Down the Wormhole

Mental Health Part 1 (Depression)

Episode 90
Welcome back to the podcast! After a brief break, we're back with new episodes to usher in our third year of podcasting.  We're getting started on a personal note, delving into the science, spirituality, and personal experience living with major depression. What is it and what makes it difference from normal sadness? How do antidepressants work? How do our religious traditions affirm or condemn us in our time of need? All that and how to cure your sadness with electric fish and cocaine. 
 
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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 our hosts are
 
Rachael Jackson  00:15
Rachael Jackson, Rabbi at Agoudas Israel congregation in Hendersonville, North Carolina, and my superpower is my level of patience and ability to keep going.
 
Ian Binns  00:34
Ian Binns Associate Professor of elementary science education at UNC Charlotte, and I believe my superpower is teaching Adam Pryor.
 
Adam Pryor  00:43
I work at Bethany college and Lindsborg Kansas. My superpower is the ability to suck the energy out of a room at any moment I choose.
 
Zack Jackson  01:01
Or infuse it at any point.
 
Ian Binns  01:06
It's like the de luminator from Harry Potter, instead of taking the mite away. That's right, all the energy that's right.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  01:14
Kendra Holt-Moore Oh, wait, though. Assistant Professor of religion at Bethany college and Lindsborg Kansas. I'm my superpower is the ability to not sleep whenever I have anything that needs to be done. So much so that it disturbs everyone around me who loves me and there is a name for this creature that no longer is Kendra. But instead they call our neck, which is my name, but
 
Zack Jackson  01:58
it's a great name, though.
 
Ian Binns  01:59
Yeah.
 
Zack Jackson  02:02
Zack Jackson UCC pastor in Reading Pennsylvania, and my superpower is the same superpower as Abraham Lincoln. Once Abraham Lincoln's superpower, I'm so glad you asked. Because that's what I want to talk about here at the beginning of this episode. Wait a second, actually, my superpower is transitions because oh, man, that was a good one. You don't make that transition. Even better is talking about the transition. Oh, man, everything is Christian. I'm so happy to be back. By the way, this this break to had was helpful in planning. And I know all of our lives are going crazy right now. But like Rachel said, It is good to be back. So um, this being a science and religion podcast, I do think it's important for us to instead talk about American history.
 
Ian Binns  03:04
Another one of those transitions.
 
Adam Pryor  03:07
You're gonna work Abe Lincoln in there, no matter what.
 
Zack Jackson  03:11
It's, you know, year three, and Abe Lincoln is starting like your one did with Thomas Paine. We're just gonna name drop along the way.
 
Adam Pryor  03:21
I can't hate on Abe Lincoln, though.
 
Zack Jackson  03:28
Oh, man. But I want to talk for a second here at the beginning about the difference between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, because there's a lot of differences. And way back in the day in 1858, the two of them were locked in a tight Senate race in Illinois. And, you know, a Senate race in the Midwest in the 1800s was not all that exciting, generally speaking, not like Senate races today. But this one was special. This was the very first instance of American political theater, which we all have come to know and love slash hate. today. Most of that being the fact that it seemed like the issue of slavery was finally going to get talked about because it's been kicked down the road by generations and generations. But now with new states forming now we had to actually talk about the thing. And these two men, they stood on opposite ends of that spectrum. And also, there was a whole lot of new fancy technology that was making this local race into something more national, there was this newfangled thing called the electric telegram, which allowed news of things to spread hundreds of miles 1000s of miles, like in an instant. They also had all of these new trains all throughout the Midwest. And what would happen in these debates is these two men had Is that there would be stenographers there, and they would be writing down the transcript in shorthand as they went. And then at halftime, because there definitely was a halftime, they would give their notes to a person on a train. And that person on the train would write out the shorthand into long form. And then at the end of the train would hand it to the typist at the newspaper, who would then start and then at the end of the debate, the second half would get there. And so by like an hour and a half after the debate was done, the full transcript was already written and ready to be printed in the newspaper, which then got sent all over the Chicagoland area and out into the Midwest and like, this sort of thing had not happened before. So these men were not just talking to, you know, the good folks of Freeport or Galesburg, or whatever, but they were also talking to people in New York, in Virginia, they have this, this debate about slavery became bigger than just this local race. So on one side, we've got Stephen Douglas, a man that is not on any dollar bills. Because he though he won this race, spoiler, sorry. History kind of forgot about him. He was a little guy with a big mouth. He was known by his contemporaries as the greatest debater in generations, if he couldn't convince you and the crowd of the truth of what he was saying, then he would find a way to destroy his opponent so badly that everyone thought the other person was an idiot. He was he was amazing at what he did. He was confident. He was well known. He had the backing of the well established Democratic Party, he had great hair. And then on the other side, we've got Lincoln, a man who was six foot four, and 178 pounds, like literally a scarecrow. And he had a high pitched squeaky voice, and wore a giant hat that made them look even bigger and skinnier, like visually, not a great guy. He was also the member of the Republican Party, which was brand new, didn't have a lot of support. And at the time, he was neither pro slavery nor pro abolition. So he made everyone mad, and nobody really appreciated his position. So like on paper, this should have been such a landslide that we never heard of this Abraham Lincoln guy ever again. But Mr. Lincoln had a superpower. He did a superpower which would propel him into the national spotlight and eventually lead to his presidency. Abraham Lincoln's superpower severe clinical depression. That's right. Severe clinical depression though they didn't call it that. Back then they call it melancholia. But now if he were to be diagnosed, that's exactly what he would be diagnosed with. Which Same as me. So me and me and Ava were like the same guy. Except he was six, four and 178 pounds and I'm six, three and 270 pounds. So you know, a little bit bigger. But anyway, six, three, I am six, three.
 
Ian Binns  08:26
I did not know that.
 
Zack Jackson  08:27
I know. I'm only about four inches on your screen. But yeah, real life.
 
Adam Pryor  08:32
Okay, carry on. Sorry.
 
