Read and Write with Natasha
This podcast discusses writing life, reviews books, and interviews authors and industry professionals.
Read and Write with Natasha
Storytelling and reimagining justice in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Renowned dermatologist and author Dr. Steve Feldman shares the inspiring journey behind his book Bent Toward Justice, highlighting how diverse perspectives, including Holocaust survivor Murray Swartzman’s story, reshaped his worldview.
He discusses the emotional complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Yitzhak Rabin’s influence, and the challenges of advocating for peace.
Dr. Feldman reflects on his potential congressional campaign, inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.’s principles, and the power of storytelling to foster empathy, challenge assumptions, and drive meaningful change.
He emphasizes the need for increased advocacy from diverse voices, particularly within conservative and Jewish communities, to counter the notion that violence leads to peace.
Through transformative anecdotes, including one that altered his medical decision-making, we explore the potential of storytelling to shape public perception, bridge divides, and influence policy.
Join us as we examine the profound impact of stories in fostering understanding and promoting societal change.
****************************************************************************
➡️ Each podcast costs me $75 dollars. If you want to keep my podcast running for free, please consider becoming a paying member of my Patreon page. Thank you for your support.
So what I hope to achieve, even before getting into Congress, is for people to see a loud Jewish voice speaking out for peace, justice, security for all the people living in the Holy Land, whether they're Jewish or not Jewish. I think that's a critically important message to get out or not Jewish, I think that's a critically important message to get out. I want to be a voice that talks about even the broader principle that we're talking about here, which is how people in different groups get misjudgments about each other.
Speaker 2:Hi, friends, this is Read and Write with Natasha podcast. My name is Natasha Tynes and I'm an author and a journalist. In this channel I talk about the writing life, review books and interview authors. Hope you enjoy the journey. Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Read and Write with Natasha.
Speaker 2:I am very happy today to have with me Dr Steve Feldman, who's a professor of dermatology, pathology and public health sciences and is the director of the Psoriasis Treatment Center at Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. His book, which I have it here, Bent Toward Justice, tells the story of Murray Swartzman, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor who finds peace in America but is forced to confront his views on Palestinians after an encounter with an anti-Semitic doctor. Wow, Dr Steve, thank you for joining me today. I'm so happy to have you on the podcast and best of luck with running for Congress next month. This is exciting. So, Dr Steve, I think my first question to you is about your book. So what made you move from medicine to being an author and what compelled you to write this story, and if you can also tell us a bit about the story?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I haven't given up medicine. I'm a dermatologist. I'm still seeing my patients, many of whom have psoriasis, and I've done all kinds of research in dermatology. And my experiences in medicine have led me to be with people in other groups, people who I was told would be really bad folks. So you know, they told me in medicine, oh, the drug companies only care about the money and the insurers don't care about patients, they only care about the money. And I'm Jewish. They told me that people in other religions they hate Jews and they told me all kinds of stuff that people in other religions they hate Jews. And they told me all kinds of stuff that I got to talk to insurers and talk to them about psoriasis treatment. It was clear that they thought they were the good guys trying to help patients get access to medical care and they wouldn't have a problem if it weren't for greedy doctors. I talked to people at drug companies who are inventing the drugs that are making my patients' lives better. They are very proud of the work they're doing. I'm a Jewish-American doctor.
Speaker 1:I got to speak at the Pan-Arab Dermatology Meeting in Riyadh. That was an experience Doctors from all over the Arab world, from what is it? Morocco and Algeria at one end to the Emirates at the other. Morocco and Algeria at one end to the Emirates at the other. All of these different cultures, different ways of dress. But it was in Riyadh, saudi Arabia. So they put all the men dermatologists on one side of the room and all the women dermatologists on the other side of the room, and you can imagine how that made me feel Like I was right at home at my bar mitzvah because, I grew up in the Orthodox Jewish community of the Washington DC area, and so what compelled me to write this book is my own personal experiences and having seen that.
Speaker 1:You know, in Hebrew school I was taught oh, palestinians want to kill Jews. And I got to go to Palestine and be in the homes of Christian and Muslim Palestinian families, and they were the nicest people Palestine, and be in the homes of Christian and Muslim Palestinian families, and they were the nicest people I have ever met in my life. I mean, I've met nice people in New York, you know, but in North Carolina people are really warm and sweet and friendly. The Persians that I met in going to Iran got to go to Iran a few times. They were even nicer. But the Palestinians are like people who walk on the same stones that Jesus walked on. Because they are the people walking on the same stones that Jesus walked on. They were just phenomenal.
