting to and make sure the hospital that we're going to take your insurance. Right. And I be I was always shocked. I'm still shocked by that, that. That's just unbelievable, right. And by the second surgery, which was in April of that year, I had reached my out of pocket maximum. So I paid nothing else the year when I would go the doctor, even for PT because of the hand. They In fact, even the physician's assistant at the time was like, well, we probably want to get you an occupational therapy. I'm not sure what your insurance looks like. And I said, Well, I've meet I've met the out of pocket maximum. He's like, Oh, well, we're just gonna write you for a whole bunch of them then. But it was just that mindset of that's what's so wrong with our system. So we'll get there, Kendra, you'll get there.
Kendra Holt-Moore  13:05Hi. Yeah, I've got some stories to share already. My husband almost went deaf a couple years ago. And so the doctor's bills of trying to like get that all sorted out. It's pretty insane.
Rachael Jackson  13:21Yep. I wanted to tackle one of your other points there, Adam. We were saying that. No, why not? Right, is it that we're just kind of status quo. And then at this, at this particular point in life, people focus on mental health, as opposed to strictly physical health of those, the two are often quite related. So that but the one of the other pieces that I was really thinking about is also at this point of life. And let's let's clarify. So I just asked two and a half questions. So let me ask a third actual question and start there. How are we defining middle life?
Adam Pryor  14:08How do you want to define middle middle life or middle age?
Rachael Jackson  14:14Yeah, I think that's a crucial question.
Adam Pryor  14:19Right? We were talking a little bit before, like things started right like that it keeps getting pushed older. I'm going to blame the baby boomers, because I blame them for everything. And I'm assuming that they just don't want to be old. So they want middle age to go further and further and further, right. Like, now middle ages to 65. And I'm like, No, no, no, you're old. You're not middle aged anymore. You're your past middle aged. I like to use 40. That's the number that I think of. And like plus or minus 40. Right. But like it there's something about that like statistically I am closer to death than I am closer to both Right, and that impending move that I go, that's to me where the like the middle life piece hits, which I know is not necessarily a popular answer. And there are different ways to do it. But it feels very
15:15straightforward to me.
Kendra Holt-Moore  15:38makes sense to me like I wouldn't. Yeah, I wouldn't say that, like 65 should be the new like middle aged mark. But 40 does feel young ish to me. Like, again, I'm speaking as the non middle aged person in the virtual room. But I think that, like technological advancements, people are living longer and will continue to live longer than we had previously. And so it does, it makes sense to me to have middle age, scoot a little bit further back then the 40. Mark, because I just, yeah, just like, a lot of older people I know who are like grandparents or great grandparents, or I know a lot of people who live well into their 90s. And, you know, not saying that, that's like the norm for everyone, but it's becoming more the norm. And so, yeah, I would scooch it back.
Adam Pryor  16:34It could be that I'm still fully anticipating to die by 80. Yeah, possibly seven.
Kendra Holt-Moore  16:38Middle Age, right.
Rachael Jackson  16:40But so when I was looking, and there's a it depends where you look, when does it start, I've seen the start of middle age be 3540 or 45. And the end of middle age be either 60 or 65. I haven't seen middle age end later than 65. The average life expectancy for the United States for men is 80. And for women 84. So I think you're not wrong, Adam to say that you don't expect to live past 80. That's the average life expectancy of men, your personal genetics, your family, genetics, your lifestyle. All of that, of course, has an issue, but 40 is straight up minute like you've literally lived half your life. Right? Like from a mathematical standpoint, none of us actually know when we're going to die. But given statistics, half is done. Right. And I think and then from a female standpoint, right, our physiol our physiology, right? If if we're only seen of as birthing machines, then then the question might be, when does half of your birthing abilities end? Right? So if we, if we look at what menstruation starts and say 13, rounding small nut rate 13. And when does it end? 5055. Right, depending on depending, again, dependent. So if we say 55. So it's 20 years, or excuse me, 40 years, half of that is 35. Right? So from a female biological standpoint, 35 would be the start of middle aged half of your birthing your reproductive life is over. So in that way, and and that's a medical place. So I think 35 is also not an not an air. When we look at jobs, people aren't necessarily retiring at 60 or 62, or even 65. Right? Some people are working until 7075. So to say, Well, I'm How long is my work history. So if my work history is 50 years, and I start when I'm 22, middle age isn't going to start until I'm 45. Right? So I I think there's value and understanding when we're talking these ages that there's a lot of different lenses that we can use. And from a from a psychological and an emotional standpoint. I see middle aged also and not necessarily in this generation because people are living so much longer. really starting to kick in. And the end of middle age. Where middle age ends is when your next when the generation before you has died. When you know if we're if we're looking at the natural order of things and saying Okay, my parents, my aunts and uncles, all of them, they've died. I'm next. And to me, that's one of those places that indicates the end of middle age. That's how, from an emotional standpoint, which is also why like, why should I go to the doctor, I don't want them to find things. I don't want I don't want That reality,
Ian Binns  20:01so helps you realize that you're not or that you are mortal.
Rachael Jackson  20:06Right? Right. I mean, teenagers and adolescence that's a better term adolescence go through an invincible stage. I think in middle age, we go through an immortal stage. I know, I know, I can get hurt, but I'm gonna live forever.
Adam Pryor  20:27reckoning with mortality.
Rachael Jackson  20:29Yes. Yeah. And it's hard.
Adam Pryor  20:35does kind of suck any other way to put it.
Ian Binns  20:42So I started looking at, like signs that you have reached middle age,
Rachael Jackson  20:45or what people think and know when those were written. So if you're looking at, you know, like huffington post things, make sure when they're ready. Yeah,
Ian Binns  20:54that one's funny. The Huffington Post one that was update in 2017. There's some pretty funny ones on here.
Rachael Jackson  21:02Are you gonna Why are you just gonna leave it like that? No, hold
Ian Binns  21:04on, a hair starts appearing everywhere. When your nose face ears. Hair Reading on your? Yeah, Reading on your phone becomes difficult because the font is suddenly too tiny and blurry. The shed or basement becomes your favorite place. you've
Adam Pryor  21:21dug a little too, too close to home.
Ian Binns  21:24That's why I read that one. Oh. You begin thinking policemen, teachers and doctors look really young. Yeah. Yeah. You are obsessed with your health. You begin looking over the top of your glasses. You start enjoying naps more than ever.
Rachael Jackson  21:50No. naps are for everything. Except for as punishment for children. Right? Because they think it's a punishment. But
Adam Pryor  21:58yeah, forever.
Ian Binns  22:00You find yourself saying what and huh? All the time. You find a lot harder to lose weight a whole lot harder. You don't know any of the songs played on the radio. Gardening becomes an obsession. You develop? You develop little leaks. This is a good one. Yeah. You grow and every time you bend over,
Rachael Jackson  22:28that could have happened to anybody at different times, depending on what their birthing was like.
Ian Binns  22:34Yeah. Anyway, those are some some. Yeah.
Adam Pryor  22:40I hadn't hadn't thought about defining middle aged by how leaky you are. Kind of like that. Mm hmm. So I can't wait.
Kendra Holt-Moore  22:55Some of those already apply though, actually. Yeah.
Ian Binns  22:57See, I told you, you're on your way. Yeah, that's fine.
Rachael Jackson  23:02It's the alternative.
Adam Pryor  23:07what's the alternative?
Rachael Jackson  23:09data?
Adam Pryor  23:11Ah, I like that, that no one's used forever. Nobody. Nobody went with like the transhumanist answer there. That's good. That's good.
Rachael Jackson  23:21We covered that. That's, that's not what we want. That we want. We want death.
Ian Binns  23:26So I wish dear listener Tune in next time when Kendra takes us on a conversation about death. Oh, yeah, it's gonna be great.
Adam Pryor  23:35In preparation for that conversation about death is as we reach this sort of, like, middle aged piece, right, we talked a little bit about this, this idea that like, mental health becomes a big piece of how people think about it. And there's this in a lot of the in a lot of research, there's this this sort of description of a longing for youth, right, a sort of almost like a nostalgia for things that you used to be able to do. But now, perhaps that was no longer a good idea is my way of describing it. So I ran into this the other day, when I was throwing Linus up in the air. And I went, did that was a it was a poor decision in relationship to when I did this with Henry. And I didn't even like think about it. And Henry was a heavier child, and that made me more depressed. I've known what that experience was
Rachael Jackson  24:33like, but just to clarify, the two of them are what, nine years apart
Adam Pryor  24:36nine years apart? Yeah. Were you stronger than I am immortal, more physically?
Ian Binns  24:45were you doing more physical things and like physically fit the new aren't new and
Adam Pryor  24:49now I feel as though I feel like I can say that for like, a 37 year old. I am like, relatively fit. I went out and biked 105 months. Last weekend, like I feel thing, I feel relatively fit. I've been cycling a lot like, you know, I don't feel undue in that regard, but also, like, not like when I was in my, you know, mid 20s and could swing my child around without abandon no matter what.
Ian Binns  25:21Well, all the reason why I'm asking this because like, for example, because of, you know, when I joined f3, and started doing boot camp style workouts, when I was a kid, and stuff and a runner, I never had upper body strength. So I can never do pull ups or anything like that. Now, I can't go out right now and knock knock many pull ups out because I'm not because of the pandemic as I've I've never really worked on physical strength, like I had before. But when I was training for those Spartan races, yeah, I can knock out pull ups, and that was 39 4041. So I was definitely more physically stronger than than I was maybe when the kids were born. Was that's why I was asking like, Is it just because in middle age now there are aches and pains that I have now that didn't especially back pains, back and neck pains that you're just like, oh, that was one of the ones I did not read off. Back in, like back in that pains. And then it also made me think to one of the things I saw on another list was purchasing your decor for your house. That if you're more excited about that, then other things, toys or whatever, that's obviously a big difference,
Rachael Jackson  26:30like going out on Saturday night. A fun date on Saturday night is like Home Depot, Target, and Sam's. Yeah. You know, yeah, free samples.
Adam Pryor  26:40Or then even like the type of good free samples are back, I just want to
Rachael Jackson  26:44do that for you. They're not back for us. They
Adam Pryor  26:46are they're coming back for us. And it is going to drive my grocery bill down. Yeah, because I get to eat me some free samples.
Ian Binns  26:57That's a middle aged thing. I would say cuz you're sitting there wouldn't I mean, can you say what you said it to drive my grocery bill down?
Adam Pryor  27:05That's right. That's what I'm worried about.
Kendra Holt-Moore  27:06I don't know if that's a middle aged.
Rachael Jackson  27:09shoe. That's a cheap thing.
Ian Binns  27:11That's a cheap item. Okay. You're right. That's that's just cheap. Adam. That's true.
Rachael Jackson  27:17That's true. Okay, in typical Rachael fashion. Can we talk about the positives, though?
Adam Pryor  27:26There are positives. There are parts. Are you sure? Because I bet I can split all your positives into negatives. Okay,
Rachael Jackson  27:34you were just saying you're not as strong as you were before.
Ian Binns  27:36I need my popcorn. Well played on that one, Rachel, thank you. I'm ready. I'm ready. Remember, she lifts weights. Flip it.
Rachael Jackson  27:48One of the things that I think really happens to people in this category of middle age, however a person chooses to identify when it starts and when's it ends, is a really knowing oneself. And this is where I think the midlife crisis concept comes in, where a person finally realizes that they are mortal. And that time is the most precious thing that we have. And because of that, we don't want to waste it. And so there's a reevaluation of life a reevaluation of priorities of reevaluation of self. And that transformation, that metamorphosis, I think, is absolutely beautiful. And there's a sort of understanding of not really caring as much what others think that a particular age you know, that turns into curmudgeonly old men usually, but it's, it develops in a nice way early. So that that that for me is one of the biggest positives that I see in this category of middle age.
Adam Pryor  29:25But I'm gonna just turn that on its head a little bit, right, like, cuz that might go really poorly. And what was well, right, so I think part of what goes on with that midlife crisis is exactly this sort of like self awareness that you're describing, right? But what happens when you're aware that the self you've become is drastically, drastically not what you want to be,
Rachael Jackson  29:48then you change
Adam Pryor  29:52or you buy a convertible
Rachael Jackson  29:54or get a tattoo you find really poor coping mechanisms. Correct. Given that that's at every stage Well, yes, I'm in the hence the poor weight loss issues. Yeah. Right then. But I mean, I think of an unhealthy coping mechanism that our society has made a joke of, but I don't
Adam Pryor  30:15I think part of this is that like the, the discovery of self is not inherently positive. Right? It's a sort of neutral item, I think, Oh,
Rachael Jackson  30:27really?
Ian Binns  30:29When that'd be based on perspective, load the discovery of like, yeah, I, I'm with you, Rachel, you say, say that, again,
Adam Pryor  30:38the discovery of self is not inherently positive. I think it's neutral.
Kendra Holt-Moore  30:43Oh, yeah. I agree with that.
Rachael Jackson  30:45Same Oh, Kendra.
Kendra Holt-Moore  30:49I just, I mean, it's such a personal like process. But I think what I hear when Adam says that is that people over the course of their lives, and not just in middle age, although I'm sure it can, like, Look, a particular way, because that's when we talk about things like midlife crisis, and all of that, but people have different like practices and hobbies, and you know, life circumstances change you and you just become more self aware over the course of your life, or not everyone does become more self aware, actually. And it just, yeah, I think, what, what Adam just said, is that, like, you can wake up one day and realize that you're not who you hoped you would be, and might also find it really hard to change into who you hope to be. And I don't know, like, there's just a million factors that play into, like, what constitutes the self? And I guess that's maybe the bigger, more daunting question is, like, what do we what are we discovering when we discover the self, but I just think that, yeah, like to be satisfied with the self, that you discover, probably has a lot to do with things like, healthy support system, and financial stability, and, you know, like, meaning making processes that are, you know, accessible to you. And, and that, I mean, those things aren't like, what we typically consider to be an inherent part of the self, but they, I think, make life a lot easier for us to become our best selves. And, and so yeah, it's just, it feels like a really, like, life is complicated. discovering who we are, or creating ourselves. The way that we want to be is just, yeah, it's a real mixed bag for people. And so it feels really intuitive to me that that, that does, that it is a neutral process, because it can be it can look very good for some people and very bad for others. And it's wrapped up in all of these like social factors, too. And some people just don't have a lot of control over those things and what they do have control over? Well, yeah, I guess that's still, that's still brings us to a conversation about like, you know, it's it's not what it's not about, like what you can't control, but it's about like, the attitude you have towards the things you can't control, like little quotes like that about, you know, who you are, who you're not, and, yeah, so anyway, I just find that a really intuitive way to talk about like self discovery. What does that not feel? I'm curious about what, what you guys are thinking Rachel and he and, Dan,
Ian Binns  33:52I think the way you said it was a lot nicer. I'm just gonna say it. So
Adam Pryor  33:59the way Kendra said it?
Ian Binns  34:01I do. I do. Because I feel like it still gets the way I was thinking of it was a perspective thing, right? It's how you approach it. And and I think that shifts, depending on what stage of life you're in, and also can just depend on the day, you know, or the moment that you're experiencing something. And so I guess, over time, it could average out as neutral feeling that way. But go ahead. Well, so one of the things that, you know, that I This helped a lot with, like all of the mindfulness meditation I've done is to really focus on which I just hit one year,
34:44daily.
Ian Binns  34:45Last Friday, I was very excited with that 10% happier group. But is that right? And then I still also we're still working progress, obviously but recognizing what I can and cannot control and to learn it. let that go is tough. Right? So I think by the fact that I'm getting better at that than I used to be, that would make it I think things more positive, because I'm recognizing what I have control over. But if I'm in a foul mood, or struggling on that day, it doesn't matter. This Yeah. It will be a negative perspective. So,
Kendra Holt-Moore  35:27yeah, yeah. And I just wanted to add that, like, what I just said, I could see how maybe it sounds like a little bit deterministic of like, oh, what, what's around you makes you who you are. And I do think that's true to an extent, but also, like, what you're saying, in the personal practices, we have to try to, you know, like, create ourselves or however you want to phrase that. It's, it's a matter of practice and like determination to some extent that. Yeah, you might not feel the same every day. And that's okay. I don't think that really like, changes your, like, fundamental being, it's just that, like, we, I think humans, we have practices for ourselves, we participate in rituals, we have community and support systems, because that those things do create a boundedness around who we perceive ourselves to be. And we, we each have many different roles in our families, and friends and communities. And that those are all ways that we, that we do, like, derive a sense of who we are. And some of that's like aspirational, you know, like, if you strip that all away, like, what, how would that make you different than who you are? In your role as like, teacher, pastor, Mother, you know, all of these things? So it's just like a really, it's a really difficult question, I think, to, to answer without thinking about the things we do to practice being ourselves in the forms of, you know, practices like meditation or attending that, like, a Bible study group every Sunday, or showing up to class to teach every week, you know, things like that. So just wanted to add that Rachel has a very quizzical look on her face. Yeah,
Rachael Jackson  37:25I I hear what you're saying. totals, parent medical tangential aside, I think everyone needs to go through active listening and assertive speaking. training. So I hear what you're saying. I think I'm coming at it from a very different place. from a place of I think, Adam, you said status quo. Right? That's, that's one of the characteristics of this time of life is status quo. And when I compare that to other phases of life, say, if we look at, right post middle age, what happens after middle age? What, like, what happens? What how are we? How are we calling that old? elderly? Right? I, it depends. And then there's medical terminology of elderly or older, or frail, all of those different fragile, right, these are all medical terms that can be used in those ways. But if we say, elderly, right or old, right, you have middle age, and you go to old, and you go to elderly, old and elderly, are in our society, because that's someone that we can really speak to, are categorized, often by the decline of the body, and the re evaluation of the self outside of a profession. Whether that profession was raising children, or having a career or whatever it was with that there's there's a shift in our culture of Oh, now you're retired. And that's, that's a very big shift in our human doing our productivity, our you have to, so that our society is very surrounded around that. So I think older and elderly are really looking at redefining the self outside of a profession. And in terms of the body, right, the body itself starts to really decline in those points. Youth, adolescence, is categorized and for me looked at as finding yourself within society, like pushing the boundaries, where is authority? How do I fit in? How do I fit there, like I am knowing mostly who I am, but it's an age of exploration. This status quo is a I've established what my career is more Less, I've established more or less, at least a partnership or not a partnership, a child like rearing children or not rearing children that there's a, these things are not necessarily fully brand new at this point, right? Most people don't say at 50. Now I want children when I didn't want them for the last 30 years. It could be a Oh, shucks. Now we have another right there. I mean, it's not saying that it doesn't happen, but that it rarely at that stage of life, is it a, yes, this is what I want. And I've never given it any thought. But that it's a status quo, which allows us to then in a slow, methodical, or not even methodical, but in a in a status quo sort of way to say, is this who I am. And I think and I will, I will very much saying I really appreciate you pointing out Kendra, that this is coming from a point of privilege. This is most definitely coming from a place of privilege that I didn't earn. Some of it, I did most of it, I didn't. And that there are people who don't have the privilege to have that conversation of self, which is one of the the markers of modernity, as opposed to pre modern era, right, they didn't have this luxury work for 15 hours a day, six days a week is. So having said all of that I come from a place of this is our time to just sort of slow down and figure out what what not what we're trying to reclaim, which is what I think you were trying to look at Adam, but how to re hone who we are. And even if it's a even if it's a 180 from who we are, it's a I can now confidently say at 40. I am an introvert. I am not shy. But I'm definitely an introvert I am a low energy person. I am a particular food eater. not picky. But I like what I like. And I'm gonna change that a whole lot. And it's okay that I like blue box mac and cheese. And I'm not going to apologize for that. And I'm not going to feel bad about it. I'm not going to feel bad about who I am or my choices and feel like someone's judging me. Anything that's that's the recognition of self that has nothing to do with my role as a clergy person, as a spouse as a parent. It's a Who am I What do I like to do? What are the things that make me happy? Not my mood. And if you'll if you'll allow me the ability to make one more analogy. One of the things I hear you saying Ian is really like weather. Today's weather. How do I feel today? Right? And that's weather. Right today? Like it was 105 degrees in Billings, Montana yesterday, that is absurd. And it snowed in Texas. And that is absurd. Right? The weather is the daily changes, but the climate. That's what we're looking at now. And I'm saying at this point in our life, this is when we can recognize the climate is changing. Can we change it? Do we want it to change? if so how? Right? cooler Texas sounds great, hotter, Montana, not great. Warmer oceans, bad idea. Poor little sharks, heard a whole story on sharks and being in mermaid purses and stuff like that, and how warm oceans are making them die. Like that. That would be the negative. But I think inherently it is good, I think inherently. And that's why I'm saying it's not inherently neutral. I think it's inherently good to look at oneself in the mirror and say this is who I am. And I'm good with that. So that that for me is the positive. Because we're not focusing on developing the career rearing the young worrying about our bodies. Again, speaking from a place of privilege.
Adam Pryor  44:30Okay with that, if you're good with it. It's the person who looks at it and says, I'm not, and there's no mechanism to change that I look at and go, that's a that's a different sort of notion of what self discovery is.
Rachael Jackson  44:49Why is there not a mechanism to change that's what I don't understand.
Adam Pryor  44:54privilege.
Rachael Jackson  44:57Can you say more? Yeah. You're like me, I'm dead body?
Adam Pryor  45:01No. So I do it this way. I'm Joe trucker. And Joe trucker has woken up at 45. And gone, I spent 20 years of my life driving truck. And I'm not sure that I believe that I've actually done anything good in the world. And I would like to do something good in the world. And I have no savings by which to change the structure of the day to day grind that I find myself in. That is not a moment of self discovery that I would say is inherently good.
Rachael Jackson  45:33disagree.
Adam Pryor  45:35But I think that's because you assume the structure of knowing the truth is good.
Rachael Jackson  45:41I do assume that,
Adam Pryor  45:43and I do.
Ian Binns  45:44But you are also Adam. I feel like with the example you just gave, you're still not fully in that person's perspective. No, no, no, no, you've not you've not lived that perspective. So you do not know. So that's the the, the To me, it sounds like. And so I want to push back a little bit on that, like I see your point, Adam, with that example, based on my perspective, I would I would potentially see that the same way. But based on the person who's lived that entire life in their perspective, I don't, I don't, I can't say how I would say,
Adam Pryor  46:19if you can't say how you would see it, I also don't think you can say self discovery is inherently good.
Rachael Jackson  46:24But I see what the problem that I have with your analogy, is that you're basing that on a person's profession, that person could then say, Yep, I am a trucker. And I feel like I haven't done anything good in the world. Now, let me go be a trucker for a company that I feel does good in the world. Or now let me take this time that I have, because I might truck 60 hours a week, but I have two hours that I could give. And I'd rather do that because this is a lack that I feel and I can do something about that. So so the profession might not change the situation of having savings might not change. But that self discovery can be a very positive change.
Adam Pryor  47:05But But I think cannon is are two different things. It can be a positive change,
Rachael Jackson  47:13there is no try only do
Adam Pryor  47:15like, but will it be is is is also a is part of what I would press back on there. And why I would call it neutral. Okay.
Kendra Holt-Moore  47:26Yeah, I was gonna also reflect that I think that Adams hypothetical, it's not that the hypothetical is always the case that like Joe trucker is going to reflect on his his himself as, you know, being like in a negative or positive position. It's just that both of those possibilities can happen. And because of the potential for that to go that either way, that that's where the neutrality lies.
Adam Pryor  48:01I mean, I work in higher ed, I I'm generally in favor of self discovery, as like something that's important.
Rachael Jackson  48:07Yeah. You sway me towards neutrality. I can, I can see that. But But you're right, Adam, I do I do believe that, you know, the more truth we know. That is inherently good. That I do. That is more my my perspective, my worldview. I do not believe of ignorance is bliss, kind of
Ian Binns  48:32reverse. I agree with that worldview. Of course, there are things that we can learn. That is true that we may not like when you put it all together. I still feel like yeah, it's better to know when you put it all together, again. Now, you can come with example right now that would be like, Oh, I'm betting he wouldn't like this. And then you tell me and I'd get mad. But then after that, I'll do
Adam Pryor  49:05that alone. I'll let you do in your optimism for a while. That's fun. Thank you
Rachael Jackson  49:10do in optimism. That means that it's going to concentrate more and I'm going to be even more optimistic then.
Adam Pryor  49:17That does seem to be how it works for people.
Rachael Jackson  49:20It is I'm sorry, you don't understand it. Okay, well, optimistic me. Cuz that's who I am. And I'm not gonna apologize for it. But that's okay. Um, is there anything else? Good?
Adam Pryor  49:46I don't know You were the one who said you could come up with good things about about middle age.
Rachael Jackson  49:50Yeah,
Adam Pryor  49:51I mean, I was I was just here to turn them over and make them bad. Yeah. So
Rachael Jackson  49:58I think the take no crap attitude. is a good thing.
Ian Binns  50:01All right, I wouldn't say that necessarily comes with it.
Kendra Holt-Moore  50:06And also, I could turn you potentially like just to get, I feel like I'm really with Adam in this crap attitude is something that I am, I also am like starting to feel the older I get, I was actually just talking about this with my sister who is in her mid 20s. And how we like, are definitely starting to care a lot less about what other people say, the older we get, and how that can be a great thing. But it can also make you a Karen well, so you know, good and bad. I say this for myself, too. Because I, I don't want to I don't want to be a caring. But sometimes it's it's hard not started to manager.
Adam Pryor  51:00I think what starts to like put itself out there, right? Are these there's a mixed bag of what this process of reaching middle age both in terms of like bodily health, mental health, the process of self evaluation, like dope. It can take us in different directions, much like other stages of life, right. So like, even if we talk about Middle Ages, this status quo, right between because I liked your like Rachel, like the like, curve up in the curve down. Right the like, there's development and growth. And this is exciting, but also, like I would never ever want to be a teenager again. middle aged feels much better than being a teenager. I'm watching my child reach into teenage them and going I hate you go back to being a child or skip right into being 20. But this this mid No, no, nobody likes you right now. I say that to the cat, also, but that's fine. So like, there's that element, right? And then I think you can say the same thing on the other side, right like that. Like I like your distinction between old and elderly. Right? Like there's this element of I remember speaking with a very good scholar at a conference, and she sort of halfway joked about I just can't think as fast as I used to. And sort of stopped and paused and then said, No, but I really mean it like this, this body that I am now is not who I am. Right? There's this element of like being betrayed by one's physical sensations, which in middle age, I feel like hasn't happened yet. Like you can be slightly dissatisfied or there's hair where there wasn't here before. There might be a grown. There's a grown from lifting things up and throwing children around. But right. But like in general, there's there's not that sense of like bodily betrayal that can come later. But I think there is this element. Right. And this is what I think is curious about the whole middle aged conversation where it intersects with health is this this element of like, an awareness of that status of old and elder of that eventual bodily betrayal suddenly being around the corner which can feel impending in a positive or negative way. I mean, the way I phrased it does not make it sound great. But I understand it could be phrased positively.
Ian Binns  53:39But it comes back to the mortality conversation we were having earlier.
Adam Pryor  53:42Yeah, right. I feel like like Middle Ages, this like element of like, mortality, contemplation, and depending on how positive or negative you are, right, like waiting for the other shoe to drop of being old and elderly or of having old and elderly cut short. Right. So I, my my thinking about this has like changed since I said that I would start to do it right, because we had this local pastor who died very suddenly. You know, truck came across the highway hit ambu. So Harley, and his 10 year old daughter died almost instantly. 13 year old survived, which is miraculously
Ian Binns  54:28weird. longer. That happened a
Adam Pryor  54:31week two weeks ago. Okay. So it's this, right? And I'm a fairly well educated, I did all the pastoral training stuff I can identify when I'm parallel processing. And yet it doesn't stop that process of parallel processing right like it continues to occur. And, you know, my my wife and I mccobb Lee joked while also sort of doing the process of grieving that as part of that to say You know, she she halfway of that when I said like, I'm, you know, I'm going on right and 100 miles like, also she's like, and then you'll never come back. That's what I think about every time you walk out the door with your bicycle, and you get run over, or you're going to flip over the handlebars. And it's not fun, right? In the same way that like, there's this like element that creeps in that like, you know, every time I send my pre adolescent teen who I hope will soon be 20 out on his bicycle to like ride to school, I'm like, someone's going to run you over, then you'll just be dead. And I feel like that is a hallmark of middle age that there is this, like awareness that creeps into the way in which you treat all of these other health related concerns.
Rachael Jackson  55:52Yeah, I think so. I mean, to share something sort of personal. They're one of I've always been with people who are night owls. And so my husband now like, stays out until two o'clock, three o'clock in the morning, sometimes even later. That's just his personality, and it's fine for us. But I it's fine for our relationship. But I as a person and emotionally go, oh my god, he's not coming home. Oh my God. He said he'd be home at two and it's 230. And what is going on? And just last night, like I'm asleep, and it's almost two o'clock. It's like 145 in the morning, and I see this bright light in my eyes. Like what is going on is like, I need you to get up the cars in a ditch. And my heart just like skipped a beat. I was just like, but you're in the house. So you're okay. Like, okay, so the cars in a ditch, like that was one of my big that was that was a big fear. And oh, yeah, I'm like trying to figure he's okay. But he's great. But he like he was the one that shined the flashlight in my face. He's like, you need to wake up. But having confronting it in those ways, saying, This is exactly my fear. And so every time you leave the house, this is what I feel like.
Adam Pryor  57:07But I think it's that element to that. It's like, it's not just your own mortality, that's part of this, right? Like, it's this recognition of is literally everyone else's mortality, and how that sort of works for you. Right?
Rachael Jackson  57:19Everyone's going to die.
Adam Pryor  57:21Right? Like, every time Rachel's, like every time you walk out the door with your bicycle, I'm afraid you're gonna die. I'm like, Well, every time you gave birth, I was pretty sure that I was going to be parenting by myself. So, you know, live with it. But also, like,
Rachael Jackson  57:36but it is this sort of shillington that three times you do this every week, just like
Adam Pryor  57:41my level of intense fear was justified, because that's a horrible process birthing. I mean, it's beautiful, but also, like, try Holy smokes
Ian Binns  57:50on that we. So while we were going through the classes when I was pregnant with the twins, and there were classes specific for multiples, right. And so they were talking about, it'll have to be a C section. Sometimes it could be emergency c sections. And sometimes there could be complications, but and so they were trying to tell the dads that, you know, there's a chance that if you're in a surgery, there's a complication that may have to whisk you out of the room, but everything's gonna be okay. So they were telling us, and I just raised my hand and said, yeah, that doesn't work for me. And they just said, What do you mean doesn't work for you? I said, So you're telling me that there could be a potential that for like an hour, I would have no idea what's going on with my wife who just gave birth these two babies. And you want me to be like, Oh, cool. And I just I kept pushing back. And finally, but and helped me change your perspective, saying that? Well, honey, if that did happen, it would help me knowing that you are with our children. Making sure they're okay. Right. And so the perspective had to shift for me, but I see your point on that one. I mean, it was like, You can't just say that and then be like, but it's all good, you're fine. And it made while waiting for them to give her the epidural because it was a C section. And so I had to wait outside of the operating room for them to do that process. And I would see because we had two teams of doctors, nurses and stuff for the babies. And then of course, the doctor and the nurses for and that they're all walking in and out and I'm just sitting there staring down going in and out. And I did that that was tough. I was those exciting moment. But for those few moments, it was terrifying. I
Adam Pryor  59:31mean, I think the intensity of those sorts of moments that you have, like earlier in your life are now spread at a low level across every day. Zack is never gonna let me lead an episode ever again.
Ian Binns  59:47I can't wait till we start with like the beginning of what we do with stories and you get to tell a story and then Okay, everyone. What
Rachael Jackson  59:52do you guys have no idea how to pull us out of this ditch.
Kendra Holt-Moore  59:57We will knock on the door of death.
Ian Binns  1:00:04We're right now we're approaching the door next time we're just
Adam Pryor  1:00:07going right up to it. Yeah,
Rachael Jackson  1:00:10that was my Zach that's it. I
Adam Pryor  1:00:12got an attack that clearly the
Rachael Jackson  1:00:14death's door Yeah. Not gonna happen next time next time knocking on
Adam Pryor  1:00:19door knocking on death's door. This time, just hairs in places where they're not supposed to be.

