The Dr. Stahl Episode

You asked for it, so here it is… the “Who is Dr. Devan Stahl” episode. We do a deep dive into the path that brought Devan to where she is today.

How did she first get interested in Bioethics?

Who were some of her most influential mentors?

What is she currently working on?

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to this episode of Bioethics for the People, the most popular podcast on the planet according to Grandma Nancy.I'm joined by my Co host Doctor Tyler Gibb, who if he weren't here recording right now, would probably be golfing.And I'm joined by my Co host Doctor Devin Stahl, who dutifully completes the same 5 New York Times Puzzles Every day test.

0:27

Test.That's awesome.Were you ever in choir?Yes, I was terrible.Yeah, you have talents elsewhere.The singing is not it.It's not.

0:44

It I was in choir and band in middle school because otherwise I had to take a study hall and I was a very poor student.So those are the options.And so I took both because they both had end of year trips.So I was I played the trumpet.

1:01

Did you know that?You seem like you would play the trumpet.I see people say that, but I don't know what that means.I was also terrible.There were like 13 of us and I was the last because I didn't practice.Last year, what do you think I played in band?

1:18

You were Piccolo.Piccolo.Oh, that would have been cool.I was not cool enough for Piccolo.What were you?I played the clarinet.Oh, so basic so.Basic.One of my kids plays the bass clarinet.What is?That's cool.Yeah.

1:33

The piccolo's like the soprano clarinet and the.Yeah, yeah, those are all kind of interesting.Clarinet adjacent but cooler for sure.Yeah.So today we're gonna do the the Devon episode as requested by the by the listeners.

1:50

It's not self indulgent.So many people have asked us how we got into bioethics and are like demanding this episode so we are reluctantly doing this.Yeah, our our first season or series or what we did at the very beginning was interviewing other bioethicists about how they got into bioethics.

2:09

And so we did get a bunch of responses from the the listeners about our story and how we got into it.So.Yeah.Well, it's worth mentioning that we did that like the first episode we ever recorded.You and I talked about how we got into bioethics and but we were like not in our groove yet, like.

2:28

And so I was editing it and I was like, this is bad, I don't want to release this.Yeah.So hopefully we do better today.Yeah, well, I mean, let's hope so.Some of those early episodes were pretty rough.I think that we were both kind of nervous about what what this was.

2:45

So, All right, so Doctor Stahl.Dr. Devin Stahl.That's me.So introduce yourself where, where are you at right now?And then we can kind of get to your story of how you got to that spot.OK, so right now I am an associate professor of bioethics and religion at Baylor University.

3:05

OK.And associate Professor, I mean, a lot of us know the different rankings, but tell us what that indicates or why is that important?It's only important because now they can't fire me without cause.Well, so you get, so you come in as an assistant professor if you're on the tenure track and people, I think people kind of understand tenure.

3:26

What people don't understand about tenure is that if you are on a tenure track and you don't get tenure, you have to leave your university.It's like a seven-year trial period and if you don't pass the bar, you don't get your tenure.

3:42

It's like a promotion.Then you have to leave and hopefully you can find a job somewhere else.But it's like, why would anyone else want to hire you?It happens all the time, but it's this like incredibly nerve wracking experience where if you don't get it, you're out, so you have to get it.So I got it great.

4:00

What that does is it creates a lot of pressure to to publish and, and to yes, within academia there's a it's, it's a pressure cooker because they're this 10 year process is really great in a lot of ways.But it also if if you don't get it and there's a lot of really qualified great people who don't get tenure for a lot of reasons that they've got no control over, it creates a lot of uncertainty.

4:23

So congratulations on that.So now you're an associate professor.That's right.Which means you can't be fired unless you do something silly.Yeah, like something really bad, yeah.What we won't ask for examples of what that would entail.You can imagine.OK.

4:38

Yeah.And so you've been at Baylor for a while.Before that you were at Michigan State and you were there for 3-4 five years ish.I can't remember.Four years, yeah.Four years, yeah.Michigan State, just up the road from us here in Kalamazoo.

4:54

And then you before that, where were you?I had graduated with you at Slew at Saint Louis University.Yeah.And we're going to do the whole trajectory backwards.We can, yeah.So Devin and I met in grad school.

5:10

We team taught a clinical ethic like intro to ethics course or taught two sessions of the same course.As I say, we didn't team teach it.I taught a class and you taught a class, but it was the same class, different sections.Right.Same syllabus and we would cover for each other and stuff like that.

5:26

And then we took a bunch of classes together and then we were writing our dissertations at the same time.Wait, did we do our, we did our oral comps at the same time as well on the same day, right?That's not, I don't remember that, but that I'm going to say yes, that sounds right, Which were, as I remember, terrible.

5:45

There's something about it's so nerve wracking to do an oral comprehensive exam.All comprehensive exams in Graduate School are tough because it's really like the bar that you have to get over before you can start writing your dissertation.But something about like standing in a room with all of your professors who can ask you absolutely anything from anything they ever taught you.

