Science & Spirituality Talks with Joseph Lamb, MD

Hello, everyone. We are back with another guest for the science and spirituality talks. And the guest today is Dr. Joseph Lam. I've had the pleasure of working with Dr. Lam and getting to know him quite intimately through our interactions at the Functional Medicine Research center, through metagenics, through even personal engagements and socializing that we've had, gosh, throughout the pandemic and also just hikings. I feel like I know Dr. Lam quite well in the way of his spiritual and scientific orientation, but you just never know what comes out in these conversations. So we'll see where it takes us. So welcome. Joe. Good to see you.

Thank you, Dr. Minick. It's a pleasure.

It's great, great to finally have this. Right.

Right. It's good to be here today.

So wonderful.

It is indeed.

Well, let's start where we usually start the conversation with many of the guests, which is in the groundedness of science. Perhaps you can tell the viewer just a little bit something about how did you get into medicine? You know, what's kind of your personal journey there, and what was the connection with science and. Or research?

Yeah, so I read at a very early age. I read before kindergarten. So by elementary school, I was reading books that would probably be considered adult books. Like, I read A Day in the Life of Yvonne Desenovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in. In fifth grade. In, like, sixth grade, I read the Making of a Surgeon by William Nolan. And seventh grade, I guess I actually read the Godfather by Mario Puzo. So, you know, I was reading books that weren't for kids in elementary school. But the one that impacted me in terms of career choice was William Nolan's book the Making of a Surgeon, because he was talking about his residency at Cornell during the late 1950s, early 60s, and what that experience was like in. And I remember taking from it that it was one of the first books that I had read where the hero wasn't, or the person the protagonist wasn't, wasn't in the military or a firefighter or police officer, but was still doing something really heroic in the service that he was doing and some of the surgical interventions and being that person who was kind of standing between a person and death. And that book really struck me. And I think after reading that book, and I'm pretty sure it was sixth grade, after reading that book, except for brief periods of time when I considered something else, I wanted to be a physician. And so, you know, that was my introduction to pursuing healthcare.

I mean, that's. It almost sounds as though you were a prodigy in the way of being so developed intellectually at a young age, reading these books. I mean, do you feel like you had a role model to kind of lead the way in these respective areas and just even, you know, did you have physicians in the family? And so you were already primed to be thinking along these lines?

I'm not sure that anybody's a prodigy, because I think we all have gifts. And, you know, I got to preschool basically able to read, but I also got to preschool with such a speech impediment that no one could understand me. You know, my mother picked me up at the end of the first day of preschool, and they basically said, he doesn't speak English. And my mother was like, yes, he does. And they were like, well, maybe you understand him, but none of us do. And so speech therapy began immediately for me at that point in time. Right. So I think, you know, my mother had read a ton to me, and I think that reading was a way of seeing a broader world. And it wasn't until second grade that we figured out that I really, really needed glasses. And I think, which, you know, in many ways, if someone threw a football at me, I wouldn't see the football until it hit me in my nose, right? So in that regard, reading was something that I could and enjoyed and excelled at, but I wouldn't call it being a prodigy. My parents did always treat us as adults at the dinner table. So, you know, we were encouraged to have thoughts and ask questions and talk about things. So if my mother, who had gone back to complete her degree when I was in third and fourth grade, if she was talking about what she was doing at George Mason University, then, you know, if the topic came up and she mentioned a book to my father, I'd be like, can I read that book? And, you know, that's how I read A Day in the Life of Yvonne Desenovich. So she took a Russian history course. So I don't know that it's a prodigy, and I don't know that it's directly having a role model who I wanted to mimic. Family doctor, I think was a remarkable man, Frank Carroll, but he wasn't part of the family, but he influenced my choice. And actually, when I got out of the year of cardiology fellowship, I did his was the first practice I joined. You know, he was retiring, and I joined him and his junior partner. So I was. It felt like it was a reward to actually get to practice with him for a year and a half. But, you know, I think everybody has gifts, and I think it's just that not everybody gets an opportunity to use those gifts.

