Latest / Why We Do What We Do / Dr. Kevorkian

Transcript

Dr. Kevorkian · Why We Do What We Do

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You're listening to Why We Do what we Do. Welcome
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: to Why We Do what we Do. I am your
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: medically questionable host Abraham.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: And I'm your driving around in a very safe van
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: host Shane.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, we are a psychology podcast. We talk about the
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: things that humans and non human animals do and have done.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Sometimes we talk about historical things and the grand implications
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: that they rise within our moral considerations of appropriate human activity,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: which is the topic of today. So jumping right into it,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: I'm going to warn everybody that as we get started
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: that we are going to be talking about in this
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: episode quite a bit about suicide and end of life care.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: This may be difficult for some folks to hear. We'll
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: mostly be discussing laws and medical processes and approvals for
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: assisted suicide. But nevertheless, we want to put this disclaimer
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: at the top of the show. That's not something you're
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: comfortable hearing. You might want to set this one out,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: but we'll try and handle this sensitively as well. But
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: before we get into anything else, wanted to let you
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: know that was a thing.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Yes, because today we are talking about doctor Jack Kavorkian,
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: a controversial figure in the nineties that actually led to
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: some interesting legislative changes in the next few years after
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: his charges and all those things. So there's a lot
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: to unpack here, and I think.
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: It'll be an interesting discussion.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for those of us who are around when this
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: was happening, Like I remember this name being in the news,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: and I remember learning about some of the things that
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: people were talking about in some of the conversations that
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: arose from this sort of controversy. If you are not familiar,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: then you are in for a bit of a roller coaster.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, so this really interesting. But before
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: we get into all of that, I would like to
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: just let you know that if you enjoy what you
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: hear today and you'd like to support us, you can
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: join us on Patreon, leave us a rating and a review,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: like subscribe, tell a friend. I'll talk more about that
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: at the end of this discussion. Furthermore, if you are
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: a returning person, then welcome back. I hope that you
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: keep finding joy and the things that we deliver here.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: And if you're someone who is new, then welcome and
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: hope that you enjoy what we.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: Are delivering here.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: So both of the same message, I guess, yes, But
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: either way, you found yourselves here on tax Day and
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: so we're sorry and we'll go ahead. And also in
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: the spirit of helping to relieve the tension, Happy Anime Day.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, yes, it's also Happy Banana Day.
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  Speaker 1: These are actual, like, by the way, real holidays. If
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: someone if you're new here and you hear us just
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: saying these things, we're not making it up. Yeah, actually
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: telling you On today, April fifteenth, Happy Income Tax Payday,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Happy Jackie Robinson Day.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: Yes, it's also Microvolunteering Day, which is when you volunteer
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: for ants. And then it's National ASL Day as well
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  Speaker 2: for American Sign Language.
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  Speaker 3: Oh.
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  Speaker 1: I had the greatest idea for like a April Fool's
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  Speaker 1: joke that we were going to do an episode entirely
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: in ASL.
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  Speaker 3: Listen, I love that.
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  Speaker 2: The other day I made a joke to somebody because
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: somebody was telling me that I was monolingual when lingual
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: because I only speak English, and I was like, I
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: was talking to them via voice to text, and I
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: was like, no, look, I can also do sign language.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: Like I'm going to say this, and I just did.
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  Speaker 3: I went.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Like my hands were waving like in the movies, like
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: when they do like so it was like you hear
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: those sound effects of like wind rushing when hand I
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: was like see I just said this, and they were
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: here and they were like, you are so annoying.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, So yes, National ASL Day. That was where we
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: were at. Yes, love ASL. I actually started learning ASL.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: It's beautiful bit and oh I love it so much.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: I really I hope I get like to the point
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  Speaker 1: where I can actually have a conversation. Yeah, in ASL
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  Speaker 1: worth unpacking at some point, if we haven't already, I
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: don't sure.
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  Speaker 3: Do you think we have. I don't know that we have.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, well maybe a thing. Those the most sidetracked we've
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: ever been on holidays. It is National Greiper's.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: Day, it certainly is. It's also one Boston Day.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: It is one day without shoes.
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: I accept sure. It's Rubber Eraser Day. Charlie Day is
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: really stoked about that. He will eat yours if you
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: would like.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Pop culture reference specific, Yeah, so specific.
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: It is School librarian Day. We appreciate those people.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Yes, we certainly do. It is also that Sucks Day.
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: Unrelated.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: It is Titanic Remembrance Day.
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: Also related.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeh, not the movie, the actual event, right, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: it is a universal day of culture.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Ind wow, the whole universe. Huh, is a World Art Day.
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: All of it. Yeah, it's Canada Book Week.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, the books in Canada are books about Canada or
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: sure books made. It is Holocaust Remembrance Week.
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: Yes it is.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: And it's also International Trombone Week.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: I also don't know if we've done one explicitly on
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  Speaker 1: the Holocaust, but that's what I've been thinking about too.
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  Speaker 3: That. Yeah, I feel like that's going to be a
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  Speaker 3: multi part thing.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, there is a lot of storage to tell there. Yeah, yeah,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: depending on how deep we want to go. But okay, yeah,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: so we did our warning. We are going to be
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: talking about suicide, end of life, care assisted suicide, those
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: sorts of topics. So again, one more warning before we
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: jump into that topic. If you or anyone you know
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: is struggling, please seek help. You can call the National
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: hotline in the United States nine to eight eight. I'm
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: not sure what it is in other countries, but look
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: up that number because there are people there who want
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: to help. I have lost a so many more people
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: that I would like to have lost to suicide that
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: it's really one of the most heartbreaking things when it happens,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: and I hope to never ever ever have to experience
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: it again for myself, and I really don't want that
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: for anybody else because it is just the worst. So
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: with that being said, there are very different ways of
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: thinking about suicide and the conditions under which end of
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: life care may involve something like that, at least with
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  Speaker 1: respect to some people and how they choose to approach
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: these things. So that is kind of how we're going
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: to talk about that today.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: Yes, so we are going to talk about Jack Kavorkian.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: So he's an interesting case study related to the topic
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: of assistant suicide. In the nineties, he was a topic
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  Speaker 2: of controversy due to his moniker doctor death and his
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: work in assistant suicide, and he was a national discussion
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  Speaker 2: and brought the topic of dignity and death to the stage.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: So we are going to kind of talk about that
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: from that perspective of what assistant suicide is. But we
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: really want to give the context of doctor Kavorkian because
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: I think that it's one of those situations that is
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: I think conflated, like it's kind of like how the
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Satanic Panic occurred, where I think people made this a
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  Speaker 2: much bigger deal than it actually was.
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  Speaker 3: Not to say that.
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  Speaker 2: There weren't some concerns here and there, but like just
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: to kind of like, as we unpack this, you'll see
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: that it's maybe not a sensationalist as we think it is.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think the moniker of Doctor Death helped
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: really elevate this into the national sort of zeitgeist and consciousness.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: But it really was, for better or for worse, more
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: mundane than it sort of felt like it probably was. Sure,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: obviously when we're talking about life and death, those are
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: serious things, but there was just a lot more nuance
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  Speaker 1: to this then people wanted to paint it with a
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: broad brush, and there was more nuance to it than that.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: I think we're good to transition to getting into the
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: background of this character, though.
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  Speaker 3: You think, yeah, yeah, let's go ahead and do it. So.
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  Speaker 2: Doctor Murrad Jacob or Jack Kuworkian was born in nineteen
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  Speaker 2: twenty eight in Pontiac, Michigan, to Armenian immigrants. His parents
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  Speaker 2: actually fled the armeny In genocide of nineteen fifteen and
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: found their way to the United States in the early
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: nineteen hundred, so he's a first generation US citizen and
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: his family from Armenian immigrants.
