SHAY:
Welcome to How to Humanist. It is Shay Leonia, your host on behalf of the American Humanist Association. If you're listening to this today, the day that this episode comes out, then it is Monday, November 2nd, which means that tomorrow are the midterm elections, and we need you all out to vote. If you have not voted already, please get to your local polling place.
If you need more information on who your candidates are, where to vote, how to vote, all of those different things, please visit vote411.org/make-your-plan. It is such an incredible and thorough resource available to you, but you can also start conversations with your neighbors, with your friends, family members.
See if there's an obstacle in their way keeping them from being able to vote if they want to. If they need a ride to their polling place. If they need somebody to watch their kids for an hour. Whatever it is that you're able to assist with, go out and do it. It is the humanist way.
So I'm really, really happy that we're joined by today's guest, Wil Jeudy, who is a great friend to the American Humanist Association, and also our (c)(4), the Center for Freethought Equality.
Let me tell you a bit about Wil. He's an urgent care physician by day, a multi-hat secular political activist the rest of the time, state director for American Atheists, Board of Advisors for the Center for Freethought Equality, board member of Secular Coalition for America, and founder of Secular Houston and Secular Texas PAC.
We have such a fascinating conversation coming up for you, not only about voting, but also about the intersection of how voting impacts our healthcare system. This conversation was so valuable to me, and I really hope it is for you too. And without further ado, please enjoy this talk with Wil Jeudy.
WIL:
I started with being the assistant state director for American Atheists, where I collected that hat back in 2019, was on the board of my local humanist group, Houston Oasis, 'cause I live in Houston, Texas.
So since then, kinda fast-forward some years, I formed a group called Secular Houston, where we endorse candidates based on church-state separation at the local level and at the state level. And then learned about this guy named Ron Millar, who, I want to be Ron when I grow up.
SHAY:
Who doesn't?
WIL:
I love the guy. Leader of the Center for Freethought Equality...
[SHAY interjects: All right, let me tell you a little bit about Ron Millar and his spectacularness. He is the PAC manager for the Center for Freethought Equality, which is the advocacy and political arm of the American Humanist Association. The Center for Freethought Equality's affiliated political action committee, which is what PAC stands for, is working to achieve equality for the atheist and humanist community by increasing the number of humanists and atheists and allies in public office at all levels of government.]
WIL:
...which is what I'm trying to be, a more local Texas version of CFE, which is Center for Freethought Equality, and they endorse candidates based on church-state separation on the national and state level.
So yeah, I finagled my way onto their board of advisors, so I'm involved with them as well. Formed a state PAC here in Texas called Secular Texas PAC to expand my vision for what we're doing in Houston to the statewide level. So I kinda wanna help form a Secular Austin, Secular Dallas-Fort Worth, and then they have their own endorsement lists. And with the PAC, we can hopefully have some money behind those endorsements to make it happen.
SHAY:
For anyone who's hearing the word PAC and just shivers going down their spine and being like, "F that." Thank you. Can you go into a little bit more depth about why this is a PAC that we would want?
WIL:
I love it. I love that question, 'cause when I explain the PAC on the social media stuff I do have time to do, I make it a point to say, "We're not a corporate PAC, we're not a super PAC, we're a state PAC. And this is our PAC. This is our money."
So the money that we get from donations from individuals, really, we use to help our candidates on our endorsement list get elected. And so far it's just Secular Houston. And Secular Houston's non-partisan. But yeah, PAC stands for political action committee.
And yeah, it's gross. Growing up, I hated money and politics, and I still do. I still hate that concept. It messes everything up. But that's the way the game is played as it is. And yes, our endorsement list is great. Yay, we're helping people get elected, but to put money behind it, it gives us more weight in this playing field.
And the way I describe it is that the other side, being Christian nationalists, they have enough money. They're sitting on piles of money. They have enough to fund a Death Star, but all we're asking for is enough to fund a X-wing fighter. And you know how that story goes, to go back to lore. Eh.
SHAY:
Do you know what's so f... I literally, I gotta show you this. Today, a TaskRabbit person came in, I don't know if you can see it, and they installed the IKEA Death Star pendant lamp for me.
WIL:
That looks like a...
SHAY:
It's so cool.
WIL:
It looks like a moon.
SHAY:
It does, but anyway, you said Death Star, and we were totally talking about something way more sophisticated.
WIL:
No, I love it.
SHAY:
And then I saw the squirrel in my house. So okay, so money to you was always gross in politics, but it is what it is today. What is the money used for?
WIL:
So it's made for donations. We donate to our candidates that are on our endorsement list. And I would love to say we donate these huge bags of sums.
So these are all people that we vetted. We send questionnaires out to everyone running. And the ones that return our questionnaire, if they align with our values, church-state separation as well as other progressive issues, then they're on our endorsement list, and we'll tell anyone that will listen, "Hey, we did the work. These people are worth our energy. They're worth our time. They're worth your and our money."
Because money's needed to run for office. I'm not gonna run for office, but I see what it takes to run for office, and money is a big part of it. So we contribute to the candidates on our endorsement list.
We'll do stuff like we'll have postcard parties, so you need postcard stamps. Those things are expensive, man. But yeah, we'll pay for the stamps to get these postcards out. So it's things like that.
And Secular Texas PAC has a board. There's five of us, great people. There's no salary. We're not making money from this, so everything that comes in goes out. Things like paying for meetup fees, that kind of thing, to make things run, to make things happen.
SHAY:
Okay, yeah, 'cause it was always so abstract to me. Okay, these people are asking for donations. Of course, Bernie Sanders probably being one of the most famous ones that everyone knows of, is, "We just need another $27." And I think for a lot of people, they haven't known, besides your daily living expenses, where this money needs to go to and why is so much money needed in politics.
WIL:
Again, in my younger years, I voted every two years, but I never really got into the depth of local politics and how important it is for my life or for everyone's life. So I never understood quite the humanism that could be had from local politics.
SHAY:
Yeah. I think my biggest wake-up call for that was learning that your local coroners are elected.
[SHAY interjects: Okay, stick with me here for a second, because this is one of the most baffling things that I've ever learned in my entire life. Coroner comes from medieval England, where in the 1100s they were established to protect the king's financial interests for death taxes. They were known as the crowner's representative.
Now, I always thought that a coroner and a medical examiner were interchangeable. Nope, totally wrong. A coroner is practically a member of the public a lot of the time, and a medical examiner is somebody who's actually gone to school for this, who actually knows the scientific data, who knows forensic data and how to interpret it, all of that kind of stuff.
I'm on the Texas Autopsy Services page right now, so that's where they lean into. Let me find... There was a statistic about how often we see autopsies.
Okay, so the fallout from the expertise of medical examiner versus coroner, they're saying on their website, extends far beyond one family's search for answers. While the idea behind having elected coroners in twenty US states covering nearly thirteen hundred counties is to ensure local accountability, it creates a dangerous inconsistency in how deaths are investigated.
Consider this: twenty twenty-one data from the US Department of Justice shows that offices run by elected coroners perform a full autopsy in only twenty percent of their cases. In medical examiner systems, that figure jumps to forty-five percent.
When autopsies aren't performed, we're essentially flying blind. Public health crises go unseen. National statistics become unreliable, because every death certificate feeds into our national health data. So if the cause of death is wrong, the entire data set is flawed. Justice isn't served. Homicides can be mislabeled as accidents, and natural deaths can be wrongly flagged as suspicious, triggering costly and needless criminal investigations.
Okay. In a 2022 article in The Economist, they described America's coroners as too often a public health liability. The article cited this example: "Coroners reliant on voters who are skeptical about COVID have not been as scrupulous as their medical examiner peers. One coroner in Missouri candidly told the press that he strikes COVID-19 from the death certificates at the request of the family of the deceased."
So clearly, obviously there's an issue here with needing to raise the minimum standards for anybody that's running as a coroner. That would be a good first step. But the fact that this can be so biased is just so gross.]
WIL:
That's right. This speaks to the importance of elections, whether it's coroners or judges or state representatives. They have the power to affect the cause of death. They have the power to affect LGBTQ rights at all levels. Healthcare. I could go on and on.