Speaker 1:And so I have, over the course of time, tried to share with people data that would get them to get past their views of other people as being evil. And I don't know, people don't listen to data. It's kind of like something I learned in my practice. If I want a patient to take a medicine, I don't tell them all the information about how effective the drug is. Oh, 90% of people get a 75% improvement in 16 weeks, or the percentage of people who have side effects. That does not move people. Natasha, you should love this.
Speaker 1:It turns out one story is more effective than all of the data you can present. Writers should take note of this. One story has powerful impacts on human lives. If I want a patient to take a medicine, I just tell them. You remind me of another patient I had. Your psoriasis is so much like theirs. They did great on drug X. I think that's the right one for you. In fact, I think I saw them in this same room. They were sitting in the same chair you're sitting in now. That one story is more convincing than all of the data that you can give people, and so I have written this book, a single story, to try to explain to people what's really happening in this world. But it's not a fight between good and evil. It's a fight between good people on one side, good people on the other side who have terrible misjudgments about the people in the other group.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, so this story is based on a real story, correct?
Speaker 1:Oh, it's barely fiction, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's barely fiction, so.
Speaker 1:I have, unlike most of your listeners, who are creative people. I'm a nerdy test-tube scientist. I got hired in the dermatology department to run a lab. I went to college, I took chemistry, physics and math courses. I do not have creativity, so almost everything in this book is barely hidden, non-fictional stuff that happened in the real world.
Speaker 2:So how did you do the research for the book?
Speaker 1:I just lived my life. I grew up in the Jewish community. I went to a Hebrew school that my grandfather helped to found in Washington DC, the Hebrew Academy of Washington. I went to a synagogue in Washington DC, an Orthodox synagogue, beth Shalom, that my grandfather helped to found. My father had been president of the congregation. My whole world was the Jewish community there. I grew up in Washington DC but as far as I knew there were only two restaurants, because there were only two kosher restaurants, and so I grew up with.
Speaker 1:What you see in the book is the story of the Jewish community of Winston-Salem and how they viewed Israel and Palestinians, and so I was immersed in that and could translate that into the book. And then I had all these experiences in medicine that told me that people in other groups are really nice, and I was. My wife has a lot of family in Israel and we visited there several times and they took us on tours of the whole country everywhere, and I remember we were coming over a mountain hillside and I'm looking out on this bright, sunny day over this valley. There's forests on the hillside and I collected dimes as a child to plant trees in Israel, so I helped plant that forest and there's farms and factories. You could see across the valley.
Speaker 1:And you know, it occurred to me. You know what they taught me in Hebrew school oh, we took this land of empty swamps and deserts and we made it bloom. And it just occurred to me at that moment that 700,000 Palestinian men, women and children had become refugees. If this had been all empty swamps and deserts, like they told me, where are the Palestinians living? I mean, they never showed me any place where Palestinians had been living and I thought something's missing in my understanding of this story. And, being a scientist, I started to pull on this thread, you know, and it started. The whole story started to unravel. I heard about a town where atrocities had been committed, dariusin.
Speaker 2:Dariusin yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I heard about another town, saf Saf, where the Israeli people reported that the Israeli forces, or the pre-Israeli forces, committed atrocities, mass murders, rapes and things I read about. I remember being on a dermatology list where a dermatologist said you know, we Jews we never looted, we never did all these criminal things. I looked, we did all of those criminal things. I looked, we did all of those criminal things and, interestingly, being Jewish and having my upbringing, I was only looking at Israeli Jewish sources, right, I mean, the Israeli Defense Force put out a report in 1948 that was uncovered by Benny Morris, israeli Jewish historian, and the report listed the reasons Palestinians fled their homes. Now, I was taught Palestinians fled because they wanted to kill us Jews, to make it easier to kill Jews. But the report said the number one most important reasons Palestinian families fled was because we Jews forced them out of their home. And then the second most important reason was we Jews forced them out of their homes. And the third most important reason was we Jews forced them out of their homes. I mean all this stuff nobody had told me.
Speaker 1:The prime minister of Israel, yitzhak Rabin, had an autobiography and in it he talked about expelling 50,000 to 70,000 men, women and children from the towns Lida and Ramla that became the Tel Aviv airport. This was so inconsistent with anything that I had learned growing up, but you hear this story being told in the book, and so I went to the local rabbi in my community with this information, thinking you know this guy, this rabbi is the most progressive rabbi on the planet. You know he doesn't wear a regular prayer shawl, a talit, he wears a rainbow colored one and, unlike my Orthodox synagogue, he has a guitar that he plays during the services. And when North Carolina wants to restrict what bathroom people can go to based on you know their assigned gender at birth, or you know when they, or stuff like that, he will be on the front lines of the fight against that. And I thought, okay, well, he does, he supports Israel now, but once he learns this stuff, he's going to see that we should be supporting Palestinian families in equal measure.