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  Speaker 1: So kuvorkiad here. He was considered a child prodigy. He
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  Speaker 1: demonstrated the ability to learn very quickly. He spoke five languages,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: including German, Russian, Greek, and Japanese obviously English. He was
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: raised in a strict religious household, where he often found
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: himself struggling with the Christian belief systems in general, which
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  Speaker 1: I can relate to.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
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  Speaker 2: He eventually graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: and ann arbor I received training in anatomical and clinical pathology,
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  Speaker 2: and shortly after he began practicing as a physician and
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: spent much of his time working with terminally ill patients.
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  Speaker 2: That's going to be critically important as we go. By
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  Speaker 2: nature of study. He was a pathologist, and so he
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: did practice as a physician underneath that, but his specialty
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  Speaker 2: was pathology.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, And yeah, the fact that he's around people that
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  Speaker 1: he was frequently watching them make painful and sometimes slow,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: prolonged transitions to end of life, and that that was
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: something you just kind of were there for and they
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: maybe was providing palliative care. But that was just sort
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: of the context in which he had a lot of
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: his experiences in sort of a medical practice setting, he
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: was no stranger to controversy in his career. He left
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: the University of Michigan after he proposed that prisoners who
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: were given the death sentence should be able to voluntarily
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: elect to join medical experimentation as a form of execution
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  Speaker 1: called terminal human experimentation. His employers asked him to discontinue
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: advocating for such a concept, but he chose to leave
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: rather than be silenced on this fact.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: I could see where he's coming from.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: And I think we made our position generally fairly clear
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: on this show that we are just against the killing
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: of other humans, particularly when it is because we're going
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: to be getting into this like end of life caret
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: and I think think there's a lot of nuance there.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: But like we're talking about like as a form of punishment,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: as a way of like addressing challenging behaviors in conflict,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: we are vehemently anti killing humans on this show. And
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: that's not even to say that we're going to be
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: pro anything that doctor Kavorkian was advocating for doing here,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: but just to say that, like, if he's like, well,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: these are prisoners who are going to be put to death.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: We can use this as an opportunity to practice this
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: end of life thing with them. I would be like, well,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: let's not put them to death. And but you know,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: I think he wasn't doing it out of malice.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: No, I don't think he was doing any of this
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: out of malice. Like a lot of the discussions around
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: death and dying and all the things that kind of
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: come up in his kind of orbit. You know, part
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: of his proposals when he was talking about this type
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: of thing with experimentation was harvesting organs from inmates following
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: the death penalty, following like after they've been put to death.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: But every time he would contact the prison or any
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: of the officials, they actually declined to cooperate. So like
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: whenever somebody would be put to death, they would never
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: they would never contact him, they wouldn't deal with them,
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: They wouldn't they wouldn't collaborate with him. So what we
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: were finding, What he was finding was that people were
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: being put to death and then they in useful organ
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: tissue was not being harvested that could save somebody's life.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: So he had he had a real problem with that.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Got you, okay, one day, I think we probably should
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: do a relatively in depth reveal, like discussion about the
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: death penalty, about the components of the controversy of it,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: the issues with it, and generally how it is just
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: a terrible thing.
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: I think we're both of the same opinion that we
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: were anti death penalty. Yes, like anti capitol bunch meant
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: great perfect. So anyway, that's just a thing I think
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: we might want to take on at some point.
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So back to doctor Kreworky, and I kind of
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: thinking about this too, Like it is around this time
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: that he is proposing this terminal human experimentation and stuff
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: like that, he is already expressing a high interest in
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: death and dying and all those things. And this is
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: where he gets his nickname doctor Death. Like this is
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: where his cohort, his peers, everybody starts calling him doctor
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: Death because he's not obsessed, but he is at least
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: like this has become a special interest for him, and
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: he has definitely like kind of spent this.
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: This is turning into a life's work for him.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, where he has his experience, it's where he
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: is like familiar with the processes that are involved. And
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: I think just became increasingly comfortable with it and like
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: probably would just found himself more and more making peace
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: with what this entailed. And in many ways, as we'll see,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: he seen it as being compassionate. But during his work
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: at Pontiac General Hospital, he developed a procedure to transfuse
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: blood from very recently deceased patients into living patients and
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: to do so successfully with great success. Yeah, he found
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: this to be of possible interest to the US military,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: but he didn't really get any traction for his idea. Again,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: there's just I think a lot of distaste around the
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: idea of I guess doing anything adverse to someone who's
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: already in the end stages of life.
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: I can appreciate.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: So his proposal was that he like if they were
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: wounded soldiers, recently wounded or like, like recently wounded soldiers
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: on the battlefield and needed blood transfusions but blood was
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: not available that they could get them from recently deceased
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: soldiers that were already on the battlefield, that they were
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: able to recover.
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: So like, so it was like a practice.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: It was actually like a practical application in an unfortunate situation. Like, yeah,
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: it's still war and it's really terrible, but like it
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: was one of those things where there was like an
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: actual like he was coming from it from a practical
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: standpoint of like saving lives, not desecrating the dead.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: It's interesting too, because you think, like we they use
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: cadavers regularly, and everyone seems okay with that, but there's
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: something about blood that feels like maybe that's uh, they
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: feel like that's a line crossed or something.
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: I feel like when people talk about blood they get
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: the same feeling that they get when you hear about ads,
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: or you just get like the hebgb's you're like, ooh,
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: you know, we're back and we're talking about doctor Gregorkian
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: right now. At this point in time, he has been
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: developing a special interest around death and dying and kind
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: of like he's working with terminally ill patients. He's tried
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: to work with the US military. They're not particularly interested.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: He's been fired from his jobs or been released from
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: his jobs because he won't stop advocating for different things.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: But he actually struggled to maintain employment throughout the mid
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: sixties and seventies. So he's a trained professional, but because
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: of his views and because he's very outspoken, and he's writing.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: When he's writing stuff about like things like the military
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: blood transfer usions and terminal human experiments, he's writing about
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: them in research journals. These are not like blogs. These
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: are like actual and actually in research journals is like
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: proposed theoretical philosophical discussions.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so he tries to open a clinic. It ends
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: up failing.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: He felt like he was like and this is actually
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: something he reported a lot. He was unable to connect
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: with his peers in the field due to his ideas.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Nobody he was kind of like very nuclear. Nobody really
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: wanted to work with him, and he was being described
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: as radical in the field as a result of those
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: kind of thoughts and those things that we talked about.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: But in nineteen eighty two, he was homeless and barely
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: making it by using Social Security income. So he's a
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: trained physician with these ideas. He trained at like a
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: prestigious medical school, and he is living out of his
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: car and he is living on social Security income because
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: he has he just doesn't have a career at this
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: point in time.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Wow, that is a wow, right, So Okay, So in
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: the early nineteen eighties he began exploring the idea of death.
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: Counts, those kind of it. Yeah, that's what he called it.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, his name for it and the ethics of
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: euthanasia and humans. Around nineteen eighty six, he learned that
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: doctors and the Netherlands were helping people upon their request
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: to die bi lethal injection. This sparked his interest in
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: assisted suicide and resulted in a set of new articles
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: discussing the benefits and ethics of euthanasia selected by the patient.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: In terminally ill patients and I mean most people I
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: think who listen to a podcast of this nature is
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: going to know what the word terminally ill means. But
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: we're talking about people who, as far as medical professionals
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: can tell, they are at their end of life stages.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: They have an illness that they cannot come back from
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: some kind of injury or disease or whatever malady, and
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: that they will pass from this disease in not to
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: long period of time. And often people where we can
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: project the timeline of their mortality fairly accurately because of
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: diseases of this nature, we also kind of know how
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: bad it can be and how much suffering they may experience,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: where they are just in constant pain, they can't communicate
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: in many cases, so they can't share anything with loved ones,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: loved ones can't really interact with them.
