4 Extra Occasions When Docs Had been the Coolest Folks Ever
By Josh Katzowitz, WCI Content material DirectorFifty-six years in the past, a number of the coolest individuals ever born did one of many coolest issues anyone may presumably do. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, immediately changing into Cool Dude Corridor of Famers. To have a good time these non-MD astronauts and all of those that made it potential to take one big leap for mankind (and to let you already know a few trio of MDs who really ARE astronauts), let’s return to a column I wrote 10 months in the past once I shouted out 5 Occasions When Docs Had been the Coolest Folks Ever.
We all know that medical doctors oftentimes don’t current themselves as “cool.” They could say that they had been a nerd in highschool or that they weren’t a part of the favored children’ clique. However lately, so-called “nerds” are in fashion anyway.
As I wrote final September, we must always revel within the coolness of medical doctors. Regardless of how annoyingly sensible they had been when acing their AP lessons or how a lot D&D they performed or what number of swirlies they may have skilled in center college or what number of instances they got an atomic wedgie within the locker room or how usually they wore their New Youngsters on the Block gear when NKOTB had lengthy handed their expiration date, physicians are a number of the coolest individuals on the planet (and past).
And sure, I’ve (much more) proof.
Extra Examples of Docs Being Completely Cool
It’s moon-landing day, so let’s begin with a few physicians who traveled past this world and obtained to discover house for all humankind. When you’re a health care provider, right here’s how you already know you’re groovy . . .
When You Orbit the Earth Extra Than 100 Occasions
Even earlier than getting into the house program, Mae Jemison was busy. She acquired levels in chemical engineering and African American research earlier than incomes her medical diploma and changing into a Peace Corps officer, answerable for the well being of American employees in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
“On name 24 hours a day, seven days per week for two ½ years, in a spot that might be so unforgiving of errors, I gained flexibility, information, interpersonal relationship abilities, and an appreciation of the challenges life poses to so many individuals on this planet . . .” Jemison mentioned, by way of the Nationwide Ladies’s Historical past Museum.
She additionally labored as a GP in Los Angeles, however when she noticed Sally Experience, the primary lady to enter house, take her shuttle trip in 1983, Jemison utilized to be an astronaut with NASA. Lower than a decade later, after changing into one of many 15 individuals chosen out of greater than 2,000 candidates, Jemison made historical past as the primary African-American lady in house when she rode house shuttle Endeavour for 127 orbits across the earth throughout an eight-day mission, the place she helped conduct experiments in biotechnology and animal and human physiology and conduct.
As she later wrote in her ebook, Discover The place The Wind Goes: Moments From My Life, Jemison wrote, “Unusual, however I all the time knew I’d be right here. Trying down and throughout me, seeing the Earth, the moon, and the celebs, I simply felt that I belonged proper there, and in reality, anywhere in your complete universe.”
She apparently felt that approach again to when she was a child rising up in Chicago.
When You Would possibly Ultimately Attain the Moon
Right here’s how Jonny Kim considered himself when he was a toddler. Apparently, he believed he was something however cool.
“I used to be the epitome of that quiet child who simply lacked full self-confidence,” he instructed Annals of Emergency Medication in 2018. “I used to be used to getting picked final on the baseball and basketball workforce. Highschool was an entire nightmare for me. I by no means confirmed up for my yearbook image. I didn’t go to promenade. I used to be fearful of quite a lot of issues. And quite a lot of that was childhood hardships I used to be going by way of on the time.”
However he, very similar to Jemison, finally took an curiosity in house. And in his first yr of his emergency drugs residency, he, very similar to Jemison, utilized to NASA. Very similar to Jemison, he was considered one of 12 chosen amongst 1000’s of candidates.
After highschool, Kim joined the Navy, which he mentioned “was one of the best resolution I ever made in my life as a result of it utterly remodeled that scared boy who didn’t have any desires to somebody who began to consider in himself.” He additionally grew to understand the Naval medical doctors who took care of him and his colleagues who suffered accidents in Iraq. Kim was in his mid-20s earlier than he went to varsity, after which he discovered his place at medical college at Harvard.
Although he didn’t observe drugs lengthy earlier than he obtained accepted to NASA, he mentioned “it’s not a goodbye” to being a doctor however “extra of a pause. . . I’m nonetheless going to be a consultant of emergency drugs. I take that accountability very severely.”
In April 2025, Kim lastly blasted into house, serving as a flight engineer for Expedition 73. And as you learn this, that is the place Kim is true now, residing on the Worldwide Area Station and doing no matter else cool medical doctors do as they hurtle by way of house.
Earlier than beginning this piece, I wasn’t conscious a doctor was at the moment circling above our heads. However as one commenter wrote on my preliminary checklist of cool medical doctors: “Don’t overlook Jonny Kim, Navy SEAL sniper, naval aviator, ER doctor, and now NASA astronaut at age 37, with a shot on the moon inside this decade. He was cool earlier than and after he turned an MD. As a meme would say, ‘Dr. Kim can kill you, deliver you again to life, then take you for a pleasure trip in house.’”
When You Take a Area Experience a Few Months After Writing for WCI
OK, yet one more doctor turned house traveler. Dr. Gretchen Inexperienced, a radiologist who just lately retired from working towards drugs, has written for WCI about Really Get Paid as an Professional Witness and What (Not) to Do If You’re Sued. She was one of many first youngsters to bicycle throughout the US from east to west to finish world starvation, and in 2022, she reached the North Pole on a Polar Class II icebreaker.
