Sawbones: The Pitt

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I'm your co-host, Justin McElroy.

And I'm Sidney McElroy.

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So if you could do that right this second while you're thinking about it and before the show proper starts, we would sure appreciate it, right, Sid?

Absolutely.

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And if you're in a position to join this year, thank you.

We appreciate you.

Yes, it's really important, I think, now more than ever to support medical media in the world.

And that's why we're doing our part here to support the other medical media,

because I think the more media about medical, the better, Sydney, personally.

I mean, mean, I think so, but I would.

I'm a doctor.

This week for the Max Fun Drive, we wanted to have some Max.

It's been kind of men fun lately on cell phones, I feel like.

So we wanted to have, it's been a tough few months, right?

So let's

thought it might be good for the drive to just get a little bit more relaxed.

Well, I mean, so there's a lot of heaviness.

We're trying to have fun here.

We're celebrating.

Celebrating.

Our network and our shows and our creators and our listeners.

We're celebrating you too.

We're all celebrating an independent source of accurate information that we are so happy to be.

And it's like a party.

Here's something I know.

When you go to a party and people start talking about,

I don't know, their jobs or life or work.

I have found that if I start saying, yeah, let me tell you about.

some medical stuff that happened at my job today or like let me discuss the measles outbreak with you it's a bummer at a party it's important in other venues right it's vital and important but at a party people walk away from me so let's pretend Sydney here at the Max Fun Drive party

we're all having some nice polite conversation someone says well Sydney did you do anything normal this week what would you say I would say I watched the pit oh that's good that's a normal show everybody can watch that not just doctors it's a TV show it's not real it's dramatized ER

stuff.

It's not ER.

That's another.

Are you sure you're not a professional TV critic?

Because

I'm spellbound over here.

It's a show.

So I'm not, I won't bum you out talking about the pit because it's all pretend.

And you can watch it and you can engage with drama and experience catharsis.

And then it ends after about an hour-ish, and then you're back to your normal life.

Yes, we're going to be talking about the pit.

So I was very excited to watch the show the pit

a brief first can i if i may a brief history of sawbones and medical tv we've talked about almost like a lot of medical tv shows here on sawbones because we got our if you haven't been listening this is also kind of a callback to our our initial podcast the satellite dish it is where we talked about a lot of tv and medical tv and we've done many medical tv episodes on um sawbones i'm always interested to hear how pop culture is like i tried i tried to stand up for popular culture and narrative and the importance of narrative to Sydney, and she stands up for the rigors of accuracy.

I like that, well, the accuracy, but I also like to see, I think that watching these medical shows

gives me sort of

insight into how society and culture views what I do.

And now I'm not an ER doctor, so I know this is a specific subset of medicine.

But I think it's interesting to see the perception perception of healthcare providers throughout TV history because I think, and I'm going to talk about the pit, but just to kind of briefly illustrate my point, I think if we look back to like my favorite TV show of all time, MASH,

the doctors and nurses on MASH are portrayed as heroes.

And I mean, obviously, there's the military angle too, but like they are heroic humanitarian figures who are the last line of defense between

you and death.

Correct.

And

most of the time,

their actions are pretty much beyond reproach.

Now, I mean, there's, you know, there's moments, but most of the time, that's how they're portrayed.

And I think that you have a lot of...

Trauma is typically from human elements rather than, and how will it shake out, rather than was the doctor fallible?

Yes.

And I think that we entered, like we had some fun medical shows we've talked about on here before, like Scrubs, which was more about the foibles of medicine.

Doctors are humans.

Sometimes they're goofy.

Sometimes they're selfish.

Sometimes they're sarcastic.

Like whatever.

Not necessarily negative.

But then we talked about the show The Resident,

which very much,

not necessarily the titular resident character.

He was the one heroic, good

doctor.

But it very much portrayed not just the healthcare system, but specifically doctors as part of the corruption, part of the problem.

Not all the physicians on the show, but that and that was what really pushed me away from it is that I didn't feel that that was a fair representation of us either.

How surprising.

By now.

The system is bad.

There are good and bad people in bad systems.