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: And there are.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Definitely those who have argued that in those circumstances it
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: is more compassionate to take that pain away by ending
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: that person's life if they have no chance of recovery.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: And therein lies some of the controversy is like there
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: have been people who sort of came back from what
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: looked like terminal illnesses and had they not been given
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: that chance, then they would have been prematurely killed.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and well, and will definitely unpack some of that too,
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: because that's gonna be some of the unique nuance of this.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: So at this stage, during the stage in his career,
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: he actually like as he's interested in this, and he
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: starts to kind of think about, like this his death
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: counseling piece. He developed something called the Thanatatron thha N
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: A t r O N and he makes it out
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: of forty five dollars materials, and what it is is
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: essentially this is his first device. This is the device
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: that he uses for the assistant suicide work that he does.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: So it includes three bottles that are delivered in successive
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: doses of fluids. So first the person gets saline, and
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: then they get a painkiller, and then they get potassium chloride,
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: which at the prescribed dose that he was looking at
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: was fatal. It is lethal. So at this point in time,
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: he gets you get saline to fleshow.
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to tell you what that dose is. Yeah, yeah,
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: we're not going to tell you what that dose is.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: I'm sure you'll be able to find it if you
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: wanted to, but we do not recommend looking at it.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: The device allowed patients to administer the fluids themselves. And
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: this is super important to know, is like this device
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: was designed, he was not administering these medications. He was
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: a doctor who had access to the prescriptions and he
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: when people would request this and he would counsel them,
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: he would get these prescriptions and he would set up
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: the device. But the person at the center of it,
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: the person who is choosing and electing to use the device,
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: is pressing the button, they're pulling the levers, they're doing
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: all that. He never in this circumstance, he never administers
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: the medications.
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: Here.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Wow, you can see where he's coming from. Like he
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: is trying to do this the compassion away and put
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: all of the choice in the hands of the patient,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: where they do not have anything forced upon them that
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: they did not choose themselves. Right now, as a quick
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: side note on here, you hear thanata tron and maybe
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: you hear the root words of this, but this essentially
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: translates to instrument of death. In ancient Greek, Thanatos is
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: the Greek personification of peaceful death and is described as
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: a winged, darkly dressed man. He is the son of
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Nix Knight and Erebus Darkness. His twin brother is Hypnos Sleep.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: His siblings, the Kiris, are personifications of violent death. But yeah,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: I think tron is like machine. Yeah, and then or
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: some kind of like mechanical device. And then Thanato is
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: meaning death, so essentially death machine.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: And I think fitting that he named it after the
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: personification of peaceful death, right like so, Thanatos is the
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: personification of peaceful death, not violent death.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: Which was the Keras, which were his other siblings peaceful
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: death machine, peaceful death machine.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: I did include a picture, and I did show this
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: to Abraham the last time we were talking, because I
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: thought this picture is so interesting because it's it's a
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: picture of the device, and it's basically to describe it,
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: there's a metal box in the bottom with like these
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: like struts that are kind of like almost like like legs,
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: like how you would see like in a like to
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: kind of like hold or steady the box. And then
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: there is what you can describe as like kind of
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: like an arch or like a handle almost like a
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: monkey bar type of situation where there are three bottles
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: or piece of medical equipment hanging from them so that
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: gravity basically pulls the the fluids out of the bottles. Right,
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: But the picture is him showing the device, and he
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: is I'm so happy about it, Like he is gritting,
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: like he just opened a PlayStation on Christmas, Like he
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: is so excited about it. And it's just an interesting
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: photo to It's like such a juxtaposition, right of like
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: this guy who like seems happy and proud and all
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: this and then a device that is specifically used to
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: help people pass. So it's just a really interesting photo.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: So we'll make sure to share it too.
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: Yes, for sure.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know how to segue appropriately, So here's an ad. Okay,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: we are back. Doctor Kavorkian has invented his death machine.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Which is to say, a peaceful death machine. Yeah, his
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: instrument to facilitate suicide by putting the choice in the
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: hands of the patient. So we can now get into
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: sort of the timeline of events here a bit.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: So.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: His first assisted suicide patient was a woman named Janet
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: Adkins in nineteen ninety. She was a fifty four year
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: old and one of his Alzheimer's patients in Michigan.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: Wow, that is young. Yeah.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Prior to her diagnosis, she belongs to a group called
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: the Hemlock Society, which is an organization that advocates for
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: end of life choices through right to die legislation and policies,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: and Adkins specifically sought out practitioners once she received her
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: diagnosis so she could make an end of life decision
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: prior to the disease taking full effect. I'm not going
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: to try and advocate that people be not have these
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: beliefs or not try and have these choices, but I
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: do think that, like, in my opinion, it would be
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: ideal to try and provide as much support as possible
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: so that people can Like, having Alzheimer's doesn't mean that
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: your life is over. Like, there are a lot of
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: people who are working to provide assistance and support into
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: communities of people with Alzheimer's so that they can have
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: the most comfortable and fulfilling life possible post disease in
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Alzheimer's is a terrible disease, and we should definitely talk
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: about it at some point, But like, I understand the
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: fear of it, but like, there are a lot of
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: people who really try to care for and give meaningful
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: lives to people who suffer with that, and I'm very
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: appreciative of the fact that those communities exist. And again
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: that's not to say that I want to suggest there
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: shouldn't be people who have support for like right today
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: policies and legislation, but I do think it's worth considering that, Like,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: if the difference is that you just don't have enough support, like,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: then let's just provide that support. I'd rather you have
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: the life that you can possibly have and not feel
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: like you don't have a choice.
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's fair.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: And I think the other side too, is that you know,
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: when we're talking about this particular episode or this incident,
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: this is from nineteen ninety, right, so this is thirty
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: six years ago, where like our medicine has advanced too,
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: So like I think that that context is also really important,
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: because I mean not to say that there weren't treatments
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: and there weren't care facilities and things back then as well.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: I think that just the care is advanced, right, And
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: that's just kind of what happens, yeah, a lot over
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: and that's what happens over a timeline. So just to
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: kind of go back to the scenario, Janet Atkins is diagnosed.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: She is has made a decision with support from the
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: Hemlock Society, and we'll talk about why it's called the
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: Hemlock Society later or like why Hemlock is such a
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: big deal here. So she finds doctor Givorkian and goes,
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: this is the guy, he will help me. This first
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: administration of the use of the thanatron and with doctor
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Givorkian in this assistant suicide space took place in a
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: public park in doctor Kivorkian's VW Van. Okay, so this
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: should give you pause to kind of go, Okay, he's
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: got a mobile facility. That's maybe a concern right now.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: She passed within five minutes of the administration though, so
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: she passed very rapidly as a result of this device.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: And this was the first time, the first administration, the
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: first the first time this's worked in doctor Givorchian's Doctor
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: Kivorkians essentially his patient zero for this, this whole career
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: that he's about to take off.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: Wow, I don't know how you explain to like cops
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: who show up and the like, I know you had
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: parked of this van for a long time. What do
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: you got going on in Yeah, it's just a dead body.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: You're like, no, no, she asked me to do it.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he goes she did it. Yeah, Yeah, she
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: did it. She did it, not me.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: And as you imagine, the fallout from this event was
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: swift and.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: Intense.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was immediately charged with murder, though the charges
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: were dismissed due to a lack of legal precedence related
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: to assisted suicide, Like they didn't have any laws to
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: turn to. We didn't have laws about assisted suicide. At
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: this point, his medical license was suspended in Michigan, which
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: ultimately limited his access to the necessary drugs to use
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: in the Thanata tron, and this led to the development
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: of Mercatron, which developed carbon monoxide through a gas mask
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: instead of the fluids in the Thanatatron, which I feel
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: like would maybe be slightly less comfortable.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Also, I will say like he's not very good at
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: naming things. To be fair, I think down from the Natatron,
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: I think the Natatron has like a nice ring to it.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: The Mrs Trons feels like CARNIVALI fair.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe also something from Transformers.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: Yes, yes, exactly.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: So I think an important point though, like he was
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: not charged with this right, so like this is at
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: this point in time, there is no legal precedent for.
