Whole Church Job Fair Encore: Insights from a Chief Science Officer

The primary focus of this episode is the insightful dialogue between Joshua Noel and TJ Blackwell as they engage with Andy Walsh, the Chief Science Officer at Health Monitoring Systems. Our discussion delves into the intersection of faith and science, examining whether significant theological topics discussed within seminaries and churches bear relevance to Andy's daily professional experiences. Throughout this episode, we explore the nuances of public health, particularly in light of contemporary challenges, and how the church community can play a supportive role. By examining the practical implications of faith in the realm of science, we aim to foster a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of these fields. Join us as we navigate these compelling themes in a manner that underscores the importance of integrating theological discourse with occupational realities.

In this compelling encore episode of the Whole Church Job Fair series, Joshua Noel and TJ Blackwell engage in a profound discussion with Andy Walsh, Chief Science Officer at Health Monitoring Systems and co-host of Systematic Geekology. The conversation delves into the intersection of science and faith, particularly examining how significant theological topics addressed in churches and seminaries manifest in the professional realm of public health. Walsh articulates the complexities and challenges of integrating scientific principles with theological beliefs, especially in a landscape where public health has become increasingly scrutinized.

Throughout the episode, Walsh shares his experiences navigating the nuances of public health, emphasizing the importance of understanding systemic issues that affect health outcomes in various communities. He discusses the vital role that faith communities can play in addressing these disparities, advocating for a greater awareness of how theological discussions can inform and enhance public health initiatives. The dialogue serves as a reminder of the necessity for churches to actively engage with public health matters, fostering a deeper understanding of how faith can drive social responsibility and community care.

As the episode unfolds, listeners are invited to consider their own roles within their faith communities and how they can contribute to a collective effort in promoting health equity. Walsh's insights challenge the audience to appreciate the often-overlooked work of public health professionals and to recognize the valuable contributions that faith communities can make in supporting these efforts. Ultimately, this episode calls for a renewed commitment to bridging the gap between faith and science, encouraging a collaborative approach to addressing the pressing health challenges faced by society today.

Takeaways:

• In this episode, Andy Walsh elucidates the importance of public health roles and their impact on community well-being.
• The dialogue emphasizes how theological discussions can shape our understanding of daily professional responsibilities and ethical decision-making.
• Joshua and TJ explore the intersection of faith and science, highlighting common misconceptions and the potential for collaboration.
• Listeners gain insights into how public health efforts can be better supported by church communities through education and outreach initiatives.
• Andy shares personal reflections on his work, showcasing the emotional toll of being involved in public health during crises such as the pandemic.
• The episode encourages a more profound appreciation for public health professionals and their often unseen contributions to society.

.

Check out Andy and Will's chat on the Systematic Geekology YouTube Page:

https://www.youtube.com/live/ERzlnBWd-zY?si=6-elmDboDPfIURqB

Mentioned in this episode:

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Episode Transcript

(00:22):
Farmer, you are working for atable full of bounty.
Painter, with each color youare teaching us to see.
Nurse.
Yours are the healing handsthat touch the poor and broken.

(00:45):
May God's kingdom come on earth.
His will be done.
Ephesians 4, 25, 29 theChristian Standard Bible say, therefore,
putting away lying, speak thetruth, each one to his neighbor.

(01:05):
Because we are members of oneanother, be angry and do not sin.
Don't let the sun go down onyour anger and don't give the devil
an opportunity.
Let the thief no longer steal.
Instead he is to do honestwork with his own hands that he has
something to share with anyonein need.
No foul language should comefrom your mouth, but only what is
good for building up someonein need, so that it gives grace to

(01:28):
those who hear.
In the book of Ephesians, St.
Paul is explaining what itmeans to be the church.
And before this pericope, Paulwrote that the church is to work
together in all of ourdifferent roles.
Here, St.
Paul insists that the churchbuilds one another up in word deeds
and he unties our occupationalwork with to this idea.
Dr.
Andy Walsh, do you think theway we present ourselves in work

(01:50):
ties into the idea of buildingone another up?
Sure.
I mean, everyone you know whohas some kind of employment or some
kind of vocation.
Right.
Needs encouragement, needssupport in that.
And so, yeah, absolutely.
I think that's part of beingpart of the body of Christ is enabling
each other to live out our vocations.

(02:11):
Yeah, yeah, Good stuff, good stuff.
Come be close to us Lord havemercy on us, Lord, please put your

(02:36):
hands all night day by day.
Hey, guys, welcome to theWhole Church podcast.
Back again with the WholeChurch job fair.
It's gonna be a fun one.
Today we're doing the encore, right?
We already finished the seriesup and you're all.

(02:57):
Wait, what?
Another one?
You guys know we do this withall of our series.
I don't even remember when westarted doing series, but it's a
thing we do now, apparently.
And after each series, we liketo do like a crossover with our other
podcast, Systematic Geekology,because we like that show and we
want to sponsor them also.
So today we have a reallyspecial one.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
One of the other hosts ofSystematic Ecology is here with us,

(03:19):
Andy Walsh, the one and only.
He's the Chief Science Officerat the Health Monitoring Systems
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
He's also the author of Faithacross the Multiverse.
And like we mentioned, he'sone of the hosts of Systematic Geekology.
And this episode is going tobe cross posted over there too.
So you guys, if you're onsystematic ecology, listening to
this and you're like, whoa,what's this?
You can hear the rest of thewhole Church Job fair series link

(03:40):
down below.
I think it's a lot of fun.
So, Andy, thank you so muchfor joining us.
Welcome to the show, man.
You're welcome.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, man.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And of course, we couldn'thave this show without the one who
invented language.
We wouldn't even know the wordshow or podcast if it wasn't for
the one and only T.J.
tiberius Juan Blackwell.
Welcome to your show.

(04:01):
Thanks.
If you're listening to this,you should check out the Onazzow
Podcast Network website.
The link is below for showsthat are like ours.
And if you're alreadylistening on the YouTube channel,
hit, like hit subscribe pretty please.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I think that'sgenerally a good idea.
But another thing I think is areally good idea.

(04:22):
My favorite form of unityactually is it comes in the form
of a holy sacrament, thatwhich is silliness.
So we always start our showoff with a silly question.
And if you've listenedthroughout this series, we did the
same silly question.
We got a definitive answerfrom Brandon Knight.
And now we're going back toget a scientific answer, a very well

(04:42):
researched answer to this question.
You know, when we asked ourFacebook group, what are the biggest
theological questions that thechurch and seminaries have been arguing
about?
Samantha Perez, a good friendof ours, threw out is the hot dog
a sandwich?
And a lot of people voted forher option, so we had to include
it somewhere.
So here it is, part of oursilly questions.
Andy, please let us know.
Scientifically, is a hot dog a sandwich?

(05:05):
Well, how do you follow upsomeone who's already given the definitive
answer, being.
More definitive, you didn'thear it, did you?
If you didn't hear it, then I.
Don'T even know what it was.
Floors here, we haven'trecorded that yet.
Well, okay, so we're doingtime travel, of course.
Yeah.
You know, it's meat inside of bread.

(05:26):
If you want to call it a sandwich.
I have no quarrels with that.
Good answer.
Good answer.
In what ways, if any, do youthink this question could be relevant
to your life?
I don't know.
I mean, whenever this comesup, it makes me think of the John
Hodgman podcast, because thatseems to be the question that launched

(05:47):
that whole thing.
So, yeah, I don't know, maybesomeday we'll all be called upon
to make judgments on arbitraryquestions that hinge on definitions
and semantics rather thanactual science.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, those are theimportant things in life, I think,
perhaps.