There are good and bad people in good systems, by the way.

Are you ready to talk about the pit?

So I'm going to talk about the pit.

So wait, before you talk about the pit, because it's Max Fun Drive, could you tell me about the pit in a way where we have a little bit of fun?

So you know that I've been in

several rooms, not a lot, where I've had to pitch TV shows to people, right?

So I was thinking maybe as a way of explaining the pit to me, I could be like a a TV executive and you could pitch the pit to me like it's your idea that you just came up with, right?

So it's a cold room.

It's so stressful.

You walk in.

I'm the exec from HBO Max 2.

It's the second, we're bringing back HBO Max with a sequel, right?

Right.

And we haven't told Max about it yet.

So Max is going to be so mad when they hear HBO Max 2 is the new kid on the block.

And we're trying to get a slate of programming.

So that's our spiel where we're at with HBO Max 2.

Tell me about the pit because I saw this on my schedule today and I was so excited to have you come in to the office today.

Okay, can I have a whiteboard?

Yeah, put the whiteboard up.

Yeah, we've got, if you look at the markers right behind you, the whiteboard's eight feet long.

I don't really miss it.

I'm going to, okay.

First of all, can I ask you, do you remember the television show ER?

Yes.

Wildly popular groundbreaking television.

I've been in Hollywood for 30 years.

That's why they call me Paul Hollywood.

Okay, so I'm just going to write two letters up on the whiteboard.

You're writing E.

E.

E.

Okay, now you're writing it R.

That's a big R.

Yeah, ER.

Okay, now this is really good.

I'm going in front of ER.

Okay.

Like before that.

There's a word before it now.

Okay.

And here it is.

Now, do you see what I've written here?

I can't.

As big as the whiteboard is, I can't make it out.

Could you read it to me?

I wrote more.

What?

I wrote more.

More.

more

do you remember how er ended and everybody said no we loved that could we have more well

that's more er can i tell you something that pitch would work this is do you know the

i'm out you can tell the reference no i'm not gonna no tell the reference i was opening the door for you to tell the reference no

i was opening the door for that this was the reference jim can when jace cameron went in to pitch his sequel to alien he went in

I heard this on blank check.

He went into a big whiteboard and he wrote the word alien, right?

And then he wrote an S at the end of it.

And then he put two lines through it and turned it into a dollar sign and then walked out of the room.

It's the best pitch.

This was, I was, thank you.

This was my

sorry, sorry.

That was a gift.

That was a gift to you.

So I don't want to, I don't want to be reductive.

I think this is a really great show.

I have not finished the season, so I won't be spoiling all the arcs of the season.

It has some things about it that make it different than ER.

The formatting is different, but I think.

That is not what we were pitched.

Excuse me.

We're going to have to spoil it.

The vibe is ER.

The vibe is, and if you enjoyed ER, I think you would enjoy the show.

And then, of course,

the main character, Dr.

Robbie, is played by Noah Wiley, who is the

chief of this emergency room of the ER in the in the show.

And while he is not a grown-up Dr.

Carter, it is not hard if you are a big fan of ER to watch and think, so this is where Carter ended up.

It's not, I mean, it's not that, it's not a stretch.

Yeah, but it's like, I think, head cannon, right?

Like, yes, absolutely.

No, it's not part of the show.

That is not in, that is not the fiction of the show.

He is a different guy named Dr.

Robbie.

He's a totally different guy, but

you can imagine that if you want, if you're like me and you want to, you can.

So it is called the pit.

I thought they were calling the ER the pit.

Like, that's where they are.

They're practicing in like the pit.

I figure it's about Pittsburgh.

Well, yes, it is.

Okay.

I didn't, I didn't, I didn't figure that out till the first, I started the first episode and they were like, welcome to the pit.

And I was like, nobody calls their ER.

I mean, I don't want to say nobody.

Somebody might somewhere.

It is P-I-T-T.

No, but it's because they're at a Pittsburgh hospital that is, you know, colloquially known as the pit.

You went to the pit.

Is this a real hospital, Neo?

Well, honey, I don't know.

Well, allow me to look it up when you talk about the show.