Zack Jackson  08:36
So, there are a couple of times in his life that he he went on, like an unofficial sort of suicide watch, where his family, his friends and family in the neighborhood would take turns checking in on him every hour or so. He couldn't get himself out of bed. And his people were worried about him. They removed every sharp thing out of his house. They brought him meals, and this would happen for like weeks at a time. He told a friend of his once that he never carried a pocket knife on him because he couldn't trust himself. There was one time when he was running for Senate, a little girl came up to him with her autograph book and asked for an autograph. And he wrote in this autograph book. The girl's name is Rosa. Rosa. You are young and I am older. You are hopeful I am not enjoy life. Eric grows colder pluck the roses air they rot
 
Ian Binns  09:38
Wow. Just makes you feel
 
Zack Jackson  09:43
warm. fuzzies right. For a little girl pulled out and looked at it was like Oh, thanks. I guess it's I think maybe he had some of Adams superpower in there too. Yeah. So, us, people, we people who live with this sort of depression, we kind of, we find ways to cope with it in the day to day grind, how to get through the day when we feel like our souls being sucked into a black hole. For me, I have always found music to be a good outlet, writing music, playing music, or being in nature has always been helpful. For Lincoln, it was being overly productive. He just worked himself until he fell asleep. And really sad poetry, which he wrote, and which he memorized other people's and used to recite at dinner parties. And that would suck the energy out of the room when he did. Or horribly inappropriate humor. He loved dark humor, too, I think most of us who are depressed, like dark humor, but those fixes are kind of like insulin for a diabetic. They, they help you get through the day. But they don't cure anything, they don't fix anything. So his his real transformation came in 1842 when he was 31 years old, and he checked himself into a hospital and received intensive mental care which 1842 this is before there was real medication, or this is pre Freud, and all of that. And so intensive psychiatric stay in those days meant a lot of sleep, quite a bit of cocaine, and Mercury and perhaps some electric shocks. Which by the way, on a side note, people have been using electricity to try to solve head problems since at least the first century. I found I found this out from there's a doctor named scrub bonitas largas. And he writes that if you have a headache, all you have to do is catch yourself a torpedo, which is a type of electric Ray, like, like a sting ray that lives in the Mediterranean, and then put it on your head, and let it electrocute you a few times, and then throw it back in the water and then you'll be fine.
 
Rachael Jackson  12:21
That's genius.
 
Zack Jackson  12:23
Yeah, so we've been electrocuting ourselves to make ourselves feel better for a very long time. And we're still doing it. And I'm going to talk a little bit about that later. But whatever he did in there was enough to get him well enough to get out and to get a mission. Like he started to see his depression differently. After that, like it was it was less of something that he suffered through and more of something that he could use for a better purpose. He, he he decided that he should use his suffering, to help alleviate other people's suffering. You see, studies have shown that happy people are really bad at fighting injustice, like truly awful. And I'm sorry to all of you happy optimists out there. It's just not your gift. Happy people tend to overestimate their abilities. They trust people too much. They see the world through rosy colored glasses. And so they don't see the need to change things all that much, because things don't look so bad to them. But we people with depression, we are under no such delusions, we think we can't stop seeing the things that are wrong, because that's just how we see the world. And we're a lot more able to empathize with the downtrodden because we are so often downtrodden ourselves. So our superpower kind of also our kryptonite, also. So Lincoln took that melancholic heart and He pointed it towards the systems that kept kept people enslaved. And while other people talked about slavery as a political issue, as issues of, of, of laws and regulations and logic and history, and blah, blah, blah. When he got up there, he spoke from his heart. And people like modern historians would say that, like, you felt what he felt when he spoke, like when he spoke, you knew that every word that came out of his mouth was coming out of his heart, and that he wasn't just a politician, that he wore his heart on his sleeve. And that level of authenticity is just so rare, that vulnerability and authenticity is so rare in in people that when a person like that comes around who's willing to speak so freely from their own feelings, it's like people listen, you know, Fred Rogers style, people connect with that on a deep level. So that was what came through and all of the communications all of the The newspaper articles that came out, they'd be like, wow, yeah, Douglas was great. But man, Lincoln really believes what he says. And that kind of authenticity became the fuel that would propel him into the White House. Eventually, he, he turned his coping mechanisms into the keys that would unshackle millions of people. His love of poetry became these heartfelt speeches, his need to stay busy kept him focused on the work of emancipation, his dark humor became something that endeared him to people in ways that other politicians didn't, he was just such a unique person who learned how to use his, his depression, for good. And that's something that I can relate with a lot, as somebody who has spent my whole life struggling with depression, and not naming it until I was, I don't know, maybe five years ago, or so, I've talked about my own journey of mental health a bunch of times on this podcast. So suffice to say, I only started seeking treatment a few years back. And it was only when I realized that I wasn't really able to be the father that my son needed that like, I couldn't get myself up to care for this baby, I couldn't feel deeply for him, I couldn't. And I had this this struggle, this debate, when I started taking my first medication. It was like, I stopped being able to be so creative, because music and creativity was one of my outlets for my depression. And so I'd only known how to be creative in depression. And so without the depression, I stopped being creative. So I had to make a choice. At that point, it was like, do I focus on the, on my son on parenting on trying to empathize with him? Or do I focus on my creative pursuits. And that was legitimately hard, because a lot of my identity was wrapped up in that. And sometimes I still wonder, like, what it would be like if I was not on any medication, but I, I'm really grateful that I have chosen to stay on. And from what I've learned about, like, what the signs of depression is, really confirmed that, that it's really important to stay healthy, and not just to get better for a while. And I'll explain why in in a bit after our first break, but yeah, so so my own personal journey, I feel like has mirrored Lincoln's, in some ways, obviously, on a much smaller scale.
 