(06:07):
Or maybe the completelyunimportant things.
Hard to tell.
But for the purposes of thisseries, we're not just doing a hot
dog podcast, unfortunately,but what we are doing that I think
is really cool, we are doing aseries, or did a series now, on people's
occupational work, their dailylives, to see whether or not this

(06:30):
stuff that we're arguing aboutis actually important to regular
people in their regular livesor not so regular people in their
not so regular lives.
You know, however you want totake it.
A lot of our listeners,though, they're pastors, theologians,
church leaders, podcasters,and we think it's important for our
church leaders to hear this stuff.
And I think they can benefitfrom hearing and learning from people
who are in other occupations.

(06:50):
So, yeah, that's why we'redoing this for our core.
We decided to act like we knewour audience for once.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For church listeners that maynot know you from Systematic Ecology,
Andy, would you mind fillingthem in with your history with the
church and your book, Faithacross the Multiverse, and some of
what you like about what ourother podcast, Systematic Ecology,

(07:12):
does?
Oh, sure.
So, short, easy question.
History of the church.
I mean, I grew up attendingchurch pretty much, you know, for
as long as I can remember inNew Jersey and then other places.
I've traveled mostly inWestern Pennsylvania after that.
Also went to Christian schoolsfrom kindergarten through high school,

(07:37):
and then was involved withInterVarsity Christian Fellowship
as an undergrad and a grad student.
So, yeah, lots of.
Lots of history with the church.
And then, you know, my sciencebackground studied biology as an
undergrad at Carnegie Mellon,studied molecular microbiology and
immunology for my PhD at theJohns Hopkins Bloomberg School of

(07:58):
Public Health.
And after a postdoc incomputational biology, I've been
working at Health MonitoringSystems, a public health software
company in westernPennsylvania, for over 16 years now.
And Faith across theMultiverse was a book I wrote a few
years ago now about theintersection of Christian faith,

(08:18):
science, and particularly thevocabulary and the concepts of science
and nerdy pop culture.
And that's how I got connectedwith Will Rose and the Systematic
Ecology podcast.
We were operating at verysimilar interfaces there of nerdy
pop culture and Christian theology.
Yeah.
Plus Will just needed anothercomic book friend that really liked

(08:40):
the X Men.
I think that was also a thing.
Yeah, I'm happy to apply.
Well, see, the Problem is,Will is too young of a soul.
All the young comic book fansdon't read X Men.
I feel like I'm old enough Ishould read X Men.
I just don't.
Yeah, he did.
He, you know, was just.
He wants to connect with theyoung people, and the young people
don't like X Men.
That's weird.
Why?
I don't know what it is.

(09:01):
You know what?
It's because they watched theHulu series Runaways and it was too
good.
Now they don't care about X Men.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's compared to the Fox movies.
Yeah.
So this is our whole church job.
Fair.
So before getting into, youknow, the business, if someone never
heard of what it is you do,Andy, how would you describe your
job, and how would you addressanyone interested in pursuing your

(09:24):
job as a career?
Yeah, well, frankly, I'malways surprised when anybody has
heard of what we do.
So I work for public healthsoftware company that provides software
that does something calledsyndromic surveillance.
So we've all learned probablyway more than we wanted to about
traditional public healthsurveillance over the past five years,
where people get diagnosedwith something specific.

(09:46):
And a doctor or lab orpharmacy that makes that diagnosis
notifies the public healthdepartment, and they keep track of
those people with specific diagnoses.
Syndromic surveillance isabout monitoring things at the population
level before people are diagnosed.
So when you walk into theemergency department or your doctor's
office, you know why you wentthere, you have a fever, you fell,

(10:10):
and you worried you broke yourarm, you were in some sort of car
accident.
You know you were having chestpain, chest pains or pain in your
arm, and you're not sure ifyou're having a heart attack or an
anxiety attack or some otherkind of thing.
Right.
All the different reasonspeople seek health care.
They know why they're there.
They don't know what they have.
That's why they're going tosee a medical professional.
But they can describesomething about what they're experiencing.
So we get that data, somebodyhas to type that up, that reason

(10:33):
that you walked in the door.
Somebody types that up, and weget it typically within five minutes
of the person arriving at thehealthcare facility.
So we're monitoring thesethings in real time, and we're adding
up, okay, in the past hour,how many people came in with fever,
came in with worries aboutchest pain.
And if there are larger thanexpected numbers in a particular

(10:54):
area, we'll notify therelevant public health department.
And then our software providesthem with tools so they can follow
up and see is there somethinggoing on here that we need to worry
about?
Do we need to keep an eye onthis further?
Is this something that wealready knew about, whatever the
case may be, but they havethen the tools to do their actual
public health work, so we'retrying to help support them, cut
down on the manual work thatthey have to do, and also maybe hopefully

(11:15):
identify things as early aspossible, perhaps even before there's
an opportunity to diagnose folks.
Yeah, yeah.
And if somebody wanted to getinto that kind of work themselves,
where would they start?
Sure.
So that's a good question,because I don't know very many people
who have jobs exactly likemine, but certainly there are lots

(11:37):
of public health folks who usesyndromic surveillance software.
And so if you wanted to getinto a career in public health, typically
public health degree is a, isa graduate level degree.
Right.
So you might.
There's a variety of thingsyou could study at the undergraduate
level, biology would be one of them.
But other things, you know,public policy, some kind of pre law
thing might even be relevant.
You know, public health sitsat the intersection of science, but

(12:01):
also public policy andpolitics and so forth.
And so there's lots of thosekinds of degrees that might be worthwhile
as well.
Some schools even haveundergraduate degrees in public health
that you can major in.
So something like that.
And then, you know, typicallyyou'll need to go to a school of
public health for a master'sdegree, master's of public health
or something along thoselines, if you're looking to get into

(12:24):
then working for the publichealth department.
And there are public healthdepartments in your state, certainly
many counties or largemunicipal areas.
So someplace like the city ofNew York has their own public health
department or the city of LosAngeles, it kind of depends.
But there are probably lots ofpublic health departments in your

(12:44):
general area.
And so that would probably bethe career path.
Cool, cool, cool, cool.
So I know we've discussed thisseveral different podcasts.
Plenty of places, plenty ofother people, probably smarter people
than me anyway, have beentalking about this.
But how would you describesome of the challenges today when
it concerns integrating faithand science and why so many people

(13:06):
see them as polarizing intoday's times.
Sure.
So I think right now there'sseveral different reasons why folks
see those things at odds.
Traditionally there wereconcerns about, and I say traditionally,
that's kind of a short horizon.
In the past hundred years inthe United States and in Western

(13:29):
cultures, there's been thisconcern about whether the findings
of science in relation togeology, evolutionary biology, cosmology,
whether those conflict withthe creation accounts in Genesis
or not and other creationaccounts in Scripture, and on questions
like how old is the Earth andhow old is the universe and what

(13:52):
is the sequence in whichthings came to exist.
So those are kind of longstanding issues, again, in that,
by long standing, kind of inthat past hundred, 150 years that
folks saw as a source oftension, conflict, or at least discrepancy.