Speaker 1:Well, I went and talked to him and he didn't. He was just like the rabbi in the story that, yeah, he learns the truth, he learns to understand, and it does not move him, it does not change his heart. But to the Holocaust survivor, to the man of principle who, while devoted to Israel. Based on what he thought of Israel's founding, he is absolutely committed to ending injustice because he understood what the lesson of the Holocaust was. The lesson of the.
Speaker 1:Holocaust was not that Jews should never be mistreated. The lesson of the Holocaust was that nobody should ever be mistreated. And once he the Holocaust was that nobody should ever be mistreated. And once he learns these things about Israel and he goes and he meets Palestinian families, as I did, and he sees that their kids are just like the Jewish kids he knows in the synagogue, one of the things I'm almost embarrassed that I used to believe was they told us this story that Golda Meir. There's a Golda Meir quote Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel, and I don't know that she actually said it, but the quote is something like we'll have peace when Palestinian mothers love their children more than they hate us Jews.
Speaker 1:This is the most racist thing you could say about a group of people that they don't love their children more than anything. I'm pretty sure I've been all over the world. Mothers love their children more than anything. If somebody said, well, black mothers don't love their children as much as they like drugs or watermelon or fried chicken, you'd say, man, that is like the most racist thing you could possibly say. But people it's so. It's amazing that people can't see it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean thank you. Thank you for sharing this. I'm just curious. I try not to get too political on this podcast and try to focus on the writing process, but my question is how was this book received in the community and what kind of feedback did you get? You know, as we all know, now the Middle East is in the forefront of the news and things are going from bad to worse and there are really strong opinions on both sides. And again, without taking any sides, I just want to understand the feedback that you got, the good and the bad and how did you deal with it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I wrote a book on the facts like 15 years ago, a book called Compartments how people in two different groups will systematically develop misjudgments about the people in the other group and it had an influence on the Presbyterian Middle East Study Committee. But it really didn't change the world right. And I self-published the book because I couldn't find a publisher. This time, you know, with my story that I hope would move people, I'm like okay, I learned my lesson. Self-published books don't go anywhere. So I tried to find an agent. I spent like a year, you know, waiting to find a, finally found an agent. Agent took I don't know the other year to find a publisher. Publisher, you know, takes two years to publish the book but goes out of business right before the publication date. Find another publisher who publish it and it's been on the market for six months and it really hasn't taken off yet. So I'm still in the process of marketing and pushing and trying to get the book out there. In terms of feedback, people who read the book have told me oh, this is educational. I never saw things this way before. Oh, I appreciate, you know, it's so refreshing because the book has a happy ending. It has an ending where there's peace.
Speaker 1:I think one of the reasons we can't seem to get anybody to support peace in Israel-Palestine is because very few people not nobody, but very few people are presenting an image of what it will be like when the inevitable happens. Right, the Israeli government inevitably says to Palestinian families oh my God, we made a huge mistake. What we did to you is against our moral character. We need you to return to your homes. We need to live together in peace. We'll rebuild your villages, we'll make sure everybody has jobs. We'll have an economy that will be the envy of the world, with all these billions of Christians and Muslims wanting to come visit a peaceful Holy Land. Once you see that vision, hopefully it will move people.
Speaker 1:But I was on a podcast radio program from a very religious Jewish New York setting and they invited me to come on and talk about the book and I explained you know this book isn't consistent with what you usually talk about and he was like, no, no, no, I understand, but we listened to all points of view and stuff and so it was. It was great. You know he had a call in program and people are calling me a traitor and and you know, don't know what I'm talking about, but you know I I understand where they're coming from because I used to be that person, right? I grew up in the Hebrew school. I was taught everything that they were taught. They are the people who you read about in the beginning of the book who haven't yet seen the full story.
Speaker 2:Steve, we chatted before recording, but I've been following your work for a while and you've been vocal about your ideas for, I think, over 20 years now or so. So I just want to ask about the feedback that you got 20 years ago compared to now. Things escalated. Do you think there is more understanding now or, on the contrary, people are more hateful towards each other? Are you more hopeful or less hopeful?
