Write On! Radio - Cheryl Bailey and Anna Farro Henderson

[00:00:23] Speaker A: You are listening to Right on Radio on KFAI 90.3 FM and streaming live on the web at KFAI.org hi, I'm Eric Zimmerman. On tonight's program, Josh will be talking with Anna Farrow Henderson and Cheryl Bailey for the full hour about their books, Core Samples of the Climate Scientists, Experiments in Politics and Motherhood and Poised. Climate scientist and policy expert Anna Farrow Henderson embarks on a remarkable narrative journey in Core Samples, exploring how science is done, discussed, legislated and imagined. A love letter to science and a bracing portrait of the many obstacles women, mothers and people digging for truth navigate. Core Samples illuminates the messy, contradictory humanity of our scientific and political institutions. Poised set in 1990s Kentucky, a naive but spirited cancer surgeon, Shelly Reilly slogs through a two year fellowship. Readers readers will relish the book's coming of age trope based on American society's fascination with what really happens in hospitals and operating rooms. Cancer care isn't funny, but people are. And Shelley's devotion to her parents makes Poised sing all of this and more. So stay tuned to Right on Radio. [00:01:52] Speaker B: Foreign. [00:01:59] Speaker C: Welcome back to Right on radio. This evening I am joined by Cheryl Bailey and I'm sorry, Anna Faro Henderson. Thanks for so much. For starts, we will have Cheryl do a reading from Poised. [00:02:15] Speaker B: Hey, thank you Josh. I am excited to be back in the studios of kfai. And let's get started. This is a scene early on in the book where the protagonist, Dr. Shelley Reilly has just finished, well, just finished meeting the most wonderful patient in the book named Faye Colgate. And we're in the operating room so don't get grossed out. It's not super gory. Here we go. Fay had a bad cancer, memorably bad, and the case took hours. The surgeons worked companionably, counting on her youth and good health for Fay to recover from such an extensive operation. The tumor scattered throughout her abdomen ranged from grains of sand to golf size masses and it was everywhere. Resecting all that required so much to be removed and resewn and hours of inspecting each step. Still, even with that surgery and chemo, she would eventually die from this cancer. Shelly holding the loops of malignant bile in her hands that day, new Faye's future. It broke her heart. With the huge surgery done, it was time to thank the OR team. While the housekeeping crew came in nonchalantly to sweep and sanitize preparing for the next sol. Shelly stepped out for a quick slug of coffee and a cigarette, then popped a mint in her mouth and went to the waiting room to talk to Faye's family while Shelly scanned faces for the elderly. Sissy, the volunteer announced, Fay Colgate. Ms. Faye Colgate. Shelly was taken aback when damn near the whole room stood up to the come to the consultation room. With a nervous smile, Shelly cleared her throat and told them, it's usual for just the close family to come to this little talk. The Entire group, about 20 people, stayed planted, and Carrie answered, we are close family, Dr. Riley. I'm afraid you're stuck with all of us. Okay? These people are not fooling around, Shelley thought. Faye's mom, Cissy, came first, and everyone got her seated and settled. The rest found their own space in the tiny conference room, some perched on the chairs, some on the floor, the men standing in the back. Shelley tried to address Cissy at first, but felt so flustered by all the bodies, she finally blurted out, who in the world are all you people? They laughed. Bless them. Tension lifted. They kept laughing. Eventually they cried as they introduced themselves and said how they knew Fay. Each was a dear friend and each claimed Faye liked him or her best, pestering Cissy to confirm it. They included Sissy in their narratives, clearly adoring her. It was like story time in a big Southern family, every person adding to the tale which always led back to Fay. Shelly was so captivated by the voices and the singular way they had with their stories that over 15 minutes passed before she finally snapped out of the spell. She hadn't told them a thing about Faye's surgery or the terrible prognosis, and that's when she felt it. Like the snap of a wristband, a slap in the face, the shit, damn it, moment of oncology. [00:05:13] Speaker C: Very good. This evening we are dedicating the full hour to a conversation with Cheryl Bailey, the author of the debut novel Poised, and Anna Farrow Henderson, the author of Core. A Climate Scientist, Experiments in Politics and Motherhood Continually hampered by chauvinist mentors and exhausting training, Shelley Riley battles for the lives of her cancer patients. Bailey gives us a quirky, lovable scientist who shakes off dismissive societal assumptions so she can get down to work. Bailey, a retired gynecologic oncologist who relished her decades of caring for women with ovarian and endometrial cancer. Grounded in her experiences as a climate scientist and environmental policy advisor to Minnesota Senator Al Franken and Governor Mark Dayton and a constant juggler of the many roles and responsibilities of professional moms, Henderson's eclectic conventional essays and core samples range from observations, confessions, and meditations on lab and fieldwork to a packing list for a trip to the state capitol and a lactation diary. Anna and Cheryl, welcome to Write on Radio. [00:06:25] Speaker D: Thanks, Josh. [00:06:26] Speaker C: The title Poised carries great weight, symbolizing Shelley's mantra and coping strategy. Why did you choose this as the title of the novel? [00:06:36] Speaker B: Well, it originally started as the title was a patient love Story. And the writing group hated it. Everyone hated it. And finally I realized that the title was Poised. And that was the word that the surgical tech that the fictional character heard every time they were in the operating room when she held out her hand for the next instrument. And the surgical tech, who was based on a real person, would say, poised. Kind of like it's been sitting here waiting for you all along. Doctor, I've been waiting for you to ask for the right instrument. And the very person who read this book reviewed this on Amazon and said poised. Thank you. So that's where the title came from. It was from a real person in the operating room. [00:07:22] Speaker C: Besides Poised, there's also this notion, I think early on of living your dash that's embodied by Maxine Reiner. What inspired that poignant idea? How did you aim to highlight it through Maxine's character? [00:07:36] Speaker B: I actually heard that in someone's sermon at a funeral of someone I didn't know at all. And the pastor talked about the fact that when you look at a gravestone and there's the date of birth and there's the date of death and everything that actually matters about that human being is the dash. And he said, you all need to make the most of your dash. We have X amount of time. You don't know how much it is time to make use of her dash. And in cancer care, that's very relevant. [00:08:04] Speaker C: Out of curiosity, where did you hear that, that service? Because I've heard that exact same line, actually, I think like five years ago at a