6:04

I did a lot of studying for that.That's yeah, I did too.And it was, it was stressful.I, I don't think I've ever told you this.And this is maybe more than I ought to share publicly, but the first question right off the bat, they thought they were throwing me a softball and I completely fumble it.

6:22

And I thought it was about the principle of double effect.And basically it was like, tell us what the elements are of principle of double effect.And people outside of bioethics, this may not make sense, but it's like bioethics one O 1.

6:38

And I completely blanked on it.I couldn't say it.Like I remember like our advisor who is saying he looked at me and he looked at somebody else and he was like, well, like almost like, let's start over again.And I, oh, man, I thought, I thought, I thought I'd failed.

6:56

Yeah.So anyway, we took our oral comps at the same time.We also had a joint graduation party.We did, me and you and one of our other friends, Beckett.So you and I have kind of been attached to the hip since grad school, like you said, Saint Louis University.What got you to Saint Louis University?

7:16

How'd you get there?Yeah.So I was at Vanderbilt getting a Masters of Divinity and I think I was trying to, I don't know that I at one point I was like, maybe I want to be a pastor.And I think fairly quickly decided that that was probably not for me.

7:32

And so I was thinking maybe I want to be a theology professor because I was good at school and I liked.Being good at being good at school is such a such a humble brag.Yeah, I Is it a brag?I don't know.It's like a nerdy it's like the only thing that I'm good at.

7:52

That's not true, no.You're good at lots of things.So there are definitely academics and professors who are only good at school and like, really bad at talking.But I think we're OK at talking.Yeah, that's.True.We have a podcast after all.Yeah, So I was there.

8:10

I really love the study of religion.I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do with it.I, I think I've said this on the podcast before, but I was diagnosed with Ms. in my first year at Vanderbilt and had all these medical encounters you when you're in your early 20s, typically don't go to see the doctor all that often.

8:30

And I don't think I had prior to that.I mean, I had some broken bones and some like, you know, minor things, but never any reason to spend a lot of time in a hospital or spend a lot of time with healthcare providers.So it really like radically reoriented me to my body and the healthcare system.

8:47

And I was searching for ways to make sense of those experiences.And one of the ways I did that was investing in disability scholarship.And the other way was to try to get together with folks who did work in hospitals and understand kind of their perspective on things.

9:04

And Vandy had a really cool Center for biomedical ethics that it still has.And I met our advisor, Jeff Bishop there.He was teaching at Vanderbilt when I was there.We met, we had some initial discussions.He left to go to Slough.

9:21

I decided to take a year to do CPE, which is clinical pastoral education, because while I didn't see myself as working in a church, I did think I could do chaplaincy in a hospital.That I would have liked to have a good chaplain when I was in the hospital.

9:38

That people, you know, just are in terrible straits in the hospital and need kind of spiritual comfort.And I thought that was important and I really enjoyed that.It was also part of if you want to be ordained in my tradition, you have to do a year of CPE so that you know how to visit your parishioners in the hospital, which a lot of pastors are uncomfortable with.

9:59

Is that a?Is that a unique requirement?It's not.Most denominations require some CPE, so I think it's pretty.It's not universal, but it's pretty common.And so if I run into somebody working in spiritual care or a pastor or a chaplain in a hospital, do they have to be CPE trained or is that something different or?

10:21

Most will these CAC P/E trains or the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education.There isn't a couple other credentialing bodies.But yes, if they're employed as a pastoral care chaplain, they will have and, and I had to explain this to a doc once.

10:36

He was like, oh, you went to school for this?And I was like, dude, I went to lots of school for this.So, you know, you have your undergraduate degree, you have your Mdiv, which is a three-year degree, and then you do the chaplaincy training, which is one to two years of kind of like residency.And then you you also have to be ordained by your denomination, which in my denomination is really extensive, a lot of testing and a lot of going before boards.

11:00

So it's a, it's a very extensive process of education and ordination.So yeah, the chaplains that work at hospitals have a lot of educational background that got them there.That doesn't surprise me because almost universally everyone that I've worked with has been extremely skilled in what they do like, really helpful, really thoughtful.

11:20

So.So you did that training for a year in preparation to go into grad school or I guess more grad school?Yeah, I, I mean, I don't know that I was exactly sure that I wanted to go to grad school.I had a feeling that I probably did, but yeah.And so some of it was I really like I had done some chaplaincy during seminary and I had really enjoyed it and I wanted to continue doing that.

11:43

I wanted to be paid 30 grand a year because, you know, that was big bucks after grad school, but it also afforded me a year to kind of think about what I really wanted to do.So although CPE is pretty intense, it is a full time job.So it wasn't like I had a ton of time to just sit around and contemplate my future.

12:01

But it it was at least time that wasn't directly in Graduate School thinking about the next.Step, was it the your connection with Bishop that got you interested in Slough or Slough is one of another program, other programs that you'd applied to?Yeah, so I applied to, interestingly, a bunch of theology doctoral programs and then Slough.

