Late-Night Talk: Sam Webster, PhD. Anatomy, Gaming, and what a PhD Really Teaches.

Students and Graduates!

Samuel Webster, PhD is a lecturer in Anatomy at Swansea University, a YouTuber and podcaster. Sam shares content about anatomy beyond his usual lectures, building an online classroom, and why doing hard things matters more than titles whether in short or long formats.

Follow Sam Webster's work on his official website, https://samwebster.net/, where you can find his YouTube channel under his name, his podcast Dissectable Me 5 Minute Anatomy, and many more.

Thank you all for tuning in, it has been a pleasure!

Students and Graduates!

This is a mid-roll from my late-night talk with Ilana Horwitz, PhD, about her book The Entrepreneurial Scholar. A New Mindset for Success in Academia and Beyond. Use the code IMH20 when buying her book at Princeton Univ Press

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Students and graduates,

Have a break from this session by hearing a late-night talk I had with Michael Gerharz, PhD, about the impact of communication in your PhD and in public.

Thank you all for tuning in, it has been a pleasure!

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Students and graduates!

This is a pod-roll from a solo session of PhD Lounge from the Iceberg explained series. Thank you all for tuning in, it has been a pleasure!

Students and Graduates!

This is my podroll with one of my guests Nikita Bedov, a PhD in Biology.

Thank you all for tuning in, it has been a pleasure!

Transcript

Meeting Sam Webster And Global Reach

SPEAKER_04 3:16

Sam Webster, it's a pleasure to meet you and welcome to PHD Launch.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Thank you for inviting me.

SPEAKER_04 3:24

So before before the questions, I When we've met uh back at um at the canteen with Emmanuel, who's not here, uh I went then I went to I went back home and said to my to my partner saying, look, I'm gonna have Sam Simon Webster on the podcast. I say Simon Webster who Simon Webster the uh the anatomist. Oh yeah, she's wildly known in Romania. She's from Romania. Oh really? Yes. Uh in uh CBU.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 3:56

A bit far from from Bucharest, the capital.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:59

And she was telling me that oh, he's quite popular in Romania, uh, thanks to his YouTube channel. We get on there for now. And uh and uh she she has a friend who I think she has finished her anatomy undergraduate there in Romania and saying, Oh, we follow a lot some uh uh Samuel Samuel Webster there. And they say, Oh, okay. So he's quite popular across Europe.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

Yeah, I've been to Romania the last couple of years. I've been to Kluge Napok uh, they've invited me to give a keynote talk at the uh heart conference. Those guys over there, they're amazing. They're I mean I'm always amazed by medical student conferences and student conferences. Like as an academic, to be honest, I try and avoid them, and then when students organize these things and they're that good, yeah. So I I have had some good introductions to Romania, yeah.

From Early Internet To Teaching Online

SPEAKER_04 4:49

Right. Well, that I can say that the world is so small in that regard, because speak and also network is also a big plays a big part on that. I spoke spoke that you would be my guest here at BH Lounge, and she was so happy to know, related to her friend who sent it atomic, and then amplified this whole this whole this whole situation and say, Oh, okay, and uh so since he's popular, I gotta check what he's been doing, and then I noticed, oh, there was a LinkedIn post you've typed uh a couple months ago. Oh, it was a great pleasure to be in Romania, and oh my god, no, everything is connecting.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

Yeah, yeah, it's a small world. I mean that's the beauty of this, right? Because I mean I've ended up making podcasts and videos because I'm a nerd. Well, that's the same reason I do everything that I this is why I'm in science, it's because I'm a nerd. But it's um it's it's amazing how because I grew up with the internet, as in the internet was becoming a thing. Yeah, this is what we wanted. We wanted to be able to share information freely, we wanted to make the world a smaller place, right?

SPEAKER_04 5:59

And we never we never expected to make that into videos. It was basically audio at the beginning, and then YouTube came 20 years ago and decided, oh, now it requires an online presence where we share moments, we share lessons, we share uh things that connect with us and resonates with the rest of the world. And that's where it can and and that's what what it's currently uh doing the mo from the most of us, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

And before that it was text, right? Because when the web was the web, we wrote and we wrote vlogs because we were nerds, we wanted to share our lives, and then we wanted to share the science that we were doing, and then as a teacher, I would write vlogs, uh blogs about um whatever we've been teaching that day, and then it's just as the technology changes, the media you use just rolls along with it, you know?

SPEAKER_04 6:57

Yes, and from blogs and then videos or vlogs nowadays, and then podcasting.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Yeah, I don't know what's next.

SPEAKER_04 7:07

You don't know what's next. We're trying to keep up with it. People so we'll assume oh AI will take over the world and say, Well, we we don't know actually, but the the world is keep keeps evolving, and and that's the beauty of it. So you said you were kind of a nerd in the the field. Uh how does that evolve your throughout your your academic background until you decided this is my aha moment of doing medicine and specifically anatomy?

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Um at school I by the time I got to A levels, I was doing all the sciences. And I was doing the sciences because I just wanted to know how everything worked. I've always wanted to know how everything works, I've always taken stuff apart. Um I love watching those documentaries on TV with factories that make things and you know all that sort of stuff. It's like, how does everything work? Um, but I didn't know what I wanted to do with three sciences uh after school. So normally when you do three sciences, you get pushed, go and do medicine, right? I'm not really the right person to do medicine. Um, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. Um, but my teachers, I think my teachers, certainly one of my biology teachers knew me better than I knew me. They obviously had experience with this. And um they saw a new anatomical sciences degree program starting in Cardiff, but it wasn't starting for another year. So they said, What about this? It's like, yeah, cool, that sounds that sounds cool. Anatomy, that sounds good, human anatomy. And they even also said, well, and also in the local NHS, here's a job working as a microbiology lab assistant for a year. It's like, so you know what I mean? Teachers really feeding you into the right thing. So I worked part-time as an MLA, medical laboratory assistant, working with um in microbiology for a year, which I loved at the bench, and then I started the anatomy degree, and um you do the physiology and the biochemistry and the anatomy and the philosophy of science and all these other things, and it was great fun, but I still didn't know what to do, and I was still learning how to work hard, but it was that third year where you have a decent third-year, a proper third-year science project where you're like, here's the project, here's the problem, you go off and do it. It was looking at uh tongues, frogs' tongues and rat's tongues, and the idea was um why can some frogs throw their tongues out further than other animals? And we thought about the um the arrangement of the connected tissue. So I was set up with I was shown how to use a scanning electron microscope and light microscopes and cut sections and stuff, and then I was just left alone, figure this out for yourself. In fact, my supervisor left halfway through to a job in Holland, I think. So I was really left alone, but this really opened my eyes. It's like what I I can do in science with these tools, and using a scanning electron microscope is mind-blowing, right? It's uh it was just incredible. And there were technicians who would help me, so there was the support, but there was also that sense of independence, and you go about this however you think is fit and sort it out with your supervisor because they're more experienced than you. And I realized that you can do this as a job and you can do this as a career, and that PhDs were a thing. It's like, yeah, okay, I want to do a PhD, I want to do this, you can do more of this, and you get paid to do a PhD. Not much, but so it was that basically, it was that whole experience. It was um a teacher at school understanding her students, sure, and then university showing me things I didn't know existed, that then you know I latched onto that route.