Where do you think those gifts actually come from? I mean, do you think that if we think of them scientifically, do they come from genetics? Ancestral lines, past lives? I mean, I think for you, it's just so unique that you were drawn to these things at such a young age.

Yeah, I actually, you and I just have a paper that's just been accepted about the nose here, but I have a kind of very, very Teilhard Deschardin view of the world and the, you know, the Godhead and, you know, kind of the Omega point and the fact that there's like this knowing, thinking, believing envelope that surrounds our planet that's a consequence of the life forces on our planet. And I, you know, I believe that we all carry a part of that within us. And I think that in going way back to when I read Jonathan Livingston Seagull in 8th grade by Richard Bach, I really think that there's this deep part in all of us that's been a gift from. Whether you want to call it nature, whether you want to fall into a Star wars metaphor and call it the force, whether you believe it's, you know, a gift from our creator, whatever, that doesn't really matter to me. But I believe that there is that spark in every single human being that's really beautiful. And I believe it's that spark that makes us unique.

Yeah, I've heard our colleague Monique Klass refer to that as our genius. Everybody has their genius.

Yes.

And so I like how you're calling it the spark because it feels like it's something really soulful, you know, One of the things that you mentioned, too, that I've found intriguing about you just through the course of knowing you for such a long time, is that you are not somebody who has intellectually siloed their thinking. You're a very expansive, well read individual where you're not just looking at books that are fictitious or maybe even nonfiction. You're not even reading within one discipline. I think you told me once that at any given moment you've got like five books on your nightstand and you log them in a spreadsheet. And the diversity of books that you're reading to me is vast. And so I feel that, you know, just scientifically speaking, this creates such neuronal plasticity and it creates such a beautiful, integrated way of thinking. And maybe you're conscious of those choices and you do that, or it's just you're interested in those topics, so you just go There.

Yes. And yes. And you know, I said this to Susan Buell, who's been an author with us on some stuff and was my ex wife. I said to her recently that reading one book at a time is like being in a coffee shop having a coffee with the author, but reading a whole group of books at the same time is sort of like being at a cocktail party with all the authors. And she accused me of that being a metaphor for my life. But it really is to me it's an enjoyable way to read because you end up finding a dialogue between the books that you're reading. You know, I recently read Evolution in Human Religion by Bella and Patrick Hanaway, our colleague past president at ifm, and he's gotten functional medicine practice in, in North Carolina and he's a shaman. Had recommended that I read the Master and His emissary by Ian McGilchrist about left and right brain hemispheric function. And those two books like had a dance between them of covering similar topics. Right. And you find those connections and you know, lately I've probably carried it a little too far. I'm reading certainly more than five at the moment. And you know, and, and, and they have their different places, right. There's the stack that I read for kind of before working out in the morning and before meditating in the stack that is intellectually sort of interesting to me. And at the moment there's a book about prehistory, there's a book on foraging in that stack. There's book about, You know, Beowulf in Grendel. There's, you know, a book, David Sinclair's book on Lifespan was recently in that stack until it moved out because it was completed. And it's like a little game. Read a chapter or two and then the book moves a certain way down the stack and blah, blah, blah. But I really do think that having a broad spectrum of thoughts and I think it's what's always attracted me to telling stories. And I think the fact that I do read a lot of fiction, I think fiction in a certain extent, if you enjoy it, opens you up to see the possibilities in other people's lives. It, it gives you an opportunity, if the author's done their job well, to understand someone who's different.

I like that there is a lot of richness within fiction. And I've got, I definitely have had that experience myself. And also when I talk with you about books, I just see the, the combination, right. And how you're enriched by both sides. It's almost like science and spirituality come through your books in a way because some of them are just hard, factual books and then others are more the story, they're more imaginative, they're more soulful. So it's almost like you have a tangible, everyday experience with science and spirituality just through your reading stack.