funeral. [00:08:11] Speaker B: Oh, it was a long time ago. It's probably a pretty familiar trope for pastors because they're always talking to people who don't necessarily know the religious place and they don't know the person so well. [00:08:21] Speaker C: Yeah, Poise feels deeply personal. How much of Shelly Reilly's journey mirrors your own career as a gynecologic oncologist? [00:08:31] Speaker B: Well, Josh, this is a work of fiction. I do happen to be a nearly 6 foot tall gynecologic oncologist who did train in Kentucky, but when I started writing this book, it was about lots of memories during my fellowship, but I took a novel writing course at the loft that's where Anna and I met. And our teacher Peter Guy said, fiction is one lie after another. So you can embellish, you can enrich, you can put things in different order. He always counseled us that doctors were very rigid in our writing. We didn't let loose at all because we're so punctual. And, well, maybe punctual is not the word, but that's where this all comes from. [00:09:15] Speaker C: The book's prologue shows a young Shelley Reilly inspired by medical TV dramas. How did media shape your own perception of medicine early on? And did it change once you were in the field? [00:09:26] Speaker B: Yeah, Dr. Gannon was hot. He was so hot, he'd come out in his scrubs looking very serious with that beautiful hair, sprayed brown hair. Cause he wasn't wearing an OR cap, because you don't in TV medical shows. And he'd push those OR doors aside like a saloon door. And when he did that, he had those sweaty pits that showed he had worked hard just now and he had saved someone. And I literally told my mom, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to save people's lives. And that was hot. [00:09:57] Speaker C: While you're at it and have. [00:09:58] Speaker B: And I was going to hope for those hot doctors to be all over the place. [00:10:03] Speaker D: Were they? [00:10:04] Speaker B: Not really. Not so much. [00:10:07] Speaker D: Can I ask you a question about just the section you read and being this. What. What is from your life story or not, but. So Shelly operates on somebody who has cancer, and then she takes this quick break and smokes a cigarette. And there's something sort of contradictory or surprising about somebody treating cancer patients who's smoking. And it also feels kind of humanizing and relatable and kind of funny. And I'm just wondering. [00:10:37] Speaker B: Well, I did smoke. A lot of people smoked in the 90s, 80s and 90s. A lot of medical professionals, we would always joke that the people out there were the surgeons, the respiratory therapists, and the nurses. I mean, hospitals smoked. And in Kentucky, that was their cash crop. Right after tobacco was marijuana. So those were people who smoked all the time. You could still smoke in the airport. You couldn't smoke in the hospital by the time I was in training. But yeah, smoking oncologists were not all that unusual. Smoking nurses giving report, that was a little bit before my time. But this, you know, this was a big part of American society. And it just was such a crushing, crushing habit. But, yeah, the irony is supposed to make her even more quirky, a little bit less perfect and completely unrelatable to what she was doing showing how we are not always logical. [00:11:34] Speaker C: Anna, you describe your work as blending science and art, particularly in your approach to storytelling. I was wondering if you could talk amongst yourselves. Did you find yourself using similar strategies? I guess, Cheryl, when you were writing. [00:11:47] Speaker B: Poised about art and. [00:11:49] Speaker C: Yeah. And trying to approach it as a blending of science and art. [00:11:52] Speaker B: Well, I think that what I really wanted to communicate was the beauty of the. The patients. The patients were the thing that I loved. The patients are almost always what makes doctors go into the field. And there's a wonderful, wonderful physician writer named Rachel Naomi Remon, and she writes these beautiful books about real patients and what happens when real healing can occur with doctors. So she was sort of my role model, but she didn't use profanity, which I found very lacking in her work. I just found that I was far too ridiculous and sassy to do anything as noble as her work. And so I morphed into something very different. But it was the same thing of wanting to say, you know, when that exam room door closes, there is just something people will tell me, anything that needs to be told, and that is the most precious thing. And they can trust me with it. And they know that if you're good at it, if you care about that part of it. And so to me, that was what I. I wanted to get across to people that doctors do love them. We just can't say it the way that, you know, other interactions with professionals, we can't show it the same way. [00:13:03] Speaker D: I think in listening to the section that you read and thinking about my writing process, it feels like, what's so beautiful and unique, you know, I don't know very much about medicine. I hate hospitals. The only time I've been in hospitals, really, is getting my tonsils out and giving birth twice. And when I was giving birth, I just remember thinking, like, this is the worst place in the world. Like, who are these people that come here every day? But reading the book, I get this deeper sense and the sense of people as full people and all the complications, and that's conveyed through the storytelling. And I think for me, writing about science as nonfiction and in essays, I was trying to tap into that same kind of vivid storytelling, bringing people into the room, using dialogue and making it a scene in a place that people can really experience. And I think that's the power of storytelling, whether it's fiction or nonfiction. [00:14:00] Speaker C: I think this is a good. I have a question to segue from that you mentioned, Anna. Living science with all your senses, from muddy hands to freezing Swims with icebergs. How did your experience as a field scientist shape your unique approach to blending science with art and core samples? [00:14:17] Speaker D: So when I was working as a scientist in the laboratory, we had lab notebooks where we wrote everything down. You don't know what's going to be important later, so you're just even anything that's off that day, anything going on, everything you're doing. And I did a lot of work in the field. And in the field again, you would write the weather. You would write who was there. You'd write if the car broke down. You'd write that you drop something into the water so that you can recreate what happened there. Somebody else looking at your samples can get all the context and information. But at the back of those field and lab notebooks, starting from the back, going to the front, I would write my own observations and notes and kind of like sketching, but with words. Sometimes I'd write poetry, sometimes I did just sketch. And that was really like the intensity of swimming with icebergs, of being in a remote wilderness and not having access to electricity or running water for two months. Being in these intense places and doing so much physical labor and being so intimate with other people that you're living with them, you're working with them, you're