Ian Binns  17:51
So far,
 
Zack Jackson  17:53
so far, sure. But in realizing that the thing that has been my burden my whole life, this depression, actually has become one of my superpowers, not only being able to empathize with people, and to be present in suffering, but to also have the ability to speak from a place of knowledge for people into people's lives who are suffering is not something that somebody without depression can do. And so I'm coming to terms with then how to see that in myself, I'm starting to see it more in characters in Scripture and throughout history. And we'll talk about that in just a minute. But let's take him just just a brief moment. 20 seconds to breathe, because that was pretty heavy. So one of the most helpful books for me. It's written by Andrew Solomon, it's called the noonday demon, an atlas of depression, which if you haven't read, you should if you suffer from depression, it's really helpful. And if you don't, it's really helpful in helping you to empathize with someone else. In trying to define even what depression is. It's very difficult, but he says, grief is depression in proportion to circumstance. So everyone has grief. Depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance. It is tumbleweed distress that thrives on thin air growing despite its detachment from the nourishing Earth. It can be described only in metaphor and allegory. St. Anthony in the desert, asked how he could differentiate between angels who came to him humble and devils who came in rich disguise, said that you could tell by how you felt after they departed. When an angel left you, you felt strengthened by his presence. When a devil left you felt horror. Grief is a humble angel who leaves you with strong, clear thoughts and a sense of your own depth. Depression is a demon who leaves you horrified. Which has totally been my experience of the thing. Again, it's a great book, because it's really hard to describe the, what it feels like to be depressed. And it's even harder to describe the physicality of depression. Can I tell you on a personal note, when I first saw my psychiatrist, and I was like, Hey, can you explain to me what's going on with my neurotransmitters? Like, I've heard I don't have enough serotonin, or I don't have enough of what is this? And it's making me and he said, Oh, well. Alright. So there's a certain sort of neuro mythology out there. That which is a great word, by the way, neuro mythology, that the only thing that is wrong with a depressed person is they have some bad chemicals. They don't have enough of them, or they have too much of them, and there's just out of whack. And if you fix the chemicals, you'll find it. I say it's neuro mythology, because it's too easy. It gives an easy answer to a complicated question. When in reality, we don't entirely know. So we kind of accidentally stumbled into these medications called SSRIs, or Selective Serotonin re uptake inhibitors. And they seem to boost the level of serotonin, which seems to make some depressed people better. So then by correlation, perhaps a lack of serotonin was the reason for their depression. And that's kind of we're just kind of trying things, throwing them out the wall. And if it raises your levels, you're fine. Because the thing is, you can't tell what your what the levels of neurotransmitters are in your body without a spinal tap. Because of that whole blood brain barrier. So there is no way for them to know what your chemical levels are like, and what your neurotransmitters are able to do. And so we just kind of throw things at a wall until they work. So just like on a very basic level, throwing these words around, when any part of your body wants to communicate with any other part of your body through your nervous system, it there's an electric charge that goes through the neuron. And then it gets to the end, where it releases a number of different neurotransmitter chemicals into the little space in between, they call that the synapse. And then they float around and they go over to the next neuron. And when they touch that there's receptors, and they kind of like, you know, the square one fits in the square hole, and this one fits in the circle hole. And they, they go in, and when they latch in there, that tells that neuron Oh, okay, so that's the thing we're doing, okay, cool, and then sends electrical signal down again. And so if you lack a certain type of, of neurotransmitter of chemical, then the transmission is less than good. And so like serotonin, we have found is really important for mood regulation, and for self control for energy. So like, we just assume that people who show these symptoms maybe lack these neurotransmitters. And when we do experiments where we boost them, pay, they get a little bit better. So we assume that they're connected, but we don't honestly know how. And it seems like there are some things having to do with maybe damage in the brain itself, or chemical levels. And then obviously, there's a part of it that's like learned that psychological where it's like you're dealing with trauma, and it's so complicated. And I wish it were as simple as just take a pill, and then you're fine. Me too, right? Ian and I are on the same medication. So we have some solidarity there.
 
Ian Binns  24:35
I feel like it's a hit or miss process.
 
Zack Jackson  24:37
And it really is and you don't know if it's going to work for like two weeks and then could either
 
Ian Binns  24:43
be okay or utterly miserable.
 
Zack Jackson  24:47
I was transitioning medications at the beginning of the pandemic. And then during Holy Week and Easter in a pandemic while transitioning medications with two small kids at home, and it was the Worst couple of months of my life, because all of my chemicals were thrown out out of balance because of that, you know, and then life itself circumstances were awful.
 
Adam Pryor  25:11
I feel like the short answer, whenever you end up talking about brain chemistry is like, it's not simple. Like, there should just be like an Asterix by every study about brain chemistry to be like, maybe
 
Rachael Jackson  25:27
for these particular people only.
 
Zack Jackson  25:30
Yeah, I mean, the future of this is in figuring out the genetic markers that cause certain things. Because we know that mental illness can be hereditary, I could trace the, the melancholia, in my own family, between, especially through the men in my family, and all of the men in my family chose to deal with it in different ways. Some of them through alcoholism, and secret vices, and some of them through religiosity and prayer. And some of them like me, through medication, and, and therapy, we kind of have all found ways of dealing with this thing that's gone through our bloodline. And my doctor tells me, you know, once we can isolate a bit better, which genetic markers are involved there, we can then just take a DNA test, and then they can create a medication for you, that is tailored to you. And so now it's just like, hey, here you go. Rachel made me a wonderful cross stitch, and sent it to me that says, If you can't make your own seratonin storebought is fine. And I love it and it's in, it's on my wall. Because I need that reminder, the storebought is fine. It's way more important to stay healthy than it is, even if I don't understand the process of it, even if it's like, I hate the fact that my happiness comes from a bottle, I should be able to do this on my own. I'm strong enough now that I don't need this anymore. And I've done this to a bunch of times where I've been like, well, I've been good for six months now. So I'm going to tell my doctor, I want to get off this medication. And then he'll be like, Well, okay, if you say so. And then I'll, I'll have a horrible regression. And then it will be like, Okay, we got to start again. And then it takes me a while to get back on. And it's just the whole thing, because my goal is to get off of the medication and to stop having to have my happiness in a bottle. But the problem is that depressive episodes are a bit like concussions in that every time you have one, it gets easier to have another and they last longer. And they're a little bit worse, actually. Jon Gruden, who's the department chair for Lopez and young. He studies long term effects of sustained stress in the depressive episodes. And he wrote that if you have too much stress and too high level of cortisol for too long, you start to destroy the very neurons that should regulate the feedback loop and turn down the cortisol levels after stress is resolved. Ultimately, this results in lesions to the hippocampus and to the amygdala, a loss of, of neural networking tissue, and the longer you remain in a depressed state, the more likely you are to have significant lesioning which can lead to peripheral neuropathy. Your vision starts to fade in all kinds of other things can go wrong, which reflects the obvious fact that we need to not only treat depression when it occurs, but also to prevent it from reoccurring. Our public health approach at the moment is just wrong. People with recurrent depression must stay on medication permanently not cycle on and off of it. Because beyond the unpleasantness of having to survive multiple painful depressive episodes, such people are actually ravaging their own neurological tissue.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  29:03
Hmm. Blood Pressure just spiked. Listening to that.
 