(14:12):
Much more recently, we've seenthat conservative Christian communities
took a very different approachto topics of climate change and public
health responses to thepandemic than some other communities.
And so there's just kind ofthat sense that the scientific world

(14:33):
is trying to control us, takeaway our freedoms, take away our
liberties, tell us how to liveour lives at a very granular level,
whether that's what kind ofcar to drive, what kind of food to
eat, what to do with ourtrash, what to do with our faces,
how to breathe.
People feel like all of thosethings, they're being told what to

(14:54):
do and how to do it and whento do it and where to do it and why
to do it.
And you know, there are a lotof reasons why you might object to
that, but certainly it seemsto have clustered around religious
communities, probably,possibly also because of that long
standing uncertainty aboutwhether scientific institutions had

(15:14):
their best interest in mind,and possibly also because some of
the, you know, some of therestrictions came around gathering
in churches and so forth.
Right.
So has it, has it everimpacted your work personally?
That's a good question.
Yes and no.
Right.
It hasn't stopped me fromdoing my job or anything like that.
It is certainly dishearteningto see the people in the community

(15:39):
that I felt like I grew up in,felt like I was part of, take a very
different view of thesethings, despite the fact that I got
into this line of work becauseof the values that were instilled
in me during those formative years.
In hindsight, it's interestingto think about the fact that when
I told people that I wanted toget into public health and studying

(16:01):
infectious diseases, sort ofin that high school, pre college
era, whenever I mentioned thatto people in church, they're always
like, why are you doing that?
Why wouldn't you go cure cancer?
So I don't know if there'sanything to that that may have been
just kind of a casual, like, Idon't understand what you're talking
about, but I know cancer.
And so that to me that'simportant, or there might have been
Something more substantialthere as a kind of hint about how

(16:26):
conservative Christiancommunities felt about public health
and infectious diseaseprevention and so forth.
Certainly discouraging at thatpoint a little bit, and has only
gotten more discouraging inrecent years to see that kind of
attitude.
But it doesn't, so far,prevent me from doing work.
That said, very recently, youknow, through a chain of events,

(16:51):
right.
We've.
We are having projects thatwork canceled and having to let employees
go and having to see thepublic health departments that we
work with change directionsand shut down projects and let people
go on their end as well,because we have, you know, made decisions
at the national level aboutchanges in priorities in public health.

(17:13):
So in that sense, you know,and that has, you know, has a lot
of religious motivations, orat least people are citing their
religious beliefs for why theyhave those priorities.
So, yeah, I guess in thatsense, in a very, very recent sense,
like in the past severalweeks, it has started to have more
of a tangible impact on my job.
Yeah.
I think all of those peoplejust really thought that you could

(17:34):
cure cancer if you felt like it.
Yeah.
Like, that's.
To them, you were just sayingyou don't want to.
I think that's what happens a lot.
Of the time, anyway.
I don't think that's it.
But, you know, Andy's smart enough.
He probably could if he had alittle bit of free time.
That's exactly what I'm saying.
Yeah, that's true.
That's a good point.

(17:54):
Yeah.
No, but more seriously, Ithink when we get at some of this
tension, a lot of it, I think,goes back to the Scopes Monkey trial
in the US which was allconstructed for the sake of being
polarizing, more or less.
Like, if you actually lookinto it, the teacher even said, like,
I'm not sure, I might havetaught evolution.

(18:16):
They just wanted to have alegal case about what we could or
couldn't teach in schools.
That that's all the wholereason that happened.
And what's interesting is ifyou go back before the Scopes trial,
even in America, thefundamentalist Christian documents,
they're like the mostconservative documents, like, Possible.
Some of the authors there wereChristian evolutionists.

(18:36):
So it really wasn't until thatlegal case came up that some of this
tension started being felt.
So a lot of this is pretty recent.
Like you mentioned, Andy.
And then I think there's alsosomething underpinning it a little
bit further, where people, intheir faith, interest in life in
general, they want to justhave solid, clear answers, and a
lot of conservative pastorspreach this kind of idea of the Bible

(18:58):
where it is completelyauthoritative and completely literal,
inerrant, you know, all that stuff.
And they say this is the answer.
It's all black and white.
Whereas science doesn't dothat, which I don't think faith does
that either.
But if you grew up in thatkind of faith, you want everything
to be that way.
Science usually does thisthing where, like, here's what we
think right now, but we'regoing to keep testing it, and if
it's wrong, we're going to sayit's wrong and come up with a new

(19:20):
hypothesis.
And a lot of the times itcomes up with stuff like, hey, a
lot of what we've been doingis harmful to the earth.
A lot of this is like.
And people don't want to feelbad and people just want to clear
answers.
And that's just not how life works.
So I think maybe it's lessqualm against science and more qualm
against reality.
Perhaps, or at least complexity.
Right.
In the.
In the ways in which realityis complex.

(19:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But speaking of that kind ofpolarization stuff, I think it's
interesting because also onour other podcast, this Medic Ecology
that all of us are a part of,we have a theme this year on polarization,
and you contributed a lot tothe different episode ideas we've
been doing over on that showthis year, such as the Magic versus
Science, Jackie Chan versusBruce Lee, other ideas that haven't

(20:05):
even been released yet.
Would you mind telling ourlisteners a little bit more about
that series and some of theideas that you came up with regarding
that?
Sure.
I think there is, in fandomsthere's a long tradition of these
kinds of you have to pick thisor you have to pick that kind of
thing.
And I think it comes from azero sum mindset that's very easy

(20:29):
to adopt when you're perhaps younger.
We associate a lot of thesefandoms perhaps with young people.
As we talked about before,people a certain age read X Men at
a certain time in their lifeand not at other times.
Or perhaps you've got yourStar Treks versus your Star wars
and, you know, Jackie Chanversus Bruce Lee.

(20:51):
Right.
A lot of these things, I feellike, come up among young people
who are still trying to kindof figure out their place in the
world, at least in the senseof feeling like you have to pick
one or the other and you haveto feel very strongly about your
choice.
Right.
We can, we can all haveconversations about the Relative
merits of different things.
And people approach that a lotof different ways.
And, you know, nuance andrelative values and priorities, you

(21:14):
know, those are all perfectlygood things to talk about.
But I do think there is acertain kind of mindset that's perhaps
an immature mindset, perhapsjust haven't had a lot of opportunities
to deal with complexity ornuance mindset.
But that feels like peoplehave to make a choice between one
thing or the other and thenfeel very strongly about that and

(21:35):
so very strongly against the other.
And so I was just kind ofreflecting on some of those things
that I've come across.
Magic and science being a bigone that covers a lot of different
categories.
And to the point they'll evensee characters within the stories
sniping at each other about,well, I'm a scientist and so therefore
all your magic nonsense isnonsense, or I am a wizard and I

(21:56):
think your technology is awfuland ruining the natural order of
things and so forth.
So that one's a fairly commonone both inside and outside of stories.
You know, as I talked about onthe podcast, Jackie Chan vs Bruce
Lee was something that I wasconfronted with in junior high.
Right.
That I had to in high school.

(22:17):
Right.
That there were some kids thatwere into one and some kids that
were in the other and you hadto choose and you couldn't fathom
liking one or the other.
The same kind of thing withStar Trek and Star wars, you know,
and.
Yeah, so just trying to kindof think about what I had encountered.
But yeah, I actually don'tfind myself being pretty particularly
strident on any of those topics.

(22:38):
Perhaps the magic in scienceone is a little trickier because
I have no problem with storiesthat use magic in interesting ways.
It gets a little bit trickierwhen you talk about, well, what do
we really mean by magic in thereal world and so forth.
I don't quite know what peoplemean by that all the time, but generally
speaking, I think that it'smore interesting to see the merits

(23:01):
of various things and to findways to.
For them to complement eachother rather than taking this kind
of zero sum approach ofanything that's good for me is bad
for you and vice versa.
Yeah, I think it's.
I think it's just more funwhen you're younger to like attach
yourself to one side of amostly pointless argument.
Yeah.
Then you just have a hot dog.

