November 24, 2025 • 29 mins
Jonathan Buchwalter, a Tuscaloosa Highschool history teacher returns to update us on the Focus act, and also to tell us about his 3 books that he has written as part of the NIght Sky Trilogy. Then Doctor Charles Vega joins us to talk about Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD).
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
A local Alabama history teacher, takes a rather unconventional approach
to reaching students to think critically and creatively about the
world around him. Hello, I'm John Mount and this week
on Few Point, Alabama, I'm talking with Jonathan Buckwalter, a
Tuscaloosa County High School teacher. And Jonathan, we've had you
on before, but I wanted to bring you back.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Welcome to the show. Hey, it's good to be back.
I'm glad to have you in studio.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
And last time we were talking about your appearance on
the History Channels unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Has that happened yet or yes?
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Season three is out now and use a new episode
every Friday, so we can check that out.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
We can see you on the History Channel. Very cool.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
But I also wanted to update on something we talked
about as well, the Focus Act, because this has been
a bone of contention for a lot of kids and
a lot of teachers are saying it's going really well.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
What's been your experience so far. Yeah, now that we're
about a quarter of the way into the school year,
we're halfway through the semester and it's been really positive.
Our behaviors are down generally, and while we've settled into
a baseline. The kids are kind of used to it
at this point, the staff is used to it. Participation
in class is broadly up, and some of the disruptive
(01:08):
behaviors that come with cell phones, like kids trying to
snatch them out of each other's hands, that just doesn't
happen anymore.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
So wait, that's west thing. Kids were snatching phones out
of each other's hands. Oh yeah all the time? Is
that the Is that like the modern equivalent of kicking
the books out of somebody's arms back in the day.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yes, it absolutely is. Fires changed.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
People don't and the students they I know, they claim
they don't like it, but I would imagine some of
them feel secretly relieved that they don't have to constantly
be on Instagram or TikTok or snapchat constantly because all
their friends are.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah, that's the That's the.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Vibe that I get from them when I talk to
them about it, is of course they want to have
their thing, and I know we're all dependent on our phones,
but beneath it is like, Okay, I don't have to
check it for a little while, I don't have to
have somebody pinging me all the time, and for a
lot of them because their parents like aggressively text them
throughout the day and they're like, I just I can
get a break from folks for a few minutes.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
They have an excuse.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
The other week, I felt so liberated. My phone was
kind of low on battery, and so I put it
on the charger to charge right before church, and I
forgot I did that, and I got to church. I
felt my pocket I was going to silence it, so
oh oh, my phone signed my pocket and I had
that feeling of that, that really weird feeling of I
feel naked. But then I was like, you know what,
this is actually going to be really good. And I
was able to focus because I didn't I was free.
(02:23):
There was no chance that anybody could communicate with me.
My phone was far away, sitting on its charger in
my bedroom.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Oh yeah, no.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
If if I could unplug a little bit more often,
I think I would be better off and me following
the school rules of like that they don't restrict staff
use of our phones, but to keep it fair with
the kids, I'll always put mine face down on my
desk while I'm in school time. And it really has
been a relief to just like not have it for
a few hours a day. I was gonna say, you know,
and I won't call anyone out. My daughter is fifteen.
(02:52):
She's in the school system here in the Birmingham area,
and she said that some of her teachers actually will
they'll assign the kids something and they'll be you know,
looking at their books whatever, and look over the teacher,
the teachers on their phone at their desk. So, yeah,
I don't think that's quite fair. I understand, you know,
you've got more, like like I've got a young kid
at home and so you have a little bit more
as an adult on your plate. But I mean, if
(03:12):
they're folksing up, you can do you know, very hard.
And kids are really big on fairness. Yes, even when
you know you can point out, hey, I'm an adult,
fair doesn't apply to me. It's a little different for you.
You're still under my roof. But they still they really
don't like the fairness thing. Yeah, if you if you
want to lead them, then you have to lead them
by example. And that's the only way you're going to
get followed is if you can lead by example.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
So and you've actually you did a tick I saw
I found a TikTok of you talking about the Focus
Act and it has some some ridiculous amount of engagement.
You do a lot on social media, which is I
think a great way to reach kids these days.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
I've really enjoyed the positive feedback that I get and
I can go more granular into the history that I'm
familiar with, where when we're covering concepts in class, we
kind of have to move right, we have to move quickly.
We're on a time crunch. I've got to ge through
the whole twentieth century in a few months. So on
social media I can really go deep into the things
that I'm most fascinated by. And the kids get a
(04:06):
kick out of that when they see me online, they like, oh,
that's mister b He's on TikTok. But for me, it's
just a way to continue to do the thing that
I love to do, and that's teach history.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Do you ever assign your students to go watch Hey,
I posted a new on TikTok, make sure you check
it out.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
No.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
No.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
I try to keep a sort of barrier of professionalism
between me and them, and I tell them explicitly, like
I'm not going to reply to your comments. If you
comment on my stuff, I'm not going to acknowledge your messages.
If you send me a message, the forum to reach
me is not on social media. That's probably a really
good policy. I'm sure that's actually probably an encouraged policy
by administration at the school that they would like the
(04:40):
students outside of class hours to not especially be interacting
that way. Well, in addition to your work in the
classroom and your work on the History channel and your
work on social media, you're also an accomplished author, and
you've written three books, and of course, you know, I
can imagine you you would write a dusty ol compendium
(05:02):
about you know, John J. Pershing or something like that,
because you're history teacher. But your books are not exactly that,
are they. No, So it's science fiction, science fantasy. It's
faster than light with a magic system. But when I
sat down to write the Night Sky Trilogy, I was
arguing with myself of did I want to do historiography,
did I want to write a book on Nazism, which
is my field of history, or did I want to
(05:24):
write fiction? And it clicked with me because I have
my bookshelf of nonfiction at work and most people are
really intimidated by history books, and they wouldn't engage with
something that they might find really interesting because it is
this dusty tone about pattern. And I thought, well, if
I could write a historically themed science fiction science fantasy
(05:46):
book and really try to ground it in historical understanding,
then I could sucker people in too getting into history
along the way.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
And it's done that. It's been really effective in that way.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
So like the Chronicles of Narnia, how it was not
it's not a religious book, but it's a completely religious book.
But if you didn't know that, you just think, ah,
that's an interesting story.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
It's a fun story with a lion in it, and
then it turns out to be a form of proselyzation.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
So your book, The Night Sky Trilogy, it's there's three
parts to it, and I don't want you to give
away any spoilers, but give me an idea of exactly
what kind of book this is. You said, it's it's
it's sort of a fantasy, but at the same time
there is some I guess historical teaching.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Explain how that is. So in the on the fantasy
side of it, I was really fascinated with the idea
of fantasy as a genre being trapped in the Middle Ages,
and of course Tolkien is the heavy weight in the
genre and what he did better than everyone everyone kind of.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Tries to copy.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
But I thought, wouldn't it be fascinating if we moved
it forward in time and you had the Orcs and
the elves and the dwarfs, but it's not trapped in
the medieval or the Renaissance period. And I've seen some
genres try to move it forward in different ways, but
what I really was fascinated by was like, well, what
happens when they achieve space travel? When the people that
(07:04):
have just kind of grown up around magic, it's not
weird to them that people have magic powers. How would
that make a future facing society look when they're going
out to colonize the stars?
