How The Far Side reshaped my view of science and medicine [PODCAST]

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Internal medicine physician Ryan McCarthy discusses the article, “What The Far Side taught me about belonging in science.” In this episode, Ryan reflects on the unexpected inspiration he found in Gary Larson’s comic strip The Far Side and how it shaped his journey in science and medicine. He explores themes of belonging, the value of embracing one’s uniqueness in the scientific community, and the role of humor in bridging the gap between popular culture and medical practice. Actionable takeaways include finding community in unexpected places, harnessing humor as a tool for resilience, and confidently carving out one’s space in the world of science.

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Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi and welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast. Today we welcome back Ryan McCarthy. He’s an internal medicine physician, and today’s KevinMD article is “What the far side taught me about belonging in science.” Ryan, welcome back to the show.

Ryan McCarthy: Hey, it’s a real pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Kevin Pho: All right, so, before talking about the article itself, what led you to write it and contribute it to KevinMD in the first place?

Ryan McCarthy: That’s a great question. I I find that these days I do a lot of writing when inspiration hits, and I, I, I do writing primarily to process life in general, but specifically I view life through the lens of health care as an experienced internist, and so I find a lot of what comes to me and works on me are patient experiences or things that happen in the clinic or the hospital that make me reflect.

Kevin Pho: So I, I would say my inspiration just starts from just marinating in the health care ecosystem. All right, and talk about this latest article for those that didn’t get a chance to read it.

Ryan McCarthy: So, my latest article kind of fuses a couple of things together. I find that when I need to step away from health care, I often do self-care that centers around a couple of things. Getting fresh air and exercise or turning to—I really find that artists and creators are people who fill me up. And there’s a variety of those folks that are really important to me: music, literature. I find that we live in a golden age of television and movies, and by that I mean there’s really great, wonderfully crafted content out there. And so I really try to turn to those types of sources that have inspiration and artistry in them. And so this particular article just kind of came from me when I was actually relaxing one evening watching television.

Kevin Pho: And what’s it about the article?

Ryan McCarthy: So, this winter I, I always joke that I’m, I’m late to the party, and that usually means that I’m watching television or media that came out some time ago, and so I found myself watching “the crown,” and in this particular episode it’s very clearly set in 1969. This is when NASA astronauts were going to the moon, and in “the crown,” it’s about the royal family and Buckingham Palace. And really the person who is most awestruck by this is Prince Philip. I have always been just fascinated by astronauts and the space program, and I grew up in the shadow of that. And so really watching just how awestruck he was struck a chord with me. I could not be more different than Prince Philip. I’m not a royal; I live at a later time. But he was just so struck with what a momentous achievement this was. And it really got me thinking about how NASA, the space program, influenced me in my lifetime when I was younger and had a similar sense of awe.

Kevin Pho: So tell us how that influenced your continuing journey in medicine in terms of the awe you felt for NASA, the scientists when you were growing up.

Ryan McCarthy: Yeah, for sure. And so, so there Prince Philip is—he has that awe. And I thought, you know, I wasn’t alive for the moon landing, but I would hope that I would feel like he did. And then I thought, well, when I was a kid, space shuttles first blasted into orbit in 1981, and I kind of thought about what it was like growing up as an American kid who saw the launches on television, and they were big and special. I felt the same way. I was just gobsmacked. I just couldn’t get my brain around how we humans on this earth could travel to the moon. And, Kevin, this is one of the things I love about writing: by thinking about that and writing about it and reflecting about it, I kind of thought, well, what else was I doing at the same time? And, you know, why did this awe from space turn into me as a doctor?

And quite honestly, there were some other things happening at the same time that really made me start to think there was a place for me in science. And funny enough, at the same time, I was really exposed to a cartoon that changed my life, “the far side.” In “the far side,” Gary Larson’s bonkers genius creation is that he looked at life’s absurdity and in a single frame would tell a captivating story. And one of the stories and recurrent characters that he comes to again and again are scientists.

Kevin Pho: Now, for those who aren’t familiar with “the far side,” give us some examples of some of these ways the scientists are portrayed in that cartoon.

Ryan McCarthy: Sure, absolutely. So, right, astronauts were chiseled, strong, super fit. “the far side” scientists are not super fit—often wearing big thick glasses, bald, overweight, usually in peril. Sometimes they’re in dangerous situations that even to a young kid like me were just obviously ridiculous. One of my favorites is where scientists are in front of a blackboard of equations, and they clearly have run out of the building because there’s an ice cream truck in front of the building.

And that, for me—I struggled as a kid to find my place. I know now I was born with a lot of intellectual gifts that helped bring me to medicine, and I often struggled to relate to a world in schools where I really felt different, where these things—math and science—really just so deeply called me. And lots of other kids didn’t feel that way. But there were so many of those characters who did. I felt like I could really relate to them, their love of filling a blackboard with equations and at the same time running to an ice cream truck. Like, I felt like, hey, I would do all of those things.

Kevin Pho: So it almost humanizes a scientist, whereas NASA kind of romanticized the astronauts and put them on a pedestal. It sounds like “the far side,” in terms of how they portrayed it, brought them down to earth a little bit, humanized it, and made it easier to relate to them.

Ryan McCarthy: Yeah, 100 percent, and that is exactly kind of the dichotomy. I felt like “the far side” was here on the earth. It was approachable, and it was a pretty simple and easy on-ramp—those scientists looked like normal people I saw in my community, and like, oh, I could do that. Oh, there’s the blackboard. I can do that. Right. I was never brave enough to sit on a rocket and never thought that that was achievable. Those were the ubermensch among us—the super people—and I didn’t see myself as one of those. But a scientist in “the far side”—Gary Larson would set up a scientist and there they are studying cardboard armor in the Middle Ages—a preposterous and ridiculous comedy setup that really seemed like a tribe I wanted to join.