I'll look at it into that stuff.

Yeah, I don't know if there's a lot of stuff.

It's a fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital.

There you go.

Good news for you, Sid.

It's already been reviewed, renewed for a second season.

Oh, thank goodness.

So, here, a couple of things that are special about it, just in the formatting of the show, I didn't realize it until I turned it on.

It's in real time.

So, like, episode number one starts at 7 a.m.

and it runs through 8 a.m.

It is the first literal hour of Dr.

Robbie's shift in the ER that day.

And it is the first, and it is an hour long.

I mean, like it is, it mimics what an hour in the ER feels like in an hour.

And I think that is such a cool idea.

Then obviously ER didn't do that, right?

An ER episode could span days, you know.

But to see the number of things, like that, that's always kind of, I think, been the draw of medical shows is to see the intensity, the moments when people have to do.

I think they do heroic things on the show.

I think, I mean, I know that sounds conceited because I am a physician, but I think working in healthcare, occasionally, people do just casually do heroic things and then go about their day, and it's no big deal.

And there are other professions where that's true, but this is the one I know.

And I think that in other shows, they show that, but because

I don't know, it's all, you have no sense of like, well, how did they save those lives over the course of a year or a day or whatever?

In this, they show you what an hour is like in a busy ER.

And that's a real, that's interesting.

There have been other shows that have tried to do the real-time thing.

Obviously, the most notable is 24, which was all, it was 24 hours of a day.

Each 44-minute episode of the show was an hour.

So you could imagine there's always 16 minutes of time on ER where it's like not much happened, right?

But

we skip, well, they were in the bathroom or something.

Actually, no, that's part of the action.

A lot of shows can't keep it up.

There's some that do like individual episodes.

I wanted to go for a list because I thought there might be some I was forgetting.

They mentioned a MASH episode here called Lifetime

that is

in real time.

I guess there was a Grace Anatomy episode that was the same way.

Movies to, what is the Nick of Time?

There's a Johnny Depp movie where he's trying to rescue his kidnapped daughter in a mall.

It's 90 minutes in the night.

But I always wonder with shows like that, does it feel...

Because you have to maintain, and they don't have commercial breaks on this show, right?

So it's like, you have to maintain a level of action that

does it feel artificial, I guess, that they're trying to do this in real time.

Is it realistic that things would be this like compact?

Does it feel like real?

So

I am again, I'm not an ER doctor, but I've spent a lot of time.

I've done a ton of hospital medicine in my career as leading an inpatient service.

And so I have spent a lot of time in busy ERs.

And obviously in residency, you spend a lot of time in a busy ER.

Not as busy as this ER.

We are not as big a city.

We would, on our worst days, I think we may reach what they demonstrate in the show, maybe.

But still, it's not typically that busy.

I would say that

it is pretty accurate.

They are cherry-picking a little.

I mean, obviously it's a TV show, so they're allowed to.

But if it were a real ER and you were really walking, like...

If you're following just one doctor through their shift in an ER, you would have a lot of stuff that probably wouldn't make very good television interspersed in the things that they demonstrate.

So, like, you would have these

very

gory traumas where you have to act very quickly and stop bleeding and be creative to, you know, save somebody's life and restart people's hearts.

And although we don't really do that very often, and all of that.

I always have to mention that, Sidney, we know you don't bring back people back to life that often.

I mean, I don't, again, this is why I shouldn't be at parties, but there's that stuff.

But then there's like a lot of ER visits that I'm sure we have all been the maybe the patient or know somebody who has like a visit that because you couldn't access health care in another way, you didn't know what else to do.

So you went to the ER.

So you went to the ER because you ran out of your blood pressure medication and you couldn't get a hold of your doctor or you don't have a doctor or your insurance ran out or you moved to a new place and you ended up going to an ER because you were scared what happens if my blood pressure gets high and I'm not really sick, but I don't know what to do.

There are a lot of things like that because our healthcare system is so broken that they don't show on the pit.

And I, I mean, I understand why.

I don't know.

I mean, that would be.

How do you make that near?

Like, how do you make that interesting or compelling?

It's boring.