Speaker 2:I mean for me, like what I've seen, especially among the, let's say, gen Z and if you look at TikTok and I've never seen this kind of narrative before when it comes to Palestinian issues, gen Z but I've never seen, let's say, an Asian student, a black student, all of them with the kofiyeh, you know which is like this is my granddad. He's wearing a kofiyeh right there and I was like huh, like what's happening? You know why? Is you know, all these people suddenly wearing kofiyeh? And I've been in the US for 20 years now and I've never seen this kind of narrative, like change of narrative. Do you see that? Or is it only a Gen Z thing?
Speaker 1:Oh no, I think you're absolutely right. I think it's the well. The title of the book right is bent towards justice. It's, you know, there's that line Martin Luther King said about the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice and I think it's inevitable that we're going to see justice. You're right. I think the young people are moved.
Speaker 1:I think half the Democratic Party this is why the Democrats are going to have a hard time winning the election this year is because half the Democratic Party is thoroughly against the mistreatment of Palestinian families and realizes that there should be peace, security, justice for Israeli Jews and Palestinian non-Jewish families in completely equal measure. I don't think what we're seeing. I don't think we're seeing a rise in anti-Semitism. It's being interpreted as anti-Semitism. What we're seeing is a rise of the values of everybody, which is to treat everybody equal. But now, with the realization that Palestinians have been mistreated all of this time, and so in Congress, we didn't used to see in Congress people, you know, speaking out against what Israel was doing, and now we see it vociferously, I think, changing. We saw over the last 20 years how gays are treated in America changed dramatically, and I think we're seeing the same shift in Israel-Palestine issues.
Speaker 2:So, speaking of Congress, so you're going to run for Congress? What do you hope to achieve when you're a congressman and you're running for the state of North Carolina, correct?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So what I hope to achieve, even before getting into Congress, is for people to see a loud Jewish voice speaking out for peace, justice, security for all the people living in the Holy Land, whether they're Jewish or not Jewish. I think that's a critically important message to get out. I want to be a voice that talks about even the broader principle that we're talking about here, which is how people in different groups get misjudgments about each other.
Speaker 1:You know, I was brought up thinking, being taught the Russians were evil. They tried to put missiles nuclear missiles into Cuba that could strike america. You know, on before we'd have a chance to react, and kennedy was able to get the russians to get those missiles out of cuba. You know how he got them out. We had put our nuclear missiles into turkey first, and all we had to do was remove our. You know, and so I see the same thing happening now with with ukraine and and how we put into place stuff that led to this by threatening to put German and American tanks on the Russian border, by trying to get Ukraine into NATO. If you put Ukraine into NATO, our troops end up on their border. You know the Russians are just doing what we would have done if China tried to put their tanks into Mexico on our border.
Speaker 1:I'm hoping to provide a very optimistic voice about the world, because there's really good people. It's not that we're fighting evil, we're fighting other good people. And, should I be elected, in the best of all worlds, congress will be a 50-50 split between the Democrats and the Republicans, and then me the deciding vote. That would be like the best of all worlds and hopefully I could get the Republicans and Democrats to work together because, look, I'm a dermatologist. I meet a lot of people. I've met Republicans. These folks want to make the world better for us and our kids. They want the country to be strong. They are peace-loving people. I've met Democrats. They're equally caring and warm and friendly and they want, but they may disagree on their policies. But each side says the other ones are trying to destroy the country. They don't care about people. We all care about people and that's a message I hope to bring.
Speaker 2:So, speaking of prominent Jewish voices that are calling for peace, you don't think there are enough voices. I mean, I can think of Bernie Sanders maybe. So you think you want to be in a similar position to Bernie Sanders or any other prominent Jewish voices that you can think of?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, bernie Sanders didn't go far enough. There's another Jewish congressman yeah, you know, bernie Sanders doesn't go far enough. There's another Jewish congressman, if I'm not mistaken, mark Pocan, out of Wisconsin, whose understanding of the issues and there are Jewish voices out there I think it's the Jewish Voice for Peace group is the most amazing group, fastest growing Jewish organization in America, absolutely committed. Interestingly, they are basically they started as a bunch of hippies out of Berkeley, california, you know. And what I don't think we see quite yet are as many conservative voices calling for equal treatment.
Speaker 1:In fact, what we see is we have a senator here in North Carolina, senator Budd, who is a devout Christian person, line Senator Budd, who is a devout Christian person. And I'll tell you, christianity talks peace. And Budd, I am absolutely certain he's as loving a human being, more so than I am. I'm sure he's as devoted to peace as I am, maybe more so and he's talking about we got to kill people in order to get to peace and I'm like no, you know, we don't need to do that.