Medical Ethics Part 3 (When is a Life a Life?)

Episode 87
For many people, pregnancy is an exciting and hopeful time, but for carriers of hereditary diseases, it can be a nightmare. For centuries, matchmakers and family historians have done their best to arrange marriages that would result in healthy offspring, but with modern genetic testing, we can take all the guesswork out of it. Couples can nearly handpick their future children and monitor every step of their development for potential problems. While there are so many opportunities for human flourishing, there are also plenty of moral and ethical quandaries to consider. When does a living tissue become a human being with rights? When does a human being take on the image of God or develop a soul? You might be surprised at what our sacred scriptures and religious traditions do and do not have to say on the matter! 
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
 
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
 
Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors. 
 
Zack Jackson 00:05
You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week our hosts are Zack Jackson UCC pastor and Reading Pennsylvania. And before I had kids, I wished that they would inherit my thick brown hair, which I had gotten from my father and his father before them. And at least one of my children has it.
 
Rachael Jackson 00:32
Beautiful. Rachael Jackson, Rabbi at Agoudas, Israel, congregation Hendersonville, North Carolina. And before I had a child, I wished that they would inherit a combination of my dark hair, but my husband's thick, wavy, wonderful hair.
 
Zack Jackson 00:55
Well, as it turns out, I have two sons. And one of them has thick blond hair, and the other one has thin brown hair. So genetics, how about you how to work out for you,
 
Rachael Jackson 01:06
so works out. So my husband's hair is a blonde with some red undertones. And his beard is, you know, definitely blonde, brown, red combination. I have for those that haven't seen pictures of me, I have extremely dark chocolate brown hair, where it looks black in some light. And our son that has just straight up watered down chocolate brown hair kind of looks like oh, maybe cappuccino or something like that. And its thickness is a combination to it's not nearly as thick and whatever, I can't think of the right adjective to describe my husband's hair. But it's also not as thin as mine, I have very fine hair. So my son's hair is not very fine. But it has a mind of its own. And that's just hilarious. And now that he's seven, I was under the impression that maybe we should start combing it or something. We hadn't really before this. combed it. And so I tried to do that the other day, and he looks at me and he's just like, I don't care. I went, Okay, do your life. I'm not gonna carry you there. That's fine. That's fine.
 
Zack Jackson 02:31
You know, of all of the hard to believe crazy. Out of this world, complicated parts about this universe, genetics are one of the things that really blows my mind. Like it's just sexual reproduction in and of itself, that you can take the building blocks of one creature and another creature, and just like strip them down into a soup, and then make something new, that isn't like 5050. That could be any number of proportion of whatever of either one, and you have no idea what's going to come out the other side. And yet, what does come out the other side is often fairly recognizable, that you'd be like, yeah, my son really does look like me. And he's got my nervous tics. And he's my other son does not and my one son is allergic to the sun, which is not really allergic to it. It's a it's a weird short circuit in your brain where you get too much light and you sneeze. My mom had it. I have it. And one of my sons has it. But not the others. No, not the other.
 
Rachael Jackson 03:43
Yeah, well, genetics is so bizarre, maybe that's why we'd like Legos. Right? Like imagine that, that are four base pairs that make up our DNA at that combine. One again, from a scientific standpoint, we need one male and one female in our genetics to make this happen. combined these genes and next thing you know, you get a completely different structure. But what's amazing is that it's so similar. Unlike Legos, right? Where you sort of take one person, you strip them down to their base pairs, you take the other person strip them down to their base pairs, you combine it and it looks like their child's like it looks like their results. It could have the the possibilities that it could be something completely different is amazing. Right? So when you have there's this concept of recessive gene, add dominant gene. So if you have, let's say, for example, that you have two people who have brown eyes and their child is overwhelmingly Going to then have brown eyes. But perhaps let's say the mom, her mom has blue eyes, right? So this, this would be child, this hypothetical child's grandparent has blue eyes. So there's the potential of this child to then have blue eyes. But it's such a low potential, because it is a recessive gene, not a dominant gene. And that question of what is recessive and what is dominant? And what is just, you know, not for us to decide, and it's just sort of like a grab bag. And where are these things? And do we know where they are? What are the traits? How do we find them and mapping that on to this genetic code, or the genome is absolutely fascinating. And humans have their own particular genome, fruit flies, like anything that has DNA has a genome, this is one of the things that we talked about several weeks ago, when we were talking with Professor Dan Janis, and looking at the genome of these viruses, right, so they were using RNA, and we use DNA, but it's the same sort of concept that we can figure out where these things are, and what happens if we mess with them. And, and that's where the conversation that I wanted to go today is what happens when we mess with them. So in our series, we've been talking, sort of going through the life cycle of people. So last time, we were able to talk about puberty and different ideas there. And so this week, I really wanted to focus on sort of the next stage of life, which is pregnancy and all the things that come up for people around that time of life. And a caveat, something that I feel that I, I need to say, not just that I feel like I need to say, if a person or people choose not to have children, that is their choice. And that is a perfectly good way to live. And if people choose to have one, if people choose to have 10, that is their choice. And so that's something that I also want to be very clear today that just because we're talking about this does not mean that it is the way to live in our worlds, and I feel the societal pressure that, wow, you're not really, you're only having one, what's wrong with you, or you're choosing to be child free, not to child less. And so there is nothing less about not choosing to have a child. So even if you yourself, our listeners have not had a child or choosing not to have a child, I think this conversation can still be important because it's going to bring in questions of ethics, and medical ethics. So I just I just wanted to put that out there. And also I'll be using the terms male and female to identify rather than gendered terms of woman and man. Because we recognize and we support and our allies, to our LGBTQ family, and our friends. And so we recognize that the human species needs to have male and female in order to reproduce, how a person expresses themselves and who they are gendered is not necessarily part of that conversation then. So I just wanted to add those caveats in those that understanding in our conversation today. So all of that, all of that to say, it's totally amazing that we can take DNA from two different people split it up the middle and then combine it and create another creature like another human being not a creature a human being.
 
Zack Jackson 08:46
Not just a random,
 
Rachael Jackson 08:47
just some random
 
Zack Jackson 08:49
person chances
 
Rachael Jackson 08:52
are like that question. So I, I carried my child. And so when I was pregnant with him, people would say so what are you having? And like, That's such a weird question. It's like a dinosaur. I'm having a Stegosaurus like. This is like, I don't know if Nicole has a question. Or if you ever had that question on her behalf
 
Zack Jackson 09:14
a time people are so preoccupied with unborn fetuses, genitals, it's unsettling.
 
Rachael Jackson 09:21
Yes. Like, what else? Do we ever talk about it? Like really? When Elsa read or, or worse? So are you going to have another? Like, when else do we casually talk about people's sex lives? Like that is literally none of your business. It would be like asking the question, so are you and your partner having unprotected sex tonight?
 
Zack Jackson 09:45
Yeah, anytime a couple says like we're trying for another one. That's all I think is like wow, you just told me that you and your your partner are just going to have a lot of sex. Thanks for that. I didn't need to know that.
 
Rachael Jackson 09:56
This is like somehow in our semi period in society, we're allowed to be that invasive and that open about this topic.
 
Zack Jackson 10:07
It's someone like, So, have you thought about getting a nose job? And like, you know what this is my body? Maybe we don't talk about this right now, it seems kind of.
 
Rachael Jackson 10:19
Right, it seems kind of not appropriate, because we're just not in that kind of relationship. And that's, that's a boundary crosser. But we, what we do we ask that question of like, so what are you having, which is a question of genitalia. And we now, in the last, I'm just gonna not go through the whole medical thing. So I'm just going to use very broad, broad decades, within the last 100 years, we've now been able to be clarified what the genitalia will be, of an of a fetus have a yet to be born fetus using ultrasound techniques, right. So plus or minus 60 years, we've been able to do this, which is pretty cool. But it doesn't really actually change anything, just FYI. doesn't doesn't change anything. But now we know. And then, within the last few decades, we've been able to do more than ultrasounds. ultrasounds give us a glimpse into what is going on. And we hopefully, focus on the genitalia. And I say hopefully, because that means everything else is fine. That means the heartbeat is going well, that means the shape of the head is forming. That means you can see the organs that are happening and forming and that the brain is going right that it's all connecting. And it's working. And if you're getting to the point where you're really excited about if it's a boy or a girl, then that means everything else is okay. And that's not always the case. That's not always the case with ultrasound. So what do we do? What do we do? But before we get to that conversation, I want to take a step back, when we're talking about recessive and dominant genes. Now we're gonna get into some odd territory to have ethnicity. So have you heard of the royal blood disease?
 
Zack Jackson 12:31
In royal blood disease, like in Russia? Oh, in Russia, are we talking about like, the Czar's that are so inbred that they have all these medical problems. They had a whole there was a whole stick on that on 30 rock for for a while.
 
Rachael Jackson 12:50
Okay. So there's there's two, there's two royal families in the European continent that are pretty famous for medical issues. One is sort of the Russian side, which is Haemophilia. Which is sort of a royal blood disease royal, because a lot of the Royals had it. And the other is the Hapsburgs where they were so inbred that it caused massive issues. And by the end of the line, the person was sterile, right, there was just so many genetic issues that the person was sterile and couldn't then have any more of their own children. And there there went the end of the line. Right, so the Habsburgs and that, so that's an inbreeding. But there's other ways of of Ashwin is the way I'm looking for, of being in relation ship in a small group without having these dramatic inbreeding issues. One of those that's fairly common that I'm mostly intimately familiar with, is the Ashkenazi Jewish list. And the reason that that exists, is Ashkenazi Jews or central or Eastern European Jews. And for a very, very long time, it was illegal punishable by death to marry a Jewish person. And it was illegal punishable by death to convert to Judaism. So what do you do with our population? Right, they just breed with each other. Luckily, the population was large enough that it didn't cause these massive inbreeding issues that we see in in some cultures or and then the Hapsburgs. But that has caused some genetic issues and genetic traits. And we know that now. And one of the things so there is this idea of genetic screening between two people and to see what is their genetic recessive disorders recessive meaning they themselves are its carrier status, right? It's, you carry this gene doesn't affect you, but you hold it. And you could pass it along to your child. And the question is, if you're holding it, and your partner is holding it, your child's 25% gonna get it. Right. Like that's. So if you're holding something and your partner is holding something, but neither one of you have it, your child will have a 25% chance of getting it,
 
Zack Jackson 15:30
and then a 75% chance of being a holder if they don't get it.
 
Rachael Jackson 15:34
But 50% chance of being a holder and a 25% chance of not even carrying if not even being a carrier. Got it? Beautiful, right? That's sort of how these things work of all genes being equal. That's how it would work. Well, the Ashkenazi Jewish population has around 100, pretty nasty diseases, some less nasty than others, right? Most are achy, but not traumatic or disastrous. So what we do is if we have an ethnically, and this is where I'm where I'm saying, It's getting a little sticky, because we recognize that people are people. And every, you know, diversity is amazing. And we want people to just love and live and Yay. But the reality is that if you have and that also, I just want to say that when a person converts to Judaism, you're Jewish. But genetically doesn't have the same gene pool.
 
Zack Jackson 17:01
You mentioned Ashkenazi Jews. Yes. That's not the only group. And before I met you, I didn't know this. So I imagine a lot of our listeners also don't know, these distinctive genetic groups.
 
Rachael Jackson 17:16
Thank you. I does, I'm so absorbed in that world that I forget that Thank you. So Ashkenazi Jews showed up in central Eastern Europe, plus or minus 1000 years ago. Right? So we'll just use that timeframe. Where else were Jews in the world about 1000 years ago, in what's considered the ancient Near East or the Middle East, or however you want to understand? Israel, Egypt, that part of the world, right? And then in the 1500s 1492, not talking Columbus talking, the expulsion of Jews, right, and these are Sephardic Jews. And that's the, that's one of the other terms, right? Sephardic Jews are those that come from Spain, or the Iberian Peninsula to be more accurate. But 500 years ago, they were kicked out of there, and they had to go somewhere. And so where did they go? They went to the Ottoman Empire or South America. So those are Sephardic Jews, as the primary differences. There's also different rights are it e Yemenite, its Iraqi, etc, those are much smaller populations, mostly coming from a mix of Sephardic and the local populations. So even the Jews that are living in India, and those were, most of them were considered Sephardic Jews, right? Because prior to the prior to the expulsion in 1492, their families came from Spain. So when we look at a genetic, when we look at from a genetic standpoint, it's really two groups of people, Sephardic, and Ashkenazi,
 
Zack Jackson 19:03
and the Arctic have had more intermingling outside of their own group, BINGO,
 
Rachael Jackson 19:09
BINGO, because Spain and Portugal was like, get out of here. And so where did they go? They spread. Right? They went to lots of different places, and they intermingled. So their genetic their gene pool was much larger. Ashkenazi, not so much, tiny little shuttles. And the entire shuttle would be picked up and move to a different place.
 
Zack Jackson 19:36
And so being Christians are awful,
 
Rachael Jackson 19:38
right?
 
Zack Jackson 19:40
Historically, I think that's pretty uncontested. Yeah. So
 
Rachael Jackson 19:44
the Jews living in those regions, then we're had a much different experience in the Sephardic Jews. So their ability to find someone to marry was challenging. Without going into all of the details of how not quite accurate This was Fiddler on the Roof. If anyone has seen that one of the challenges that tavia has is he has to marry off his daughters. And there aren't any. There aren't any suitable Jews in their city. Right. So where does he has to find them from elsewhere? Right that that that kind of challenge of like, Okay, I've got seven daughters. What do I do? And they they brought in a matchmaker. Yay. Right? And if no one's got the song, right, Matchmaker, matchmaker maker, find me a Kashmir catch. And so they did the matchmakers job and this is getting us back to the genetic question. The matchmakers job was not just to match them with someone who could produce children, someone who could keep a roof over their their heads and, you know, happiness and love sure, but that's that's a new issue. But the matchmakers job way back when, right pre pre maternity was to know this family, did they have any issues? And were there lots of issues? Did they lose children not miscarriage? But did did their children die at young ages? And knowing that piece of information and saying Ah, and I have a family over here, right? This, this, this bride's family her, her family has had all these little graves, these little baby graves, and this groom's family, his family has all these little graves for children, do not combine them. Right. And they just know that, again, they didn't understand genetics, but they knew that there was something in this family's blood that caused these issues. And if the same issues arose in someone else's gene pool or someone else's bloodline, you don't combine those people. So that have that's one of the roles of the Ashkenazi Jewish matchmaker was to make sure that those genetic issues sort of stopped with the families as much as they could. So what we do now, is we actually do genetic pre testing, test the adults. So Zack, if I can ask the personal question, did you and Nicole have this question or wrestle with this? Or did anyone even bring this up to you to have your own genetics tested?
 
Zack Jackson 22:41
know, a little, that would have been so strange and invasive, and no one would have ever thought to do that.
 
Rachael Jackson 22:51
Okay. And after you had conceived, did that even come up?
 
Zack Jackson 22:56
There were no I know. They they know. Like, maybe a little bit when we're thinking about like, well, heart disease runs in both of our families. So we just need to make sure we're eating right. But like, that's, that's kind of,
 
Rachael Jackson 23:15
right, right. For our segment of the population, we actually talk about pre genetic testing, where we say okay, if you two want if you're both genetically Ashkenazi Jewish, let's get you pre tested and see if you're a carrier, see if this is a recessive gene. One of the most famous ones that people might have heard about is Tay Sachs. And Tay Sachs is a neurodegenerative disease, basically, where there's a piece of fat, right that the brain just turns to fat, rather than being a muscle. And because it's a muscle, or should be a muscle, it controls things. And starting around six months old, it just stops. So if you've ever been around a child, an infant who's about six months old, they're not. They're just starting to develop any ability to have language, right, just as an ooze and whatever, just somehow forming things. They're just beginning to really sit up and hold themselves, right, but they're not really mobile, right? They're not crawling, they're not walking, but they're there but you can just plop them down on the floor and be like, okay, here's your key ring, have go to town, right, those plastic keys. And starting around that age with Tay Sachs, that's when it starts to become degenerative to the point of losing all muscle control, going blind, going deaf, having zero physical ability and eventually suffocating with lungs and most children die by the age of five, if not sooner, and it is a horrific death, the the dying, the degeneration is traumatic and the death itself is awful. Well, that's a sex. And that's one of several diseases that are like that. So we suggest, and that I think I have to double check with the numbers are, there's been much more intermarriage recently, which is good for the gene pool. Not gonna say how it is for the religion, but it's good for the gene pool where the numbers are going down. But I one point I looked at was something like one and 21 and Trey were carriers of Ashkenazi Yeah, huge. And if if anyone has been to an ultra orthodox enclave, there is a lot more infant graves than the general population for all these different genetic issues.
 
Zack Jackson 25:53
So are people getting people are getting tested before they get married?
 
Rachael Jackson 25:56
Correct. So they can see if they're right, are you a carrier? And if you're not a carrier, okay, then Hmm.
 
Zack Jackson 26:06
I like if, if you were to get tested before you got married, and you found that you're both carriers, right? Like, would that change your decision to get married at all?
 
Rachael Jackson 26:19
What do you think? What would you do?
 
Zack Jackson 26:24
I think, well, if I'm back when I was getting ready to get married, I think I could have found out that Nicole was, you know, secretly, a Martian, or she had a disease where her hair would catch on fire every 10 years or something. And I would still probably if married her and be like, well figure it out down the line, I don't care that you've been cursed by a witch or something. That's futures x problem. Right? Right. Because has Zach was puppy dog love, and so I wouldn't have cared later down the line, though. You know, as time went on, and we thought about kids and thought, like, that's just gonna be, that's gonna be so dangerous, potentially. I don't know if I want to do that. And then maybe we'll have felt regret. I don't know. This is this is all brand new thought experiments to me.
 