SPEAKER_04 10:47

So it was a more of a practical way of uh doing your PhD with all the technology and uh some of the um uh dummies as well when doing um when analyzing the human body or even the anatomy of animals, because you're talking about frogs and yes, that was the the the PhD then was um a molecular cell and developmental biology project.

Choosing Anatomy And The PhD Spark

SPEAKER_00 11:13

I was looking at um the genes that might be regulating um endochondral ossification, cartilage becoming bone, and there's a chick model for that. The sternum. Next time you have a roast Sunday lunch, yes, you look at the sternum, the top third is bone, and the other two thirds are cartilage. So yeah, so in the embryo, we then chick embryos are quite good because they come in a little package, it's an egg, you know. So you can with chick embryos, we were looking at the cartilage and looking at the genes that kept one area of cartilage cartilage and the genes that would drive the other cartilage to become bone. So I was learning differential display RTPCR and things like that. Really tricky, problematic um techniques that other people weren't using at the time locally. So I had to figure out all of these problems with myself. And um it was just incredibly challenging, incredibly difficult, and you know, one of those PhDs where you have no results for the first year because you're figuring out these problems, and then when they start to work, then you start getting differentially displayed genes, you get you know then you start to get targets, and then you can start sequencing those targets, and and it all kind of started rolling. But my wood, PhD is the hardest thing I've ever done by far, and one of the best things I've ever done.

Tough PhD Methods And Breakthroughs

SPEAKER_04 12:36

I think it gets the best of both worlds. The best and well, the worst to an extent of both worlds, because I was chuckling and then you you you we laughed at the same time because it also resonates with my experience. I'm still well doing the corrections of course, but technically being a PhD student. But during my first year, I was quite lost in trying to get everything done for the uh the probation period, and I had to to postpone it for this for the second year, and I only managed to find to do the findings right right at the end of my third year, and then during my fourth year, then I I gathered every material possible and compiled it into 100k words, because we like to write a lot, yeah, and my main argument was literally at six months till the end of my submission, and so I when you said oh the there would there's a bigger challenge, it was so hard to not to get everything done in the first year, and that's where I started I had the chuckles on that.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

I think it's a common feeling in in you know, it's such a challenge, uh, these things, and it's so different doing the PhD and doing a bench-based PhD. You know, um no battle plan survives the first encounter, right? PhDs are like that. It's like we're gonna do this, yes, and then you do it, and yeah, it's uh the techniques you learn are often incredibly high level and very technical. If you're lucky, um you've got a lot of people around you who are doing this routinely. Oh man, that's great, but you're still doing something novel, so it can be very off-putting, can't it, when you're putting all this time in and you're not getting any results back and you're wondering, have I made the right decision?

SPEAKER_04 18:48

But that's when I'm having conversations with uh med students and including PhDs in medicine. Not long ago, I was having a uh talk with uh one of the PhDs in medicine. You might have knew might have crossed with him. His name is Angelo Robles, he's doing another sort of Ph uh sort of PhD in medicine, and he's you know, I've been this is so hard for me, just doing some lab uh work and it needs to be done at this specific time. Oh what if this is wrong? It was completely non-stop of talking medicine alongside with other things, but the main the main focus on the lunch was medicine, and say I need to send this to my supervisor. I don't know if this was gonna happen, what's gonna happen afterwards, and say, Well, the only thing, look, I'm from arts and humanities, I don't understand STEM. The only thing I can say to you, give it a shot and see how it goes. Just don't think about it.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Yeah, you have you just gotta keep pushing on and see what happens. I think um this is this is why I uh I do have great respect for people that have done, I mean, particularly STEM PhDs, because if we feel like we've gone through the same thing, the same difficulties. And I think if you have succeeded, it means you have found ways of getting through those those difficulties that most people don't encounter. Um yeah, I don't have much experience of the arts and humanities PhDs. Um I'd like to know. Yeah, I know a bit about I know a bit about what goes on the business.

SPEAKER_04 20:24

It's a similar concept because it's just a f it affects. We obviously we we tend we write more. We write a huge um uh a huge dissertation with thousands and thousands of words. Mine was a hundred a hundred K words, and in other fields is literally the same.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Yeah, yeah, and of course, in that first year you're really fleshing out your own discipline, right? In your own thoughts, you're writing that introduction, you're pulling all that, all those literature reviews together, and you're really assimilating that information, which in itself is a big job, and I think that's something else you don't realise before you get into a PhD is the level of understanding you've got to get to in that niche area to be able to complete what that PhD means. Yeah, and you figure that out in the first year. It's like during my degree, I didn't understand what hard work was until I probably got to the third year, and I kind of figured it out by then, and the PhD was another big step up again. Um and it made me the person I am, I think.

SPEAKER_04 21:29

Yeah, and you said yourself um that you are competitive, so you you've brought that um competitiveness into your journey pre and then during your PhD, and also you said you said also you have a po you did a postdoc as well. So you brought that all also alongside your academic journey.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

I did a few postdocs. Um I'm naturally competitive, but I try to be less competitive academically. I'm very very competitive of myself. I expect a lot of myself, I think. Um when I succeed, I feel good about that. Do you know what I mean? Um but no, during the PhD, during postdocs, locally, it wasn't about competition, it was about collaboration. It was all about support and working together and helping. You know, you're always gonna, if somebody's learning a technique you know about, oh, I love teaching people about how to do that thing, right? Sure. You love sharing that knowledge and showing off your skills. Um, so no, there's a lot more collaboration, maybe a bit more competition between universities, but even then, um, there's a lot of collaboration between different research groups as well, probably more collaboration than people realise.

SPEAKER_04 22:47

Yeah, uh well, we can we could ask straightforward about compet academic competition and also the competitiveness and how happy you think you feel about of seeing others thriving through collaboration as well. And I would ask you, because you you said you have a YouTube channel with your with your name, and I would I'd like to know who is Sam Webster the the lecturer and then Sam Webster the YouTuber. Are two day are two two sit two different persons?