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: What he did.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is confusing for people in the legal space,
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: especially when it comes to people dying.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: And she pulled the trigger, you know. So it's like
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: his active involvement was supplying the equipment, but she was
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: the one who did the deed, so to speak.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: And that's why they were able to suspend his medical
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: license is because of that right, because he did provide
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: the material. So now going forward, Gavorkin was charged the
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: following year once Michigan passed law's outlaw assisted suicide. So
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: he actually as a result of this event, had they
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: had to make legislation to catch up with what he
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: was doing. So he was jailed twice, but he was
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: never charged in those those other crimes because the administration
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: of the medication was based on the quote intent to
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: relieve pain and suffering. So he felt there's a loophole.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: There's a loophole in the legislation that said, because the materials,
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: all that stuff, because it was it was provided under
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: the intent to relieve pain and suffering, they couldn't charge
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: him for homicide, murder or manslaughter or anything like that.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: Wow, I know, super interesting.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: I can imagine though, that law was probably written well
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: before because of people who when in their attempt to
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: like let's say, just for example, you had a patient
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: who was in a lot of pain and you provided
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: morphine and they were still in pain, so you provided
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: morphine and they were still in pain, so you provided
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: more and morphine, right, and eventually it reaches a critical
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: mass and they pass. All you're doing is, the doctor,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: is to try and relieve pain, right, and so, like,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: long before any of this was happening, it was relevant
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: that patients would pass during medical procedures, with doctors doing
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: their best effort to make sure that they didn't pass,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: and often in the space that they were simply trying
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: to relieve them of their pain and suffering, and so
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: laws protected them from that because you could see people
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: getting frustrated and they lose loved ones, and the doctors
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: were like, I was just trying to, you know, alleviate
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: their pain and suffering.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Anyway, all that being said, that's essentially the precedent here.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: He did continue to help patients despite these charges and
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: attempts to jail him. In nineteen ninety eight, he even
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: taped a session with Thomas Yuke, who had elected to
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: receive assisted suicide after suffering from lou Gerrigg's disease also
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: known as ALS, very different from asl YEP, another really
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: horrible disease that is quite unfortunate.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, so this scenario is different. Was this tape
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: was actually aired on sixty minutes, so they actually aired
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: this treatment on.
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: TV WOW, so which is why wow.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: And he was eventually as a result of this tape
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: and this airing, he was brought up on second degree
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: murder charges, where he was found guilty for Thomas Yuke's
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: murder for his homicide and served eight years in prison.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: He had been sentenced to twenty five but was released
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: conditionally on good behavior. So he was released on the behavior.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: As a result of this, they did finally catch up
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: with him, they did finally charge him. But here's why
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: they charged him. The reason that Thomas Yuke's case was
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: different than every other case was because in the video,
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: doctor Kavorkian is actively administering the lethal dose so he
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: is the one that administers it in this scenario, not
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: Thomas in his and making that decision on his own,
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: and every other case, the person electing assistant suicide administered
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: the drugs themselves, which is actually current practice in some
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: places as far as like the law stand. And that's
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: what they were able to charge him on is because
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: he administered the dose, not Thomas got it.
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, and that did.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, as we sort of mentioned the legal president before,
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: where it was murky, was because he was all he
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: did was supply the equipment. But right once he was
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: the one pushing the plunger. Then the everybody else, like
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: lawyers who were just frothing at the mouth, were like,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: we got him.
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: That's yeah, that's exactly what happened. That's exactly what happened.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: So we're sort of covering the timeline here of his life.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: On June third, twenty eleven, He died at the age
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: of eighty three as a result of kidney and heart problems.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: At the time of his death, he had assisted with
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: at least one hundred and thirty patients between nineteen ninety
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: and nineteen ninety eight using his assisted suicide techniques. That
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: was sort of the overall counts there. I am guessing
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: he did not have the opportunity to die by assisted
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: suicide in his medical condition, but that would have been
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: interesting had he chosen that.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that didn't come up in my research. It
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: maybe out there, but I didn't see. I didn't see
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: how that happened. I think he I think he passed.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: I don't know that he made that choice though. Gotcha
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: all that to say, We've got doctor.
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: Gregork in here.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: That's his life, that's the guy that kind of started
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: this discussion, And I think it's really important to kind
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: of take this and go go a little bit further,
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: right because, like, while his story is pretty linear, which
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: is went to school, he's had, you know, his troubles
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: and relationship troubles and whatever. He's interested in death and
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: all that stuff. Ultimately, the crux, the core, like the
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: critical feature, the central feature of this story is this
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: conversation about assistant suicide, and we'll talk about that. So
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: I think we're gonna take a quick gab break just
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: to fill your ears with some respite, and then we're
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: gonna really unpack what assistant suicide means and kind of
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: like current current terminology and stats and stuff like that.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: All right, we are back. And Yeah, as you said,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: doctor Gevorkian's story is interesting because of the topic of
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: assistant suicide, I mean interesting, provocative maybe.
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: The reason that his story was told and made the
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: news was because it was rooted inside of this nebulous,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: sort of gray area that people hadn't necessarily thought a
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: whole lot about because there were very few laws about
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: it at the time, and like murder was clear and straightforward,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: simply dying was fairly clear and straightforward.
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And for a while, before.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: The government had a monopoly on violence, there was this
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: sort of do it yourself justice system in the old
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: Western the United States, where shooting someone for offending you
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: was kind of like, well, shouldn't offend people then type
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: of reaction. Sure, at this point in history, we're getting
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: to the part where like people who are as far
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: as we can tell, in the service of compassionate care,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: attempting to relieve pain and suffering, and so that's the
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: sort of assisted suicide aspect of it.
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: Let's unpack this a little bit though.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: So the central feature of the story, like I mentioned,
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: or the primary diliver, boils down to the concept of
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: assistant suicide. So are to define our terms and to
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: understand what it is. Assistant suicide refers to suicide effective
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: in the assistance of another person, especially the taking of
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: lethal drugs provided by doctor for the purpose by a
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: patient with terminal illness or in cure condition. So essentially
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: it's just saying this person has elected, under these conditions
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: to choose how their life ends, and as a result,
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: you've got this assistant suicide discussion that's come up.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: Yes, man, this does get There's so much complication and
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: nuance here too. It assumes, at least to a point,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: people have competence and understanding to make an informed decision,
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: and that it's not something that I think is even
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: necessarily recommended, but is potentially made available upon request. Should
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: somebody be seeking relief from their pain and suffering by
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: I guess requesting that their life be ended, Right, So
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: this concept falls in line with that right to die
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: view that we described earlier, which advocates for a person
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: to refuse measures intended to prolong someone's life when they
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: are terminally ill or commatose. That is something I also
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: have been directly adjacent too, I guess is somebody who
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: essentially wanted to die and didn't ask for help with suicide,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: but then refused all medical treatment. And a doctor really
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: can't force someone to take a treatment that would save
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: their lives if that person is refusing it.
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: Right, they just can't.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: And I mean, like and many ways I think we
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: just don't want them to, but they can't do that.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: And so that's another sort of tricky part here, is like,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: is it assisted suicide if you don't help when you could,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: if you can't help because they won't let you, right right,
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: And therein lies the conundrum. But anyway, the idea here
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: with this right to die of you is that a
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: person should have ethical and legal responsibility to make autonomous
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: decisions about their end of life and their end of
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: life care.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, Now, the concept of assistant suicide has been
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: a long standing practices and not something that just started
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: to emerge in the eighties. And nineties with doctor cavortis
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: to something that's been around for a very long time.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: Some accounts go so far as they go back as
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: far as three hundred ninety on BCE and a lot
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: of times in the like what the first documented account,
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: they found that suicide and the assistant suicide was actually
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: like accepted and was often assisted with hemlock. Hence the
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: Hemlock Society. Right, so, like a legal dose of hemlock
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: would would be used in those situations. As Christianity began
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: to take hold, though, suicidality was condemned as a violation
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: of religious doctrine, so it wasn't really until Christianity showed
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: up that they were like, oh this is bad.
