EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Have you ever stopped to think about yourself and your story? If someone were to write your memoir what would it say? We all seek some level of authenticity but have trouble removing the labels and finding our whole story. Welcome to Dropping In with Diane Dewey. In this program we’ll explore diverse stories on identity to help determine what is truly yours. Now here is your host Diane Dewey.

Diane: Welcome to Dropping In everyone. Good morning on this last day of July. Today we’re glad to have you with us for our guest Dr. Sam Stea who will talk about the intersection of medicine and climate change in a crucial moment of our time. Congratulations on writing this book The Edge of Elsewhere Dr. Stea. It’s published by Books Fluent and there’s a lot to talk about so thanks for being with us.

 

Sam: Thank you for having me.

 

Diane: Lovely to be with you. You are in this book taking us on a swift and fun and really interesting adventure at the same time making some serious statements. Speaking of the earth’s deterioration you have said a house on fire cannot stand ladies, gentlemen and young people everywhere our house is on fire. This is a crucial moment, a kind of a tipping point in our culture would you say in terms of climate change.

 

Sam: We are absolutely at a critical moment in human history. My responsibility as a physician considering that it’s a global health catastrophe that looms my responsibility is to use my influence, my identity as a physician to spread the message, to spread that message and to affect as many people as possible.

 

Diane: You took a Hippocratic Oath. Your first do no harm but also just the sense of your purpose and mission in life is to help people. I’m just so glad that you’ve brought this intersection of the two that when we’re experiencing drought, famine, mass migration and epidemics we’re talking about climate change direct results of climate change. It’s just very refreshing for me and I think for our listeners to hear from an established and very esteemed position about the very real truth of climate change as science. I think you’ve brought your voice to the table at the really right moment. How does it feel?

 

Sam: Well I think I’m even a little bit late. I think the entire medical establishment particularly the American medical establishment we’re not on time. We are late. We are decades late. This idea of climate change and health goes back decades. I would say to the 70s and 80s. I think, this is my opinion and I am not in the majority of my opinion but health care professionals particularly doctors are lapsed and I would say even negligent in promoting the idea that climate change is real science and I believe it absolutely is real science and it’s as real as the science I use to treat people. It’s real science and we need to change the trajectory of where we’re heading. Doctors are negligent. I see it every day with my own practice, in the hospital with my peers and I even encounter it in my discussions with medical organizations. They don’t seem to, they recognize it as a problem but they seem to right away turn it off as their problem.

 

I think they look at it almost as a political problem or a public relations problem but again doctors you mentioned it from the Hippocratic Oath doctors are to do no harm first but in this particular case silence and the way doctors are acting is harming people. It threatens human health on a global scale.

 

Diane: What percentage, let’s just try to quantify it when you have a microcosm. Clearly there’s a lot of denial in the public eye at large including politicians, including people that could make a significant difference as I believe doctors could in terms of awareness. What’s the percentage of say people who have woken up to these connections versus now?

 

Sam: I understand. I work in more or less a rural hospital setting. I can’t speak from an urban hospital setting. I’ve worked in central Pennsylvania for 25 years but I could say it’s a very tiny minority of doctors that, I would say a fairly good percentage of doctors think climate science is real. Probably 50% or maybe more. The problem is that the vast majority of physicians don’t consider it a health issue and don’t consider their input as essential or even required.

 

That is the problem doctors have sidelined this issue and have led it fester as someone else’s issue politicians perhaps environmentalists and have left environmental scientists alone but doctors can serve as an essential bridge between the climate science and the public in general because we garner, we still garner that trust in the public’s mind’s eye. They would listen. I think the public would listen to us more so than climate scientists or the politicians but we haven’t filled that role for some reason and I don’t quite understand that.

 

Diane: Well the good news is you’ve written this book that’s going to be an eye-opener to a certain part of the population that reads it. It’s an excellent trajectory about these three young people Abby, Paul and Max who time travel back interestingly enough you mentioned the 70s and 80s. They travel back to the 1970s through the lens of with our previous existence which was, the book begins in 2079. They basically live in a pile of ash which occurs from the great fires which will occur from the climate change that continues as we speak if left unmitigated.