(23:23):
Yeah, that'd be a perfectpolarizing question.
No.
And.
But all the things that Andysaid is also the series, the flagship
series for that theme over onsystematic Ecology, we actually named
Finding the Good.
So what we're doing in thisepisode largely is picking a side
and then talking about themerits of the other side, rather
than just bolstering our ownperspective kind of deal.

(23:44):
That's kind of the goal.
I think it's a good exercise,even if you're not into the nerdy
stuff, because it helps youkind of understand better other points
of views and care about whatother people have to say.
Which is good for churchunity, perhaps, too.
Yeah, I think I do.
I think magic and science is a particularly.
One, like, particularlyinteresting one.

(24:04):
Yeah.
Because it seems to getbrought up in media a lot recently.
And like, you got ReedRichards, and he just blatantly doesn't
believe in magic.
He's one of the smartestpeople, friends with the Wizards.
Yeah, right.
Has met actual vampires and was.
Was questioning whethervampires exist in the.
The blood Untapped event.
It's like a.
I feel like we've taken thisone step too far.

(24:26):
Yeah, it's so funny.
But that's not what we're here for.
We're here for the job fair.
So, Andy, what are some thingsthat are normal in your occupation
now that others might notoften think about?
For example, you know, we.
Josh and I both work in a restaurant.
We've got front of the houseversus the back of the house, opening

(24:47):
shift versus night shift.
You know, we've got theserifts that people might not often
think about.
You know, when customers comein at night and say, why don't you
have this?
A lot of the times the answerthey'll get is because they didn't
do it in the morning.
But is there anything likethat for you that we might not think
about?
That's a good question.
Again, I suspect that peoplehave learned way more about public

(25:09):
health in the past five yearsthan they ever wanted to know.
And so it's maybe a little bitharder to think of what people don't
know or aren't familiar with.
You know, I think people mightbe surprised to see and to know how
much public health is a very.
The word that they like to usein the public health community is
siloed activity.

(25:31):
Right.
So people are in their different.
Their different silos, andthey don't really get out of those
silos.
So if, you know, a silo mightcover a particular area of public
health, like chronic diseaseor a specific chronic disease or
a specific collection ofchronic diseases, infectious diseases,
sexually transmittedinfections, environmental health,

(25:53):
occupational health, workplaceexposures, the actual ways that things
break down might vary a Littlebit from health department to health
department, but there are somepretty traditional ones.
And so you might have folksthat work at your state health department
who would physically sit nextto each other, Their cubicles are
connected to, are attached toeach other, and they might never

(26:17):
really have occasion tointeract professionally because they're
working in different domains, right?
One might be a chronic diseaseperson, another might be an infectious
disease person.
They might interact socially.
It's not that they're not niceto each other, polite to each other,
but they just have no reasonto interact professionally.
Whereas they might work veryclosely with the person in the next

(26:39):
state over who is in theirsame state silo who does the same
works on the same disease thatthey do.
And so they know exactly whatthat other person is doing, even
though they're several hundredmiles away, but they don't really
know what's going on in thecubicle next to them.
The one that I was mostsurprised by, I mean, I had some
notion of that going into thisbecause I had public health training,

(27:00):
and I have some notion of itfrom working here.
But the one that I came acrossabout 10 years ago that I was really
surprised by was there arefolks in public health who work on
drug overdoses.
But drug overdoses actuallysplit into two very different silos
that don't interact very often.

(27:21):
One are.
And the dividing line isintentional versus unintentional.
So there are folks who areconcerned about intentional overdoses
that are essentially suicide attempts.
And so that falls under kindof mental health or behavioral health
or something like that.
And the unintentional ones areconsidered, like, a public safety
issue.
And so they fall under anentirely different category, at least

(27:44):
in some departments of public health.
So that was a challenge for uswhen we started working on drug overdoses
with our data, was trying tofigure out.
Well, when people come in,they're not exactly forthcoming about
whether they intended tooverdose or not.
In fact, they may not even beconscious and forthcoming at all
about their situation.
So how do we differentiatebetween those two things?
But that was an importantpriority to those folks because while

(28:04):
I work on this particular kindof drug overdose, and it, you know,
and it's not by substance,it's by what the person's intent
was.
Yeah, man, crazy stuff.
But I.
We also want to ask just like,about the language you.
So, like, whenever we'retrying to get to understand different.
Because there's like, allthese different worlds, even within

(28:26):
our own communities, becausepeople live different lives at work
than at home sometimes.
And we want to ask like, isthere any different language that's
unique to your profession?
So like when I, when I workedfor Shutterfly, you know, is image
comp validation.
You know, we kind of said thisstuff all the time.
Whereas like in real world wehear about image composition.
Like what?

(28:46):
Or you say validation, it'slike, yep, the image is there.
What do you, what do you mean?
And even, you know, I won'tget into it, but there was even some,
some racial stuff because likeyou, you knew when certain colored
people were up.
Photo editing technology isn'tas geared towards some people groups
than other people groups.
So yeah, you had a lot oflanguage that you're trying to like

(29:07):
communicate this stuff.
Is there anything unique inthe language for your job that maybe
isn't normal language foreverybody else?
Yeah, that's a good question.
The first things that arecoming to mind are more, because
we're a software company andso there some of the jargon from
the software engineering world.
So things like Sprints, thereare different ways, different philosophies

(29:27):
and different ways to organizehow developers do their work.
And one method is called theAgile method.
And so development efforts areorganized into Sprints and nobody's
actually running.
They're sitting at their desk typing.
Just as you might imaginesoftware developers do.
But they are sprinting towardsa deadline.

(29:48):
Essentially.
They're trying to work inshort, fast bursts of writing code.
Rather than we're going tospend six months on this project
or you know, it's more like,let's spend six days or a couple
weeks.
Yeah.
What else?
Trying to think if there's anykind of public health.
I mean, like, you know, wetalked about silos, right?
So those, you know, it's ametaphor from farming.
It's not the physical object,but I think the, the concept translates

(30:12):
pretty clearly.
I mean there's certainly allkinds of disease terminology, right?
The med, you know, the medicalterminology, you know, there's all
kinds of lingo there,technical terms, so forth.
I'm always fascinated by.
We have in the Englishlanguage there's a lot of medical

(30:33):
terms that have both a Latinderived version and a Greek derived
version.
And it's interesting to seewhich communities use which one versus
the other.
So things like adrenalineversus epinephrine, that's Latin
versus Greek for, you know,above your kidney.
Oh, and the other one, sincewe're talking about drug overdoses,
an interesting languagechallenge that comes up is that,

(30:56):
you know, so we're gettingthis text data that people are typing
very quickly, so they oftenuse abbreviations.
And shorthand to try to justget down what the patient said as
quickly as possible so theycan get on to actually treating for
them, treating them.
And so oftentimes, if somebodyoverdoses, they'll just type OD for
overdose.
However, there are somedoctors and clinicians that like
to use OD as an abbreviationfor right eye for.

(31:20):
Again from the Latin.
And so, yeah, it's aninteresting challenge to try to figure
out from context.
Is this person talking about adrug overdose or talking about someone
with a problem in their right eye?
Yeah, I never would havethought about that.
That's exactly what thatquestion was for.
Weird, though.
Yeah, I also would have neverthought of that.

