Episode 49 : Flatliners with N.J. Gallegos

It's spooky season and that means I have something a little different planned for you. This week HATM is joined by emergency physician Dr. N.J. Gallegos to talk about Flatliners (1990). We also talk about her new book The Broken Heart, med school, her work as a physician, and because we are both nerds, Star Wars. It's a rolling and fun episode with one of my favorite people on the planet.

About our guest:
N.J. Gallegos is an Emergency Medicine Physician who enjoys horror, medicine, and wicked women looking for revenge. Put all three together? Now we're talking! She lives in Illinois with her wife and two cats. In her spare time, she enjoys binging reality trash tv, brewing beer, and running while listening to EDM so she can drink said brewed beer.
You can find her on twitter at @DrSpooky_ER
Her debut novel, The Broken Heart, is available here: https://a.co/d/1CzVX4T 

Transcript

Jason Herbert (00:56.454)
 Hey, Dr. Gallegos, how you doing?

N. J. Gallegos (00:56.638)
Yeah.

N. J. Gallegos (01:03.36)
Hey, how are you?

Jason Herbert (01:05.839)
I have to, and great. I'm just deciding on your name. We were just talking. You actually have a name, but a moniker as well. And then a title of doctor, which is awesome. I guess. So I guess it is awesome. I am so glad we could find that you and I have been like following each other for a while now and we've been like, I remember when I started following you on. The site formerly known as Twitter. I was just like, this person is awesome. And like,

N. J. Gallegos (01:16.98)
I'm like Prince, pretty much.

Jason Herbert (01:33.458)
Star Wars and is this fucking festering bubble of positivity must follow. I remember like, cause you were talking about Star, like the algorithms brought you to me. And I was just like, yeah, I'm following her. And then like, that's how we became friends. And then we decided at one point in time, we were besties without even meeting. So it's good to like, this is our first conversation. Yeah, it works. It works. Where are you?

N. J. Gallegos (01:53.768)
Yeah, it works out.

I love it.

I am, right now I'm in Illinois actually, yeah.

Jason Herbert (02:00.366)
Where are you now?

Are you in Chicago? Is that where you're at? Or where in Illinois?

N. J. Gallegos (02:05.648)
It's like three hours south of Chicago, kind of like Peoria area.

Jason Herbert (02:09.27)
Where? Oh, no kidding. Okay, all right. I interviewed for a gig at Illinois State last year and did not get that job. And I was considering like, yeah, Bloomington normal. Right, so that's gotta be not too far from where you're at then, right?

N. J. Gallegos (02:18.44)
Bloomington, right?

N. J. Gallegos (02:22.781)
Yeah.

N. J. Gallegos (02:26.564)
No, I did. I did my third and fourth year medical school rotations in Bloomington Normal, actually. So yeah, no, it's nice place

Jason Herbert (02:35.734)
It was all right. I mean, it was like, I desperately wanted a job and thought I was gonna be a professor at the time before I took this gig with the Forest Service. And so I was trying to like internalize like what would like life be like in central Illinois? It's very flat. It's flatter than life here in Colorado. So where did you?

N. J. Gallegos (02:56.104)
Yeah, a lot of corn, a lot of corn.

Jason Herbert (02:59.982)
A lot of corn, a lot. It's like there's Chicago and then there's Illinois. And as I was watching this movie, I waited till today to watch this movie, like Flatliners, like, so the running gig here is like, we don't talk about the movie for the first hour of the pod. And that's probably the case. But I was watching, I'm like, why is every doctor show ever in Chicago? Have you noticed this? It's like,

N. J. Gallegos (03:27.496)
It really is, isn't it? Yeah.

Jason Herbert (03:29.126)
ER, there was ER, there was this movie, Flatliners. There was, there was Chicago Hope for a while, uh, with Mandy Patankin, Chicago Med, is it because of the heart attacks? Is it because of the food? Like why, why in Chicago? Cause I have, I have a billion questions to ask you about medical school and being a practicing physician and an author, which we'll talk about and all that stuff. So, um, so yeah.

N. J. Gallegos (03:37.524)
Yeah, Chicago Med now.

N. J. Gallegos (03:57.128)
Yeah, these are good questions. Maybe it's because lightning always hits a Sears tower and then we use that to power all the defibrillators.