Speaker 2 (07:16):
And so that was sort of my.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Bedrock of like, this is a new take on the
genre that I wanted to explore, and then I attach
historiography to it, of there's this great crisis and it
sets off an economic shockwave, and a populist strong man
with magic rises to power over over the population and
sees this destiny among the stars as their main propaganda line.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
And they're using it as.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
An excuse to deport non humans because a human supremacist
sort of military cult that moves inward and upward, and
like we see with the rise of Nazism in the
nineteen twenties, this notion of get the sub humans out
of here was the sort of earliest of what we
now consider the Holocaust, And that was the framing I
(08:04):
wanted to go with. Is like, there's this mass exodus
to the stars, but it's the non human peoples of
this fantasy world being deported out to go elsewhere, and
the regime entrenches itself in power, and when the story
picks up, they've been in power for a thousand years.
The God Emperor of the Federation, the premiere, is literally
(08:25):
a deified character that it has the cult of personality
that you see with fascist dictators. But I wanted to
take it a step further, and so what if he
actually was immortal, Actually was this larger than life figure
that had magic power that could wield the kinds of
political tools that you could have one hundred lifetimes to
really develop and hone into a real art of totalitarianism.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
This is Viewpoint Alabama on the Alabama Radio network ime
John Mountsin speaking with Jonathan Buckwalter. He is a Tescalosa
County High School teacher, and we're talking about his book
series that he's cared, the Night Sky Trilogy, And you
know what, I'm probably not the first one to compare it,
but this kind of sounds like Star Wars, but in
reverse because that was a long time ago in a
galaxy far far away. This is in the future, but
(09:13):
it's still the same kind of thing. Space travel and
religions sort of tied together. Am I the first one
to make that comparison?
Speaker 3 (09:19):
No, you're not, and it's a perfectly valid comparison. Star
Wars is my great love. I am absolutely obsessed with
Star Wars. I have a Star Wars tattoo. My wife
and I sit down and regularly watch through all of it.
We are a Star Wars household, and so the influences
are absolutely there. And I had to put a lot
of work in to not just copying the things that
(09:40):
I thought were the coolest parts of Star Wars. Are
any laser swords in my story, And that was deliberate.
I was like, I can't even like I'm already it's
space magic, and that already gets me pretty close. I
don't want to trip over the mouse. Nobody uses the Force,
and then nobody uses the Force.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
No.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Now, as a Star Wars fan, do you like all
all Star war Wars equally or are you more of
a fan of the original trilogy four, five, and six.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
I think the best Star Wars trilogy is and or
season one and or season two Rogue one.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Okay, so you go hard into the and to some
of the new stuff that it's kind of the spin
off Disney Star Wars as well.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Some of the new stuff is really really incredible. Now,
I think when you approach Star Wars it is for
twelve year olds, and you have to like know that
going in that a lot of it is really hokey.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
But it's magic. It's magic.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
It's the biggest ip in the world for a reasons
because it captures this the sense of wonder that I
think few pieces of media are really able to capture.
I think Star Trek does it really well. Lord of
the Rings does it really well. But there's a thisness
to it and I don't know how to describe it
as more than that, but it is this unique and
special thing that grabbed me and I wanted to contribute
(10:54):
in that way. I wanted to have my own kind.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Of Star Wars.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Well, you know, a lot of especially I'm thinking back
to specific the original trilogy of you know, four, five,
and six, and they really they took a lot from
World War Two, you know, all the way to the
space fights looked a lot like the footage of the
dog fights that you saw during World War Two, you know,
in the Battle of Britain, all that kind of stuff.
It looks very similar all the way down to I
thought it was interesting that the cast, you know, the
(11:18):
the rebels, of course, they seem like regular American folks,
but then the bad guys almost seemed like Nazi Germany.
I guess they had like a little bit of a
British accent, but they still they seem like the bad
guys from World War Two. So in that respect, I
think they drew on history in the creation of that.
And that's kind of where I'm going with your work.
Is it sounds to me like you also are drawing
(11:38):
on history when you write these sort of books. And
because you're used to speaking to an audience of teenagers
your class, does that give you some insight into how
to reach young people with the story with maybe a
historical flare, but still with the all the new trappings
of space and magic.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Yes, so we're Star Wars' approach to history as fiction really,
at least initially, doesn't go much deeper than aesthetic. Right,
you have the uniforms for the Imperial officers for example,
look reminiscent of SS uniforms, or stormtroopers borrowing from the
strem of a Tilong, from the Brownshirts from the storm Ittalion.
(12:17):
I wanted to go a layer deeper than aesthetics. So,
for example, one of our perspective characters is the villain.
It's Artemis Rayner, and he is an Intelligence Bureau and
Information Bureau officer, and in his storyline you get to
see the function of the Information Bureau of the SS
and how it worked on the inside. And I'm drawing
(12:38):
in that storyline, I'm drawing really heavily on people like
Adolf Eichmann and Theodore Ike and how they navigated working
in the shut Staffle and what it was like to
work in a system that follows what's called the leader principle,
this absolute obedience to the chain of command and some
hierarchical system of power where the person who's a rank
above you is the absolute end all b and then
(13:00):
the person who's a rank above them is the end
all be all and so on. And I really wanted
to capture that through the character of Artemis or with Liam,
my main protagonist, who is fleeing from the Federation, and
without any spoilers that he used to work for them,
that he used to be an information bureau agent before
he defected, And how does someone come out of that world,
(13:22):
you know, to go from this place of rigid hierarchy
and really it's a predator's work environment where you are
routinely encouraged to undermine your coworkers to advance your own station,
and like, how do you have a normal life after
coming out of that? And what do you do with
your life when the leader principle is gone and you
have to start making decisions for yourself? And you find
when you meet Liam, I mean he's an alcoholic. He's
(13:44):
having a real bad time of it.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
So in the in the story, and he said it's
written for is it written predominantly for adolescents, teenagers or
people of all I mean, I know people of all
ages can read it, but like would a say a
eighty year old a sixty year old, would they get
as much out of it as a teenager or is
it really more meant for younger people.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
I think it's more meant for an adult audience. I
don't follow a why a young adult plot structure. Where
young adult novels are really catchy, and the thing that
makes them so popular in the market is they just
burn real hot that you in. Hunger Games is a
great example of this that like almost every chapter has
some meaningful action sequence going on, and there's not a
(14:26):
lot of time to sit and reflect with the characters,
and that makes the books go down really easy, so
you can just chew through ya novels. But if I
wanted to tell this more reflective story, if I wanted
to have my characters really interact with history in a
fantasy setting, then I have to give them time to
do that space away from the laser guns, to really
(14:46):
sit with the things that they're interacting with. So I
try to strike this middle space between old fantasy's slower
pace and new fantasies sort of breakneck pace.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Could you imagine a scenario where they were to take
these books and create some sort of a Hollywood production.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
So I am in the.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Very earliest stages of that, and I don't want to
oversell and make you think like, oh and Netflix shows
coming any minute.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
And by the way, he did not give me that
question to ask him so he could say this, am
I breaking news here on Viewpoint that where yeah, yeah, So.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
I am working with Jonathan McLain. And if you've seen
basically any of like the serialized doctor shows, he's been
in a lot of those. He did the audiobook work
for the Jack Reacher series. He's written several books. But
Jonathan's just been wonderful. He found me on TikTok and
me and him became fast friends. We have a whole
(15:36):
lot in common in terms of our perspective on things,
and he offered to do the audio books for me.