(31:41):
Yeah.
Cool.
So for the meat of theseepisodes or job fair, we want to
walk through 12 bigtheological topics that often get
debated by theologians orpodcasters or pastors, and to see
how these ideas actuallyimpact people's everyday lives, career
wise, specifically.
So we're going to go through12 topics that our Facebook group

(32:01):
voted on as the biggesttheological hot topics of our time.
And like, it's multiple choice.
We just need you to tell us ifyou find the topic somewhat relevant,
not relevant, really relevant,or if you've never heard of it.
So pretty easy.
You've got four options foreach of our 12 topics, and then later

(32:22):
we'll go back and highlight acouple to talk more in depth about.
Does that sound like somethingyou're good for, Andy?
I will give it a try.
All right.
That's all we can do, right?
You can do our best.
So the first one is gonna be.
Ceteriology, and the questionis if that is relevant to my job
or not.
Mm.
If it's relevant, somewhatrelevant, not relevant, or if you've

(32:44):
never heard of it.
Just say one of those four.
Right.
I know, I've heard of it, butI'm not totally confident I'm gonna
say not relevant.
All right.
Free will versus predestination.
Yeah, not really relevant.
Atonement models.
Yeah, not.
Not really relevant.
Continuationism versuscessationism in regards to gifts

(33:08):
of the Spirit specifically.
Yeah, I mean, I suppose it's alittle relevant.
All right.
Christology.
I mean.
Yeah, it's hard.
I'm not seeing where that's relevant.
All right.
And God's nature.
Yeah, I'm not.
I'm not too.
I feel like.
Like I'm doing very bad at this.
I mean, you know, I'm notsaying these are not relevant topics,
but, like, in terms of how Iactually do my job day to day.

(33:29):
Well, it doesn't Be about your job.
Just you while you're doingyour job, you know, for you.
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
Whatever you say is the rightanswer because it's your opinion.
Fair enough.
Social justice.
Yeah.
So that one comes up a lot.
So I would say that's very relevant.
The doctrine of imago dei.
You know, I would say thatthat's relevant to how I think about

(33:52):
my job and how I think aboutthe people that we are helping, hopefully
through the da.
The nature of scripture.
That one I don't think is relevant.
Ecclesiology and missiology.
Yeah, I don't think that's relevant.
Demonology and angelology,again, maybe a little relevant.
And, you know, depending onhow one thinks that causally intersects

(34:14):
with people's health.
And eschatology, the study ofthe end times.
I'm hoping that that is notrelevant to my job.
Yeah, yeah.
Especially on your side of things.
It's like, yeah, I hope that'snot what.
Right.
But if it would be very relevant.
Right.
Yeah, it's good.

(34:36):
You're going to have to add awhole new silo.
Yes.
With demon fatalities.
Oh, man.
So with that, if you, Andy, ifyou had to pick two of those above
12 topics that we mentionedthat you think are relevant to your
day to day life just to talk alittle bit more about, they don't
have to be the two mostrelevant, just two that you would
want to talk about that youthink are relevant.

(34:56):
What would they be?
I mean, you know, I think theimago DEI and the social justice
ones kind of stood out.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
You want to just riff aboutthat for a little bit?
What stands out to you aboutthose that impacts your life?
Sure.
You know, I mean, in terms ofsocial justice.
Right.

(35:17):
We again talked a lot in thelast few years about how the categories
that we create for people,race, gender, even various, you know,
social and communityaffiliations, you know, have an impact
on people's health, you know,and they.

(35:38):
Beyond whatever biologicalcorrelation there happens to be.
Right.
So we've known for a while,for example, that, you know, there
are certain health outcomesthat are worse for black people in
the United States than theyare for other groups.
And that is not, you know, andthe evidence does not suggest that
that's because there is somegenetic feature of that population

(36:00):
that means that they haveworse outcomes.
You know, things like bloodpressure and diabetes and so forth.
There are obviously oneexample that people might go to is
sickle cell anemia.
Right.
So the genes for sickle cellare more prevalent in certain populations.
And that does have to do withthe intersection of sickle cell anemia
and malaria protection.
And so people coming fromplaces where malaria is endemic.

(36:22):
Right.
That is there.
There is some biological,genetic connection.
But a lot of these otherhealth outcomes, we have not been
able to find any biologicalexplanation or genetic explanation.
It has to do more with accessto healthcare, education, communities,
approaches to treatingdifferent things.

(36:43):
It even comes down to knowingyour health outcome may depend on
did you grow up in a communitythat knows when to go to a doctor?
For what, and what doctor doyou go to?
I'm always a little bitsurprised by how much you have to
know as the patient about which.
Which doctor to see for whatkind of condition.
You always have to halfwaydiagnose yourself before you figure

(37:03):
out which healthcareprofessional to see.
And so if that knowledge isnot part of your community, part
of your education and yourupbringing, you might delay care.
You might not get care at all.
You might not know this issomething that needs to be treated
or something that could be treated.
A lot of people suffer withthings because they don't think there's
anything that could be donewith them.

(37:24):
And so, yeah, so that intersects.
And we've made some efforts inthe past using our data to try to
identify.
We don't get a lot of dataabout specific people.
We're not getting your fullname and address and all that kind
of stuff.
We're trying to look at thingsat an aggregate level.
So there's limitations to whatwe can do.
But we have made some effortsto try to identify issues that might

(37:45):
correspond to socioeconomiccategories or just geographic regions.
I've seen public health folkswho have access to more granular
data.
You know, they've been able toidentify specific housing developments
where there are specifichealthcare problems or healthcare
issues because of access tohealthcare and different issues.

(38:06):
So that definitely intersectswith what we do a lot.
And we talk a lot about how dowe provide the best care for everyone
and to make sure that publichealth is definitely concerned with
things like education, accessto resources.
We're not necessarily treatingeach individual people.
That's more on the medical side.
But, you know, if there's anissue with a particular neighborhood
is too far away from thenearest pharmacy, the nearest grocery

(38:31):
store with fresh produce, thenearest emergency department.
Right.
That's a public health issuein terms of how do we identify those
communities and those needs.
Yeah.
And I just want to lean alittle into that.
Do you think there are anyways that the church can actually
help be part of the solution here?
Because, like, what you'reMentioning is it's not something
that maybe science can solveon its own.

(38:52):
Because what we're seeing is alot of these issues aren't just genetic.
It's people's access.
Is there a way the church canstep in there?
Yeah, you know, there arecertainly things that churches can
do.
I think part of, you know, thefirst step in some church communities
may just be grappling with andrecognizing that systemic issues

(39:13):
exist and that not allproblems are caused by individual
choices, that there are thingsthat operate at a system level, at
a community level, at aneighborhood level, at a county level,
or what have you that have tobe addressed at that level in order
to be able to make acontribution to the solution.

(39:35):
Churches can be a source ofbetter education on these issues.
Right.
You can have folks in yourchurch who maybe provide their expertise
on.
On healthcare issues.
Right.
How do I.
Who do I see for this?
Is there a doctor that canhelp me with this problem?
When do I call?

(39:56):
When do I go to the er?
When do I go to my primarycare physician?
Some people just need helpwith those kinds of questions.
There may be issues dependingon where your church is located.
There might be issues oftransportation, so the church could
maybe.
I know there are churches thatprovide transportation to various
things that could includetaking folks to healthcare appointments

(40:18):
or even.
And this obviously gets intoconfidentiality issues and so forth.
But sometimes folks might evenneed somebody to go in and talk to
their doctor with them aboutwhat is going on.
Maybe there's languagebarriers or maybe there's just unfamiliarity
with things.
And obviously, again, that hasto be navigated very carefully with
each individual with respectto their pregnancies, privacy and

(40:40):
so forth.
But that might be a placewhere folks could help.
Some churches operate foodpantries, just kind of paying attention
to what food are we stocking?
What kind of nutrition isavailable through this food?
Is it all just calories?
Are there plenty of micronutrients?
Is there plenty of protein,plenty of fiber?