traveling across land. If they get hurt, you're taking care of them. That I had to just kind of process it. It was really like this, like, it's like what's in your body that you're experiencing? And it just felt like so much that I had to have some way to express it. And so I was writing it. And I had no purpose in that writing, although all of that informed writing this book. I have all those notebooks still, but I never wrote those things with any kind of intention of doing something. It was just like needing the art to be present in the intensity of the science. In that moment. [00:15:51] Speaker C: I have a more personal question. I'm kind of curious now. For you then. So is rote memorization pretty easy for you? Like, of picking apart details of your environment and holding. For me, I'm. I'm horrible at that. I feel like I'm very good at, like, talking about a movie or something I saw 20 years ago. But I. You could ask what I did yesterday, I cannot tell you, or details of my environment. Are you better, or is this something you've developed over time as a scientist? [00:16:17] Speaker D: I think it's just a sort of thing about me that, like, once when I was working at the Minnesota State Capitol, it was an intense time. Near the end of legislative session. I came in a side door, which usually nobody would be there, but there was a protest and the place was jam packed. I didn't know what they were protesting. And I'm squeezing my way through. I had a meeting I had to get to, and I'm stuck in this crowd. And then I realize it's a, like, pro gun rally. So I'm thinking, God, all these people have guns on them. And I'm squeezing through them. And it took a while and I got to my office and then these, you know, intense meeting, and then it's like, well, what do I do now? It's just like you're all kind of whipped up. And I just sat down and wrote it in detail. And I think it's that going through that sensory detail of, like, what did it feel like in this moment in my body, in this space, and rendering it somehow is calming. [00:17:06] Speaker B: Anna is not your average scientist, and I am not your average. I mean, we do have a closer look at humans and the world around us than a lot of people. Maybe other surgeons and scientists do see these things, but Anna lives them, and she does. You really do process your world through art. She has beautiful drawings. She sees everything in a way that's unbelievable. She counseled us. Oh, I had a great writing session today. I got my kayak and I went out on the lake and I wrote in the middle of the lake. And we're like, anna, no one goes out in the middle of the lake and writes, but Anna does. And felt the sun and felt the water, and you wrote for a good hour. You had a good writing session. I'm like, dude, I'm not going to the lake to write. I'm gonna stay where I am and write. [00:17:56] Speaker D: When I teach, I always tell people to take a notebook and a pen and leave your phone, go sit on a park bench where there's nothing. There's nothing you have to do, there's nobody, you know, there's nothing around. And then write, like, to get out of things. But, Cheryl, I'm curious for you. When you were in medical training and medical school, you have all these intense exams, the, like, your first experiences in the OR OR with patients dying, which I've got to imagine, all of that is really intense. Were you writing about it in some way? Because, like, the metaphors and imagery in your book really bring me there. And they. I feel like I'm feeling Shelley's experience. [00:18:34] Speaker B: No, I was never writing. I never wrote fiction at all. Doctors write all the time I've thought about this as I was writing the novel. I'm like, I've actually been writing my whole life. But it's all factual, it's all organized. It's all in a very expected way. We expect the next sentence to tell us the next systems, et cetera. We all write in a way that we communicate with each other, and it's very dull, but it's very critical because we're trying to take care of someone fast, and we need to know what happened to them. So I never wrote fiction, but I was horrible at the first two years of medical school. I was horrible at the memorizing. I was an English major. I took in people, and I learned in a different way, I guess. And when I got to the clinical rotations, I'm like, oh, yeah, this is where I am. This is where I belong. [00:19:19] Speaker C: Well, it sounds like what Ann was just saying there. Like, what she did was very. It was therapeutic for you to kind of process this, I think, through art, through fiction. You didn't have that at all. [00:19:27] Speaker B: There's no time to process. And that's. That's what's very. That's what's very hard about medicine. And I think that's what really caused the moral injury. During COVID we had no time. I mean, doctors killed themselves, nurses killed themselves. We had no time to process what was happening. And, you know, I don't know anything about the literature of trauma surgeons, but there's certain subspecialties that are just tough. And so doctors drink, they are mean, et cetera. So they're just. There are a lot of bad behaviors, and then there are a lot of good behaviors of exercise and trying to stay, you know, mentally get good mental health. But, yeah, it's not an intuitive place to be artistic and in touch with your emotions. [00:20:13] Speaker D: When you were dissecting, like, cadavers in medical school, did you draw the parts? [00:20:19] Speaker B: No, I can't draw for shit. Hannah, you know this. No, you would have been drawing. You would have gotten kicked out, probably. I'm thinking in the first, like, two months of. Yeah, you would have actually probably asked to not do that anymore. But she would have been incredible. During the first two months that you were there, you would have. No, I didn't draw. You had to be so rigid. There was such rigidity expected. And I think that's what is a really cutting part of medicine. And maybe that's getting better in medical education. I don't know. [00:20:52] Speaker C: But in both books, there's a tension between technical Expertise and deep personal reflection. How do you balance professional objectivity and vulnerability in both your writings? [00:21:05] Speaker D: You go, Anna, Professional objectivity and vulnerability. My book is vulnerable, and I set certain rules for myself in writing it. One of those rules was to stay in scene with this idea of making science active, bringing people in, making it interesting, having it be storytelling, and to have it be honest. And in scene. That also meant being really vulnerable. And it's interesting seeing people's reactions to that. Like, they'll be like, wow, this was very brave. And it doesn't feel brave. It feels honest and truthful. And I think that having that in the world is helpful for us understanding ourselves. But some of that, you know, I didn't write tons while I was working intensely in the field or in the governor's office or in the Senate. But in the time of writing this book, there was a lot of time for reflection. And that's something that I really treasure. To have taken that time and to be able to put these chaotic and intense moments into a framework and having the time to even put them into, like, almost poetical language sometimes, or metaphors and have that