Yeah, yeah. And to me, just like, we don't. Well, for a lot of us, there's a mind body continuum, right? Mind body, spirit continuum. For me, there's definitely a science spirit continuum. Because if you look back at, you know, if you look back at Newton, if you look back at Leibniz, if you look back at Bacon, if you look at Carl Jung, I mean, for so many models, Einstein, you look at his writings, right? If you look at people, they, they living in hard science, they're having those moments of inspiration and the moments to see the world differently. Right. I mean, you know, for Einstein, who was, I think, working, was it a patent office or a post office or something like that, but a very clerical type job there for a while to suddenly come up with the physics that changed the whole way we view the world. Right. Or, you know, for Teilhard de Chardin, who, you know, was a Jesuit paleontologist, to start talking about the evolution of spirit and, you know, that we're evolving towards the Godhead. And, you know, and that's why his writings were heretical, because he was basically saying that the boundary between God and man wasn't what the church was saying the boundary was at that point in time. You know, his sort of drive for were something deeper and more meaningful in the connection between humans and the more than human world. A lot of people credit that with some of the earliest influences on what we ended up calling New Age philosophy. And yet he was a Jesuit, you know, a Jesuit paleontologist who worked as an ambulance driver during World War I. And then to have someone like, you know, it's another branch of science because it's diving deep. But, you know, you have someone like J.R.R. tolkien who, you know, had a deep appreciation for language and his specialty was medieval languages. And he would end up writing the fiction that he wrote because he thought that man needed a mythology. Modern man didn't have a mythology by which to live. And so he wrote the War of the Rings for that reason. I think. I think, you know, and people talk about, you know, our brain function and our tendency to have that leaning to belief and that that belief actually gives us evolutionary advantage. But I think, you know, I think it was Lisa Miller, right, who had the book.

Yes.

And I guess I read the book on, I guess it was on my Kindle. But the concept of how much having belief impacts our wellness, I think that.

Book was what the awakened brain.

Right, right.

Yeah. And she's done some pretty remarkable research. And kind of in my experience of reading it, it seemed like she stumbled across it as she started to go through people's questionnaires.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. It must be on my Kindle because it's not on my bookshelf.

So let me get back to you in terms of your personal journey because all of these different philosophers, mathematicians, scientists, healers of various types have so informed you. So I'm curious, when you went to medical school, did you already have a spiritual imprint based on all of your reading? Did you already have kind of like a set notion of bringing your own belief system into your work as a physician?

I didn't. I, I mean, I had, I mean, I read Jonathan Livingston Siegel in 8th grade in Catholic confirmation class, you know, in order to get confirmed. And I, you know, I attended St. Stephen's Episcopal School for Boys, which is now, you know, St. St. Stephen, St. Agnes School in Virginia, but it's co ed now. And so we had religion for three years. And when I was in eighth grade, I was sure I wanted to be a priest. And by the end of 8th grade I was sure that girls were much more important. And so I wasn't going to be a priest. But that year was really formative. But you know, my in, despite taking some religion courses with, I guess Father God, now I'm blanking on his name, but with a Jesuit at UVA when I was there, despite that, despite reading widely like I read Taylor de Chardin probably in ninth grade, right. And I actually got kicked out of CCD and religious ed because I gave too much of a hard time to the lay teachers who were teaching it. And then I gave such a hard time to the young priest who was supposed to be meeting with me once a week that he ended up saying, if you keep your mouth shut, I'll let you go back to ccd. And I said, fine. But you know, you know, when you look at all of that, I still kept a real, it's here and science is here. Right. You know, there wasn't a lot of discussion in my high school and physics class about the meaning of the non physical world. Right. And there certainly wasn't that model in anything that I took at UVA and in med school. You know, it was, it was the days before neuroimmunology, even before Candace Pert. People really weren't thinking that way. But it struck me during med school, and, you know, it's when I started writing some of my first fiction myself about past lives and about a physician on a journey. It struck me that the dichotomy was being held too tightly. And what was fascinating to me was I started becoming interested in what we would call integrative medicine in probably 92, 93, because I had had some. To make the story short, I had left my family doctor's practice. I was out on my own, and I had more time to spend with patients. And Frank had said something to me that was really good. He's like, if you have the time, give it to the patient, and you'll build a relationship for a lifetime. Well, it's is an amazing way of listening to the story and telling the story back to them that functional medicine holds so dear, right? And people would come in and say something about, well, what do you think about acupuncture for my migraines? Or what do you think about this? Or what do you think about that? And because I guess who I was, I wasn't going, stay away from me. Go back. That's dangerous. Stay away. I was like, well, bring me some of what you're reading, and I'll do a little exploration, and then we'll talk at your next visit. And my med school and my residency had been very much about see one, do one, teach one, right? And so as I started accumulating these antidotes of people doing well along the way, I started being more and more open. And then it was probably the fall of 96, a brochure bounced across my desk from Herbert Benson's program at Harvard. And it bounced across my desk, and it was training in cognitive behavioral therapy. And then a week later, almost the very same brochure popped across my desk from him describing the same program, but they had renamed it as Mind Body Medicine. And I was like. And I was like, I've got to go take this course where they don't even know what to call it. And so I went and took it. And when I came back, one of my friends was like, well, when was the last time you talked with Casper? And I was like, I don't think I've talked with Casper for years. Casper had been five years ahead of me in high school and had been a counselor at summer camp and that sort of stuff. And he was a Rolfer. And my friend Eleanor said, well, Kosper is trying to put together an integrative clinic and the stuff that you're talking about, stuff that he's talking about. And Casper and I got together and suddenly I was transitioning my practice from being one of the respected internal medicine practices in Alexandria to really declaring that I was the strange doctor who was doing something more. And not long after that, I got the opportunity to meet Jeff Bland and you know, and things just accelerated and I ended up where I am. You know, when I got to teach with IFM in 2006 and David Jones and Jeff Bland asked me what I wanted to teach about, I was like, I want to teach about that unique part of us, about the mind, the body and the spirit, and how it drives everything else. So I gave the first lecture at AFMCP on that topic.