Jason Herbert (03:58.53)
That's...

Jason Herbert (04:05.83)
Oh, see, the frivolators were used in this film quite a bit. And like, just a lot. Had you seen this movie before or had it been a while?

N. J. Gallegos (04:10.496)
So there you go.

N. J. Gallegos (04:17.308)
It'd been a long time. Like I'd seen it maybe like when I was a teenager. So I hadn't had any concept of like medical school or anything yet.

Jason Herbert (04:23.498)
Right, yeah.

Jason Herbert (04:28.27)
No, because OK, so I was trying to figure out like what to what to suggest to you. It hit me actually about an hour before this part, before we recording this podcast, what we should have done, because I was watching it today. And I want to get your thoughts on this movie, because I watched it when it was. When it first came out, and I was trying to think about something that would tie medicine to horror, because I remember this film being scarier than it turned out to be, like at least today. Like I was not frightened at all by so much. I was kind of I was kind of bored by it.

N. J. Gallegos (04:52.412)
I would agree with that, yeah.

Jason Herbert (04:58.302)
in a lot of ways. I don't know. And I was thinking, I was like,

N. J. Gallegos (05:01.16)
Julia Roberts is pretty much the saving grace, so let's be fair.

Jason Herbert (05:07.391)
This movie came out the same year Pretty Woman comes out in 1990. So, yeah, it comes out in 90. And she starts dating Kiefer Sutherland while they're filming this movie.

N. J. Gallegos (05:11.176)
Holy shit, really?

N. J. Gallegos (05:22.474)
Nice!

Jason Herbert (05:22.774)
So you got the Julia Kiefer Sutherland thing. Then she runs off. She's supposed to get married to Kiefer Sutherland, leaves him at the altar, and runs away with his best friend, Jason Patrick. Runs off to England or something like that with Jason Patrick, who was his best friend at the time. Did you know this drama? Yeah, this is straight up Runway Bride. And then she marries Lyle Lovett, like afterwards. Who I-

N. J. Gallegos (05:38.968)
No way. No, I did not. Like, this is like runaway bribe, but like, real.

Jason Herbert (05:52.114)
I adore. I saw Lyle Lovett in concert earlier this year. He was awesome. So, yeah, Lyle Lovett was married to her after this whole I can't imagine what it was like to be Julie Roberts in like 1990. Just going from. I mean, she was rising. Oh, this is this is this is Pete Julia. I mean, this is like she's got this. She's got Pretty Woman. She got Sleeping with the Enemy coming up right after this. Another film we could have done.

N. J. Gallegos (06:06.088)
Yeah, like the glory days, man.

N. J. Gallegos (06:17.097)
So good.

Jason Herbert (06:21.614)
Oh, wait, the movie I thought we could we should have done was like Frankenstein. I was like, wait a second. That's a horror film that involves medicine and Kenneth Branagh. Or who was in who? Did you ever see that one with the one with like Robert De Niro? Like, I'm not a Frankenstein dude. I'm a vampire. I'm a vampire werewolf, dude. Is where I fall on the chain, but I don't I don't know. So. Oh, my God, I just had a thought. What if we had a monster show set in the Star Wars universe?

N. J. Gallegos (06:35.18)
I haven't, no.

N. J. Gallegos (06:43.053)
the monster spectrum.

N. J. Gallegos (06:51.316)
Well, they need to do like, like death troopers, right? Did you ever read that, that book back in the day?

Jason Herbert (06:58.154)
Yeah, but you haven't finished watching Ahsoka, so I'm like, how many episodes are you in on Ahsoka right now? Because I can't really reveal, because it takes some twists, and I don't want to reveal anything. And also, how dare you not be caught out? How many episodes are you in on right now?

N. J. Gallegos (07:11.452)
I know, I know, I'm the worst. I think like five. So like Sabine just found Ezra. And then we had to stop.

Jason Herbert (07:23.283)
Okay. That's no, that's fine. That's good. Um, can we talk about Ray Stevenson before we talk about anything else? Because Ray Stevenson is Bailin's goal is.