Rachael Jackson 27:13
So let's keep going with that thought experiment. Right? So let's say you do get married. Because love triumphs and love is amazing. And kids don't make marriage, right. Marriage is its own entity. And so you can say, Yes, we choose to start a family. Turns out, we don't want to do that to us. Right. Very few people, I think would say, Oh, I'm a carrier and my partner's a carrier. Let's try it. Those are good odds. No, those are not good odds. Those are bad odds, because the result is so bad. So the answer is no, let's not do this, quote unquote, the natural way? Well, let's say you're just so tied to seeing those ticks in your kids to knowing that your kid is like you, genetically, that you're just tied to that idea. So what are some options? Right, exactly. You know, what, what are your options?
 
Zack Jackson 28:17
No, I would have no idea. I mean, if both partners are carriers, yeah. I mean, we don't have the technology to like, isolate and splice out those Sure
 
Rachael Jackson 28:26
do. What should we do?
 
Zack Jackson 28:29
No, we do not.
 
Rachael Jackson 28:31
Here's what we do have Stop it. We have the ability to create zygotes where you take a sperm and you take an egg in IVF. Right. So you make the woman like, okay, so just a little bit of medical technology. And sorry, I'm dominating the conversation. Take a little bit of technology.
 
Zack Jackson 28:49
I glad it's not me dominating the conversation about pregnancy and, and Jewish genetics. Very appropriate that way. Thanks. So Turkey,
 
Rachael Jackson 29:01
generally speaking, a woman oscillates and yields one egg per monthly cycle. Right. And then if things if, if intercourse happens at that time, and everything is right, then there's pregnancy that's able to happen. But you don't want to just take one at a time when you're trying to do IVF. You want a whole bunch, so you just like load the woman up with hormones and all these other things. And then you go in and you grab a whole bunch of eggs at the same time. It's like, I got 10.
 
Zack Jackson 29:38
I can't help but imagine like a farmer, right? We're doing picking chicken eggs,
 
29:43
bacon, chicken eggs. That's right.
 
Zack Jackson 29:45
This is all very scientific,
 
Rachael Jackson 29:47
tinier, tiny little pinchers, right. You take all of these, and you take the sperm and you take you take a sperm and you're just like, Hi, meet your partner, and they come together in a petri dish. Or test to write test two babies. And we've had that technology 40 ish years, right? And now what but the sperm and the egg get together and you're just like, Oh, it's so beautiful. Let's make more of us. And they go from that one to two to four to eight and then pause. you pause everything at eight cells.
 
Zack Jackson 30:20
What do you mean, you pause it,
 
Rachael Jackson 30:21
you stop the reactions from continuing you stop that. You freeze them. Like I don't, I don't know the science behind it.
 
Zack Jackson 30:30
Like actually freezing them in and like it like
 
Rachael Jackson 30:33
you just like you put it like you put it in spaces. That's not the right word. But like, you just stop the reaction.
 
Zack Jackson 30:40
This is all science fiction to me. So
 
Rachael Jackson 30:41
you go. And then you take one of those eight cells. You do this, lots of sperm, lots of eggs, and you take one of those eight cells, and you look at it and you say, Alright, this is going to tell me all of the genetics of the future fetus and child. Oh, yeah. And you can say, Ah, this child will have Tay Sachs, this child will have cystic fibrosis, this child will have brown eyes, brown hair, generally be tall will have no heart disease will be male. And 1/8 of a set 1/8 of this will tell you that and then you say, ah, I've taken a look. I know that this one doesn't have a six it doesn't have any genetic disorders. Fantastic. let it continue to grow. Let me pop it in your uterus, or a surrogate unit uterus if yours is not a good place to grow things. And then you grow the child's and you're fine.
 
31:42
Helmets off.
 
Zack Jackson 31:44
So wait.
 
Rachael Jackson 31:46
I'm blowing Zach's mine. Okay, so I know that I know that audio and Zach's head is like literally flooded?
 
Zack Jackson 31:53
I know, we should have been recording the video and smacking into my microphone and everything. Yeah. Okay. So you get a bunch of bunch of fertilized eggs. And, and then the doctor says to you, all right, we've got 16 here, and seven of them are with are not going to have k sex? Do you then get the choice? Like, do you want a boy? Do you want a girl? Do you want to tall kid a short kid? Or are they sequencing the full genome are just looking for those markers?
 
Rachael Jackson 32:27
And that's where this becomes an ethical question. Where are we asking? We I believe I Rachel believe that when we say I don't want the trauma. And I know I'm using that word again. And the tragedy of bringing a life into this world only to see it suffer and die. And we are preventing that. And that is amazing. And I completely support that. I think we should use our technology in those ways. The question then becomes, how much information do you get? Because yes, generally speaking, when you're doing the Royal you, when you're doing these investigations of the genome, it's all found, you know, what gender you know what sex it is, you know, what? hair color and all of these other things that we have genetic markers for, you know what those are, and they test for them all. And so you can have this picture of what this child could look like. And so the question becomes, okay, now you have four, three are male, and one is female. Which do you implant? Who gets that choice? Should anyone get that? Drake's? What do you think?
 
Zack Jackson 34:14
This is where it'll be really helpful to have more guests on the show.
 
Rachael Jackson 34:19
Put the pressure off of you.
 
Zack Jackson 34:24
Yeah, right, take the pressure off of me because it's somehow feels different when we're talking about minimizing suffering and death and weeding out something like Tay Sachs, or something else that would inevitably end in suffering and death. And then there's like the next level down, where it's like this could potentially cause suffering and death. So like markers for heart disease, or diabetes or something like that. That is may cause suffering down the line. But it's it's kind of your baseline average it sucks to be human suffering. And then there's like things that won't really affect that. But maybe the family ones that are more cosmetic, you know about height and, and weight and hair color, hair color, eye color, things like that. And then there's like this whole other category of things that are like, would cause social suffering, right? Like, you might say, Wow, it is much better to be born a man in this day and age. So if I have a choice, I'm going to raise somebody who's going to be able to get ahead easier in the world, and be like, I'm worried. So we're gonna have a son to pass on our name and get a good job, we'll make him tall, tall, dark, handsome, as best as we can. And set him up for success. And then that feels like a different ballgame that feels like custom humans and but not custom humans in the way of like designing a genome and then spitting out something. But custom humans in a sort of process of elimination, wasteful kind of a way that then feels like if we're fertilizing a bunch of eggs, and only keeping the healthy ones, because we're trying to minimize suffering and death, for some reason that feels morally better than creating a bunch just so that we can find the one that's the best, that feels a little more shady. For all of the nerds out here, my my brain is immediately going to all of those hours I spent breeding Pokemon and Pokemon field recently on switch, and putting two in there catching an egg checking to see how strong it is, and then releasing it into the wild, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of strays running around the world right now because I wanted to find the perfect one. And now when I kept and trained, and I even in a video game I felt a little dirty about
 
Rachael Jackson 37:09
that's good. I think that means your ethics is kind of in check. But those are the questions that people face every time they go through this process.
 
Zack Jackson 37:21
Yeah. And so then created, they're not intentionally,
 
Rachael Jackson 37:25
right. And then the question becomes, who gets to decide if there is a decision to be made? Again, so let's let's just agree that the suffering the immediate and error, irreversible or blanking on the word, guaranteed suffering and death, that were just that those, those are just not going to be implanted? Right? We just, we just, that's part of the reason for doing this, right? We're just saying, okay, no, but now we've got four healthy ones. And let's keep it at a reasonable number for that you implant to now and then you can have a sibling later and implant to in a couple of years. Right. But if you have more than that, like, who's making the decision? Is it the parents? Is it the doctor who's doing the implantation? Is it the geneticist who found this information? Right, so from my perspective, we can we have to have layers of trust and layers of ignorance. We where the trust is we trust the geneticists finds the ones that would cause suffering, and said, these ones, these ones aren't going to be good, right? To use a very subjective term. These five are great. And I'm not going to tell you anything more about it. And then the doctor, the implanter, and the parent say, Okay, I've got five good eggs. How many do you want to try now? And that's all that that's all they know. It creates a barrier, but then we'd need to check and balance with the geneticist to make sure that the genetic so then the geneticist doesn't have any say into Oh, well did. The geneticist really likes girls that the geneticist really likes brown hair, right there, that's what's good or bad.
 
Zack Jackson 39:22
Right? And then years down the road, there's gonna be some big breaking story about this geneticist who was like a white supremacists, right. patriarchy guy who's been intentionally implanting only men
 
Rachael Jackson 39:36
for why they're only boys, right? The rest are bad, right? So there has to be some sort of check in that situation of what's identified and someone to then audit using a bookkeeping term, right to audit what this geneticist is doing. So in Judaism, the answer is at this point, right because we have questions and answers called Holocaust. response and response basically says, if it's going to be suffering and death, don't implant them and just destroy the embryos. Other than that, anything other than that heart disease, Down syndrome, right, diabetes, things that just naturally occur that might make it harder in society. No, you don't get to abort, or you don't get to choose to not implant those ones for those reasons. You say, yeah, I've had enough kids. The difference in Judaism, which I personally disagree with some of this is from a gendered standpoint, or a sex standpoint, where if you already have two boys, you're allowed to choose a female one. Or if you already have two females, you're allowed to choose a male one, to ensure a balance in your nuclear family. So that's, that's sort of where the Holocaust rests.
 
Zack Jackson 41:06
Okay, it feels like a concession that someone made,
 
Rachael Jackson 41:08
right. But it's, it's exactly that you get a little bit more, because if you if if this if you're both carriers, and you want to have multiple children, and you're like, Ah, well, I've already had two boys. Make sure that this one's a girl, then they can. Mm hmm. So, but now let's, let's get forward on your ethics. Let's say you don't go through that testing, like the majority of people don't. And you're pregnant. Yay. Yay. And you have an ultrasound and something's not Yay. And they ask the question, do you want an amniocentesis? Or do you want some other genetic testing of the fetus and amniocentesis is basically where they go into the belly, and into the amniotic fluid, take some of the fluid out and test that fluid, which means that they're puncturing the amniotic sac, which is basically the baby's life. Yeah, right. So if they puncture it, and something goes wrong, there's a 1% chance of miscarriage at that point, which is a decently high percentage, for a question mark, right, of what's going to come from this. So what do you do then?
 
Zack Jackson 42:24
defer 100% to my wife. I feel like with most of these decisions that have to do with childbearing and, and the creation of life, that these decisions should be made by the one carrying the life and fostering the life much more than the person who had a little bit of say in the beginning. But I think at the end, I know what what she would say would be, okay, well, what what are we going to do with the information we get? And are we considering terminating the pregnancy? If we find that it's something awful? And if that's the case, then it's worth taking the chance? If we're not going to terminate the pregnancy, that it's not worth taking the chance? And we'll see what happens.
 
Rachael Jackson 43:21
Yeah, exactly. I think that's wonderful way of looking at it. If you ask the question, what do you do with the answer? If the answer is nothing, right, that you're doing nothing with the answer that you receive, then why ask the question
 
Zack Jackson 43:35
is just for peace of mind.
 
Rachael Jackson 43:39
Great, like, why? Right? Nobody asked that question. Nobody had the ability to ask that question. 100 years ago, right, didn't have that ability. So why is the question now if you're not going to do anything about it? which then gets us to the religious side of things. So Zack, if you could tell us about the various stages of what life is like, when does life happen? When does a soul happen? When does like in your tradition? When do those pieces happen?
 
Zack Jackson 44:21
Well, the various strands of Christianity are all over the place, as is true with almost anything. I came from a church that taught very strictly that life, human life begins at conception, at the moment that the sperm enters the egg and they do their little dance, and there is a single cell. Or maybe when that single spouse splits into two, that's when life exists. That's when there is a soul present. That's when this is a human being and anything you do to That human being in that womb, that would be equated to what you would have done to a person, an adult human. Essentially. We were that church who protested at Planned Parenthood and had awful giant banners of aborted fetuses and just leave without those people. And I'm horrified now. That tradition I'm in now, the United Church of Christ is kind of work. congregational denominations, every church is allowed to do their own thing. But from a national standpoint, they would say that life begins when a child is on their own, when a child is out of the mother, and is able to live by their own means.
 
Rachael Jackson 45:56
Almost a medical definition then, right? Yes, is it it's a viable, that it's viable,
 
Zack Jackson 46:01
that it's viable on its own. So after, after birth, essentially. So we're not talking like, you know, 36 weeks or whatever, but like, after the child is out on their own, then they are a, a life, and we just, we don't bother ourselves with the question of souls, entering bodies and whatnot. One person, I pointed out that up to 14 days, a, an embryo can still become twins. And so after 14 days is when the soul enters the body, because then you'd need two souls, if it was going to be twins. And so that's the moment that it happens. And when I heard that, it said, I thought to myself, this whole thing feels very arbitrary. Like, we are really trying to shove very ancient, almost mystical ideas about how the physical and the spiritual intermingle in what makes humans special from animals. And we are trying to shove that now into scientific understandings of life. And it gets messy, and then we pretend like it's not messy, and that makes it nastier.
 
Rachael Jackson 47:32
Is there a differentiation of something which is alive, and something which is a human life?
 
Zack Jackson 47:44
modern progressive Christians would say, Yes. That though, like a tissue in the uterus, is alive on its on its own, it is also so heavily connected to the mother, that it is, in some sense, a part of it. And is is just is not a human being as itself an autonomous being. Just definitionally, I mean, my own perspective, is that I try not to have a perspective because it's not my body. And I would rather listen to the people who have those bodies and have those experiences to tell me what is happening within them.
 
Rachael Jackson 48:31
Although I will push you on that and say that, especially as a, as a man, being an ally, is also important. And so to understand where your ally ship feels in accordance with your morality is important. But I appreciate that I applaud the idea that the person who's making these decisions as the person going through these decisions themselves,
 
Zack Jackson 48:59
it also helps that I no longer have a, an individual theology of a human soul. Which then kind of changes a lot of the conversation. Like if you believe that there is an immaterial spiritual thingness that resides within you, and without you, that enters into you, or is formed into you, and then once you die is freed, to continue its everlasting life in whatever afterlife, like that idea, which honestly, is a bit more Hindu than biblical. This is the Atman we're talking about more than what the Bible would talk about as a spirit, a soul, a life a person or whatever. And I mean, when I say Bible, I mean both Christian and Hebrew Bibles. A lot is read into it. I think what the the the Christian Bible Promises is a resurrection of humanity. That the dead ur dead, ur dead are dead. And that the promises not that they die and then are washed away in some ethereal state. But the promise is that the God who remembers them will resurrect them and give them new life here on earth with a physical Earth and a physical garden and trees and wildlife and all those things, there's not really a promise other than in a couple of isolated places, in Paul's writings that talk about being freed from this mortal coil. There's not really a whole lot of indication of an individual eternal soul that is present with in a person, despite the fact that it's so present within Christian theology historically, it's not really biblical. And so if you no longer have that hinderance theologically speaking, then this question becomes a lot more scientific. Like if that if that embryo that is growing into a fetus, as growing into a child within the womb is does not have an eternal essence to it. It doesn't have a them that is them that is then that is them yet, then it's an entirely different ethical question, then it is that thing, a, a divine, a carrier of the Divine?
 
Rachael Jackson 51:23
Yeah, that's beautiful. Thank you for, for adding to that I've not really thought about it in in those ways. That also
 
Zack Jackson 51:31
might get me in trouble. So I'm sorry, all of you who are listening, who are a member of my church, don't tell anyone. All three of you.
 
Rachael Jackson 51:42
And I'll just say, gay Judaism, big
 
Zack Jackson 51:51
man,
 
Rachael Jackson 51:52
because we basically have this idea that there are so we don't just stick to the Bible. The Bible just influences other conversations such as the Tom Budd, which is really just 2700 pages of people arguing with each other. And what does this mean? And what does this mean, and going on from there, and in these pages, one of those examples, basically says, there's this, this I got, I just got, I just got to actually share the share the line, right, so we've all heard, and a hammer Robbie's code, right? An eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth and iron for a lar, or a limb for a limb a life for a life. And there's so many ways of answering What does that mean? You know, it's like God's revenge. And then the answer is, actually, it's proportionality. And another is actually it's just talking five different kinds of damages and using the body as an example of that. Yeah, that's that's like, Torah gymnastics right there. So we, we still have that, right. So if you keep that in mind, and that that's written down in the Bible, right, written down in the Old Testament, and then there's this line in Exodus 21. Exodus 2122. For anyone that would like to check on me. It says, If men strive together, right, so you got a bar brawl going on? Right? just let's just set the scene. I'm just gonna quote the whole thing. You got a bar brawl? Right? The bar brawl happens. And this woman comes out and says, Come on, has been Time to go home. Like you got to get work in the morning. She's just like, walking up there and she's pregnant. And and like a fight ensues and the non husband accidentally kicks her and hurts her. And she miscarries. Right. And that's it. Like nothing else. She's not even bruised in the ribs. She doesn't have a scrape on her knee. She just miscarries caveat parents medical aside, it's not just a miscarriage, it can be very traumatic. I am so sorry if that's ever happened to you. I honor that challenge. That's not the point of this conversation. But I want to recognize that miscarriages are not just miscarriages. Close parentheses. So she's fine otherwise, physically. So then they say, Oh, hey, you damaged my fetus. You owe me money. The person who did the damages What is he supposed to do? And it says, yet no harm follow, he shall surely be fined according as the woman's husband shall lay upon him and he shall pay as the judge determines because the only harm came to the loss of the fetus, not to her, but it's in the same same category as a limb for a limb alive. For a life, but it was a miscarriage. And the person who caused it is not paying with any body part, including his life from that lie and there is the not so far leap of, therefore the fetus is not a life. Hmm. It had potential hay, that could have been a boy that he could have worked in the farm and you owe me for that damages, you hurt my cow, you hurt my property, and therefore you owe me for the damages of my property. But it is not a life. And it's from that line that more than that, that our understanding of So when is this life thing happening. And there are other lines that I won't go into the gruesome nature of what they talk about, basically, it says up to 40 days, it's like water. So 40 days, which, scientifically speaking, you know, it's about six weeks. So if anything happens before six weeks, whatever, like, it's just like water, like there's literally nothing else, or we're not even going to do anything if if a miscarriage or an abortion, a spontaneous or an intentional miscarriage happens, great man gonna do anything about that. And then comes that other period of it's still really attached to the female that it is living within as a parasite. Loving pregnant, totally a parasite,
 
Zack Jackson 56:50
your bones,
 
Rachael Jackson 56:51
Oh, my God. Again, loved it was not was not did not feel like
 
Zack Jackson 56:58
my calcium child,
 
Rachael Jackson 57:00
and my blood supply and my brain cells, please go on. Thanks for that. That it is not considered a nephesh it is not considered a soul a life until the moment that the entire head is outside of the body. At that point, when the entire head is outside of the body, then the life of the person delivering it and the life of this child, this infant are now equal. Up until that point, it is considered as a limb of the mother. So if you imagine a limb, and you're just like, this limb has become gangrenous, I must get rid of it. Okay, let's get rid of the limb. If your life is in danger, because this limb is going to cause you death, then you get rid of it. It is considered and so using that language that it is as a limb, I think really changes, who owns it? Who makes the decision? And what can happen to it. I know this is all new for you, do you care to react?
 
Zack Jackson 58:25
And it sounds like it's being treated like a person who would trample on seedlings. And the question then is do you are you then guilty of destroying my tomatoes? Or just with the things that would one day bear tomatoes? Yeah, and that's a distinction I hadn't really considered. And coming from a place like that. Yeah, Exodus. That was, I came out of left field. Because we in the evangelical world, we would often quote from especially from Psalms from some of the more poetic places of you who formed my parts. my innermost being you knew me from in my mother's womb on all of these, this language of personal autonomy before birth and intentionality of creation. And all of those were used to, to give autonomy to the thing before it's born. So it's really interesting to hear that the people who wrote those books, interpret them differently than the people who inherited them. Which is so often the case so are doing Christians and Jews.
 
Rachael Jackson 59:44
So So holding that holding that idea of of imbuing all of these characteristics into something that is not yet born. Here's a piece from the mission of then that I'll share with you and this is trigger warning. It's a little bit graphic and used as hyperbole, okay? Because they didn't actually enforce capital punishment. But this is using that example to highlight and underscore what they're saying. So, in the case of a pregnant woman who is taken by the court to be executed, the court does not wait to execute her until after she gives birth. Rather, she is killed immediately. But with regard to a woman who is taken to be executed, while sitting in the throes of labor, on the on the birthing stool, the court shall wait to execute her. And then the following conversation is, well, isn't it obvious that the court executes a pregnant woman rather than waiting? After all, it's just a part of her body, the fetus is considered her property? If so, the courts should wait until she gives birth before executing her and not cause him to lose the fetus. And this is no actually this is not taken into account at all. So who gets so a woman who is pregnant, who is meant to be murdered by the state right? capital punishment? Yes. Up until the point where she is in active labor, on the birth. And so for those of you that are aren't so familiar with midwifery, on the birthing stool means the woman is pushing. She's not just in labor, like she is pushing, and that baby's head is like coming out. Only until that point, they can execute her up until them
 
Zack Jackson 1:01:40
worth noting, too, that the mission is not a modern
 
Rachael Jackson 1:01:44
document. Thank you. Yes, the mission was written down approximately 1900 years ago. Yeah. So contemporary with other Christian with Christian sources that might be interpreting this in a completely different way. So that's sort of the Jewish way of understanding this.
 
Zack Jackson 1:02:03
Okay. Interesting, though, that it's considered a part of the mother's body and not the father's property, as I would imagine a patriarchal society would want to do that, like, don't execute her until she's given birth, because that's that child is my property is how I would imagine them back then, to be thinking, but
 
Rachael Jackson 1:02:19
no, and that was that was the question that came out in the gamar, which was written about 200 years later, like, wait a minute, it's his property, he should get a say, right, he doesn't. And it's like, actually, it's not his property on till it comes out.
 
Zack Jackson 1:02:33
Wow. So 2000 years ago, there were people saying that a woman's body is it's her body, her choice? Yeah. And
 
Rachael Jackson 1:02:42
it's her body. And who gets to choose? She does? Hmm. Yeah.
 
Zack Jackson 1:02:51
Well, the early Roman Christians got real weird about sex and REL controlling about their patriarchy. And that really went a long way into informing what Christianity in Europe would develop as for the next couple 1000 years, and we are still recovering a lot from from that. And so it's actually kind of refreshing to hear that contemporaries of early Christians, and probably some early Christians as well. We're Reading these verses and thinking about life in these ways.
 
Rachael Jackson 1:03:23
Yeah. So when we're thinking about life in these ways, I think it's really important for us to recognize that it's not so clear cut, that these are difficult choices, that there's no easy answers, there are no, frankly, actual answers that everyone can follow. It's right. It's not math. It's not two plus two equals four, it's that every situation is unique and of itself, and the people who are actually impacted should be the one to be making these decisions, not somebody else. And I'll just sort of use this platform to also say that lawyers and politicians have no place in the gynecological office at all, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. They don't. They don't ever have a place that I think the only people that even dare to have a place in there is the person whose body it is their medical practitioner, and their partner. Those are the people that get a say, and no one else
 
Zack Jackson 1:04:37
in that order,
 
Rachael Jackson 1:04:38
in that order, in that order, until we come up with some other way of reproducing in that order. Yeah. So go support Planned Parenthood. Go yell at your politicians who are not choosing this who are not recognizing that and there's a few things that I'll just say that I'm going to put in the show notes. Because for those of you that have not had the experience of having yourself or a loved one or a person in your circle of concern, go through an abortion to have to make that choice. It's really easy to assign blame. And it's really easy to say what you would have done, but you've never been in those shoes. And anyone considering that choice is not taking it lightly. It's and so I just want to dispel that it's, it's never used as a birth control option. It's never used as a ploy of oops, I just forgot, well, let me just go down the street and have an abortion, right? There's no, there's no casual this to anyone that's had to make this decision. All the more. So the later in a pregnancy, this decision has to be made, the more you've heard felted kick or heard its heartbeat, or watched your own body change to accommodate this. That is not a choice that anyone wants to make. So I will be including in the show notes, some stories of people who've had to make those choices, and how they've, how they've dealt with it. Oh, I know that kind of took a serious turn. This isn't quite where we're going.
 
Zack Jackson 1:06:25
But I think one excellent place to land.
 
Rachael Jackson 1:06:28
And when we're talking about ethics, I think that that's part of our conversation is who gets to make these decisions. When we're when we're speaking ethics. And when we look at medical ethics, part of the part of the list is do no harm. Personal autonomy and resources. Right fair justice and fairness and those ways. So yeah,
 
Zack Jackson 1:07:01
thank you for leading us in this discussion that I'm I'm so glad it was you. And that the fact that there were so few of us here today meant that you had the space to explore that a little bit further.
 