So you were really a pioneer in your own right. I mean, as a physician in the 90s and then bringing this content, I would say creating that entry point for the Institute for Functional Medicine, I mean.

There were people thinking about all these things was David was always very interested in it. Right. And I wanted to do it because I had seen the power of teaching the courses that Herbert Benson taught and that Jim Gordon at the center for Mind Body Medicine taught and really helping people know themselves. And you know, we had that paper a few years back, our Healing Journey and you know, talked about helping people discover and helping ourselves discover what's important, meaningful and valuable. Because if you really have that sort of self knowledge, then it's a lot easier to figure out why you need to make lifestyle changes that are congruent with what your mission on earth may be. And we've recently, you know, the paper that I mentioned before, the one that you and I are authors on, a proposal to whole the knowing clinical practice in the noosphere is again, it's a journey of how do we listen to stories and how do we recognize that each person's story is unique because of what they believe in and how to understand their belief so that you can walk with them.

I love what you just said. That's such a beautiful synthesis in so many ways. And so it leads me to think, how much of illness and disease do you think comes from people not seeing who they truly, truly are? They're not coming into their own wholeness, or maybe that they're telling themselves a different story and how much of health and correction of that disease into health is about reframing, reshaping the story of our lives.

It's an interesting question, right? And the reason why I didn't jump in with my first answer, which was 100% was because, well, there's no simple way to put it. Shit happens to people, right? And I remember Marianne Williamson and Jim Gordon. This came up during one of the lectures at the center for Mind Body Medicine. And, you know, Jim was giving his Comprehensive Cancer Care conference. And it was the first one, so it would have been about 98, I guess, late summer, early fall of 98. And there was a lot of back and forth. People talking about cancer as a gift, you know, because it allowed them to wake up to what they wanted to do with their life. People talking about the concept of kind of cancer as a metaphor for the busyness and the aggressive growth of our lives and the such. So a lot of interesting pieces. And this was a conference that was attended by everybody, right? So there were patients, there were caregivers, there were medical professionals, there were allied health professionals, there were scientists, there were politicians, there were news reporters, anyone who wanted to have a topic. And Marianne Williamson was giving the Saturday night kind of keynote, but slash, special event. Like in the middle of her talk, she took a pause and Sweet Honey on the Rock actually did their acapella music, right? So it was quite the special event. But she took questions right before Sweet Honey on the Rock. And a woman got up and very aggressively said, my husband didn't choose to have cancer. He wouldn't have brought this misery on himself and he wouldn't have brought this misery on me. And how dare you suggest that cancer's a choice, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you know, and so she really went off on like a five minute tirade. And Marianne Williamson very politely gave her a two minute answer. And the woman rebutted Marianne Williamson. A lot of passion, a lot of anger, a lot of hurt. And the woman rebutted Marianne Williamson. And Marianne Williamson gave her a 30 second response. And the woman started to rebut Marianne Williamson again. And Jim interrupted because he was moderating and he basically said, there are other people who want to ask questions, so you need to give someone else a turn. And the woman stepped back from the mic and sat down but close to the mic and two people asked questions. And as soon as they were done, she jumped up and started again. And Jim cut her mic off because we were already running late. And Marianne Williamson was doing this as a special favor to Jim and she was needed to be back in Cincinnati at the crack of dawn the next