SPEAKER_00 23:23

No, I'm not that clever, it's all it's all the same. Um so the YouTube thing got a little bit out of hand. I mean, so like I say, when when I had a blog, yeah, um, you were just trying to share your life, and I was reading blogs of other people who would share their lives because that's what us nerds did. We were making the web, right? This was before it became corporate. Um, and then um when I started this job in 2004 and I started teaching, like I say, I'd write articles about this is what we did today. Oh, and here's that paper I said go and read, and here's an annotated picture of that thing I showed you, just to add to the learning, it's basic e-learning. Ever since I started this job, I've always done various e-learning things, and then the podcasts. So then when video became a thing that was fairly easy to do, because you've got to remember that we didn't have the bandwidth for video when YouTube was young. You couldn't watch YouTube at home because you'd have what you know, we wouldn't have 150 megabits per second. You'd know if you had a megabit per second, I mean whoa, half a megabit per second, yeah, you'd be sure enough. My first modem was uh 28.8 kilobits per second, right? Yeah, and then I upgraded to a 56 kilobits per second. So um, and then video was actually quite easy to make because digital cameras came along earlier, so it's quite easy to make digital video, quite easy to edit it, very expensive to host it on a server, very expensive to stream it, nobody really had the bandwidth to watch it. So it was that general thing of that's why YouTube got bigger, is because all the other technologies caught up. So at that point, um, what I'd been doing just shifted to video. So I wasn't making videos for the world, it's just that every time I make an e-learning resource, it's like if I'm putting the time into this, I should share it with everybody because that's what we've always done, us old people on the web. Um, and that means the amount of time I've put into it is more valuable, more efficient because as many people as possible use it. Great, I spent 30 minutes on this and loads of people used it. That's really efficient, right? Um, so I'm making anatomy videos like the blogs for my students, just sharing them widely, and then the vlogs were just a continuation of the blogs. Oh wow, and then well, like I say, it got a bit out of hand.

SPEAKER_04 25:37

Do you have in memory your first ever video of anatomy?

Collaboration Over Competition In Academia

SPEAKER_00 25:44

Um so I'm an outdoorsy person, so the the the vlogs actually have another purpose. I like to because I'm a very active person, I like to be doing active things and outdoors things just to just like with the blogs to show this is a normal, this is how I normally live my life, and try to encourage people to do it, right? You normalise these things like cycling to work, going for a run on the beach, you uh you kind of encourage other people to do it, and it adds a bit of context if you're teaching stuff as well. So I think my early videos were I was talking about cardiac output, and I think I was running on the beach with a GoPro, and and then I was also doing one about um lungs, or maybe maybe it was the mechanisms of breathing which I did on my bike with another GoPro. So I think those were the early ones.

SPEAKER_04 26:33

Wow. So sharing moments and then just going through anatomy lessons.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

It's a different way of teaching, right? Yeah, I can take a camera out.

SPEAKER_04 26:41

It's alternative teaching, and um I think just many of the teeth many of uh the lecturers are um taking that step forwards. It I I I would assume it's it's a small, it's it's a small percentage, I would say, but there's there's I can see there's still uh people who are trying to elevate their uh their position as lecturers and to show to the rest of the people what we can do as teachers, what goes beyond um the teaching room, essentially. There's teachers have a lot have a life that they like as you do with you with your channel and and educ it's it's education basically for towards medicine. But I do, I'm a subscriber myself, and I've liked it's really fun to watch actually, and to get uh like a brief knowledge of oh, it's how a liver works.

SPEAKER_00 28:21

Yeah, it's our own. Bodies, right? We've all got one. That's the other thing, is I want everybody to know how this works. So I started making shorts as well. Sure. Um, I don't know why I remember I don't know why I started doing that. But I started making shorts for some reason, and the shorts are interesting because it's a case of okay, how can I teach somebody interest something interesting about their body in less than a minute? And that's quite nice. And um that then ends up being not at a high level, yeah, but a very everyman level. It's like, yeah, everybody needs to know this. Everybody's got a body, everybody has things that go wrong with their bodies. The better people understand their own bodies, the better for themselves and better for everybody else, right? Um, so that that's a big part of it. I think academics as well, are we we're probably quite bad at having like a life and a job, aren't we? It all blurs together. Sure. Because I mean, I right, so I work at a university and they pay me to study anatomy and then tell other people about it, which is what I would be doing anyway. But they tell me, they pay me to do this, right? Because this is just what I'm interested in. How does the body work? So then, of course, that bleeds into my home life because that's what I'm doing at home. I'm just want to know how everything works, right? So then in terms of videos and podcasts, it's the same thing. That's just me on video or in real life. It's the same.

SPEAKER_04 29:46

Wow. Do you get have you ever got any not so pretty comments when you ever pay attention to to the to the commentaries of uh below down below?

SPEAKER_00 29:59

It's basic human psychology, isn't it? Uh you get lots of really nice, really good supportive comments, but it's that negative one that then sticks in your head.

SPEAKER_04 30:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

And then yeah, so you you kind of when you get when you get big, I get I think I have about two million views every month. Um you get to a point where you partly I don't have time to read all the comments, and partly I don't want to read all the comments.

SPEAKER_04 30:26

That that would be great if we if we uh would make a living out of it just reading uh positive, negative commentaries and reply to them.

The Lecturer Versus The YouTuber

SPEAKER_00 30:35

The vast majority are incredibly supportive and positive, but like I say, it's just my own personal psychology that you tend to fixate on the negative ones, but it's the same as student feedback, right? If you if you've got 150 students and you deliver a whole bunch of sessions, you do deliver a module, and all the feedback you get says, this was good, this was fine, don't change anything, and then you get one bit of feedback that says I hate this bit, what do you do? Do you change it? Well, you shouldn't, right? Yeah, but yeah, so it's the same with YouTube comments, yeah. Except YouTube comments are weirder, much, much weirder.

SPEAKER_04 31:10

Yeah, yeah, and obviously I mine for my podcast, I never received any commentary whatsoever, like in such nature. Uh, when I started to put it on YouTube, I I can recall a one time that I that I had a comment, but it was a very elaborative commentary that's that the one user said I I was unimpressed with one of the interviews we got. And I say, no, this is a nice constructive feedback, and I earned a subscriber from that. I said, I really thank you for that. And we just you can't control basically what other people are saying, and as you said, we just get in your head, but then you just have to release it.

SPEAKER_00 31:53

But I do have some very supportive people making comments, and I've I've made I've made friends with people who've made comments and made links and we've talked together by email. Uh so comments are weird as well, it's a bit like trying to get student feedback again because you ask for student feedback and you mostly don't get any. You just get either end of the spectrum, you know, really enthusiastic or really unhappy people. And YouTube, um, the vast majority of people on YouTube and on the internet generally never comment on anything, never say anything. Twitch, YouTube, the vast majority say nothing. So you've already got a very small self-selected pool of people that are saying things. So it's difficult to know how to take that, but like I say, most people are positive. Um it's just it's it's just me really. My main aim is to make stuff, and the topics I choose every week is just stuff I'm interested in that week. That's why there's not much structure. So there's something we've done or something I'm interested in that I need I just need to tell everybody about.

SPEAKER_04 32:53

So it's not it's not the on what you teach basically. So in other words, you have this you have this module about about the the the human brain, the anatomy of the human brain. Do you take something, any information from that module onto YouTube?