Rachael Jackson 1:07:15
No thank you for doing that. And listeners please please, please tell us your your your questions. Give us your questions. Give us your your experiences that you're feeling comfortable enough to share, give us your opinions, right tell us engage us with this conversation because it's it's even more meaningful, the more we hear from you
 

Medical Ethics Part 2 (Let's Talk About Sex)

Episode 86
There is nothing more natural than sex. It is literally the reason why you exist! Yet despite that, we seem to have a really hard time talking about it. Our experiences with sex-ed are vastly dissimilar. Some of us learned about the biology and mechanics of sex in school while others learned of the moral horrors of "improper" sex in our religious settings. With such varied approaches and experiences with sex-ed, surely there are good ways to impart scientifically sound and spiritually uplifting lessons to our youth so that they can make healthy, informed decisions about their own bodies. How should we talk about sex? Who should be doing the talking? Is sex-ed just a clever ploy by the banana lobby to sell more bananas? Let's talk about it! 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
 
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
Show Notes
What is sex ed, from planned parenthood
https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/for-educators/what-sex-education 
 
List of resources for sex positivity: https://sexpositivefamilies.com/10-best-sex-ed-resources-for-families/
 
Sexuality from the UCC: 
https://www.ucc.org/justice_sexuality-education/
 
Consent is yes means yes; video on making the analogy to serving hot tea
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZwvrxVavnQ 
 
National Sexuality Education Standards
https://siecus.org/resources/national-sexuality-education-standards/?fbclid=IwAR3lyhfcNyOc_bwS0pWvxk54DIqdrAHwbJqV4iXSgh3DZAOwyLkRw_p4ITM 
 
Religious Institute: it is ideal for exploring our understanding of gender, sexuality, reproductive justice
http://religiousinstitute.org/resource/educational-resources/
 
ObGyn: Is Science Anti-Transgender?
18min video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEhis4L4ohY 
 
Male and female are binary, but people aren't | Riley J. Dennis
18min video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2MEFj8q6rg 
 
Sex ed and sexual minorities (not cis/het)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7986966/ 
 
Legislature issues:
https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/breaking-2021-becomes-record-year-for-anti-transgender-legislation
The basics is that trans kids are being attacked by the government in a pretty atrocious way. The FL law that allows coaches to look at a child's genitals if they suspect they might be trans, for example, is one of the more disgusting acts... And could easily mean an increase in sexual assault of kids, cis and trans, but goodness me if we get a trans girl who likes soccer!
At any rate, some of these bills are related to education and some aren't. That they're all out there also just speaks to the message that kids, who already often don't live through adolescence, are being given about their gender by the government and our society for allowing it to happen.
 
HPV (what is it/vaccine)
https://www.cdc.gov/hpv/parents/about-hpv.html 
 
Initiative to reduce teen pregnancy
https://www.shiftnc.org/initiatives/gaston-youth-connected 
 
How we’re failing our students:
https://nursing.usc.edu/blog/americas-sex-education/ 
 
Sex ed around the world:
https://www.studyinternational.com/news/sex-education/ 
 
Sex ed in EU compared to US
https://archive.attn.com/stories/7020/sex-education-europe-compared-to-united-states

Artificial Intelligence Part 5 (The Moment Where Homo Sapiens Die)

Episode 85
You may be wondering if something is wrong with your podcast feed because this episode is clearly about AI when we already finished that miniseries. Well, that’s my (Zack) fault. I released the wrong episode last time and got us all out of order! Honestly, I’m impressed I made it 85 episodes without messing up the order. This episode is a sort of nice bow on the series. We break down the difference between artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning. We talk about the rights of non-organic beings, whether robots can convert to Judaism, and what our creations teach us about ourselves. We'll also touch on the ethics of data harvesting and whether Google's AlphaGo computer signals the end of homo sapiens as we know it...
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
 
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
Show Notes
To Read: 
1) Alphago deep learning
https://deepmind.com/research/case-studies/alphago-the-story-so-far
2) Alternative reading of Alphago
https://www.wired.com/2016/05/google-alpha-go-ai/ 
3) Terminator “skynet” character
https://terminator.fandom.com/wiki/Skynet
4) Defense of the skynet character:
https://medium.com/humungus/in-defense-of-skynet-3fd56d04b06f
5) Engineered or Evolved:
https://theconversation.com/evolving-our-way-to-artificial-intelligence-54100 
6) Book (don’t read if you’re happy)
https://www.amazon.com/Sparrow-Novel-Book-ebook/dp/B000SEIFGO 
7) Song: machine generated,  Frank Sinatra covers Britney Spears “toxic”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbh3VAzrwh8 
[the original version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOZuxwVk7TU  ]
8) Book
https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Code-Art-Innovation-Age/dp/0674988132 
 
Transcript 
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors. 
 
Zack Jackson 00:00
Hey there, Zack here. You may be wondering if something is wrong with your podcast feed because this episode is clearly about AI when we already finished that mini series. Well, that's, that's my fault. I kind of released the wrong episode last time and got us all out of order. Honestly, I'm impressed. I made it 85 episodes without messing this up. Hooray for me. This episode is sort of nice a bow on the series though. It's a really wonderful episode, we had lots of fun with it. We break down the difference between artificial intelligence machine learning and deep learning. We talk about the rights of non organic beings, whether robots can convert to Judaism and what our creations tell us about ourselves. So without further ado, Let's get this party started. You are listening to down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week our hosts are
 
Rachael Jackson 01:05
Rachael Jackson, Rabbi at Agoudas, Israel congregation Hendersonville, North Carolina and if I were stranded on a deserted island with a I would choose the AI computer from Star Trek next generation, Zack Jackson
 
Zack Jackson 01:21
UCC pasture and Reading Pennsylvania and if I were stranded on a desert island with one AI I would choose Google Assistant because no one in my life knows me better. Now
 
Adam Pryor 01:41
Adam Pryor, I work at Bethany College in Lindsborg Kansas. If I were stranded on a desert island with an AI. I would choose the mind uploading software from a book called mind scan, which operates as a quasi AI but allows you to then transport your consciousness into artificial bodies in other places,
 
Ian Binns 02:06
so I'd get the best of both. Ian Binns Associate Professor of elementary science education at UNC Charlotte. And if I had to be stranded on an island with AI, Siri,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 02:19
yeah, Siri, Kendra Holt-Moore, PhD candidate, Boston University. And if I was stranded on a desert island with an AI, I think maybe at this point, I would go with our two D two because he just like always survives, you know, he gets into a lot of sticky situations and always comes out alive or always saves people who are in sticky situations and being on a desert island. That's a sticky situation. So
 
Ian Binns 02:48
RTD I feel like he could probably tap into the midichlorians probably see, so there you go. Maybe we are on right track here.
 
Zack Jackson 02:57
Thank you, Kendra. You're welcome. Not sure how that's how
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 03:00
I'm not sure that I agree with you. But you're welcome. Yeah, thank you.
 
Zack Jackson 03:06
Well, we kind of have a confusion of terms there. Ian's trying to make midichlorians from the Star Wars into artificial intelligence, when I'm pretty sure in canon, their biological. But the terms here that we've been using the past couple of weeks are a little squishy. And maybe we haven't clarified them super well. So since this is the last episode in our series on AI, we're going to kind of clarify some things and give some final thoughts for now we'll probably revisit this topic in the future since this sort of technology is just happening so quickly into our lives. And especially with the rollout of 5g, I mean, that's going to be a whole other conversation about the Internet of Things. And when you have refrigerators and toasters that are as smart as your iPhone is now the world is going to look a lot different in the next couple of years when we will definitely still be podcasting. So we want to answer a couple of questions that we ourselves have had and also tell you that we are going to be adding a q&a segment to the end of every episode. So if you have questions that you want answers if there's something from the episode that was unclear if there is a pressing question you have in your mind if you have any question what so ever that is at least somewhat tangibly tangentially connected to the podcast, then you can leave it on our Facebook page on Twitter, you can email it to admin at down the wormhole comm any way that you can get in touch with us to ask that question. We want to answer it at the end of every episode. So please send that in. But the most pressing question today. What is AI? What is artificial intelligence other than a very sappy movie from the early 2000s Well, we've kind of been using some of these terms interchangeably when we probably shouldn't have. So artificial intelligence is just an overarching term for any machine that acts like a human, or has human like intuition. So your Roomba, that's able to tell that there's a chair leg and moves out of the way, that's artificial intelligence, the computer player in Mario Kart, that's artificial intelligence, the machine that beat the championship go player, that's artificial intelligence. But there's all these different branches of it that we just need to clarify real quick. So like, at the most foundational level, you've anything that has a set of stimulus, and then response is artificial intelligence. So if you're programming something, all it needs to be is a series of if then statements. So if there's a table leg in the way, then move for your Roomba. So an example of this kind of rudimentary level, is all of the battles and Lord of the Rings. You know, when you have like 10s, of 1000s, of orcs, and humans and elves, and all of them coming at each other, that was a computer program called massive, which stands for multiple agents simulation system in virtual environment. One of those really forced acronyms backronym, right. But they're called. So what that was, was each and every one of those characters had its own set of physics, and its owns awareness of what was happening around it. And they were told, attack. And if you encounter this, then this happens and encountered that, then that happens. And so you do that on a large enough scale. And you could have 10s, of 1000s, of orcs and humans and elephants, and all kinds of things fighting each other. And the computer is determining each and every outcome based on a set of, of commands. Actually, in early renders, the humans kept on losing. And so they had to keep modifying it in in a couple of cases, when the olifants came over, over the side, the humans retreated. And they kept giving up because it was too hard, and which is such a human thing to do. So a lot of the special effects that you see are done like this. So then one step in to that, nested within that, if you think of it, like a series of nested eggs, is machine learning. And this is artificial intelligence that gets smarter, the more you use it. Basic machine learning has been around for a long time, if you've ever had to prove your human by answering a CAPTCHA, you know, show all of this, but click on all the squares that have a crosswalk. That's you are actually training an artificial intelligence by doing that, you are helping them to learn how to identify crosswalks so that that information can then be used by machines in the future to for some other purpose. This level of machine learning requires human input to say to it, this is a crosswalk, this is not a crosswalk, and then the artificial intelligence then takes it apart pixel by pixel. And enough input from humans will teach it what to look for and what not to look for. And then once it has a grasp on it, it can start doing it itself. And the more that it does it, and is confirmed that that's the right thing, the better it gets. And so this process can take months and months and months of of teaching this machine, the way that you would teach a child that this is this that is not that my local recycling plant has this incredible system driven by machine learning where it's got all these cameras and sensors, and it can tell different types of plastic. And then it can sort them with machine arms and with all kinds of fun things that they can do to then sort the plastic faster than you could with humans, which then means that it can be more profitable, and they can recycle more and be less wasteful. So like, that's pretty great. And the longer they use that system, the smarter it gets, the better it gets at determining different types of plastics and metals and whatnot. So that's great. I'm totally into that. It takes a lot of human input, though, in order to teach it. So then, the next level of nested egg of artificial intelligence is what's called Deep learning. And this is the future. This is actually the present. If you've interacted with google assistant or Siri or any kind of customer service You have likely interacted with deep learning. Deep Learning does what machine learning does, but it doesn't require humans to, to teach it first. So an example of this is Google's AlphaGo, which is a program, the supercomputer that was created to beat a human go player, the ancient Chinese game. And the thing about go is that it has, I think it's I read somewhere, it's like a million times more potential know, the difference between the potential moves in chess and the potential moves in go is more than all of the atoms in the entire known universe, there is so much, so many different moves, you can make an any different point. Whereas chess players are thinking about potential moves, a lot of times, like the best go, players are just feeling it, it's intuition for them. And so this is kind of the gold standard for teaching artificial intelligence to beat humans and to think like humans. So what they did was they they took this AI that they developed, and they had it watched 100,000 games of go. And so it's analyzing every single pixel of this, and putting it through its neural network and breaking it all apart and deciphering the rules itself. And then after 100,000 times of watching it, it had learned the rules on its own, because like it knew that this person one and this person last, and this person did this, and this criteria was met. And so it learned the rules itself, nobody had to teach it, it learned it itself. And then they set it to play against itself 30 million times, it's simulated 30 million games against an older version of itself. So it would learn for a while to get a little bit better, and then face its previous self, and then that version would get a little better, and then it would face the version before it. So it's always facing a version that it can beat, but just by a little bit. And after 30 million times, it faced the number one champion go player in the world and beat it beat him in 2017. So those, what, five years, four or five years ago, that it is for this happened for Yes, thank you for thank you for math, we're not yet in 2022. So in this case, it took no human interaction for this thing to learn and then to be able to thrive. They've got these playing old, old games from the 70s and 80s. It learned how to beat Space Invaders overnight, and just defeat the whole game without teaching it any other rules. It just lost enough times to know how to avoid things and how to time things and all of that. What this requires, however, as opposed to machine learning, and AI, in the simpler senses, is a ton of data. So this required 10,000 100,000 games of go, it had to watch in order to figure out the rules of the game. So if we have a ton of computing power, and a ton of data, then we can create systems that can teach itself how to best optimize itself, and then is able to find avenues that the human mind is not able to find. So this is where we are now, which obviously there are some issues with because if you're not being very careful about the data that you're feeding it, then the output is going to end up being potentially skewed. On the other hand, because we're not intentional about which we're not giving it specific data sets, we're giving it everything, it's able to make patterns that maybe we wouldn't have otherwise, it's already proven to be so effective at locating cancer cells of predicting stock movements, which is causing all kinds of issues, was one of the reasons why the GameStop stock went crazy was because humans out out, bought the algorithm and then crashed the stock market basically for a while. It's also one of the things that's contributed to the crazy gerrymandering that we have now, because the computer is able to run every simulation of every election we've ever had against population data and then determine the ideal gerrymandered district for how population growth is going to go and immigration and all of that to make sure that their people stay in power. So like there's a lot of potential in this kind of technology. To be amazing, like, imagine a shirt that was able to sense your body temperature and your sweat, and the temperature and the forecast and then to be able to adjust its fit, depending on your particular comfort level. So like the person who's like, I'm always cold, they don't have to be always cold anymore, because your shirt knows you, and it loves you, and it wants you to be warm and comfortable. But at the same time, there's all kinds of potential issues where it'll still smell bad. It'll say, Well,
 
Rachael Jackson 15:33
I was thinking about how to wash your shirt like that,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 15:35
unless it's merino wool. Unless it's what will Marina will?
 
Zack Jackson 15:40
Sorry, is that fancy? Well, which I don't know? Well, yeah. Well, resistant, very, I'm a simple man,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 15:45
I've been preparing for backpacking this summer. And that's. So an example of issues with big data.
 
Zack Jackson 15:58
Okay, so all of these companies that are trying to teach computers how to talk and to communicate with humans, naturally use these huge language models, where they take communications from spoken communications from television, and radio, and podcasts even and, and they take written communications from websites and emails and text messages. And they create models of the English language, let's say, and, and then are able to do the sort of predictive texts that you see, or Google is able to translate websites just in a snap. There are some concerns. And one of the couple of months ago, the head of Google's ethics team co authored a paper that her name is timnit gebru. And she co authored a paper for conference, questioning some of the ethics behind this because if you're just gathering data, just haphazardly, because you need a ton of data to make this kind of system work. If you're just gathering it from everything, and you know, Google, the Google algorithm has access to every google doc and every email and everything that you have ever used on their system they have, that algorithm can access whenever it wants to, if you're just taking all of that in order to learn the English language, and you're not taking into consideration prejudices and violence and the awful things that make humans human, then you have the potential to create an algorithm that will say have implicit bias built into it the way that humans have it built into us, because it's just the air we breathe. And so she questioned in this paper, that not specifically calling out Google but IBM and Microsoft and everyone else that's doing it. And Google demanded that she retract her name from it. And when she refused, because she wanted to know who exactly it was that was censoring her, and why they were censoring her and what she's allowed to say in her position and what she's not. They fired her, though, they said they told everyone that she quit. Yeah. And she has said many times, I did not quit you, I say you fired me, I don't work there anymore. And I didn't quit. That means you fired me. And they still kind of refused to acknowledge that they fired her over questioning this kind of potential issue with data. And so that's not a good look for Google. Because they are, this is kind of their business. They're in the business now of big data and predictive tax, and they need to be on top of it. And it's a threat to their bottom line if if people start questioning the ethics of it, and they start opting out of that. So that raises all kinds of issues about oversight about trusting capitalist systems to self correct for morality, versus government systems for that as well. The potential for a self learning machine to become smarter than us and realize it doesn't need us or the potential for it to fill in all of the gaps of our weaknesses and help to create a utopian society. It seems like the future is wide open and we are at a transitional tipping point right now. And that is my long intro into all things AI and machine learning and deep learning and the fear and the optimism of the future.
 
Ian Binns 20:08
So can I ask a question? No, you just don't want to do anymore. All of the it sounds like even, you know, maybe from the initial beginning of things that is still depends on human input in some way to to then get things going. Is that accurate?
 
Zack Jackson 20:28
But like humans have to create it,
 
Ian Binns 20:31
either and create and then started on the learning process until they started doing it on its own, like from the the initial outset. Like it doesn't start on its own right.
 
Rachael Jackson 20:44
I don't think anything does doesn't I mean, started jumping? No. Doesn't does anything start on its own? Or like, your father? Did your children start on their own? That that,
 
Ian Binns 20:57
that that topic will come up in a later episode, Rachel, you know, it is. Not that they
 
Rachael Jackson 21:09
came into existence on their own, but that, as you're raising them, they don't just know what you expect of them. Right. And so for me, I don't know why we would expect anything different at this point until AI creates its own AI. And perhaps that's because I was watching Agents of SHIELD where AI is creating AI and I just want to cry. And how the sort of sci fi horror that comes with that. But I think, for me, the analogy is absolutely each one of those things, right? It's very much a parent child relationship for for those circles within circles, how much input is someone giving it? Or how much are you just being taught to do on your own, and a whole lot of garbage in garbage out?
 
Ian Binns 21:55
But I guess what I'm saying is, is that I guess, where I'm trying to go with this is that being that it always like, even if AI gets advanced enough to the point where it can create its own AI, the initial AI still had to be depend on human input to get going.
 
Rachael Jackson 22:14
Yes, all of our biases, all of our motives, all of our garbage, is my point is going to be a part of it until somebody teaches it or trains it to remove it in my opinion.
 
Adam Pryor 22:25
But I think that's what's terrifying about deep learning. Is that it Yeah, it's not reliant on that. Like, so this is what this is what's notable about the AlphaGo experiment, right? So this this experiment where they're playing go, right, so like, it's not just that AlphaGo beat Lisa doll, it beat Lisa doll three times in a row. And the second time it beat Lisa doll, it made a move that no go player thought was a good move. He made a totally novel move, it's in fact changed the way that go players play by analyzing this game. So okay, it took it. So like, mathematicians will describe this in terms of like a local maximum. Right? Go players had reached a local maximum in the landscape of potential go moves that one could make. And everyone thought that was the highest point AlphaGo utterly creatively changed the strategy by which the game is played. It found a new maximum in the landscape of possibilities. Right, that that's the piece of deep learning that it was not relying on human beings. Okay. It was not taught to do it. It was a completely novel structure structure that it came up with vinted on its own.
 
Ian Binns 23:46
Yes. all on its own. Like it. This was not from analysis. Nope. of Oh, I, you know, the thing was able to remember a move in the past this was told this was a totally novel move. That's really interesting,
 
Zack Jackson 23:59
right? That's what the old ones like Watson, when they're playing chess, they would look at the board and all possible moves, and then would plan ahead for all possible moves like three times in the future. That is kind of rudimentary machine learning. This one got creative.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 24:17
But that creativity, I mean, I don't know that that creativity still is based on what the AI has learned from humans. It's not that the novel move. Yeah, maybe like humans had never done that before. But it's like a process of elimination of what didn't work that humans had done. And so the novelty is still sort of playing in opposition to human.
 
Adam Pryor 24:46
No, it's because that would be so that would be that would be a machine learning instance, right. That would be where there's a set algorithm, it analyzes all of the potential moves that would be available and then chooses the best one. Right.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 25:01
But what is the best case one is one that was never chosen.
 
Adam Pryor 25:04
But in this case, it's not working that way. It's modifying the algorithm.
 
Ian Binns 25:08
And that's where the deep learning comes into play.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 25:12
Okay, yes. That's creepy. Yeah, okay. Well, that that kind of.
 
Adam Pryor 25:18
I mean, it is still like children, though. I mean, like, I think that's still like a good like an out like, right, like, but there comes a point, right? Where those children start making decisions on their own. Right? utterly independent of the places from which they came. Deep Learning is rapidly approaching that place, and if not already crossing over into it.
 
Rachael Jackson 25:38
And just like with children, or, you know, I'm not I'm not saying children as in a particular age set, but the parent child relationship, looking at them going, you know, you can have that moment of like, wow, where did that come from? That I'm now seeing you. It's no longer what I'm teaching you and you're a being back to me. It's like this was you. And then there can be that moment of like, Oh, my God, what is this? Like, what did I create? And where is this coming from? Like, the, the parents of psychopaths, like I did not create that. They did that all on their own. So I, again, I really like the analogy that a where we are with AI and deep learning and all the concentric circles is still really a parent child relationship.
 
Zack Jackson 26:27
This has this has a very Genesis three feel to it. Yeah, we're like, God creates these creatures that have advanced knowledge and gives them a set of of do this, don't do that. But I'm gonna let you go and learn on your own. And then
 
Rachael Jackson 26:43
I want to be God to let me eat this apple.
 
Ian Binns 26:46
That does make me think about Skynet from Terminator. And when you really think about it right there, they wanted to pull the plug on Skynet, because they realized this guy that was learning on its own, and becoming better, like learning faster and becoming dangerous to humans. And so they tried to pull the plug. But by then it was too late.
 
Adam Pryor 27:06
I mean, like, this is the thing to me. Right? Like, Skynet is like the, the, like the best example of this, right? Because the only thing human beings have going for us is that we're better at structuring context. Right? We are never going to win the like data processing game. Computers have beat us out on that for a long, long, long time. And it's only the distance is only growing further. Right? It's, it's when you reach this point with deep learning that algorithmic systems produce better analyses of context than humans do. Which is really what Skynet does, right? Like it's it's gathering all this data, and then suddenly can produce a better vision. Right, of what the original outcome that it sought, is then what? Humans you know, what our key was, okay?
 
Ian Binns 28:04
Or like Vicky from iRobot? Ah, yeah, that's a good example. That would be a really good example of realizing to Vicki, I think there's even a part in that film. Where, Vic, like, when they realize that the one who's been doing this bad stuff the whole time was Vicki. And she talks about, I think, something like realizing that humans were unable to do these things for themselves. And so Vicki felt like it was time for me to take over. Because humans are too dangerous, and all that kind of stuff. And then it just, yeah. All the problems that exists because of humans. So let me take over and I'll fix everything by killing.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 28:43
Nice. But yeah, but also rational. Yeah, yeah. Oh, no, just this conversation is making me rethink. Or maybe not rethink, but I'm just wondering about, like, the usefulness of this frame, like comparative framework that someone published an article, I think it was in Scientific American, or somewhere, I can look and send that to Rachel, but he's a scientist and was talking about, like, the way to think about AI. It's something that has evolved or like, is evolved, rather than engineered. And that, you know, I think, sort of like colloquially, especially for people who aren't scientists making robots, we think our like gut reaction is like, oh, someone made that someone like engineered this robot to perform this function. And that that, you know, Like, on some level is true, but it's not actually the end game of AI in like the grand scheme of, like what humans are trying to do with AI, it given our conversation about, you know, the, the, the goals of like being better and better with each generation of AI. Like they're vastly outpacing a lot of our, like human abilities already. And that's just like continuing to happen at greater degrees. And so there is an evolution, like, have these things. It's always been that way. But I guess like the the main point of that comparison between, like evolution versus engineering is that thinking about AI, in terms of evolution, is more like thinking about human intelligence, and, like the evolution of human ness. And that there's something very similar, maybe, like, eerily so that robots are, you know, that's like what we're doing. And I think that the example that I think it was Rachel, who a few minutes ago, like, brought up the kind of analogy to like a child, or like that parent child relationship that, you know, there is like a starting like a baseline of what AI is and what it knows. But if you have to have like mechanisms in place for it to, to grow and learn and that simple Engineering Task, where you're creating a thing to solve issue a, there's not an an implied, like, growth are like evolution factor in a simple Engineering Task. I mean, it can be but not always. And so I just, I think that's really interesting, because I, I just, like, evolution. Like, I guess I'm struggling always with, like, what the morality of like, what, what are the implications of this? the morality of AI, because I'm, like, thinking about the evolution of AI. And in that one day, it's just gonna like, or, you know, apparently, I've been misunderstanding robots. And it's already like creatively coming up with novel solutions. that evolution is kind of this like, opportunistic, amoral system. I guess that's how I think about it. And so whether you're talking about AI in terms of engineering, or evolution, you still have these like social political issues. And that doesn't go away. And it's a little concerning, because I think that, like some scientists will see themselves as outside of that problem. Like, science for the sake of science, seeking the truth, uncovering whatever is before us, whether that's good or bad. And there's something really exciting about that ideal, but like, it's out of it, we don't like live in a vacuum, and you can't, you can't, like seek that kind of big t truth without considering these other contextual factors have implications for harm and things like that, which is, you know, what we've been talking about. So anyway, that, the other thing I wanted to say is that this sort of relates to I think, one of the first episodes we recorded about personhood, and just thinking about the kinds of AI that are so much like, us, I'm just wondering about future conversations where, you know, like, we talk a lot now in the 21st century about human rights, and the importance of human rights. And, you know, we're there are a lot of people who always have but, you know, now these groups, you know, look in different forms of like, animal rights, and, you know, like, hardcore, like veganism and things that are trying to, like, bring animals into the picture and, you know, reevaluate, especially the ways that the West treats nature. And I just am really curious about how robots are gonna make us reconsider even the value of like, human or animal this and like, what will be our big common denominator? Is it is it personhood? Or is it something else? Because personhood is, I think can include robots, but it's still kind of this like weird, a morphus category and human rights is just something that I think especially for like, liberals is like this big like, that's the idea. We want everyone to like, benefit from human rights. And, you know, we want to like not torture animals too. And just like how will that conversation, which is like general and really common in a lot of our circles? How will that change with those smart robots all around us?
 