morning for giving her church service, right? Her church she was participating in at the time. We knew, and I knew because Susan Buell, my ex wife, was involved with putting on the conference. We knew she had a certain bedtime and we knew she had a book signing to do afterwards after this thing happened. So the, the evening ended and she's doing the book signing and we're way past the time that she had said she wanted to be alone, right, that she wanted to be in her room. And I noticed that. And this was really a formative moment for me in my medical practice, which is why I'm taking so much time with this. But I noticed that the woman who had been aggressive in her questioning had gotten in line for the book signing. And I noticed that she was at the end of the line. And I noticed that when anyone got behind her in line, she let them go first. So she was the very last person getting in line. And Marianne Williamson had said that she needed to be in her hotel room at 10 o'. Clock. And it's about 10:30 at this point when the woman gets to her and Marianne Williamson sitting all by herself at one of those cafeteria style tables with the draping around it that you see in hotels. And she's been signing books and suddenly the woman's in front of her and starts talking. And Marianne Williamson goes like this. And it was hard to figure out what that meant. And she jumped up. And I was, I was watching, right, because I was hanging out with Susan because we weren't going to leave until they were done. And there were like five or six of us sitting off to the, in this hotel lobby in front of the ballroom. And Marianne Williamson jumped up and walked away from the table. And I was like, did she just leave that woman talking? But she grabbed a chair and she brought it back and she sat it down right across from her. And they proceeded to talk for an hour. And the last part of it, the last 10 to 15 minutes, was the woman sobbing. Both of them sitting more on the floor than in their chairs. The woman sobbing in Marianne Williamson's arms.

Oh, my goodness.

Finally the woman reached a point where she was okay. And she got up and gave Marianne Williamson, you know, one more hug and, and then wandered on. And we all got up and walked over to Marianne Williamson. And in so much of my medical training, having a heart wasn't anything that you bragged about, right? Like the typical medical response from, like, if you had caught one of my fellow residents showing compassion like that, it would have been, God, can you believe how demanding that patient was? Or can you believe blah, blah, blah about that patient? Marianne Williamson looked at us and went, oh, my God, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that I was making you all wait. And it just struck me that the true interactions happen because one person cares about the other person. And whether it's between practitioner, whether it's between family members, whether it's between strangers, and if you can put yourself there, more often than not, the world sort of rewards it. You know, that. That whatever you want to call it, whether it's the noosphere, whether it's the. The more than human world, whether it's Mother Nature, whether it's Gaia, whether it's God, whether you know, the Goddess, whatever you want to call it, if you spend a moment listening, you're given an opportunity to make a difference in someone else's life.

That is such a beautiful story. I'm glad that I now remember you telling me this some time ago and how impactful it was to hear it. Right. And it delivers so many different lessons. You know, being receptive, being compassionate. I love what you about the heart and really coming from that place. So I guess I would ask you. I have so many different things to ask, and I do feel that you are a clinician's clinician in the way of you're such a role model to other health professionals in the way that you practice medicine. You know, for a short time, I had the ability to observe you and to see how you went about your therapeutic encounters and how thoughtful and receptive you were with patients. And you still are. I mean, I don't see your encounters now, but I do see kind of your general imprint of how you operate. And I think you take that even out of the clinic. I mean, that's just who you are as a person.