Speaker 1:We can be conservative, we can want fiscal responsibility in our government, you know, we can want to bring the deficit down, and you don't have to be a progressive socialist to think that it's wrong to kill a whole, entire Palestinian family all at once, or to think that or to realize you know what. That doesn't make us safer. I mean, you wouldn't. The whole essence of Judaism is not to do to other people what you wouldn't want done to yourself, or the Christian version treat others the way you would want to be treated, or it's in one of the Hadith. You know, you're not. You're not really a Muslim, if I'm not mistaken, unless you, you know, want for your brother what you want for yourself. It's across every religion and people don't? They think, oh, we're going to get to peace by being violent. Would we be peaceful if people were violent towards us? I don't think so.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you've been promoting this book on podcasts and other platforms. Where did you get the most success in sending your message?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know where I've had the greatest success at this point. So far, the successes I've had have been small. When it hits the New York Times bestseller list, I'll be more good. Dermatology has been very good to me. I am not a writer who's writing to make a living. I'm making a living so that I can promote my writing, and so I've tried marketing in major national Christian publications, in a major national Jewish publication, because one of the things I see is that most of the time, people end up preaching great stuff to people who already understand, and what I want to do is get to the people who get the story into the hands of people who don't already support equal treatment for Israelis and Palestinians.
Speaker 2:Are you still publishing articles?
Speaker 1:Yes, right now most of my publication efforts would be in my campaign for Congress. It's a great way to get a message out, at least to several counties in North Carolina, but hopefully there will be a synergy between the book, the campaign. Maybe it will be. You know, if my campaign can develop any kind of traction to be a national story about the Jewish doctor campaigning on the idea that we need to control the federal deficit and we need to stop supporting Israel's killing of Palestinian families, that there's a path for which.
Speaker 1:One of the things that's really fascinating about all of this is that good people have been supporting a two-state solution. People who would never have even considered for a moment supporting separate Bantu stands for blacks in South Africa are supporting a two-state solution. People who would never have even considered for a moment supporting separate Bantu stands for blacks in South Africa or supporting a two-state solution. People who would be offended by the idea of separate water fountains for blacks and whites, much less separating them into different parts of the state. I mean, and they're supporting a two-state solution. It makes like absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Speaker 1:It made me realize. You know, I grew up in Washington thinking that the people in the deep South were these evil, hateful people supporting segregation and slavery and racism. And now I realize they were really warm, caring Christian folks who were brought up thinking that segregation was just right and normal. You know we believe what we're brought up to be. They are just like the rabbis today who will fight for gay rights, who will fight for trans rights. You know who stand against all forms of racism and still hang signs in front of their temples saying you know who stand against all forms of racism and still hang signs in front of their temples saying you know we support Israel, I mean it's so.
Speaker 2:Your idea of peace is a one-state solution where everyone can live in peace.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I think that's you know. It's a complete no-brainer when you think about it, because you know how you can reliably tell an Israeli Jew from a Palestinian Muslim or Christian? You can't, I don't know. There's no way. They're identical, they look alike, they're identical. They go along. And so all my relatives need to do is say to the Palestinian families come on, let's rebuild, and people are not going to want to be violent. I mean America. We're friends with Vietnam and we did horrible things to them.
Speaker 2:Do you think it's feasible in a lifetime?
Speaker 1:Yes, it could happen tomorrow, gosh, you know, netanyahu could wake out of his slumber or the next right-wing person could realize. You know what? We're going to make a lot more money if we just let Palestinian families return to their homes. Our economy is going to be better Lives of our children. Right now we've got rockets coming in Northern Israel. We can't live there. And now Tel Aviv is under attack. Our kids, even in peaceful times, are warriors. They're not learning peace.
Speaker 1:And, gosh, everything would be better if we just lived together in peace. The economy we would have you'd have 2 billion Christians, 1.5 billion Muslims, another billion Chinese people wanting to visit the beaches, the sites of the Holy Land. They would come in peace. You'd have jobs for everybody, as translators, as tour guides. It would be a phenomenal economy and so it should happen in our lifetime. We've seen miracles happen in our lifetimes, like South Africans giving up apartheid. The situation there is so similar. Whites there thought they had been abused in the Boer Wars. They thought that the blacks would slaughter them all if they gave up their racist system.
Speaker 2:But they gave it up. But you know people might object to that because the projection is Palestinians or Muslims or Arabs would outnumber the Jews and that might be a problem for people.