reflection. But it is certainly unprofessional writing about professional work. And that's like. And that's maybe the most vulnerable thing of all, is to share. You know, when you're in a professional setting, there's only some parts of yourself that you share and that. That are appropriate to share. And so to give that whole full picture of yourself feels kind of strange. [00:22:47] Speaker C: You describe moments of intense solitude in research, where discoveries often lead to more questions for you. Do these unresolved mysteries frustrate you, or do you embrace ambiguity as part of the. The appeal of being a scientist? [00:23:02] Speaker D: Yeah, the ambiguity. It's that you ask a question and then you get an answer and it leads you to more questions. And so as a. My field is in geology and earth science, and I was studying past periods of climate warming. So everything you learn is, like, revealing more and more parts of this giant puzzle that you're never going to have all the pieces to. So it's just more and more questions. And that's thrilling. It's really exciting. It's like. It's a mystery. It's like kind of like a love affair. Like, you're like, what else can I know about you? [00:23:36] Speaker B: Earth, it's the same with cancer. I mean, think of all the molecules that have been developed and receptors that are being used. And we've helped with nausea because some scientist in a lab figured out where the nausea Receptor was. And they made a molecule. And now people can take a medicine and not throw up. With chemo. I mean, all these things, you just get hungry and say, more, I want more. You see people who get a response from a chemo that would never have gotten a response to a drug before. And it's just unbelievable. And you think this has got to be possible for a lot of other different cancers. [00:24:13] Speaker C: We did touch about this somewhat, but I think not really specifically about part of this. So both poison core samples address sexism in professional environments? [00:24:22] Speaker B: Oh, yes. [00:24:22] Speaker C: Be it in the operating room or doing field work. Did writing about these challenges feel cathartic, confrontational, or something else altogether? [00:24:31] Speaker B: Yes. I mean, yes. And scary. Even though it's been years and years and it's fiction. Yeah, it is really. It is such a big issue still of how men and women see each other and also how women see other women. Just being in power is. We all have a certain vision of what that means. And being in charge, and especially being a surgeon, I had to make it clear that I was in charge. And that, thankfully, has never been very difficult for me. Ask anyone in my family or my husband. But I had to figure out what was going on in a way that I just didn't. I just didn't understand why I would be treated that way. And that, I think, is the case for a lot of people who are discriminated against when they feel like I'm just a normal human being. I'm really good at X. I love doing X. Why do you seem to think I'm not going to be good at X? Because this is my whole thing. So I think being puzzled and surprised and confused by it is part of the strategy. Because if you're on your back foot, you're not expecting it and you can't figure out how to fight it. And so the more we talk about it, just like Anna said of being honest and talking honestly about this, it clears the air. It's better for all of us. And it has to be done. We're half the population, for goodness sake. So it has to be done. It has to be, you know, a boil that has to be lanced. That's an ugly metaphor. So let's transition to that topic. [00:26:00] Speaker D: Yeah, I didn't find it cathartic at all to write about because I felt like I was keeping myself in check. One of the other rules that I had for myself was like, this is not a place to grind axes. And so there are things that have happened that are so frustrating or feel Kind of like heartbreaking or, you know, what a missed opportunity. And I could go on and on and on, but it's kind of boring to hear somebody, like, gripe about things or there's context you need, or it's just. It's also. These are real people, and. And there's a broader context for them. And I felt very sensitive to centering on my story and not making guesses or explaining anything about other people that I just don't know. And so it's an unsatisfactory thing to be like, well, this is the situation, or this is what I was told, and to have it serve the art. I mean, this is one of the things about writing essays, is that while the book reads like a memoir and you can read it beginning to end, and it'll feel like a memoir, each one is an individual essay. And so I don't need to give the full story, or my story isn't the main point. There's a question at the heart of every essay. And so going into the full detail of sexism was never needed for the art. But, yeah, so it doesn't feel cathartic because it's like, man, this is also still going on. And the people involved, I'm sure, don't always come to the same realization that you do. [00:27:32] Speaker B: But I guess when I said yes to cathartic, I have had so many people in the medical field read this, and I've had countless conversations with multiple women who said, oh, Dr. Bailey, you have no idea. Guess what happened with this? Every single one of them had a story. And if these stories don't come out, we. I didn't know any of that. Of any of these women. These were. Or techs. They were nurses in the operating room, nurses on the floor, other young physicians saying things that you just can't even imagine happening. And of course, you can imagine them happening at the same time. That's what's so odd, because we don't see it, and so we don't know that all the people around us who have experienced these things keep quiet. And, you know, when MeToo happened, look at the backlash and look at people saying, that just can't have happened. That has to be impossible. So I feel like if we're quiet about it, that lets it kind of continue. So that was the cathartic was hearing that other women that I had known all these decades had had things probably worse than I've experienced, and they still were poised, and they survived and they thrived. And that's the. I think you're right. It is boring to hear about that. But I think the being resolute and powering through it and finding strategies about it is kind of the part that maybe is what I would say is cathartic. [00:28:56] Speaker D: And I think people sharing their stories with you is poignant, not boring. [00:29:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:29:02] Speaker D: I felt like as the author, if I just went on and on about other people's bad behavior, that would be poignant. [00:29:07] Speaker B: I agree. I agree. [00:29:12] Speaker C: And we are back on the air talking to Cheryl Bailey. Excuse me. And Anna Faro Henderson about their works poised and core samples. I don't think so. During the break, Anna, you had me wondering. I was gonna also try to come back on a light. Oh, lighter note here. First off, why don't we do a reading from your book? Let's start off there. [00:29:32] Speaker D: I'm gonna read from an essay called Congressional Lactation Diary. And this is structured as a diary that I kept while I was pumping milk for my second child. I had been hired six months pregnant