So we just finished the audiobook for book one and
it's on Audible now. And he said, you know, I
think this really does have teeth and maybe we can make.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Something happen with it.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
And he said he was going to just poke some
of his contacts out in Hollywood. And again, I don't
want to over sell. Most shows don't get made, most
movies don't get made. But we have signed a shot agreement,
which is the first step in getting something produced, and
we're sort of poking around to see if anybody would
be interested in it.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
That and that's actually really interesting, uh, the idea that
this thing actually could be on your your the big
screen as well as just on your on your shelf.
Who would you who would you cast if you are
in your mind, like who you would have cast as
the characters in your story.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Yeah, So my wife was my first line editor and
she brought that up. That was because I hadn't thought
about it that way, but she brought it up of
like if they did a show, we could have this
person and this person. So, for example, I think I
would want Liam Neeson in as the protagonist. I absolutely
love Liam Neeson's work and his sort of the aesthetic
(16:44):
that he brings of like a character who's just kind
of been put through the ringer really fits with my
protagonist and I would absolutely love that.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Well, as I was looking at the cover and there
are there are people on the cover, I I assume
probably AI pulled, you know, created these pictures of the
people on the cover, because.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Well, I have an artist. I went to fiver and
had a cover artist make the cover for me. When
you're doing indie work, it's the rule of thumb on
indie publishing is if you can't do it yourself, outsource it.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
And I'm good to draw a stick person.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
So if I wanted any kind of cover art whatsoever,
I had to outsource that, and I went to fiver.
I found a guy and I said, hey, this is
kind of what I want. Here's some like character concept
things that did use AI for the character concepts because
I have no budget. And I was like, here's some
kind of character concept images, and like, can you make
something for me? And he was like, oh yeah, hold on.
Only two weeks later I get a book cover and
(17:38):
I've been going to him ever since. He does really
good work.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
But it's one of those things.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Once you've done that, now when you go to cast
these people, you're going to probably look at the picture
on here and go, all right, this person looks like so,
and so you're going to probably try and cast the
people on this cover as opposed to yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
There's one of the.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
One of the I guess friction points is like if
you give your characters a visual, then that is the visual.
But I mean that would be like a dream come
true situation. I want people to read it and like it.
And if enough people read it and like it that
people get to see it and like it, well that's
even better.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
And it's a three book trilogy. So after you finish
the third book in the trilogy, the Fire in the
House of God book, is that it and then you're done?
Or is it going to be a second trilogy in
a prequel and all that kind of stuff, or is
this it? It's going to stand on its own, It's
going to be three books, and then you will do
another project.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Well, I fall in love with these characters, and it
was initially just going to be the one book, and
then I was going to write something else, but I
did so Book one is The Night Sky Darker, Book
two is Fired in the House of God, and book
three is Stars Themselves Shall Weep. And by the end
of book three, you know, I've been on this thing
for three years. I spent my summer breaks writing like
it's a full time job, spending basically all of my
(18:46):
school breaks writing like it's a full time job, writing
basically every day. And you get to know these people,
like these characters become real human beings, to you by
the end, and it's like it just hurt to let
them go. So I've got one novella prequel kicking around
that's going to follow everyone's favorite character is a robot
named Maximilian, and it's going to follow him. It's a
(19:07):
detective story, which it doesn't make sense in the context
of our conversation, but once you read it, you say, Okay, yeah,
max does get a detective story.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
And then another is a.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Side story following completely new characters that happens alongside the
events of book two and that we do our annual
rewatch of Band of Brothers every year in my house,
and we had finished one of our annual rewatches of
Band of Brothers and I was like, I want this
in my setting. And so I've been working on a
sort of Band of Brothers following some of the soldiers
(19:37):
that is in the rebellion that is the center line
of book two and book three.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I've kind of bait and switched.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
You get a hero's journey story in book one that
opens up into a space opera, and the characters are
in the characters in this side story are in book two,
sort of tangentially, and in your house Jonathan, You've got kids, right,
So are they of an age they could read this?
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Or a they're still too young for Oh no, my
son is one year old. Okay, so he's not reading yet.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
No, he is learning how to throw food and he's
very very good at that, but he's not quite reading
just yet.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
So in other words, maybe this will be a bedtime
story at some point.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Maybe. Yeah, you'd be surprised.
Speaker 5 (20:15):
You know.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
When my daughter was not much over maybe one and
a half abe two, I started reading her stories, and
of course what she would do is she'd then read
them to me. But what she was doing was she
was reciting what she heard and pointing at the words.
But eventually that developed into learning how to read. So
she learned at a very to read at a very
young age, just doing that sort of thing. So you'd
be surprised how quickly you know that before that neural
(20:37):
pruning happens. You know, those young minds, they're able to
pick up a lot of stuff very early.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Accuse me of being a teacher if you like, but
I think reading is quite important and everyone should read it,
says the author and the teacher.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Well, Jonathan, I encourage people to check out this book.
It is on Amazon, is everywhere. It's not hard to find.
So it's the it's the it's called The Night Sky
Is Dark as the first one's part book one of
the Night Sky trilogy. And then there's in the House
of God, and what.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Was the third one.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
It's The Night Sky Darker Fire in the House of
God and the Stars Themselves shall Weep. The audiobook for
book one is out and we're looking at i'd say
Ballpark sometime by the end of twenty twenty six. The
audiobook for book two will be released. It's just a
matter of scheduling it with mister McLain.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
And by the way, Christmas is this month, so it's
just around the corner. And it could be a good
stocking stuffer or great to put under the tree for
a young reader in your house or even an adult
reader who likes science fiction and wants to read something
that came out of you're an Alabama guy, it's a
story that was written in Alabama, but it's not about Alabama.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
If you're a fan of Star Wars or Dune, I
think this would fit right in line with your interests.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Very cool, well, Jonathan Buckwalter, thank you so much for
coming up. Thank you for talking to us, keep us
informed as to how this book, that's how the movie does,
or maybe it's a TV series, maybe it's a Netflix
limited reduction thing, but whatever happens, let us know and
also let us know how how the things go with.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
The History Channel. Maybe there's a season two. Thank you
so so much.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
And if you guys want to see some more of me,
you can follow me on TikTok at johnst Truck like
Monster Truck but with a Jay, or you can watch
The Unbelievable with dan Aykroyd on the History Channel.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Jonathan Buckwalter, a Tuscaloosa County High School teacher. I'm John
Mounce and this is Viewpoint Alabama on the Alabama Radio Network.