But elections matter, and that's, I'm in Texas, so apathy's a huge problem. And you talk to people over here, and as in a lot of the country, and you'll hear things like, "Oh, it doesn't matter who I vote for. Both sides are bad." Yeah, that's the headwind that I'm fighting against here at the local level, on the ground. It's all good.
SHAY:
What are you telling those people? Because I've been running into them a lot lately too, and I don't know what to say to them.
WIL:
I'm not quite the expert on what to tell people like that. You just have to be patient. You work with what you have. I'm finding a lot of success in other avenues, so I'm focusing on that. But when I do have conversations with them, I'm not... I'll let them talk. I'll say, "Why do you say that?" Use the Socratic method...
[SHAY interjects: This is so cool. Okay, the Socratic method. It's like when somebody is asking you questions, and it kind of feels a little bit like a debate, but it's not a debate. It's almost like leading with curiosity, but they're asking you probing questions so that you can use and engage your critical thinking in order to arrive at a conclusion that, I guess, they wanted you to arrive at.
But I was looking up some info on this, and in Plato's dialogue, Thea... How do you say that? Theaetetus? Socrates describes his method as a form of midwifery, because it is employed to help his interlocular, whoa, his interlocutors develop their understanding and lead it out of them in a way that is analogous to a child developing in a womb until it's ready for birth. That's so savage.]
WIL:
...plus active listening. I'm not gonna have a awesome nugget of advice to tell anyone, but you just listen, and you let them know, "Okay, I think differently. I really think things can change." And that's it. Walk away. You're not gonna change their mind. That's the only advice I have.
The other piece of advice is save your energy, save your efforts for things that you can have some success in. Listen, if you're super charismatic and you can talk to people and change people's minds, yeah, maybe develop the skill to get out there and do something like that. But me, particularly, I don't quite have that skill.
SHAY:
I was literally just thinking about this earlier. I was like, why can I not be one of those people that is just equipped for somebody to say something that innately I know is wrong, or that I just disagree with on my values, and I just have nothing to back it up with.
I'm never good on my feet that way, and so I'm so relieved to hear you say that, 'cause it's like I'm meeting somebody else that deals with that struggle also. I'm just like, "Okay, that sounds nice," and I just walk away.
WIL:
Yeah, keep it short, keep it sweet, and planting a seed.
SHAY:
Yeah.
WIL:
Yeah. Play the long game.
SHAY:
Yeah. So earlier you were saying that you're the person that does the work. What, aside from the political side, is considered the work of humanism?
WIL:
The work is forming communities or keeping communities going. That was my first introduction into humanism, secularism here in Houston, was Houston Oasis, and I quickly learned and met other people, other leaders of groups here, Houston Atheists, Humanists of Houston back then, which no longer exists.
But it takes a lot of work to keep communities going, and to form a board, to keep the board going, to have speakers if applicable, have meetups. So a lot of work needs to be done, and it's usually done by a few people. And yeah, much respect for those people doing the work.
Not only the ones I've met, but the people I haven't met. I know they're out there, and I have a special place in my cold, dark, atheist heart for the people that are behind the scenes doing the work.
[SHAY interjects: If you are interested in being one of those people behind the scenes, starting up a humanist group, feel free to check out episode 28 of this podcast. We brought on Elizabeth Hegwood, who is a humanist community launcher extraordinaire, and we also have Jake Via, our organizing director, who would be the person that would be right by your side helping hand-hold you through the process. And yeah, we have a ton of resources for you if you do wanna start a group.]
SHAY:
Oh, gosh, that's amazing. All right. Speaking of, so you are a doctor, and you're doing all of this work outside of being a doctor. What kind of doctor are you?
WIL:
Yeah, it's my day job. I am a trained family medicine doctor, but I've been doing urgent care full-time since 2014.
SHAY:
Oh.
WIL:
And within the urgent care, I also wear a lot of hats. I think that's a theme of mine. So I do medical research, urgent care shifts here and there, a lot of variety in my day job as well.
And urgent care fits in that space between emergency room and family doctor medicine. So weekends, offices are closed, or you have a cut, maybe you might have broken a bone, that's what urgent care is for. That's what we do.
And sometimes people don't know, is this urgent care? Is this ER? If you're having a heart attack or stroke, if a bone's sticking out of your arm, that's ER. Bullets go right to the ER. But we stay busy. We take care of a lot of stuff.
SHAY:
I love my urgent care people. My nurse practitioners and the doctors have been so helpful throughout the years, especially in the years that I didn't have health insurance. Oh my goodness. And now I do direct primary care, which I am such a huge fan of and try to shout from the rooftops about.
[SHAY interjects: Okay, don't laugh. I learned about direct primary care from TikTok. So now, if you're not hip to the game, let me tell you, direct primary care is when you can see your doctor without having to go through insurance. All you do is pay a monthly subscription. You do not, I repeat, you do not need to have insurance.
So when I didn't have health insurance, before I started working at AHA, I found my doctor. And the thing about direct primary care is that not only are you not going through insurance, but you are getting incomparable access to your doctor.
Whereas through insurance, we're all used to sitting in the waiting room for what feels like hours on end, having maybe five minutes with the doctor, and then they're onto the next, and you don't really get to establish that level of care that helps you feel seen and heard.
My first appointment was an hour. Every appointment since then has been a half hour. I can schedule an appointment whenever I want. If I have a little tickle in my throat, I am scheduling an appointment, and it all costs the same, because it's all covered under that small monthly subscription. Yeah, I don't think I'll ever go back. I love direct primary care.]
SHAY:
What are some of the things in the medical field that you're facing that are directly tied to who is sitting in office?
WIL:
Yeah, access to health insurance is a huge thing. It's always been a big deal. But as people are thrown off of health plans, or it becomes affordable, so de facto they're kicked off, because of decisions that are made at the state legislative level, also federal. Yeah, a lot of people are losing their insurance.
So when they come in, instead of taking care of a cough that they could have taken care of or should have taken care of in two to five days, they delay it. They don't wanna go in to an urgent care or ER. Instead of a mild infection, now it's more severe when they actually do come in.
So it can impact people in many ways. But yeah, those decisions are made in the state capital, and it does filter down. Health insurance is a big one, and access to childcare. It's all connected.
The biggest thing that drives my progressive activism really is minimum wage hasn't gone up for, what, 20 years? I just been so many years. And that affects healthcare. That affects the medicines you can get. It affects the food you can buy. All this stuff is connected. If minimum wage goes up, cost of living is normalized, the health data will improve. I absolutely guarantee it.
SHAY:
Yeah. It's so intersectional, because I think of a single mom, for instance, that is working two, three jobs. Catching a cold, she's probably gonna think that she could just live with that and pop some Tylenol and get on with her day. And if she's got kids, can't afford to get a sitter or figure out other accommodations for the children, wow. Yeah, that's all gonna definitely lead to that.
WIL:
Yeah, that's why we do what we can do. That's why we try. I like to be efficient. I love efficiency, as a physician, as an activist. So in that vein, when you elect better people to office, they make those decisions that will affect not only healthcare, but climate, and the list goes on and on. So I find it a really good efficient use of energy, the political activism.
In the medical world, I remember as a young doctor, I saw a lot of type 2 diabetes patients, so not specialized per se, but I just wanted to know more about diabetes. So as I learned about diabetes, diet is a huge part of treating diabetes. But as I learned more about healthy diet, weight loss became a thing.
So then as I looked, I said, "Whoa, if people lose weight, the diabetes gets better, but so does depression, so does arthritis, so does cholesterol," so many other things. I said, "You know what? Medical bariatric medicine," back then it was called. That got my attention, so I thought, "Okay, let me focus some energy into that." And I still think it's a very efficient use of energy. You help people lose weight, and so many things get better.
SHAY:
That's what Chris Line and I were talking about when he was on the podcast.
WIL:
Yep. I heard that one.
A lot of studies, a lot of information. Bariatrics, or weight loss medicine, is very complex, and it's changed a lot over the years. The new GLP-1 medications have been crazy amazing, awesome so far.
SHAY:
For anyone who didn't hear Chris' episode, and also just helpful to hear from you because you're a professional in this space, what is your take on GLP-1s? Because they are still very demonized at this moment.