12:20

So Slough was the only program I applied to that wasn't a theology program.And I was and I got into a couple other schools.And so really debating, you know, do I want to go the theology route?Do I want to be an academic theologian or do I want to get more into bioethics?

12:38

I had just had a little taste of that at in seminary, really just through Jeff and and I knew I wanted to do something around disability and healthcare ethics, but I also wanted to do the theology.So I was wavering and Jeff convinced me to go to Slough.

12:55

Yeah, that you could do both.Yeah.So you can do the theology that you want to do.You have all that background.But what you don't know well, and what you won't get at these other places is all of this training in bioethics.And he was right.So I'm I'm glad he convinced me to do that.Yeah, great.

13:10

And then Slough, how long were you in Saint Louis then?So I graduated in four years.So I started in 2011.I graduated in 2015, which is like somewhat fast, faster than you for sure, because you were doing a dual program, but probably about the same amount of time as you if you combined my master's program and the PhD program.

13:34

I think people don't.Religion is one of the few fields in which you cannot go straight from undergraduate work into PhD programs.You have to have a master's degree, which makes us typically a little bit older than other PhD students.

13:50

So Slew accepts both folks are coming straight out of undergrad and folks who have had more graduate work.So I had a little bit more background than some students, but lots of students like you and others were doing these dual programs so that we had folks who were doing MD's and pH DS and J DS and pH DS.

14:11

And I'm not sure if there were any other dual programs at that time.There are lots of them now.Yeah, there's more there.There were a couple through the law school that were like JD and like an MPH or something, but maybe there was also like a master's degree in theology or maybe that came after.

14:26

Us that, that was after us, right?Yeah.So anyway, I love my time at Slew, both at the law school and then IT in the ethics department.So, so from Slew we had this banger of a graduation party and then.And it just really propelled me into well, I should also mention when I was doing CPE, I met a clinical ethicist at my hospital.

14:50

So our hospital was one of the few hospitals who was employing a full time ethicist to take all the ethics consults, which was then and now really unusual to have the funding to do that.And she was amazing.Everybody really respected her.

15:06

She was called in all the time.She was really like just, you could tell she was like commanding the room and that everybody respected the ethics recommendation she was making.And I was like, this is a, this woman is amazing and her job seems amazing.And I think that also pushed me toward healthcare ethics because I thought if there's any way I could do at least a little bit of what she's doing in my future, I would like to do that.

15:31

Yeah.And so that got you interested in clinical side of ethics.That's great.What an an amazing like mentor.I know.I know who you're referring to, and she was amazing, yeah.She recently passed away, which is sad, very sad I should say.

15:46

She recently died.We shouldn't use pass away.Scratch that out of the podcast.Edit Yep, she, she died.She was very well respected.She actually did some consulting work for the hospital that I work with now before and actually convince them that they needed to hire somebody more full time, more dedicated instead of doing a consulting process, you know, arrangement with her.

16:07

And so that's part of how I, I ended up here.But so, yeah, so you and I, so 2015 we're on the job market.You land a job at Michigan State.I end up at Western Michigan, ironically, coincidentally I guess.It's it's coincidentally, but have we said this on the podcast before?

16:25

We applied to all the same jobs.That's true, yeah.And we may have like passed each other in the airplane going to and interviewing at different places as well.So yeah, you know, the job market's no fun.It's really, really stressful.

16:42

Look at us, this whole pocket has been like, my life is so hard.It is not, my life is amazing, but it is really stressful going on these because there's so few jobs in, there's more in bioethics than in other academic fields, but it's still, it's still really hard to land a job.And, you know, we have the same credentials.

16:59

We had the same advisor.And I think my advice to anybody who's, like going through this is just be open and transparent with the other person.Like, don't do this like game of hiding where you're applying and where you're getting interviews.I think we were really upfront with each other, and that just helped.

17:17

And I knew that if you, I would have been happy for you to get a job and you would have been happy for me to get a job, even if it meant the other one didn't get that job.So yeah.But I I think that we also are probably better friends than most people who are competing for jobs.That's true.

17:33

That's true, but it was fun to be able to like text each other about almost like in prepping each other for the job interviews that we we were going to for each other.I don't know if that's some sort of breach of etiquette, but I don't.Think so.Both landed in in Michigan.

17:51

You were at Michigan State for a while.Worked with Tom Tomlinson closely.Who Really.Yeah, really great man.I I really have a lot of respect for him.And then you moved on to Baylor and.And what do you love about Baylor?

18:06

Yeah.I mean, what's cool about Baylor is so, I mean, my time at Michigan State was amazing and I had this really cool job, kind of like your job now, where I split my time between the hospital and the medical school.So I was teaching Med students, but I was also a clinical ethicist at our Community Hospital.

18:26

Technically 50% of my contract was that and we had a contract with the hospital that paid Michigan State for Tom and I services.And I just thought that was a really cool balance of being able to do research and teaching, but also be able to do the practice of clinical ethics.So I but I guess what it was missing for me was all my theology and religion background.