SPEAKER_00 33:12

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm if we've been teaching something that week, I might make a video about it. Okay. But you do this for 10 years, you've already made a video about it. So you're looking for something else to make a video about. Um the videos themselves, um, so you've only got so much time with the students. So the other thing the written blog and the video does, it gives you more time with the students. So I can the videos are structured so that they start off with a very low assumption of knowledge, right? So anybody can come in and I'll introduce stuff and lift you up. I find that students that already know this stuff don't mind because they like the refresher and they think, oh, I know this, this is good, so it's quite positive. And the people that don't know it, well, it's good for them because you're lifting them up. And then I kind of cover the material that's most important, most relevant, and as you go through the video, it starts to get more detailed and more esoteric. It gets summarized at the end. But what that means is the viewer can just jump off when you've got enough. That's it, you're done, you can jump off. Because I'm not actually fussed about YouTube stats, you see, I'm not actually fussed with numbers. So that would be terrible if you wanted good YouTube numbers, because the main determinant for the algorithm at the moment is if people watch to the end or not. If people the more people watch the end of your video, the more your video will be shared by the algorithm to others, but I don't care. So it it does that. So it by doing that, we can I can cover the content I maybe talked about that week and then add the other detail I didn't have time for, and maybe tie in other things which the learner will then make those connections and remember it better.

SPEAKER_04 34:40

So those ones that you add this through YouTube Shorts then, isn't it? Those extra layers.

SPEAKER_00 34:47

Those are the long form videos. The long form from the long form. The 10, 20, 30 minute videos. Oh, 30 minutes is a bad idea.

SPEAKER_04 34:54

Did you ever try to include any students into one of your videos?

SPEAKER_00 35:01

Um no, not intentionally. I'm a one-man band. I am so busy, I do so much work that honestly this gets squeezed in when I can. I I found in the past that if I work with other people for this sort of thing and rely on other people, it doesn't get done, doesn't get finished. The only it seems like the only person who can keep up with me is me. Sure. Um I have done something. I think there's some students in the background in one video because they were just there and they wanted to do it for a laugh. Um and bits and bobs, but no, it's that's why it's just me, is because then I've got control and I I I won't get it done if I'm waiting for other people. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 35:40

I mean again, this this is all completely new for me when it comes to anatomy, medicine in general, but say just one man person to hold on to him to himself and then just to explain all the the beauty of the human body in s in a plain and simple language with less jargon, although it sometimes is necessary to add some specific words to it, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:08

Yeah, you build up the jargon.

SPEAKER_04 36:09

You build up the jargon and say, okay, I don't want to, I don't want jargon. I just want to see the to see the the the dummy.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

Yeah. So the shorts are interesting and inter because if they're an interesting challenge, because trying to do it in a minute, and I usually will get it in the first take as well, is um what have I absolutely got to include? So that's an interesting challenge.

SPEAKER_04 36:33

So so could you explain one time you had the challenge when to make a a video about a specific region of the human body? Do you have a v do you have a video where you found it was the most difficult to explain?

SPEAKER_00 36:55

Um it's always neuroanatomy. Um and it's mostly because most of the body you can like pull layers aside and see other things. The brain is so soft. I don't use uh human tissue in the videos, it's just plastic models. But it's the same problem with plastic models. You can't move it in such a way as to show the things you want to show. Like a muscle is a muscle. See, that muscle starts there, ends there, that's a muscle. What does it do? It does that, and that's the nerve that innovates it. Brain isn't like that. Yeah, it's soft tissues and tracts and nuclei and grey matter, and it overlaps and it blends, and they share functional, and they're all interconnected, and they have circuits. And um, I know from my own experience that learning neuroanatomy and neuroscience is very difficult. It's scary for most students because it's uh so abstract, I think. Um so that is uh it's a major challenge, and also my own understanding of this is improving, and humanity's understanding as a whole is improving, right? So that's another thing that annoys students is yeah, we don't actually know what all these things do yet, so sorry. And I'm teaching you this thing might change in the next five years. I'm sorry, because we're at that end, right? The cutting edge. So that that's always the hardest, those are the hardest topics. Um it's so kind of ephemeral.

SPEAKER_04 38:19

Wow. I mean, as as you said, it also keeps keeps evolving.

Making Shorts For Every Body

SPEAKER_00 38:24

Yeah. But then during COVID, I we I uh I was still making videos during COVID, they were mostly in my back garden. And the one on my list to do soon is I did the basal ganglia. The basal ganglia are structures deep in the brain, they're involved in movement, they're actually involved in inhibiting movement. So with Parkinson's disease, that's when those circuits stop working, and then you start to see resting tremors. Um I don't know how I recorded that video without any models, but I basically did it from I think from photos that I had and just describing it. So and I'm writing a textbook at the moment with a colleague, Pocket Atlas of Neuroanatomy, and now I understand the basal ganglia better. So you see, now I want to go back and do that video again with the models I have in the lab with my improved understanding, and maybe I can do a better job. But I don't go back and watch my own video, so maybe I did a great job last time. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 39:14

But don't you you do backtracking to see oh what I've what could I improve here? What can I improve?

SPEAKER_00 39:21

Um no, I assume I did a great job.

SPEAKER_04 39:25

So you just they essentially oh I'm gonna make this video, I'll edit it when I'll edit it, and then I'll launch it, and then I'll just ghost myself.

SPEAKER_00 39:34

It's done. And done.

SPEAKER_04 39:35

Yeah. You're just only going back. Oh, let me see the comments.

SPEAKER_00 39:39

No, it's just what's the next video? Just the next video. What am I interested in right now? What are we gonna do the next video about? It's always about the next thing. Yeah, um, I've got a post-it note above my monitor. So I uh October this year, um I've been making a vlog and an anatomy video every week for nine years. Yes. Um, and there's a post-it note which I put up at the beginning, which just said just keep uploading, and it's still there. Because you've got to simplify, right? Yeah, make a perfect video every week. No, if you make a perfect video, you're never gonna get it done. Just up the only rule I have is I have to upload something. And going through that process of having to upload something means iteratively I keep improving because you always reflect on what you're doing, especially if you're a teacher, and it's in the editing process you think, ah, next time, next time, next all those little things add up, and with time, hopefully, I get better. Um, but I'm not I'm not aware of any videos that I've done really badly that I want to do again, but things that I understand better, like or things that I've learned new and cool things about, I'll do that again. That's an excuse to talk about that again.

SPEAKER_04 40:49

I see. Well, and as you said as well, because I was watching a video this morning and saying doing the hard things, you it was a vlog that you have uploaded. Yeah, and these are these if you just go wait for the perfect time to oh make a this perfect video, as you said, you never get it done. It's just making the hard things. And as you said, we we were talking about the at the beginning of of the of the of this talk and saying just doing the hard things.