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah you no no, no, no, no, no, no no.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: No, and started wagging their fingers at people, right.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which is confusing for the amount of violence and
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: death that they caused in so many places, but.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: Right right, yeah, the guy's coming out of the crusades
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: going no.
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: No, no, no no no, you don't do that yourself. I
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: kill you. You don't kill you. We do that. Yeah, yeah,
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: we are.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: The death machine. You don't make choices, We kill you.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: And like the witch trials and the fact that the
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: most conservative places are the most religious have the most
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: capital punishments. It is a weird, wild conundrum there.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you get whiplash from snapping your head back and
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: forth between those two views.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, incongruent is what I shall call it.
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: Okay, so that's a nice word.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: So in eighteen eighty five that saw the first proposal
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: to use a voluntary euthanasia practice and a medical practice
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: in the United States, and this followed accounts of assisted
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: dying methods where folks would go around and pull on
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: the legs of hangs people who hadn't immediately died to
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: help them accelerate the process.
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: Gross, but okay, So apparently you've got people hanging in
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: the gallows and you're like, if they had fallen, their
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: neck didn't break and they didn't suffocate yet, Like, let's
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: just cut pull them down harder so it cuts off
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: the airway so that they definitely die.
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: That was written in a newspaper article talking about how
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: that was like oftentimes a request from the prisoners and
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: the gallows because they were like, I don't want to
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: suffer up there.
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I want this to be quick.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: So like they would actually request people doing that to
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: like go and like pull on their.
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: Legs to make that a little bit quicker. Oh what
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: a horrible thing. Yeah, And just that's in the late
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: eighteen hundreds. Yeah.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: So in nineteen oh six, two bills were introduced in
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: Ohio and in Iowa, and they were called the Chloroform Bills.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: And these two bills were aimed at legalizing euthanasia and
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: medical aid in dying, and specifically, the term medical aid
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: and dying is going to come up a couple times
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: because that's going to be kind of the more the
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: more current term than assistant suicide. These two bills were proposed,
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: both failed. People were absolutely not having that, and part
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: of that was because doctors were finding new drugs and
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: new ways to help people peacefully fall asleep and their
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: own lives.
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: Right then.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: The first successful law to be passed, so these ones
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: failed in nineteen oh six, but the one that did
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: succeed was the Death with Dignity Act in Oregon in
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, not taking effect until nineteen ninety seven,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: but that was the general idea of that law.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: So the reason that the organ law that that's with
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: the the act took so long is because in nineteen
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: ninety four it was passed, but it got challenged in
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: court quite.
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: A few times. Oh okay, yeah, so it took.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: A little bit for for everybody to got to go
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: like it's fine. Now, laws that do exist for medical
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: aid in dying or assisted suicide have specific qualifications that
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: need to be met. So this is not just that
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: anybody can go, I want to do this. There are
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: four things that have to happen. The person has to
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: have a terminal illness that is incurable. And most laws
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: right now say that the person has to be they've
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: been given a prognosis of like six months, like they
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: are not going to make it past six months guaranteed,
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: right Some go up to a year, but most say
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: six months. So they have to have a terminal illness
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: that's incurable and resistant to treatment. And they have to
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: be of sound mind. So they have to be able
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: to And this goes back to Janet Atkins and in
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: the first Kvorkian case, where if she elected to choose
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: to do this, she was able to competently make that
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: decision and multiple times express that will.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think you imagine someone who is maybe comatose,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: who doesn't have a very good prognosis. If they can't
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: advocate for themselves, then they are not a candidate for
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: this right. If there is someone who had significant brain
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: damage or has some kind of mental disability or something like,
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: they also may not be able to understand what is
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: being offered to them and make an intentional choice within
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: like a clear understanding of the implications of that choice.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: So that's why that part is like a baked right
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: into it as well. They also specifically will include the
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: requirement that the patient voluntarily and repeatedly express their wish
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: to die. If they're changing their mind, then like it's
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: a no. It's either a hard yes or.
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: It's a no.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: Anything but a hard yes is a no, A maybe yeah, no, yes,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: I'm not so sure. No, I don't really think so, No,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: I do think so, I'm not so sure again. No,
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: Like there is just no lawfle like it is either
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: you are firmly in that camp or you are a no.
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: And even the people that are firmly in that camp
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: still make a decision at the end. So we'll talk
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: about that, right. So the final condition is that they
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: take the specified lethal dose by their own hand, and
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: this is largely because in medical profession specifically, they take
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: the hippocritic oath and they cannot be responsible for someone
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: for helping someone die in that space for the same
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: reason that like the death penalty is never administered by
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: a medical doctor or medical professional, it's always somebody who
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: is trained, but not somebody who has taken the hippocritic
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: oath and belongs to that group.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: Aside from again, sometimes the alleviation of pain does result
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: in death in some cases, right, but again it is
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: gray area, but the intention is to just make them
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: more comfortable, which sometimes results in death, and sometimes the
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: doctors know that that is a risk, but they're like,
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: let's just make you us comfort as we possibly can.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: Right for those people who are following, This exact scenario
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: is depicted in the season two of The Pit. Not
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: to spoil a big spoiler, I guess, but they handle
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: I think very well. And I think it is again complicated,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: nuanced and interesting topic in of it in and of itself,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: and yeah, what a good show. I don't know if
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: we've recommended that before, but oh my god, what a
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: good show.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: I think we've talked about it, and I it's on
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: my list because I heard it's really good.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: Oh man, Okay, Season two is about to rap at
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: the time that we're recording.
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: This, so okay, okay, we're close. You're close, all right.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: Some argue that assisted suicide and Kavorkian's work is actually
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: not assisted suicide, but is something they're calling instead medical aid.
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: In dying or made maid. Huh.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: The preferred name aligns closer with the legal precedents set
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: in place and attempts to remove the stigma that often
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: comes with the term suicide. And again they're trying to
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: really the emphasis on the fact that dying is happening
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: and the medical professional is helping to What's what I'm
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: looking for here, like assist you know, yeah, facilitating the process?
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: I guess, yeah. Yeah.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: There's something really interesting about I mean, this is a
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: meditation on language, right, like a suicide medical aid.
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: And dying like it is.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: It is a very like you've mentioned at the top
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: of the show, it's a very nuanced discussion, and it's
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: a very complex discussion, and it is a meditation on language,
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: on like what is the preferred nomenclature for something like
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: this that is ultimately going to be compassionate and result
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: in dignity, but also make sure that the person is not,
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: like you mentioned, waffling back and forth, Like it is
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: an incredibly complex space to be in, Like it's not
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: as easy as going.
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: This person has they just chose this, so it's fine.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: It's like I've worked with people who are of not
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: sound in mind, not not of sound in mind, sound
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: not of sound mind. That's I'm trying to say, they
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: were not of sound mind, and I've heard them try
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: to make decisions like this and there's just no way
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: that would have been ethical or legally responsible.
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah it's so complex. Yeah, yeah, it really is.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: So someone choosing this may either just pills or powders,
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: or take the dose intravenously, or use an inhalent, which
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: has been used in a few cases of Switzerland. So
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: there are some different things. It's actually, in some ways
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: it's not that easy to kill a person, like you
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: kind of got to you kind of work, you gotta
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: work for it. It does feel like sometimes it's easier
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: than others, but like it's not really that easy to
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: kill people. I think mentally the experience and then also
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: the fact that our bodies are trying really hard to
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: stay alive. Yes, so like, yes, are the rest of
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: our biology. It's basically its only job is to keep
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: us alive indefinitely until it fails, you know, right, so
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: or you know, like an autoimmune disease that attacks itself,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: but that's it's yeah.