N. J. Gallegos (07:31.632)
Yes, he is so cool.

Jason Herbert (07:33.694)
my favorite thing in Star Wars. He's so fucking cool. He is like, he is like this reluctant, I don't even call him a villain. I've talked to a good buddy of mine and she was like, oh, he's a villain. I'm like, you're in your fucking mind. He's not a villain. He's just, he's just doing things his, he's trying to, I think he's trying to reset the galaxy. I think he's trying to reset the force or something. And he's just like, yeah, I have to go, you know what? I gotta go kill Sokka now. That's too bad, you know?

N. J. Gallegos (07:51.004)
Yeah, absolutely.

N. J. Gallegos (07:59.068)
He's like, it's fine, it's fine.

Jason Herbert (08:01.918)
It's it's like it's fine. It's fine. I'll deal with it. It's not a thing. I wanted to do have to do today It's a Wednesday You know, I was hoping to sit down and eat some chili tonight

N. J. Gallegos (08:09.224)
He is just so cool too, like his style is good, his beard, can we talk about the beard? First off, my God.

Jason Herbert (08:17.026)
The beard's magnificent. And he's got this bit of the like the Caesar-ish haircut where it's kind of pushing forward and the beard is like perfectly coiffed. And is he wearing eyeliner? Yeah, I've always liked him.

N. J. Gallegos (08:25.393)
It looks so good.

N. J. Gallegos (08:30.032)
If it is, it's very subtle. It's very subtle.

Jason Herbert (08:33.47)
Okay, I've always liked him. And then he passes away right before the show kicks off. And all I see is all these like Star Wars people talk about how it's a travesty. He never got to see how much people love him. And they're right, because Star Wars fans are like notoriously fickle about who they love and hate. And everybody seems to love Ray Stevenson in Ahsoka. He's, he was awesome. I don't know what they're gonna do to replace him.

N. J. Gallegos (08:57.332)
Which doesn't happen frequently, because like you said, like Star Wars fans hate Star Wars sometimes. The worst is like, come on.

Jason Herbert (09:08.39)
Oh my gosh, do we even talk about the sequels at some point in time? Like, I hate Star Wars when it comes to that. Oh, you're a fan. Are we still friends?

N. J. Gallegos (09:12.67)
Uh...

N. J. Gallegos (09:17.22)
No, I like, I like Ray. I like Ray about, and that's about it.

Jason Herbert (09:22.102)
That's fine. Like I like, I like Ray. Like I love Daisy Ridley and I love the character of Ray. I just think every, and Adam Driver's probably the best actor of his generation. So it's not like you don't have good pieces. It just doesn't, it just doesn't, I don't know. It just doesn't feel like it works. Yeah. So.

N. J. Gallegos (09:23.497)
Yeah.

N. J. Gallegos (09:37.36)
Yeah, they could have done better.

But I'm a prequel junkie, I have to admit. Like, I love the prequels. I hate to say it, I know, I know. So you know how you were.

Jason Herbert (09:46.574)
That's your generation. That's your, no, it's okay, you can, go ahead.

N. J. Gallegos (09:53.244)
You were saying how you waited in line, you know, 26 hours or whatever for Phantom Menace. So I was a nerd. No, I'm gonna also nerd with you. So when I was a senior, that's when Revenge of the Sith came out. And it was senior ditch day that day where like, you know, I could have gone and like gotten drunk and like, you know, bang some people or something. But instead me and my friend.

Jason Herbert (09:56.802)
Uh huh.

26 hours.

Jason Herbert (10:05.194)
What did you do?

Okay.

Jason Herbert (10:12.718)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Herbert (10:16.043)
Right.

Jason Herbert (10:22.546)
as one does as a senior.

N. J. Gallegos (10:24.284)
Yeah, you know, me and my friend decided to take our Game Boys and our link cords and go and sit in front of our like the theater in our hometown, which like, there's not enough people in our hometown to even like want to go and see Star Wars, but we were so nervous we wouldn't get tickets that we waited there all day to get tickets. Like we weren't in danger at all of not getting them. Yeah, but.