And now we turn our attention from education to health
because chronic kidney disease affects thirty five million Americans, ninety
percent of whom don't even know they have it. Hello,
I'm John Mounce and this is Viewpoint Alabama on the
Alabama Radio Network. Joining me now to explore this is
(22:35):
doctor Charles Vega. He is a primary physician, primary care
physician at UC Irving and Therma Thelma A two time
kidney transplant recipient and the mother of two boys. Doctor Vega, first,
how many people? How many people are living with this
and they don't even realize they have it?
Speaker 5 (22:52):
Right?
Speaker 4 (22:52):
Well, thanks very much for the intro. So you're right.
Thirty five million or so US adults have a CKD
and nearly ninety percent don't know it and that's because
it does not present with symptoms until its later stages.
And the reasons that Zelman and I are here today
is to talk about diagnosing it earlier because when you
diagnose CKD earlier, outcomes are better. And my goal is
(23:15):
for patients to never have to worry about their symptoms,
much less dialysis or some of the downstream effects of KD.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
When you talk about chronic kidney disease or as you're saying, CKD,
is this one thing or is this an umbrella under
which many kidney disorders fall.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
Yeah, that's a great question. So there are certainly multiple
disorders which can cause CKD, and the more of these
disorders you have, for example, diabes and hypertension often run together.
In fact, the majority of folks with diabetes also have hypertension,
and unfortunately, every additive risk factor may be have a
family history of KD, or maybe you have an autoimmune
(23:53):
condition that causes KD. The more risk factors you have,
the more important is to get tested because your kidneys
are more risk. And moreover, CKD is not just a
risk factor for analysis or renal transplant. It's a risk
factor as well for heart attack and stroke. So just
having CKD increase your risk of those very important outcomes
as well.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
And the kidney, as I understand, is essentially the body's
filter where it allows it processes the blood and it
gets the bad stuff out of the blood, puts it
in the urine, and then lets the blood keep on flowing.
So if you have these things like say hypertension, in
other words, you have more blood pressure, you're going to
have pressure on those areas where you need to carefully,
you know, push things to the blood, and then you
(24:33):
can have those little glomorial eye not able to easily
filter the blood because they're under so much pressure.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
Wow, glomerial ie, that is exactly right. You are going
down to the level. This is the microscopic working center
of the kidneys, and there's hundreds of thousands of those
gloomeryal i working your kidneys but unfortunately, when your blood
pressure is high when you have diabetes, it just promotes
dysfunction in those centers, and over time that leads to
SIMP and eventually really negative outcomes. Like I said, I
(25:03):
don't want to fee able to feel down though. If
you have KD or if you have one of the
risk conditions, get tested. Go to tester kidneys dot com.
It's a great way to assess your own risk for
chronic kidney disease. But we have great trietents are available
and I'm nearly thirty years in practice now. I have
folks with CKD for twenty five those years. I know
they're never going to need dialysis, they're never going to
(25:24):
need a transplant because we managed to control their illness
well before any symptoms developed.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
That's the reason why we're speaking with Thelma. Thelma, I
guess you had just that happen where you had kidney
failure or your kidneys were failing and you had to
have a transplant that not once but twice.
Speaker 5 (25:40):
Yeah, So what actually happened in my story was it
took nearly a decade for me to find out that
I actually had chronic kidney disease. When I present it
to the doctor, as doctor Vega said, with swelling and fatigue.
It was pushed off for another condition. But then a
decade later, I go to the doctor's office with flu
likes and this time they did a dipstick test in
(26:03):
my urine and that showed blood and protein which is
not supposed to be there from their testing was done
for HIV and loopus. Everything was negative, but a biopsy
revealed that I had a rare, benign kidney disease. And
that goes back to you making the comment about chronic
kidney disease and other conditions that can affect the kidney.
So minds was a rare kidney disease. But now besides
(26:25):
living with kidney disease, everything spirals out of control. I'm
now living with type two diabetes, high blood prussia, high cholesterol,
because everything is interconnected and it affects those cardiovascular, kidney,
metabolic conditions. And to say the least has been overwhelming.
And kidney disease is a silent killer. So sometimes you
(26:46):
may have symptoms, sometimes you may not. They may be overlooked,
and that's why we're talking about getting tested early.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Detection is key, doctor Vega.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
How common is Thelma's story, and in other words, you
have a host of kind of vague symptoms in for
ten years. In her case, you live with these symptoms
and you don't get a accurate diagnosis, and without a
good diagnosis, you can't possibly have a good treatment.
Speaker 5 (27:11):
Right.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
No, absolutely, So it has to do with game screen.
Speaker 5 (27:14):
Now.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
She had a rare condition called IgA and a property,
and so that's not something we're going to screen for regularly.
It doesn't make any sense because it is a rare
enough condition. But it's I always talk to my students
and our residence that when you see something in the
promise persistent, this wasn't just a one time fatigue due
to I'm having difficulties sleeping or I'm in a stressful
(27:35):
moment in my life where it's persistent, you know, look
a little bit more broadly. That's when you really have
to start thinking about broad testing looking for some of
these rare types of conditions as patients. What I would
just encourage you is, don't give up. Make sure that
you keep your follow up appointments. Unfortunately, in our center,
sometimes people disappear for eighteen months or two years and
then they come back with much more advanced conditions and
(27:57):
then it is harder to treat. We still have effective therapies,
but we missed an opportunity. And that's why when the
primary care in the first place was really more about
disease prevention as opposed to disease treatment.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
And one of the things a lot of people are
dealing with, especially this day and age, is it's very
difficult to navigate insurance and all these things because you
pretty much have to have insurance to do anything, even
if you're just going to see your primary care physician.
Without that insurance, they won't even let you through the door.
And sometimes insurance is changing costs or changing and people
they don't know how to keep up with these things.
And that's the reason why it's a good idea to
(28:30):
be able to take some sort of I guess an
online screen just for starters that doesn't cost you anything
to at least figure out if you're at risk and
if you need to battle through the next step of
getting in front of an actual physician.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
Yeah, I think that the technology is important, but empowerment
is critical, and so when patients are empowered, good things
tend to happen. I love it when my patients come
in with questions about their health, just those that they're
engaged and that we're going to work on this together.
Speaker 5 (28:56):
You know.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
I use some of their ideas, they use some of
my ideas. It's really a partnership and that's I think
the healthiest kind of relationship you can have. I will
say that getting the urine test and the blood test
covered is not an issue for me because so many
patients have risk factors, and even insurance companies understand these
symptoms can presents fairly vague type of symptoms, so therefore
they'll cover these tests, which are ubiquitous and fairly inexpensive.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Doctor Vega. It takes to campaign the website one more time.
What is that website?
Speaker 4 (29:24):
Test your kidneys dot com?