18:48

It just wasn't part of the curriculum.We did one lecture a year that was vaguely related to religion and spirituality, and that just wasn't enough.I didn't get all of that into my teaching in a way I would have really liked.And so when this Baylor job came around, it was they wanted a bioethicist in the religion department, which is super rare today.

19:12

And also like your dream job description, right?I mean when you sent me that posting when you were applying for it, I was like, did they read Devon CV and like craft it for Devon?Anyway, it seems like from the outside it seems like a perfect fit for.

19:27

You.Yeah, it really was.And it's funny you say that because every now and again universities do that.They actually do a target hire where they have to have a open applicant pool, but they really have already decided who they want.That was actually not the case.I didn't know anyone at Baylor.

19:43

I heard about the job because somebody I knew had a wife who worked at Baylor and heard about the job opening and thought I should apply.So it was not tailor made for me, but it felt tailor made for me.So it was really exciting and I do love it here.

20:00

And I do get to still work at the hospital.So we we have a neighboring hospital and the palliative care team was like you do clinical ethics and you want to do it for free for us.Come on down.Yeah.Yeah, it's amazing when you have a a unique set of set of really valuable skills that you're willing to offer people for free.

20:21

Yeah, you get lots of opportunities to do that.Yeah, Although, I mean, I've tried to do it with other hospitals who have said no to me.So and so it's not guaranteed.I mean, just because you have a PhD in healthcare ethics and you've practiced as a clinical ethicist for a number of years doesn't mean that it doesn't necessarily guarantee that the hospital will even let you do work for free for them.

20:42

That's true.Yep.So much of it is culture dependent on the institutions themselves.Like how much they not just value it, but how much they recognize the the need for it as well.So yeah.So at at Baylor, what kind of classes do you teach?So you're teaching undergrads is my assumption.

20:59

But I guess I don't know exactly who you teach.Yeah, I teach both undergraduates and graduate students.So we have obviously makes sense to teach undergraduate students.So I teach a upper level bioethics course for mostly seniors, juniors and seniors.And I teach an upper level disability ethics course, which I'm teaching right now, which is also a super fun course.

21:19

And then I teach bioethics to our graduate students, our PhD students.OK, PhD in religion.It's a PhD in religion.Yep.OK.So in your department, OK.And do you, do you have a lot of tell me about some creative or innovative or fun ways in which you've integrated into your teaching?

21:39

Oh, some some super fun things I do in my teaching, Yeah.Or why?Why are Why are you somebody's favorite professor?Oh, I'm everybody's favorite professor.Read my teaching evaluations.No, I'm sure I'm not everybody's favorite, but I think what my students appreciate is, especially my religion students, is that I have all this experience in healthcare.

22:00

Actually, both the religion students and I teach a lot of pre meds.The pre meds really love it too because pre meds don't actually get any medical training in undergraduate education.They have to wait till they get to Med school to really Start learning about medicine and they're like desperate to get any exposure to medicine, to the healthcare system.

22:21

They really want to know what it's like to work in a hospital.And so I think what I provide is a lot of experience and real hand accounts of what goes on in a hospital.So I think, and I think the value of that is that the first exposure they're getting really to like what it's like to work at Healthcare is through the ethics of healthcare, which I love.

22:41

And hopefully then sets them up in Med school to like ask good questions and to value kind of the ethical perspective because Med school can really beat that out of you sometimes.Oh man, I I get to teach our medical students usually within the first day or two of them starting medical school.

22:58

And that's something I try to inoculate them against.Is this is hard, right?This is going to be a difficult Rd., but it's also really important and really special that you're here.And yeah, it it's interesting to see them over the four years kind of at, at certain points lose the, the twinkle in their eye that that they had on the 1st week, but then regain it towards the end.

23:21

So you're obviously teaching, mentoring students, but doing your own research and writing, right?Yeah.And I'll say just quickly, I also just got hired at Baylor College of Medicine, who opened a new campus near us.

23:37

So I go over there and teach the medical students too.So I get to teach undergraduate students, undergraduate medical students, and graduate doctoral students in religion.And I'm a faculty member on our palliative care team.So when we get fellows, I also get to do rotations with the fellows.

23:54

So I'm I get to teach at like every level of education.That's amazing.Do you have a favorite?Do you have a favorite cohort?Absolutely not because they all listen to this podcast and so I wouldn't want to.I mean, they're, they're all so unique and I get really energized by all of them, but like, for different reasons.

24:15

Yeah.So it's like, what an honor to be able to teach at all those levels to like sort of see people's progression.Yeah, my favorite cohort to teach are retired nurses.Oh interesting.Why is that?Cause they've seen it all clinically and they've often had some sort of like nagging emotional moral quandary that they've like carried their entire career.

24:41

And being able to see them, like recognize this is what I was feeling.This is kind of the conflict that I've been then struggling with.And then see their eyes open up like, whoa there.There's like a way to process this.And and, you know, I don't know, they're also really, really nice to me.

24:59

I love that.Yeah, that's a group I don't often get to teach.That's cool.Me either, but so that's always my answer to retired nurses and then medical students.I really, I love teaching my subject to medical students because they get a lot of really intense education that's really hard and difficult and complex and a lot.