And it also,

I think that it,

I mean, I think, and I, maybe they'll discuss it at some point.

Maybe that will be part of it.

This shouldn't have been an ER visit.

This is the kind of thing that we should.

And it's, but the problem is you don't want to blame the patient for that because the reason people come to the ER for stuff that isn't ER stuff is because they've got no other options.

Right.

Right.

Because we do have, because what is it you always say?

We do have single-payer health care and we just have the least efficient system.

Yeah, we have universal health care in this country because of Imtala.

We cannot turn you away from the ER, but it is the most expensive, least efficient, and

the least effective for your health.

Because the ER is, their job is to find the true emergencies and get them in the hospital to fix them.

and then triage out people who can go see another doctor the next day.

Their job is not to provide for your chronic care.

And so you're never really getting the chronic care that you need in an ER.

But anyway, back to the pit.

I don't want to, I promise I wouldn't be a bummer.

I do think it's fairly reflective of if you were to just condense the most dramatic things that are happening in a busy big city ER at any given time, you would get an episode of the pit, especially since they follow multiple doctors.

I think that makes it a little more fair.

If it was one doctor whose entire ER shift was just non-stop drama, that would be unrealistic.

How do they handle that in the show, Sid?

Because I feel like ER was

so defined by, well, I say ER, but really all these medical shows, right?

It's always about a team.

Like it's always about, except for House, which was obviously he had a team, but it was about house.

But it was about house, right?

How do they make it seem like he's not just like the...

How do they balance that?

Because I feel like we have moved away from like saintly hero doctor as a template.

You know what I mean?

So like, how do they make it seem like it's not just the Noah Wiley show?

Well, okay, it is a little, a little, it is, and not in a bad way.

So, we start with his shift.

I think that's a really powerful way to move into, and in all honesty, you know, that was the first episode of ER was, it was actually Mark Green's shift.

You were following his whole.

Now, it wasn't in real time, but that was the opening.

You wake up with him in the call room.

So, you're following Noah Wiley's shift.

And so, I do think that kind of immediately puts you in his perspective.

Sure.

And there's a through line.

So, there's all the other doctors, but it's important that we're following Dr.

Robbie on this day.

And you find this out immediately, so I don't really think this is a spoiler.

He is working on a day of the year that he traditionally takes off.

It is unusual that Dr.

Robbie would be working on this day because it is the anniversary of the death of his mentor and predecessor as chief of the ER,

who died of COVID during the height of the pandemic five years ago.

And so he's working a shift that is specifically very hard and traumatizing for him to be at.

And we don't know all that, like the details of that are slowly unveiled through the, you know, so far through what I've watched.

And I assume we'll, we'll find, there is some level on which you can tell he blames himself and we don't really know why.

But throughout the episodes, while we're slowly getting insight into each of these other doctors, we're getting a lot more insight into Dr.

Robbie.

I would say that, I mean, his segments, if you went minute to minute, I'm sure they're, I'm sure we get more screen time with him than anybody else.

And then the other thing is he has flashbacks.

He's standing in an ER room taking care of a patient in the present, and then he'll have a momentary flashback where he's in the same room and he's wearing his papper, the big.

the big space hood looking thing that everybody wore during COVID.

And he's surrounded by patients, you know, just packed in every room, three and four people all on ventilators, pictures of their loved ones taped to the machines.

The thing, the COVID thing.

I get choked up when I think about it too much.

I'm sorry.

But he's surrounded by COVID again, and nobody else quite gets that kind of insight.

So it is a little bit the Noah Wiley show,

but

they pull away from that very quickly.

It's kind of cool.

The way they do it is like you'll have one character who's who you've been following their narrative and then they stop to talk to somebody and another character just sort of enters the scene and the camera follows them to the next thing yeah it's a great technique and that's the way that they guide you to the next character story they are gonna do um i'm looking at this it looks like 15 hours for this first season so sydney do you think it's a missed opportunity that it's not like 35 hours so like shouldn't it fall an intern that you get to get to hour 30 and they're not even like making sense anymore like that like you can't even follow storylines like there's a whole episode where they're just trying to nap but no one will let them.