Speaker 1:I don't think that would be a problem. Again, what did Saudi Arabia look like when I went there? It looked like a country run by Orthodox Jews.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, we Jews were slaughtered in a lot of Christian-controlled places Russia, germany. Germans were Lutherans and Catholics Spain. You know, we Jews were relatively safe in Arab communities that were dominated by Muslim people. I say this not entirely joking, but I could foresee a two-state solution where you have one state for the religious Jews, religious Christians, religious Muslims and one state for the secular Jews, christians and Muslims You're smiling, because that would actually be sensible. One state where they let the gays have parades and they let the girls show their belly buttons and have nose rings, in one state where they cover, because they would all cover right, you know, whether they're jewish, christian or muslim, they all. That would make sense. You know to separate on the basis of the cultural differences, but separating on the basis of religion is abhorrent to me yeah, it's absolutely abhorrent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to hear that you're optimistic. Unfortunately I'm well, I'm 48 now. I don't think I'm gonna, we're gonna see peace in my lifetime, unfortunately, and well, maybe you can change my opinion. But I'm happy to hear that you're optimistic and you think we can. We'll see a solution at least in our, in our lifetime.
Speaker 1:Let me tell you the power of one story. A couple of years ago, I was trying to keep up with you, young people in a CrossFit class.
Speaker 2:I'm not that young, I'm almost 50.
Speaker 1:The workout of the day was like rowing and back squats as many as you could do for like 10 minutes. I'm trying to keep up with you, young people. And on the very last back squat I felt something pop in my back. All right, so I thought, oh, that can't be good, but it didn't hurt at the time I went on.
Speaker 1:I was invited to speak on dermatology stuff in China, going four cities. I'm walking down the street in Shanghai and I tripped and I thought, oh, the sidewalks here must not be level, but they looked okay. And tripped and I thought, oh, the sidewalks here must not be level, but they looked okay. And then I tripped again a few seconds. I'm like, oh, the sidewalks are not a problem. I have foot drop. You know, my foot is just dropping and it's tripping me and I thought, well, maybe I'm just old. So I come back from China again.
Speaker 1:18 hours sitting on the plane, come to work that disc in my lower back. That pop found the sensory nerve and caused this intense sciatica pain. But I'm so stubborn, even though I can't move, I just get in a wheelchair and I let my minions wheel me from one patient to the other to see my patients. I go to the urgent care center and I don't know if this is the best way to get narcotics from an urgent care provider, but I grab them by lapel and I'm like give me narcotics now. They gave me narcotics. I couldn't sleep at night.
Speaker 1:So what do I do? I read up to date on how to manage the pain. It says do physical therapy. That's not what I want to hear. I want to hear there's a surgical procedure not a new one, an old one that they have a lot of experience with that will provide 100% immediate pain relief with no risk and no downtime from work. It doesn't say that it says do physical therapy time from work. It doesn't say that it says do physical therapy. So I look up the articles that this online up-to-date medical journal cites and they have studies proving I should do physical therapy. That's not good enough. I do my own literature searches and I find more trials and, sure enough, it's proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that I should do physical therapy. So I come to work one day I'm doing physical therapy.
Speaker 1:I come to work on my walker and my partner, the skin surgeon, says to me Steve, you look terrible, what's wrong? I go oh, I got this lumbar disc. You know it's so painful. He says Steve, I had a disc in my neck. It was affecting the motor function of my hand. I went to the neurosurgeons and they gave me prednisone and I felt better right away. Okay, so, on the one hand, the nerdiest person you've ever encountered in your life, most data-driven medical scientist type, has read all of the evidence proving the best he can do is physical therapy. And he's got one story, one story from somebody he has nothing in common with. I have a lumbar disc. That guy had a cervical disc right. I have pain. He had motor dysfunction. I'm a medical dermatologist, he's a skin surgeon. We have nothing in common. He says take prednisone. What do you think I did?
Speaker 2:You did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I took the prednisone. I called my gerontologist right away. I'm like I need prednisone now. So I'm prednisone before the day was over. One story and so and you could see this in the world You'll hear people during COVID here's about somebody who took some ivermectin, you know, and they got better. Well, people with COVID sometimes get better. But you hear one story about somebody who did well on ivermectin. It's like everybody wants ivermectin. One story has the power to move people and that's why I'm optimistic that if people read this book they're going to go oh, I, it's not what I thought it was.