WIL:
I guess the argument is, "We don't know what the long-term effects are." Sure, and we do not take that lightly, we being science, medicine, doctors. But GLP-1s have been around in some form or another for at least a couple decades. It was a diabetes medicine back then, and it's just gained a lot of popularity for all the other things that they've done.
So far I give it a thumbs up. It's changing lives out there. And again, nothing is without risks, but obesity is a major problem, not only in America, but in the world.
SHAY:
So you cited one of the objections that I've heard so many times, not just for GLP-1s, about we don't know the long-term effects of it. People have also said that about vaccines for forever. But now we're seeing these new cases of measles coming out, and I'm in Philly, we're seeing infants with measles, and this is scary shit.
[SHAY interjects: Oh, you think I'm kidding? I recorded this episode with Wil at the top of October, I think. It is now November 1st when I am editing this episode for you, and I just want you to hear this. Pennsylvania has now confirmed 1,426 measles cases across 44 counties. It is a historic multi-county outbreak. What the fuck?]
SHAY:
I re-watched Law & Order: SVU from season one recently, and I saw so many episodes where they were talking to parents that were misinformed and using the case of, "Yeah, I don't want my kid to be vaccinated," but then putting everybody else at risk. What is the humanist approach to vaccines?
WIL:
Yeah, absolutely. It's the same that it was during COVID, before the COVID vaccines came out. Vaccines not only help the person getting the vaccine, but it helps your fellow human, the people around you. And that's as humanistic as you can get.
And the data on vaccines is solid. Before vaccines became a thing, cemeteries were filled with small coffins, small little crosses from kids dying. As soon as vaccines became a thing, that child death plummeted. This was back at the turn of the century or so.
So the data is there. Again, there's always pros and cons in medicine, always. We take that very seriously. But the pros are... It is so effective. I think it's one of the best things medicine has ever done. It has to be in the top three, is vaccines.
So I think people just forget. They forget about all those little crosses in cemeteries. They forget how it was before vaccines became a thing. So fast-forward to now, the vaccine hesitancy, the anti-vaxxers. I don't know that group well enough to know what drives it, but I think if you ask them, they think they're doing the right thing.
Is it going against experts in the field? There's a certain term for that. Is it they're just deluded? Is it they don't know any better? I don't know. I don't know. But the numbers of people that are rejecting vaccines have been going up and up. And as predicted, the number of measles cases has gone up.
I think it's the most it's been since the early '90s. If you look at a graph, just look at a graph. And sure, sometimes it's not that simple with medicine. Oh, other factors. I think people have tried to blame it on immigration, and that's been debunked.
SHAY:
Seriously?
WIL:
They will say, "It's the browns, it's the browns bringing the measles in." They try. They try to deflect.
SHAY:
See, my first thought, my first theory, is, oh, this current administration is making it so acceptable to be this overtly religious and just non-critical thinking that of course it's gonna give people the carte blanche to think that they know better than doctors and the data. But of c... I didn't even think about... Yeah. Okay. Yeah, they're blaming immigrants again, of course.
WIL:
Of course.
SHAY:
Of course.
WIL:
But we saw that with COVID. They were mad. The government was telling churches to close down. They got very mad. How dare you get in the way of me and God?
I get a little PTSD from the COVID times, 'cause I was in the thick of it.
SHAY:
Oh, that's right.
WIL:
And people got to see how the sausage was made, how medicine... We didn't know what it was, but we learned. Every month, we learned more and more. But it caused a lot of doubt in people's minds, 'cause they saw medicine not knowing, or I think they're used to medicine having all the answers. Did that feed into the vaccine hesitancy that we see now? Probably. It probably did.
SHAY:
But is that, for you, for what I can only imagine... I'm a huge fan of The Pitt. Have you seen The Pitt?
WIL:
I have not.
SHAY:
You haven't seen The Pitt?
WIL:
No. I used to watch ER back in the day. I'm kinda old.
SHAY:
I love ER. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. Yes. All right. We can relate on ER.
But yeah, so what's cool about The Pitt is that they portray, trigger warning for you, but they portray what this particular emergency room went through during COVID. They do little flashbacks. And so that's my only frame of reference to be able to imagine what you might have gone through. Does it ever feel like a big fuck you to anybody that's anti-vax, to know what you had to endure during that time, and all of the loss?
WIL:
Absolutely. I think, no, I know that was the first time I ever thought there should be two Americas, and I don't like admitting this.
But it was, yeah, watching those people burn the masks, and "Fuck you, Biden, you don't tell me what to do." This was before the vaccines. And I was solidly a humanist atheist by this point. It was weird, because that's what it... Maybe it was cumulative, but that's what it took for me to say, "There should be two Americas, those people and everyone else, or sane people, humanists."
It was a very strange thing to think, but it was a very stressful time. I'll never say "fuck you" when I have my day job hat on. But seeing what I was seeing on my side of that whole story, yeah, some anger does well up thinking back to those days. I guess seeing it carry over into these days.
COVID is not as bad as it was back then because of the vaccines, because of an understanding of what the virus was and is. But yeah, the whole fuck you, it's a reaction to the fuck you I was hearing, just shitting all over humanist values and taking care of your fellow human by wearing a mask, by staying indoors, not going to church, that kind of thing.
SHAY:
So when the vaccine came out for COVID, we heard so many people being like, "Oh no, we need more time. How could they possibly know that this is gonna work? It's a cash grab. Johnson and John..." All that kind of stuff. What are you able to say to that now, in retrospect?
I was being open ears. I've never been anti-vax, but I definitely was hearing people's concerns about, "No, this came out too quickly." And I was like, "That's something I should probably look up some information on."
WIL:
Yep. It is a valid concern. I had that concern myself. A bunch of us are skeptics in our world.
SHAY:
Yeah.
WIL:
Including me. So yeah, I actually looked into it. I asked people in that field, and the amount of data that went into the COVID vaccines was the same as other vaccines. So it was on a tighter timeframe, but the amount of data, the quality of the data, was equivalent to any other vaccine before it. So that calmed my mind.
And I actually, personally, I, Wil, was in a study as a participant.
SHAY:
Oh.
WIL:
Yeah, so I was in the, I think, the Pfizer study as a participant. So I kinda helped that data come about. So I had a different perspective from all that. But yeah, when the vaccines came out, I was confident, and I was comfortable giving them and recommending that people get them.
SHAY:
Now, people were claiming that one vaccine was gonna be different than the other if you got the Pfizer one, if you got the Johnson & Johnson. But for those types of people that were claiming, "Oh no, it's a corporate cash grab," we are in the US, we do see how our healthcare system runs as opposed to the rest of the world. Is there any legitimacy, I guess, to their concerns there?
WIL:
The short answer is yes. We do live in the USA. Pharmaceutical companies are in the middle of medicine, which I've always hated. And it really gets in the way. But the system held.
Vaccines came out, and there was a difference between the vaccines, but at that time, they were all good enough to save lives and worth the potential side effects, which, again, were the same if not better than vaccines previously. And then, yeah, looking back in retrospect, it was great. It allowed us to get back to normal. It was the vaccines that did that.
SHAY:
It still feels like such a separate time. I feel so disconnected from that era happening, and I'm sure everyone does. But I can't imagine how much more magnified it is for you, having been on the front lines of it.
WIL:
Yeah, it was scary. I remember making my will, taking shoes off, clothes off before entering the house.
SHAY:
Oh.
WIL:
Yeah, it was crazy times.
SHAY:
So for people that have just lived their whole lives just being like, "These vaccines are ridiculous, they're gonna give you other illnesses," and the Jenny McCarthys of it all, what can we say to them today? I know that you and I already established that we're not the ones to come to, to try to change your mind on things, but if there are people that are listening like, "Okay, I will consider what Dr. Jeudy says..."
WIL:
It starts with that. It starts with your relationship with your health provider, and a lot of people don't have health providers anymore, so I think that's part of it. Bucking experts is getting more popular. So, what does Dr. Fauci know? I know more than him. But then there's a layer of, "I don't trust the system, money grabbing, and they're just trying to make money."
So there's so many layers. It's frustrating from my standpoint because, again, I know people, I know the science, I trust what science has done for humanity for 100 years plus. And I get it, I get the money part, I get the hesitancy. Focusing on the bad and not the good. I get it.