with my second baby by Senator Al Franken to work in his D.C. office. And this was right after I left my research in academics. April 1, 2013. I'm on the verge of tears and half naked in the United States Senate. My pump won't work. I don't know what to do. The lactation room has a chair, a fridge, a sink, beige walls, and a door that locks. I checked in with the nurse at the front desk, but I can't ask for help with this. I hear metal curtain rings slide in the room next door where sick people are lying down. I don't know if I can do this job and be a mother, never mind keep up milk production. But I can write everything down. Okay, I just took the pump completely apart, put it back together, and bingo. It's a trick I learned with mass spectrometers in the laboratory. Sometimes if you can't figure out what went wrong or why, just start fresh. When I walked into the building this morning, electricity went up my legs. Each click, click of my heel sent a shock. The black veins and flecks in the marble walls don't match from one block to another, creating a sense of motion. It's like birds flying in the distance or wind rustling in the leaves. It's like the building is alive. As a climate scientist, I was trying to make a difference. But shouting in a room with other scientists wasn't getting anywhere. No one was listening. I didn't know how to be heard or who to talk to. But here I am in the middle of it all Boom. A friend from my lab said that my postdoctoral advisor told them I'd gone off the deep end. She was as likely referring to my having a second child as to my work in Congress. When she congratulated me on my fellowship, she said that if I left, I could never come back. But does that mean I'm no longer a scientist? Ounces pumped 9. April 2, 2013 to explain my office to Bird, my 2 1/2 year old, I nicknamed my direct boss the Pilot. I told Bird. The pilot comes to work by helicopter and climbs down a rope from the roof of the Hart Building. Our office is a loop split into two sections with a stairwell and bathroom in the center. On one side is a communication team, on the other the legislative team. These are the two sides of the Senator's octopus brain. The pilot and I are the environmental policy tentacle. The biggest issues are in energy and ag. We keep up an ongoing dialogue through our shared gray cubicle wall. There are also tentacles for judiciary, health, education, economics, infrastructure and tribal issues. Each tentacle sifts information and passes on critical bits and a distilled form. What gives me power and what most terrifies me is making decisions about what information not to give the Senator. Giving him everything would render it all meaningless. Ounces pumped 8. So I tracked ounces and then I started tracking push ups, which at first was like half and then I fell on my face. But I built up two sets and. [00:32:38] Speaker C: As course tables often explores the juxtaposition of motherhood and professional ambition. How has this dual identity shaped your outlook on success? [00:32:51] Speaker D: I think the biggest thing about becoming a mother that changed my framework or my identity was my relationship to time changed. So with a baby, you are in the here and now present moment. One day they can't smile, the next day they're laughing, one day they can't walk, a week later they're running. And I really appreciated that what I was doing today was what mattered. And I'd been studying climate in the past, like over the past 20,000 years. When I finished graduate school, I went to do a postdoctoral fellowship where I was working over the past 20 million years. And it felt like I was getting further and further away from right now. And I didn't understand why we weren't taking action on climate. I didn't understand how politics worked. I didn't understand how I could communicate with any of the people who were making those decisions. And it felt really urgent. And so that continues to inform what I'm doing is having kids is like incredible accountability of is What I'm doing today important. Does it count? Is this who I want to be? Do I feel comfortable explaining myself to them? [00:33:58] Speaker C: You also detail the visceral transformation of motherhood had on you physically. How did becoming a mother alter your relationship to science, the environment, and your own body? [00:34:09] Speaker D: So there's an essay in the book called From Scientists to Animal. And when I was a scientist, before I was a mom, everything was work. My entire identity was work. I went to the lab as soon as I got up in the morning. I tried to go as early as possible. I stayed till I was basically going to fall over from hunger. I got home way after dark. Everything I did was just, how can I get more work done? And for me, being pregnant, I suddenly was too tired and had all kinds of awful minor physical ailments that were really distracting, and I just had to be in my body in a new way. And I had elbows and knees sticking out of me, and it was just. It felt like really animal in a way that I hadn't known. [00:35:03] Speaker C: Yeah. I think we refer to the book as like, a primal part of yourself. Somehow you have, like. [00:35:07] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:35:07] Speaker C: Encountered that you hadn't before. [00:35:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:35:09] Speaker D: And it's like, you know, there's a movie that just came out, Night Bitch, where the woman, it's like, becoming primal with, like, parenthood, and she turns into a dog at night. [00:35:21] Speaker B: Not you, Anna. Not you. [00:35:23] Speaker D: I just love that metaphor. But, no, I didn't become a dog. But I started to feel like the writing was essential. The being present in the moment, the, like, making decisions on things other than just developing my career in the way I was expected to became much, much more important and real to me. Maybe I became much more real to me, which is sort of like being an animal. I don't know, Cheryl, what's. [00:35:51] Speaker B: I thought, you know, I didn't have a lot of guilt of going to work when my kids were going to daycare or anything. I didn't have those experiences, but I had a lot of memories of women in the OR whispering into the phone, well, how hot was the. Like, how high was the fever? Like, all of them having a kid who was sick or needed something and not having the resources to go get that kid. That was what I remembered before I had kids. Like, that was the danger of kids. Something would happen, and I can't leave the or. But what I grew into was I loved them knowing that their mom was a doctor, Their mom was a surgeon. We had gone to church. I had the two boys. We stopped at a bagel place in St. Paul. And I got a page that someone really was in a bad way on a Sunday in Burnsville. And I looked at the boys. They were really little. I said, boys, we have to run. Mama has to run. I've got to go to help this lady. And when I got back, and she really did need help, and she did okay. And when I got back, the boys were still waiting, and they were just sick with worry. And they said, is she okay? And I realized they get me now. They get that when I leave, something important happens. And I think that's really useful for especially young boys to realize their moms can do important things and helpful