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So for pills and injections, generally, medical providers will
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: use propofol, mesdazolium, a roch uranium, or like a variety
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: of barbituates. It's basically stuff that like for the sedative
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: effects that they're looking for, but they just they do
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: it to a level that will eventually like stop because
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: part of the reason these drugs work the way they
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: do is because they suppress your respiratory system. And so
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: like once you are like unconscious, you're what ends up
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: happening is you're you stop breathing, right, And that's just
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: that's essentially the way that those work.
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: The brain doesn't last very long without oxygen, so it's yeah,
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: it's essentially like asphyxiation, which is quick, yeah, fairly quick,
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: not immediate, but it is. It doesn't take very long,
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: like when your brain stops getting oxygen. It's it's sort
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: of akin to having a stroke in a way. Yeah, anyway,
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: we don't need to get into that. Okay, we're at
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: the home stretch here, but that does mean that we
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: have to play more ads and so we will be
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: right back. Sounds good, Okay, we're back. We've been talking
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: about the assistant suicide or medical aid in dying.
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: Currently.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of places in the world where
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: this is allowed. So it's legal in Australia, Austria. This
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: is alphabetical, by the way, Belgium, Canada, China, Columbia, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands,
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, South Africa, Switzerland, United Kingdom,
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: and Uruguay. I tried to read that with as much
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: dynamic like as I could, like it was, I'm just
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: listing countries, but those are the places.
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting to find that it's it's not just
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: like a uniquely United States thing. Right now in the US,
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: it is currently legal in Oregon, Washington, Montana, Vermont, California, Colorado, Hawaiian,
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: New Jersey, Maine, New Mexico, Delaware, Illinois, and New York.
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: Most of this legislation has taken place in the last
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: twenty years, Oregon being the first one in nine teen
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: ninety seven officially, but the rest of them have taken
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: place in the last twenty years in Illinois and New
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: York are the most recent editions as.
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: Of twenty twenty six. Wow, so like.
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: That's that's how recent this legislation is being passed now.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: Florida has explicitly written laws to prevent this from ever happening,
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: and they go so far as to in the legislation call.
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: It self murder.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: So they there are stories of people who like will
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: commit suicide or like they will end their own life,
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: and then the family is responsible for whatever damages that
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: person has caused because it falls under self murder. So
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: like if somebody jumps in front of a train, the
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: family is responsible for the repairs on the train and
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: stuff like that.
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: Wow, unbelievable.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: It is kind of ironic that the places where capital
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: of punishment is the most prevalent and used the most
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: are the places where like this would not be available.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: Right again, murders by state, okay, murder by choice not okay.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: I mean death by chase r not okay. Right, And
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: they're the ones who say they don't want big government.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: They're like, we only want the government to kill people, right.
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: It's so bizarre, dude, it's so bizarre.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: Anyway, So you may be listening to this and going
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: and thinking to yourself, well, what is the problem here?
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: The Heritage Foundation has four problems that they would like
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: you to know about.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, reliable source. Yeah, Heritage Foundation.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: Of course not reliable. But okay, no, let's take turns
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: Number one. Assisted suicide and dangers weak and marginalized people
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: because it pushes people toward death instead of getting them assistance.
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: Okay, not accurate, but whatever.
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: Assist The suicide changes the culture of medical practices by
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: corrupting the profession and allowing professionals to use tools of
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: healing for killing.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: As they do in capital punishment. Assisted suicide harms our
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: entire culture, specifically for family and intergenerational obligations. We will
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: begin to see older folks as burdens and advocate for
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: assisted suicide for them. That is called the slippery slope
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: logical fallacy.
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: Yes, yes it is.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: And then the last one that they have a problem
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: with is assistant suicide quote, and this is a direct quote,
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: violates human dignity and denies equality. Before the law end quote,
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: unbelievable as.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: An organization who seems to have as their mission statement
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: denying people dignity and equality before the law, it's ironic
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: that they'd have a problem with that.
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And just so we're all on the
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: same page, the Heritage Foundation is full of shit, like
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: and this is just a gateway for them to like,
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: for example, the second problem when they're professionals are using
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: the tools of healing for killing. I'm telling you that
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: is therein for changing things like abortion laws, for removing rights,
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: for doing all those things that are saying that the
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: doctors are going to make the ultimate decisions, and those
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: decisions are going to stand like they are. These are
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: the seeds that they plant for those that legislation to
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: align with that stuff and so and it's and it's
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: never based on accurate medical information.
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because there's no.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: Doctor going, oh good now I can kill people Like
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: that's not happening the way that they're saying. And the
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: argument about like intergenerational obligations, we're going to see older
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: folks as burdens, It's like, well, the burden is the
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: healthcare system that doesn't allow us for resources to take
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: care of our families. So then we have the additional
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: invisible labor of taking care of our families when they're
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: ill while having to work sixty hours a week to
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: make ends meet because capitalism has been so pervasive that
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: it has ruined everything for everybody. But that's what the
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: Heritage Foundation is aiming for, is all of that. So
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: it's just they're so fullish.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: And I also am going to say that I without
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: having evidence necessarily to back this up, I feel pretty
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: confident in my ability and general understanding of human behavior
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: and saying that most people, whether or not their laws
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: against this, would never push for assisted suicide in someone
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: because they felt like they were a burden, like a
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: family member specifically. And the people who would push for that,
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: they again, their problem existed well before and outside of
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: whether or not these laws exist, Right, So there are
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: people who fall into that spectrum who like they're like
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: ID rather than be a burden, I wish they were
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: just gone, But I'm like, that's not. That has nothing
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: to do with like whether or not this is available anywhere,
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: And the overwhelming majority of people are not going to
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: advocate for assistant suicide even if they have a family
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: member who is a burden, like right, speaking of someone
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: who has worked with a lot of families with children
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: who have profound, profound disabilities, require twenty four to seven
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: care for their entire lives and are They're expensive and
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: can be challenging and essentially mean, like your full time
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: obligation at all waking hours of the day is to
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: be a caregter for this person. There's a very hard
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: place for those people to be and they do it
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: without asking for anything, right because they're family. So like, again,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: that's a slippery slope, absolute bullshit argument that they're trying
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: to make there And then going to the very first point,
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: because this is actually aligned with something I said earlier,
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: is like, instead of getting them assistance, I do think
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: that what we should do is try and make as
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: much assistance as available as possible. I don't think this
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: pushes it toward them toward that, and I don't see
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: any evidence to suggest that this is specifically targets weak
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: or marginalized people in any way. I think this is
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: death is a universal thing. I will tell you all,
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: if you don't know already, you will die someday. I'm sorry,
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: but it's gonna happen. Like no one human has ever
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: lived more than a lifetime. So besides Highlander was high
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: Highlander who was not a human that we discovered in
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: Highland or two, so again just humans like they don't
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: get to live forever. So anyway, point being that, like
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: I think they're essentially push in incorrect arguments to try
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: and make their arguments very part for the course for
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: them anyway.
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: Well, and also the argument of assistant suicide pushes people
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: like dangerous, we can marginalize people like this is the
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: only time they ever care about that because they're not
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: doing anything to set up social programs to ensure that
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: the people are getting the assistance they need. So like
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: that they're cutting those programs or privatizing all that stuff.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: They're putting bids for contracts out for private organizations to
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: manage this type of stuff. Like this organization is talking
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: like I mean, if you're listening to this show, you
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: probably are already aware. But the Heritage Foundation is talking
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: out of two sides of their mouth like they are
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: absolutely the epitome of hypocrisy. And this is just telling
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: you exactly that.
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: The thing is you can tell that their argument doesn't
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: hold any water because there's literally no statistics or studies
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: to back up what they're saying, Like there's nothing that
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: supports what they're saying. And these are the exact types
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: of things that they're the slippery slope types of things
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: that end up with overturning abortion laws and roe versus
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: wading on. This is just another way for them to
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: kind of like start, but to set a precedent or
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: set a guideline or set a value that drives all
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: of the work that they do in lobbying in politics
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: that ends up with more conservative, more fascist types of policies.