Ian Binns  29:10
My watch did tell me to take a breath,
 
Zack Jackson  29:12
your cortisol levels just went up hearing that and you need to find a way to get him back down again. Sustained stress is bad for you. There are natural ways, right? Y'all I'm sure have natural ways of calming yourself. Right. What do you all do when you're in this sustained periods of stress?
 
Rachael Jackson  29:38
I crossed it.
 
Zack Jackson  29:40
Yeah.
 
Adam Pryor  29:43
I ride my bicycle.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  29:47
I paced around the living room. physically exhausted myself.
 
Ian Binns  29:54
I will go out, sometimes about side. Sometimes I'll meditate. Though the Lego do a puzzle, something like that. I picked up golf again, on vacation. So there are times when I've gone to the driving range, if I have the time, I found while on vacation, there was a we always play when we're down there. And the last few times we've gone I haven't played I'd started to bring my old clubs that my dad gave me years ago. So they're very old. And we, I would play with play with my father in law and brother in law down there and I was hitting it pretty well. And it's just like, it's kind of fun. I'm not taking it seriously. I'm just out here enjoying myself and then one afternoon while we were there. It was a lot of downtime. We weren't doing anything. And so I just kind of look my wife and said, Honey, I think I want to go play nine holes by myself. You're out with it. She said sure. So I've called the course because I made some courses right there and they said Yeah, come on. So I went play nine holes by myself put my headphones in and listen to a podcast. And it was a great two hours. Like it really helped. And so we found that Wow, that's so now I bought a new set of clubs. not expensive though. But it's it's very therapeutic. And I found that it's nice for me to go out there and just do that this time for myself to think and and just or let go.
 
Zack Jackson  31:20
Yeah, well, I was gonna say I hear two themes that the neuroscientist Andrew Newberg has talked about a lot in his books, the the arousal and acquiescent systems in your body, the the ones that you get pumped up, and the ones that you get brought down. And in both of those, if you overdo it, you're the thinking part of your brain starts to shut down, as it focuses on just that part. And you get out of your spatial awareness you get out of your cognitive areas, the parts of your brain that are overthinking that are causing the feedback loop of cortisol to keep going. And so when you work yourself out, like on a bicycle, or walking or running, you're flooding your body with such high levels of these, these chemicals that it's like whoosh, wash afterwards, or if you're doing something repetitive, like cross stitch, or knitting, or golf, or meditation or something that does the opposite, that relaxes you so much that it gets you out of that, that cycle than that to, then once that stupid thinking part of your brain is done overthinking, then the natural parts can get through and flesh it all out. I mean, you see this in religious ritual, right? You either have things like tribal dances, right with the drums and the repetitious things, or you have something like a meditative, like the home, the sound of a slow Bell or something. You even see that that's the difference between modern Christian worship songs and old timey hymns is, is the same kind of deal. You're trying to either raise yourself up and do it an ecstatic state or bring yourself down into a lower state. But both of them are trying to get out of your own head to let your brain fix itself. And that's so important.
 
Rachael Jackson  33:17
I love I love that I love this idea of especially in religious contexts, without even necessarily knowing why we're doing those things, right, as you're saying those. In Judaism, there's a there's a word for it called a knee goon. And a goon is a wordless melody, or a repetitive, a few words melody that will come up frequently. And we'll just say the same thing for 235 minutes, it'll be the same thing. And there's really something very powerful about that. And so it's nice to know why it works.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  34:16
Think it's also really scary, like the people that I know who have depression and have tried, or are in the process of trying all the various medications and nothing's working. It's just scary to her. I feel very much for those people who want a medical solution and are not sure how to navigate like, at least in the meantime, until something works if something is going to work. Not everyone knows how to navigate like other activities to help manage those symptoms. And that When people become really desperate, and so, yeah, I just, I, I know that that is a very scary process for people to just mean it's hard to like go on antidepressants anyway, like it takes, there's an adjustment period and all of that, but for nothing to work, I know people who are like, you know, trying the last thing before they go into like anti psychotics. And that's a whole other category of drugs. That is very, I mean, like, you don't want to mess with that stuff, if you don't have to, because, you know, that's, you have a whole other set of issues that can come up with, with those things. And, yeah, it's just, it's a lot, it's a very confusing puzzle that for some people seems to like not really have a solution, except, you know, whatever it is that you can try, that makes life a little bit more manageable. And like, giving you that ability to reach, not not happiness so much, but like a state of equilibrium. It's like all people really want at that point.
 