Jason Herbert (10:41.746)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Jason Herbert (10:49.058)
It was pre-internet. Yeah, it was like pre... Yeah. I don't know. Your experience as a senior was different than mine because I too was a nerd and the idea of banging anyone as a senior was not even relevant at that point in my life. Now, and we're just talking about beforehand, it's like now it's great to be a nerd. Your ability to just score. Oh yeah, let me talk to you about Count Dooku. I love the name Lord Tyrannus, which by the way...

N. J. Gallegos (11:07.092)
Ha ha!

Jason Herbert (11:18.818)
totally underused. So yeah, and I love Obi-Wan. Like, it's a crime. Here's my thing, right? And I was talking, go ahead. No, I actually had issues with this idea of like bringing Darth Maul back and I know they use him in the cartoons and stuff like that. Ooh, what are you drinking? Because I know you're into beer. You brew your own stuff.

N. J. Gallegos (11:25.188)
Oh yeah, who doesn't?

N. J. Gallegos (11:29.5)
I mean, Darth Maul doesn't like him. I mean, Darth Maul.

N. J. Gallegos (11:41.116)
I'm sorry. So I did a snake bite. So you do apple cider, apple cider, and then you can pick a beer, but I did a shapely pumpkin ale.

Jason Herbert (11:46.326)
What is a steak bite? Oh my.

Jason Herbert (11:56.234)
I'm drinking apple cider right now. I mean, so I'm drinking the angry orchard. Dude, I swear to God. Like, cause like I was complaining earlier before we started recording that I wasn't wearing a Star Wars shirt and then you're rocking out like the extent. What do you have? You've got like a cartoon Boba Fett on there. What do you have? What are you doing?

N. J. Gallegos (11:58.888)
Oh my God, we're twins.

N. J. Gallegos (12:14.722)
I think it's an Empire Strikes Back shirt.

Jason Herbert (12:18.054)
Okay, okay. Oh, okay, I see. All right, outstanding. Which is the best Star Wars, except for Andor. I think Andor is the best thing I've ever seen on a scope.

N. J. Gallegos (12:28.208)
Really? I mean, I like Dandor, but I would give it to Ahsoka and then Obi-Wan probably. Not that I finished Ahsoka, but... No. Oh.

Jason Herbert (12:30.679)
I do.

Jason Herbert (12:34.518)
Did I show you this?

Jason Herbert (12:38.9)
Do you know what that is? That's Orabesh and it means never more than 12.

N. J. Gallegos (12:41.671)
It looks.

Oh

Sorry, I'm a little rusty on that.

Jason Herbert (12:47.518)
I broke up with like, no, that's my aunt Star Wars and or tattoo, which was like after my girlfriend broke up with me, then I got to start that. I embraced the, the dark them again. So there's a corollary here somewhere. All right, you know what? Let's do this. Um, now that we're 15 minutes into the pod, let's introduce you to our listeners. Cause this is what's cool about today is like, this is the historians of the movies podcast. And I'm just like, you know what? Uh, I don't give a shit about that anymore.

So I want to have like cool people at the movies podcast. So we're now Kip Hapham or whatever. So why don't you introduce yourself and what you do? Why are you here?

N. J. Gallegos (13:29.134)
Well, you know, first off, you know, you stalked me and invited me. So there was that, but no.

Jason Herbert (13:29.72)
How about that?

Jason Herbert (13:33.558)
Nope. Little bit.

N. J. Gallegos (13:36.476)
It was fine, I liked it. I like attention. So I'm NJ Gallegos. An ER doctor by day or night, depending what shift I'm on. And then a horror author as well as a cat mom to Theodore and Cat Bane, which I think that you enjoy that name quite a bit.

Jason Herbert (13:43.466)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Herbert (13:58.958)
so much. And you've got a book out.

N. J. Gallegos (14:01.552)
And then, yeah, I do. I have The Broken Heart, which came out September 19th.

Jason Herbert (14:09.09)
No. And I was trying to do this podcast before then so we could launch it with your book, but I was a bad friend and I don't even know. Oh, I moved to Colorado was what happened. Like that's like I got busy doing. Is that right? Where are you from in Colorado?

N. J. Gallegos (14:20.433)
My home, my home state.

Mm-hmm. Alamosa.

Jason Herbert (14:28.27)
Where is that? I know where nothing is.