Yeah. I mean, everyone is deserving of respect. And, you know, if I have a spark in me, then you have a spark in you, and everyone has a spark. Right. And if that spark is something special, if I recognize it in you, well, you deserve my respect and reverence. And you also deserve my service. Because otherwise, you know, it's like not real. You're not honoring it. You know, it's a little bit like you've seen me do this. Get on board an airplane and give the flight attendants candy. And not the greatest health choice, but you can get it at the airport and it's individually wrapped. Right. So prior to Covid, I did it whenever I got upgraded it. Right. And because you can't thank a computer for the upgrade, but there's a person there and they're providing service, and you can say thank you and you can say it in A way that's strikes them and you know, what's, you know, six dollar bag of candy, right. If you can affect four people's lives or five people's lives. Right. And it's interesting to me because since COVID I do it every time I get on the plane. It's getting harder lately because I think because of our environmental concerns, we're not individually wrapping a lot of candy. Right. You know, wasteful packaging. But when it comes to giving candy to a group, it's not great to have it. You know, everyone's hands touch it like on an airplane. But I still do it. And it's, it's a matter of respecting that person and remembering what they do. You know, I think the first time that lesson was really brought home to me was I was still in med school and I was probably third year of med school and my friend Griff was in second year of law school and we were at a cocktail party at his parents house and it was probably the first cocktail party where we were there as adults. We were being treated like we were part of society as opposed to being treated like we were kids. Right. Future doctor, future lawyer. Here you are. And I remember Griff and I were speaking with a judge and we were moaning about how second year of law school, third year of med school, you know, they're the toughest years and how hard we were working. And Henry walked up and was like, yeah, well, in a couple hours you guys will help me carry the trash down to the street. And you know, this was over Christmas break and tomorrow morning the trash is going to be picked up and there's going to be some guy hanging on to the back of that trash can, working as hard as or back of that trash truck, working as hard as he possibly can to hold on. Because it's going to be 35 degrees and it's going to be raining and it's going to be sleeting and it's going to be cold. And he's having to get off that truck and pick up what we've thrown away. Tonight he is working as hard as he possibly can with the gifts and the opportunities that he's gotten to build a life for himself and his family. His commitment is no different than yours. You were privileged. You're here because of where you were born and who your parents were. And yes, maybe you worked harder than your high school classmates and maybe you worked harder than some of your college classmates to get to med school and get to law school, but you've gotten gifts but that guy's working just as hard as you are, and he has the same hopes and dreams and concerns. And, you know, and when you recognize that fact, when you recognize that so much of the behavior that we don't like in others comes about because of their fear, because of what Jung called complexes or Bill Plotkin calls sub personalities. And that's also in Schwartz's family therapy systems, I guess this kind of concept that we have these automatic defense routines when we're threatened, whether it's our professional status or whether we're going to get enough to eat or job security or are we loved or is our life meaningful, we all lean towards that piece. And so much that's ego driven because it's culturally driven, right? Because we as a culture have picked what we consider important. And when we don't think we have that and when culture rubs in our faces that we don't have it, you know, of course we feel threatened. And of course our behaviors aren't going to be what they are and they're lead to that ego side as opposed to being on the soulful side. But if we can live a little bit more on that soulful side because we develop practices, then, you know, like in that Healing journey paper where we actually had an illustration of this spirit which is in us, can infuse us and you know, instead of being on the sliding scale over towards ego, we can be on the sliding scale towards soul. And then the functions of our bodies, you know, the anatomical function, the metabolic function, the physical function, the cognitive function, you know, the psychological functions, all of those can be reflected in behaviors that are celebration of human potential. And, you know, we don't really know who Jesus was, right. We have some books written about the man starting 50 years later, if you look 40 to 50 years later, if you look at the epistles, more like 60 to 90 years later, if you look at the Gospels. And so much of what was then written was by the early church fathers, some of whom probably need to go back to school because Augustine's position versus it'll come to me. But in the. Instead of the position that, that we're born in a state of grace, Augustine's position was that we were born with original sin. Right? You know, so much of that we don't know what the man said, but the man was remarkable because of his relationship with something bigger than himself. And that's probably the story, right? And that's the story told in the noosphere, right? That's the third story that the universe, you know, has been Evolving, it has a consciousness and it's calling us. And we can choose to be part of it and see our connection to it. And when we do, that's probably that movement to Taylor Deschardins Godhead and, you know, the Omega point. And maybe that's what heaven is.