things and powerful things. And so that was my relationship to motherhood. Not like I'm trying to show off to my kids, but that we all grew as a family, understanding we all have our little niche here. We all do things that matter. And the kids learned. They do things that matter, too. Even though Jackson did see one of my laparoscopy pictures and asked what the different organs were. And then when he got to the uterus, he's like, what's that? I'm like, it's the uterus. He's like, that's inappropriate. I was like, you were in that? Not that particular one, but yeah. So that's. To me, motherhood and fatherhood can be seen the same way of letting your kids know. I'm proud of what I do. I'm excellent at what I do. I want to model that for you. And we all are families. We all should be supporting that, whether it's hard science work or whether it's hard teaching work or whatever the profession, you know, and we teach our kids. [00:38:06] Speaker D: About the world through our work. Like, I. So when I worked at the Minnesota State Capitol, sometimes I didn't know if I was going to come home for dinner or even just come home to sleep. Like, I would pack a toothbrush and go to the Capitol and be there as long as I needed to be there, even if it was sleeping under my desk for a couple hours. And my kids knew I was doing that, and they didn't totally understand. They came and brought a picnic, and I went out for an hour. There were little things like that. But then once I wasn't working there anymore, I took them to the Capitol for the end of the legislative session late at night so they could see this building full of adults who smell like sweat and mothballs and are, like, standing around and super stressed out to say, like, this is how government works. And this is where I was when I wasn't coming home. And this is why all these people are here. And what's so important. Cause it's important for everybody, you know, what happens with our healthcare, what happens in our government. [00:39:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:39:08] Speaker C: Anna, in core samples, you mentioned the advice not to follow your heart in science. Cheryl, did you ever feel that same pressure in your medical journey? [00:39:16] Speaker B: To not follow my heart? [00:39:18] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:39:18] Speaker D: This was like, as an undergraduate, I was in one of those women in science and engineering events, and somebody asked a question about how they should decide what to do for their career. And at first somebody said, well, you know, you just gotta follow your heart. And then this other professor came in and was like, that's not the advice we give to men. Men are told to set goals, and we just tell women to follow their hearts. And if you want to be successful, you've got to follow goals like a. [00:39:44] Speaker B: Man, you know, I don't think anybody ever guided young medical students. We all seem to know exactly where we were meant to be. I just think the surgical fields have tended to be pretty unwelcoming to women, but they still are fantastic places for women, and we're poking our little feet into all of the places. So, yeah, I think it just felt like we knew. My next door neighbor had said he was a medical student. He said, I'm gonna be a child psychiatrist. I'm like, I will pay you $100. If at the end of medical school, you are a child psychiatrist, you are no more gonna be a child. He's a child psychiatrist, and I had to pay him 100 bucks. I should have known that he knew. He just knew that was where he wanted to go. So there's certain things. And I knew I was not an internal medicine doctor, even though I was totally crushing on the chief resident who was in charge of me. I'm like, I do not want to read EKGs. He said, We've got a great admission for you. It's a vet who's got gonococcal knee infection. I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, that's a great admission. That's not my idea of a great way to spend my life. So I knew certain things I didn't want to do, too. [00:40:52] Speaker C: So your book critiques sexism in medical education, especially through the character. Dr. Cardinal, how prevalent were these issues during your training, and have these things improved since, do you think? [00:41:02] Speaker B: Yeah, they're very prevalent. I've heard from all sorts of docs. They all recognized exactly what I was talking about, and they are sadly still going on when I was writing Poised, there's a journal from one of the medical. It's not really a lobbying group, but a group that works for doctors to the state capitol and they publish a quarterly review and they've usually got a piece at the end that's someone writing a little bit more in depth about issues that affect doctors. And this woman quoted the recent stats of women leaving medicine early moral injury, of losing grants, of getting passed over for advancement in their departments, academics in the sciences, academics in the medical field. It's still happening. And you know, certain fields have been able to really stem this. Like in music, professional musicians now can. A lot of orchestras will interview and have people do their performance. [00:42:05] Speaker C: Yeah, it's concealed, right? [00:42:06] Speaker B: Yeah, concealed. So you can't judge the appearance of the person they go by, the musicality. And you just can't do that in medicine because it is more than the gender. It's how do you behave with patients, it's how do you score on your tests? Do you have good hands, do you use good judgment? It's really, really subjective. And so you have to see the person and interact with them. So we have to do better at this because we're losing out on half the population who would be good. And it's not just females who can parent their kids. Men want to be good parents too. And if that doesn't get modeled, we'll never get away from this. You know, the women have to do all the housework and the work. You know, so many young couples are struggling with that and trying to make that more equitable. I mean, I think that's the big issue of you can work your until you're sleeping under your desk, but once that kid is born or even once you have a permanent relationship, you know, not giving to that relationship is really hard and just trying to figure out how to make our fields. You know, medicine's tried to do it by limiting the hours that residents can work, but that hasn't done. Just makes us have less experience. We all poo pooed it because we all did the every third night. And you're just blind with fatigue the second day where you were operating on people and delivering babies and doing all the things that you really wouldn't want a sleep deprived person doing on you. So I don't know, I don't know what the answer is, aside from being really honest about it and saying this just isn't right, you can't do it. [00:43:31] Speaker C: Anna, I think we kind of pose a similar question to you. So in your essay how to pee standing up. You highlight humorously the challenges faced by women in fieldwork. How does gendered exclusion in science persist today? And what solutions do you envision for the future of female scientists? [00:43:48] Speaker D: I think one of the big things is it's so dependent on the individuals that you are around. So there are