Speaker 1:I teach this to my students. I ask them did you know that the medical literature reported that before 9-11, the sanctions we posed on Iraq killed half a million Arab children? And my students are like what? I never heard that. What are you talking about? So I show them this 30-second clip from 60 Minutes where Clinton's Secretary of State, madeleine Albright, is being interviewed by Leslie Stahl. Leslie Stahl says to Madeleine Albright we've heard that half a million children have died that's more children than were killed in Hiroshima and is the price worth it? And Madeleine Albright responds it's a hard choice. The price worth it. And madeline albright responds. It's a hard choice but we think the price, the price is worth it. Half a million children, I don't know, maybe it was only 50 000 children. Who knows the numbers? You know may only be 50 000, but they didn't attack us on 9-11 because they hate our freedom, you know yeah, so okay, what does the future hold for you in terms of storytelling?
Speaker 2:I know you're going to get into hopefully you get into Congress, but in terms of storytelling, do you plan to publish more stories? Do you plan to continue on this path or is this a one-hit wonder? I want to hit wonder.
Speaker 1:That's a great question. Yeah, I would like part of me would like to you know for there to be children's books that communicate this idea that people in other groups are really just good folks just like us, that we need to see. One of the most amazing things is the power of selection bias to impact people's thinking. Right? I'm Jewish. I don't know any Catholic priests. If I'd read newspaper stories on the cover of the newspaper about a Catholic priest, what do you know about that Catholic priest already? Well, that they're a pedophile. Right? I mean, that's the only thing you're going to see. You're going to see story after story and you're going to believe that Catholic priests are all pedophiles, when I don't know. They're not all pedophiles. I don't know if there's one in 100, one in 1,000, one in 10,000. It could be less than that, but they'd be the only ones you'd ever hear about and those stories have an enormous impact on people's thinking. I think, as a storyteller, I may have fewer books in me, but a greater realization of the power of story to change people.
Speaker 1:I had a big failure just last night. A neighbor put on an event to support my campaign and I explained why I was running. In terms of the data. I didn't tell them one story. If I'm on the campaign trail, I'm going to be a storyteller. I'm going to tell stories about my trip to Iran, my trips to Iran, you know. My trips to Palestine.
Speaker 1:I'm going to tell stories about my patients in medicine, who you know. How are you going to convince people that the problems in medicine are not caused by greedy insurers? They're not caused by greedy drug companies. The problems in medicine are caused by the system that we have, where people don't pay for their own healthcare. When somebody else is paying for it, the prices are just going to go up. And the way I explain this, I had one patient who had mild psoriasis. He just needed a little kind of cream to put on. He had great insurance, and so I offered him the three choices either a generic ointment for $4 that probably would work pretty well, a less messy spray that costs $200, and then a fancy new combined product had two different drugs in it for $800 a tube. Ok, now he had really good insurance. Which one do you think he picked?
Speaker 2:The free one.
Speaker 1:No, he said give me the $200 one and the $800 one. I'll try them both and I'll see which one I like better. Because somebody else is paying for them. Why don't I take the best? And yeah you know people, I mean the system that we have is what's driving it. But that one story, I think, communicates more than I could do in any other way how just the fact of insurance changes causes healthcare prices to rise. Huh.
Speaker 2:So you self-published this book, correct?
Speaker 1:No, no, I waited years to get a real publisher, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's a Ransmith books. Okay, so do you think the reason you waited years to get a publisher is because you're offering a progressive Jewish voice, and do you think that mainstream publishers might shy away from this kind of narrative?
Speaker 1:Yes, to the latter, the reason I waited. I didn't self-publish this because I wrote a fabulous book before called Compartments, that illustrated these problems and really it was, I think, key to understanding so much of the conflicts of the world within our families, between people, within companies, between organizations in the United States, between different countries, between religions. You could understand how conflicts develop when you put people in different groups. And that great book I say it's great. Anyway, it didn't go anywhere. It didn't make the list because it was self-published. You know bookstores weren't carrying self-published books and things and I think it's assumed that it's not valuable if it's self-published. Maybe better than anything published. Anything your listeners are writing could be better, but you can only go so far self-published. So I felt like, based on my experience, I needed to have an agent. I needed to have a real publisher to push my book forward and when I went to agents, agents would not pick me up because I didn't have what they considered a platform. I'm like the number one rated dermatologist on the planet. Number one expert on dermatology on the planet according to expertscapecom. Planet. Number one expert on dermatology on the planet according to expertscapecom.
Speaker 1:But I think what agents were looking for were celebrities who had, you know, a million followers on Twitter and they would take their cookbook over a book that you know would be a convincing way of achieving world peace and so. But I found an agent who was willing to take a risk on me and then finding a publisher. I think when you try to find a publisher now, you're on the risk of okay, well, do we really want to take on something controversial? On the one hand, controversy might sell books. On the other hand, it could poison our relationships with a lot of people. And I've got all these other folks who are strong supporters of Israel and maybe I don't want to take it on. I don't. I assume, you know, I assume that the letters I got in response to what I wrote were honest letters. I think they probably were. So, hey, it's a great topic, but it's not right for me.