Rachael Jackson 35:41
Zach, I want to make sure that you had some time.
 
Zack Jackson 35:45
I had the first 20 minutes. I was thinking the same thing about everyone else.
 
Ian Binns 35:58
And can we go back to the AlphaGo thing real quick? Just come just curious. So I was I found a wired article about it, right? And started thumbing through and goes back to what you're saying, Adam, that that move showed that, you know, his creativity that was able to do something that's never been done before on its own. And right here, it talks about this article I'm Reading in Wired Magazine. That particular move wasn't the moment where the machines began their rise to power over our lesser minds. That move was the moment machines and humanity finally began to evolve together.
 
Adam Pryor 36:37
Right, so this is that like, I mean, I think kendras thing about like, engineering versus evolution for thinking about this is really critical, like, because we do think of machines as engineered objects. Right? And that is not what is happening at this point, right? Like, what I think is like, most interesting, terrifying sort of like, is strategically helpful, potentially, about the way algorithmic learning occurs, which is really like, also, I keep using the phrase algorithmic learning, you could substitute deep learning, right? All deep learning is a form of algorithmic learning, at this point, so what's like both terrifying and potentially helpful about over an algorithmic learning is this place that it has reached, where it allows a new context for local systems to be discovered. It opens up a new way of seeing the data that sits within a given field field of analysis. Now, at least in my area of the world, academically, we might call that meaning formation. And that I think is the sort of like that wired article is I think, Reading AlphaGo, Reading the situation that occurred is AlphaGo, forming new meaning out of this particular landscape of the game. Now, is that what happened? I am a little more suspect, right? Like there's a level of intentionality and consciousness being projected. right on to that situation in order to say that machines and humans are learning together right now, are they evolving together? Right? is are we suddenly in an age where this sort of algorithmic, algorithmic deep learning means humans engage their environment in ways that previously were totally unimaginable? Yes, I'm on board with that. Like, I I'll point to this moment with AlphaGo. And say, like, that may be the moment where Homo sapiens die. If we looked at this millions and millions and millions of years from now, like that might be the demise of our species.
 
Ian Binns 39:24
So happy right now. I don't think that's a bad thing.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 39:31
I'm not ready to die.
 
Ian Binns 39:34
I like my I like our species, and that I'm still alive.
 
Adam Pryor 39:37
I mean, the Neanderthals like their species to
 
Ian Binns 39:41
good fairpoint.
 
Rachael Jackson 39:48
You know, that's where I was thinking about this, you know, if we, if we really toy with this idea of evolution, and AI, we don't there's past 70 or so. The activity in my head, right engineering means that we are actively doing something and evolution is there's sort of a passiveness that it's that it is happening, or happens like we you just said the Neanderthals like themselves too. And yet they're not here either. And part of that is not the evolution of them, but the evolution of us. And then we killed them.
 
Zack Jackson 40:23
Right, right. absorb them I'm part Neanderthal, yes.
 
Rachael Jackson 40:30
Two 3% or something like that, right? Like, absorbed kills those things? Perhaps those things, sports, all those things like people that those things like those changes, I'm not that harsh. Right? Resistance is futile, you understand this? Right? So maybe if we initially engineered machines, machine learnings that then has with our evolution and our engineering, we're sort of making that deep learning turning into ai ai, then over X number of hundreds of years then evolves beyond where we started from. And if that then is our demise, then perhaps isn't that our homosapiens evolution? That, that we have all these branches, and it's not necessarily a fatalistic perspective, but it is much more of a geological time perspective, right, human Homo sapiens have have been around for a blink of an eye.
 
Adam Pryor 41:40
Not nearly as long as homo Neanderthals were around.
 
Rachael Jackson 41:42
Exactly. Exactly. And, and who knows how many more iterations before that, that we just don't even know about? And how long they were around? And why why do we think that us human beings are so much more specific and special that we would get to last? You know, 160 million years like dinosaurs did? In a Why? I just don't see I don't I don't have an issue with Homo sapiens no longer existing. Again, not a deathwish not saying that I want us to die now. But but recognizing that in the grand scheme of things of things on this planet, if that's if that's where we're going to go through our own evolution, then that's, that's an okay thing. It's not our demise. Like Adam is saying it's
 
Adam Pryor 42:38
that no, let's let's be clear, it is still our demise. No, no, I don't want to let you off the hook. That easy. Wait, there's there's demise there. There may be progress. Also. I'm okay with that. But it is still the demise of Homo sapiens.
 
Ian Binns 42:55
As we know it now. Yes. Okay. Great.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 43:00
Thank you, demise, evolution, what's the difference? Tato. But, so to me, like, what's interesting about this,
 
Rachael Jackson 43:09
maybe we'll be together. Sorry, Adam. Or like, maybe it will be together?
 
Adam Pryor 43:13
I don't think that's gonna go well, for the like, like, not as fast thinking homosapiens we just say that hasn't traditionally gone real well, for those species, but
 
Zack Jackson 43:22
think about it an excellent pet way to be.
 
Adam Pryor 43:28
Have you read the sparrow? No. Okay. Yeah, you need to read the sparrow. And think about that before you decide you want to be a pet. I will just tell you, if you haven't read the sparrow, it is Jesuits in space. It's worth Reading.
 
Rachael Jackson 43:45
Is this just making sure. Mary Doria Russell, Mary Doria Russell,
 
Adam Pryor 43:50
yeah. Because it's brilliant. It's a brilliant book. Also, please don't read it. When you're feeling happy.
 
Rachael Jackson 43:57
You will not feel happy at the end,
 
Adam Pryor 43:58
you will not feel happy at the end of this book in any way, shape, or form. But all told, even if it is the demise of Homo sapiens, which I think it is, or, you know, a lovely vision of progress where Homo sapiens now live in a utopia with these machines. And we're not just pets. I look at this though. And I do go like, I feel like that's really challenging for religious traditions. Like I think most religious traditions have a sense of the sacredness of the human. And that gets translated to Homo sapiens. Very, very specifically. And, and I think this is sort of like an interesting place where I really do think deep learning is starting to push a boundary for religious traditions to rethink themselves. Maybe not all, but I'll at least speak from my right, like, Lutheran Christian version of this right. It's really hard for me to square any kind of eschatology that we've usually talked about in those traditions, with a vision of Homo sapiens not being permanent fixtures until the Rapture. Right? That's, that's pretty hard to square. It's, it gets kind of harder for me to sort of do a usual Christology. where, you know, Jesus Christ shows up at this very particular point in time, if Homo sapiens aren't going to be the last species of human beings on this planet. I mean, I think there are ways to do it. But but it's a, there are some creative theological questions that I think really emerge from taking this idea seriously.
 
Rachael Jackson 45:38
If you don't have those two things, though, right, because only some religions have those two things. Would it? Would it work?
 
Adam Pryor 45:49
Well, what I would say is, like, I wonder are would other religious traditions have their own questions that they have to ask in the face of this? I don't, I don't think all all of them ask the same question by any stretch of imagination, like
 
Rachael Jackson 45:59
I think about, from my, my corner of the world, right? I'm thinking that in Judaism, what what is the ultimate goal for for the existence of humans or the existence of Jews or the exit, right? Like what what is happening next, not the rapture, not right a second coming up. A Messianic age figure that says the world is now fully repaired, and it will continue to exist in a place of wholeness and peace. It allows for anybody to participate in that. In fact, it it requires anybody and everybody to participate. And if you were at one point, a righteous person, or specifically a righteous Jew, you then get to return in that in that Messianic age, and sort of heaven on earth, right? gun aid in the Garden of Eden, comes once more for us to live happily ever after. And there's no problem with Well, what if it's not me?
 
Adam Pryor 47:12
Well, but I think maybe then, so as I'm listening to you, right, like the question that would start to emerge for me in my like, philosophy of religion sort of side of things would be like, okay, so can there be a righteous Jew? That's not a homosapien? It feels like there would be internal debate about that.
 
Rachael Jackson 47:30
I don't actually know. I mean, only because Jews debate about everything. I mean, right. But beyond that question, my gut reaction is, why not? If we're not already limiting ourselves to dues, then we're opening ourselves to everyone. And if we're opening ourselves to everyone, then why couldn't that everyone include an AI? Maybe I'm just optimistic and positive. I don't know. Maybe I'm just in the right religion. I don't know that either.
 
Adam Pryor 48:27
There's nothing that brings my heart more joy than just hearing you say maybe I'm in the right religion. I'm gonna hold on to that for a while. I just I just want you to know.
 
Ian Binns 48:42
I say you're always optimistic to
 
Rachael Jackson 48:45
heavy stuff.
 
Adam Pryor 48:47
I would bet that there are scholars though, in different religious traditions who, who would be able to say like, there are questions in our questions or propositions or concepts within our tradition that have to be rethought in light of homosapiens not being a permanent feature into the far future.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 49:10
Yeah, I think like everything that you're saying, Adam makes a lot of sense. But I I also think there's a version of like Christian eschatology and Christology that on the one hand, you're right, like people will have issues with the, you know, homosapien piece, but there's another side of that where I feel very similar to what Rachel saying, I'm like, yeah, Christians will be fine with it, and they adapt and make up stuff all the time for that's why I have a job. Yeah, so I just think, you know, it'll be like the same as it's always been, like, more hardcore conservative interpretations will maybe be more troubled by this, but I think Christianity has also always done a version of like very liberal and open and like metaphorical interpretation that definitely can survive without homosapiens. However we may feel about that.
 
Adam Pryor 50:18
Yeah, I mean, I think that would be the case. I, I do think, though, that you end up with a I'm gonna I'm gonna go with this since you know, Rachel's in the right religion, right. I think there are winners and losers out of these, like traditions as a result, like there are. Look, we can use the evolutionary example, right? There are evolutionary streams of various religious traditions that get closed off if you start taking this seriously.
 
Ian Binns 50:47
Well, so what I'm really curious about I keep coming back to this AlphaGo thing, like, I mean, if you really think about it, that is really amazing. This happened.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 51:01
Right, right. Like, it's how to, like sign up for the go championship or something like,
 
Ian Binns 51:09
no, no. I've never played the game. So I would probably do pretty badly. But no, my point is, is that so this this article that I have from wired magazines, like 2016. So what's happened since then? Like if this was kind of a pivotal moment, in machine learning, and deep thinking, what I mean, Adam, are you aware of anything like that, since then has happened? That's,
 
Adam Pryor 51:44
well, like more like, Holy moly, I can't believe that happened. So it's interesting to me that like, after this moment, my understanding is that the deep mind team, like so the folks who did Watson, the folks who did AlphaGo, like, they have shifted on to more substantial issues. Things like climate change analysis, right, very specific, like, like, targeting this type of deep learning to specific problems. So like Zack mentioned, like at the beginning, like cancer, cancer Reading, right, so I'm training algorithms to be better interpreters of MRI scans, and CAT scans, then human technicians, right, that's an active project going on at a couple of medical schools, you start to see these very, they tend to be like highly targeted problems right now. In terms of stuff that I'm thinking about, there are some like creativity ones. I taught a an interdisciplinary class with a math professor on this. And Charles Deuce toi, wrote a book called the creativity code that covers like, some of the like, latest things, and he starts like with AlphaGo, and then works on other places. And the book is framed around, like, will we reach a point where deep learning is more creative about mathematics than mathematicians are? is like a sort of, like, problematizing question. But there's some really interesting examples along the way of, you know, like the action Jackson, right, which is a machine painting system. Some other music is a big area, right? Where there are good AI projects working to do composition work.
 
53:47
Cool. So.
 
Adam Pryor 53:50
So on the one hand, there are some like kind of like, pet projects in the creativity realm. There, there are a series of like, I think, specific medical and environmental technologies, where you're seeing this used pretty robustly. There was a good piece in The New York Times Magazine on where AI, particularly deep learning systems will end up replacing a variety of middle class jobs. Actually, there was the final one of the final assignments for the students in the class was when their job that they want to pursue be replaced by AI in their lifetime.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 54:29
That's a great assignment.
 
Adam Pryor 54:32
Most of them said probably, and that, you know, that, you know, ultimately, there's something about their humaneness that would prevent them from losing their jobs specifically.
 
Rachael Jackson 54:43
We talked a little bit about that, I think in a in a previous episode to where we say like, some of us like, our jobs are secure. My jobs not going anywhere.
 
Adam Pryor 54:54
But mine definitely will go away. I mean, I'd be shocked, actually. Yeah. Part of it will be part certainly part of it would.
 
Rachael Jackson 55:02
Yeah. One of the things that I just wanted to sort of end on that we've been dancing around but not really talking about is our human relationship to AI. In terms of what will our relationship be, if we're looking at relational or transactional? Those are sort of the buzzwords these days for how to how to be inside a community like are you treating? Is your community? Is your place of worship transactional? Are you fee for service? Or are you relational, and that's how you get people to stay members. Or to stay engaged, not just a membership, because it goes much more beyond those buzzwords of the last half decade. And for me, it goes further back to Martin boober. And the idea of, not just where is God, but where are we, and how are we using the ideas of AI it or I thou relationships, and for boober boober said that we can have an I it relationship with another human being and most of us do almost all the time. Right? The person that at the grocery store, the person the bank, Teller, any delivery service, even friends, even rather acquaintances, and co workers, most of them are I it relationships, very basic, based in transaction I will do for you only because you do for me. And that's sort of how we just can live our life and the antithesis to that is the I thou relationship, the ICU is you and want to be in relationship with new, not because of what you can do for me. And that is that can be true for every person. And also with things you can have an i thou relationship with a tree. And I love that one like I guess I have, I haven't I have an i thou relationship with my tree. And if we take that concept, how right this is, this is sort of my hopeful, optimistic view of where we can go with this, no matter what it is that we're talking about. If it's a deep learning, if it's an AI, if it's if it's, if it's Rosie, if it's your Roomba, you can have the I thou relationship with it, with the object with the creature with this, this something in front of you, and you're better for it as as is that thing. And wherever, wherever we ended up going with it. That's that's the perspective. And that, for me is what I can contribute to these relationships. What my perspective and how I perceive the thing across from me, I'm smiling.
 
Adam Pryor 57:55
So so I want to know, do you do you say thank you to Siri or Google or Alexa? When when you ask it questions, almost always,
 
Rachael Jackson 58:04
and it changes that I have I have Alexa. And it changes the sound of its voice. And it'll give me two or three phrases back such as you betcha. And it's like this really fun. Is this really fun statement of like, Oh, you're welcome. Now, just FYI, if you say I love you, it does not say I love you back. It says, you know, like, thank you, which is really smart emotional learning. So you don't find to get that attachment to this object. So that I believe is the programmer is because it's not yet capable of doing that. But maybe we'll get to a point of how and Eureka, right, the TV show Eureka where he's buried to a house.
 
Adam Pryor 58:47
So I I will say I tell Google thank you all the time. Whenever whenever I asked Google something. Um, but what it did make me recognize is that I don't say thank you to my cats. As we talked about, I though I had relationships,
 
Rachael Jackson 59:05
but but you don't like your cats. You have until your cats you kind of hate them.
 
Adam Pryor 59:08
No. So. So this is the like, but when we ask, like, Can we have a closer relationship with machine learning, deep learning than we do with other creatures? You right? Like I don't even have to go all the way to a tree. I can just go to the cats in my house. Right, right. Like any when they get up on the counter. The thing I shout at them is nobody loves you. Right? So like, I mean, I don't shout nobody loves you Google. I say thank you.
 
Rachael Jackson 59:33
You have a deeper relationship with your Google than you do with your cat. Yeah, I think that's a perfect example. You monster.
 
Zack Jackson 59:45
This has been Episode 85 of the down the wormhole podcast. Thank you for coming on this journey with us and especially to all you who have helped us to spread this work by sharing with your friends or leaving us a review wherever you get your podcasts. That's really huge. Thanks also to our patrons on Patreon for helping us to make this podcast happen. If you'd like to donate to the cause you can find us@patreon.com slash down the wormhole podcast. And make sure you send in your questions for our new q&a segment as well. So hit us up on Facebook, Twitter or through our website at down the wormhole.com

Elevating the Discourse with Eric Elnes

Episode 84
In part 14 of our Sinai and Synapses interview series, we are talking with the Rev Dr Eric Elnes. He believes that we are in a sort of spiritual seismic shift that has not been experienced in 2,000 years, and is hopefully optimistic about the future of religion, spirituality, and humanity as we know it. We talk about weird new ways of doing church, what he learned from walking across the country, and what we can glean about God from the Higgs field. Make sure you don't miss this one! 
 
The Rev Dr Eric Elnes  is a biblical scholar, pastor, author, podcaster, and video producer. He is the founder and host of Darkwood Brew which has created and hosts more progressive Christian video resources than anyone else in the world. He is the newly settled pastor of First Congregational United Church of Christ in Portland Oregon and a leading articulator of Convergence Christianity. Find more at https://www.darkwoodbrew.org/
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
 
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors. 
 
Zack Jackson 00:04
You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week we are exploring how that relationship gets worked out in real life with one of the current Sinai and Synapses, fellows, Sinai and Synapses is a two year fellowship committed to elevating the discourse surrounding religion and science and where the five of us first met. So without further ado,
 
Eric Elnes 01:17
Dozens and dozens, yes, but something that I think our listeners might be less familiar with, then even knowing that UCC pastor, is that phrase that I brought up convergence, Christianity, which I think is a term that they may not have heard, but a concept they have almost certainly felt or experienced in the world. So I wonder here if at the beginning, because I know, a lot of your work is colored by this concept and all that goes with it. So could you just take a minute here and unpack that a little bit for our listeners, you sure I can't. And what I'll say is kind of the tip of an iceberg. This goes way, way deep down the wormhole. So if I want to go talk about like how this is, I see this acting and other even other faiths, and beyond the little, you know, puddle of Christianity that we didn't have a habit, I'm happy to talk about that. But really, the whole idea of convergence came when I i and a bunch of progressive political progressive Christians, we walked across the country in 2006, to try to wave a flag say that you're helping people realize there are more than one way to be a Christian. And we had this platform called the Phoenix affirmations, which eventually kind of became kind of a theological backbone for a lot of progressive Christian churches. Kind of 12 points of affirmation about why what makes us excited to be for our faith outlook, we weren't bashing anybody. We're just trying to articulate things like, you know, we take the Bible seriously, but we don't read it literally. We don't. And we acknowledge there are other paths besides Christianity that are legitimate, even as we claim our own path, as Christians, you things like this in claiming environment, environmental responsibility, openness and affirmation of LGBT LGBTQ community things that you would or would not surprise you to find about progressive Christians. But we walked across the country thinking we were waving this banner, and we're going to lead the charge, or at least help help help lead the charge to a greater Christian witness in America, but in more generous spirit. And what we discovered was almost immediately our, our understanding of what was going on in our nation were completely wrong. Or at least at least needed to be significantly rethought because we kept running up and up into two kinds of people. One were people on the other side of the theological swimming pool than we are, you know, more of evangelical Christians who were as frustrated with their own camp as we were. And if he asked them, well, what are your hopes and dreams, they were looking for things like LGBTQ equality, they're looking forward, non literal Reading of the Bible, they're looking for not throwing everybody into hell who wasn't Christian. They're looking for the very things that progressive Christians stood for, really. But we also found from our own camp, progressive Christians who are having a huge problem with with our camp as well, but they weren't looking for a more conservative Jesus, for instance, they were just looking for Jesus, were so much progressive Christianity has basically said, and I very much count myself as a progressive Christian, but with so much progressive Christianity said, whatever, we think that the evangelicals have fundamentals of do badly, we won't do it all. So they do Jesus. Jesus, they do Bible badly, well, will, will not do the Bible. You have to do a prayer badly. We're not gonna talk about prayer and all these things, and there and there are people who are frustrated by that. It's like, I don't want to conserve Jesus. I don't want conservative prayer, but I want those things. I want these classic things, you know, and so and but so but we listen to those those what I would call people who are moving to be post evangelical progressives, and people were becoming you know, post liberal. All progressives. And so what they were looking for was actually found in the other side. So like those, those former evangelicals or becoming former evangelicals still had Jesus, and Bible and prayer only they had, they themselves have moved beyond the conservative, you know, layering of that. So they actually had a gift to bear to these post liberal progressives. And the post liberal progressives have gifts to bear before the post evangelical progressive, because they they were doing things like LGBTQ equality, and you know, pluralism and all these things. And we realized that you both camps, they've grown up to be suspicious one another. And both camps have no idea that the other camp exists. And so every year we asked ourselves, you know, have they found each other yet? Because we knew that if they didn't find each other, they would there just be like this heyday. It's like, Oh, my gosh, you got your chocolate in my peanut butter. I got my peanut butter, your chocolate. I was like, Wow, this is amazing. Yeah, it really felt like like, like, there were two groups of escaped slaves out in the wilderness that Moses, you know, was trying to wrangle together. And if they never get together, they would just like drop everything, the gifts they would that they brought out of Egypt that they could not bear to leave behind. They were the gifts that each other needed. And they could build a new tabernacle in the wilderness based on those gifts that come together as convergence. And so every year we asked ourselves did that, have they noticed each other? And every year? We had to say No, honestly, we'd like to say yes, but we know until this little festival happened in what year was that? About 20? About 2013 2012. In in, in North Carolina called the wild goose festival. And those people they just simply raised a flag saying, are you into spirituality, justice and the arts? If you are come, and what who the people who came were the exact people from those posts, you progressive post liberal progressives and post post evangelical progress they were they just came they they just came and they showed up and they discovered one another. And all what a party that was when they discovered one they're like, What? Wait, you come from an evangelical church? You're talking to this way? What you're coming from a liberal Tricia talking this way. Like, why, why, why why? This is so cool.
 