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Test your kidneys dot com.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Or throw that at Google or put that actually in
the r L box and they'll they'll get you right there,
Doctor Vega and Thelma, thank you so much for joining
me this week on Viewpoint Alabama.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Thank you excellent, thank you.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
You've been listening to Viewpoint Alabama, a public affairs program
from the Alabama Radio Network. The opinions expressed on Viewpoint
Alabama are not necessarily those of the staff, management or
advertisers of this station,
A local Alabama history teacher, takes a rather unconventional approach
to reaching students to think critically and creatively about the
world around him. Hello, I'm John Mount and this week
on Few Point, Alabama, I'm talking with Jonathan Buckwalter, a
Tuscaloosa County High School teacher. And Jonathan, we've had you
on before, but I wanted to bring you back.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Welcome to the show. Hey, it's good to be back.
I'm glad to have you in studio.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
And last time we were talking about your appearance on
the History Channels unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Has that happened yet or yes?
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Season three is out now and use a new episode
every Friday, so we can check that out.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
We can see you on the History Channel. Very cool.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
But I also wanted to update on something we talked
about as well, the Focus Act, because this has been
a bone of contention for a lot of kids and
a lot of teachers are saying it's going really well.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
What's been your experience so far. Yeah, now that we're
about a quarter of the way into the school year,
we're halfway through the semester and it's been really positive.
Our behaviors are down generally, and while we've settled into
a baseline. The kids are kind of used to it
at this point, the staff is used to it. Participation
in class is broadly up, and some of the disruptive
(01:08):
behaviors that come with cell phones, like kids trying to
snatch them out of each other's hands, that just doesn't
happen anymore.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
So wait, that's west thing. Kids were snatching phones out
of each other's hands. Oh yeah all the time? Is
that the Is that like the modern equivalent of kicking
the books out of somebody's arms back in the day.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yes, it absolutely is. Fires changed.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
People don't and the students they I know, they claim
they don't like it, but I would imagine some of
them feel secretly relieved that they don't have to constantly
be on Instagram or TikTok or snapchat constantly because all
their friends are.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah, that's the That's the.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Vibe that I get from them when I talk to
them about it, is of course they want to have
their thing, and I know we're all dependent on our phones,
but beneath it is like, Okay, I don't have to
check it for a little while, I don't have to
have somebody pinging me all the time, and for a
lot of them because their parents like aggressively text them
throughout the day and they're like, I just I can
get a break from folks for a few minutes.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
They have an excuse.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
The other week, I felt so liberated. My phone was
kind of low on battery, and so I put it
on the charger to charge right before church, and I
forgot I did that, and I got to church. I
felt my pocket I was going to silence it, so
oh oh, my phone signed my pocket and I had
that feeling of that, that really weird feeling of I
feel naked. But then I was like, you know what,
this is actually going to be really good. And I
was able to focus because I didn't I was free.
(02:23):
There was no chance that anybody could communicate with me.
My phone was far away, sitting on its charger in
my bedroom.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Oh yeah, no.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
If if I could unplug a little bit more often,
I think I would be better off and me following
the school rules of like that they don't restrict staff
use of our phones, but to keep it fair with
the kids, I'll always put mine face down on my
desk while I'm in school time. And it really has
been a relief to just like not have it for
a few hours a day. I was gonna say, you know,
and I won't call anyone out. My daughter is fifteen.
(02:52):
She's in the school system here in the Birmingham area,
and she said that some of her teachers actually will
they'll assign the kids something and they'll be you know,
looking at their books whatever, and look over the teacher,
the teachers on their phone at their desk. So, yeah,
I don't think that's quite fair. I understand, you know,
you've got more, like like I've got a young kid
at home and so you have a little bit more
as an adult on your plate. But I mean, if
(03:12):
they're folksing up, you can do you know, very hard.
And kids are really big on fairness. Yes, even when
you know you can point out, hey, I'm an adult,
fair doesn't apply to me. It's a little different for you.
You're still under my roof. But they still they really
don't like the fairness thing. Yeah, if you if you
want to lead them, then you have to lead them
by example. And that's the only way you're going to
get followed is if you can lead by example.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
So and you've actually you did a tick I saw
I found a TikTok of you talking about the Focus
Act and it has some some ridiculous amount of engagement.
You do a lot on social media, which is I
think a great way to reach kids these days.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
I've really enjoyed the positive feedback that I get and
I can go more granular into the history that I'm
familiar with, where when we're covering concepts in class, we
kind of have to move right, we have to move quickly.
We're on a time crunch. I've got to ge through
the whole twentieth century in a few months. So on
social media I can really go deep into the things
that I'm most fascinated by. And the kids get a
(04:06):
kick out of that when they see me online, they like, oh,
that's mister b He's on TikTok. But for me, it's
just a way to continue to do the thing that
I love to do, and that's teach history.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Do you ever assign your students to go watch Hey,
I posted a new on TikTok, make sure you check
it out.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
No.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
No.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
I try to keep a sort of barrier of professionalism
between me and them, and I tell them explicitly, like
I'm not going to reply to your comments. If you
comment on my stuff, I'm not going to acknowledge your messages.
If you send me a message, the forum to reach
me is not on social media. That's probably a really
good policy. I'm sure that's actually probably an encouraged policy
by administration at the school that they would like the
(04:40):
students outside of class hours to not especially be interacting
that way. Well, in addition to your work in the
classroom and your work on the History channel and your
work on social media, you're also an accomplished author, and
you've written three books, and of course, you know, I
can imagine you you would write a dusty ol compendium
(05:02):
about you know, John J. Pershing or something like that,
because you're history teacher. But your books are not exactly that,
are they. No, So it's science fiction, science fantasy. It's
faster than light with a magic system. But when I
sat down to write the Night Sky Trilogy, I was
arguing with myself of did I want to do historiography,
did I want to write a book on Nazism, which
is my field of history, or did I want to
(05:24):
write fiction? And it clicked with me because I have
my bookshelf of nonfiction at work and most people are
really intimidated by history books, and they wouldn't engage with
something that they might find really interesting because it is
this dusty tone about pattern. And I thought, well, if
I could write a historically themed science fiction science fantasy
(05:46):
book and really try to ground it in historical understanding,
then I could sucker people in too getting into history
along the way.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
And it's done that. It's been really effective in that way.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
So like the Chronicles of Narnia, how it was not
it's not a religious book, but it's a completely religious book.
But if you didn't know that, you just think, ah,
that's an interesting story.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
It's a fun story with a lion in it, and
then it turns out to be a form of proselyzation.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
So your book, The Night Sky Trilogy, it's there's three
parts to it, and I don't want you to give
away any spoilers, but give me an idea of exactly
what kind of book this is. You said, it's it's
it's sort of a fantasy, but at the same time
there is some I guess historical teaching.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Explain how that is. So in the on the fantasy
side of it, I was really fascinated with the idea
of fantasy as a genre being trapped in the Middle Ages,
and of course Tolkien is the heavy weight in the
genre and what he did better than everyone everyone kind of.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Tries to copy.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
But I thought, wouldn't it be fascinating if we moved
it forward in time and you had the Orcs and
the elves and the dwarfs, but it's not trapped in
the medieval or the Renaissance period. And I've seen some
genres try to move it forward in different ways, but
what I really was fascinated by was like, well, what
happens when they achieve space travel? When the people that
(07:04):
have just kind of grown up around magic, it's not
weird to them that people have magic powers. How would
that make a future facing society look when they're going
out to colonize the stars?