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: And legislation that's in place like this is this.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: Is exactly the type of rhetoric that sounds very fancy
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: and is completely missing the mark one hundred times over
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: and over.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: Sorry, I just have to go back really quick because
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: I was also thinking they advocate for and ensure that
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: they pass policies that create weak and marginalized people so
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: those groups don't exist without their help. Like they create marginalization,
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: they create dependency, they create inefficient systems, and that's why
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: we have groups of people who are in danger and
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: at risk for being potentially targeted by poor outcomes, which
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: I don't think again would be unique to them in
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: the assistant suicide space.
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: But I digress. We run long.
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: We have some more science to bring to this and
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: some take on points, but we have to do an
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: ad first.
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: All right, we're back.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: Let's get into some more of the science here and
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: sort of I think where we would approach this from
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: sort of our professional perspectives.
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so behavior analysis doesn't have any articles on this
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: on assistant suicide or made at all. And as you
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: can imagine, it makes sense because death likely marks the
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: end of the analysis of the living organism's behavior. Right,
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: So like usually when somebody passes, we're not doing that
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: level of analysis unless you're working forensic behavior analysis.
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: Then there's a different conversation there, but for the most
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: different field, also an entirely different field.
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: But the conditions under which many elect to engage or
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: to enlist made are actually widely varied and complex. As
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: we mentioned before, the majority of folks who elect this
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: medical aid in dying, they are terminally ill and may
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: have no more than six months to live. So they
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: are people who are experiencing severe, significant cris not crises,
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: but like they are coming to end of life decisions,
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: and they are really complex. There's lots of complex factors
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: inside of that.
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we sometimes joke because if you are alive, you
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: are behaving, whether or not you're conscious, you're even behaving,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: and so living is behaving, and so when someone says
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: they weren't behaving, then we might jokingly respond, oh, no,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: when did they pass? Right, Because like, if you're not behaving,
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: you're no longer alive. So that's sort of the end
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: of where our field participates. But anyway, since its introduction
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety seven, Medical Assistance are Medical Aid and
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: Dying in the US has seen it confirmed twelve four
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five people successfully complete these steps. Number
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: is possibly underrepresented. There might be some people who do
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: sort of back alley versions of this, but the ones
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: that you are aware of, that's the number.
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: And only about sixty one percent of people who receive
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: their prescriptions actually fall through with the procedure. So there
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: are people who who will order it and request it
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: and get approved for it, and they are pretty consistent,
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: and because at the end of the day, like they
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: are still the ones that has like their finger on
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: the button to make the decision. There are some folks
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: that just don't do it sure, So even though they've
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: been evaluated, even though they've been approved, even though they
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: have the prescription, they still have the autonomy to decide
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: otherwise through the entire process, and that is critically important
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: for processes like this.
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: And I think it does show the importance here of
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: like if all they all they wanted was the choice,
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: and they might not choose that, And that's I think,
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: you know, the sort of the slippery slope and sort
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: of worst case scenario dooms day approach of like if
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: we allow this, everyone's going to be dying all the time.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: It was the same thing of the like, you know,
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: if we legalize weed, everyone's going to be smoking weed
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: all the time. And I'm like, it definitely became easier
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: for people. But I'm asking, like the person who's advocat
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: against us some I'm like, are you going to start
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: smoking weed.
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: If this becomes legal? Right?
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: Because is like a lot of people who don't have
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: that as a habit are unlikely to start picking that
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: up as a habit, you know.
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: What I mean?
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: Like, right, just because it's exactly and so I don't know,
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: it's I think it just it creates the worst case
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: possible scenario which is never it's always hypothetical and never real, right,
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: but all right, eighty nine percent of people who use
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: medical aid and dying are already in hospice or palliadive
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: care services. This is almost ninety percent, seventy nine almost
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: eighty percent of the people who use made are able
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: to return home and pass in their preferred place of comfort,
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: meaning that they don't use it and then return home.
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: They go home so that they can receive these Yeah, yeah,
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: aig of course, right, And this has been generally identified
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: as the preference in the United States is that they
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: can be in a place they're comfortable, surrounded by loved
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: ones at a time of their choosing.
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: And then that's sort of how that that.
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: Goes, right exactly, So as we kind of like get
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: to the end of this, this conversation for me started
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: with doctor Gavorkian, and it's hard to me it's hard
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: to say whether Kavorkian was a bad person or not,
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: because I don't I think as behavior analysts, I would
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: not say that. But morally speaking, was he right or wrong?
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: And that's I think hard to say. You could argue
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: that he could have done some things better, right, like
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: maybe like I don't know, done some legislative practices, maybe
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: like I don't know, not done it in his van,
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: Like there's some things that are maybe a concern there.
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: He could have also done a better job of confirming
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: whether or not people were terminally ill and competent to
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: give consent, Like he didn't really have a process for
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: that that was really clear spelled out, And again, hindsight
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: is twenty twenty now. Some also argue that his work
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: presented disability rights concerns, with his actions being considered as
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: by some as suggesting that some people weren't worth keeping alive.
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: But these are usually people who kind of like fall
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: on the conservative side. They're like, oh, he didn't value life,
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: And I would argue, and I think most people could
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: argue when you really understand a story, that he actually
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: valued life quite a bit and that his views were
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: more compassionate and his goal was to alleviate suffering of
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: others and that was really his primary driving value, or
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: you could make that argument. I should say his work
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: sparked a larger debate, and his example actually led to
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: the development of systematic processes and safeguards for folks seeking
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: made specifically in the form of legislation and the development
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: of those procedures for folks who were terminally ill. So
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: it's hard to say, like did he have an impact absolutely,
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: was it good or bad? I think that that's a
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: personal viewpoint per se, but I do I genuinely think
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: and kind of where I land on this is that
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: I do think that he was approaching this from a
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: compassionate and dignity based standpoint where he just wanted to
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: help people who are sick. After watching people suffer and
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: die interninally ill wards as a physician for so many years, Like,
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: I think that he truly just wanted to save as
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: many lives as he could in any way that he could,
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: and then when he could, and he wanted people to
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: be able to like pass peacefully.