Speaker 2:It's a great topic, but it's not right for me, okay. Okay, so you don't think there is some sort of a renaissance now among the publishing company about the importance of pushing these kind of, let's say, different narratives and the mainstream narrative?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean there are niche publishers out there doing it. I'm blanking on their names, but you can look to see who's publishing this stuff and you'll see that there are publishers, but the mainstream folks I don't think they see it as you know, the cash cow it's. The situation sort of reminds me of, you know, obama and marriage equality. You know, I think he couldn't push for it. The people had to push him to push for it. I don't think publishers are going to push people into buying pro-Palestinian you know, equal treatment for Palestinian material. I think the people are going to have to bend towards justice before they get the publishers to do it.
Speaker 2:What if Bernie Sanders publishes something he would probably get a?
Speaker 1:book. I think, bernie Sanders, you know Bernie Sanders, as good as he is, he's not all the way along. God, I love that man but you know, even though I disagree with his politics, I would have voted for the guy because I love him. I think you know love and stories trumps data and policy.
Speaker 2:You know, in many ways, yeah, yeah, I love you know. Before we conclude, I just want to say I loved what you said, that stories trump data and I know that, since I'm a storyteller and sometimes, like I give a talk or I listen to a talk and I don't remember anything. The only thing I remember is one story they told about their son doing something or their grandmother, and that's the only thing I would remember, like the one hour of PowerPoint presentation, nothing, and you just only remember the story. So I think that's like a nice message to conclude with, especially since you're a scientist and data is your blood, your bread and butter, so that's fascinating.
Speaker 1:You look at a great ted talk. I don't care if it's about you know nuclear physics, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, if there's a, it's got to have a story yeah, for me, my method is when I when I give, uh, public talks, is I start with a story and I end with a story, and the same story that I started with I end with it, so just to close the loop, and I I think that that what would make for for a good talk yeah, I like to to start with the story of how I went to palestine and I ended up with a palestinian, a young, a young Palestinian man holding a blade at my neck.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, did you have you heard? Oh, let me tell you. You know, there's a Quaker fellow, max Carter, who takes Americans to the West Bank to meet Palestinians. He takes them to Israel and Palestine and we spent time in Ramallah at the friend's school where he had served as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. He had a jewel of a guy and he took us around and we meet Palestinian families, we go in their homes, we go to PLO headquarters, we meet Palestinian, we meet a guy who had been in Hamas, we meet all kinds of people and you see how warm and genuinely friendly these people are.
Speaker 1:And I was afraid that when I came back to tell my story, people would discount it, saying they only showed you what you wanted to see. So I decided I would go out on my own. This is how I ended up, with a Palestinian holding a blade at my neck. I, you know, I'm not very personal, I'm a scientist. I can't just go knock on people's doors and say, hey, I want to talk to you. So I thought where can I go? Where people talk? And I was telling this to a group of black women in a small town here in North Carolina and they said well, of course you would go to the barbershop.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I said yes. I went to the barbershop and I got a haircut and he shaved my neck with a blade. That was the only time a Palestinian man was having a blade at my neck.
Speaker 2:That's a very good story. This is see, like I will always remember this one and on this note, it's been wonderful talking with you, steve, or Dr Steve, and best of luck with the book, with the campaign, with Dr Steve Feldman's book, Bend to World Justice. It's available on Amazon and also I saw it's audible. Is it on audible as well?
Speaker 1:Yes, it is read by Ed Asner, who had won multiple Emmy Awards. Many of the older folks will remember him from the Mary Tyler Moore show. The younger people will remember him as the voice of Carl Fredrickson in the movie Up.
Speaker 2:Ah, yeah, that's true. Yeah, amazing.
Speaker 1:And, by the way, you can get it on Amazon, but you might consider going to your local bookstore. Yes, you know, support your local bookstore, ask them to order it. Having it be in the bookstores would be good, but it's also great, I think, supporting our local bookshops.
Speaker 2:Yes, I love this message. Think, supporting our local bookshops. Yes, I love this message. So, thank you very much, dr Steve, and, for anyone who's listening or watching, thank you for joining us for another episode of Read and Write with Natasha and, until we meet again, thank you for tuning in to Read and Write with Natasha. I'm your host, natasha Tynes. If today's episode inspired you in any way, please take the time to review the podcast. Remember to subscribe and share this podcast with fellow book lovers. Until next time, happy reading, happy writing.