definitely situations and departments and universities where there's great support and the infrastructure is there for women to be included. And there are places where it's not. So it's not like a blanket thing that this is always not done well, but it just depends on the people around you. And so as a student and as a graduate student, as a researcher who's dependent on grants and living on a fellowship or grant for one or two years, you're dependent on just one or two individuals who have a lot of control over your life and your career and your ability to get the next thing and to get a more permanent job. And so if that person has kind of bad attitude or bad behavior about things, you're just really screwed and you don't have any recourse. It's not like just going out and getting a different job. You're kind of on this like one way, narrow path. And there's no. It's like when you go through the car rental, you can only go forward, but if you go back, it'll shred the tires. It's like that. Like, you just have to keep going forward. And if you're in a really bad situation, you just kind of have to make it through enough to get to the next place. [00:45:03] Speaker B: Yeah, academics, you get sort of a niche projects and a niche, you get known for doing certain specialties. And so if you can't proceed in that, you kind of don't have a place to go. It was the same with medical training. If that doc didn't finish that fellowship, didn't graduate, it's not like she can go to another fellowship. No one would have taken her. And then she can't do that field because she can't get board certified, she can't take the tests and she can't do that career. And she's 35 and she's in debt to her ears and drives a Ford Festiva and has a mixed breed dog. And that's kind of it. My mom said, do we need to rent anything for you to come back? I'm like, dude, no, the Ford Festiva has it all. I didn't own the bed. So yeah, we're good. I've got my books and my dog. [00:45:52] Speaker D: It sometimes is like in these kinds of careers, you would think that the most important thing is, like, how good of a doctor is she? How good of a researcher is this person? But it's figuring out weird interpersonal situations. And then it's also. It's not just about whether people are nice or sexist or not. The how to pee standing up is a reference to being on a drill rig in the middle of a giant lake that was formed by an impact crater a million years ago. And there was a sort of porta potty on this rig. I was the only woman on the expedition. There were like 50 people, and I'm the only woman. Nobody had thought of that before. And there wasn't a really good plan for cleaning this porta potty. So they would just wait until it started to overflow. Like, literally. There'd be like raw human waste flowing over the drill rig where we're working. And then they would radio shore for somebody to come get it. But we were so far away, it might take an hour for a boat to get there. Then they take this porta potty off and then there's no bathroom. And so there was a situation. It happened more than once, but a situation I write about where there was no bathroom for eight hours. I worked 12 hour shifts every single day. No weekends. It was a 24 hour a day operation. And there's nowhere for me to go to the bathroom. It's summertime in Africa. I'm doing hard manual labor. I'm drinking water and I need to pee. And the men all just peed off the back of the rig and that was fine. And nobody had considered. So it wasn't that anybody was being unkind or actively sexist. It was just like it hadn't occurred to anybody that I might need to pee. [00:47:26] Speaker B: Women are like aliens. We're like newcomers onto a lot of places. [00:47:29] Speaker D: Or you're just supposed to, like, shut up and figure it out and not, you know, make anyone feel uncomfortable. Anyways, there are ways to make yourself an apparatus so you can pee standing up, which is what happens in this essay, as well as some geologic phenomena happening at the same time. [00:47:49] Speaker B: Josh is flummoxed right now. [00:47:51] Speaker C: Despite the heavy subject matter with cancer and death and sexism, humor is woven throughout poise. In Anna, there is a quiet, almost ironic humor through core samples. [00:48:02] Speaker D: Maybe irreverent humor. [00:48:04] Speaker C: That's probably better. [00:48:05] Speaker B: Yeah, that's profane on my end. [00:48:07] Speaker C: Profane. [00:48:07] Speaker D: Yeah. I've got a number of. [00:48:09] Speaker B: You can't say that. [00:48:10] Speaker D: Yeah, I can't say that. [00:48:13] Speaker C: How important is humor in handling demands of your careers and narratives? [00:48:19] Speaker B: 1,000% important. And you do have to like, I used it with patients. And I think I was good at walking that line of never being flippant. It was never about their situation. But honest to God, people would tell me the funniest things and they could tell immediately that they had an audience. And I'd be like, oh, yeah, I want to hear more about that story. What about gas? What's gas smell like? Gas is so different, Dr. Bailey, when you're on chemo, you can't even imagine. And then I'd get a five minute story. And that's why I was always late, because people told me the funniest things. And that's why I say cancer is not funny, but people are funny. And we sat in this very studio with a whole bunch of cancer patients telling their stories. I asked them, I want to interview you with music. We did it on the Wave project. And I want you to tell people what funny things, what joyful things, what hilarious things have happened to you since you found out you had cancer. And you can't believe it. Because people with cancer also want to be alive. They don't want to be thinking about just where are they going to park for their six hour chemo. They want to also have fun and maybe have sex and at least have a good meal and see their nephew again. Like all the things that we want to do right now, like being human. [00:49:31] Speaker C: And having a life doesn't stop. [00:49:31] Speaker B: You still want to have a life and you don't want to always be afraid. And so for that part of having a cancer diagnosis, having the ability to laugh, and especially if your surgeon thinks you're funny, then you kind of think you're the popular patient. And that's a plus too. So, yeah, I think it's super important and always being sure never ever to make them think that they're what's funny, their condition is funny. Cause it never is. But yeah, humor's the bomb. And doctors are not funny people. And so they just are not funny people. They're not. That's why I say I'm not your average surgeon and Anna is not your average geologist. [00:50:09] Speaker C: You're funny. You know it, Cheryl. I can see I kind of am. [00:50:12] Speaker B: But I like it. [00:50:13] Speaker D: I think humor is a really good way to connect with people. Like what you're saying with Patient doctor, which I hadn't thought about, but on a field expedition in a remote wilderness or working in politics on a team where it's you don't have too many people you can trust. Everybody wants something from you. They're angry at you. They're trying to, like, convince you of something. And making jokes and being silly sometimes is how you get through it. One of my favorite moments that I