 

We’re already experiencing fires. We’re already, your book is prophetic but almost here. That’s why to me it was so resonant reading it. I just want to say though maybe even the medical community look, climate change it’s a bigger than life. It’s a really huge issue. It is going to take all the components to bear witness to it and to join in. It’s like how do you eat an elephant. It’s still one bite at a time. Sorry, that’s a terrible metaphor and I wouldn’t, it’s an endangered species and there you go. It’s animals.

 

To review you are a physician. You are a nephrologist which is the study of kidneys which is a purifier. I found that sort of metaphor very interesting. To review Covid 19, the pandemic that we currently experience ourselves in is derived from animal life that has lost its habitat to industrialization sort of in short. Is that the way you perceive it?

 

Sam: Yes it is. We need to have a change of heart in the public’s opinion about this. We almost need to have a Pearl Harbor moment where the danger can be seen for what it is. Unfortunately with climate change things move very slowly. That Pearl Harbor moment may not come and that’s the true danger of this. Physicians need to take a stand right now. One physician or 10 or 20 in a community is not enough. Physicians need to bring in the big organizations, the American Medical Association and journals to lobby in Washington to, lobby congressmen and senators. The time is now. We left this too long with politicians and with big corporations in America and believe me they do plenty of lobbying in Washington but the doctors need to take a stand. The doctors can be the tipping point to the public’s perception of this. It could impact the political landscape that could really make the difference here.

 

That’s what I’m trying to get across. I’m trying to do the best I can. As an individual doctor I am powerless and especially in my case because I’m the only nephrologist in my particular area so it’s hard for me to get away. As you can see I’m being called during this podcast.

 

Diane: Don’t let anyone die while we’re on.

 

Sam: No, no, no. I have a responsible people on it but what can I do. I’ve brought this issue locally. It’s more or less been considered but it’s not taking root. I’ve written the book.

 

Diane: You’ve written the book. I was just going to say you have gained a voice by writing the book. What I would say is you’re absolutely right and doctors right now are at the pinnacle of our awareness as healthcare workers are the ones that are saving lives in Covid 19. We’re all in that rally cry of appreciating healthcare workers and gaining a sense of their value more than ever. If there was a time when you had our ear it would be now when we’re thinking and ICUs across the country and the world.

 

Sam: Oh sure. Covid 19 is I look at it as an opportunity. Covid 19, the pandemic is global. It involves health care. It involves the vast resources of health care. It involves politics. It is climate change. It is a dress rehearsal for the climate change disasters that are approaching. Doctors are on the front line now and doctors will be on the front line when the worst of climate change happens. We’re not talking about generations away. We’re talking about decades away. The characters in the book deal with the effects of climate change in only 60 or 70 years from now.

 

I do believe that if this issue isn’t addressed in the next decade or two we are facing perhaps a world that will be unrecognizable in 50 years, in 60 or 70 years. I used a bit of hyperbole in the book regarding the cutting edge of climate change and its effects on the world and on weather and on the North American continent to drive my point across.

 

Diane: It didn’t seem like an exaggeration to me. I felt as though it was very well grounded and that you are really talking about something that has a great sense of urgency. Thanks for this wonderful book. It sort of reminds me of a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down because inside this story, this wonderful story and we’re going to talk to you after we come back from the break about writing these characters, these wonderful children with whom I fell in love and also empathized with in their consternation over why didn’t our generation do anything to prevent the earth from burning up.

 

Sam: That is the great question of the book how we will be saved by history by future generations. That is a big question of the book. In the book I use the term sleepwalkers. That are our children’s children are going to look at us as sleepwalkers. Just people who are purposefully ignorant and purposefully denying truth for what gains or what benefit is the big question. I tried to address that in the book.

 

Diane: You did very well. Here’s the quote from Abby. “Maybe an epidemic of sleepwalking disease or blindness or plain old stupidity struck the world. Anyway I’m going to find out for myself. I’m going to see for myself what happened, the real truth. That’s what’s important. Science and truth.” that’s after she’s asked her mother why would people let the world burn up and let everything die.