But I think at the end of the day, you have to trust who is in charge of your health. And I think for more and more people, there's no one there, or the internet's there. ChatGPT is there. And it can be a dangerous thing.
SHAY:
What you said is very easy to consider for some, I would imagine, saying you've got to trust your healthcare provider, if one exists in your life. But then there's also the very real history of the groups that have been screwed over by healthcare providers.
WIL:
That's right.
SHAY:
I mean, the Black community has a very valid mistrust of the healthcare community. Can you speak to that, and how someone today who might very well need the care is still hesitant on going to get checked out?
WIL:
Yeah, absolutely. The stories are horrific as to what medicine has done to the Black community in the past. And it extends past medicine, but we're focusing on the medical part.
[SHAY interjects: For any of you that are already in the know, you know that this is a very valid concern from the Black community. So just gonna name a few things that have happened over the course of history to the Black community from the medical healthcare system: surgical experiments on enslaved women, the Tuskegee syphilis study, the theft of HeLa cells, coercive and forced sterilizations, and institutional exclusion.
Now, this is not only just a lasting impact of trauma on the community, but today we are still facing incredible disparities in Black maternal health. Black women who give birth are three to four times more likely to face mortality.]
WIL:
So many people have tried to improve access for Black and Brown people in the medical world, and to date, it's still happening. So the distrust is always gonna be there. It's gonna take so long to get past it.
But the people, the organizations that are trying to help, again, they need more help. They need more money. They need more energy to continue what they're doing. Again, so many people behind the scenes are trying to make that happen. And those are my people. Those are people my heart goes out to.
There's no magic bullet. There's nothing I can say that's gonna make it all better. "Oh, yeah, just trust people that look like me." It's not that simple. It goes deeper than that.
SHAY:
But is a part, or a small fraction of the solution, to have more Black healthcare providers? I would imagine that that...
WIL:
100%. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. I can't think of the number, I can't see the numbers right now as far as how many Black and brown providers have graduated, or is there a trend up? When I was in medical school, there was a trend up. And yeah, I'm very proud to be a part of that.
[SHAY interjects: Okay, so while it is trending upward, it's important to note that, following the legal and policy changes like the 2023 Supreme Court ruling to end race-conscious admissions, medical school matriculation data showed a drop in Black student enrollment, according to kff.org. There's also a stagnation for Black men.
While the number of Black women in medicine has increased, the proportion of U.S. physicians who are Black men has remained essentially flat since 1940. That's according to UCLA Newsroom. So yeah, still a big issue here.]
SHAY:
I would have loved to have had Mekhi Phifer be my doctor, for any ER fans out there. Oh my gosh, his character arc was so good. Ah. Oh my gosh. Now I'm gonna have to re-watch it all over again. I went from hating his character to absolutely adoring him. It was awesome.
Okay, so I'm gonna throw something out there. Feel free to pass on it, because I could end up editing it out. There's a large part of me that is concerned that what the Black community endured, with testing in particular, is also happening currently for detainees from ICE. I know that there's no claims to back that up necessarily. I haven't actually even done any research, but there's a part of my gut that is very worried that's happening all over again.
WIL:
What's happening is cruelty. All the Black and brown people in custody, they just throw them in a hole. So what they are doing to them in that hole, I don't know if anyone knows, or the people that do know will not tell.
I don't know. I don't know. I would hate to learn that anything like that is happening now, but I can't just say, "Oh yeah, we're better than that. No, that kind of stuff doesn't happen anymore." It pains me to think that things like that are happening, above and beyond the cruelty that we know is being perpetrated right now.
SHAY:
At the very least, we do know that there is proof that they are not getting sufficient nutrition, sufficient outside time. They're not being treated in a humane way, which is incredibly unnerving. And that's why it circles back to the work that you're doing to get endorsements for these politicians that you're working with and that you're backing with the PAC. So thank you for doing that work, 'cause oh my gosh.
WIL:
Yeah. It's tiring. It's exhausting, but it's fun. It really feels good to do something about this shit. And accountability will never happen until we elect better people. And will there ever be full accountability? Probably not, but I want as much as I can get, and that involves electing the right people to make those decisions.
SHAY:
I remember there was someone who said that, yes, you cannot agree with this person 100%. Absolutely your right to not agree with every single thing that they feel on their policies. But there does come a choice where you think, "Okay, would I rather argue with this person, or would I rather argue with that person? Which one is gonna be more effective?"
WIL:
Yeah. I use the term we have to stop the bleeding, 'cause that's my day job, but it's also in the political realm. We're bleeding, and we have to stop the bleeding, and then we figure out the next step after that.
SHAY:
Do you have a T-shirt that says that? 'Cause I really would love one.
WIL:
I can have some cool graphics with that too. I don't have a T-shirt that says stop the bleeding.
SHAY:
You really could.
WIL:
Yeah.
SHAY:
All right. We gotta work on something. Yeah. Let's do this thing. You heard it here first, everyone. No, that would be super cool. Let's do that. Anything more that you would like for people to know about this work that you're doing and how they can get involved?
WIL:
So Secular Houston, we're on all the social medias. Our website has a list. We've compiled a list of things that anyone can do, and this is Houston centered, but it's applicable nationwide. So it goes from easy to hard. My philosophy is voting is basic, and I got that from Andrew Seidel. That's the least you can do. But I'm asking people to do something extra.
Again, from reposting your favorite candidate's social media to running for office yourself, and there's a lot of stuff in between that you can do. And when you spend a little bit of energy to make all this shit better, now you're a blade of grass in a grassroots movement, and grassroots is where it's at. So one blade of grass isn't gonna change it, but this is where change happens.
"Oh, yeah, I would love to help, but I have no idea what to do." You know what? We did the work. We have that list on the Secular Houston website, and actually the Secular Texas PAC website has it as well. I think it's under activism, what you can do. But start there and pick one thing that you vibe with.
And if you don't know what candidate to help, Secular Houston has a list. Center for Freethought Equality has an amazing list, and they do it state by state. So if you wanna stick with which state you live in, CFE, Center for Freethought Equality.
SHAY:
We got you. Thanks for the shout-out. Appreciate that. Where do you wanna see humanism go?
WIL:
I want people to know what humanism is. I wanna be as visible as possible with my humanism, with my secularism, so that I don't have to explain anymore what that means. That's my long-term goal. If there's a humanist candidate running for office, if your kid's teacher's a humanist, you don't have to look it up. That is what I want.
SHAY:
Love that. Thank you for all the work that you do to help us get there, 'cause it is possible, and you're a huge part of that. And I can't thank you enough for taking time yet again. You have to watch The Pitt, though.
WIL:
Yeah, I don't have a ton of time for TV anymore, so...
SHAY:
I know. Hey, can you take time away from your super important work that you're doing changing the world, and watch this awesome show?
WIL:
"Hey, State Senator, I can't talk to you..."
SHAY:
It might be a good talking point. "Hey, I just caught up on episode three." But just throwing that out there.
FISH:
I'm Fish Stark, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association.
AMITAI:
And I'm Amitai Heller, Legal Director of the AHA's Legal Center.
FISH:
Right now, religious freedoms are under attack, and that includes the ability to not believe. And when those rights are violated, we're here to fight for you. Your boss says the only way to get promoted is by joining his Bible study group? Well, we'll walk into his office with a 10-foot Constitution and slam it down on his desk.
AMITAI:
We don't actually have a giant Constitution, but yeah, that is probably a violation of your rights.
FISH:
Or your kid's coach says, "No pray, no play." We will show up in matching tracksuits, and we will coach the team ourselves.
AMITAI:
We don't do that. What we do is we defend the rights of students in court.
FISH:
And if a judge tells you to read the Bible as part of your sentence, we will storm into that courtroom with a choir singing We Will Rock You.
AMITAI:
Still no choir, but yeah, that's probably unconstitutional, and that is exactly why we're here.
FISH:
Call 1-800-BIG-BANG-LEGAL right now, because we are the Big Bang. That's 1-800-NO-GODS-NO-PROBLEM, and we will make your boss have to sell his boat. So call 1-800-ATHEIST-AVENGERS-ASSEMBLE right now, and we will...
AMITAI:
None of those are real numbers. Please just go to americanhumanist.org/legal and submit your case. We're here to protect your rights.