25:19

And then I get to come in every once in a while with a little bit of sprinkling of something different.And I don't know, it's like the leavening of the curriculum.I like to think of it.How's that for some religious language?I.Love it.Oh, I don't.Is there religious metaphors of leavening and bread?

25:35

I can't think.Of any maybe I made that up.No, that's a great religious metaphor.So research, I describe my research as like fitting into a couple different buckets and when they all kind of overlap, that's not a good metaphor.Buckets don't ever overlap.

25:51

If there's a Venn diagram when all these.Things slosh onto each.Other yeah, that's kind of you fill them up so much they overflow into the next.So I do work in, obviously in, in bioethics, but mostly disability bioethics.So these come from, typically come from cases.

26:09

So something will happen at the hospital and I'll say, wow, there's not a great solution to that issue that just came up or this raised all sorts of other issues for me that I think would be helpful to do more research on.And so it's, but it's usually prompted by something I see in the hospital or something I see in the news or through policy that sparks me.

26:30

And it's funny because I was just at Western at your university giving a lecture and I was and y'all wanted me to talk about disability bioethics.And I thought, OK, what?There's so much to talk about, Maybe I'll just talk about something I've recently written on.And I was like, wow, I've written a lot of disability bioethics articles of late and so I tried to sprinkle those in.

26:50

So that's been a lot of my time recently has been in that kind of bucket and I do work in disability theology, so.Disability bioethics?Like what kind of questions or topics or cases are you talking about in that bucket?So it it can be so many things because of course, disability effects people throughout the lifespan.

27:09

So it can be, you know, prenatal testing.What are we testing for?How are we communicating results?Is, you know, the the presence of or possibility of a disability always that I'm sorry you have to break this to you, but which of course primes people to think disability is bad.

27:27

It can be, you know, a newborn with a disability that might be life threatening but might not.And how the doctors think about the quality, the future quality of life of that infant.That can be true in Pediatrics.It can be, are we sometimes denying people with disabilities aggressive care and such that that would be life ending for them, which is something I've written about recently.

27:51

It can be, you know, are we denying people organs because they have disabilities, intellectual disabilities that don't actually contradict anything about receiving or flourishing with an organ.So all sorts of ways in which like disability discrimination can happen, which can happen at the very beginning of life, the very end of life, but really like anywhere in between. 2:00 right now I'm writing about guardianship and the ways in which would we force people to get guardians.

28:16

It takes away a lot of their rights and there might be alternatives to guardianship that are that preserve the kind of independence and autonomy of people with disabilities while still allowing them to have people support them through their decision making.So because disability effects people at every stage of their life, it affects so many people, like 20% of our population.

28:40

There is really like nothing that goes on in the hospital that can't be affected by disability, that disability discrimination might not crop up.And.And so I'm trying to find the places where that's true, explain the history of those, explain how we might do better.Such important work and you know, obviously we follow each other's publishing and stuff, but seeing you lean into this disability bioethics and really kind of being a leading voice in that space in my opinion.

29:09

But then how does that contrast with or how does it compare with the second top bucket?You're talking about disability theology because those two words I don't think of as being connected very often.In the same way that disability bioethics is a kind of, you might call a subfield or a, but I would say growing area of bioethics.

29:29

You think like bioethicists would be really concerned about disability discrimination.They have historically not been.So there's a certain irony there.Same would be true in theology and in church spaces.So there's lots of disability discrimination that happens in churches who are exempt from like ADA requirements.

29:48

So that's both architecturally but also attitudinally.There's lots of theology that would lead you to believe that disability is bad and connected to sin or that's something we ought to pray away, those sorts of things.And so carrying that same like disability, disability positivity into conversations around theology and in church spaces, where do we see disability discrimination happening and how could we counteract it?

30:13

And so it's like a different arena to carry that disability conversation into and.Do you usually look at kind of the Christian framework or do you like broader than that?I'm a Christian theologian, so I I do, and that's my tradition, my personal tradition.I don't often try to criticize traditions I'm not a part of Fair.

30:33

It's better from the inside view, yeah.And of course there is an entire like, you know, centuries of theology and other traditions that I just, I know some about but would not call myself an expert in.So I I mainly write for Christians.

30:49

From that perspective, yeah, that makes sense.Good.And you, you've just written, you've published a book recently in this space, right?I remember all of those words being in the title, although I don't remember the the order.Yeah.So it's the title is disabilities challenge to theology and this is where so the other bucket I do is theological bioethics that should not be surprised this that would sort of fit.

31:13

So the ways in which theology then affects the way we think about bioethics or how we should, as you know, people of faith think about healthcare.So this book traces some of the history of the eugenics movement, which for me is like this perfect storm of the church and the state aligning to discriminate against disabled people.

31:38

So and, and medicine, of course.So medicine saying we have this tool to get rid of disabled people to make sure that they're never born in the future and to forcibly sterilize, you know, quote UN quote, unfit people help, quote UN quote fit people get access to reproductive care to make sure the right kinds of people get married.