SPEAKER_00 41:17

Yeah, I think the vlogs are a bit of a cheat, because really I can do a vlog however I want, I can do it low quality, I can talk about whatever I like, it's a vlog, right? I can whereas the anatomy videos have to have a bit of structure and stuff, um but yeah, with that I was talking about um how when you realise you can do hard things, sure, and the PhD very much teaches you that, it's absolutely revelatory because you see other people do hard things and you think and then you learn you can do those hard things, like man, I I can do anything if I really put my mind to it, I can do whatever I want. Now, what is it I want? Um, and a lot of that is having the support around you, you know. Uh, you're as a PhD student, if you've got a good supervisor and if you've got a great co-supervisor, that that is the support that will make you realise you can do anything. Um, and with making videos and podcasts, um, I talk to lots of people about this, and the hardest thing is not the recording, it's not the making, it's the hitting upload, is the sharing it, right? That's the terrifying bit. I mean, I I still get it every week. Every time I'm gonna edit, every day of the week when I'm editing a video, I am grumpy. Oh because I'm not, I don't want to do it, I don't want to share it. I just I'm just kind of got this grumpy mood on it.

SPEAKER_03 42:40

So there's this that that bit of oh no no, I'm gonna do this, and then when it hits the moment of yes, no, I want to upload, but yes, no.

SPEAKER_00 42:52

The rule, the only rule is I've got to upload something. So it's like it's done, it's going up, and then worry about the next one. I think that method of worrying about the next one means you don't dwell on the last one, because I really don't think about it. Once it's gone, it's like great, what's next? Um, I think the PhD is the same thing, right? Because my PhD was not finished as I expected it to be. Wasn't as perfect as I wanted it to be, wasn't as complete as I wanted it to be, didn't go in the way I wanted it to be. But it's like a case of you just gotta finish it, you just gotta you gotta get it finished, you gotta submit it, move on to the next thing. Move on to the next thing.

SPEAKER_04 43:28

Yeah, that's when I'm also pondering what to do next. So finishing. Yeah, yeah. Um I know what I I re I know what I want. I just need to do a breakdown of okay, first do the corrections, and then what's coming next?

SPEAKER_00 43:47

That's you looking for jobs or have you looked?

SPEAKER_04 43:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've I've already glanced them. Uh just seeking out career boost here, and uh they they're really helpful in seeking out graduate jobs in arts and humanities, but I my background is ancient history. So at the moment, just glancing, finish up the corrections, and then after that just started just um searching for graduate jobs on that, on that, on that side.

SPEAKER_00 44:13

You know, that that is the route. I am I kind of almost saw my youngest going down the same route. Okay. Um, really interested in history. We went to the open day here, very impressed with the history uh lecturers here. Man, they are really good, and they did the small group thing afterwards, really, really nice. Um, so and they're interested in the ancient history side of things, and I could see, and they were talking about academics and stuff, so I could see PhD in the future and what have you, and they were nailed on for that. Um, but they were tied with illustration as well because they're an artist, they've picked the illustration route, I'm afraid to say.

SPEAKER_04 44:47

Oh, there's an illustration you ended up winning.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

Yeah, I guess applications going into it.

Neuroanatomy’s Challenge And Evolving Science

SPEAKER_04 44:52

But that's something that you said as well that here the the arts and humanities department, they have we have uh great lecturers and they are great great supervisors, and as you were saying, also the supervisor. If a supervisor is an excellent uh tutor, then I think the PhD candidate will also be outstanding, and I think that's what makes uh the department so good. If someone tries to tries to motivate that person, only or if the student motivates himself or herself as well, and um and that's basically then and that that is how how it works, and we were saying saying about competition. If you you are competitive with yourself, as you said, and you but you like to see others going through, and that's what makes you fulfilling in your role as a lecturer. Uh, I do I wonder how your students are competitively.

SPEAKER_00 45:55

Uh they're med students. Yeah, they're famously competitive. Um, yeah, it's really interesting. So when you've done your medicine degree, there's no there's no grade as such, right? It's either you get it or you don't get it. It's not like a first or a 2-1 or a 2-2. And then after the degree, you go into the foundation programme. So you've got two years of foundation training, F1 and F2. Um, and it was so part of the algorithm looked at the decile that you finished in, what your scores were like at medical school to determine whether you got the job you wanted to get in the first foundation year. They've changed that um to a different method. They don't look at any of your scoring data, and I think the aim is to try to give everybody their first choice as far as they can. If you don't get your first choice, then your second choice and what have you. So try to get people to go where they want to go and work. Um, and I've heard anecdotally from students that that has taken away some of the competitiveness, not just the competitiveness though, the the the that push to work really hard to score the best grades, they they take the foot off the gas a little bit. Probably doesn't matter, they're still gonna be excellent doctors. Um, but now there is competition at higher levels, surgical like at uh trainee levels, because there aren't enough jobs, I think. Then in some disciplines um it's harder to get jobs than in others. So there's a lot of competition at higher levels, and I still see that in med students. I so whenever I do lectures, and often in uh the anatomy teaching, I'll use like cahoot quizzes and what have you.

SPEAKER_04 47:31

I heard of it, yes.

SPEAKER_00 47:32

Yeah, really competitive, and it's great fun because they're really noisy, they're debating, they're discussing the answers, they're talking about what we've been talking about. Love it as a as a teacher, and also you get immediate feedback on they got the right answer, damn. They were listening. Brilliant. Um, so they're a naturally competitive bunch. Funnily enough, back in the day when I because I run a series of embryology lectures, back before Kahoot, when we had physical clickers, so you'd hand them out in the lecture and they'd press the button and for the answers you'd put up in your PowerPoint presentation. I used to run as a boys versus girls. Oh we did this for a number of years, and the thing we learned was that boys cheat. They would pinch extra clickers and they'd sign into the girls' team and they'd put the wrong answers in to bring the girls' score down. Yeah, so uh yeah, very competitive. Not sure, you know, and obviously they're not too seriously competitive, but there's this natural I think it's very, very hard to get into medicine, right?

SPEAKER_04 48:31

So it's a natural and healthy and unhealthy composition?

SPEAKER_00 48:37

It's it's healthy if you manage it. Oh you know, it's um I think you've got to be that type of person to do medicine, to go into medicine. You've got to be up for the challenge, right? You've got to be up for the challenge to get a place on a medical school programme. Yeah. Because it's hard, it's you know, we have what 1300 people apply, and we've got 150 places, you know. Um, so you're already selected for that type of person. And then when they start, I try to just encourage that collaboration, that working together, because they're graduates, they've got degrees, they've got careers in different disciplines, so they can help each other. You know, the pharmacologist can help their group of friends, and the anatomist can then help the pharmacologist and so on, and they'll all grow faster. Um but I think I think competition is healthy. Um, I think it also teaches you how to fail.

SPEAKER_04 49:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:32

Because you're not going to win all the time. And if you learn, if you get used to little failures, then hopefully you learn how to deal with the big failures. Medic is often the first time somebody fails something meaningful. Yeah. And the real challenge, the real the important thing about failure is how you figure out how to succeed in that thing that you failed, right? Rather than giving up.

SPEAKER_04 49:58

How did you have in during your PhD and then your academic career any sort of a fail uh of a failing of a moment where you said to yourself, I failed in this in this aspect. How can how can I improve it to make it to make it a successful?