(41:00):
All those kinds of things.
And so maybe even rethinkingabout asking what you ask for donations
for the food pantry might besomething that the church could do.
And if you don't have one,maybe, you know, starting one or
starting something like that.
Right.
Helping to deal with issues offood insecurity, food access.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, there'sprobably a whole long list of things

(41:21):
that could be done, but thoseare just some of the ones that kind
of popped onto my head.
Yeah.
I'm asking one other thing,and then TJ will be annoyed at Me,
but it's okay.
I think.
I don't think he hates me yet.
One of the things you saidsomewhat, too, is what I'm actually
curious of the angelology,demonology, and how people think
that might impact their health.

(41:41):
Growing up Pentecostal, I knowa lot of people who blame diseases
and stuff or mental illnesseson demons.
Is that kind of what you weregetting at or is there something
else?
I'm just curious.
Yeah, I think that's part of it.
Some people absolutely havethat mindset that some element of
mental illness and some,sometimes even physical illnesses

(42:03):
are spiritual in nature.
But there's also, you know,the element of, you know, on the
flip side.
Right.
Do I think that, you know,angels can be a source of healing
or a source of relief fromthese things?
Right.
So I think that there's a kindof practical public health issue
of being aware of people'sbeliefs in those kinds of areas and

(42:26):
helping navigate them.
And whether you, as ahealthcare provider or a public health
professional, share those samebeliefs or not, you might have to
still navigate how a personapproaches those kinds of questions
and be respectful of wherethey're coming from and provide solutions
in a way that is consistent orcomplementary to how they approach

(42:46):
things.
And that may be another rolefor, you know, for the church.
Right.
For the church leaders to beable to help navigate those.
Those intersections.
Right.
And help maybe some of thecongregation being a positive force
for.
Hey, you know, there's a waythat this medicine or that, you know,
this health care procedure ormental health, you know, treatment

(43:11):
can sit alongside of yourbelief in, you know, God's healing
rather than being at odds with it.
So, yeah, that was.
That was kind of what I had in mind.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I get it.
And they're right.
Demons do cause all bad things.
No.
Yep, that's what that is.
So is there any one of thetopics that we mentioned that you

(43:34):
think is particularlyirrelevant to your life?
Like, specifically, I mean, tomy life.
It's a whole lot, you know,not necessarily, but, you know, thinking
about, like, how I conduct my.
My job day to day.
Right.
I, you know, I'm not, like Isaid, you know, a particular model
of the end times, a particularmodel of atonement.
Maybe I'm just not a goodenough theologian, but I'm not really

(43:57):
sure how I would do my jobdifferently under different circumstances.
I guess there's a certainnihilism that comes with a certain
very extreme view ofeschatology that I might just not
do my job if I didn't thinkthat there was any way that I could
positively impact the world orsomething like that, but that's a
fairly extreme view that I'mnot sure anybody seriously holds

(44:20):
to.
Right.
Do you think, or what wouldyou rather our church and like our
pastors, theologians, focus onjust, you know, more to cater towards
people like you?
Yeah, I mean, so, you know, asa person like me, I see, you know,
value in theology of all kinds.

(44:41):
Right.
And as somebody who isenthusiastic for basic science and
curiosity driven science forthe, for its own sake, I certainly
wouldn't want to discourageanybody from curiosity driven theology
for its own sake.
Right.
So even if the question of,you know, what, what actually happened
on the cross, what was themodel of atonement or the question

(45:02):
of what's coming in the futurefor all of us, even if that might
not change what I'mpractically doing from moment to
moment, doesn't necessarilymean that it's a, it's not a worthwhile
investigation.
Doesn't mean it's notinteresting academically, intellectually
and so forth.
So I, you know, I don't wantto, I wouldn't want to dictate, you
know, anybody's particulartheological preferences or directions

(45:22):
and so forth.
I think those are all validtopics to explore and, you know,
learning more about God,knowing more about God and who God
is and what God is like, youknow, I wouldn't, I wouldn't discourage
any of that, you know, I think.
But, you know, thinking aboutmyself as a public health person,
as a scientist and what mightcater to me specifically, you know,

(45:45):
I think that what I would liketo see is when there are intersections
with science, you know, beingwilling to engage with people who
have technical expertise andtechnical knowledge.
I have, I have sat in sermonsand heard people preach on biology
and heard people preachincorrectly on biology and tried

(46:07):
to explain afterwards, youknow, if you wouldn't go up in front
of the church and say, look, Iknow we have these fantastic musicians
in our church and they cansing and they can play the piano
well and all these differentthings, and that's great, I'm glad
that they're here, but we'regonna do worship now and I'm going
to sit down at the piano andplay and sing and that will be fine.

(46:27):
And then, you know, know gothrough and, you know, provide an
off key, you know, rendition.
Right.
That wouldn't, we would neverdo that.
That would be, we would knowthat that would be so insulting to
the talented musicians whohave put years and years of practice
into being musicians.
But When I try to explainthat, I just kind of got like, you
know, dead looks like.

(46:48):
But of course, it's not thesame thing because I didn't sing.
I talked about science.
And that's, you know,everybody's allowed to have their.
Their thoughts and theiropinions about these topics.
Okay.
But, yeah, I mean, that's.
That's how I've felt in thepast, for what.
For whatever that's worth.
And I would like to see fewerpeople feel like that in the future,
if that's at all possible.
Yeah, yeah.

(47:08):
No, I actually.
I really love that.
I.
And we've had Frank Viola onour podcast a few other times, so
check him out if you guys will.
He's a little bit moreconservative, but he helps write
a book called PaganChristianity where they kind of show
how the church somehow becamethis place where, like, it revolves
around one person doing aspeech and it's like a show, and
that's not what the churchstarted off as.

(47:30):
So I like this idea of morepeople participating in different
ways, whether it be ourscientists to talk about scientific
issues rather than someone whomaybe doesn't have expertise in that
field.
Or, you know, like youmentioned pastors preaching about
biology, not knowing anythingabout it.
Your pastor's preaching the Bible.
And I'm like, I kind of wishyou would stop at exalt a Bible expert
first, because even the stuffthat's, like, maybe seems inconsequential

(47:50):
that you get wrong.
I'm like, no, that's just incorrect.
That's not actually what it says.
Or, you know, I'm like, Idon't think you read this other passage
that says Saul's name, who wasalso Paul.
That's the thing, they getwrong a lot, right?
Where people, like, whenSaul's name changed, like, it didn't
stop preaching.
That Bible doesn't say that.
And it's just stuff like that.
Or even, you know, whenpreachers preach about, like, the

(48:12):
Buddha and how he's their God.
And I'm like, he's not, though.
You know, like, we expect ourTV shows to go to scientific experts,
religious experts forphilosophy, people on hand so that
they get stuff right.
But for some reason, when apreacher gets up to tell a congregation
what is truth, the sameexpectation isn't put on them, that's
on our entertainment of simplyjust getting stuff right, you know,

(48:34):
I don't know.
That was just a little bit ofa side tangent, I guess.
Anyway, each of us see theworld through different eyes, right?
Like something we talked a lotabout on this series is, you know,
you as a scientist and how youlive your daily life, you see the
world differently than someonelike me who works in food.
How we see the world goingthrough our life.
Is there anything in your workthat you think that you see that

(48:55):
our pastors, church leaders,theologians, might benefit from seeing
for themselves or learningmore about that maybe they don't
see in their regular daily lives?
Yeah, I had occasion to talkwith Will a little bit about this,
and it was kind of actuallyeven exploring a little bit as we
were talking and hadn't quitearticulated it in this way before,
but one of the things that Ihave to do for my job periodically

(49:17):
is, you know, we get this textdata of why do people go to the hospital?
And we have to identify newcategories in that data and find
new things that we hadn't beenlooking for before.
You know, for example, drug overdoses.
We didn't used to work withthose, but, you know, became a bigger
and bigger concern.
And our data was able toprovide up to date information at

(49:39):
a time when that was harder to get.
And so, you know, it was a newthing that we had to take on.
So periodically I have to gothrough this text data and I'll look
through tens of thousands,hundreds of thousands of these short
little descriptions of whypeople went to the hospital.
And by and large, what I'mgetting is a very, very concentrated
dose of everybody's top five,10 worst days of their lives, right?