Zack Jackson 07:19
And even the performers too, and the speakers they seem Jennifer Knapp up there. That
 
Eric Elnes 07:24
was that was some special. Oh, she's awesome. Yeah, exactly. So in every year, it just, it's just built until finally other organizations started realizing this and, and I helped, you know, Cameron Trimble and Brian McLaren. We you put together something called the convergence network, just to try to make use of you know, to kind of bring that entity together. And eventually other organizations started to see this happening San Francisco Theological Seminary, you start start going on and made the Phoenix affirmations of primary working document for their cutting edge ministry, unit and, and Random House, even even Random House. They they'd actually been Reading stuff that was on the darker blue reps website. So you know, what, our marketing people have been Reading what you've been writing, and they're saying, This is exactly what we're saying to in our stats. And like, really, it was, yeah, yeah. What do you think's going on? Is it Well, I think it's might be called convergence, you know, and guess what they named their press. Convergence press. I hope you got a cut of that. And no, no, I didn't get a kind of a No, no, but but the point is, is is, is really that there is something going on that is statistically valid. But under the Trump era, it just kind of went all underground, and seemed like we took many steps backward. But I actually don't think we have in, in my Reading of US history, you know, as we're kind of talking about before the podcast began, if you really take a serious look at it, developments of the grassroots and religion tend to precede political developments by about 20 or 30 years, you think it's the opposite, because you look back and look at social developments that were held up by religion, but it really wasn't until the average Christian or person of faith kind of saw a new thing that suddenly there's a tidal wave change, and it works out. It's worse way out politically. And that happens with the abolitionist movement with women's suffrage with with a welcoming divorcees into the light in the mainstream life of society with racial justice all these LGBTQ cool quality even thought was gonna be the one exception to that but but even then, you could argue that it wasn't until the average even evangelical really kind of saw Wait a minute. Maybe God isn't condemning all these people to hell that suddenly there was this this massive SharePoint and we're still not there. You know, we're not start where we need to be. But there was a massive SharePoint, and that the reason why the Trump kind of era even happen is because some of these developments have sunk so deep into the fabric of human society now that the Old Dominion is reacting and is fighting For its life, there's so many developments that have happened to bring us together in this in not just religious convergences. I mean, convergence of faith and science convergence. You'll all have different religions even and not not like a super religion. But I mean, religions recognize the value of each other's pass into the diversity of faith pads actually makes us stronger rather than weaker. There's all kinds of convergences going on, right now that are leading to, I think, to some changes, so profound that literally, I mean, I'm willing to put it on on tape I years from now, I think we'll look back and say, what's happening now is significance as Jesus's own, you know, coming 2000 years ago, we're in a deep shift that, you know, philosophical talks about 500 years shifts that I think is just absolutely right on us, the tectonic shifts in society. They happen it's at least in western monotheistic society, which was the subject of her study, it tends to have a tectonic shift every five years, but then there's followed by season of like, extreme argumentation and violence until a new normal sets in, and I think that, you know, the last time this happened was, you know, the Renaissance than leading to the reformation, the big fight over what's real, and what, what Where's authority, you know, and what happened in the last century in, in western civilization, and really could argue throughout the world, but I'm just going to keep it from my area of expertise to makes the Renaissance look like child's play. I mean, literally makes the Renaissance look like child's play. I mean, in 1900, the first patent on record in the US Patent Office in New York City, was for a paperclip. And we ended the century literally cloning sheet. I mean, seriously. And then, of course, you think about your site, all the science, you would just geek out all day long about the scientific revolution took place in that century. But that's it was way beyond just the scientific. I mean, in 1900, there were 200 countries that legally had legalized slavery or forced labor in some kind. By 2017, that number was three, you know, in 1900 40%, of all children died by the time they were five years old. And now 4%. child mortality, in 1900 200 countries had the death penalty. And now there are under 90, in 1900, you know, only women had the right to vote and just one country in the entire world. Yeah, and now the numbers about 200 countries. And that's not even counting, like in 1851, we ordinating, the first woman, you know, and that's just been, you know, had a revolution. Since it was look at the history of, of the world. You know, that's just, you know, it's crazy the amount of progress we've made. You know, I mean, you just go on and on and on about this adult literacy. 1900 was 20% of the planet. Now it's 90% of the planet. Or 1900, those who lived into democracy accounted for 15% of the planet population. Now it's about 60% of the planet. And we just talked about LGBTQ equality, too. I mean, think about the revolutions happen. They're all these amazing competitors as yours. Yeah. Yeah. All these amazing convergences and, and all those those social changes did not happen in a vacuum. They're, they're real people who made them happen. People who gave her gave her a hoot about about the world. You know, just the fact that like Nicholas Kristof. He writes that article every year except for like, last year, he writes in why 2019 was the best year in human history. Why 2018 2017 2016? You know, the stats he brings out are just amazing. Like, in last decade, about 200,000 people per day emerged from extreme poverty. 200,000 people per day, 300,000 people over 3000 per day gained access to electricity. 300,000 per day gained access to clean drinking water, this is year after year, per day. In just 1919 alone, 650,000 people per day gained access to the internet. You know, so you're the the Renaissance looks nothing compared to this kind of revolution we are experiencing. And and so it also tells us like, okay, there's the tectonic shift is bigger, way bigger than the 500 year mark. I think I think we're, I think it's bigger than 1000 year mark, I think we're at about a 2000 year, kind of tectonic plate shift, which is also why we're in so much danger. Because every time the tectonic plate shifts, then the whole nature of authority and what's real just goes out the window and then there's a free, there's a free for all until there's a new consensus, you know, the only problem is is now that we've democratized the instruments of mass destruction and get increasingly artful the ways of killing each other every day. And now we got global climate change. Also, because twin threats, human, the human civilization has never experienced such an existential threat to its existence in all of human history as well. So if somehow we've got to jump the track of human history, we got to do it history doesn't expect in order to survive this kind of thresholds in time. So it's good news and kind of terrifying news. But to me, and I kind of go back and forth from year to year, which I think is, you know, which, which one is going to win out, you know, we're going to actually survive this or we're going to is it you know, are we truly kind of, in this Doomsday, kind of, like, civilizational collapse, I tend to aside with the former more than the latter and these days and, and have for the last few years actually been kind of went out of a deep funk about where this was headed. And think that actually we are building the capability to jump this track, not without pain, not without a certain amount of violence to be sure, probably our it's going to get a little harder before it gets better. But I think the pandemic actually has really provoked a lot of have is terrible and tragic, as has been, you know, I don't know hardly anybody who has not been touched in some significant way or had significant deaths occur or job loss and so forth. Some of the, the flexibility it's almost like been, it's it's low, it's been like a in Oregon, they have with snow as well, on any coast, they have what's known as a king tide, it's the it's when the the tides go way out, you know, and then and then any rocks that were under the water, you know, close to shore, that might be a danger, the boats, you know, are totally exposed. If now, if you knew what you're doing, you knew those rocks were there all the time. But But you can't Time goes out doesn't matter how much experience you have with the waters, you know, you see the rocks, and it seems like the pandemic has lowered the tide too. So we see the rocks that have been there for a long time that we should have dealt with a long time ago that we haven't, you know, racial justice, obviously, you know, is really showed us how how far behind we still are, you know, and and with respect to health, providing health care for all people about a living wage, we call these people frontline workers and we pay them, you're less than a living wage, seriously, you're all these these these rocks underneath the water, they've been really sinking a lot of boats. For so long. Now, we're all of society, if you have your eyes halfway open, you're seeing these things. You know, it's no wonder that Biden's suggesting this massive, you know, all these massive reforms, cost trillions of dollars, it's like, we finally have the political will to actually say, you know what, we better do something about this, while we still have the ability to do something about this. It's like, wow,
 
Zack Jackson 17:51
I love your spirit. I love the optimism in your voice at this podcast typically, typically goes somewhere in between the world is ending on Tuesday, and rainbows and unicorns are coming on Wednesday, where we're somewhere in between there, depending on who's on the show at the time. So I'm loving this energy, I'm feeding off of it. We're kind of hopefully, coming over a crest in the United States, in COVID. I mean, obviously, we look at the rest of the world. And we are nowhere near through this thing. But we're starting to feel a little bit better here. I know that some of our educational institutions are starting to go back to something that looks like normal, our churches and places of worship, or lots of them are starting to go back to something that looks like normal. You've talked to me a little bit off the podcast about how you're not sure you want to go back to normal, right? That there are some things that happened during this COVID time that that really stuck, that really exposed something that needed to be exposed and whether it's through technology or just rediscovering some of the essentials. What do you see what what has been made manifest that's good about this COVID time that you're gonna keep moving forward in this new church here a part of
 
Eric Elnes 19:09
sure I'm having another. Can I preface that with a quote by one of my favorite authors Arundhati Roy who wrote the the God of small things. This is just rocked my world and it really feeds into what you're, you're asking about. She wrote something about the pandemic. And she wrote this way. She said, What is this thing that has happened to us? It's a virus. Yes. In and of itself. It holds no moral brief, but it is definitely more than a virus. It has made the mighty Neil and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth longing for a return to quote normality, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture, but the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday. machine we have built for ourselves, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves, nothing could be worse than to return to normality. Historically pandemics have forced human beings humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next, we can choose to walk through it dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data bank banks and dead ideas are dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly with little luggage, ready to imagine another world and ready to fight for it.
 
Zack Jackson 20:47
Man that'll preach.
 
Eric Elnes 20:49
Oh, wow. I've actually been using that quote like I've quoted it like five times in the last eight weeks.
 
Zack Jackson 20:58
I say that that author one more time for our listeners.
 
Eric Elnes 21:01
Oh, Arundhati Roy, she wrote the the God of small things is one of one of many great books she's written. Okay, thank you. Yeah. Indian author. Yeah. And so yeah, I really one of the one of the great awakenings that I personally he's I had in the pandemic was the glory of doing nothing.
 
Zack Jackson 21:25
Amen.
 
Eric Elnes 21:28
Nothing productive anyway. You know, I when the pandemic started, I was like the second person all of Omaha, Nebraska, I can't remember the habit. It was a souvenir I brought back from Spain before the Spain was on the hotlist and my carnation had just coincidentally had made this we had taken a little money to, to grow our church, we were on the try faith comments, were at a synagogue and a mosque and white churches all co located. This is my Omaha church, to move beyond interfaith dialogue into interfaith community. It's just super heady thing, you know, and, and we have taken somebody to then get the word out, hey, we're here, we're open come, and then some of the pandemic hits, and oh, how are we going to grow the church if we have no, we can't, can't even open our doors. And so we decided to, to use that money to buy time on television to broadcast our then electronic worship. And, and so for the first time, in my 25 years of ministry at the time, I literally had all my Sunday work was done by Friday at three because I had to have that worship stuff to the television station. So Sunday morning, my only commitment was literally to roll out of bed a little late to having slept in and make some sourdough pancakes for the family, turn on worship and watch it just be available to chat and then have the afternoon free and easy with my family or friends or if not too much friends in the pantry. But you know, and I realized that, you know, I've been a Sabbath follower, very diligent one for all of my adult life. But once I got into ministry, myself became Mondays because you work on Sunday. And so my wife was working my friends role work, my kids are in school. So I took Sabbath alone. But suddenly, I was take a Sabbath, like back in, like, when I was in seminary, where it's like I was with my families, like, this is like, Oh, I forgot about this, this is this is how it's meant to be, you're supposed to just have fun, and it's the play and pray and recreate and procreate if your character you know, just that's what you should be doing on the Sabbath, you know, and, and it really, for the progressive community that which I'm a part of, we get so fixated on healing the hurts of the world, what's wrong with the world, all the things that are broken with the world, that we're just always dog in that all day long? Every day, we're out there striving for social justice, and to make the world a better place. But we've forgotten that there needs to be at least one day where you fall back in love with the world. And you celebrate what's right with the world. And you don't do a freaking thing that to help anything other than just receipt you receive the world that day, rather than try to change the world. And I started realizing, you know, there's a reason why of the 10 most important thing God says the entire Bible known as the 10 commandments, keep the Sabbath holy in there just a few breaths away, but from do not murder. I mean, that's the level of importance that's placed on the Sabbath. And I realized that in my own community, we we are so activist and we get so angry about all of the things that are broken, that we assume there's no joy in us anymore. there and we're all in the know nothing is ever good enough. And we even begin to resent God or even doubt God, could he possibly exist because there's just so much broken. And it's like, if that's really your attitude, you really do need to check that you really do need to stop worrying. They'd go for a long walk in the forest, or sit beside a river for a day, you know, get out on the lake or do something out in nature, just to remind yourself of just how magnificent This world is, as well as broken up and messed up and, and stuff. But you got to connect to him once at least once a week just to you remember what you're fighting for, you know. And so yeah, post pandemic, I realized I want nothing to do with the church that supports everybody just working their tail off seven days a week, or and always being resentful about what's what's broken. I don't want to turn away from that. I mean, six days a week, we should be about that. We should be working at that at social justice and changing that hurts. But maybe my biggest responsibility as a minister is to help teach my own carnation how to do nothing at all. That's my biggest my biggest responsibility on Sunday is to actually help people understand you have a day, not just come to church for an hour, you know, and call your spirituality, you're done for the week. And for heaven's sakes, don't come to church to do more work. You know, but take a take a day, take some deep breaths, you know. And if you could find God in the mountains, you know better than you can find God in church, well, maybe we ought to change church to allow for that, you know, so one of the proposals you're trying to change is post pandemic, one of the proposals is literally for my carnation here in Portland, is that even when it's okay to get back together again, we're going to get back together on the second Sunday of the month. But every other Sunday, God bless if you want to go out in the mountains do that thing or but we'll we'll offer zoom worship, we'll do electronic worship. And and if you want help you be more intentional about finding God and mounts will provide you some helps, you know, there too, but you so go anywhere you want on Sunday, but make sure your butts in the Pew on the second Sunday, because we're really gonna have a good time of it. And we're going to pull out all the stops that we have special programming, special worship, the choir would have been rehearsing all month long for this, this one Sunday, and we're gonna have a potluck afterwards. By the way, that's going to make you the most foodie person to salivate. You know, we're going to invite people to bring their best stuff not pulled from KFC on the way in, pick up a bucket, you know, unless you're a bad cook, then please come through KFC and do that. But But if you have if you can bring a lot of food because we want not just to share it with others. But we have a lot of people who are homeless, we're right down Center City, in Portland, right downtown, we've got tons of homeless people all around. So once they find out there's a free meal they're going to want to come to and we're only going to invite them and say, Hey, come back next month and invite your friends too. So we want to have enough to send the homeless out with food as well and maybe actually start some relationships over you table fellowship with people too. But so that's that so that we actually help our whole congregation experience, Sabbath. I mean, some of our youngest families actually are some of the greatest supporters of this idea in our congregation, they're like, Oh, my God, because for us, it's like a heck of a lot of work to go to church. Like, we got three kids that are all complaining there, although they want different things all you got to get dressed all this and then you got to go. And you know, we start to follow the habit. And once you fall out of the habit, it's really hard to get back into the habit. But it's like you're talking about once a month, we could commit to that, you know, and and our young families are coming to worship more than they ever have, because they can turn on zoom, you know, on Sunday mornings, too. And the average congregation, not just young family, the average parishioner in my Parish, they live 30 to 40 minutes from our downtown church. And so there they've actually been getting to know each other better during the pandemic than they have in years and years. Because they're able to meet on zoom, they're able to after after worship, we have breakout rooms again and breakout rooms they talk about real stuff instead of just like what the weather is and how good the tea is. It fellas they're actually having real conversations with each other every week, and thriving when they get to know each other, you know, so it's interesting, who knows, in the two months from now you have me back on obviously, oh, yeah, that went disastrously rejected that. Whatever. But but but literally, the pandemic has allowed, even that thought to, to be seriously discussed.
 
Zack Jackson 29:21
So you something you said really stood out to me that taking taking that day to fall back in love with the world so that you're better equipped to then go go out and save it, like progressive superheroes that we all emphasis on the word think we are you there you go. So it It occurs to me that that is more than anything the value that science has given me personally. I'm thinking back to a conversation we had the beginning of the pandemic with Dr. Scott Samson was on the podcast before and he was talking about inspiring the love of the world into children so that those children grow up to care about the world? Yeah. Right. The environmental movement has to begin with loving the world and being, you know, being curious about this. And so for me, that's a lot of my link between my love of science, my love of God, my love of world, my people. It's, it's in that, yeah, Sinai and Synapses is a fellowship, elevating the discourse between science and religion. And so typically, the the fellows have some foot in, in both the one foot more heavily in one than the other. Where's your connection to the world of science? Where do you see yourself plugging in? And?
 
Eric Elnes 30:48
Yeah, well, I, before I became a had any notion of being a minister, I thought I was gonna be a solar energy research scientist. So I've always had a science has been, you know, very much in my blood. Of course, we've been talking about science this whole time, but really more like social science, you know, the ways your whole movements of people act over, you know, over time, but I can totally geek out on quantum physics, astrophysics, those kinds of things, too. And the climate change thing is, is a really, really a high importance piece of scientific scientific interest for me right now and sociological interest, I think, you know, we are in great danger. Right now, if we don't pay attention to the science on this and, and it's actually part of my enthusiasm for trying to reclaim Sabbath actually feeds very much directly into what I believe the science is telling us about climate change, that one of the best things we can do actually is actively train ourselves to disengage with a materialistic utilitarian, consumeristic society that we did we unplug from the the fantasy that we need to keep consuming every day of the week, in order to to be happy, that we can actually unplug from that system unplugged from the advertising unplugged from all of the, you know, the, our society gives us so many things to do all week long to keep us distracted from what's important. And the pandemic has taught us anything, it's like, once you stop, slow down from your 65 mile an hour lifestyle to a three mile an hour lifestyle, like a walking pace, you notice stuff that you never noticed before. And we need to we need to not just make that a pandemic reality, we need to make that a weekly reality to notice stuff. And, and to get involved in on those x, those six days a week, say, you know what, the Sabbath day, actually is more real than any of these other days, I want to bring that mentality into the rest of the week, as well that we're going to unplug from all this rampant consumerism, we're going to unplug from this overscheduling of our children and ourselves, you know, we're going to unplug from treating people as commodities. And, you know, and and basically stealing money from their pockets so that we can enrich ourselves by not paying people a living wage and things like this. So it to me the Sabbath, actually, and the cell science and climate change all these things in social justice, they all kind of converge in that way. There's, there's more than one kind of convergence going on. But I think what you know, but if you want more than the harder science stuff, you know, for this podcast, I think that, you know, one of the most intriguing concepts that I've heard in recent years is that what had happened when the Higgs boson field was was proven, then that that energy precedes matter, that it absolutely does, you know, to me, that was just a real sea change, you know, and an important watershed moment, at least in my own life, because, you know, if you were to then take the totally non scientific unprovable assumption that that energy is love, that precedes matter. Now, suddenly, you're looking back at those people known as Celtic Christians, that that exists in flower for so many centuries, that until they're finally put down by the Roman Church, their whole notion that, that that this entire plane of existence, we're on it that all of the creative world is literally the incarnation of God's love. It is literally like, do you want to know what God's love looks like? Tastes like feels like smells like go take a walk in the forest. Go get on the lake, go next. You know, get out in nature, and that and you'll see it you'll smell God's love. You'll hear God's love, you'll feel it. This is what it looks like it's in. It's the incarnation of love. And that feeds them back into my scientific the scientific piece like why every Christian should be like, madly in love with science. Because Science in looking at the net, the created world is really dissecting the way love works. You know, the way love operates, and, and challenges some of our notions of love, you know, to, you know, you can use a piece of steel to make a surgical scalpel to heal somebody or to make a knife that will stab somebody, you know, but it's both using something that is theoretically then a create an incarnation of love. Right? So what does that say? It doesn't say that stabbing somebody is loving, it means that that love has an incredible vulnerability to it. That can actually release its own need for control of you. Because for its own reasons, and love has its own its reasons. But that you run into that you start to reconsider your notions of God even that the God is so gentle with us, you know, it's not the God of, of wrath that the guy you get out of line and you know, one millimeter and suddenly like, you know, this fire and brimstone coming at you but a God that is actually gentle enough to do what Jesus says God does, which is You're the son May God makes God's sunshine on the on the righteous and the wicked, you know, in the rain to fall, that actually we are the every person is so utterly blessed by this creation. And there's no morality test given to give you these blessings, as the Talmud says, The Talmud talks about how even a stolen seed bears fruit. Like, literally, you can steal seeds, like something that's totally immoral. And yet those seeds are still going to grow if you plant them in the ground. You know, there's, there's, there's a vulnerability to love. That is just absolutely astonishing. And I think we can all learn, you all learn from we keep thinking we can only give good gifts to people if they deserve it. You know, and if they're at least a little like it by dessert when they're a little bit like us, or at least a little bit like us,
 
Zack Jackson 37:16
or if they're broken, they're at least broken in the same ways.
 
Eric Elnes 37:19
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. But that doesn't seem to be on the agenda of the sacred order of things. And you know, and maybe Jesus was right, and not just naive when he said, you know, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you pray for those who persecute you, all those things that we just think, you know, like we give lip service to, and when we think but when push comes to shove, we say, Well, he's just a naive idealist. Well, now that we've democratized the incidence of mass destruction, is he such a idealist? Or is he a realist? You know, we need to get about that. That vulnerability, that robust rowboat build ability that is willing to gift people who even we, we made, who makes us profoundly uncomfortable, and keep gifting them and keep loving and out love our enemies. Because this whole world is the incarnation of, of love, energy proceeds matter. And we then in a flowing with the material and the spiritual order of things.
 
Zack Jackson 38:23
So here, as we as we near the end of our time together, you have created dozens of videos, probably hundreds of sermons, maybe 1000s of sermons at this point. Dozens of podcasts for books, I believe. you've walked across the country you've shared at events, you have a lot of important things to say. But I am asking every fellow the same question at the end, which I think is probably harder for someone who has a lot to say to answer. But just if you What is one thing, one thing that you wish that everyone knew about the world,
 
Eric Elnes 39:23
that the world is an incarnation of a love that loves you personally, personally, beyond your wildest imagination, that everything in this world is oriented toward you, your neighbor, and also other creations and the nonhuman world as well, but it exists in a state that is created out of love. And when you begin to treat it that way, you start to see it that you start to see that more much more clearly. And the more you Pay attention to that reality, the more that reality reveals itself to you, then you don't have to believe in God, I don't think even to benefit from that set that orientation. It's not a it's not a, there's not necessity there just so you pay attention and you start to treat it as if it is, it is a love. That is, I think nature has consciousness. It's our consciousness. But if nature is truly an incarnation of love, then Love is a relational thing. It's not you can't say 12 ounces of love. Right? So all of all creation is inherently relational. We know that if you take humans out, it's inherently relationship, right? So add us back in the equation we're inherently in relationship to and you start to flow without love, you start to flow with creation when you flow with love.
 
Zack Jackson 40:56
Well, thank you so much for that. Thank you for this past 45 minutes or so of conversation. If our listeners are interested in hearing more about what you have to say, they can check out any of your books, I actually just purchased gifts of the dark wood seven blessings for soulful skeptics and other wanderers. I just the description alone felt like hey, he wrote a book for me, that's great. You can also check out dark wood brew.org dark wood brew.org to check out the videos that they're produced. And there's some more links and information about how to find the podcast, and all kinds of other things that you're doing. there anything else that you would like to let folks know about how they can find you? Or? I think you've done a great job already. More than they need to know about me. No address or cell phone number.
 
Eric Elnes 41:53
No, but if you're ever in Portland, first Congregational Church of Christ, come come. Well. We are at least get online. You will Yes, physically now.
 
Zack Jackson 42:02
Maybe the second Sunday. If you're there. There we go. Come to the second Sunday. Bring some KFC and have a good time. All right. Well, thank you so much, Eric. Thank you, sir. It's been a

Medical Ethics Part 1 (Of Mice and Daddy Issues)

Episode 83
For the next five weeks, we are going to talk about "medical ethics" broadly, but specifically about the various stages of being alive, from birth to death. In part 1, we're starting at the beginning. How much of who you are is determined at (or before) your birth? Can trauma be passed down genetically? Can generational cycles of unhealth be broken? Is there value in prenatal testing or does it create self fulfilling prophesies? How can we make sure that future generations are not saddled with our burdens? 
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
 
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
Further Reading
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190326-what-is-epigenetics
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fearful-memories-passed-down/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/health/mind-epigenetics-genes.html?smid=url-share
https://www.spectrumnews.org/features/deep-dive/the-problems-with-prenatal-testing-for-autism/
 
Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors. 
 
Zack Jackson 00:05
You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week our hosts are
 
Rachael Jackson 00:14
Rachael Jackson, Rabbi at Agoudas, Israel congregation Hendersonville, North Carolina, and a trait that I see in myself that I can trace back is dark hair coloring, which I get from the my father's father, who was Iraqi Jewish.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 00:35
Kendra Holt-Moore, PhD candidate at Boston University. And my trait that I've inherited from my family is having only two wisdom teeth.
 
Ian Binns 00:52
Ian Binns Associate Professor of elementary science education that UNC Charlotte and the trait that I get from my dad's side of the family from the Binns side is the shape of my upper lip. We call it the Binns lip.
 
Zack Jackson 01:07
Zack Jackson UCC pastor in Reading Pennsylvania, and I am 2% Neanderthal on my mom's side, and maybe more on my dad's side, but we haven't tested that. And I like to think that's why I am so comfortable in the cold, and really appreciate a good Mammoth Burger. But we're talking about genetics a little bit today, because we are entering into a brand new mini series, broadly speaking about medical ethics, but divided up into the various life stages of, of being a human. So we're going to start with birth, as we, we often do, as humans, most of us, I think start with being born, moving into puberty, which most of us don't want to remember, then into pregnancy, general issues of age, and then end of life. And so we're gonna start with the start today. And as I was thinking about all of the different, all the different different issues connected with, with birth, with being born with all of these new medical procedures around testing, and Neo Natal surgeries and DNA, and knowing how much Neanderthal you are, I went and I got a haircut. And the guys in the barber shop, just randomly started talking about this stuff. But like, I'll try to frame it for you. So I'm sitting there, and one of my favorite parts about going to get my haircut is that I don't have to talk to anyone. And I get that at barber shops and not quite at salons. So I go there to just sit and have the Zen moment with the clippers and enjoy my ASMR experience. And so the guy, the barber next to me says, Oh, hey, we're having a boy. And every one of the barber shop is super excited. This is his first kid. And wow, I didn't even realize your girl was pregnant. Man. That's awesome. How did you find out so early? And he's like, Oh, well, we did that test, that blood test where you can tell like the gender of the kid and their testing for autism and all that stuff. And then this guy from across the bar across the barbershop is like, Man, that test is BS. They can't tell if your kid's gonna be autistic. And then he's like, Yeah, man, they totally can. And he's like, Well, why would you even want that mess? What are you going to do? And he's like, Well, you know, I want to be prepared. In case I'm my kids gonna be special needs. And he's like, whatever man. He's gonna be what is gonna be? Well, what are you gonna do read some books, you know, read books. He's like, I read books, you don't know me. And he's like, you know what? They said that my boy was gonna be autistic. And he came out just fine. He's like, the smartest kid in his class. And the other guy was like, yeah, most autistic people are super smart. He probably is autistic. And he's like, there's nothing wrong with being autistic. And I'm sitting here like, man, I just wanted to get my haircut.
 
Rachael Jackson 04:14
I want to know, on barber shop, like,
 
Zack Jackson 04:15
I know, I want to say something. Because now I've been thinking all about, about genetic testing and neonatal care and epigenetics, and all of this and, and that's when the guy was like, Well, do you have anyone that's autistic in your family? And he's like, Nah, man, I'm not my mom's not Dad's not grandparents now. I mean, my sister is but like, that's just because mom had like, really stressful pregnancy. And so my sister came out autistic because of that, and that at that point, I was like, Man, that now I really feel like I need to say something. But I didn't. Because I hadn't done my research yet. For the episode. Had I done the research for the episode, I'd be like, man, stop blaming your mom for all your problems. You are not Sigmund Freud. It is not entirely the mother's fault for everything that come that is wrong with the child. Also, let's reframe that a little bit that being autistic does not mean that there's something wrong with you that some of the most important humans that have ever lived, were on the autism spectrum.
 