Well, can I say that would be, I think that would be a real great idea for a next season.

I mean, it just picks up immediately.

Like he's like, well, this has been one crazy day.

It's like, it's just getting started.

We've got another 15 hours to go, Robbie.

Well, I mean, I do think that that would, that might terrify.

This might become a horror movie if you had to watch, if you had to be in the mind of a resident who's been on call for 36 hours and has been awake that long.

And

I don't don't know if, I don't know how you would reflect the amount of caffeine that is generally coursing through your system and what that does to your brain at hour 36.

Sid, I want to talk more about the pit, but first I did want to remind everybody that it's max fund drive time.

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Sid,

the most interesting thing to me with medical shows, because you and I watch them together.

So I get to experience this in real time.

How do they handle jargon?

Where is jargon at?

Because I think jargon is so interesting with these shows because you have some where like, okay, Scrubs handles it by only using jargon when they want to communicate that a character is confused, right?

Or that they're being smart.

So if a character has an answer in Scrubs, it's jargon, right?

And sometimes you'll...

House will use jargon to show why he's smarter than the other people in the room.

They don't want the audience to guess what he's thinking.

So House can use medical terminology.

He uses jargon like that because he wants the audience to be lost, right?

So how does the pit handle that?

Because I think that when you bring jargon into it, you are adding realism, but you're also risking, I think, losing the audience to them not being able to follow the story.

I think that is why you see so many shows that are said in teaching hospitals.

Oh, interesting.

I think that's how you...

So if you, the way that the pit is structured, and this is similar to Gray's Anatomy, you have in the, in this show, you've got Noel Liley, who's the chief, he's the attending in the ER.

So he's done with all his training.

He runs the ER.

He's, he's just, he could just use jargon the whole show if it was just him, because he knows what he's talking about.

But underneath him, you now have senior residents, junior residents, so in various years of residency, interns, first, second, third, fourth years.

And you've also got medical students.

You have, and they introduce themselves.

I thought it was

I mean, I guess most people could figure it out.

They like introduce themselves and they're like, so-and-so, MS4, so-and-so, MS3.

I'm assuming most people know that means they're a med student in their third year and fourth year.

Media,

med student for med school, you know, that's what they're anyway.

So you have all levels of learners in the ER.

Oh, yeah.

And so that helps.

And then you also have doctors explaining things to patients.

And specifically, they actually have one character who gets criticized a lot.

Anyway, she gets criticized, Dr.

Mohan, she gets criticized a lot because she spends too much time with her patients.

And part of that is her explaining things to patients in ways they will understand.

So I think when you have characters like that, it also helps.

They have a social worker whose job is to explain things to characters in ways that the doctors didn't.

And then I really, I really think that's part of the draw of teaching medicine in these shows is that then there's a reason for two doctors to be standing at a bedside, like and make a decision, leave the room, and for one doctor to look at the other and say, Did you understand why we did that?

This, this, this, and this.

That's real.

That's all real.

We do that.

And with med students, especially like when you're in your third year, I don't know that they know all the terminology yet.

And they probably don't.

And so there are times where I might use some jargon and then I might quickly like define the jargon as soon as I say it.

Just to, so I don't put them on the spot.

And then also to reinforce what that, I mean, they're learning a new language and I want to reinforce this new language as they start to feel comfortable using it.

I feel like these, the, the glut of medical shows throughout TV have, or especially recently, do you think they've increased the like literacy of as these shows become more realistic?

Do you think that people are more literate, like medically literate when it comes to TV show?

Not like the actual system, but like they can handle a bit more as we get move forward, right?

It can be a little bit more realistic and jargon-y because we've been hearing a lot of this jargon for 30 years yes i i definitely think there are probably terms that i can use that the medical terminology or abbreviations that i could just toss out do you know what an mi is

myocardial infarction infarction myocardial infarction or colloquially

you want me to know the colloquial name for myocardial infarction I think a lot of people, when they hear MI, have learned that.