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree with all that I do.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: It's I heard a debate where there were some people,
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: like in good faith, arguing for and against this idea
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: of medical aid and dying, And one of the arguments
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: that the people against it pointed out is how much
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: many people who when they have potentially attempted to end
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: things early for whatever reason, but primarily if they were
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: like had some kind of disease or whatever and were unsuccessful,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: so they actually tempted it and did not were unable
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: to complete it, that some portion of them were glad
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: that they failed and instead were happy to like they
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: were glad they got some more time afterward.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: And I think that's a compelling argument.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do think that they make the case that, like,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: and going back to the thing that said is like,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: I would feel best about this if we've done everything
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: to make people's lives as supported as they can possibly be,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: so that it's not done out of desperation, and it's
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: not done because they feel like they can't have a
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: quality of life that actually could be afforded to them
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: given the care that we could potentially provide. There are
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: going to be cases, I think, where people are like
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: actively suffering and they're just like they're miserable, they are
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: in pain, and they just like there is just no
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: hope for them, and it's hard for me to say
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: you shouldn't have relief from that pain, you know, that
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: feels really bad to me to like say like you
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: don't deserve this because I don't feel good about it, right,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: And they're like, what you feel, I'm in pain? Like
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: you don't know what this is like, right, And so
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: I can appreciate like where a lot of the people
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: who advocate for this come from on that particular topic,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: and and so I think, you know, I do it.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: It just can't be a black and white thing. And
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: I think sometimes laws are just they're too black and
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: white in the way that they're painted, and they don't
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: consider enough nuance. And I have a strong value for life,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: and I have an appreciation for the compassion of the
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: approach that was taken with these people and the idea
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: behind this and most of these advocacy groups, and like
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: I think you, I want people to have as much
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: of a life as they can possibly have where they're
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: you know, able to participate meaningfully and effectively and have
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: the support that they need and not be killed by
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: ice agents or police.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: Agreed, agreed, yeah, or killed by anybody yeah, like I
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: but especially police and ice and.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: Like state sponsoredaire.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: So I think where I would end on this too
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: is like I had a friend of mine who had
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: a loved one that was in end of life care
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: and they had elected to do this, and they said
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: it was a gift to have the opportunity to be
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: in a situation where they could be there with them
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: at a time of they're choosing by their side, they
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: knew it was going to happen, and they could prepare, Like,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: there were lots of things that were like, really pretty
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: wonderful about having that moment together, even if it was
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: the last moment they had, you know, that's their story
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: to tell. But it was one of those things where
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: like when they told me, I was like, I couldn't
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: imagine being in a situation. I could imagine if like
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: somebody I love, like really dearly decided to do that.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: I think I would honor that, but I think I
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: would have a really hard time with that. And it
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: just kind of made me reflect on that quite a bit,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: Like because I think, again, I think it's complicated. I
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: think my value is people should have a choice in
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: how they go and what that looks like and in
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: their care, and this is part of their care. I
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: think in a personal situation, I think I would have
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: a really hard time with it. Yeah, but I think
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: that's the nuance of this discussion, you know.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's because I think we are people who generally
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: love humans and have a lot of love for people
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: in our lives, and we as behaviorists value choice tremendously
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: right and those sometimes those things don't always align exactly
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: the way that we wish.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: That they did, but right exactly exactly.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, Well, we ran long, but there was a lot
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: to say about this. This is a very heavy episode.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: So if you made it all the way through it
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: with us, then thank you. I hope that you at
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: least got some kernels for thought in there. And if
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: you would like to share some of your thoughts with us,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: you should email us. You can write to us directly
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: at our email at info at WWDWWD podcast dot com,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: or reach us on the social media platforms, or if
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: you stop us in the street and tell us your
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: thoughts that's okay too, as long as we're not in
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: a big hurry, or send us a letter. I don't
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: know where to because I closed down our po box,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: but figure it out then cool. Anyway, we'd love to
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: hear your thoughts on this, And if you do enjoy
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: the show and you would like to support us, there
• 1:04:04
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• 1:04:06
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• 1:04:09
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• 1:04:12
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• 1:04:14
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• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: you leave a rating, it just be five stars. And
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• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: We don't need to.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: Leave your roots of the rocks get lost. But anyway,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: if you haven't joined us before and you're new, we
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: have some things to recommend still and we're going to
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: do that thing after some nths. Okay, we're back and
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: we do have recommendations. But I also didn't totally get
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: through all the credits because I started mentioning ways that
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: you could support us, and one of the ways you
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: can do that is to join.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: Us on Patreon.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: Yes, theario good at free content, early episodes, some other
• 1:04:53
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• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: do this. And the biggest benefit possibly is that we
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: will re your name at the end of our full
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: length episodes. Is a thank you to the people who
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: continue to support us over there, So a big shout
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: out and thank you too, Mike, m Meghan, Mike t, Justin, Kim, Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Ashley,
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: Kiara and Charlie. Thank you all so much for keeping
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: us afloat.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, y'all are just truly the best.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: My team of people helped me do this podcast writing
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: and fact checking. From Shane to myself. Thank you so
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: much for your work on the notes today and for
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: recording with me today.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: This one was a lot of fun to put together.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: Super interesting, yeah, but real thought provoking.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah for sure.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson, and our audio
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: engineer technician extraordinary Emperor Penguin is justin where's my pebble baby?
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: And so thank you to all of my team as well. Okay,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: I think we are ready for recommendations.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: Let's do it recommendations, all right. I'm gonna recommend a
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: book series.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: And I got this recommendation from a co worker and
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: then it was bolstered by you specifically, And so I
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: just finished the entire series, and that is the Silo
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: series by Hugh Howie. The books that are included in
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: this are Wool Shift and Dust. I just finished Dust
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: yesterday afternoon.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: What a great series. Ye like the twist and turns,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: you never get bored reading it. There's not like big
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: long explanations of like like how you know, like Lovecraft
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: will explain an armoir for thirty pages. Like it's nothing
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: like that, right, Like, it's it's great science fiction.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: It's post apocalyptic future.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: It's people living in these silos and Hijinks and Sue
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: and it's a it's a great it's a great read.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: I really love it. It's like one of my favorite
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: sci fi series I've ever read.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: Hijinks is a very light and fluffy way to put it.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: The Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah it is. It's depressing in some ways, it's very
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: uplifting in others. The action of the these books moves
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: at just breakneck speed. It is like things happen so fast.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: So yeah, you're right that there is never a dull moment.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: It is just go, go, go, go go, and it
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: really keeps you on the edge of your seat the
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: whole time. Yeah, but the prose is beautiful. It's possibly
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: my favorite prose of like modern authors. Yeah, just the
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: way he writes is so even though it's it's high
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: octane sort of plot developing, it's told in this beautiful,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: illustrative way. His writing is just very It really paints
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: a picture, So I think, yeah, he has some of
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: my favorite pros of like modern authors. And just the
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: way that he puts together a sentence is beautiful. Yeah.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so descriptive. It's so great.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, and like really poetic and beautiful and
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: I don't know it just like you think about a
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: sentence and like why did you choose to write it
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: that way? And like it's interesting, like it makes me
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: think of this thing that was probably an intentional choice
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: on his part, Like really fantastic writing. So second to
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: that recommendation for sure.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, all right, that's the Silo series.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: I'm recommending a TV show. It is just wrapped its
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: third season. It's a little bit related to this topic,
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: not directly in any particular way, but this is Shrinking
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: season three specifically. This is an Apple TV Plus show,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: but it's generally about some psychologists. They are cognitive behavioral psychologists, therapists,
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: and their families and their interactions with each other. It
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: is starring Harrison Ford, Jason Siegel, and then a whole
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: bunch of other actors who have Kobe Smolders is in
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: there at some point. Jeff Daniels is in there at
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: some point. So there's quite a few people in it
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: and a lot of other stars in it. Has a
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: great opening song by Death cap for CUTI nic But
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: the show is just it's very heartwarming at various points,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: it's extremely sad, but you just love the characters so much,
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: and the story is so awesome as an folds, and
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: Jason Siegal's so wonderful. He's funny, but he's also dramatic
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: and the way he carries everything is really awesome. So
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: I really couldn't recommend it enough. Actually, we had when
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: we did our episode last year with the authors of
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: the book that you helped publish. Sorry, the title, I
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: keep I mess up the title every time. Reframe I
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: want to say reframing, and I'm like, it's one of
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: the two and I'm not sure what, so reframe. They
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: recommended this as well, and I've and I hadn't at
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: that time watched it. Now I've watched all three seasons.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: But it's a phenomenal TV show. I really really strong recommend.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good stuff. I'm super stoked to I got
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: the clips. I've seen them, like, oh yeah, yeah, this
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: is this is right up my alley. I just need
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: to sit down and watch it.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely worth the time. So okay, I think that's
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: what we have to say. About shrinking and the Silo
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: book series. A lot of people sometimes think of woll
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: because it's the first one, but yes, the trilogy there,
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: and then there's another book of short story is called
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: machine Learning that has apparently three stories from this universe
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: and I haven't read them. Shane maybe has read them,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: because the series you got came with a companion book
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: with short stories related to this, So.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: Yes, it came with all of them.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: Yes, and it's uh, it's it's an interesting follow up.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: So anyway, I think that's what I have to say
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: about all of that. Is there anything I forgot you'd
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: like to add before we say goodbyes?
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: Uh?
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 3: Nope, not today. Be safe, be safe? Yes, indeed, thank
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: you all for listening. This is Abraham and this is Shane.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: We're out. See up. You've been listening to Why We
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: Do What We Do.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: You can learn more about this and other episodes by
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: going to WWD WWD.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 3: Podcast dot com.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.