32:01

So it's this, you know, the the disability discrimination comes from medicine sponsored by the state through eugenics laws, but also mainline churches are really in favor of eugenics in the early 20th century.So they had a theology that sort of lent itself to that.

32:17

And so I try to go through why that would have been and then in a constructive move, say what can the what?How should churches think about it today?Are we, do we still have a kind of eugenic mindset?If so, where does that come up?And how might we counter that with some different thinking around disability?

32:36

Like you said, you were just up here in at our at our medical school giving a talk which was wildly well received from the students who were texting me during your talk saying can Devon come every year?And one student even said can we exchange you for her?

32:53

Which didn't make me feel great but I did appreciate this.Yeah.Maybe you also work in like broadly speaking, like medical humanities though, right as well.Tell us what that is and how you what your work in that area is.

33:11

Yeah.So yeah, I used to teach AI, actually used to teach a medical humanities class at Slough and I taught one at Michigan State Medical Humanities or health humanities.There's some controversy around which of those words is the best to use Broadly is trying to bring in more of the humanities disciplines into healthcare education.

33:33

That or at least that's the way Americans think about it.We should have my sister on some time who did a research project in the UK where they think about it very differently.But often in our context, it's in service of either pre meds or medical students.And the idea is that they get such heavy science training, but it's not balanced by, I mean, medicine is not merely a science, It's also a humane practice.

33:58

And there are tools and fields that have a lot to say about the ethical, just humane way to deliver medicine.And they should be learning from those disciplines as well.So that can be literature, it can be fine art, could be poetry, it can be religious studies, it can be philosophy, any, any of the humanities disciplines.

34:21

I do work, of course, with my sister in the use of fine art as a medical training tool and and a patient care tool.So how can we help patients explore feelings through art, but also how can we teach doctors how to understand their patients differently through the use of fine art?

34:40

So that's another I do talk a lot about art and I use a lot of art and the research that I do because I think it evokes different responses.So we can throw data at people all day long, try to convince them that they should think differently about this topic because of all this empirical data That doesn't tend to sway people's like deeply held biases and opinions.

34:59

But I think art has the capacity to evoke different things in people.Yeah, I totally agree.I try to integrate as much art and art of various mediums and disciplines and styles as much as I can and, and how I teach as well.

35:17

So, and so actually just recently I lent your book to a colleague of mine.So one of my colleagues is a neuroscientist and was mentioning that he enjoys like images of the brain and, and has them in his office.And so I, I took him a copy.

35:32

I lent him a copy of your book.Nice.So the, the book that you and your sister collaborated on.So you want to talk about that book a little bit?Sure.So that's Imaging and Imagining Illness, which is a project built out of just Darian and I doing work together where she started making, She's a printmaker and she started making art prints incorporating my Mr. is as a way to think through like what care looks like from the artist perspective.

36:01

And I had been talking to her about, you know, what it was like to sit in an MRI or lay in an MRI machine and how tough it was and how it produced all these images that didn't really look like me.And we're kind of, you know, the, the physician knew how to look at those images and diagnose me and to track the progression of my illness, but kind of looks at them in the room.

36:22

And I'm sitting behind him.And so it's always like sort of around his head that I'm trying to look at these images, too.And neurologists that haven't traditionally shared those images with me.And so as we're talking through this, she's like, I'd love to look at those images.I wonder how I could.She always tells the story as it was her idea.

36:39

And I always tell the story like it was my idea.And I, it's been so long, I don't really remember.But so she, she kind of comes up with this idea that we could give some humanity back to those images.So she uses the printmaking process to layer in other things onto the MRI's that evoke kind of my feelings about Ms. or about the MRI process to try to capture something about the images and to, you know, give some humanity back to them.

37:10

Yeah, it's great.And if listeners aren't familiar with Darian, we've had Darian on every.We've had a Halloween special episode every year so far.We've had the podcast and Darian comes on and tells a spooky story.Yeah, she's, she's so good.Yeah, she loves it too.

37:26

So.Yeah.All right.Well, I mean, So what are you working on into the future?Like what next 5-10 years of your career?What's that look like?Yeah, so I'm writing a book right now that it's super fun to write, but it's been really hard to write because it requires a lot of original sourcing from time periods and in languages that I don't know, which is why did I do this to myself, But I taught a class at Slew.

37:52

I think you might have taught it too, called Freaks in the Medical Body.Yeah, I never taught it myself, but I, but when you were teaching it, I, I would come in and every once in a while you'd have me as a guest lecturer about the ADA history.But yeah, I but it's a great, I've used your syllabus a couple of different times, so.

38:11

It was such a fun course.The idea of it was to examine the history of the freak show and to talk about why certain people and certain embodiments were considered freakish and what being part of a freak show did for folks and what it did for society.

38:28

And then in the second-half of the course, we'd find contemporary analogies to the freak show.How is and how is and ask the question how is medicine participating in lifting up this person as a freak of in freaking them?And I think.Medicine.What a great word and freaking.