It would be so personally meaningful to me if you would take like a half second if you would just take a half second it would be so personally meaningful

it was impressive that you knew what mi stood for that was very impressive you know wayne if you're not careful you're gonna lose me i yes that was very impressive i just meant i do think that there are some terms that have seeped into The lexicon.

I mean, I think most people know immediately when we say EKG that we're worried about your heart.

And that, you know, I mean, so I do think that like some things have because of these medical shows.

I think that there's still a lot that you can learn from them about the system.

I mean, I would not say that these medical shows are a great place to learn about medicine.

Certainly, I will say a lot of it on this show is pretty accurate.

What they're demonstrating looks pretty much like things look and people survive things that they generally could survive.

And we see the consequences when it is something that we can't fix or save.

And I think they're really honest about that.

They tackle some things that I think they're not medical concepts, but I do think are important for people to talk about.

There's an elderly person who has advanced directives that say don't intubate him, but his adult children show up and are demanding that he be intubated.

And so we see that drama play out.

And that, I think, is like a real, I mean, I can tell you that happens.

It is not uncommon.

I've been the doctor in that situation many times in my career.

And it is, it is as heart-wrenching as it seems on the show every single time to try to figure out what is the right thing ethically, legally, medically.

How do I, and how do I make the people in the room feel okay with the decision that we're all about to make?

It is so difficult on the show and that echoes real life.

So I think there are moments like that that are instructive.

They also talk a lot.

And I think this is maybe what they wanted to do with this show.

In ER, they talk about like in the original ER, they talk about HMOs and they talk about like underfunding and medicine and shutting down ERs.

They talk about some of that stuff, but it's always sort of like secondary to the relationship drama and like the personal drama, you know.

And like, there's some like people are doing it and stuff like that.

Whoa, are you telling me that love can bloom even in the ER?

Even in the ER.

So, can I take a guess?

Is it?

I'm seeing Dr.

Cassie McKay, a a 42-year-old second-year resident.

That makes her a non-traditional

student.

Is that the love interest for Dr.

Robbie?

Not that they have indicated in any way.

It's your show, Sid.

You got to tell me, are you going to get these two together or not?

Honey, I'm trying to sell this to HBO Max 3.

By the way, HBO Max 2 got canceled.

I'm so sorry.

It's Max 3 now.

And I need love.

I need romance.

I need sex.

I got to sell.

Sex sells.

What do you got?

Honey, for all I know, he's married to somebody.

They don't talk.

I mean, they get a little bit into their personal lives at times, but like Dr.

McKay has an ankle bracelet.

And I don't know why.

That's wild.

That's a big swing.

Yeah.

And so like, I mean, like, an electronic monitoring, just in case that wasn't clear, I don't just mean she has a bracelet on her ankle.

No, no, no, like a.

Yeah.

And like, we don't know why.

So there's all kinds of things we don't say about these.

Man, if I was a, if I was a TV writer, can I just say, as somebody who's done, who has had to script things on the fly before a lot,

that's great.

What a great idea.

Do that in your D ⁇ D campaign, folks.

Put an ankle bracelet, put an ankle monitor on some character.

You don't have to know.

They may not know.

No.

But here in a few years, they'll be like, oh, yeah, this old thing, I'm wanted.

And then they wanted a felon.

So, I mean, I think they very much want to...

They're separating some of that personal life drama to really focus on the trauma that their career has inflicted upon these characters.

I mean, I really think that that's the point because we get a little insight into how medicine has impacted them and less into how whatever's going on in their personal lives.

So I don't think we're going to have that kind of like

that sort of thing.

The drama we're getting is, and I do think, man, I think this is going to mark every medical show.

We've talked about it on Dr.

Odyssey.

It's COVID is part of Dr.

Odyssey, if you can believe it.

I think these post-COVID medical shows, and when I say post-COVID, COVID isn't over, by the way.

I diagnosed cases of

the world in COVID.

I mean, is it accurate to say the pandemic is not, it's not, it's no longer an active pandemic?

Right, right.

We are moving into the, which we knew would happen scientifically.

We are slowly moving into the phase where it is becoming endemic in multiple countries, which will mean it will be hopefully less fatal overall.

But it is still a serious illness.

I've, I diagnosed cases of it this week.