Rachael Jackson 05:19
Yeah, neuro diversity.
 
Zack Jackson 05:21
Amen. For neuro diversity, if we were all neurotypical, what a boring world that would be. Yep. So I got to thinking, I got to thinking about what is the purpose of testing for these sorts of issues beforehand? What is the point of knowing your genetic predisposition to things? How, how much of an effect does it actually have? Like what kind of a life the mother lives while she's pregnant? Obviously, we know things like if mom is drinking heavily, or taking drugs, then that's gonna be passed on to the baby. But like, what if mom has a really stressful job? Or isn't sleeping very well? Or, like, how much is that messing up that baby's life? And I mean, I, I remember how stressed out my wife and I were her more than me, because I felt like my stress didn't affect the baby. But she was like mad. She was so scared that the actions that she took during this time we're going to ruin her baby's life, and what pressure to put on a person? And do we actually have any science to back that up whatsoever? So the answer is, yes. Also, no, but mostly No. But also Yes, because the field of epigenetics is still fairly recent. And there's a lot of controversy around it. And I should say what I mean, when I say epi genetics, is that you have DNA inside of you, that is the building block that makes you who you are, it is your blueprint, there is a series of, of chemicals that all went worked together make you the wonderful human being that you are now attached to those are also these little chemical markers that can turn things on and off on it. I remember Reading a while back about some scientists that were trying to recreate a dinosaur out of a chicken. I think we talked about this during the Jurassic Park episode, and that they're trying to reverse engineer it by like finding the parts of the chicken's genome that have to do with feathers, and then putting a little chemical marker on there to turn it off. So that then they don't grow feathers, and maybe they can find one where they can get teeth back again, where like, we can tell a lot about you based on your genome and the things that you have on and off on there. And so certain stressors in life, certain aspects, sunlight, even can affect which parts of the genes are expressed and which parts are not. And so that's what we mean by was the epi, genetics, none of this stuff is going to change your genome. But it is going to change how it is expressed, whether the light switch is on or off in the different parts of you. That I get that fairly accurate. Rachel, the chemist?
 
Rachael Jackson 08:13
Yeah, I think the only thing that I would also not the only thing, I would also add that these things can be turned on and off, not just in the neonatal state, but throughout a person's life. So for example, one of the things that we're we again, Oreo, we're not actually any of us, we are looking at his addictions, right that how do you know if this is if you're going to be addicted or not addicted? Or if that's, you know, there's, there can be a marker, but if you've, how do you know if you're going to be addicted to cocaine if you've never taken cocaine, like, so perhaps you need to have some cocaine before that marker gets switched on, you don't know one way or the other. So, same thing with other drugs, including drugs that we consider legal, such as alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, etc. Really how your body reacts to those things, you will not necessarily know the epigenetic outcome until you're exposed to it. So I just want to add that piece of not simply a neonatal neonatal field of study.
 
Zack Jackson 09:29
Sure.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 09:30
Can I ask a clarifying question to Rachael and or Zack just that like, before we get too much further into the conversation? Can Can one of you describe more particularly like when we when we talk about chemical markers being turned on and off? Like what does that mean in a little more detail? Like what what's the chemical marker made out of and how does it attach itself to the jeans that we're talking about.
 
Zack Jackson 10:01
So there are three different and let me just pull this up. So I make sure I say it. Right.
 
Rachael Jackson 10:08
Yeah. And also, just as an FYI, I have several articles that we'll be putting in the show notes for people that want to read a little bit more about this, in addition to our explaining, Silliman the so let me let me make a different analogy and take it out of take it away from things that most of us are not comfortable with, right? Like, we're not going to talk the four things that make up DNA, right? We're not talking about base pairs, we're not talking about those things, right? Most people are not super comfortable with that language. Let me make an analogy to say your home. Right? My home right now. I'm currently in my bedroom, and I have curtains. And I also have lamps and light switches. Right? How much light do I have in my room right now? That depends if I have turned on my light switch. And that depends if I have opened my curtains. Why would I open my curtains because I want more light? Well, did I know that I was allergic to sunlight, not until I opened my curtains. Right? So something has to happen. So it's already there. It's something then that changes that says now, now this thing has happened. So for some it's a methylated zone. So if we then look at the actual DNA, it's a methylation process, or a D methylation process, it's adding or subtracting these things that are already there and turning them to a different form, which means some which is why the light switch works really well, because it's always there or curtains are always there. It's just whether or not you open, open them or close them. And so again, part of that is metallization is one of the big ones. That's what I would add that's there's a there's a big one there in terms of smoking, smoking cigarettes, is a big switch, a big activator of turning on things that will or will not happen in one's body. When that happens. One of those things is a methylation that happens on in this particular case, it's the A h r gene. But given that smoking is often a choice, I'm not saying it's not an addictive choice, but there is a choice there. Most people don't do it when they're born. And people have the ability to not do it. So you can actually monitor how much of this epigenetic change is happening in a person who, right before they smoked while they're smoking and former smokers and really what it looks like. So that's a really clear example, when you can look at an adult what's happening.
 
Zack Jackson 12:48
So the DNA metallization is one of three ways that this process can happen. The other way is through modifications that histone modifications, which is the the actual framework of the DNA, like the Think of it like the scaffolding of your DNA. The other way is micro RNA expression, which is something that I have a really cool experiment to talk about and a bit that, as far as we know, these three ways seem to be how how these genes get expressed in different ways. But some combination of three, it's not usually just one or the other. And there could be other mechanisms as well. It's not fully understood exactly how it happens, just that it does. And all of the all of this is also way above my head. So I just want to acknowledge that I'm not a biologist. And a lot of these words, I am also learning for the first time along with you fare listeners. A lot of the early, just almost intuitional epigenetic studies looked at the way that babies develop in the womb, while their mothers experiencing certain types of trauma, right, like famine, or displacement or something like that. And I think we've kind of known intrinsically that that sort of thing affects the child for 1000s of years. But it's always been an issue of mom's fault. So what's really fascinating about some of this study recently is they've done all these genetic studies on sperm because it's a lot Easier to study than eggs. And so there was this one study that was done that was published in 2013. In nature, which was fascinating, and kind of was a made a huge splash and a ton of controversy on both sides, and got picked up by all kinds of news outlets end misrepresented. in so many different ways. It's one of those groundbreaking sort of studies where extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So here's how here's how they laid out the experiment. They took a group of mice. And because scientists hate mice, they, they would expose them to a, a chemical called acetone, which is just a it's a scent, they use it in artificial smells all the time, it smells vaguely of cherry blossoms, they use that scent because they know exactly which odorant receptor in the olfactory bulb it corresponds to. So they don't have to guess where it is they know exactly where it is. And every time they expose them to that smell, they electrocuted their feet. Because they hate mice. And so they did this enough, such that when they would spray the gas, the mouse would get terrified. So they traumatize the poor mouse that they they correlated that smell with being electrocuted. So then they bred that mouse, and had that mouse be raised by a totally different parents. So then there was there was no acculturation whatsoever, and exposed that mouse to that smell, and found that that mouse also kind of freaked out by it.
 
Rachael Jackson 16:47
Now the second not the second generation mouse,
 
Zack Jackson 16:50
yeah, but not other smells. And they even they looked in the DNA of the sperm of that mouse that second generation, and found markers on that part of their DNA. And after it had they euthanize The poor thing, they autopsy the brain and found that that odorant receptor, that is corresponds to that particular smell, had more receptor cells, and then other smells. So that mouse was born, more attuned to that smell that its father was traumatized by, despite having not been raised by that mouse, or having any being taught anything about it. But then they bred that mouse and found that the next generation, so the grandson of the first one, still held those markers, and was overly receptive to that smell. So three generations of mice were traumatized by the same traumatic experience. And it was it changed how their bodies developed. Now, it didn't change their DNA. And that's important, it did not change their DNA, it changed how their DNA was expressed. So that that expression caused that part of their olfactory bulb to make more cells, so they'd be more sensitive to that awful smell that hurt their grandfather. And so it's important, and this is what the news people got wrong was that the future generations weren't scared of the smell. It didn't ruin them. It wasn't that the fear was passed down through generations, or the trauma was passed down through generations. But the effects of it, the sensitivity to it was passed down three generations. As as you know, as you would expect, this is evolutionarily helpful, that if some environmental trauma is introduced into into an area, you want your future generations to be able to avoid the thing. And so they're adapting in real time, to this awful thing that is happening to them. And then a couple of years later, and this is the super hopeful part. They and a number of other people redid the experiment. But this time, they exposed a separate group of mice to the smell traumatize them did the whole thing, that awful thing that they because they hate mice, and then they stopped electrocuting them. But they would still give them the smell. But they wouldn't electrocute them. And then of course, the mouse would be scared and they'd be scared and but eventually they stopped being scared of the smell. And then that next generation was did not have those markers. They did not have a larger olfactory bulb, they did not have the predisposition to fearing or being more receptive to that. So in essence, one of those, that generation overcame it by being exposed to it without the Negative, traumatic effect attached to it. And it changed their epigenetic markers changed in their sperm, so that it no longer passed that down to the next generation.
 
Rachael Jackson 20:12
Like, like, they basically said, Hey, this was trauma, but it's not actually trauma anymore. So let's, let's rewind, let's rewire ourselves again to say, this activity, this sense is safe.
 
Zack Jackson 20:29
Right? Which again, makes sense from a evolutionary perspective that now things have adapted and the other way. And so now, our genes don't have to protect us from that anymore. And I'm trying so hard not to draw really strong conclusions from this because my goodness gracious will this preach this, this feels intuitively correct, right? I mean, how much of our, in our, in our scriptures in our religious traditions are around generational sin, generational punishment, generational trauma, the sins of the Father that go down seven generations, like how much of overcoming that is baked into our religious stories that we tell, and I want this to be true, but it is very, very much in the infancy and we do not understand the mechanisms by which this would even happen. Because when, when a sperm and an egg, you know, get together and do their do their fun thing. Most of them epigenetic markers are stripped from the DNA of the sperm. And then it all gets reconfigured inside. And so it shouldn't work. So there has to be another mechanism that's at play here that's making it happen. Or it's all just wishful thinking on the part of the researchers. And it's all Bs, and we want it to be true because it feels true. So I need to make that disclaimer right here. Because epigenetics feels like it would solve so many problems, and explain scientifically so much of what we experience. But it also might not, it might just be wish fulfillment,
 
Rachael Jackson 22:10
right? Stop blaming your grandparents for things that are happening in your life, right? Like we don't, we don't need to do that either. But I, I'm looking at this from a slightly from a similar perspective, but perhaps a bit differently. Not being able to, to wish away things that we see happening. But these, these experiments are so tightly controlled, looking for one tiny thing, to then make the leap that it would go to us. And we could then identify all of our generational trauma, through these things to make that leap feels exceedingly large. First of all, right, like it's one smell, one type of creature. Three, generally, it's, it's so tiny, so narrow in its scope. So that would be my disclaimer. And so when we then move to say, humans, which is, I think, where our narcissism takes us. Why does it matter? What read this question, also of if you go seeking for something, if you ask a question, what are you going to do with the answer? So go back to your barber shop people? Why are they asked like, why did you do the blood test? What do you look at? Oh, to get prepared for what? You don't know You don't? Okay? So barring the incorrect understanding that this can tell you autism or not autism, which is not been proven at all, so let's dispel that. But if that were the case, autism itself expresses itself in Oh, very vastly different ways that a person can't actually be prepared for that. One cannot prepare themselves for some of these traits that we may or may not be looking for. It's very different than straight up genetic traits. Right, straight up, you know, this person has different genes, which causes them to have Tay Sachs, which causes them to have CF. That cough was timed appropriately. Another questions that we're looking at, so why are we asking these questions? What will it actually give us because if you ask the question, You have to do something with the answer.
 
Ian Binns 25:04
Well, and with that, and maybe reminded me of when we learned that animals pregnant, and throughout the pregnancy, I remember just kind of asking one day, so we're gonna do those genetic tests, because I didn't really know anything about him, right? And you just kind of hear about him and stuff. And I just was curious, like, it didn't really matter me either way. And I remember she kind of said the same thing that you were kind of talking about Rachel, was that, what would we do with that information? Like, is that going to determine if we, you know, would end a pregnancy or not? Again? For our purposes? Probably not. Enough, just like them? Yeah, there's really no point for us to do that. You would. So and that was just that was our decision. That was our choice. Was that was a decision we made? And so yeah, and it was not a long conversation. I don't remember it being something that we really discussed at length to figure out what should we do here or not, it was more just a casual conversation. And that was the choice we made? Well, if
 
Zack Jackson 26:07
you can identify in your family, a history of dysfunction, and you can say like, yeah, grandfather, great grandfather was a prisoner of war, and came home different. And, and then he had kids, and those kids, and they had a rough go of things, and then kind of our family ever since then, has been battling with with abuse and dysfunction, and addiction and all of these things. And if you understand that, you know, part of that is upbringing, right? hurting people hurt people. But a part of that, if you can identify it could be epigenetically, transmitted from great grandfather's prisoner of war time. And you could identify that yourself, would that be something that you would find empowering, to say, this is something that is within me, but I can overcome it. And I have studies on poor traumatized mice? To show that I don't have this can end with me. And it doesn't have to go to my children? Or does it then just run the risk of, of creating self fulfilling prophecies that well, now I know that my family is just messed up, and it's in my genes, there's nothing I can do to stop it. Or it gives an excuse that now I'm off the hook, because it's, you know, great grandpa's fault.
 
Rachael Jackson 27:36
In a sort of lightened mood, comment. Who Framed Roger Rabbit in the movie from a very long time ago? Such a great movie, there's a line in there where the female, female, Jessica, she says, you know, in her very sultry voice, you know, I'm not bad. I'm just drawn this way. Is she just saying that it's not in her power? Now, I feel like I've taken up a lot of airspace. So I'd like to hear from a few of the other people here. How this strikes you, right? Yeah, no,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 28:26
I just, I just find epigenetics. so confusing. So
 
Rachael Jackson 28:31
I just don't
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 28:34
I don't know. The a couple of things I was thinking about, though, is one just like the issue of people choosing to get all the testing done when they're pregnant or not pregnant. I, I've never had kids. So I'm not speaking out of experience here. But just like, I've known people who have had, like difficult circumstances in terms of like health, health problems, like the decisions to make a testing a priority when you're pregnant don't have to just be entirely about, like what your future child is going to deal with or not deal with. But I think there is also like a legitimate concern about wanting to know what your chocolate the state of your child will be, say it that way. Because that can mean a lot of different things. Because you might not be able to prepare for you know, what, what they will experience but if there are other people that you're already taking care of, or if you're like trying to take care of yourself, or a partner. I do think there's something valuable. And I'm not trying to diminish like obviously, there's a lot of really tricky ethical considerations that are like inherent to this discussion. But I think that it's just about like wanting to feel control. And it doesn't really matter. Like, I don't I don't know that you have to do something with the answer if you ask the question. And maybe, maybe not doing something with the answer is like a form of doing something with the answer. Or, you know, like, maybe it's just that the psychological comfort or illusion that you get that you have control? Is what you're doing with the answer to those questions about testing. And, honestly, I don't know whether or not that's something that I would want personally, because there is a part of me that thinks I would be like, forget it, like, let's just jump right in and see what happens. But there's also a significant part of me that would want to know, everything I possibly could not because it would make, make me do anything differently. But I love having the illusion of control over life. And my life. And so, you know, if I can get that, from from these tests, and that, that feels really appealing. And I imagine that there are a lot of people for whom that, yeah, that feels really comforting. And it's not, that's not to say that, you know, the comfort we receive from this kind of, like, genetic testing is worth the other risks that come with it ethically. And, you know, like, there's, I have, I have this fear that we're heading into a, you know, will basically just be living out a dystopian novel plot in like, 30 years. But like, I get it, I get the appeal of wanting to have
 
31:57
so hopeful
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 31:59
wanting to have that control and just know, like, knowledge, it's so appealing. And it doesn't matter. I think for a lot of people it doesn't, I don't know, that people are really thinking through what their behavioral changes would be. It's just like, if you can peek behind the curtain and see what's behind it. It's just like curiosity a lot of times. And so I, I tend to think that that is actually a pretty significant driver, and like motivator to do this kind of thing. And and that that's, even though that's true, that doesn't mean that we should stop asking these other like, really significant ethical questions about, you know, at what cost Does, does this knowledge will, like, how will this change us in the future? But yeah, I don't know, I just, that's kind of what I'm been thinking about?
 
Ian Binns 32:58
Well, it's still no guarantee. Right? So say, like, these tests could show something, or, you know, whatever level they can show or something like that, but still was not like, as far as I understand that. It's, oh, you get this test? And it's a definitive answer. Either way, what what would happen?
 
Zack Jackson 33:16
They can tell within I think, 99% certainty whether or not your child has Down syndrome.
 
Rachael Jackson 33:22
So I think there's the the big difference, and this is where I'll just jump in the difference between epigenetics and genetics. Yeah, genetics, they can tell pretty easily right, and they're high, highly accurate, just like the genetics have an anatomical gender, right there. That's pretty clear what that is. And it being very specific that it's anatomical, right? No, no genetic testing, not ultrasound testing. Right. ultrasounds, then it's like, most of the time, it's more of the, you know, when you're looking at an ultrasound, is there a penis is there not a penis? And so there can be something wrong with that ultrasound, but if you do the blood testing, there's no question again, from the sex perspective, right, is this x y or z or x x right from that perspective, not talking the gender that we feel those are those are highly accurate. epigenetics, not right. epigenetics is like, for example, if we take this idea that and we go back to our grandparents, you know, your grandmother, right, you a grandmother was alcoholic, and your father is alcoholic, are you going to be alcoholic? And then there was nothing else going on? Right? There was no abuse. There was nothing else is just this person was an alcoholic? Can you determine if you yourself will then be addicted and changed by alcohol? Are you one of the people that can just take a drink? and totally be fine with that level of that question? And for the most part, that's where it's not clear? And what are you going to do with that information? So and that that's for me, one of the places where we could be positive about it, I'm saying, Okay, if I see some epigenetic markers, as well as the nurture part of this alcohol I have seen happen, do I, then this third generation choose to have alcohol in my life? Or do I choose not to? And do I then, if I choose to? Am I a little bit more heightened, that something could be amiss, or that's something that my reaction may not be the reaction that keeps me in control, right, Kendra was talking about liking this ability to control, right that we want to have that. And alcohol is one of those things that doesn't allow you to be in control usually. So if you then see yourself going down that path, are you capable of saying, Ah, this, this is not the reaction that I'm looking for. And I see this history, I can stop this. So where I'm coming from is a if we have this knowledge, using it wisely. And not presuming that it's black and white? Yeah,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 36:27
I do think I might have a confused our terminology when I because I said genetic epigenetics is so confusing. And then I just started talking about genetic testing. So sorry, I didn't
 
Zack Jackson 36:40
know it's a very confusing. So I knew a guy. He, his mother drank heavily when she was pregnant. And he was born with fetal alcohol syndrome. And so he's lived his whole life in a group home, and not able to function on his own. And I gave him a part time job at the thrift store I used to run and he, I loved the guy, he's sincere as can be, and was just, he had a heart of gold. And he felt like he was paying for his mother's sins. And that his life was a sort of punishment for her sins. And there was this mix up of just the consequences of a person's actions or traumas or addictions, and then a moral component to it. Of the why. Right, like, why did this happen? Well, obviously, now I'm paying for the sins of someone before me. And that's, I mean, that shows up in almost every religion in the world. And we all do it, that we think we're paying for something, as if there's some cosmic weight that needs to be counterbalanced. And there's a story in which some people bring a man to Jesus who was blind from the time he was born. So if he is blind as a result of being punished for something, and he was blind at birth, it couldn't have been his sin. Right? The couldn't have been retroactively cursed. So therefore, it must have been the sins of his parents, right? So who sinned that this man was born blind, and Jesus looked at them, and he was like, I mean, neither. This man was born blind, so that you could shut the hell up, essentially. And then he healed the guy and was like, stop thinking in these terms. Sometimes things just happen. And it's not somebodies moral fault, nobody's being punished because they're suffering in the world. But suffering in the world exists. And I'm going to try to eliminate as much of it as possible. And how about you do that too, instead of wasting your time trying to find blame for things?
 
Rachael Jackson 39:02
I really I appreciate that Reading it I hadn't I hadn't heard that story. I'm not super versed in stories of the Bible.
 
Zack Jackson 39:12
I mean, that's my translation. Jesus doesn't say Shut the hell up. Clearly.
 
Rachael Jackson 39:18
Um, you know, when looking through the the Jewish lens when we get to those passages, right, because they certainly appear in Leviticus and Deuteronomy sounds like yeah, for generations. It is what it says. But there's also the, the the flip side of it, that the righteous shall have 1000 generations. But read that that, if you're really good 1000 generations will also be really good. And so, so there's a couple of reads there. The first is there's an end rate 1000 is just 1000 generations is an absurd number written, none of us can really conceptualize of that that value. Okay, so it really just means forever if you're righteous, your kin shall be righteous. And if you're sinful, it'll end. Right for generations, you're dead. Right, for the most part, we don't know, for generations as adults. So by that point, once you're dead, then the then the following generation will have the ability to choose themselves. So it's not a perpetual. It's not a perpetual state. It's not a it's not for all time. So that's, that's one read. Again, still don't love this read, because it still does blame previous generations. Then there's another section in the Talmud, which talks about these passages, which basically says, Ah, yes, for generations, only if the sun because remember, the Talmud is completely the misogynistic and only talks about men. Unless, you know, women has have a fault. And then they'll talk about it says, Ah, it's only four generations, if the son of the first person continues in his father's footsteps, which basically says, actually, it's only four generations, if you yourself participate. If you don't break the cycle, then it will continue for a little bit longer. So if you and you can break the cycle, you can, if we look at the the big 10 commandments, number five is Honor your father and your mother. If your father or your mother is doing something that breaks all of the other commandments, then you must break that when you say I cannot do this, if your father says glassbeam, then you shouldn't, if your father says kill, you shouldn't. But if you follow them, because you think you're honoring them, you're actually dishonouring the rest of your community, and don't do that you have the power to stop it. Just because your parents did it doesn't mean you have the same fate. And that's where this this beautiful power of autonomy, power of the self comes in that i think i think i think we absolutely have to give ourselves that ability. That and it has nothing to do with the Odyssey, which is what I which is what I hear you saying, Zack, is that Judaism? Doesn't. Judaism doesn't look at this from a theater. theodicy lens. Why evil things happen in the world? Right.
 
Zack Jackson 42:36
And it's also, I mean, I'd be remiss if we didn't say that a lot of these sins of the Father get passed down generations are highly situational. You know, there's a study that they, this is, of course, very retroactive, but looked at the birth and death records of Civil War soldiers. and looked at the Civil War soldiers who were prisoners of war, versus those who were not in came home, and then also had kids after the war. So this prisoners of war during the Civil War were horribly mistreated. So they came home emaciated, and on death's door, and found that the next generation born after them, died earlier and had more cardiac issues than those who were just soldiers who saw war, but we're not prisoners of war. So on average, those soldiers who experience more trauma, the next generation died earlier. And now you can read backwards into that. And you can say that that's because they that those trauma, the trauma marked those men sperm, and it made them more sensitive, they made their children more sensitive to anxiety, for example, they're hyper alert. And so their heart was always racing, they died of heart attacks at young age, you can also look back at that, and you can look at it from a sociological perspective, and that if men came back from the war and macerated and broken, they probably were not able to work as hard or contribute as much to their family. So they probably were ended up being more poor, there were no big social safety nets back then. And so those children are probably malnourished because their dad was unable to work as much. And then that then perpetuated a system in in that that maybe was partially genetic, but it was also very social. And we need to make sure that we are not just making our genetics another scapegoat, the way that we did with God punishing people before, because then that lets us off the hook for not changing the world as it is. Because this is one of the huge focuses of the early church like the pre Roman early church, before we got in bed with empire for the first couple, 100 years was all On caring for the widows and orphans, which were essentially the people who had no social safety net, who were not being taken care of, and so who were going to perpetuate systems of oppression by their existence. And there's a wonderful story did I did I talked about St. Lawrence at all. He's one of my favorite dead Christians. He was the deacon of Rome. And that means he was in charge of all the charity and the money. And the local ruler was like, hey, so there's this edict coming out that we're gonna have to round up all the Christians and kill them. However, I know that you are in charge of the purse. So if you just give me the treasures of the church, I will give you a 10 day headstart you can get out of here and you can be safe, you just need to give me the treasures of the church, which I'm going to have anyway. So but this way you and your family can get out of town. So he goes and he liquidates all of the assets of the church. And he gives away all of the gold to the widows and orphans, the poor of the city, that are parts of the church. And then when the time comes, he brings all of them with him. All of the, the the crippled the poor everyone to that ruler and says, Behold, the treasures of the church, our God is far richer than your Caesar will ever be. And the guy was like, man, I do not take this kind of sass from stupid little Christians. And so he had him strapped to a grid iron and put over a fire, because he's Roman, and they're awful. And after a couple of minutes said to him, Have you had enough at Do you recant, and Lawrence said, I'm done on this side, turn me over. So instead of becoming like this patron saint of smart acids or something, he becomes the patron saint of chefs. And so I have a lovely St. Lawrence icon in my kitchen. And he's holding a grid iron with like some onions and garlic hanging off of it. And he's real happy. And he's like, Hey, I'm the patron saint of chefs, when the story is that he was grilled on one. And
 
47:18
this is
 
Zack Jackson 47:20
this is why I wanted to dead Christian story hour because man, the stories of these crazy dead Christians, but like, that's the spirit of the early church is the the disenfranchised, those that are being left behind who generationally are being cursed by society, those are the ones that we're here to serve, to bring them out of the generational cycles. And so we need to just make sure no matter where we are on this genetic roller coaster of understanding that we keep that in focus, and we don't blame our DNA, and we still make the changes that need to be made. Yeah,
 
48:18
I think that
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 48:20
you've like touched on what makes me just pause in conversations about epigenetics is that, like, regardless of how I just don't even know how to like, describe what it is that I'm thinking, I'm thinking of like the theological explanations of epigenetics. However, those theological interpretations, either shame people for what they are experiencing, or even, like, uplift and empower people for, you know, what they experience. Either way, I just get this sort of like, like cringy shrinking feeling, because I don't like the theological explanations of epigenetic phenomenon, whatever that even means. I'm still like, not entirely sure. It just, I guess I just, I just worry that it's like such an easy it's such an easy conversation to turn towards blame or like deterministic. You know, like,
 
49:33
well, like,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 49:35
what what you both Zach and Rachel, I think said especially earlier early in our episode, like blaming your mom or blaming your grandparents for everything, and, and you know, if you want to put the theological spin on it, I don't know it just it just feels so like. It makes me very uncomfortable. Like, you were cursed. And so God did this to you. I really Like, oh, it feels really similar to the conversations that happened sometimes were like natural disasters happen to that community because they're sinful. That's what I keep thinking about is like, that. Just, it just makes me angry. And so I, it doesn't really matter how generous or not generous, we're being with, like, the theological interpretations of epigenetic phenomenon, I just, I don't know, my head is just kind of like swirling with it, that that's what I've been thinking about. And I think that what you just said, that helped me sort of put together why I'm like, I don't know what to say about
 
Rachael Jackson 50:42
it's that feeling that you just, you know, you got creepy crawlies and just want to take a shower. Like, it's just, it's just icky. For me, when we add all of those layers in, it takes away individual control, it takes away our ability to look at the world and say, I have a role in this, and I have a I have a role to make it better, myself included in that world.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 51:08
And to me, it gives us the ability to ignore other like social conditions that people have no control over, like, you know, the wealth that you inherit, or don't inherit. And you know, it like that, I think is also like a significant part of it is like, is it? Is it epi genetics? Or is it just like bad luck?
 