SPEAKER_00 50:22

Uh yeah, PhD all the time. Yeah. Your cells die. Yes. Your sales die. Damn, I'll wear my lucky socks next time. We're so skeptical, and yeah, you know, there are some things in in uh in STEM subjects where we'll take all the luck we can get. Um yeah, I mean during the PhD it was just failure after failure after failure, but it was also incremental progression. I understand this a little bit better. I understand why this I understand what to do next. And it was that keep trying at this thing, which makes that final success so much more rewarding. Sure. And I think I found once I'd succeeded once, you could succeed more easily again. Because you learned so much from each of those failures, you better understood the process, and then you would succeed over and over again, and you could train other people how to do it as well. The biggest one was during my degree though, um, I was terrible at biochemistry. Again, probably because it's abstract, right? And because I want to know how everything works, I couldn't just learn biochemistry and that that plus that does that. It's like, yeah, but why? Yeah, but why? But but but why? And you go down this rabbit hole of but why? And I failed my biochemistry exams, so then I had to, you know, approach the biochemistry lecturers and do extra tutorials and accept this process of learn these facts. And you're not just learning and regurgitating, this is a useful thing that you're learning, but that's enough, you don't need to learn all the details. And then I started passing my biochemistry exams, and then I could, you know, I didn't fail the degree. Um, and that was the first thing I failed that was really important, I suppose. I mean my A-level results weren't great, but um, that was the one where I had to really figure out how to change what I was doing.

Shipping Imperfect Work And Consistency

SPEAKER_04 52:12

Yeah, I was thinking on my mind here as well, because we all have failures, and I think from this stage from a PhD candidate and then to a postdoc and then becomes a a lecturer, uh, most of the students will see us as as role models, right? And then they expect from us that we cannot we cannot fail because obviously they are paying the tuition fees, we get paid from them. But at the same obviously, we don't share these moments uh of failure because obviously you have so much to do in your head. But I was I was recalling my my times on in secondary school, but also during my university, during my uni uh times as an undergraduate that I had to fail three times during my uh geometry module. This was back in secondary school, because I was doing visual arts at the time, and I needed to do lots and lots of exercises uh to in order to pass the exams. So at the third at the third attempt, I've managed to pass, and then university on the first year I had medieval history, no, sorry, second year, medieval history, it was the hardest module I've ever faced. And and say, Okay, I'm gonna keep failing this time. So how can I revert the situation? And the solution was I need to go abroad.

SPEAKER_00 53:39

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 53:40

I went to Spain to finish my undergraduate, and I had only six modules left. Uh the medieval history was the hardest one, and when I went back to when I went to Spain uh to take that module, it was even the lecturing style was even harder than my one, than the the one that I had back in my home country in Portugal. I passed in a tangential uh at um tangentially, I'm I can't remember the uh the the proper name was was a little gap of one point above failure.

SPEAKER_00 54:17

Creeped over.

SPEAKER_04 54:18

So it was creeped over there, and I say, oh my gosh, I've passed already. So I I was um I was so cheerful and joyful on uh that moment that oh my god, I won't have to deal with this anymore. And and those are the I think those are the moments where when you fail and try again and you improve and review it every single day, it's a matter to it's a it's uh one more point towards uh towards success, say to say that. And I guess students we uh students sometimes have to also to think about oh, so if despite all the failures that we as because we're humans that we take through, they also expect from us, okay. So if the if Simon Webster made up this far, he had to learn a lot. So we can also follow his his example.

SPEAKER_00 55:23

Yeah, and I try to share my failures, you know. Um as a as a lecturer, my biggest job satisfaction comes from students that aren't succeeding, yeah, and then helping them succeed, right? And a big part of that is psychological, the things that you've been describing, right? It's it's awful to not succeed, right? It's awful to fail at something, it feels terrible. If it's a little thing, you get over it. But if it's something that's really meaningful, it really knocks you to your core. It's like, man, this means I cannot do this thing that I really want to do. Because, like you say, you look at other people and you don't see their failures. Yeah, I work with a huge number of clinicians, and as an anatomy teacher, I have orthopedic surgeons who love telling me how they failed their anatomy exams and now they're surgeons, like you know, because they're really proud of this, right? That's why they like telling me because they overcame this thing. Turns out they loved anatomy and now they've become a surgeon. Um, I know some very eminent, uh very eminent consultant who failed his final year OSCIS. You're not supposed to fail your final year OSCIS, and he is now like super highly regarded. Nobody sees that, he doesn't tell everybody that. Um, so people do hide their failures as well, but no, what we're what we're doing is not easy. If it's worth doing, it's not easy, right? If if if it was easy, everybody would be doing it. Yeah, um, but it does, it just feels awful to fail. So a big part of what I try to do is try to share that feeling of awfulness, take a bit of the burden on, right? And say we've all been through this, and um there's a huge amount of psychology to success, right? I think another important thing, and I think this is important for PhDs as well, is try not to let other people define what success is for you, right? Society is a construct, biology, physics, it's real. You're you are you, you define what is success for yourself, you define what it is you want to do. Don't let other people assume for you, don't fit into those societal norms of this is what success means. Because just because you hit those things doesn't mean you're gonna be happy or feel good about yourself. What is it you really want to do? What is it you really want to get out of the PhD? And you might not know the PhD might just be I'm doing this because I'm really interested in this thing and I want to do this thing. That that is your measure of success, and if you feel good, if you you know, if you feel happy as a result, bam, big tick. Right, right?

SPEAKER_04 57:55

I think it is. So would that be your definition of success? You have already one.

SPEAKER_00 58:01

No, I've not given anybody else a definition of success. You define success for yourself, right? So it's a personal thing, it's like happiness. Happiness happiness is not a thing that people experience all the time. Happiness is a transient feeling. So people are chasing happiness, I know maybe expecting it to be a permanent state, but it's not. It's uh it's a it's a thing that comes and goes, right?

SPEAKER_04 58:24

Yeah, it's it's uh those well those definitions that are on the dictionary and then say the societal to a norm, it is just what society says. Uh those feelings are within, and the only you're the only ones who can cultivate that.

SPEAKER_00 58:41

That's the most important bit, isn't it? Yeah, it's your brain, it's your psychology, they're your feelings.

SPEAKER_04 58:46

Yeah. So that do you also feel uh do you also feel that way when you play Hades?

SPEAKER_00 58:52

Um right up until the last encounter, yeah. See, I mean video games are great, aren't they, for learning failure? Video games are just I mean, the the people who make video games are genius teachers. Yeah. The way they teach you how to do things and you don't know is that you're learning, and then you become an expert at it, and you feel like a genius. Um yeah, Hades, I'm all the way through to the last encounter, but I still haven't done it yet. Oh my word.

SPEAKER_04 59:20

I didn't know about the game. My girlfriend had to ask F to tell me. Oh, love, what is um Sam playing? Let me see. Oh, he's playing Hades, isn't it? Uh Warcraft. No, no, it's Hades. Oh, okay. I didn't know because RP RPG games of that nature, honestly, for me it's doesn't work with me. I I like more collective video games, but in terms of more sporting and cars as well.

SPEAKER_00 59:50

Maybe you should just try it.