There is an active outbreak ongoing in our community and in many communities right now.

COVID is still a thing.

But there was a time period.

There was a time period where it was, obviously, it was different.

It was a different thing.

It's still a thing.

It's just, it's changed as to how we think about it.

When I say post-COVID, I mean in the world where COVID exists.

In this space, I think we're going to see a return to healthcare providers being a little more the heroes.

I think there's more sympathy.

They treat these characters with a lot more care, with a lot a gentler lens.

I think that there's more understanding for what they're going through.

I think we see that in the show.

We see them stand in a room and deliver heart-wrenching news or

there's a kid who maybe is gonna do a school shooting and then he runs out of the ER and nobody knows where he went and then everybody has to go on with their day, knowing that that kid is out there, maybe gonna do something horrific.

And then they have to go on with their day because that's their job.

And so I think they do a really good job of humanizing doctors again and nurses, all healthcare professionals.

I think most people like nurses.

I think it's us doctors that need more humanizing because

I mean,

I mean, you know, I think to say that like nurses are angels and heroes is not like a revolutionary statement.

I think people have felt that way for a long time.

To say that doctors are heroes, I think it's controversial now.

A lot of people hate us.

A lot of people think we're part of the problem.

And some of us are.

I'm not saying we're all great.

But I don't think most of us are part of the problem.

But anyway, I think we're going to see that.

And I think we're going to see the trauma of living through and working through the pandemic, surviving the pandemic.

I think there's a lot of survivor guilt among the medical community because we lost some of our colleagues.

And I think we're going to see that playing out in these shows.

And I'm glad that we're talking about it because it's part of the, it's part of the great,

what did they call it?

The great, people are, it's quitting.

It's the great quitting is what I'm going to call it.

People are quitting medicine.

People are leaving the medical profession because they're traumatized.

They're worn out.

A lot of people don't like us very much.

And the system is so impossible to work in and do a good job anymore.

It feels hopeless.

And so I think that it's going to talk about that.

There's a lot.

The administrator comes down and is like, you're keeping people in the ER too long.

You need to move them through faster.

And they're like, well, we can't because there are no beds upstairs.

Well, the truth is there are beds upstairs, but they don't have nurses to staff them because the hospital doesn't want to pay nurses a living wage.

So they can't attract any nurses to staff these beds.

So they shut down whole units and then people sit in the ER for days and days.

This is all true.

This is all true about the system that you are interacting with.

And so I think that knowing that and absorbing that and then demanding something else is a really good thing that this medical drama could do.

Now, Sydney, before we wrap up here, I did want to say, and I know that Sawbones, we haven't talked about Nat Suite yet, and I know Sawbones can't be just about medical TV, but

shark attacks are a huge problem, and Dr.

Odyssey has the guts to turn that into a two-part event.

Honey, it's Shark Attack and then Shark Attack Part 2, Orca.

And I'm just saying, if you could consider that for next week, Dr.

Odyssey Shark Attack, a very important two-parter, which just like the pit, highlighting important issues, shark attacks in this case, and apparently orcas.

Honey, nothing would make me happier than to talk about Dr.

Odyssey next week.

Well, nothing would make me happier than if people supported our show in the Max Fund Drive.

MaximumFund.org forward slash join is the address.

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It may seem like something that somebody else is going to do, but I hope that like you realize that it is an individual thing.

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I'm going to support it and I can make a difference.

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And it's allowed us to do the show for a decade and to

put a lot of good stuff out.

And I really appreciate the opportunity to do that.

Yeah, thank you so much.

If you are a member already, thank you.

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Share the show, tell your friends.

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Thank you.

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donate, if you can upgrade a little bit or boost, you can, even just a couple more bucks a month would be so hugely helpful.

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Let people know that it's Max Fund Drive time.

I really appreciate it.

That's going to do it for us for this episode.

Oh, thanks to the taxpayers for the use of their sound medicines as the intro not programming.

Thanks to you for listening.

That's going to do it for us.

Until next time, my name is Justin McElroy.

I'm Sidney McLoy.

And as always, don't drill a hole in your head.

All right.

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