 

When we come back we’re going to take up this subject with Dr. Sam Stea who’s written a marvelous book The Edge of Elsewhere don’t go away. We’ll be right back on Dropping In.

 

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Diane: Welcome back everyone. We’re here with Dr. Sam Stea who’s in real time himself dealing with actual medical situations and patients in his practice in central Pennsylvania. Thank you again Dr. Stea for being with us and even during the commercial break you were hands on dealing with the situation to which we say kudos because of course our health and lives are in your hands. That’s why we’re so glad that you’ve written this book The Edge of Elsewhere and you bring us to the awareness that medicine has to step up to the plate and deal and take accountability, responsibility for its role in making people aware of climate change and the disastrous effects that we face.

 

How have your patients influenced you? You say on your website that the day-to-day struggles of my patients have given me a sense of priorities and keep an understanding of what’s truly precious and enduring, what needs to be passed on. Is this the inspiration for writing your book The Edge of Elsewhere?

 

Sam: Nephrology is kidney medicine specifically it’s dialysis. I take care of patients not for weeks, per month or months but for many years and in a lot of cases decades. I see patients grow old. I see them become sick. I see them die. I see them do anything to reverse what’s happening to them. I see their desperation. It is truly impacted the story because the people in the story are desperate. They are searching for the most precious things in life which is hope and a hope for a better future.

 

I’ve learned that from patients. I’ve seen it so many times. I’m right in the middle of it and often I tell patients that no matter what we do you’re not going to live. I do see kind of a light switch off. With the characters in my book their light switch is still on. No matter what they go through they have that hope. That is in Abby even when she seems that things aren’t going to work she still has that hope in her heart.

 

I want people to, people who read the book I want them to think that way not necessarily about themselves but their children’s children. I want them to think about the world that they’re leaving behind for them. They more or less have to think in terms of the time dimension which is how the story unfolds but we must come to an awareness about our future generations and what we are leaving to them and to not take away their hope. Taking away nature is what we are talking about. If nature is depleted that hope of a better future for them is going to be depleted as well.

 

Diane: Well I think that was so well put. I do think that the children you dedicate the book to Greta Thunberg and also to Sophie Scholl. These were two young women. Sophie Scholl perished at the hands of the Nazis while trying to save lives. Greta Thunberg is likewise trying to save our life, save our collective lives. It seems to me that you’re pointing to the next generation almost saying it seems to be we’re doing this whatever we can do we’ve got to do it for them and that they are also carrying the torch in a big way and capable of carrying the torch in history changing ways. When you say nature and hope this reminds me so much of the notion that we’ve been with nature as a species for hundreds of millions of years. We’ve been with the industrial age for about two or three centuries.

 

At a sort of like molecular level we are very connected to nature. It’s part of our identity as humans. I think that you see that erosion of hope at least I feel it that tiny heartbreak each time you hear a species is going extinct. The ice caps are melting. The fires are worse. There’s a directional area there right?

 

Sam: We’ve lived in balance with nature right up until the industrial revolution. We are living in aberration. We are consuming nature at an incredible rate. We are heading for self-destruction. We must find that balance with nature again otherwise we’re doomed as a species. I believe I put that in the book. It is achievable. It’s hard work. It means that fossil fuel companies have to give way to alternative energies. It means that the public must take care of nature, be outraged at what’s going on. It means that we have to listen to the young people that are starting to realize what’s going on. They were out last year in in masses when I think Greta Thunberg led a popular movement. Young people were out at the streets. That needs to happen but we, the baby boomers the people that have used so much of nature in a negative way we need to come to that realization as well.

 

Diane: We’ve gone astray.

 

Sam: There is there is a new enlightenment that’s needed. There was an enlightenment centuries ago but that was how people are to arrange themselves in governments and societies and in politics. That was a great enlightenment of the 16th and 17th century but a new enlightenment is needed. Not people with people but people and nature. That enlightenment means to find a balance of sustainability for both. Without that balance, bad things are coming and it’s not just our generation or the next. It’s not in the many generations ahead but it’s in our generation and the next one, our children basically. That that was a major point in the book as well.