Kevin Pho: Now, did that help you during medical education? Because sometimes in medical school, you have the best and the brightest come in through premed, and sometimes there’s a little bit of imposter syndrome. You know, sometimes if you’re going through rotations for the first time, and you’re among attendings for the first time, there’s a tendency to put them on a pedestal. Now, bringing that mentality that we’re talking about today, are there any tips or tricks that you use yourself to kind of help humanize them and get over some of that imposter syndrome?

Ryan McCarthy: Yeah, it’s a good question. And so, you know, I think so many of my heroes have been comedians or people who look at the absurdity of life. Right. And so if I was starting and plugged into “the far side” early on, relying on comedy and other people who were funny to make light of whatever we were dealing with, I definitely did that in medical school. It’s interesting, a lot of people around me had those feelings of imposter syndrome, and they would vocalize that. And, Kevin, here’s what’s really interesting: I didn’t realize until recently that I actually am a person who did not have those feelings. I had many other feelings. My specific feelings were, as a first-generation professional, I often felt like a fish out of water among doctor kids who were in medical school—kids who had so many more resources than I did. I felt like that was kind of a weird fit for me.

But the strange thing about my personal journey is, you know, imposter syndrome is I don’t belong, and I’ve fooled these people. So if you take a kid from the lower middle class like me in a West Virginia town where I grew up with no financial advantage and no professional parents, the only thing that got me there was ability—along with all the teachers and other good breaks that helped, right? I know that. But I never felt like I was inadequate to be there in the classroom. Socially, it was strange. Maybe it was social imposter syndrome, because as soon as med school class ended—which I felt like, hey, I deserve to be here—and then I would try to exist in this emerging professional experience of becoming a doctor, I felt really weird among kids who had so much more access and support for their professional development than I ever did. So maybe social imposter syndrome.

Kevin Pho: So tell us about the role of humor as you’re going through a medical journey, because we’re talking about “the far side,” we’re talking about cartoons. Tell us the role of humor intersecting with what you do every day as an internal medicine physician.

Ryan McCarthy: Yeah, no, I think humor is maybe my secret weapon. I come from—my last name is McCarthy—and I come from what I’d call the Irish tradition of storytelling and joke-telling. I think in the Irish culture, Irish people like to joke because, hey, we’re doomed, let’s have a laugh. And that’s kind of fatalistic in the Irish diaspora. And then here in West Virginia, I think there’s a lot of fatalism as well, like, hey, the deck is stacked against us, we’re in a place that’s often forgotten and left behind. And so gallows humor or dark humor—that’s what we have. Humor is a rejection of despair. You have to choose to make a joke, right? I’m going to make light of something so we can laugh, and the laughter comes from, hey, we’re here together. That’s the half-full part of this glass. Maybe the half-empty part is we’re staring down a difficult situation today in the clinic or a difficult medical illness with this patient. And instead of focusing on that despair, there can be light there, and that’s the comedy where a patient tells a story like, let me tell you something hilarious that happened to me in the cancer infusion clinic, or you’re not going to believe the bizarre set of circumstances that happened when I tried to take this medicine, or let me tell you a funny thing that happened after my knee replacement. And, Kevin, I think that’s where the role of humor is, and that’s where I can really connect to my patients on that level—when they’re still finding the glimmer of something funny or light even in the midst of suffering, pain, recovery, cancer, all these other things.

Kevin Pho: Now, how do you find a resource and energy for that humor whenever you read these physician forums? They’re always talking about burnout and all the obstacles that they have to overcome to treat their patients, whether it’s prior authorizations and whatnot. Sometimes there’s just not a lot of capacity left for humor. How do you do it?

Ryan McCarthy: So, it’s a job. It’s a chore. I find I have to take care of the machine. And by that, I mean a good night’s sleep, good nutrition. You know, I’m a coffee drinker. I face my day with that, pack my lunch, and bring the things that are going to sustain me. So it’s a system of care for me physically. And then when I’m not in the office, I get away from a computer, get in front of human beings that I love—my children, my wife Erica—getting outside here in West Virginia. I have lots of fresh air and sunshine, and those kinds of nurturing—some people call those the Scandinavian skills of being plugged into nature—are very accessible here in West Virginia and very meaningful. I find that often, half an hour outside with my dog Trixie can wipe away ten hours of pain dealing with the American health care system and sitting in front of a computer. I’m not saying that always works, but those are the things for me. And then doing the other things like cooking dinner with my wife together, watching something together—really trying those rehumanizing experiences. Because if dealing with those things that you’re describing—prior authorization and the electronic medical record and the pain of trying to be a doctor in America today—is dehumanizing, I’m always trying to rehumanize by the things I described.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Ryan McCarthy. He’s an internal medicine physician, and today’s KevinMD article is “What the far side taught me about belonging in science.” Ryan, as always, let’s end with some take-home messages that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience.

Ryan McCarthy: My take-home is that battling burnout is a daily struggle, and looking for the simple and analog things that are available, finding small pleasure—and people say that, but it’s very real. I take pleasure in my coffee as I drive in, listening to music in the morning that’s going to fill me up for the day. And I don’t know what that’ll be, but I really try to lean into that. When I’m done serving humanity for the day, I really try to go back to the people that I love and let them fill me up so that I can rehumanize myself and come back in here and do it. And even though we all work in an imperfect system, I really try to think about the small and simple things that can be done to help somebody today in a profound way that only I can do. And I think that each of us has those opportunities, and we can walk away at the end of the day feeling like, you know, I did a couple of those things and it really made a difference for somebody.

Kevin Pho: Ryan, as always, thank you so much for sharing your story, time, and insight, and thanks again for coming back on the show.

Ryan McCarthy: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.