Welcome to How to Humanist. It is Shay Leonia, your host on behalf of the American Humanist Association. If you're listening to this today, the day that this episode comes out, then it is Monday, November 2nd, which means that tomorrow are the midterm elections, and we need you all out to vote. If you have not voted already, please get to your local polling place.
If you need more information on who your candidates are, where to vote, how to vote, all of those different things, please visit vote411.org/make-your-plan. It is such an incredible and thorough resource available to you, but you can also start conversations with your neighbors, with your friends, family members.
See if there's an obstacle in their way keeping them from being able to vote if they want to. If they need a ride to their polling place. If they need somebody to watch their kids for an hour. Whatever it is that you're able to assist with, go out and do it. It is the humanist way.
So I'm really, really happy that we're joined by today's guest, Wil Jeudy, who is a great friend to the American Humanist Association, and also our (c)(4), the Center for Freethought Equality.
Let me tell you a bit about Wil. He's an urgent care physician by day, a multi-hat secular political activist the rest of the time, state director for American Atheists, Board of Advisors for the Center for Freethought Equality, board member of Secular Coalition for America, and founder of Secular Houston and Secular Texas PAC.
We have such a fascinating conversation coming up for you, not only about voting, but also about the intersection of how voting impacts our healthcare system. This conversation was so valuable to me, and I really hope it is for you too. And without further ado, please enjoy this talk with Wil Jeudy.
WIL:
I started with being the assistant state director for American Atheists, where I collected that hat back in 2019, was on the board of my local humanist group, Houston Oasis, 'cause I live in Houston, Texas.
So since then, kinda fast-forward some years, I formed a group called Secular Houston, where we endorse candidates based on church-state separation at the local level and at the state level. And then learned about this guy named Ron Millar, who, I want to be Ron when I grow up.
SHAY:
Who doesn't?
WIL:
I love the guy. Leader of the Center for Freethought Equality...
[SHAY interjects: All right, let me tell you a little bit about Ron Millar and his spectacularness. He is the PAC manager for the Center for Freethought Equality, which is the advocacy and political arm of the American Humanist Association. The Center for Freethought Equality's affiliated political action committee, which is what PAC stands for, is working to achieve equality for the atheist and humanist community by increasing the number of humanists and atheists and allies in public office at all levels of government.]
WIL:
...which is what I'm trying to be, a more local Texas version of CFE, which is Center for Freethought Equality, and they endorse candidates based on church-state separation on the national and state level.
So yeah, I finagled my way onto their board of advisors, so I'm involved with them as well. Formed a state PAC here in Texas called Secular Texas PAC to expand my vision for what we're doing in Houston to the statewide level. So I kinda wanna help form a Secular Austin, Secular Dallas-Fort Worth, and then they have their own endorsement lists. And with the PAC, we can hopefully have some money behind those endorsements to make it happen.
SHAY:
For anyone who's hearing the word PAC and just shivers going down their spine and being like, "F that." Thank you. Can you go into a little bit more depth about why this is a PAC that we would want?
WIL:
I love it. I love that question, 'cause when I explain the PAC on the social media stuff I do have time to do, I make it a point to say, "We're not a corporate PAC, we're not a super PAC, we're a state PAC. And this is our PAC. This is our money."
So the money that we get from donations from individuals, really, we use to help our candidates on our endorsement list get elected. And so far it's just Secular Houston. And Secular Houston's non-partisan. But yeah, PAC stands for political action committee.
And yeah, it's gross. Growing up, I hated money and politics, and I still do. I still hate that concept. It messes everything up. But that's the way the game is played as it is. And yes, our endorsement list is great. Yay, we're helping people get elected, but to put money behind it, it gives us more weight in this playing field.
And the way I describe it is that the other side, being Christian nationalists, they have enough money. They're sitting on piles of money. They have enough to fund a Death Star, but all we're asking for is enough to fund a X-wing fighter. And you know how that story goes, to go back to lore. Eh.
SHAY:
Do you know what's so f... I literally, I gotta show you this. Today, a TaskRabbit person came in, I don't know if you can see it, and they installed the IKEA Death Star pendant lamp for me.
WIL:
That looks like a...
SHAY:
It's so cool.
WIL:
It looks like a moon.
SHAY:
It does, but anyway, you said Death Star, and we were totally talking about something way more sophisticated.
WIL:
No, I love it.
SHAY:
And then I saw the squirrel in my house. So okay, so money to you was always gross in politics, but it is what it is today. What is the money used for?
WIL:
So it's made for donations. We donate to our candidates that are on our endorsement list. And I would love to say we donate these huge bags of sums.
So these are all people that we vetted. We send questionnaires out to everyone running. And the ones that return our questionnaire, if they align with our values, church-state separation as well as other progressive issues, then they're on our endorsement list, and we'll tell anyone that will listen, "Hey, we did the work. These people are worth our energy. They're worth our time. They're worth your and our money."
Because money's needed to run for office. I'm not gonna run for office, but I see what it takes to run for office, and money is a big part of it. So we contribute to the candidates on our endorsement list.
We'll do stuff like we'll have postcard parties, so you need postcard stamps. Those things are expensive, man. But yeah, we'll pay for the stamps to get these postcards out. So it's things like that.
And Secular Texas PAC has a board. There's five of us, great people. There's no salary. We're not making money from this, so everything that comes in goes out. Things like paying for meetup fees, that kind of thing, to make things run, to make things happen.
SHAY:
Okay, yeah, 'cause it was always so abstract to me. Okay, these people are asking for donations. Of course, Bernie Sanders probably being one of the most famous ones that everyone knows of, is, "We just need another $27." And I think for a lot of people, they haven't known, besides your daily living expenses, where this money needs to go to and why is so much money needed in politics.
WIL:
Again, in my younger years, I voted every two years, but I never really got into the depth of local politics and how important it is for my life or for everyone's life. So I never understood quite the humanism that could be had from local politics.
SHAY:
Yeah. I think my biggest wake-up call for that was learning that your local coroners are elected.
[SHAY interjects: Okay, stick with me here for a second, because this is one of the most baffling things that I've ever learned in my entire life. Coroner comes from medieval England, where in the 1100s they were established to protect the king's financial interests for death taxes. They were known as the crowner's representative.
Now, I always thought that a coroner and a medical examiner were interchangeable. Nope, totally wrong. A coroner is practically a member of the public a lot of the time, and a medical examiner is somebody who's actually gone to school for this, who actually knows the scientific data, who knows forensic data and how to interpret it, all of that kind of stuff.
I'm on the Texas Autopsy Services page right now, so that's where they lean into. Let me find... There was a statistic about how often we see autopsies.
Okay, so the fallout from the expertise of medical examiner versus coroner, they're saying on their website, extends far beyond one family's search for answers. While the idea behind having elected coroners in twenty US states covering nearly thirteen hundred counties is to ensure local accountability, it creates a dangerous inconsistency in how deaths are investigated.
Consider this: twenty twenty-one data from the US Department of Justice shows that offices run by elected coroners perform a full autopsy in only twenty percent of their cases. In medical examiner systems, that figure jumps to forty-five percent.
When autopsies aren't performed, we're essentially flying blind. Public health crises go unseen. National statistics become unreliable, because every death certificate feeds into our national health data. So if the cause of death is wrong, the entire data set is flawed. Justice isn't served. Homicides can be mislabeled as accidents, and natural deaths can be wrongly flagged as suspicious, triggering costly and needless criminal investigations.
Okay. In a 2022 article in The Economist, they described America's coroners as too often a public health liability. The article cited this example: "Coroners reliant on voters who are skeptical about COVID have not been as scrupulous as their medical examiner peers. One coroner in Missouri candidly told the press that he strikes COVID-19 from the death certificates at the request of the family of the deceased."
So clearly, obviously there's an issue here with needing to raise the minimum standards for anybody that's running as a coroner. That would be a good first step. But the fact that this can be so biased is just so gross.]
WIL:
That's right. This speaks to the importance of elections, whether it's coroners or judges or state representatives. They have the power to affect the cause of death. They have the power to affect LGBTQ rights at all levels. Healthcare. I could go on and on.