Medical Student Competitiveness And Assessment

SPEAKER_04 59:51

I need to try it. Just try it. I need to try more a bit more. I need to speak with my brother, but now because my brother now is in Norway, can't I can't reach him. Uh, of course. But I need to talk with my partner because she loves you love to play RPG games.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:05

So yeah, I played World of Warcraft when it came out in 2004. I've got a World of Warcraft character that's older than my kids. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:13

Which one is it?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:13

I'm not a good role model. Well, it's a uh dwarf hunter. Yeah. Um but I think video games are very interesting. I've always again being a nerd, I grew up with video games. Yeah, I was playing video games on DOS, well, before DOS, Atari and stuff. Pong, I played Pong anyway, sorry. Pong. You know the Pat Pong? Oh yes, I know I know Pong. Anyway, I know Pong. I have literally grown up with all this. What was my point? Um but video games, then they teach you um about failure, little failures, and failure is a part of the learning process, and you do get really frustrated and angry and annoyed.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:54

Many times I was so fucking frustrated of doing doing to win to win uh a 24 Le Mans race on the on on my desktop at the time was what 20 years ago when the uh Toka was in. You you know have you heard of Toka, Toka drivers? It was a big boom before Gran Turismo came in. So my god, I need to win this. So go so got so fed up, and so they even I got slapped by my parents once when we wasn't normalized at the time, Evoke.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:25

It's like when you get hit by a blue shell as you're about to go through the finish line in Mario Kart in first place. Who's that blue shell? Anyway, yeah. But I I am interested in um so the other thing about video games is of course they're often very visuospatial. And anatomy is also very visuospatial. Yes. So there's a there's a tie in there. The reason I find anatomy easy is because it's probably very easy for me to build these three-dimensional spaces in my head. So I'm often interested in students if they play video games, what type of games they play and how they get on in finding their way around the video game world or the real world, because often that ties into how easy it is for them to understand anatomy. Um, but doesn't it yeah, doesn't uh doesn't the history of playing video games teach you how to deal with those little failures which feel oh so meaningful at the time because it's the last boss and you're dripping with sweat and your heart rate's like 160 BPM and you just sat in a chair. Do you know what I mean? If you if you go through those safe virtual experiences, does that help you with real life? I don't know. I don't do psychology.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:25

Well, I wish I could do, but it was it's not my cup of tea. I prefer ancient history and uh for ancient for ancient history games uh Assassin's Creed is Oh you're learning while you're playing, right? You learn while you play. I've the first the first one I got was Assassin's Creed 2. Yeah, and I knew they were they had the the novels written by Oliver Bowden. I don't know if Bowden is a common surname here in Welsh, um just asking. Anyways, um but I've learned a lot from AC2 and then Brotherhood uh Revelations and so on. I never knew so much about Renaissance Florence when I had art history license. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I need to if I needed to do so. There was this time I needed to we were having uh Renaissance history, art history, and the uh the the lecturer at the time was telling about the technology of the Cathedral of Florence because it was made in uh in various tier uh tiers in various faces. So I was thinking about okay, so what's the best time to check out these? I mean I have the internet, but I also have a c2. Okay, let's let's play it on my PlayStation and see how it goes. I was doing the missions, the the um the parkour missions, and like oh I need to get reached to the top of the of the Duomo or the uh the the big the big vault of the Florence Florence's cathedral. So oh, so this is how it's built because they have a they have a snip um um a brief information about the cathedral, who made this, um the material, how the engineering uh worked at the time, and I was like, oh, okay. So they had a they had a model built with by uh they built with uh with wood. So it was like a um uh a blueprint for them. And I say, ah, now I get it. So and that was and then we had a uh group work and we had good we had a a nice uh a nice great. I don't remember how which one was it, but I'm surely that AC2 was helpful was helpful on that.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:33

It does all it's all wider learning, wider reading, right? Are you now at the level where you're critiquing what you see in those games? You're saying that's not right and that is right.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:42

So have you heard of uh Operation? The the the anatomy game. Yeah, yeah. So would you what would you do if you if you just like have you have this lecture about about the human body in in any place? Would you invite your students to be competitive and then just take off the bones? What would you do if you and what would you do if if they would fail?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:05

Yeah, no, operation is not so useful for learning accurate enough, we know it's a bit too vague, no. Um we um competition can be very useful in getting groups of students to work together, and I we like that because if groups of students are working together, they're talking to each other, so they're debating what the right answer is, they're comparing their own knowledge, they're error-checking each other, they're having um little arguments and discussions. Man, that helps learning so much because anatomy is another language, right? So they're saying the language out loud. Um yeah, so competition is really helpful in that respect. Um, but even in that competition, you've already got collaboration. Yeah, you've got one group fighting against another, particularly if you've got uh new students who don't really know each other very well yet, and you can get them doing this, and they start to relax, they start to know each other and talk, and yeah, it's nice, isn't it, as a learner in a group of other people that you don't know, yeah, to then know them all a bit better. It all feels a bit easier. Yeah.

unknown 1:06:13

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:15

And then once it gig hit the exams, I do remember as well that you said on the on the on this last vlog you've made that they had an exam to do. Yeah, wasn't it? It was just a form of a simulation then.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:28

Yeah.

unknown 1:06:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:29

Yeah, so we're just um the anatomy spotter exam is a very strange exam. Um we have physical objects, we put pins in things, and we ask them questions about it's recognition and recall, what's the name of that thing? What what what nerve innovates that thing? Yeah, so we like to give them a dress rehearsal so they know what's coming up.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:46

Oh, okay. So it's more of a spoiler alert for them.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:49

Yeah, I show them the real level. Um we we are marking them, we'll give them their marks back, but the marks don't mean anything to us, it's just for them. It's mostly showing them this is exactly what's expected of you, how prepare. So when we do the summative exam, this is what you'll get. Um and that type of exam is different again because we're not spreading the students out like first two, one, two, two, we're setting a bar and saying if you know a bit about everything, you'll get over this bar. So the pass marks are about 50%. Most students should be scoring about 70-75%. And I know the students do battle to try to get 100% because it's entirely doable. Usually, students have done some anatomy before. So easy to make a mistake, though. I reckon I probably wouldn't get 100% going around my own exam. Not because it's hard, I just make a silly little mistake somewhere, you know. Sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:38

Oh my. Uh well, as you said, it's it's the competition, but then how they see themselves in a in a real-world scenario, then.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:49

Yeah, when they're working in medicine, they're not going to be competing when they're working, they're going to be collaborating, they're part of a team, and they're part of other teams. Um, so um medicine is there's a lot of learning to be a uh a lone worker and very much being a team player, communication is a huge part of this. Yeah. Um, so there's a lot of hidden curriculum stuff in anatomy. There's a lot of uh communication skills that we develop, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:14

Problem solving as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:16

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:18

I guess it it it it hits all across across all areas.