That's another way to see it for sure. So is that your view of spirituality? Would you tether it back to the noosphere and to being a part of this consciousness, this collective of consciousness? Or do you define it more in functional medicine terms, whether it's meaning, purpose, or do you see it more along the lines of what you're speaking to with story? Or is it an amalgam of all of those things?

I would say the biggest part of it is I think we're part of a broader world than the human world. And I think, I believe that that magic is in most things, including rocks, water, earth, sky, sun, plants, animals. And it's certainly there for us to see in other humans because we've got the filters that allow us to see that. Right. And. And we have all sorts of systems for understanding the magic there. Right. And you know, a lot of people would say there's not a lot of science to astrology or there's less science to astrology than there is science to functional medicine. I know it's like make some people's hair go straight or stand up on the top of their heads. In many ways, I think the functional medicine, heuristic and astrology are both ways and filters of looking at the world. And I think that finding the tool that allows us to see the breath and to have some understanding and to contribute is really important. And that's why story is so important to me, because I don't think you understand people without hearing their story if they're in the first story or the second story or the third story that we talked about. And the third story is that new cosmic story, right. Of the universe having substantial peace. Right. You know, like the Joni Mitchell song Woodstock. We are stardust, but we're also, you know, butterflies and flowers and hopefully we can find a way to turn the bombers in the sky into butterflies. But it's got to start one on one. It's got to start with the way we treat each other. And we've got to listen to each other enough to understand.

Wow, you know that everything that you just said there, it's such a perfect encapsulation of healing for this modern day. Right. Of like where so many people are just feeling the distress of Everyday living. And so I'm kind of curious just again, to bring it back to you, how you said it all starts with the story. It all starts with listening and being able to tell one story. Is that where you see healing residing? Like if we look at the state of the world today, is that one of the first places that we can start is by human connection, listening to people through our everyday, whether it's in an elevator or we're on the phone, or we're on a podcast, whatever it is. Do we start there, Joe? Or where is the sense of spirituality that comes into healing?

I think it, well, I think it starts with having respect and reverence for the other, no matter who they are, recognizing that they've gotten that same spark as a gift that you got and they're worth as much as you're worth, and then listening enough to understand where they come from. I mean, you know, at the moment we have someone who's a master of manipulation and a master of the deal leading our country. And he's choosing to lead, to use his understanding of people's personalities to, to use their ego driven fears to fulfill his goals. Right. He's asking humans to be the worst of themselves. And I think that we need to recognize that in our politicians across the board. When we had Mitt Romney going back a number of years talking about the bottom 47% who don't pay income tax, or when we had Hillary Clinton talking about the deplorable, now I'm sorry, there is no one in this world who's a deplorable. And the jobs at the bottom 47% of the country who don't pay income tax are doing how many of those jobs would we really want to do? Right? And they're horrible jobs and they're hard jobs and people, you know, I volunteered for years at a free clinic in Tacoma and I would hear people say, yeah, they're just taking advantage of the system. They don't want to pay for insurance. And I'd be like, I never met one person in that clinic who wouldn't rather have been somewhere else.

Yeah.