Rachael Jackson 51:30
I don't know,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 51:32
are those the same thing? I don't know.
 
Zack Jackson 51:35
But it can also give you an an a heightened sense of empathy. If you understand that this person is acting beyond their control because of forces that were before their birth. And so it might help you to have a little bit more grace with people acting badly. And then get past that to then find ways of ending that cycle. Because even even in electrified mice, we know that we can break the cycle. And we know that through our religious traditions and are our social traditions we know that we can break the cycle with we've seen it done historically, we know how it can be done. We just have to have the willpower to do it.

Elevating the Discourse with Jonathan Crane

Episode 82
In part 13 of our Sinai and Synapses interview series, we are talking with the Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Crane. We talk about the various ways that religious and generational groups handle trauma, how we can reclaim the sacred act of eating, and whether we can make the world a better place by paying closer attention to the labels at the grocery store. 
 
Dr Crane is the Raymond F. Schinazi Scholar in Bioethics and Jewish Thought in the Center for Ethics at Emory University, is Professor of Medicine and of Religion, and is the founding director of the Food Studies and Ethics program at Emory University. In addition to being an ordained Rabbi, He is the founder and co-editor of the Journal of Jewish Ethics, and author of several books including Eating Ethically: Religion and Science for a Better Diet (2018), Narratives and Jewish Bioethics (2013) and Ahimsa: The way to Peace.
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
 
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors. 
 
Zack Jackson  00:05
You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week we are exploring how that relationship gets worked out in real life with one of the current Sinai and Synapses, fellows, Sinai and Synapses is a two year fellowship committed to elevating the discourse surrounding religion and science and where the five of us first met. So, without further ado, our guest today is the Raman Ashkenazi scholar in bioethics and Jewish thought in the Center for Ethics at Emory University is the professor of medicine and of religion and as the founding director of the food studies and ethics program at Emory University. In addition to being an ordained rabbi, he is the founder and co editor of the Journal of Jewish ethics and author of several books. I want to welcome to the podcast, Jonathan crane,
 
Jonathan Crane  00:58
thank you so much for having me, Zack, it's a pleasure to be here.
 
Zack Jackson  01:01
Yeah, it is wonderful to finally get a chance to connect with you, you have a lot going on. It seems in your biography, a lot of books being published a lot of work being done in ethics, in religion in medicine, you are an ordained rabbi, as well as a full professor. just figuring out where to start in, in getting to know you a little bit better. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about what's occupying your headspace these days?
 
Jonathan Crane  01:36
Well, thank you for the opportunity. I'm very much interested in understanding how and why people are responding to current events as they do. And there are so many that are provoking us in a variety of different ways. Everything from the pandemic, to racial tensions to ongoing conflicts to wars that are starting up and wars that are ending to climate change, to how we are unfortunately getting increasingly sick from the food that our civilization feeds to us. And there's a whole host to the list goes on and on. And so I'm very curious about how we, as individuals, as communities, as societies, countries, civilizations respond to these challenges and what sort of resources we bring to bear on our deliberations through figuring out what to do with these circumstances, which ones we prioritize is more urgent, which ones we kick the can down the road and say that technology will solve it sometime in the future. And which ones we actually tell ourselves that this is the time and this is the place, and we are the people to actually deal with the mess.
 
Zack Jackson  02:49
So in your in your professional opinion, how how are we handling, the current mess that we
 
Jonathan Crane  02:54
understand depends, of course, on whom you are talking about, and which which topics, I think some we are handling better, and certainly depending on the scale. So some institutions, schools or communities or cities or states, and even a few countries are dealing with their tensions and conflicts in very creative ways, and are showing market success toward reaching certain kinds of goals. So for example, New Zealand has done an extraordinary job of protecting its population from the ravages of COVID-19. But it's done so at an expense of closing down international tourism. And so that's a bit that itself demonstrates an ethical deliberation, they saw two things that are good. One is tourist tourism, and the other good is their own public's health. And so they decided that in this instance, one should take priority when they are in tension with each other. Whereas other countries have decided to, to go different routes, and prioritize other things instead of the public's health. And we can see how that plays out. So it really depends on what topic you want to focus in on and at what scale and what timeframe, before you can really begin to give the assessment on whether they are succeeding or not.
 
Zack Jackson  04:21
It seems there are a few countries in the world that handled the COVID outbreak worse than the United States. And that might just be biased because I'm in it. But it seems like the idea of there being something that we would have to collectively get behind and give up some of our individual liberties in order to better serve the whole is just so antithetical to this American cowboy spirit that we were sunk before the ship left the dock did you do you see any of have that in the why we were so poorly prepared and handled it so bad,
 
Jonathan Crane  05:06
different countries and America is no exception here, champion different notions of success and what their national story is. So we do have this myth here in the united states of India, rugged individualism. And one of the challenges and perhaps you can reflect on this, too is this pursuit of self interest has amazing power. And it has developed an incredible goods for America and Americans and the world writ large. But at the other hand, it also makes us extremely vulnerable, especially when there are challenges like a pandemic or a challenge, like climate change that impact everyone, and no one can find safety, because everybody is implicated and impacted by these challenges. So rugged individualism is now facing a challenge from from without, from outside of it. And one of the things that I have been impressed with there are those communities here within the United States, sub national communities. So certain cities or religious communities that have demonstrated that the pursuit of self interest is perhaps not as good as the pursuit of enlightened self interest. And when I say enlightened self interest, that means taking other people's interests into consideration as well, like the public's interest, and so they adjust and make changes in their practices and in their policies so as to protect the community, as well as trying to champion individual pursuits as well.
 
Zack Jackson  07:11
Yeah, I've seen I've seen pockets of that, as well. Do you think there's a generational gap here that younger generations are more community focused and older generations less? So?
 
Jonathan Crane  07:27
No, on the contrary, I think it's flipped. Now. I think that, at least here in the Atlanta area, I have seen the elderly population be much more vigilant and taking care of themselves and doing what is necessary not only to take care of themselves, but to protect the public writ large, and not engage in risky business, risky behaviors, I should say. Whereas younger generations, some of them understand the seriousness of this public health issue, and also follow vigilant protocols. And then there are, I would say, a fairly sizable minority of younger populations that still engage in Cavalier behavior.
 
Zack Jackson  08:14
It's interesting that she would say it that way. Because it's been, it's been noted many times by by folks that the younger generations are more globally minded, having grown up in a digitally in a digital world connected by the internet all the time, they they think of themselves more as citizens of the world, as opposed to citizens of a particular ethnic or local municipality. But when it comes to this particular crisis, that they are acting more, more reckless and less in terms of the collective good. That's interesting. It seems like there's a lot of different factors at play in any particular crisis, or
 
Jonathan Crane  09:04
or I think you're right about that i and and now that I'm thinking about, I think that you're stumbling onto something really interesting here is that perhaps the younger generations are more globally minded in regards to social and political issues. But when it comes to public health issues, to physical issues, about our bodily existence, I don't know whether that global mindedness translates that there's something about the the pre digital person who's not a digital native, who has a greater sense of embodiment, and understands just how vulnerable radically vulnerable we are to each other and to the broader environment that perhaps digital natives are less inherently attuned to.
 
Zack Jackson  09:57
Now that is something interesting to think about. as a as a person who is like a first generation digital, not really a digital native, a digital, what would you call someone who grew up analog and then turn digital in early teens? digital? Don't know, I can see both sides of that. I want to I want to shift and ask you a question about something that you brought up a little bit earlier, talking about public health crises, and how we deal with them. And you mentioned our modern world, our modern way of producing food and of eating, and how that is poisoning our bodies. And I know there's been a lot said on this topic, both scientifically and pseudo scientifically. And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit to the scope of the work that you've done, I know you've, you've written an entire book on ethical eating.
 
Jonathan Crane  11:02
So that book, eat eating ethically, religion and science for a better diet, explores an old idea that the Abrahamic traditions, championed many, many decades ago, hundreds and 1000s of years ago. In a previous millennium, that built on an ancient Greek and Roman idea a classical idea of satiety that one should eat until one is sated, until and, and not until one has been collected. And this notion of eating until one is stated, these religious traditions in insist is a kind of eating strategy, a consumption strategy, where you listen to your body, and your body tells you when you have eaten enough, and it does not mean that you have eaten enough. It does not mean that in this one particular meal, you have eaten enough calories or eaten enough protein or eaten enough micronutrients. But on the whole if one eats this way, eating until you have become sated, and you do this chronically, it is far healthier for your body than if you eat until you have filled your belly or glutted yourself. This is not to say that you should not eat an occasional festive meal. Indeed, every religious tradition mandates festive meals, like for example, Easter, feast or eat at the end of Ramadan, or Passover meal. These feasts are designed specifically to be special, but they can only be special in the context of calendar year where you are not eating a festive meal every single day. If you did that, that would be maladaptive biologically, and also transgressive according to the religious traditions, and contemporary science of nutrition has is corroborating this ancient idea that what is healthy, and also what these traditions say is what is holy, is actually biologically adaptive. Our bodies are designed to eat until we are sated. And all only on occasion, eat beyond that point. So the book tries to explore these ideas of the distinction between maladaptive and adaptive eating between healthy, healthy and unhealthy eating unhealthy and holy eating, and bring it together into conversation with contemporary science. I and my teaching continues to explore some of these ideas. Here at Emory, I teach a variety of courses that a suite of courses the fold into the food studies and ethics program that we're trying to develop here. Because eating is a dynamic relationship. And any relationship is fraught with ethical decisions all the time eating is perhaps one of the most pursued relationships that we all are engaged relationships that we have in our lives. And we need to take time in our lives make time and, and give ourselves the privilege, the opportunity to pay attention to where our food comes from. Who is growing it How does it get from farm to factory to to the local restaurant and to your fork and what are you doing with your fork? We need to be paying attention to all of these questions. So I think that industry and government and cells have done extraordinary jobs in making the food system info hate, obscure, really difficult to have access to. The meat industry is notorious for hiding behind high walls, both physical and legal. I so much so that it is now a criminal in activity to engage in investigative journalism into certain in certain states when you want to go investigate what's going on, on animal factory farming entities. So this does not breed transparency, and it certainly does not inculcate trust. And so it, this is killing us. It's making it difficult for us to trust the food system, it's making it difficult for us to trust not only what the food is and how it gets to us, but also what it's doing to us bodily. We can see it in our ballooning waistlines and our deteriorating health. And
 
Zack Jackson  16:12
a lot of that sounds familiar, I think a lot of us have heard this, this call to more humane ways of treating animals and livestock have more attentive ways to think about the things that we put in our bodies. But you mentioned a phrase that I don't know if I've heard before holy eating. I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about how the how eating can be a holy
 
Jonathan Crane  16:45
practice. So every religious tradition that I have come across spends a lot of time and energy and spills a lot of ink, across time and space, thinking about what it means to be an eater of the world. And the world that food has to be if it's going to be food, that has to be not your own body that you're eating. So it can't be your fingernails, it can't be your finger, it can't be your arm, he got to eat something, that's not you. And so that means that it's a relationship with something outside of yourself. And so these religious traditions, he's turned on Western, native and global, spend a lot of time thinking about what that relationship should look like. And they describe and prescribe what they consider to be appropriate ways of managing those consumptive relationships, eating. And so what eating looks like, say, for Judaism, that's the tradition I'm most familiar with, looks a peculiar way. In its details, then say how a Christian my understand to be appropriate and holy eating. But that's not to say that Christianity, and Judaism are mutually allergic about the importance of eating, they just have different details about how to think these things through. So when I say holy eating on every, again, as I hope that religious traditions take eating very seriously. And our civilizations, our companies, try to do a lot of effort to make us forget those commitments that our traditions encourages us to think about, or they try to capitalize on them. And I think one of our challenges as creatures of the 21st century is to reclaim those tried and true, religiously based notions of eating. They were developed over a lot of time, and a lot of space for those good reasons. And we should know that for the vast majority of these religious traditions, views on eating, were developed in context of scarcity and agricultural vulnerability, they did not have big monocropping Technologies. They did not have drip irrigation, they did not have aquaponics. They were exposed to the natural to the vagaries of the natural world. And they did not have supermarkets, and they certainly did not have to our delivery systems to to get what they wanted to their front doors. We live in a context for the most part of extraordinary super abundance. And eating, just because we can is not necessarily eating everything that we can just because we can, is maladaptive biologically and contrary to what our religious traditions teach us.
 
Zack Jackson  20:17
So if there's someone out there who would like to start thinking deep deeper about where their food comes from, who wants to change their purchasing habits, such that it causes the least amount of suffering in the world. And so they go to the to the grocery store, and they choose to spend an extra dollar 50 on eggs that say cage free or free range, or they decide to buy some bread that says no GMO, or organic, or any number of these pictures and badges and signs and phrases that grace our foods these days. Do any of them mean anything? Can we trust those labels to help us to make better choices,
 
Jonathan Crane  21:13
we can trust them that they're trying to sell us something, not just the companies to market and attract and seduce and entice? Absolutely, there is only one term that has legal definition and teeth to it. And that is the term organic in order for a product. To claim that it is organic, it must meet certain legal standards of where its ingredients come from, and how those ingredients are produced and manufactured. Everything else any other marketing claim that is found on a package is just that it is a marketing claim. There is no standards outside of that term. So anything that says that it's healthy, that it says that it's all natural, that it has no GMOs, that may or may not be true, but it doesn't mean anything. Anything that has corn in it is necessarily a GMO product, because contemporary corn is unless it's some rare heritage breed, it is a genetically modified organism. So one would have to search far and wide to find to find products that are truly not impacted by save genetically modified or efforts technologies. So you ask what can a person do, a person can look at their purchasing practices, and figure out what their values are, and what their highest priorities are, and figure out how their purchasing practices align with reflect and reinforce those values that I tell my students, they should try when they go to the local grocery store is to just walk around the outside of the grocery store, the outermost layer, do not go through the middle aisles of a grocery store because those are usually where you find find barcode products. And those things that are bar coded are typically manufactured and manufactured products are those that are, for the most part. unhealthy. The fresh produce is on the outside, the fresh dairy, the fresh meats, those are typically offered on the outsides of grocery stores.
 
Zack Jackson  23:48
I remember some time ago, there being some legal battle with McDonald's because they advertise their chicken nuggets as made with white meat or something made with 100% white meat. And the it was actually made with with some slurry of chicken parts. But white meat was included in that. And so technically by saying made with 100% white meat, they could say like no, we used 100% white meat in it. And so we didn't lie technically, it's just also bones and cartilage and things that are all chopped up.
 
Jonathan Crane  24:28
Like dog food. Exactly. So companies will go to great lengths, especially those companies that use animal products will go to great lengths to to misinform the public. And they do this for a variety of different reasons. We don't need to get into all of those details. It's complicated, but we should know that. They are there are very creative industries that that make that try to swage consumer concerns And make them feel comfortable in buying their products.
 
Zack Jackson  25:04
that occurs to me as well that a lot of a lot of the places that have options of fresh ingredients and fresh produce and fresh, locally sourced whatnot, are places of privilege of money, that there's a lot of places, especially in the cities that we call food deserts, where there's not a supermarket within, within the ability to get to without taking several buses. And you're kind of forced to get your food from the local bodega. And a lot of that is questionable at best. And the food that is more affordable because of government subsidies to things like corn and wheat are things that are almost completely just corn that is flavored in different ways to look like real food, but it's not actually real food. So the it strikes me that that a lot of the the fight to help America to figure out how to get its food priorities back in line is also an issue of, of justice for our underserved populations.
 
Jonathan Crane  26:17
Yes, you're right, there's a lot of racism that's embedded in contemporary zoning. Not just contemporary, but historical zoning practices about where grocery stores can and should be located. There were banking practices that allowed for certain kinds of businesses to be established in certain kinds of neighborhoods and not established and other kinds of neighborhoods. There's a lot of sexism that's involved in this and education ism, as well about who can and should have rightful access to healthier foods. There's classism that's embedded in all of these practices as well, we should recognize that the history of the laws governing our contemporary food environment, were designed precisely to continue to, to fatten the profits of the well off to for the corporations. And there were there were very few incentives to actually democratize, access, democratize the production of food. And that story is quite pronounced here in the south. Black farmers were notoriously kept off out of gaining access to capital investments to improve their farms. And so they had to eventually sell them. And then they become ground, landless. And they had to find their economic wherewithal in urban areas. And so there are, there are a fraction, just a tiny percentage of all American farmers are black, or brown. Even though many of the laborers are black and brown on farms. The people who actually own the farms, or manage them are not minority populations. There's a historical set of complicated interlocking stories about why this is the case. So you're pointing to exactly why we need to have not just a dispassionate investigation into these issues, but a real consideration of the ethics that have been involved in many of those decisions. And what should the ethical values be at play as we move forward?
 
Zack Jackson  28:42
And thinking globally, as well. There's there's a lot of pushback in the United States right now about genetically modified plants. And I think part of that is Monsanto is not helping by being in kind of a dastardly organization. But there, there's push on either side, when places that are being ravaged by climate change, or dealing with long periods of drought, who can't sustain their populations, they're being production of like, vegetables that can that are more drought resistant, through genetic modification, and using science and technology to make food easier to grow for in needing less water for places. And then there are others that would say that, you know, we don't know the long term implications of people eating that kind of unnatural food, and we could be poisoning developing nations through this. Do you have any insights into into that? So
 
29:45
I
 
Jonathan Crane  29:47
I'm disinclined to, to speak about a particular company. Just because I don't know enough about what say Monsanto or other seed companies do. But it is, I think, right to say that we need to have a sincere conversation about the centralization of seeds for farming practices. That is a complicated story that needs to be investigated from a variety of different disciplinary approaches. But we also need to recognize that climate change is real. And people need to feed themselves in a sustainable fashion no matter where they are in the world. And that if science can help by creating drought resistant or flood resistant crops, then though those are goods, we don't want to put so many regulations on genetically modifying organisms, that it puts a chilling effect on these kinds of research programs. So there are goods that can be done with genetically modified technologies, in certain places at certain times.
 
Zack Jackson  31:17
I tend to be in that camp, as well. I also tend to be somebody who trust science a little bit too much. Maybe just recognizing that technology is only as as good as the benevolence of the of the people wielding it. Well, on that point, I'm
 
Jonathan Crane  31:35
teaching a course here at Emory called immoral medicine. We're looking at the Nuremberg medical trials in 1946 47, about what the Nazis notoriously did during World War Two to their own citizens to indigenous non German citizens, both in their clinics, their communities, as well as, obviously in the concentration camps. And the vast majority of their victims in these biomedical experiments were Jews and political prisoners. But I
 
32:07
the
 
Jonathan Crane  32:08
one of the things that we're coming to really appreciate in this course, is that the Nazis were very much guided by a utilitarian ethic that they wanted to do what was best for the state. And because that was their that was their ultimate goal that justify that goal justified any means it justified doing heinous things to innocent victims, I so we do need to be wary about science, that is unbridled, unregulated, pursuing science or knowledge, just for the sake of knowledge is a good but if it is done without any kind of ethical constraints, it can unfortunately, history shows us It can lead to disastrous AI programs of investigation and also results. Right.
 
Zack Jackson  33:10
Now, I mean, I think they argued that they they were operating under a certain ethic, a certain ethic that the individual suffering is not as important as the greater good, which I mean, many in the world that argue is an not ethical ethic. How do we, how do we police ethics,
 
Jonathan Crane  33:34
by continuing to put it on the public's radar, we need to have conversations about what our values are, and to have ongoing conversations about what are our convictions? What should be our commitments. This is true not only in the science arena, and not only true in the food arena and public health arena, but it's also true in our social arena. What what sort of values should be guiding our commitments to vulnerable populations. We need to have these conversations from time to time and they're going to be uncomfortable, and we need to be comfortable sitting in that discomfort as individuals and as a society but to defer to political elites to defer to academic elites. And I'm putting elites in air quotes. By delegating or relegating certain kinds of conversations to others, we absolve ourselves of participating in these conversations that necessarily should involve as many people as possible.
 
Zack Jackson  34:48
So changing gears a little bit. What was it that led you initially to the Sinai and Synapses fellowship?
 
Jonathan Crane  34:58
Somebody who's interested In religion and contemporary issues, the the tensions, the dynamic relationship between religion and science is, has been there from the very beginning. And it's as alive as ever. So this is perhaps the best venue to too, to interact with clergy, professionals, academic policy, people, science people, it everybody's curious about how best to appreciate the wisdom that is derived from religious traditions, as well as insights that can be derived from scientific explorations of the world.
 
Zack Jackson  35:45
Has there been anything in in this fellowship that has surprised you
 
Jonathan Crane  35:51
the the ease with which it is possible to relate in deep ways with people who come from different religious communities as well as different scientific commitments that I have found for the many years that I've now been involved with Sinai and Synapses. That the people are really genuinely nice and curious and welcoming, and generous, and willing to hear somebody else's perspective, even if they don't necessarily agree with it, or even fully understand it. And that's been really refreshing, especially in this middle, you this contemporary political milieu here in the United States, where people demean and damn others who are not waving the same kind of flag that they were with.
 
Zack Jackson  36:55
Yeah, thing that's the main criteria for admission into the fellowship is you must be curious and kind. So as we approach the end of our time together, I want to ask you one final question, feel free to take as much time as you need. The question I've asked every other fellow before you. And that is, what is one thing that you wish everyone knew about the world.
 
Jonathan Crane  37:23
That it's vast. It's big. And because it's so big, you can zoom out and look at it from 30,000 feet, and still only see a fraction of it. And you can zoom in and take a microscope to it and dig deep down. But you're only going to see a tiny fraction of it to It's big. And that's when I talk about the world being big. I'm talking about not just the natural world, which is awesome, and intricate, and fragile. But I'm also talking about the social world. It's also variegated, and complicated. And I'm also talking about the world that's within each one of us. There's so much within each person that is still a mystery, to be experienced and to be appreciated. And that's one of the things that I hope that all folks can come to really appreciate is that you can learn new things about yourself. may not be things that you want to be learning may not be things that you're proud of about yourself, and the things that you might want to change. But there is always something new to learn about oneself if you are willing to pay attention to it. So the world is vast. And I really do hope that people are willing to be courageous explorers. Hmm.
 
Zack Jackson  38:52
Thank you for that. That is essentially the synopsis of the book that I've been writing about. Well, thank you so, so much for being here, and for sharing some of the work that you're doing some of the passion that drives you, and thank you for the work that you are doing through the fellowship, and I look forward to Reading and hearing more about what you do.
 
Jonathan Crane  39:18
Well, thank you so much, Zack. It's been a real pleasure and delight talking with you today.