But elections matter, and that's, I'm in Texas, so apathy's a huge problem. And you talk to people over here, and as in a lot of the country, and you'll hear things like, "Oh, it doesn't matter who I vote for. Both sides are bad." Yeah, that's the headwind that I'm fighting against here at the local level, on the ground. It's all good.
SHAY:
What are you telling those people? Because I've been running into them a lot lately too, and I don't know what to say to them.
WIL:
I'm not quite the expert on what to tell people like that. You just have to be patient. You work with what you have. I'm finding a lot of success in other avenues, so I'm focusing on that. But when I do have conversations with them, I'm not... I'll let them talk. I'll say, "Why do you say that?" Use the Socratic method...
[SHAY interjects: This is so cool. Okay, the Socratic method. It's like when somebody is asking you questions, and it kind of feels a little bit like a debate, but it's not a debate. It's almost like leading with curiosity, but they're asking you probing questions so that you can use and engage your critical thinking in order to arrive at a conclusion that, I guess, they wanted you to arrive at.
But I was looking up some info on this, and in Plato's dialogue, Thea... How do you say that? Theaetetus? Socrates describes his method as a form of midwifery, because it is employed to help his interlocular, whoa, his interlocutors develop their understanding and lead it out of them in a way that is analogous to a child developing in a womb until it's ready for birth. That's so savage.]
WIL:
...plus active listening. I'm not gonna have a awesome nugget of advice to tell anyone, but you just listen, and you let them know, "Okay, I think differently. I really think things can change." And that's it. Walk away. You're not gonna change their mind. That's the only advice I have.
The other piece of advice is save your energy, save your efforts for things that you can have some success in. Listen, if you're super charismatic and you can talk to people and change people's minds, yeah, maybe develop the skill to get out there and do something like that. But me, particularly, I don't quite have that skill.
SHAY:
I was literally just thinking about this earlier. I was like, why can I not be one of those people that is just equipped for somebody to say something that innately I know is wrong, or that I just disagree with on my values, and I just have nothing to back it up with.
I'm never good on my feet that way, and so I'm so relieved to hear you say that, 'cause it's like I'm meeting somebody else that deals with that struggle also. I'm just like, "Okay, that sounds nice," and I just walk away.
WIL:
Yeah, keep it short, keep it sweet, and planting a seed.
SHAY:
Yeah.
WIL:
Yeah. Play the long game.
SHAY:
Yeah. So earlier you were saying that you're the person that does the work. What, aside from the political side, is considered the work of humanism?
WIL:
The work is forming communities or keeping communities going. That was my first introduction into humanism, secularism here in Houston, was Houston Oasis, and I quickly learned and met other people, other leaders of groups here, Houston Atheists, Humanists of Houston back then, which no longer exists.
But it takes a lot of work to keep communities going, and to form a board, to keep the board going, to have speakers if applicable, have meetups. So a lot of work needs to be done, and it's usually done by a few people. And yeah, much respect for those people doing the work.
Not only the ones I've met, but the people I haven't met. I know they're out there, and I have a special place in my cold, dark, atheist heart for the people that are behind the scenes doing the work.
[SHAY interjects: If you are interested in being one of those people behind the scenes, starting up a humanist group, feel free to check out episode 28 of this podcast. We brought on Elizabeth Hegwood, who is a humanist community launcher extraordinaire, and we also have Jake Via, our organizing director, who would be the person that would be right by your side helping hand-hold you through the process. And yeah, we have a ton of resources for you if you do wanna start a group.]
SHAY:
Oh, gosh, that's amazing. All right. Speaking of, so you are a doctor, and you're doing all of this work outside of being a doctor. What kind of doctor are you?
WIL:
Yeah, it's my day job. I am a trained family medicine doctor, but I've been doing urgent care full-time since 2014.
SHAY:
Oh.
WIL:
And within the urgent care, I also wear a lot of hats. I think that's a theme of mine. So I do medical research, urgent care shifts here and there, a lot of variety in my day job as well.
And urgent care fits in that space between emergency room and family doctor medicine. So weekends, offices are closed, or you have a cut, maybe you might have broken a bone, that's what urgent care is for. That's what we do.
And sometimes people don't know, is this urgent care? Is this ER? If you're having a heart attack or stroke, if a bone's sticking out of your arm, that's ER. Bullets go right to the ER. But we stay busy. We take care of a lot of stuff.
SHAY:
I love my urgent care people. My nurse practitioners and the doctors have been so helpful throughout the years, especially in the years that I didn't have health insurance. Oh my goodness. And now I do direct primary care, which I am such a huge fan of and try to shout from the rooftops about.
[SHAY interjects: Okay, don't laugh. I learned about direct primary care from TikTok. So now, if you're not hip to the game, let me tell you, direct primary care is when you can see your doctor without having to go through insurance. All you do is pay a monthly subscription. You do not, I repeat, you do not need to have insurance.
So when I didn't have health insurance, before I started working at AHA, I found my doctor. And the thing about direct primary care is that not only are you not going through insurance, but you are getting incomparable access to your doctor.
Whereas through insurance, we're all used to sitting in the waiting room for what feels like hours on end, having maybe five minutes with the doctor, and then they're onto the next, and you don't really get to establish that level of care that helps you feel seen and heard.
My first appointment was an hour. Every appointment since then has been a half hour. I can schedule an appointment whenever I want. If I have a little tickle in my throat, I am scheduling an appointment, and it all costs the same, because it's all covered under that small monthly subscription. Yeah, I don't think I'll ever go back. I love direct primary care.]
SHAY:
What are some of the things in the medical field that you're facing that are directly tied to who is sitting in office?
WIL:
Yeah, access to health insurance is a huge thing. It's always been a big deal. But as people are thrown off of health plans, or it becomes affordable, so de facto they're kicked off, because of decisions that are made at the state legislative level, also federal. Yeah, a lot of people are losing their insurance.
So when they come in, instead of taking care of a cough that they could have taken care of or should have taken care of in two to five days, they delay it. They don't wanna go in to an urgent care or ER. Instead of a mild infection, now it's more severe when they actually do come in.
So it can impact people in many ways. But yeah, those decisions are made in the state capital, and it does filter down. Health insurance is a big one, and access to childcare. It's all connected.
The biggest thing that drives my progressive activism really is minimum wage hasn't gone up for, what, 20 years? I just been so many years. And that affects healthcare. That affects the medicines you can get. It affects the food you can buy. All this stuff is connected. If minimum wage goes up, cost of living is normalized, the health data will improve. I absolutely guarantee it.
SHAY:
Yeah. It's so intersectional, because I think of a single mom, for instance, that is working two, three jobs. Catching a cold, she's probably gonna think that she could just live with that and pop some Tylenol and get on with her day. And if she's got kids, can't afford to get a sitter or figure out other accommodations for the children, wow. Yeah, that's all gonna definitely lead to that.
WIL:
Yeah, that's why we do what we can do. That's why we try. I like to be efficient. I love efficiency, as a physician, as an activist. So in that vein, when you elect better people to office, they make those decisions that will affect not only healthcare, but climate, and the list goes on and on. So I find it a really good efficient use of energy, the political activism.
In the medical world, I remember as a young doctor, I saw a lot of type 2 diabetes patients, so not specialized per se, but I just wanted to know more about diabetes. So as I learned about diabetes, diet is a huge part of treating diabetes. But as I learned more about healthy diet, weight loss became a thing.
So then as I looked, I said, "Whoa, if people lose weight, the diabetes gets better, but so does depression, so does arthritis, so does cholesterol," so many other things. I said, "You know what? Medical bariatric medicine," back then it was called. That got my attention, so I thought, "Okay, let me focus some energy into that." And I still think it's a very efficient use of energy. You help people lose weight, and so many things get better.
SHAY:
That's what Chris Line and I were talking about when he was on the podcast.
WIL:
Yep. I heard that one.
A lot of studies, a lot of information. Bariatrics, or weight loss medicine, is very complex, and it's changed a lot over the years. The new GLP-1 medications have been crazy amazing, awesome so far.
SHAY:
For anyone who didn't hear Chris' episode, and also just helpful to hear from you because you're a professional in this space, what is your take on GLP-1s? Because they are still very demonized at this moment.