38:44

And freaking yeah.Yeah, that's a good one.That should go on a T-shirt.Yeah, don't, don't, don't in freak me.Don't in freak me or do in freak me I It's complicated.It's complicated.So I'm I really have always wanted to write something in this arena and I've been finding these case studies from the early modern period, so 17 hundreds, 1800s where children are born that were called monsters, which is the same word as freak, just in a different translation.

39:17

So the idea was that certain people who are born kind of are portends.They they tell us they're symbolic in some way.They're telling us something about God and we need to figure out what that is.And physicians even in this time period would write about what is this the birth of this child mean and how?

39:40

And then they would fight about how we should understand the child's embodiment.So these are like conjoined twins and people we used to call hermaphrodites, little people, what sometimes they're called pygmies.So children who are born with like just really unusual anatomy.

39:57

And then you find all these really fun tracks or pamphlets of physicians fighting about how we ought to interpret the body and then how we how they should then treat medically this person's body.So does it need to be intervened upon or not based on their theological interpretation of that body?

40:14

And so it's just fascinating stuff.And I want to say there's something we've lost by kind of pushing that debate aside that we don't talk about the meaningfulness of bodies anymore.So I want to recover something about that, but through these very particular case studies.And the case studies are just so wild and amazing.

40:32

And I can't believe the stuff that some of these physicians say.So it's just been a really fun project.So that's going to be a long term project because it's it's just hard to to get through.But I also really want to write right now I'm, I'm outlining a book for something about disability clinical ethics.

40:49

So based on the cases I've encountered, to just kind of teach lay ordinary folks about what happens in hospitals and how we can prevent disability discrimination.That's great.Yeah.So interesting.And yeah, that that class that we taught that you taught about, what was it called Freaks in the Medicalized Body?

41:08

What was the name of?The the freaks in the medical body.Freaks in the medical body.Yeah.Such an interesting concept.So that, so a couple of book projects you're working on and then clinical ethics obviously is kind of ongoing and then students you're working with as well.

41:26

Any new courses you're you're developing or hoping to develop in a In a ideal situation, what would you teach?Definitely so many courses I want to teach.I just got greenlit for a new doctoral concentration in bioethics.So if you're a listener out there and you're thinking about doing a PhD, in the past I have said go to Slough and now I will say come to Baylor.

41:49

So we're going to start admitting to PhD students every year to do a PhD in religion with a concentration in bioethics.And they'll also work with our philosophy department, which I'm really excited about.So I'm going to have to develop a practicum.So I'm going to have to get them in our hospitals to figure out, you know, what it looks like to be a clinical ethicist.

42:09

And we're going to have to fill out some areas that.So right now I teach bioethics and disability ethics, but I think there's other courses that I think they'll need.They'll need to know more about research ethics and I think research ethics is fascinating.They'll need to know more about the law and healthcare law.

42:28

So we'll need somebody to teach that.So right now I'm in kind of this visioning mode of what needs to be taught for a proper doctoral program.And who's gonna teach it?Is it gonna be me?Is it gonna be my colleague Neil Messer?Is it gonna be our new colleague Leia Nocone?Or is it gonna be the colleague that I get to hire next year?

42:45

So we'll have another person on top of all of the wonderful people we've been hiring.So it's been, yeah, a big program building year for me.That's great, that's great.And it's it's exciting to see institutions put resources and energy behind growing bioethics in like the religion departments, for example, in collaboration with philosophy departments.

43:09

So good on Baylor.So in your travels and in your training, who is one of the people that you look up to?Maybe a current contemporary person that you either they're writing, maybe they're a clinical ethicist, maybe.Yeah, something somebody who you draw inspiration professionally from.

43:28

Yeah, I mean, there's a bunch of people.So obviously our advisor, Jeff Bishop, has always been a great supporter of my work, and I think his work is really, really interesting and way smarter than any of my work.

43:44

Maybe that's it for debate, but probably not.No, I I agree every time that I yeah, he's a very, very smart, wise, kind, generous.Shout out JPB.He's wonderful.So my first boss, we already mentioned Tom Tomlinson, was not only like an A great thinker, but was so gracious.

44:05

I, I told the story at his retirement party that when I was first hired at Michigan State, he sent me an article he was writing.He's like, what do you think of this?And I sent him back like a ton of edits and questions, which was really like brazen to do.As you know, he's this, he's been a full professor for forever.

44:21

He's been in the field for forever.And here I am like my first job.And I'm like I have a lot of thoughts about this but.He was.I got some notes.I got some notes.He was so gracious.He was like these are so interesting.I should we co-author this paper together like let's and we did and just the idea that somebody who has been doing this profession for so long and has been writing and publishing and doing clinical ethics for so long would open up to a critique of a junior scholar and say, I think you have something valuable to say.

44:52

He was such a good mentor to me for that reason and in the hospital as well, always making sure that we had this tendency for people to call him Doctor Tomlinson and me Devin, and he would always correct them.So he was just a very good, he understood the role of a mentor really well and sort of getting me into the profession and into the job.