Zack Jackson  36:15
There's some really exciting breakthroughs in transcranial magnetic stimulation. Previously, the last ditch option for people is to, like knock them out unconscious, and then electrocute them a bunch of times in the head, electrode thought shock therapy, it's silent and can lead to memory loss and all kinds of things. But this technique, which is been approved, but your insurance won't pay for it until you've tried, literally everything else takes off course, right? focused electromagnetic stimulation into very specific portions of your brain. So they do a brain scan first. So they can identify where exactly your how your brain is situated. And then they'll do these wonderful tests, where they'll like, they'll, they'll try to locate your like motor centers. And then like, once your hand twitches, they'll be like, oh, yep. Okay, so that's where that is. And then Okay, your nose switched, okay, that's where that is. And then they can triangulate where your mood centers will be. And then use this magnetic stimulation through, like this special hat, it looks like the kind of thing that you use at a like a beauty salon to dry your hair. And it just stimulates that one part. So it's really focused on just that one part. And it, it basically exercises it because the theory is that it's underdeveloped. And so it's like it's massaging it, and it's helping it to move and whatnot. And so you do this for every single day, it's a half hour sessions every day, for a month. And then after that, most people are fine. And they might need to come in for a tune up every couple years or so. But instead of like medication that increases the, the chemical levels in your, in the synapses, this goes straight to the brain, and tries to help massage an underdeveloped part. And it seems to be working really well. And there's a lot of new breakthroughs in the technology. And if insurance would catch up and help more people get it, then it would be it would be so helpful. But I love the fact that we discovered 1000s of years ago that you could electrocute your head and feel better and that we are still doing the same thing but with science.
 
Rachael Jackson  38:52
It was science back then, too. They just didn't know why.
 
Zack Jackson  38:56
I call it that. Yeah, he also used to use sting rays while the electric rays to cure hemorrhoids too. But I didn't look into the specifics of how that word
 
Rachael Jackson  39:08
awkward interesting.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  39:09
I have so many questions.
 
Rachael Jackson  39:12
I don't want to know the answers. I love this idea. And I think and without getting so much on that soapbox. I'm just moving past that conversation guys. Without getting so
 
Adam Pryor  39:26
jealous derailing. Like, no, no, no. That's all I'll do. I'll stop I'll stop
 
Rachael Jackson  39:35
is one of the challenges that we have in westernized medicine. And I'm framing it that way because I think even in places that have universal health care, which you know, America certainly needs to get on that bandwagon. But even in those places, it's still crisis management. It's not actually preventative or care. It's It's, it's all emergency medicine, it's all Something is wrong, let's treat what's wrong. Not let's actually figure this out way upstream. So the insurance industries, but also just our frame of mind of saying, we don't have to wait until we see where something is wrong, to try to help a person live the best life that we know they can live. And I think if we change our mentality with that, where we can catch up for a holistic perspective of what life can look like, will enable each other to to thrive in ways that we're not yet capable of. And then I also just want to respond to partly what you were saying, Zach, but not directly to you, but to the concept of this mental health and this, so several people very close in my life also suffer from deep clinical depression. And I suffer so and I have suffered from not clinical depression, but situational. And so it's very, very different than that. But having said that, when I look at our screen, three of us are wearing glasses, right? And we hear this idea, or you have said yourself, sack, you know, I wish, I just wish I wouldn't have to take it out of a bottle. And I wish, you know, I could just find happiness this way. And we've learned that health is health, regardless of whether it's mental health or physical health or emotional health, health, spiritual health, right? It's health. And if we're unhealthy, then we need to do whatever it takes to get us healthy. And none of us are going to be like, Oh, I just wish my eyes would work. And I'm just not gonna wear my glasses today. Because maybe today will be the day that they just decide to work. Maybe today, I'll wake up and my, my astigmatism will magically mend itself. We never ask a person to make that kind of ridiculous jump. And that because we recognize that that's just not going to happen. I'm never going to not need my glasses. Unless perhaps I go through some sort of surgery, in which case, it may or may not help it, but probably not like, especially with my astigmatism, I'm always going to need glasses. And, and there's nothing wrong with that. And so I think if we get to the point of as a society, and then hopefully internally to say, okay, so there's something going on with the physical part that we don't fully understand. We don't know why this is happening. We don't know why this part of your brain needs to massage or is underdeveloped, or these chemicals are or are not working. We don't have the why yet. But if we can get to a point of at least saying, great, we have something that's working. Why make a person feel bad about that. And don't expect yourself to be any different tomorrow. Adam, you don't like this?
 
Adam Pryor  43:19
Wow. You know, like no
 
Rachael Jackson  43:22
poker face.
 
Adam Pryor  43:22
I'm not on board with like shaming people about mental health. Let me start there. That's not okay. Clear? Yep. I'm on board like, okay, so like, usually when I disagree with you, it's just like, full like, No, it's not that
 
Ian Binns  43:42
nobody can see, can I stop just for a minute? Can you make sure you include all of that in this transition? Cuz fumbling is is awesome. Sorry. So
 
Adam Pryor  43:52
here. This is what I wonder about though, right? Because I like the I like the eyeglasses analogy, right? So nobody says I'm going to wake up in the morning be like, Ah ha, today, I won't wear my glasses, and my eyes will work. But also, right, like, this is a problem that's really well explained by the reductionism of science. Right? Why do I put a lens in front of my eye because I have a very clear understanding of how the light is refracting into the wrong spot. Right
 
Rachael Jackson  44:21
now, but 500 years ago, we didn't
 
Adam Pryor  44:24
know but those pieces of being able to answer the why and the development of the technology were much more parallel than what's going on here. And I think this is the place where I look at I go like, I wonder if issues of mental health fall into a very different category, because I'm not sure there is a good reductionist answer to the why. Like, there's a little part of me that says, like, is this a problem at which science starts to break down in its investigation, because the rules of how science investigates things can't ask all the right questions
 
Rachael Jackson  45:03
while still living within an hour, an ethical and moral way of treating human beings. Absolutely,
 
Adam Pryor  45:08
absolutely. Right. Right. But even I mean look like even if you do some of the things that aren't moral or ethical, you may run into some fundamental problems were because these issues, bridge that element of the reductive descriptive nature of neurotransmitters, and big feelings. You know, as my teenager is having, right? There's some, there's some drugs that should be invented for puberty, I've decided
 
Ian Binns  45:48
a couple of years.
 