And but, you know, taking that attitude of I've never met one person that's not going to help the other person here and not until I understand their fear. Right. I mean, you know, we as a society at the moment have chosen to have social policies which for the most part make it so that people of privilege don't have to look at the way the bottom 47% live. And we're having the issues with Diversity, equity and inclusion right now, because the last 60 years have only been spent putting a band aid on the issue. And the planters in the south prior to the Civil War had great fear that there was going to be a slave revolt and they enlisted the lower class whites to be on their side. Right. You know, you're with us. And those people, they're the ones we've got to watch out for, which gave them security. And unfortunately, our system at the moment is, you know, is doing the same thing. You know, I can't believe that the politicians who are leading this country would really, truly care to have a meal with the average American. And yet they're telling the average American, you're just like me. You can have what I can have. And the only reason you don't is because of them. And it's reflected in how we treat each other. And, you know, we talk about young people these days being pessimistic. Well, we've spent, spent 20 years, 30 years now talking to children about climate change and how it's going to be the end of their world. Right. If we don't make changes and we haven't done crap, really, when you come right down to it. And you know, some of the profound things that we did are sort of profound things that we did that were meaningful in the last couple of decades are getting reversed. We've got to change the stories that we tell. Michael Stone, one of our colleagues, one of our co authors, Michael and I did a podcast back during the COVID days and we were talking about books and I looked to see, like, what are on the must read lists or what are on the commonly read lists for high school and college. 19 out of 20 of them were either dystopian novels, or they were, or they were novels about people in unfortunate circumstances being treated poorly and the lessons that could be learned from there. But with the exception of the Alchemist by Coelho, there was no optimistic book on that list. And, you know, it's interesting because, you know, one of the most dystopian of novels, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, is about living in a world where our distractions keep us from paying attention, our entertainments keep us from paying attention, where we're overwhelmed by information that's not meaningful and it allows an elite to have their way. And that's the book we all choose to read, but we don't pay much attention to it. But we don't read the island by Aldous Huxley, which talked about alternate education systems, which talked about, you Know, entheogens, you know, hallucinogens that open us to a different depth of experience. You know, that's not the book that we choose to have a discussion about because, you know, and I can kind of understand why do we really want to introduce ninth graders to a book touting drug use, premarital sex, and a lack of authority for the educational system. System. But on the other hand, what it produced in that book would be a future that could be a utopia and wanting people, you know, having a way of having the average person find enough space for optimism as opposed to living in their ego driven fears. If we can't change that, we've got a dark period ahead of us.

We do. Thank you so much. That was so. Thank you for really weaving together everything from the patient experience, encounter into what's happening largely and what we're all up against and also what we can do to affect change. So, Jill, what I'm taking away from kind of the science and the spirituality interface is that finds itself in the nexus of respect, of story, of equality, and of serving our fellow humans.

What I would say is science and spirituality are just two facets of the jewel. That's our belief in the uniqueness of the mus in the more than human world.

That's brilliant. Thank you so much for this interview. It was chock full and I almost felt that we could have gone down rabbit holes at any given moment there because there's so much there with respect to these stories and so much learning. So we're looking forward to your book when your book is coming out, because you've done a lot of reading. So now is the time to see the fruits of all of that cross talk neuronally into a science and spirituality type of fusion. So I'm looking forward to that.

Yeah. So it's bouncing back and forth between whether it's the nonfiction book or the fiction book. At the moment I'm working on the fiction book a little bit along Redfield's line with the Celestine Prophecy.

That's the perfect blend. Yeah, we're kind of. It feels like the two. It's almost a nonfiction fiction or a fiction. A fictitious nonfiction. It's kind of like a good amalgam of the two.

Right. A. A fictional autobiography or a fictional memoir.

Yeah, yeah. Loaded with story, loaded with lessons and engaging.

Yeah.

So I'm looking forward to the. To the story of your life.

Yes. A fictional life.

Well, thank you for the conversation again. It's been a delight. And you know, again, I so appreciate you. I'm just feeling it as you're telling stories and just listening to your wisdom. There is so much there. It's so layered. So I want to thank you for all of your contributions to functional medicine, to integrative medicine, to being a, I would say an enlightened human in this world and being a way shower for so many different people, including myself.

Thank you, Deanna. And you know what you're doing with this. When I've looked at the people who, you know, you mentioned Monique earlier and I watched parts of hers, there is so much to celebrate and so many ideas and so many people you really have on this. I think the take home for me is how many truly remarkable people there are and how you're remarkable for taking the effort to build this space for people to be themselves. So thank you.

Thank you. It's letting those sparks fly, right?

Yeah.

All right. Thank you so much and thank you. I look forward to more conversations with you, Joe. Take care.

Absolutely. Bye. Bye.