45:11

He was just really excellent at that.Right now I'm doing all this work with Rosemary Garland Thompson, who is somebody who is so established in the field of disability studies and is just one of the most generous and kind people I've ever met.

45:27

Again, a senior scholar who is now retired, who thinks that I have something valuable to offer to her and is like really collaborative and always inviting me to things and interested in the work that I'm doing.And she'll e-mail me and say, oh, I just recommended your book or this article to my friend so and so who's like a really big deal.

45:44

And I'm like, that's amazing.Thank you for doing that.So she really again, like knows the role of a mentor and also makes me feel like a collaborator and not necessarily somebody who is like junior to her.Yeah, yeah, that's great.You're you're about the fourth person who I really like respect who've had very similar things to say about Rosemary Garland Thompson.

46:07

So, yeah, I, she, she's the type of person like when I was in grad school and 1st going to like conferences and stuff that I would see her in like on a panel and like recognize her and get so nervous and not go up and talk to her.But so for all, all of the graduate students are junior people in the profession.

46:25

Don't do that.Just walk up to people, introduce yourself.Well, and the worst that can happen is they're rude to you.And then, you know, then maybe they're not somebody you want to talk to or admire.But she's and she's just the opposite.In fact, when I was a graduate student, I invited her to be on a panel with me at a bioethics conference.

46:41

And she didn't, she had never met me before.She had no idea who I was.And she said, yes, I mean, what, what an amazing thing to do.I'm just some grad and she emailed me later and she's like, Devin, I tried to look you up on the Internet and I couldn't find anything.And I was like, Yep, that's that.Yes.I'm a I'm a no name graduate student.

46:59

So we've been friends for a long time now.But yeah, she was so gracious and she, the fact that she even was willing to do that for a graduate student was amazing.So I try to remember that and I tell my students to do that.You know, if you admire somebody, just reach out, ask if they want to be on a panel with you.You never know.I mean, they might be too busy, but they might not.

47:14

Yeah, what one thing that I did as a grad student and that I've tried to continue to do that is so easy and I wish everybody would do this, is that if I like a paper or if I read a paper or if I recommend a paper to somebody, I'll e-mail the authors and just say I enjoyed your paper.

47:32

That's it.You know, I, I recommended it to a friend.I I thought it was interesting period.Send the e-mail, the warmth and like gratitude that that engenders and people is so easy to do.Yeah.If you read something somebody likes, tell them.

47:48

If you like our podcast, tell us.I mean, it really does.It makes us feel good.But it also, you know, you do a lot of hard work for free sometimes, like this podcast and like, I hope people like it.You don't really get a lot of feedback.So when you do, it's really affirming.

48:04

One other quick story that I'll I'll share about.So the we wrote a paper together, exactly 1 paper if we published together.Yeah, just the one.Just the one and we got some really harsh criticisms from the peer review process, accusations of being, I think the the quote is at best extremely unscholarly was a description.

48:28

Yeah, I love it.It that actually could be AT shirt as well on our merch site, which we don't, we never talked about, but we do have a place where you can buy T-shirts and stuff.But being the the poor self promoters that we are, we don't talk about it very much so.

48:44

We should talk about it only because then it helps me pay the students that I employ to help.Us so it goes directly into the hands of students.So anyway, tangent so that quote and the process of talking about how critical and how ridiculous some of these reviews are it it prompted an idea here and every this will be the second time this upcoming month where at on a Tuesday, we we buy pizza and it's a faculty and staff only like pizza party where we share our most harsh reviews from peer reviews either on grants or papers or books or whatever.

49:26

So it's like an open mic in a safe space with only faculty and staff and we call it the at best extremely on scholarly luncheon.I love that we should do that.I'm part of a psychology lab right now that celebrates their failure.So every time they get a paper rejected, every time they get a grant proposal rejected, they share it.

49:46

And I, I do think that's a good practice because we all fail so much in academia that, you know, you, you have to laugh.Yeah.So anyway, that was that was inspired by our our peer review for that paper, what ended up getting published.Yes.It did.

50:01

So.And we just got an e-mail about it this week from somebody who was like, I have things to say like, that's great.Which is awesome.So all right, Devin, any final thoughts about you?Have we talked enough about you?That was as much as I ever want to talk about me in one of these episodes or in many other formats.

50:21

So thank you for that, and I'm excited to do the same and quiz you on all sorts of questions you've never thought about before.Good, good.All right.So stay tuned, all right.Also shout out to your family, lovely children.Right.Well, you didn't ask about that, but yes, the lights of my life.

50:39

Yeah, the real meaning in your life.So don't want them to go unmentioned on the podcast.So.OK, All right.Have a good week, Devin.You too, Tyler.Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Bioethics for the People.

50:55

We can't do it alone, so a huge shout out to Christopher Wright for creating our theme music and to Darian Golden Stall for designing our logo and all of the artwork.If you're into what we're doing, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen.

51:14

And if you're really into what we're doing, head over to bioethicsforthepeople.com to snag some merch.