Adam Pryor  45:51
So this is like, I do sort of wonder like, does this become a space, particularly in things like religion and science conversation, where it doesn't follow the neat categories that we have to talk about that. And I think the the hope, especially in Western culture, is that we've put in medical science to be able to do those sorts of things, or are in to heal in very specific ways, the bounds of what that means are really stretched in this case, which, you know, only adds to the feeling of anxiety and depression in the situation.
 
Zack Jackson  46:54
So what has been your experience from the religious side of depression?
 
Adam Pryor  47:02
I actually wanted to ask you Zack, like, do you use any, like, specific religious traditions?
 
Zack Jackson  47:09
In what way
 
Adam Pryor  47:10
in terms of thinking about ways of, of managing or, or trying to address those feelings of depression,
 
Zack Jackson  47:18
or when you're talking about managing religions have done a great job with that, I mean, they always talk about doing yoga, for example, doing something to get into your body, or meditation, something to get into your mind. prayer and whatnot. You know, I, personally, I've said this before, too, it's kind of my religious tradition, when I was discovering my depression said that you're too blessed to be stressed, and that depression is a problem for atheists and not for Christians. And, you know, so I know I've worked with, I've worked with my therapist on this, I know that those things are not true. I find more comfort in looking at some of the people in Scripture, like Jeremiah, for example, the weeping prophet literally wrote a book of the Bible called Lamentations. All he does is cry. He is a sad emo boy, who felt so deeply the destruction of Jerusalem, that he couldn't help but weep and his weeping became the song of a generation, and helps other people to deal with the trauma that they were experiencing. And it's something that probably only someone who feels the depths of despair like that can can do. And so like God using him, not in spite of his depression, but because of it was something it's just important for me to, to help categorize my feelings, give them validity.
 
Rachael Jackson  49:01
I'll add to the religious side to that. In our tradition, it's not necessarily taboo. And it my heart just hurts hearing this idea too blessed to be to be depressed, like it just is revolting. But also we have this term called Shonda, right? It's public shame. So don't talk about it. We're not going to tell you you don't have it. Y'all feel it, but we don't talk about it. And that's where I've decided to make a big change, right saying no, absolutely. We talk about it and using those subtle signs as well as the obvious science, like on my bulletin board in my office, I have, you know, the here's the suicide hotline, business card, and here's the phone number for Nami. National Alliance of mental instant National Alliance of Mental Health Institute, something of that and on my bookshelf, like it's here's the Here's how Judaism and depression looks right. Like I make it very obvious. And then when I talk in my classes and my sermons, I totally talk about it. Right? My sermons at least once a year or during the big holidays, I talk about mental health this year included in this year, I'm using King Solomon. Right? I mean, Zack, right in Jeremiah, I think King Solomon, who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes, he is right, all is futile. You kidding me? Right? Like, all is futility? utter futility. Right? Like there's an entire chapter on how utterly futile all of life is you telling me he's healthy? That is not the sign of a healthy, well rounded person who's saying these things, right? There's existential issues going on. So recognizing that they exist in our tradition, and that we should talk about it right? daska, like, we have to talk about these things. And I think that's the role that science has made that religion can play is allowing people to explore this need of themselves and encouraging them to utilize the best science that exists. To find this way I love the word they can do use equilibrium at a bare minimum, and then hopefully grow from that point.
 
Ian Binns  51:20
But how do we reach those who mean we talk about instant places in the Bible, that based on how we interpret it shows that you don't need to have shame? If you suffer from depression, or you have depression, right? And yet, the Bible is still as we know, with everything, right, the Bible is still used to instill shame on some people. So reaching the individuals who still feel shame because of someone else, telling them the Bible suggests it. And I know I'm majorly paraphrasing, making this easy, or simplifying it, but those are the people that need to be reached. Right? And we need to be helped.
 
Rachael Jackson  52:08
And I think the best that we can do is try to make broad, build those bridges of making that happen. Right, that I'm not the person who would have ever said those things I'm right, that that would never, that would never be my way of thinking. Right? But if I can't reach out, they're not coming to me, perhaps I can reach someone who is talking to them. Right that, that in my way of saying these things, I am opening doors for people to open other doors for other people to come in. Right? That that that's that's our way of reaching people that don't want to be reached also is not through us talking. But it's through the overlap. Got to bring in a Venn diagram sometime today. I can't talk directly to the said person. But perhaps we share a person in common that would then say, hey, look at this, here's an alternative to what you've learned. So I don't know if that?
 
Ian Binns  53:11
Does. That's my first
 
Rachael Jackson  53:12
offensive.
 
Ian Binns  53:14
No, no, no. I think part of the issue we're dealing with here too, though, around mental health, and something that we can address throughout this series is that, you know, if you pull back from the role of the Bible, there's a major stigma in this country around mental health. And I know there are elsewhere but let's just focus on where we are right now. But there's this whole notion that if you have struggle with your mental health in some way that you're not supposed to talk about it, because of the shame associated with that. And then we see the number of military personnel or retirees who you know, it's like 20 or 22, who take their lives every single day. Because they're, you know, taught that and a lot of them are typically men, and they're taught that you know, you're supposed to be a hardened warrior. So you can't talk about these these touchy feely things, and then they end up dead right? We lost that workout group I'm part of that three. I did not know him that well. We met a few times he took his life about a month ago. Because and people were shocked people were like, I have no idea I had no idea is struggling I had no idea that struggling and I didn't know him that well. I'm certain the signs were there but we don't know to look for them if because of the shame he he may have felt but that stereotypically goes with mental health is that that's one of things i've you know, Zack as I've once we met and as we got to know each other, I've always appreciated how on Facebook when you talk about your struggles with depression in your, in your journey with your depression, that you have equated it to things like us. Or arm or something with your heart or something that people tend to talk more freely about than they do if it's something with your brain, right, and that is just another part of your body. So that's that I approach it a lot that way ever since I saw you do that. I thought that made a lot of sense, right? Yeah. And so it's, and we've had many conversations on the show about who is the real me, based on the meal medication or the Minato medication.
 