 

Diane: We need to deliver a glancing blow to those in power currently who are climate change deniers. Clearly there is some direct action that needs to happen at the voting polls in the very near future in November. I’m just going to call that out as part of the rebalancing because we’re not going to get anywhere if we don’t have leadership that’s on.

 

Sam: The status quo is not working. This denial is not the way to proceed. I think America is in big danger of losing their credibility as a world leader based on science and based on what tomorrow would look like. I think we won the cold war basically because other people in other countries particularly the Soviet bloc countries in Europe I think they wanted to be us. They saw Hollywood. They saw how we acted. They saw the things that we did and the cars that we drove. They said enough of the system. I want to be like America.

 

You remember in china during the Tiananmen Square incident? I think I remember this they built a statue of liberty, a little image, a little model of the statue of liberty. I mean it was big. It was about the size of the car but they were telling the people in power we’ve had enough of this. We want to be like America. I think we’ve kind of lost that and it’s because our vision of the future is it’s not in accord with science or a prosperity for the long run. I hope in the next election and it may be too late for me to make a difference in this. I mean the books I was hoping to impact people to maybe impact politics but I could only hope that but I’m hoping that medicine can as a whole can do what I can’t as an individual.

 

Diane: Well you’ve started something and we’re going to jump on board with you and keep the momentum going. I would urge people to read the book The Edge of Elsewhere. We’re speaking today with Sam Stea. He’s a practicing physician, proud husband, father of a wonderful son and daughter. I have to think that that influenced your motivations too Sam.

 

Reading now from your biography. Some time ago Stea took a simple and deliberate step back from the complexities of life to see himself in a much bigger picture within the context of a past and future within the balance of the human species with nature and with what is truly lasting beyond one’s own years. His great hope is that others in healthcare physicians, nurses, therapists of all kinds, scientists and administrators and young people everywhere will join him in the fight to better inform the public that climate change is the greatest imminent health challenge humanity has yet to face.

 

Yet without these critical resources Sam, if the medical community it seems to me if they were more on board and said yes we’re now fighting for our lives and as you say America has lost its sheen. You only have to look at our Covid numbers to understand that we don’t have things under control while other countries in Europe have seen shrinking Covid incidences. We’re not the country that’s being looked up to anymore but what I want to ask is in this country as you understand the way it works if the medical community were on board would more resources be brought to bear in this fight?

 

Sam: Look at the notoriety that Dr. Fauci has. He’s basically a celebrity now weighing in favor of science and logic. I think people are listening and if it wasn’t for him less people would be listening would be in a worse situation as far as Covid is concerned. I think medicine in big organizations need to be more vocal and lobby the government and Washington directly about climate change much in the way that the CDC and the NIH is trying to do now with individuals like Dr. Fauci like they’re trying to do with Covid.

 

I think medicine needs to be more vocal and much more in the news than just being in these, doctors and medical organizations have a tendency to put out alerts and memos and papers. We need much more than that now. We need individuals. We need people. We need a people that can speak for doctors as a whole to be out there in the news talking with politicians, talking with the people in power. We can’t be in the sidelines anymore.

 

Diane: No and Dr. Fauci I’m happy to report has higher ratings approval ratings than the current sitting president. I think that the other thing, people it’s dawning on us is this is not an isolated case. Covid 19 this is something that will recur and the role of medicine and figures like Dr. Fauci will continue to be imminent and extremely important to all of us and will act as a kind of leadership. Similarly CEOs of companies like Tim Cook at Apple who says we’re going to be carbon neutral by 2030. That’s not that far off. Carbon neutral that’s a really important goal for a lot of, that’s the direction that that industry has to take. Your thoughts on that.

 

Sam: In order to become carbon neutral by the end of this decade which we must be to have any impact on the trajectory we’re on boy we need a mobilization of society, of government, of the government’s resources almost to the degree I would say probably to the degree of the efforts during the Cold War to win the Cold War, what we had to do to or even World War II. I mean this is a societal shift, a tectonic shift in society on all levels from government to the public to businesses to the free market and again doctors can lead the way.