WIL:
I guess the argument is, "We don't know what the long-term effects are." Sure, and we do not take that lightly, we being science, medicine, doctors. But GLP-1s have been around in some form or another for at least a couple decades. It was a diabetes medicine back then, and it's just gained a lot of popularity for all the other things that they've done.
So far I give it a thumbs up. It's changing lives out there. And again, nothing is without risks, but obesity is a major problem, not only in America, but in the world.
SHAY:
So you cited one of the objections that I've heard so many times, not just for GLP-1s, about we don't know the long-term effects of it. People have also said that about vaccines for forever. But now we're seeing these new cases of measles coming out, and I'm in Philly, we're seeing infants with measles, and this is scary shit.
[SHAY interjects: Oh, you think I'm kidding? I recorded this episode with Wil at the top of October, I think. It is now November 1st when I am editing this episode for you, and I just want you to hear this. Pennsylvania has now confirmed 1,426 measles cases across 44 counties. It is a historic multi-county outbreak. What the fuck?]
SHAY:
I re-watched Law & Order: SVU from season one recently, and I saw so many episodes where they were talking to parents that were misinformed and using the case of, "Yeah, I don't want my kid to be vaccinated," but then putting everybody else at risk. What is the humanist approach to vaccines?
WIL:
Yeah, absolutely. It's the same that it was during COVID, before the COVID vaccines came out. Vaccines not only help the person getting the vaccine, but it helps your fellow human, the people around you. And that's as humanistic as you can get.
And the data on vaccines is solid. Before vaccines became a thing, cemeteries were filled with small coffins, small little crosses from kids dying. As soon as vaccines became a thing, that child death plummeted. This was back at the turn of the century or so.
So the data is there. Again, there's always pros and cons in medicine, always. We take that very seriously. But the pros are... It is so effective. I think it's one of the best things medicine has ever done. It has to be in the top three, is vaccines.
So I think people just forget. They forget about all those little crosses in cemeteries. They forget how it was before vaccines became a thing. So fast-forward to now, the vaccine hesitancy, the anti-vaxxers. I don't know that group well enough to know what drives it, but I think if you ask them, they think they're doing the right thing.
Is it going against experts in the field? There's a certain term for that. Is it they're just deluded? Is it they don't know any better? I don't know. I don't know. But the numbers of people that are rejecting vaccines have been going up and up. And as predicted, the number of measles cases has gone up.
I think it's the most it's been since the early '90s. If you look at a graph, just look at a graph. And sure, sometimes it's not that simple with medicine. Oh, other factors. I think people have tried to blame it on immigration, and that's been debunked.
SHAY:
Seriously?
WIL:
They will say, "It's the browns, it's the browns bringing the measles in." They try. They try to deflect.
SHAY:
See, my first thought, my first theory, is, oh, this current administration is making it so acceptable to be this overtly religious and just non-critical thinking that of course it's gonna give people the carte blanche to think that they know better than doctors and the data. But of c... I didn't even think about... Yeah. Okay. Yeah, they're blaming immigrants again, of course.
WIL:
Of course.
SHAY:
Of course.
WIL:
But we saw that with COVID. They were mad. The government was telling churches to close down. They got very mad. How dare you get in the way of me and God?
I get a little PTSD from the COVID times, 'cause I was in the thick of it.
SHAY:
Oh, that's right.
WIL:
And people got to see how the sausage was made, how medicine... We didn't know what it was, but we learned. Every month, we learned more and more. But it caused a lot of doubt in people's minds, 'cause they saw medicine not knowing, or I think they're used to medicine having all the answers. Did that feed into the vaccine hesitancy that we see now? Probably. It probably did.
SHAY:
But is that, for you, for what I can only imagine... I'm a huge fan of The Pitt. Have you seen The Pitt?
WIL:
I have not.
SHAY:
You haven't seen The Pitt?
WIL:
No. I used to watch ER back in the day. I'm kinda old.
SHAY:
I love ER. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. Yes. All right. We can relate on ER.
But yeah, so what's cool about The Pitt is that they portray, trigger warning for you, but they portray what this particular emergency room went through during COVID. They do little flashbacks. And so that's my only frame of reference to be able to imagine what you might have gone through. Does it ever feel like a big fuck you to anybody that's anti-vax, to know what you had to endure during that time, and all of the loss?
WIL:
Absolutely. I think, no, I know that was the first time I ever thought there should be two Americas, and I don't like admitting this.
But it was, yeah, watching those people burn the masks, and "Fuck you, Biden, you don't tell me what to do." This was before the vaccines. And I was solidly a humanist atheist by this point. It was weird, because that's what it... Maybe it was cumulative, but that's what it took for me to say, "There should be two Americas, those people and everyone else, or sane people, humanists."
It was a very strange thing to think, but it was a very stressful time. I'll never say "fuck you" when I have my day job hat on. But seeing what I was seeing on my side of that whole story, yeah, some anger does well up thinking back to those days. I guess seeing it carry over into these days.
COVID is not as bad as it was back then because of the vaccines, because of an understanding of what the virus was and is. But yeah, the whole fuck you, it's a reaction to the fuck you I was hearing, just shitting all over humanist values and taking care of your fellow human by wearing a mask, by staying indoors, not going to church, that kind of thing.
SHAY:
So when the vaccine came out for COVID, we heard so many people being like, "Oh no, we need more time. How could they possibly know that this is gonna work? It's a cash grab. Johnson and John..." All that kind of stuff. What are you able to say to that now, in retrospect?
I was being open ears. I've never been anti-vax, but I definitely was hearing people's concerns about, "No, this came out too quickly." And I was like, "That's something I should probably look up some information on."
WIL:
Yep. It is a valid concern. I had that concern myself. A bunch of us are skeptics in our world.
SHAY:
Yeah.
WIL:
Including me. So yeah, I actually looked into it. I asked people in that field, and the amount of data that went into the COVID vaccines was the same as other vaccines. So it was on a tighter timeframe, but the amount of data, the quality of the data, was equivalent to any other vaccine before it. So that calmed my mind.
And I actually, personally, I, Wil, was in a study as a participant.
SHAY:
Oh.
WIL:
Yeah, so I was in the, I think, the Pfizer study as a participant. So I kinda helped that data come about. So I had a different perspective from all that. But yeah, when the vaccines came out, I was confident, and I was comfortable giving them and recommending that people get them.
SHAY:
Now, people were claiming that one vaccine was gonna be different than the other if you got the Pfizer one, if you got the Johnson & Johnson. But for those types of people that were claiming, "Oh no, it's a corporate cash grab," we are in the US, we do see how our healthcare system runs as opposed to the rest of the world. Is there any legitimacy, I guess, to their concerns there?
WIL:
The short answer is yes. We do live in the USA. Pharmaceutical companies are in the middle of medicine, which I've always hated. And it really gets in the way. But the system held.
Vaccines came out, and there was a difference between the vaccines, but at that time, they were all good enough to save lives and worth the potential side effects, which, again, were the same if not better than vaccines previously. And then, yeah, looking back in retrospect, it was great. It allowed us to get back to normal. It was the vaccines that did that.
SHAY:
It still feels like such a separate time. I feel so disconnected from that era happening, and I'm sure everyone does. But I can't imagine how much more magnified it is for you, having been on the front lines of it.
WIL:
Yeah, it was scary. I remember making my will, taking shoes off, clothes off before entering the house.
SHAY:
Oh.
WIL:
Yeah, it was crazy times.
SHAY:
So for people that have just lived their whole lives just being like, "These vaccines are ridiculous, they're gonna give you other illnesses," and the Jenny McCarthys of it all, what can we say to them today? I know that you and I already established that we're not the ones to come to, to try to change your mind on things, but if there are people that are listening like, "Okay, I will consider what Dr. Jeudy says..."
WIL:
It starts with that. It starts with your relationship with your health provider, and a lot of people don't have health providers anymore, so I think that's part of it. Bucking experts is getting more popular. So, what does Dr. Fauci know? I know more than him. But then there's a layer of, "I don't trust the system, money grabbing, and they're just trying to make money."
So there's so many layers. It's frustrating from my standpoint because, again, I know people, I know the science, I trust what science has done for humanity for 100 years plus. And I get it, I get the money part, I get the hesitancy. Focusing on the bad and not the good. I get it.