Zack Jackson  55:30
You know, one of my favorite things about the Bible as a whole. Both the Hebrew and Christian versions is that unlike most ancient texts, it doesn't seek to idealize people. Like, if you if you're Reading about some Babylonian king from the Babylonian texts, you'll read all about how handsome he is, and how muscley he is and how he never loses and how he's God's favorite person, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But like you read about King Saul, or David or Solomon or like, like David is lifted up as the greatest King ever. And he's written all these songs, and he's such great guy, but man, the Bible tells you all about all the awful things that he's also not. Right. So like the gospels were written by the or supervised by Jesus's disciples. And so they're the ones writing this book, and they are portrayed as such nincompoops in there. Like, they did not try to sugarcoat themselves, they presented themselves as they are. So you can read this. And you can see yourself in it. And you don't see some idealized version that you can never live up to. You see people who struggle, people who are honest, sometimes up How about what they're feeling, and how they're struggling what they're dealing with. And then you see a God that is still good. And that uses, uses their weakness, as as their strength as their superpower. And that is one of the overarching themes of Scripture, as always been that that's why I have these two scripture verses tattooed on my wrists that the one is from Psalm 33, I believe that he spoken all things came into being and the other ones revelation. At, behold, I'm making all things new, that the beginning and the end of the story of the Christian scriptures anyway, begins with his creation on both ends, that it's taking the old in the broken and making something beautiful with it, like, like a mosaic, and not just shaking up the edges sketch and starting over again, because this one got broken. I love that. And I need that, as somebody who dwells in darkness on the regular. That's actually how I met Rachel, was I said that story about how the Bible begins and ends with creation. And she said, whose Bible? my Bible doesn't end that way. And I was like, this person, this person is going to be my best friend, but it's gonna be great. My life is so much richer, because she's in it. Oh, hey, Rachel, I didn't see you there.
 
Rachael Jackson  58:34
I want to say thank you for taking us down this journey. And for being again, so open and vulnerable with us. Not just the five of us, but anyone who's listening and anyone who feels like we can share this. That we can really share this with others. So please do so right. Even if even if you've never shared an episode or a podcast before with someone, I think having this open conversation about struggles is really important. So please feel free to share this and any other episode.
 
Zack Jackson  59:13
I just want to say one final thing as we as we wrap up that and then to read you a poem that I discovered that the goal as we often see, it is pure bliss, and hope and joy and laughter and all the good things. And we imagine that mental health is some mental illness is something that is keeping us from that pure bliss and only if only we had just the right combination, we would be happy all the time. And we think of hope as something so blessed and wonderful and I want to affirm the grittiness of life and of you the listener and you my fellow hosts and to say that Sometimes life is dirty and the bloody and is still is beautiful. And so I wanted to finish this by Reading a poem by a poet named Caitlin seda. That's called hope is not a bird, Emily, it's a sewer rat. This is directed at Emily Dickinson, who wrote a lovely poem about how hope is this flattering bird that comes in on the wind and I found this one to be much more inspirational. Also, there's a couple of expletives in there. And so, if you're listening, and you're a child, maybe plug your ears. Also, if you're a child, you're a super cool kid for listening to this podcast so good on you. Okay.
 
Adam Pryor  1:00:48
And probably you don't need to plug your ears at this point.
 
Zack Jackson  1:00:54
Hope is not the thing with feathers that comes home to roost when you need it most. Hope is an ugly thing. With teeth and claws and patchy fur that seems some shit. It's what thrives in the discards and survives in the ugliest parts of our world, able to find a way to go on when nothing else can even find a way in. It's the gritty, nasty little carrier of such diseases as optimism, persistence, perseverance, and joy. transmissible as it drags its tail across your path and bites you in the ass. Hope is not some delicate, beautiful bird, Emily. It is a lowly sewer rat. That snorts pesticides, like there were lines of coke, and still shows up on time to work the next day, looking no worse for the wear,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  1:01:52
huh. Now I want to cross stitch of that monster, that monster
 
Adam Pryor  1:02:03
feels like one that could go in my office. snore snorts lines of coke and shows up for work the next day, who's pull that right.
 
Rachael Jackson  1:02:28
And on a different note, we have decided this year, year three of our podcast at the end of every episode, each one of us is going to share something. And one of the things that I Rachel love to share our stories from my tradition. And so I hope that you enjoy this story this week. And next week, we are going to be so excited to hear from one of the other hosts and each week, we will rotate what our story is. Sometimes it will be connected to what we are talking about. And sometimes it won't. So stay tuned for the end of every episode and let us know what you think. Today I wanted to share a story with you about prayer. And just a note about many Jewish Oh folktales whatever, they always have men as the primary. So if you've heard this story, I'm just gonna change the gender because I don't think men get up all the fun. So just putting that one out there. So once upon a time, no, not really. One day. There is a farmer in the field. And she is tilling away. And she's working really hard because every farmer I've ever met works really hard sunup sundown 365. incredibly hard work. And this person, because she is a farmer, she doesn't have time to study. She doesn't have time to pray. She doesn't have time to be a learned scholar. She does the best she can. She prays to God, whenever she needs to, in whatever way she feels she can one day or very learned scholar comes along, is driving his carriage and he stops and he sees her praying in the fields and he says, What are you doing? And she says, I'm praying. And he responds, you can't pray right now it is not the time for prayer here. Let me teach you. And she says, okay, I've always wanted to be a good Jew. I've always wanted to be a good pray er, and so she agrees. And this very learned scholar comes and lives with her and in the house. And every day for six months. He teaches her When to pray, what words to pray, how to pray exactly the right things, to do the choreography, when to bow, when to shuffle all this stuff when she learns it, because she's a great student. And then he says, Thank you for giving me this opportunity to teach you the right way to pray. And then he moves on. And he leaves the house, and she is still a farmer, tilling the soil every day harvesting and reaping when necessary. And day after day, she slowly forgets she forgets, is it two steps forward? Or three steps forward? And then how many steps back Do I have to take? And do I go left first or right first, I don't know which way to bow. And she starts getting confused. And she starts getting upset because she knows she's doing it wrong. And so she stops praying. And she no longer goes out into the field and says the prayer of her heart. She no longer prays when she's moved to. And that's how she lives her life. And the learned scholar dies. And he goes up and he meets God. And God says, What did you do? to this farmer, he went, God, I taught her. She was such a good student. She learned she learned all the prayers. And after six months, I felt my job was done. And I moved on. He said, I thought I was doing exactly what you God would have wanted me to do. And God responds, how dare you? How dare you. She has not prayed a day since you told her that she did it wrong. She was my best prayer every day, she would pray to me. And she poured out her heart to me. But you came along and told her she did it wrong. And now she hasn't prayed. That is not your role. How dare you. What we learned from this is even if we have all the rights and the rituals, the smells, and the bells and the choreography, there is no right or wrong. The best prayers are the ones that are genuine, whether they be written down, or whether they be in our hearts, whether they be a prescribed times, or it's spontaneous ones. The ones that affect us are the ones that we feel there is no wrong way to pray.
 