 

We still have that. We still garner the trust of the public to serve as the catalyst for this. That’s what I want to, that’s my greatest message. That’s my biggest message that doctors and health care professionals need to start waking up people.

 

Diane: Well I applaud and just honestly commend you. I think Sam we are going to, we’re headed for another commercial break but you’ve left us with so much to think about. I especially love the word serve because I think that is what we do. The medical community does and they can provide leadership in a vacuum that otherwise exists. When we come back from the break we’re going to lighten them up a little bit. We’re going to try to ask the question and answer the question how does a quiet nephrologist from central Pennsylvania come out and write a book as grand and almost classic as The Edge of Elsewhere and what motivated you. Don’t go away we’ll be right back on Dropping In.

 

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Diane: Welcome back everyone. We’re here with Dr. Sam Stea, a nephrologist from central Pennsylvania but moreover a voice that is going to be heard again and again I think in the awakening of the medical community as it works with climate change experts to help stave off the imminent health crisis that is in front of us. Thank you very much for joining us today Dr. Stea and honestly I think that you have from your website and from your words express this great hope that healthcare physicians, nurses and therapists, scientists and administrators and of course the technological and industrial community will join in this fight to better inform the public that climate change is the greatest imminent health challenge humanity has yet to face. It’s literally a question of our survival.

 

Your book The Edge of Elsewhere I couldn’t help but read, I ducked into the acknowledgements and was just so fascinated by your influences and what motivated you. You talk about a thinker, 19th century thinker Dr. Edwin Schrodinger who was a Nobel Prize winner. He’s a theorist and his book is called What is Life. That’s a pretty broad subject. He says that as we become conscious and aware that that actually, it’s not an individual journey. It actually puts us more deeply in touch with one another and the universal truths. Is this kind of subtext for way back for writing this book?

 

Sam: To write this book I incorporated a lot of things. What’s interesting is my greatest influence is probably XM Radio and driving back and forth to dialysis clinics, hemodialysis clinics. That’s where people get dialysis. I spent a lot of time on the road. I listened to the music of the 60s and 70s and it brings me back to a time that I loved. There was so much nature and hope and excitement. It was in the late 60s and early 70s. That was an inspiration.

 

Also art was an inspiration. I can imagine children in the future looking at pictures and paintings and advertisements seeing a beautiful, colorful world. I can imagine the sense of loss or almost anger. I tried to incorporate that in into the book famous pieces of art from the 19th and 20th century.

 

Diane: Well Van Gogh is there and Abby herself is making a collage of color because color no longer exists in her world.

 

Sam: She’s using the color that she’s finding in magazines that she’s picking up tossed away as garbage. I also use science and scientists Albert Einstein, Schrodinger. There’s a big debate and it’s in the book between certainty and uncertainty. Going back in history, in recent history and in science of the 19th and 20th century there was a big debate between the philosophy of relativity that things are certain and cannot be altered. Einstein was more or less in that camp versus uncertainty that we cannot predict things, that disorder and chaos are integral in the world and in the universe. That camp was led by Schrödinger and Niels Bohr.

 

I brought that debate into the book and of course relativity is how the kids actually time travel but the debate of certainty versus uncertainty also translates into our perspective of climate change in the future. I’ve heard people say and politicians say well climate change is here and we’re just going to have to live with it. Full steam ahead. That’s the certainty of doom. Uncertainty is the young people trying to impact the world and bring about change. If it means throwing off the shackles of the fossil fuel industry and political minds that are unyielding so be it. Let us create uncertainty so that we may impact the future.

 

That conflict exists today and it’s in the book. It’s in the book through one of the one of the kids in the book is Paul. He spent his whole life as a recluse. He has asthma. He’s afraid to go outside but he brings this into the book. Also later on in the book when the kids realize the forces they’re dealing with the debate is brought forth again by the people that try to stop them from doing what they need to do.

 

Diane: They enlist the support of an alternate universe John Lennon which is fascinating. I mean if you want to read something that’s multi-layered and as you say lots of influences from pop culture and the art world and the theoretical world this is the book The Edge of Elsewhere. I thought Paul was fascinating character because of his debilitating asthma he of course spent his time in his room becoming intellectually grounded in many theories and exploring the world of the mind. I thought he was fascinating that way.