(50:03):
There are some people,obviously, that go to the ED more
often that are experiencingchronic illnesses.
And there are some trips tothe ED that are not that big of a
deal.
You had a small injury or alittle bit of a fever and you'll
be fine.
But by and large, if you're inthe emergency department, that's
one of the worst days of your life.
You've been in some kind ofbad car accident, you're having some
kind of health crisis.

(50:25):
Even if it's just kind of thatemotional, like something is going
on with my body that I don't get.
That's a tough day.
And so getting thatconcentrated dose of tens of thousands,
hundreds, thousands ofpeople's worst moments, that's a
tough thing to deal with kindof emotionally, mentally.
And so, you know, but it's.
And thinking through that andthinking about that, it's given me

(50:46):
opportunity to reflect on, youknow, the experience that God must
have of having a much more,you know, than just a little text
blurb awareness of whatpeople, you know, both the joys and
the happiness and the, youknow, top 10 days, positive days
of people's lives and the, youknow, the top 10 worst days of people's
lives that we're all goingthrough all the time.
There's always, you know, Idon't know how many millions of people

(51:08):
experiencing their worst dayof their life at any given time right
around the world.
And you know, how Godexperienced that exactly?
Like I said, I don't reallyknow for sure.
But, you know, scripturetestifies that to some extent, you
know, in some fashion, God isaware of our suffering and our joys

(51:29):
and, you know, is sensitive tothose things.
And so what, you know, whatmust that be like?
And again, not trying to saythat I'm experiencing something the
same way that God has, butit's a different kind of human experience
that maybe helps us to think alittle bit differently about what
God's perspective might be like.
Yeah.
Also for those wondering, hementioned Will, that Pastor Will

(51:51):
Rose.
He's my pastor.
We also mention him everyepisode now, apparently.
And they will.
And Andy did an episode, aYouTube exclusive for systematic
Ecology, talking about Andy's book.
So I think that's kind ofwhere they got into some of that
if you guys want to check it out.
Hopefully I remember to putthat link in the show notes, but
I'm bad at that, so don'tcount on it.
Yeah, yeah.

(52:12):
All right.
So are there any questionsthat we might have missed that you
think people might want toknow about you or your work as a
public health official?
You know, I think, I thinkwe've touched on the basics of what
I do.
You know, it is a very unusualkind of job, as I've kind of hinted
at.
Right.
It's at this intersection ofsoftware and software engineering

(52:34):
and statistical analysis anddata engineering and data science
and also public health andbiology and, you know, so it.
You guys are basically hittingmultiple jobs at once.
Yeah.
Just so you know, when I, whenI applied for this, for this job,
they told me, well, we didn'treally have an opening for somebody

(52:55):
like you because we didn'tknow that somebody like you existed.
Yeah.
But, yeah, so, you know, it's always.
There's always something newgoing on.
There's always somethinginteresting to work on.
But yeah, hopefully folks havea little better awareness that this
is.
There's a whole community ofpeople who are sitting out there

(53:15):
at a second kind of levelremoved from your doctors.
Right.
Obviously you've got doctorsand nurses and other clinicians who
care about your specificpersonality, health and well being.
But then there's this wholeOther level of people that are trying
to think about how do we.
How do we make things betterfor whole groups and communities
and neighborhoods and statesand counties and, you know, hopefully
that that's a positive thingto think about, that, you know, that

(53:37):
these folks, you know, theymay not always achieve it in the.
To the best that they.
They want to or the.
To the degree that they wantto, but they are trying to figure
out how to make things betterfor all of us, how to improve our
health, how to improve ourenvironments and our communities
so that we can all flourish alittle bit more.
And.

(53:58):
Yeah, you know, and it reallykind of grieved me a bit when, you
know, to see these folks getdemonized so much and, you know,
the idea that, like, oh, theydon't want us going out and hanging
out in restaurants or getting together.
I'm like, if only you knew youcould talk to some of these people,
like, they would be the firstperson to go to you with a bar, have
a drink with you, chat with you.
They would love nothing morethan to see you get to socialize

(54:19):
and be happy and would gladlydo it with you if you were so inclined.
But, yeah, I think there are afew people that I've met more who
are more just kind of thinkingabout how do we make things better
for everybody all the time.
Yeah.
I do have one question.

(54:40):
As the chief science officer,do you get, like, a big fancy desk?
You got a name for gimbal?
So I got the job title that I have.
My boss said it was about 60,40 between it was appropriate promotion
in the sort of corporateadvancement sense and wanting to
give me a job title that wasthe same as Mr.

(55:01):
Spocks on Star Trek.
Yes.
So fantastic.
We are a small softwarecompany and, well, we don't have
to go there, but, yeah, we area small software company.
We've been about the same sizethe whole time that I've been there.

(55:21):
So, you know, I'm not in somefake fancy corner office.
I don't even have a door on my office.
This private suite kind of thing.
I do have, you know, a nice.
Yet you don't have it yet.
Yet.
My desk is bigger than.
My desk in my office at workis bigger than other desks that I've

(55:43):
had before.
So I guess I would say there'sa big desk, but it's not like, you
know, it's certainly nothing,you know, one of these, like, solid
wood kind of.
Right.
You know, those aren't real.
No one has that.
Yeah.
I'm literally recording onthat desk right now, a solid wood,
big desk.
Yeah, but it's not that solid.
It's broken.
I mean, that's true, butthat's because I moved it several

(56:03):
times and I broke it.
I'm just that powerful.
That's different.
Anyway, the, you know, onething we usually do on this show
before wrapping up is to askour guests if they could provide
a single tangible action forthose listening that they could go
to help church unity, youknow, whatever.
But instead, for this series,we've been asking people, people,

(56:25):
if someone in the church orthe church itself could do something
to help you specifically orlike someone like you or in your
career that works with publichealth, what's something the church
could do that would bebeneficial to people like you, Andy,
or someone in the church?
Yeah, you know, I think that,you know, something that public health
folks could always use is justa little more encouragement and appreciation

(56:50):
or gratefulness.
Right.
So when you're, when you're aphysician and you help somebody get
better, right.
You see that you have somedirect connection to, oh, look, that
person is now healthy becauseI, you know, gave them this medicine
or performed the surgery, whathave you.
Right.
The best that I can do workingin public health, and especially
since I'm kind of like evenone step removed from frontline public
health is, well, hopefullylike 100,000 people are like 1 point

(57:17):
or zero 0.1% better off todaythan they were last year or whatever.
Right.
And so maybe hopefully thatall those, you know, little.00001s
add up to something.
But it's very abstract, it'svery indirect and diffuse.
And so, yeah, just kind ofsaying to somebody, hey, I know that

(57:39):
I don't know what exactlyyou've done done to help me personally,
but I know that you're workinghard to help people and I appreciate
that and thank you for that.
You know, if you know somebodywho works in or around public health
and obviously also, you know,healthcare, frontline healthcare
workers and all those folks,you know, deserve all the thanks
and appreciation that we cangive them too.
But yeah, if you know somebodyin public health just, you know,

(58:02):
every once in a while that,that little, hey, I'm glad that you
do what you do, and obviouslyeverybody would, would benefit from
that.
But just kind of, I thinkpublic health, because of that abstraction,
because of that removal fromany kind of tangible, direct results,
it's always, it's always needed.
Yeah.
Well, we do appreciate you andwhat you do, for the record.