But I think at the end of the day, you have to trust who is in charge of your health. And I think for more and more people, there's no one there, or the internet's there. ChatGPT is there. And it can be a dangerous thing.
SHAY:
What you said is very easy to consider for some, I would imagine, saying you've got to trust your healthcare provider, if one exists in your life. But then there's also the very real history of the groups that have been screwed over by healthcare providers.
WIL:
That's right.
SHAY:
I mean, the Black community has a very valid mistrust of the healthcare community. Can you speak to that, and how someone today who might very well need the care is still hesitant on going to get checked out?
WIL:
Yeah, absolutely. The stories are horrific as to what medicine has done to the Black community in the past. And it extends past medicine, but we're focusing on the medical part.
[SHAY interjects: For any of you that are already in the know, you know that this is a very valid concern from the Black community. So just gonna name a few things that have happened over the course of history to the Black community from the medical healthcare system: surgical experiments on enslaved women, the Tuskegee syphilis study, the theft of HeLa cells, coercive and forced sterilizations, and institutional exclusion.
Now, this is not only just a lasting impact of trauma on the community, but today we are still facing incredible disparities in Black maternal health. Black women who give birth are three to four times more likely to face mortality.]
WIL:
So many people have tried to improve access for Black and Brown people in the medical world, and to date, it's still happening. So the distrust is always gonna be there. It's gonna take so long to get past it.
But the people, the organizations that are trying to help, again, they need more help. They need more money. They need more energy to continue what they're doing. Again, so many people behind the scenes are trying to make that happen. And those are my people. Those are people my heart goes out to.
There's no magic bullet. There's nothing I can say that's gonna make it all better. "Oh, yeah, just trust people that look like me." It's not that simple. It goes deeper than that.
SHAY:
But is a part, or a small fraction of the solution, to have more Black healthcare providers? I would imagine that that...
WIL:
100%. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. I can't think of the number, I can't see the numbers right now as far as how many Black and brown providers have graduated, or is there a trend up? When I was in medical school, there was a trend up. And yeah, I'm very proud to be a part of that.
[SHAY interjects: Okay, so while it is trending upward, it's important to note that, following the legal and policy changes like the 2023 Supreme Court ruling to end race-conscious admissions, medical school matriculation data showed a drop in Black student enrollment, according to kff.org. There's also a stagnation for Black men.
While the number of Black women in medicine has increased, the proportion of U.S. physicians who are Black men has remained essentially flat since 1940. That's according to UCLA Newsroom. So yeah, still a big issue here.]
SHAY:
I would have loved to have had Mekhi Phifer be my doctor, for any ER fans out there. Oh my gosh, his character arc was so good. Ah. Oh my gosh. Now I'm gonna have to re-watch it all over again. I went from hating his character to absolutely adoring him. It was awesome.
Okay, so I'm gonna throw something out there. Feel free to pass on it, because I could end up editing it out. There's a large part of me that is concerned that what the Black community endured, with testing in particular, is also happening currently for detainees from ICE. I know that there's no claims to back that up necessarily. I haven't actually even done any research, but there's a part of my gut that is very worried that's happening all over again.
WIL:
What's happening is cruelty. All the Black and brown people in custody, they just throw them in a hole. So what they are doing to them in that hole, I don't know if anyone knows, or the people that do know will not tell.
I don't know. I don't know. I would hate to learn that anything like that is happening now, but I can't just say, "Oh yeah, we're better than that. No, that kind of stuff doesn't happen anymore." It pains me to think that things like that are happening, above and beyond the cruelty that we know is being perpetrated right now.
SHAY:
At the very least, we do know that there is proof that they are not getting sufficient nutrition, sufficient outside time. They're not being treated in a humane way, which is incredibly unnerving. And that's why it circles back to the work that you're doing to get endorsements for these politicians that you're working with and that you're backing with the PAC. So thank you for doing that work, 'cause oh my gosh.
WIL:
Yeah. It's tiring. It's exhausting, but it's fun. It really feels good to do something about this shit. And accountability will never happen until we elect better people. And will there ever be full accountability? Probably not, but I want as much as I can get, and that involves electing the right people to make those decisions.
SHAY:
I remember there was someone who said that, yes, you cannot agree with this person 100%. Absolutely your right to not agree with every single thing that they feel on their policies. But there does come a choice where you think, "Okay, would I rather argue with this person, or would I rather argue with that person? Which one is gonna be more effective?"
WIL:
Yeah. I use the term we have to stop the bleeding, 'cause that's my day job, but it's also in the political realm. We're bleeding, and we have to stop the bleeding, and then we figure out the next step after that.
SHAY:
Do you have a T-shirt that says that? 'Cause I really would love one.
WIL:
I can have some cool graphics with that too. I don't have a T-shirt that says stop the bleeding.
SHAY:
You really could.
WIL:
Yeah.
SHAY:
All right. We gotta work on something. Yeah. Let's do this thing. You heard it here first, everyone. No, that would be super cool. Let's do that. Anything more that you would like for people to know about this work that you're doing and how they can get involved?
WIL:
So Secular Houston, we're on all the social medias. Our website has a list. We've compiled a list of things that anyone can do, and this is Houston centered, but it's applicable nationwide. So it goes from easy to hard. My philosophy is voting is basic, and I got that from Andrew Seidel. That's the least you can do. But I'm asking people to do something extra.
Again, from reposting your favorite candidate's social media to running for office yourself, and there's a lot of stuff in between that you can do. And when you spend a little bit of energy to make all this shit better, now you're a blade of grass in a grassroots movement, and grassroots is where it's at. So one blade of grass isn't gonna change it, but this is where change happens.
"Oh, yeah, I would love to help, but I have no idea what to do." You know what? We did the work. We have that list on the Secular Houston website, and actually the Secular Texas PAC website has it as well. I think it's under activism, what you can do. But start there and pick one thing that you vibe with.
And if you don't know what candidate to help, Secular Houston has a list. Center for Freethought Equality has an amazing list, and they do it state by state. So if you wanna stick with which state you live in, CFE, Center for Freethought Equality.
SHAY:
We got you. Thanks for the shout-out. Appreciate that. Where do you wanna see humanism go?
WIL:
I want people to know what humanism is. I wanna be as visible as possible with my humanism, with my secularism, so that I don't have to explain anymore what that means. That's my long-term goal. If there's a humanist candidate running for office, if your kid's teacher's a humanist, you don't have to look it up. That is what I want.
SHAY:
Love that. Thank you for all the work that you do to help us get there, 'cause it is possible, and you're a huge part of that. And I can't thank you enough for taking time yet again. You have to watch The Pitt, though.
WIL:
Yeah, I don't have a ton of time for TV anymore, so...
SHAY:
I know. Hey, can you take time away from your super important work that you're doing changing the world, and watch this awesome show?
WIL:
"Hey, State Senator, I can't talk to you..."
SHAY:
It might be a good talking point. "Hey, I just caught up on episode three." But just throwing that out there.
FISH:
I'm Fish Stark, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association.
AMITAI:
And I'm Amitai Heller, Legal Director of the AHA's Legal Center.
FISH:
Right now, religious freedoms are under attack, and that includes the ability to not believe. And when those rights are violated, we're here to fight for you. Your boss says the only way to get promoted is by joining his Bible study group? Well, we'll walk into his office with a 10-foot Constitution and slam it down on his desk.
AMITAI:
We don't actually have a giant Constitution, but yeah, that is probably a violation of your rights.
FISH:
Or your kid's coach says, "No pray, no play." We will show up in matching tracksuits, and we will coach the team ourselves.
AMITAI:
We don't do that. What we do is we defend the rights of students in court.
FISH:
And if a judge tells you to read the Bible as part of your sentence, we will storm into that courtroom with a choir singing We Will Rock You.
AMITAI:
Still no choir, but yeah, that's probably unconstitutional, and that is exactly why we're here.
FISH:
Call 1-800-BIG-BANG-LEGAL right now, because we are the Big Bang. That's 1-800-NO-GODS-NO-PROBLEM, and we will make your boss have to sell his boat. So call 1-800-ATHEIST-AVENGERS-ASSEMBLE right now, and we will...
AMITAI:
None of those are real numbers. Please just go to americanhumanist.org/legal and submit your case. We're here to protect your rights.