Zack Jackson  1:07:49
This has been Episode 90 of the down the wormhole podcast. If you enjoy this podcast would you do us a favor and share it with your friends. That's a simple way that you can help our third year to be our best year yet. Thanks also to our Patreon supporters 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. We'll be back in two weeks as Ian helps us to understand the science and spirituality of anxiety and how mindfulness meditation has helped him to persevere. We'll see you then.

Palmer Seminary Science and Religion Symposium (Oct 1 and 2)

We're back with new episodes starting next week, but in the meantime, we want to make sure that you are all aware of the incredible science and religion symposium that is happening this weekend at Palmer Seminary. Zack has put a lot of time and energy into making sure that this is an event that is worth your time. Check out the website to register for in-person or online space. It will be recorded and available after the fact as well, but make sure that you register to get the link! 
 
https://www.palmerseminary.edu/science

RE-RELEASE: DtW Goes to the Movies (Star Trek: Generations)

While we are hard at work on the next season, we are re-releasing some of our favorite episodes. Way back at the beginning of this awful pandemic when everyone was stuck inside binging on Netflix, we did a series on some of our favorite movies. This episode was simultaneously spiritually uplifting, raucously funny, and somewhat NSFW (depending on your tolerance for eyeball hooks and heavenly orgies). If you haven't seen Star Trek: Generations, make sure you watch it before listening or else much of this will make no sense! 
 
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 
 
 

RE-RELEASE: Conflict Language (Who‘s Authority is it Anyway?)

While we are hard at work on the next season, we are re-releasing some of our favorite episodes. This one was our fifth episode way back on September 4th 2019. When we recorded this, we had no idea how the battle for scientific and religious authority would devolve into a battle for our very lives. Should we trust the institutions that created these vaccines? Should we trust our religious leaders who claim to speak for God? Should we trust what the internet has to say about health when we can't even trust it to tell us the truth about the hit 90's cartoon, Street Sharks? 
 
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
PS - Zack's audio did not record properly, so we had to use the backup recording which is why it sounds so bad compared to the others. 
Show Notes:
Street Sharks and the problem with history:https://www.geek.com/tech/how-i-used-lies-about-a-cartoon-to-prove-history-is-meaningless-on-the-internet-1656188/
The definitive guide to the Denver Airport conspiracy:https://www.denverpost.com/2016/10/31/definitive-guide-to-denver-international-airport-conspiracy-theories/
Hawaii Telescope Project, Long Disputed, Will Begin Construction:https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/10/science/hawaii-telescope-tmt-mauna-kea.html
The Oven of Akhnai:https://www.sefaria.org/Bava_Metzia.59b.1?ven=William_Davidson_Edition_-_English&lang=bi
Note from Zack: After editing the past few episodes, I realized that I've mentioned Thomas Paine at least five or six thousand times. This is because I just finished a massive biography on him, and have had no one to process it with. I do apologize and will henceforth make every effort to diversify my 18th/19th century pop culture references in future episodes. I will leave you with this gem from the October 1783 edition of The Onion...https://www.theonion.com/historical-archives-i-cannot-help-that-women-are-oft-a-1819584502

RE-RELEASE: Human Origins (Did Neanderthals go to Heaven?)

While we are hard at work on the next season, we are re-releasing some of our favorite episodes. This one originally aired on January 15th, 2020.
 
------------
 
Our Human Origins miniseries keeps rolling as we explore the implications of art, social structures, and burials among Neanderthals and early Homo Sapiens in the Stone Age (specifically about 65,000 BCE to 10,000 BCE). How much can we infer from the clues they left behind? What of the small idols that predate all known religions by 15,000 years? Was God speaking to early humans like God speaks today? Are we making too much out of too little? Why does spirituality always seem to pop up whenever humans are around? 
 
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
 

RE-RELEASE: Dr Scott the Paleontologist (Re-Enchanting the Natural World)

While we get the next season of DtW ready, we are re-releasing some of our favorite episodes. This one was especially fun.
 
This episode originally aired on June 16th 2020
 
--------------
 
We are thrilled to welcome Dr Scott Sampson to the DtW podcast! Those of you with small children probably know him best as Dr Scott the Paleontologist from Dinosaur Train, but there is so much more to him than time traveling cartoon dinosaurs! In his book, "How to Raise a Wild Child", he explains how he left his dream job in academia and devoted his life to spreading the love of science and nature to the next generation, because unless we become a people who love and understand our world, we're doomed. We get into some of the teaching strategies that he has developed to help all of you parents who suddenly became home-school teachers, as well as practical ways to grow emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. He casts a vision in which humankind rediscovers their love of the natural world, develops technology in tandem with it, and becomes a force for good for the sake of all living things. All that to say, it's no accident that the answers to life, the universe, and everything are contained within episode 42. 
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 

RE-RELEASE: Big Emotions (Awe and Asparagus Urine)

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 

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. 
 
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
 
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.