(58:22):
Well, thank you.
Yeah, it's true.
And what do you think we wouldsee change in the world around us
if everyone started doing that?
You know, just being thankfulto our local or not local public
health officials?
Well, I mean, I think we wouldmaybe develop a greater collective
appreciation and understandingfor what public health is and does

(58:45):
and has been doing and whyit's been one of the best investments
we've made over the pastcentury and why it would be worth
continuing to invest in andcontinuing to have people pursue.
You know, I think we're kindof at a low point at the moment of
why would anybody want to getinto this job that, you know, when
folks aren't even gonna listento what you have to say or what have
you?
So, yeah, I think if, youknow, if we could foster a little

(59:08):
bit more appreciation,awareness of just what it is that
public health does and whythey do it, then, you know, maybe
we'd have a.
We'd be in good shape for thenext generation of public health
workers.
Yeah.
All right, so before we startto wrap up here, we like to do what
we call the God moment, and weask everyone to share a moment they

(59:30):
saw God in recently, whetherthat be a blessing, a challenge,
a moment of worship, what haveyou, what it may be.
I always make Josh go first togive the rest of us enough time to
think about a good momentwhere we saw God recently.
So, Josh, do you have a Godmoment for us this week?
Yes.
It's going to be weird andmaybe a little awkward.
I don't know.

(59:51):
My God moment this week isjust like approximately an hour and
10 minutes ago.
I was thinking about howthankful I am for this guy named
tj, Tiberius Vaughn Blackwell.
He just does a lot fordifferent podcasts that I'm involved
with.
You know, I produce, I edit, Ido all this stuff, and sometimes
TJ is just like, he's theground man, right?
Like, he's, hey, we needsomebody to jump in here.

(01:00:12):
And he's like, yeah, I coulddo that.
Yeah, I know enough to talkabout that.
Sure.
And TJ says sure to so manywild, crazy ideas I have or just
things that I need help with,and he makes my life a lot easier.
And just think about howthankful I am for him and how I just
don't say that enough, probably.
So being on this podcast andgetting the opportunity to thank
TJ is.
That's going to be my God moment.

(01:00:33):
So thank you, dj.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So for me, my God moment, it's.
It's a.
It's a.
It's a weird one, it's adifferent one.
I've been so caught up in,like the cultural zeitgeist of, you
know, just everything that'sgoing on really, and how much attention

(01:00:54):
has been diverted away fromenvironmental health recently because
of the pandemic and seeing itcome back into the spotlight.
Especially for us here inSouth Carolina, where we've got,
you know, wildfires for thefirst time, like ever.
Not actually ever, butdefinitely for the first time since

(01:01:15):
I've been alive, it's beenpretty eye opening to see people
around me start to grapplewith the idea of environmental health.
And especially because I justthe other day I found out, and this
is.
Well, I've always been such abig advocate for making your kids
go play outside, but now it'sjust not all that safe.

(01:01:37):
My roommate was going for awalk out behind our apartment complex.
Just walking out down therebecause he likes to look around and
see old stuff.
Old, you know, rotted outbuildings and stuff.
And he found a chemical spillin our creek.
Oh, yeah?
Wait, what kind?
Not sure yet.
But now that's underinvestigation, so.

(01:01:58):
Interesting.
Yeah, that is not what I.
Where I expected this to go,by the way.
It's not, is it?
Yeah, that's wild.
But, you know, these otherproblems still exist.
You know, it's nice to be outthere, you know, community.
Our country would fall apartif we weren't.
Everyone wasn't trying to lookout for each other at least a little
bit.
And I think that's kind ofwhat's happening.

(01:02:19):
So.
Well, you know, do your part.
Is that a blessing or a challenge?
Like a blessing.
We remember that.
There's.
There's other problems otherthan just Donald Trump.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's the president.
The only problem in the world.
There's chemicals in my creek.
Yeah.
But that's getting dealt with.
So, Andy, do you have a Godmoment for us this week?

(01:02:42):
So we're making plans.
My wife and my daughter and Iare making plans to visit my parents
for Easter weekend coming up.
And kind of out of the blue,my daughter was asking me, hey, does
grandma still run the Sundayschool at her church?
I was like, yeah, I think so.
Or, you know, she's stillinvolved, like.
Okay.
And you asked this becauseshe's like, oh, yeah, because I wanted

(01:03:03):
to, you know, see if sheneeded my help with Sunday school
when we go see her.
And, you know, in light ofjust, you know, without getting into
all the details.
Right.
But my family and my daughtershad, you know, some complicated relationships
with church activities inrecent years.
And so just hearing that, oh,you know, she was still thinking

(01:03:23):
about that.
She was thinking about how tohelp my mom, how to help these kids,
how to be involved at churchwhen we go out there to this other
church that she's not familiar with.
Especially because my parentschurch is meeting in a different
building.
They had a fire like a yearand a half ago.
I think now it is.
And so they've been meeting inanother church's building and so
that, you know, this will beour first time there in this other

(01:03:46):
unfamiliar setting.
So that, you know, she was notlike, oh, you know, I don't want
to go.
I don't want to be involved.
I don't want to.
I just want to kind of hide.
But she was like, no, how canI help?
How can I be involved?
That was encouraging andpositive to see.
Yeah.
All right.
Yeah.
And if you like this episode,please consider sharing it with a
friend.
Share with an enemy, Sharewith your cousins.

(01:04:09):
Check out the store we runthrough Captivate.
It's comfy, it's nice, it'sreasonably priced.
There's no reason not tounless you don't have any money.
But if you want me us to buyyou the merch, you know, that still
goes down as a merch sale for us.
So let us know, we'll see what happens.
Yeah, it wouldn't be the firsttime weirdly enough, but yeah.
Also check out our other shows.

(01:04:29):
You know, this is a crossoverwe're doing.
We're doing some crosspromotion with systematic ecology
with our encore episode here.
So check them out.
But you know, check out allthe shows on the Unazile podcast
network.
You can check out trying tothink some ones.
I don't usually say the homilywith Will Rose.
You can check out Friday NightFright with Christian Ashley or the
Bible After Hours with thefoul mouth preacher.

(01:04:50):
All those are, are fun and Ithink worth worth taking your time
checking them out.
Yeah.
And we hope you enjoyed it.
Next week we will be off for a week.
It's gonna be crazy.
We're gonna do probablynothing and realistically probably
a lot actually.
But the week after that we'rehaving a round table of pastors and
professors join us to reflecton this, our job Fair series.

(01:05:12):
And after that we're going tobe doing some episodes to hype up
the Ology beer camp.
But this year in St.
Paul, Minnesota.
And we hope to have ReverendShayna Watson back on soon to discuss
her time pastoring aninternational diverse faith community
at the Anglican Trinity churchin Washington D.C.
at the end of season one, ofcourse, will be Francis Chan.

(01:05:32):
Yeah.
He doesn't know, though, sosomeone does have to tell him.
Still police.
Yeah, we're currently.
We're going for, like, theworld record.
Longest first season.
Yeah, something like that.
But I think, yeah, it's got tobe close.
I don't know.
I've never checked the stats.
I have no idea.
Guinness let us know.
Right.
Till next time, though.

(01:06:08):
On us, Lord Please put yourhand on us day by day, Lord.

(01:06:34):
Lord.
Have mercy on us, Lord Pleaseput your hand on us day by day.