In Could 2025, she joined the twelfth human flight for Blue Origin’s New Shepard program. See the liftoff under, and you’ll quick ahead to Inexperienced rising from the capsule at 55:10.
Together with her arms raised to the sky after which along with her hands-on-the-hips pose following her exit from the capsule, Inexperienced was the epitome of cool. Afterward, she mentioned, “It was perfection.”
When You Battle the Flames
What a day it was in mid-January 2025 when 62-year-old Dr. Chester Griffiths carried out mind surgical procedure, after which, a number of hours later, battled the Pacific Palisades hearth that devastated Los Angeles.
After his medical shift, Griffiths, his son, and his neighbor noticed how homes had been “coming down like dominoes.” They determined to attempt to save the six properties of their cul-de-sac.
Because the BBC wrote:
“Connecting 4 hoses to hydrants, Dr Griffiths, his son, and Mr. [Clayton] Colbert positioned themselves on close by roofs to spray water on the flames, and used filth to place out embers on the bottom.
‘There have been burning embers coming down on us for about 12 hours,’ mentioned Dr. Griffiths.
The trio had been solely joined by firefighters in the previous couple of days of their week-long ordeal as a result of sources had been ‘so extensively stretched’ as a result of variety of blazes within the Los Angeles space.”
This went on for 4 days and 5 nights, however Griffiths mentioned he was decided to not let his home burn to the bottom. Fortunately, he and his firefighting companions succeeded—due to their braveness and preparation.
“I’m a surgeon,” he instructed Pacific Neuroscience Institute. “You prepare and also you put together, after which whenever you’re within the thick of it, you depend on your coaching and your preparedness.”
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Almost 4 many years after breaking into the cultural zeitgeist with its still-powerful Cult of Character, Dwelling Color just lately participated in an episode of NPR’s Tiny Desk Live performance. Although Dwelling Color has put out some robust albums within the final 20 years or so, the band’s recognition, at the least in the case of MTV and FM radio, peaked within the late Eighties and early Nineties (although it additionally has gotten a lift within the final a number of years from professional wrestler CM Punk utilizing Cult of Character as his entrance music).
(The foursome additionally nonetheless places on a strikingly good stay present. I’ve seen Dwelling Color 3 times this century, and my favourite interplay with the band got here after a present once I instructed guitarist Vernon Reid that my then-4-year-old daughter thought Dwelling Color appeared like heavy metallic group Mastodon (though it doesn’t). Vernon laughed after which requested the place he may get some late-night sushi.)
Nonetheless, the socially aware band’s songs are significant, particularly when vocalist Corey Glover sings about injustice or the struggles that minorities face. It’s the thirty fifth anniversary of the band’s second album, Time’s Up, and considered one of my favourite songs from that report is This Is the Life, which reveals you the views of someone who has an important life and someone who needs they did.
I like songs that seamlessly skew from one dichotomy to the precise reverse in the course of the tune (songs like Weapons N’ Roses’ Rocket Queen and NOFX’s The Man I Killed are two good examples), and that’s what This Is the Life accomplishes.
Within the first half of the music, Glover sings a few potential white coat investor . . .
“In one other life all of your jokes are humorous/In one other life your coronary heart is free from worry/In one other life you make some huge cash/On this different life all the things is evident.
In one other life you are all the time the hero/In one other life you all the time win the sport/In one other life nobody ever cheats you/In one other life you by no means have to alter.”
However then Glover presents one thing totally different.
“In one other life you are all the time the sufferer/In one other life you are all the time the thief/In one other life you’re all the time lonely/On this different life there is no such thing as a reduction.”
So, what’s the purpose of those two opposing viewpoints? One, I suppose, is to be pleased about what you might have, as a result of in one other life, you won’t be so fortunate. Right here’s how Reid noticed it in 2015 when speaking to The Vinyl District.
“A music like This Is The Life is a bizarre music to stay with, as a result of it was a music written when the band was savoring actual palpable success. Nevertheless it was speaking about how in one other life, issues are higher,” Reid mentioned. “In one other life, you offered much more information and had much more fame, as a result of for People it’s by no means sufficient. Nothing is ever sufficient . . .
“This Is The Life, when that music was written, we had been doing properly . . . Whenever you’re on the surface trying in, you think about what it’s. You’re exterior of the social gathering, all these fabulous individuals. Champagne is flowing, there’s a conga line, and also you’re on the surface.”
Although a lot of the rock music from Dwelling Color’s Eighties/Nineties contemporaries hasn’t aged properly (both sonically or lyrically), a lot of what the band was singing about (because the Houston Press mentions “its themes communicate on to issues of race, police brutality, the worth of science, who controls info . . .”) remains to be related as we speak.
Which might be why its NPR live performance already has greater than 500,000 views lower than a month after it premiered.
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My youngsters have Roth IRAs. Although they nonetheless solely have just a little bit of cash in there, right here’s hoping that, at some point, all that compounding will make them wealthier than they ever may have imagined once they had been initially depositing their babysitting and pet-walking cash of their accounts.
What do you suppose? What different cases have you ever discovered of physicians being tremendous cool?
[EDITOR’S NOTE: For comments, complaints, suggestions, or plaudits, email Josh Katzowitz at [email protected].]