Learning Through Failure And Resilience

SPEAKER_00 1:08:24

Yeah, we've been teaching like modern anatomy for about 400 years. We've kind of got the hang of it. Not me personally. But you know, in from Italy, yeah, the first anatomy lecture theatres, um, the first universities there. Well, uh uh you know, pretty much yeah, just over 400 years ago. And we haven't really changed that much. We've added to our knowledge of anatomy, but we still do small group teaching with a body or with other objects, practical stuff.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:53

Plus the oil on canvas of the anatomy lesson by uh Rembrandt. Uh you've probably heard of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:59

Nicholas Toolp. Nicolas Toolp. The anatomy lesson of Nicholas Toolp.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:03

Yes. Um is that it? No. So the um probably it is, but it I was refer I was recalling to um an oil on canvas anatomy lesson of uh of a physician dissecting the this area of the forearm. Yeah. So he's well, it's from uh from Rembrandt, he's famous for these bigger, bigger canvases.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:27

Yeah, the anatomy lesson is um there's a body that's very grey, and there's a small group of bearded gentlemen, and then a teacher at the front, and some interesting use of light and colour. And it is my classic example of hey look, small group teaching. Hey look, small group teaching. What have we changed?

SPEAKER_04 1:09:45

They're all paying attention or how this how the radio, yeah, if it's the metatarsus and the radio, how how how do I dissect it? How do I dissect it?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:56

Yeah, I mean there are fewer roughs and beards now, but otherwise, you know, it's yeah, and we we do have new things like YouTube and podcasts and the internet and stuff, but it's it's not really changing much the body.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:10

No, I think it's just the less the there are transferable skills throughout the centuries. I mean, just proper lessons were made, as you said, 400 years ago. Even going back further, histor historically, we had we had the Arabs who basically knew about um medicine. Hence the word medicine comes from a physician called Ibn Sina. Yeah, and many of them I that I'd risk to say that most of the people are uninformed about it and they think, oh, everything was a creation from the Western world, which in f to an extent it developed wildly, yes, but or originally it came from the Islamic world during the uh the uh the peak of the caliphate era.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:00

Yeah, and that's exactly how we think about it.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:02

Yeah, that's where the knowledge was for a long period of time when there wasn't so much knowledge in Europe, yeah, and and so life goes on, sitting here, sitting down with a proper anatomist. You said also, because we were talking about YouTube and um your teaching experience. You said you also have a podcast as well. Yeah around the same concept?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:26

Um, yeah, it's again, it's another teaching thing, so it's the Dissectable Me podcast. It's limited to five minutes.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:32

Dissectable me.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:33

Dissectable me. Yeah, we teach physician associates, and when we do, I do a Kahoot quiz at the end of every session, and they came up with great pseudonyms. Uh, really, really ingenious pseudonyms. So when we were thinking about starting a podcast, we said, What should we call our podcast? And that's they came up with that name, so we picked that. Um it's um again, it's a topic of so Chris Summers and I were doing it regularly. Uh-huh. Chris fell by the wayside, so it's me doing one every week. Um he says he's gonna come by next year, we'll see. Um, but it's um it's five minutes on whatever topic we're interested in, and that five-minute so that it's giving choice again with e-learning, right? Um, you can go out and read something before the teaching, you can watch some YouTube videos before the teaching, listen to some podcasts. We're not expecting you to use it all, we're giving you choice. You pick whatever works for you. So if you haven't got much time, five-minute podcast is gonna introduce you to the terms, introduce you to the subject and warm you up, and it only takes five minutes. And for me as a teacher, because I can talk for hours about most things, right? Uh university lecturers are terrible for that. Um, if I've only got five minutes, okay, wow, what do they really need to know? What is really clinically relevant? And that's a great exercise. Especially when you've been teaching a long time, because it distills down what you do know to what you should know.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:01

To what you should to pro to what exactly they want to know.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:05

What they need to know. What you need to know about. This is what you need to know about.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:08

Yeah. Oh. Which takes out a lot of faff. Any any upcoming sessions?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:15

I make it up as I go. As you as you go. Every week. I just make it up, whatever topic. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:20

So it would be the same on the same day that uh when a YouTube video is launched?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:27

No. Um so Monday I'm teaching all day gem. Tuesday I find to do find time to do a short. And literally it takes me five minutes of work to do a short. Just have an idea and go to the lab, grab a light. I use the meta Ray Ban glasses because they got the camera in the thing. So I can use both my hands. I just get a big light and usually record it in one go. Um, Wednesday I try to record a video when the labs have finished being used. Um, so Thursday is editing. I'll do a vlog at some point during the week, often on the weekend. Friday is when I do a podcast. And again, because it's a five-minute thing and I should know about it, it shouldn't take me much time to research, and it should only take me five or six minutes to record. So it's all about efficiency. It's like what's most useful for somebody else, and how can I maximize the probability that I will complete this task every week?

unknown 1:14:20

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:21

So if you've already got a topic in your head, yeah, that makes it easier for you to record that topic, right? Because you've already done the research. If I'm if I'm already teaching something on the Wednesday, because we teach on Wednesdays, we're gonna teach on Tuesdays, Monday, you know, if I've already talked about something that week. And often, if you're teaching, if you're you're teaching a lesson and you've done some research, you'll often come across this really interesting thing, like, oh, I didn't know that really interesting thing. Now I've got to tell everybody about it. So that's a short or that's a podcast, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:14:50

Wow, and I think with all this information, uh I think I just got a brief knowledge of knowing a bit about the anatomy from your from your ex teaching experience. And I think this is a good way of wrapping up the the session because we could we could stay here all day long, but just tackling time and then uh talking about more about anatomy in the teaching experience and also other topics as well as you like, unless you have something to share before before wrapping up.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:27

No, not in particular.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:28

Um any advice for whoever wants to take a PhD specifically in this area or then in general as well?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:37

Just in general. Um a PhD is harder than you think it's gonna be. Yeah, um, and because it's hard, you're gonna struggle and you're gonna have failures, and that's fine. Yeah, um, it's worth it in the end. It's um yeah, so I I think before I did a PhD, the title was important to me, and after I did a PhD, don't care. Nobody ever calls me Dr. Webster, or even the people I work with. Um, yeah, no, it was all it was all about the experience, and yeah, I think it was a really important part of my life. I can't recommend it hard heartily enough, but you gotta be up for it.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:23

And I think this is an excellent way of uh finishing up the session. Thank you for having me. So thank you so much, Sam, and your channel, Sam Webster, your podcast, the Disect Dissectable Me. Dissectable Me. So, students and graduates, make sure to pop up on the show notes and look out for for Sam's YouTube channel, also his academic profile if you're interested. You say you also have a LinkedIn as well with your same name as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:59

It exists, I don't use it much, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm quite searchable, I think.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:06

So just crack on on that. And Sam Webster, thank you so much for having and thank you for the time for for to to come.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:15

Thank you. That was fun. Nice to be back trying to PhD students again.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:18

We can also talk afterwards if it's useful. Like so for you citizen graduates, so thank you for tuning in. Again, make sure to follow um Sam Webster's podcast and YouTube channel. And as for me, it's been a pleasure.