Speaker 2 (07:16):
And so that was sort of my.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Bedrock of like, this is a new take on the
genre that I wanted to explore, and then I attach
historiography to it, of there's this great crisis and it
sets off an economic shockwave, and a populist strong man
with magic rises to power over over the population and
sees this destiny among the stars as their main propaganda line.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
And they're using it as.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
An excuse to deport non humans because a human supremacist
sort of military cult that moves inward and upward, and
like we see with the rise of Nazism in the
nineteen twenties, this notion of get the sub humans out
of here was the sort of earliest of what we
now consider the Holocaust, And that was the framing I
(08:04):
wanted to go with. Is like, there's this mass exodus
to the stars, but it's the non human peoples of
this fantasy world being deported out to go elsewhere, and
the regime entrenches itself in power, and when the story
picks up, they've been in power for a thousand years.
The God Emperor of the Federation, the premiere, is literally
(08:25):
a deified character that it has the cult of personality
that you see with fascist dictators. But I wanted to
take it a step further, and so what if he
actually was immortal, Actually was this larger than life figure
that had magic power that could wield the kinds of
political tools that you could have one hundred lifetimes to
really develop and hone into a real art of totalitarianism.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
This is Viewpoint Alabama on the Alabama Radio network ime
John Mountsin speaking with Jonathan Buckwalter. He is a Tescalosa
County High School teacher, and we're talking about his book
series that he's cared, the Night Sky Trilogy, And you
know what, I'm probably not the first one to compare it,
but this kind of sounds like Star Wars, but in
reverse because that was a long time ago in a
galaxy far far away. This is in the future, but
(09:13):
it's still the same kind of thing. Space travel and
religions sort of tied together. Am I the first one
to make that comparison?
Speaker 3 (09:19):
No, you're not, and it's a perfectly valid comparison. Star
Wars is my great love. I am absolutely obsessed with
Star Wars. I have a Star Wars tattoo. My wife
and I sit down and regularly watch through all of it.
We are a Star Wars household, and so the influences
are absolutely there. And I had to put a lot
of work in to not just copying the things that
(09:40):
I thought were the coolest parts of Star Wars. Are
any laser swords in my story, And that was deliberate.
I was like, I can't even like I'm already it's
space magic, and that already gets me pretty close. I
don't want to trip over the mouse. Nobody uses the Force,
and then nobody uses the Force.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
No.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Now, as a Star Wars fan, do you like all
all Star war Wars equally or are you more of
a fan of the original trilogy four, five, and six.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
I think the best Star Wars trilogy is and or
season one and or season two Rogue one.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Okay, so you go hard into the and to some
of the new stuff that it's kind of the spin
off Disney Star Wars as well.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Some of the new stuff is really really incredible. Now,
I think when you approach Star Wars it is for
twelve year olds, and you have to like know that
going in that a lot of it is really hokey.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
But it's magic. It's magic.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
It's the biggest ip in the world for a reasons
because it captures this the sense of wonder that I
think few pieces of media are really able to capture.
I think Star Trek does it really well. Lord of
the Rings does it really well. But there's a thisness
to it and I don't know how to describe it
as more than that, but it is this unique and
special thing that grabbed me and I wanted to contribute
(10:54):
in that way. I wanted to have my own kind.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Of Star Wars.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Well, you know, a lot of especially I'm thinking back
to specific the original trilogy of you know, four, five,
and six, and they really they took a lot from
World War Two, you know, all the way to the
space fights looked a lot like the footage of the
dog fights that you saw during World War Two, you know,
in the Battle of Britain, all that kind of stuff.
It looks very similar all the way down to I
thought it was interesting that the cast, you know, the
(11:18):
the rebels, of course, they seem like regular American folks,
but then the bad guys almost seemed like Nazi Germany.
I guess they had like a little bit of a
British accent, but they still they seem like the bad
guys from World War Two. So in that respect, I
think they drew on history in the creation of that.
And that's kind of where I'm going with your work.
Is it sounds to me like you also are drawing
(11:38):
on history when you write these sort of books. And
because you're used to speaking to an audience of teenagers
your class, does that give you some insight into how
to reach young people with the story with maybe a
historical flare, but still with the all the new trappings
of space and magic.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Yes, so we're Star Wars' approach to history as fiction really,
at least initially, doesn't go much deeper than aesthetic. Right,
you have the uniforms for the Imperial officers for example,
look reminiscent of SS uniforms, or stormtroopers borrowing from the
strem of a Tilong, from the Brownshirts from the storm Ittalion.
(12:17):
I wanted to go a layer deeper than aesthetics. So,
for example, one of our perspective characters is the villain.
It's Artemis Rayner, and he is an Intelligence Bureau and
Information Bureau officer, and in his storyline you get to
see the function of the Information Bureau of the SS
and how it worked on the inside. And I'm drawing
(12:38):
in that storyline, I'm drawing really heavily on people like
Adolf Eichmann and Theodore Ike and how they navigated working
in the shut Staffle and what it was like to
work in a system that follows what's called the leader principle,
this absolute obedience to the chain of command and some
hierarchical system of power where the person who's a rank
above you is the absolute end all b and then
(13:00):
the person who's a rank above them is the end
all be all and so on. And I really wanted
to capture that through the character of Artemis or with Liam,
my main protagonist, who is fleeing from the Federation, and
without any spoilers that he used to work for them,
that he used to be an information bureau agent before
he defected, And how does someone come out of that world,
(13:22):
you know, to go from this place of rigid hierarchy
and really it's a predator's work environment where you are
routinely encouraged to undermine your coworkers to advance your own station,
and like, how do you have a normal life after
coming out of that? And what do you do with
your life when the leader principle is gone and you
have to start making decisions for yourself? And you find
when you meet Liam, I mean he's an alcoholic. He's
(13:44):
having a real bad time of it.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
So in the in the story, and he said it's
written for is it written predominantly for adolescents, teenagers or
people of all I mean, I know people of all
ages can read it, but like would a say a
eighty year old a sixty year old, would they get
as much out of it as a teenager or is
it really more meant for younger people.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
I think it's more meant for an adult audience. I
don't follow a why a young adult plot structure. Where
young adult novels are really catchy, and the thing that
makes them so popular in the market is they just
burn real hot that you in. Hunger Games is a
great example of this that like almost every chapter has
some meaningful action sequence going on, and there's not a
(14:26):
lot of time to sit and reflect with the characters,
and that makes the books go down really easy, so
you can just chew through ya novels. But if I
wanted to tell this more reflective story, if I wanted
to have my characters really interact with history in a
fantasy setting, then I have to give them time to
do that space away from the laser guns, to really
(14:46):
sit with the things that they're interacting with. So I
try to strike this middle space between old fantasy's slower
pace and new fantasies sort of breakneck pace.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Could you imagine a scenario where they were to take
these books and create some sort of a Hollywood production.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
So I am in the.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Very earliest stages of that, and I don't want to
oversell and make you think like, oh and Netflix shows
coming any minute.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
And by the way, he did not give me that
question to ask him so he could say this, am
I breaking news here on Viewpoint that where yeah, yeah, So.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
I am working with Jonathan McLain. And if you've seen
basically any of like the serialized doctor shows, he's been
in a lot of those. He did the audiobook work
for the Jack Reacher series. He's written several books. But
Jonathan's just been wonderful. He found me on TikTok and
me and him became fast friends. We have a whole
(15:36):
lot in common in terms of our perspective on things,
and he offered to do the audio books for me.