wrote about in the book when I worked for Governor Dayton at the Capitol was in the middle of the night. We had bought this ice cream cake. I'd run out with another policy advisor of the governor's. We bought a giant ice cream cake, like, the biggest one we could get because there were so many people, and we're all just stuck there waiting on negotiations. But, like, a giant ice cream cake is a lot to eat. So we ended up walking around with this melting cake and just trying to get people to eat it. And somebody started playing music, and people started dancing. And eventually we formed, like, a conga line and made our way to the governor's office and knocked on the door at midnight. And his body man was like, what are you doing? You know? And then, like, hang on. You can't just go in there. And he was like, come in. And he got chairs for all of us, but we kept playing the music. And so we were kind of, like, dancing, and we ate ice cream cake with our hands in the middle of the night with the governor. And it was, like, so silly. And it just makes you love those people. [00:51:34] Speaker B: Like, maybe not even just humor, but humanity and joyfulness and pleasure. Cause it's not like we were yucking it up in the clinic room every single day, but it was, who are you? Who are you as a person? And just a way of connecting. And humor is one way. I like what you say about. And then doing something completely surprising that involved deliciousness and eating something. And just pleasure is such an important part of humanity. [00:52:01] Speaker D: I just love Dairy Queen so much. [00:52:04] Speaker B: Ever since. Bacon cakes are the best. [00:52:06] Speaker D: I didn't love it before, but now. [00:52:08] Speaker B: It'S just Oreo with that little weird blue frosting, the little icing. [00:52:13] Speaker D: That's. [00:52:14] Speaker B: What is that? That's not ice cream. [00:52:15] Speaker D: I don't know what that is. [00:52:16] Speaker B: That comes in a tube, and that's not. [00:52:18] Speaker D: When you're working closely with people. Did you guys start to have kind of personal jokes? Cause it's like there's a lexicon of medicine and surgery and that that might kind of lead to its own, like, little world of jokes. [00:52:31] Speaker B: Oh, totally. And I used to call kfai, to be honest, from the or and talk to Lalio Beda and talk on fundraisers, and she would play Some I liked. I'm not gonna be able to say her name now. I say a little prayer for you, Aretha. She would play certain things, but, yeah, I think all of us knew each other so well, and I'm sure certain people said, please don't put me in Bailey's room. But we had a great team, and it just made it so much more enjoyable because someone was always poised. Someone was always ready with that instrument, made everything work great. And so, yeah, we would have fun times. We were always super professional with the patient in the room. But, yeah, you know those people in so many different ways. And I remember we had a new scrub tech come in. No one knew this man from Adam. Never seen him before in my life. And I started. Patient is asleep, getting ready to operate. And he said, so, what'd you do for the weekend? And I just looked at him like, oh, no, no, no. You don't know the rules. We don't. You don't. Number one, you don't know me. I think he called me Cheryl. I'm like, yeah, that's not actually gonna fly. And then we are. This is the work part now. And that part had to be respected. So, yeah, there are definitely rules, too, of frivolity is not. It's not a. It's not. That's not the place for it. [00:53:52] Speaker D: You know what I mean? [00:53:53] Speaker B: So there are barriers to it, but there are other times where it's very fun. [00:53:57] Speaker D: Yes. That's same in politics and in science that most of the time, you're just focused on work. Everyone is so serious. [00:54:04] Speaker B: And you're not peeing. [00:54:05] Speaker D: Yeah. And you have a moment of quiet, and you don't fill it with talk because everybody is really intent on what's going on. And then it's these moments of levity. It's that kind of contrast, that you could be so serious and so intent, and then you can laugh and you can eat ice cream cake with your hands and joke around. [00:54:24] Speaker B: Dionne Warwick. That's who I always ask for. [00:54:26] Speaker C: Okay, I think one more question. I think. And I want you both to respond to this. Both books challenge the idea that professional women must sacrifice a part of themselves to succeed. What would you say to young women entering your fields today? [00:54:43] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. You're human beings, and you should do all the things, reach for all the things, and, yes, find the things you're good at. But when you're in a group that has been discriminated against, you have to make sure that if you flub, if you make a mistake, if you Go down a wrong path. That you have to remember it's not your breast tissue that made you do that or it's not your skin pigment or your whatever. Like you are human and you will err and you will make mistakes. And I feel like owning them is better. It clears the air and it says, yep, I did that. I had a complication, I did this. I was not nice to my partner. Whatever the thing is, clear it. But then move on and say, and now we're moving on and we're going to learn this from that. So I feel like. And that's the same for young men. I want all the young people to go for their dream and be excellent at it. But don't be judging other people. You have to learn to use your frontal cortex and realize that you can't be judging whether it's women or different racial group or different gender, whatever the like outer thing. Just you can't limit them. Don't, don't clip anyone's wings because we don't have enough people in the world. We've got too many problems. We need all the people. [00:55:57] Speaker D: I love that I got that off. [00:55:58] Speaker B: My breast laden chest. [00:56:00] Speaker D: I would say I think it's. [00:56:03] Speaker B: Sorry I haven't said the usual gynecologic things. I've been trying to be so good. [00:56:07] Speaker D: I love it. My advice to young people would be to build the career you're interested in and don't worry about pleasing the advisor or program or parents or whatever narrative you think you're supposed to be fulfilling. And the way you build the career that you're interested in is you try out new and different things. So if you're a scientist and you're in college, go work for a corporation for a summer, go work for a newspaper, go work for a nonprofit. Learn how the world works, map the world, get a sense of it so that you can find the different ways that you might fit in. Because all of us have multiple places where we can be really successful and we can be really helpful and have meaningful careers. [00:56:51] Speaker B: And go for Mr. Rogers. Look for the helpers, Go for the people who are positive in your field and suck everything you can out of them and help them too, and help others. I can't tell you how helpful Anna is. She's always thinking of other people, how to lift up their careers, lift up their writing. Like always find those people because they'll inspire you. When you think, I suck, why am I doing this? I suck. Find those good people, those helpers.