 

The relativity, it’s so interesting to me there seems to be some contradictions. Most good things do have contradictions. Einstein’s relativity, this is quoting you now, predicts that the fabric of time space or space-time can be torn at those overlapping points creating a temporary inter-dimensional portal. These portals are called wormholes and that’s what the children took to go back to the 1970s. It’s interesting to me that Niels Bohr represents uncertainty and Einstein with all the relativity represents certainty. It’s a fascinating dichotomy to me, one that you bring up. I love that people like Greta Thunberg are pushing us to our level of discomfort and pushing us towards the uncertainty we need to face these issues.

 

Sam: Einstein never accepted quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is uncertainty inherent in the universe. He never quite accepted it. Again, I used that in the book and I drew parallels with mindsets today certainty versus uncertainty. It’s interesting that each character in the book brings a specific, I would say talent or aspect. For example Abby brings in the art world and literature. That’s how she seeks hope in the future by turning to books, by exploring the rooms of Princeton University searching for things. She finds color. She finds books. That is her medium to hope.

 

Paul, very sickly, asthma. Can’t go outside because of the dust. He finds hope and it’s mentioned in the book he finds hope through his thinking and in using his mind. He refers to everyone else’s as uneducated. In other words he’s seeking enlightenment through the books that are available to him. Max is a very interesting character. He’s kind of the bridge between the two, Abby’s neighborhood friend. He brings the tangible things.

 

He brings hope basically because he sees the world, the world of 2079 is just a place that he has to live that he has to exist, that he’s making the best of things. His hope is primarily through his growing relationship with Abby. They’re both 14 years old and Abby is his hope. Their relationship is his hope.

 

Diane: She depends on him as well for emotional support.

 

Sam: It all swirls together and it really comes to a head. It’s all unified toward the end of the book.

 

Diane: We won’t give any spoiler alert.

 

Sam: Okay, I’m not going to spoil things. John Lennon and what he did in New York in the early 70s is the hope coming in from the past. What we were like back then in the Vietnam era.

 

Diane: The Imagine era.

 

Sam: Yes, the Imagine era. We were full of hope. Young people had the drive and the energy to see what was happening and they went out in droves trying to change things and they changed things. They changed the world. We’ve lost that. I made that quite clear in the book that we ourselves, I’m 57 years old. I was a kid back then but a lot of the people now that are so hung up on status quo, keeping things as is, business as usual, that’s the American way were the same people that probably wanted to be a big part of the change in their late 60s and early 70s and saw themselves differently back then.

 

Something’s lost. Something’s different. I want people to read the book and perhaps take a good look at themselves, who they are, who they become, what their values have become. Think again because we could still be those people. We could still be those people that we were. I’m speaking now to the baby boomers out there.

 

Diane: Yes and as one I mean that was me. I was protesting and the big question is the arc of how hippies and revolutionary thinking kids that we were became baby boomers. Consumptive and altogether sleepwalking. That’s a real arc. I think you have helped us regain some of ourselves. Go back to the garden. We’ve got to get back to the garden literally and figuratively. You’ve brought us these three wise men sort of symbolic children, three children on a journey through the book The Edge of Elsewhere.

 

I’m going to give our listeners now that we have a minute to the close Sam Stea his links. www.reimagine2079.com. You can find the book and pre-order it there. It comes through Books Fluent and as you say Sam something is starting. Someone is knocking. Somewhere is calling and I think as we find ourselves in this time of Covid where even Freud could say one day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful. Let’s hope that’s true through doing the tough work and making the necessary choices to change our course.

 

Sam Stea, thank you very much for joining us on Dropping In. thank you for your marvelous book The Edge of Elsewhere. You’ve given us the right stuff at the right time and we’d love to hear from you again. To our listeners thank you for tuning in. Be safe and stay connected everyone. Yes Sam?

 

Sam: Thank you Diane and I want to thank the audience for listening.

 

Diane: Thanks for dropping in everyone. Until next week.

 

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