So we just finished the audiobook for book one and
it's on Audible now. And he said, you know, I
think this really does have teeth and maybe we can make.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Something happen with it.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
And he said he was going to just poke some
of his contacts out in Hollywood. And again, I don't
want to over sell. Most shows don't get made, most
movies don't get made. But we have signed a shot agreement,
which is the first step in getting something produced, and
we're sort of poking around to see if anybody would
be interested in it.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
That and that's actually really interesting, uh, the idea that
this thing actually could be on your your the big
screen as well as just on your on your shelf.
Who would you who would you cast if you are
in your mind, like who you would have cast as
the characters in your story.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Yeah, So my wife was my first line editor and
she brought that up. That was because I hadn't thought
about it that way, but she brought it up of
like if they did a show, we could have this
person and this person. So, for example, I think I
would want Liam Neeson in as the protagonist. I absolutely
love Liam Neeson's work and his sort of the aesthetic
(16:44):
that he brings of like a character who's just kind
of been put through the ringer really fits with my
protagonist and I would absolutely love that.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Well, as I was looking at the cover and there
are there are people on the cover, I I assume
probably AI pulled, you know, created these pictures of the
people on the cover, because.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Well, I have an artist. I went to fiver and
had a cover artist make the cover for me. When
you're doing indie work, it's the rule of thumb on
indie publishing is if you can't do it yourself, outsource it.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
And I'm good to draw a stick person.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
So if I wanted any kind of cover art whatsoever,
I had to outsource that, and I went to fiver.
I found a guy and I said, hey, this is
kind of what I want. Here's some like character concept
things that did use AI for the character concepts because
I have no budget. And I was like, here's some
kind of character concept images, and like, can you make
something for me? And he was like, oh yeah, hold on.
Only two weeks later I get a book cover and
(17:38):
I've been going to him ever since. He does really
good work.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
But it's one of those things.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Once you've done that, now when you go to cast
these people, you're going to probably look at the picture
on here and go, all right, this person looks like so,
and so you're going to probably try and cast the
people on this cover as opposed to yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
There's one of the.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
One of the I guess friction points is like if
you give your characters a visual, then that is the visual.
But I mean that would be like a dream come
true situation. I want people to read it and like it.
And if enough people read it and like it that
people get to see it and like it, well that's
even better.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
And it's a three book trilogy. So after you finish
the third book in the trilogy, the Fire in the
House of God book, is that it and then you're done?
Or is it going to be a second trilogy in
a prequel and all that kind of stuff, or is
this it? It's going to stand on its own, It's
going to be three books, and then you will do
another project.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Well, I fall in love with these characters, and it
was initially just going to be the one book, and
then I was going to write something else, but I
did so Book one is The Night Sky Darker, Book
two is Fired in the House of God, and book
three is Stars Themselves Shall Weep. And by the end
of book three, you know, I've been on this thing
for three years. I spent my summer breaks writing like
it's a full time job, spending basically all of my
(18:46):
school breaks writing like it's a full time job, writing
basically every day. And you get to know these people,
like these characters become real human beings, to you by
the end, and it's like it just hurt to let
them go. So I've got one novella prequel kicking around
that's going to follow everyone's favorite character is a robot
named Maximilian, and it's going to follow him. It's a
(19:07):
detective story, which it doesn't make sense in the context
of our conversation, but once you read it, you say, Okay, yeah,
max does get a detective story.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
And then another is a.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Side story following completely new characters that happens alongside the
events of book two and that we do our annual
rewatch of Band of Brothers every year in my house,
and we had finished one of our annual rewatches of
Band of Brothers and I was like, I want this
in my setting. And so I've been working on a
sort of Band of Brothers following some of the soldiers
(19:37):
that is in the rebellion that is the center line
of book two and book three.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I've kind of bait and switched.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
You get a hero's journey story in book one that
opens up into a space opera, and the characters are
in the characters in this side story are in book two,
sort of tangentially, and in your house Jonathan, You've got kids, right,
So are they of an age they could read this?
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Or a they're still too young for Oh no, my
son is one year old. Okay, so he's not reading yet.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
No, he is learning how to throw food and he's
very very good at that, but he's not quite reading
just yet.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
So in other words, maybe this will be a bedtime
story at some point.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Maybe. Yeah, you'd be surprised.
Speaker 5 (20:15):
You know.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
When my daughter was not much over maybe one and
a half abe two, I started reading her stories, and
of course what she would do is she'd then read
them to me. But what she was doing was she
was reciting what she heard and pointing at the words.
But eventually that developed into learning how to read. So
she learned at a very to read at a very
young age, just doing that sort of thing. So you'd
be surprised how quickly you know that before that neural
(20:37):
pruning happens. You know, those young minds, they're able to
pick up a lot of stuff very early.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Accuse me of being a teacher if you like, but
I think reading is quite important and everyone should read it,
says the author and the teacher.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Well, Jonathan, I encourage people to check out this book.
It is on Amazon, is everywhere. It's not hard to find.
So it's the it's the it's called The Night Sky
Is Dark as the first one's part book one of
the Night Sky trilogy. And then there's in the House
of God, and what.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Was the third one.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
It's The Night Sky Darker Fire in the House of
God and the Stars Themselves shall Weep. The audiobook for
book one is out and we're looking at i'd say
Ballpark sometime by the end of twenty twenty six. The
audiobook for book two will be released. It's just a
matter of scheduling it with mister McLain.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
And by the way, Christmas is this month, so it's
just around the corner. And it could be a good
stocking stuffer or great to put under the tree for
a young reader in your house or even an adult
reader who likes science fiction and wants to read something
that came out of you're an Alabama guy, it's a
story that was written in Alabama, but it's not about Alabama.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
If you're a fan of Star Wars or Dune, I
think this would fit right in line with your interests.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Very cool, well, Jonathan Buckwalter, thank you so much for
coming up. Thank you for talking to us, keep us
informed as to how this book, that's how the movie does,
or maybe it's a TV series, maybe it's a Netflix
limited reduction thing, but whatever happens, let us know and
also let us know how how the things go with.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
The History Channel. Maybe there's a season two. Thank you
so so much.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
And if you guys want to see some more of me,
you can follow me on TikTok at johnst Truck like
Monster Truck but with a Jay, or you can watch
The Unbelievable with dan Aykroyd on the History Channel.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Jonathan Buckwalter, a Tuscaloosa County High School teacher. I'm John
Mounce and this is Viewpoint Alabama on the Alabama Radio Network.
And now we turn our attention from education to health
because chronic kidney disease affects thirty five million Americans, ninety
percent of whom don't even know they have it. Hello,
I'm John Mounce and this is Viewpoint Alabama on the
Alabama Radio Network. Joining me now to explore this is
(22:35):
doctor Charles Vega. He is a primary physician, primary care
physician at UC Irving and Therma Thelma A two time
kidney transplant recipient and the mother of two boys. Doctor Vega, first,
how many people? How many people are living with this
and they don't even realize they have it?
Speaker 5 (22:52):
Right?
Speaker 4 (22:52):
Well, thanks very much for the intro. So you're right.
Thirty five million or so US adults have a CKD
and nearly ninety percent don't know it and that's because
it does not present with symptoms until its later stages.
And the reasons that Zelman and I are here today
is to talk about diagnosing it earlier because when you
diagnose CKD earlier, outcomes are better. And my goal is
(23:15):
for patients to never have to worry about their symptoms,
much less dialysis or some of the downstream effects of KD.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
When you talk about chronic kidney disease or as you're saying, CKD,
is this one thing or is this an umbrella under
which many kidney disorders fall.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
Yeah, that's a great question. So there are certainly multiple
disorders which can cause CKD, and the more of these
disorders you have, for example, diabes and hypertension often run together.
In fact, the majority of folks with diabetes also have hypertension,
and unfortunately, every additive risk factor may be have a
family history of KD, or maybe you have an autoimmune
(23:53):
condition that causes KD. The more risk factors you have,
the more important is to get tested because your kidneys
are more risk. And moreover, CKD is not just a
risk factor for analysis or renal transplant. It's a risk
factor as well for heart attack and stroke. So just
having CKD increase your risk of those very important outcomes
as well.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
And the kidney, as I understand, is essentially the body's
filter where it allows it processes the blood and it
gets the bad stuff out of the blood, puts it
in the urine, and then lets the blood keep on flowing.
So if you have these things like say hypertension, in
other words, you have more blood pressure, you're going to
have pressure on those areas where you need to carefully,
you know, push things to the blood, and then you
(24:33):
can have those little glomorial eye not able to easily
filter the blood because they're under so much pressure.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
Wow, glomerial ie, that is exactly right. You are going
down to the level. This is the microscopic working center
of the kidneys, and there's hundreds of thousands of those
gloomeryal i working your kidneys but unfortunately, when your blood
pressure is high when you have diabetes, it just promotes
dysfunction in those centers, and over time that leads to
SIMP and eventually really negative outcomes. Like I said, I
(25:03):
don't want to fee able to feel down though. If
you have KD or if you have one of the
risk conditions, get tested. Go to tester kidneys dot com.
It's a great way to assess your own risk for
chronic kidney disease. But we have great trietents are available
and I'm nearly thirty years in practice now. I have
folks with CKD for twenty five those years. I know
they're never going to need dialysis, they're never going to
(25:24):
need a transplant because we managed to control their illness
well before any symptoms developed.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
That's the reason why we're speaking with Thelma. Thelma, I
guess you had just that happen where you had kidney
failure or your kidneys were failing and you had to
have a transplant that not once but twice.
Speaker 5 (25:40):
Yeah, So what actually happened in my story was it
took nearly a decade for me to find out that
I actually had chronic kidney disease. When I present it
to the doctor, as doctor Vega said, with swelling and fatigue.
It was pushed off for another condition. But then a
decade later, I go to the doctor's office with flu
likes and this time they did a dipstick test in
(26:03):
my urine and that showed blood and protein which is
not supposed to be there from their testing was done
for HIV and loopus. Everything was negative, but a biopsy
revealed that I had a rare, benign kidney disease. And
that goes back to you making the comment about chronic
kidney disease and other conditions that can affect the kidney.
So minds was a rare kidney disease. But now besides
(26:25):
living with kidney disease, everything spirals out of control. I'm
now living with type two diabetes, high blood prussia, high cholesterol,
because everything is interconnected and it affects those cardiovascular, kidney,
metabolic conditions. And to say the least has been overwhelming.
And kidney disease is a silent killer. So sometimes you
(26:46):
may have symptoms, sometimes you may not. They may be overlooked,
and that's why we're talking about getting tested early.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Detection is key, doctor Vega.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
How common is Thelma's story, and in other words, you
have a host of kind of vague symptoms in for
ten years. In her case, you live with these symptoms
and you don't get a accurate diagnosis, and without a
good diagnosis, you can't possibly have a good treatment.
Speaker 5 (27:11):
Right.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
No, absolutely, So it has to do with game screen.
Speaker 5 (27:14):
Now.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
She had a rare condition called IgA and a property,
and so that's not something we're going to screen for regularly.
It doesn't make any sense because it is a rare
enough condition. But it's I always talk to my students
and our residence that when you see something in the
promise persistent, this wasn't just a one time fatigue due
to I'm having difficulties sleeping or I'm in a stressful
(27:35):
moment in my life where it's persistent, you know, look
a little bit more broadly. That's when you really have
to start thinking about broad testing looking for some of
these rare types of conditions as patients. What I would
just encourage you is, don't give up. Make sure that
you keep your follow up appointments. Unfortunately, in our center,
sometimes people disappear for eighteen months or two years and
then they come back with much more advanced conditions and
(27:57):
then it is harder to treat. We still have effective therapies,
but we missed an opportunity. And that's why when the
primary care in the first place was really more about
disease prevention as opposed to disease treatment.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
And one of the things a lot of people are
dealing with, especially this day and age, is it's very
difficult to navigate insurance and all these things because you
pretty much have to have insurance to do anything, even
if you're just going to see your primary care physician.
Without that insurance, they won't even let you through the door.
And sometimes insurance is changing costs or changing and people
they don't know how to keep up with these things.
And that's the reason why it's a good idea to
(28:30):
be able to take some sort of I guess an
online screen just for starters that doesn't cost you anything
to at least figure out if you're at risk and
if you need to battle through the next step of
getting in front of an actual physician.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
Yeah, I think that the technology is important, but empowerment
is critical, and so when patients are empowered, good things
tend to happen. I love it when my patients come
in with questions about their health, just those that they're
engaged and that we're going to work on this together.
Speaker 5 (28:56):
You know.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
I use some of their ideas, they use some of
my ideas. It's really a partnership and that's I think
the healthiest kind of relationship you can have. I will
say that getting the urine test and the blood test
covered is not an issue for me because so many
patients have risk factors, and even insurance companies understand these
symptoms can presents fairly vague type of symptoms, so therefore
they'll cover these tests, which are ubiquitous and fairly inexpensive.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Doctor Vega. It takes to campaign the website one more time.
What is that website?
Speaker 4 (29:24):
Test your kidneys dot com?
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Test your kidneys dot com.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Or throw that at Google or put that actually in
the r L box and they'll they'll get you right there,
Doctor Vega and Thelma, thank you so much for joining
me this week on Viewpoint Alabama.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Thank you excellent, thank you.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
You've been listening to Viewpoint Alabama, a public affairs program
from the Alabama Radio Network. The opinions expressed on Viewpoint
Alabama are not necessarily those of the staff, management or
advertisers of this station,
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