N. J. Gallegos (14:29.812)
So yeah, Alamosa, it's not very big, but it's like in the Southwest portion, maybe, I don't know, like 50 or so miles from the New Mexico border.

Jason Herbert (14:39.01)
Okay.

Jason Herbert (14:43.254)
Okay, is it close to like Durango then?

N. J. Gallegos (14:47.288)
If you had like a line between Denver and Durango, it's like in the middle.

Yeah.

Jason Herbert (14:53.947)
Oh, okay, cool. I've got to go out to visit some folks at the Southern Ute Reservation and the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation here for my daytime job when I'm not podcasting, talking about Star Wars and all these other things. So I will find this place on a map. But you're now in college. I thought you were like from Tennessee. Like, because you're in Illinois now. Okay.

N. J. Gallegos (15:16.368)
No, no, Colorado, I'm one of those hippies. Yeah.

Jason Herbert (15:21.226)
I'm trying to figure out what I think about Colorado because people keep asking me and I feel like it's like Maine and Oregon had a baby but didn't feed it anything. I don't know like.

N. J. Gallegos (15:30.624)
I'm sorry.

Jason Herbert (15:35.29)
Where's the food here and Jay? Well, it's like, what do I eat? I don't like I don't know. I don't know what to eat here. Like everyone kept telling me I moved to Pueblo's like, oh, the food here is so good. I'm like, is it though? Because they keep pointing to Burger King. You know, it's.

N. J. Gallegos (15:35.338)
That's good, I like that.

N. J. Gallegos (15:50.02)
No, no, no. So here's what you do. You find a Mexican restaurant where it looks like you're going to get hepatitis and that's where you eat. Those are the places to eat.

Jason Herbert (15:54.207)
Okay.

Jason Herbert (15:58.154)
Yes. Okay. I found that in, okay. I found one of those in Canyon city. So I did, I did that right. And I went to a place called today called the taco stop, but I understand why it's called taco stop, which is stop eating at the taco. So it was the worst. It was the worst tacos I'd ever had for like $13. It was just absolute crap. Um, and I love talking. It's talk. It's taste Tuesday, right? Yeah. I mean, it should be like taco Tuesday.

N. J. Gallegos (16:20.232)
That's awful. Man.

Yeah.

Jason Herbert (16:27.638)
I have no idea what they said right now. Like I am, I'm recording so many pods right now at night that it's just, I did, uh, I did one on the last Mohicans last night and then tonight we're talking flat liners, maybe eventually, and then dirty dancing tomorrow. And then I guess, I don't know, Mulan Rouge coming up. I have to watch a musical. I do not want to watch a musical.

N. J. Gallegos (16:44.625)
It's, yeah.

Yeah, that's very eclectic, man. That is a very broad range of movies.

Jason Herbert (16:55.026)
I'm trying to mix things up. Like we just did the one that was out this week was about, uh, like it's 1952 Humphrey Bogart film that I had to watch on YouTube that was like put out by a Russian station. So I'm sure that I don't have any kind of bugs crawling all over my television and internet and everything else, you know, right now. So, all right. All right. So talk to me. All right. Let's talk about this. Um, let's talk about your career as a physician cause you're an ER doc. Yeah.

N. J. Gallegos (17:10.652)
I'm sure it's fine.

N. J. Gallegos (17:21.929)
Yeah.

Jason Herbert (17:23.914)
All right, so how long have you been doing, how long have you been a physician? How long have you been Dr. Gallegos? How does this work? For the history of people coming here, how do we understand this other place that has math and like lives at stake? Because everybody I talk to, you know, so like, how do you do what you do? Like, what does it mean to be a physician? Get me to where you are now. Let's start there.

N. J. Gallegos (17:47.736)
It all started when I was born. So.

Jason Herbert (17:51.754)
It was a dark and stormy night.

N. J. Gallegos (17:53.612)
Right. Although, you know, I believe I was born at 1 p.m. in the afternoon, but you know, whatever. So yeah, you go to, you know, your high school crap, whatever, you do college. And I mean, you can do any major really that you would like to do medicine, you just have to take like the appropriate classes. So that would be, you know, like, you have to take your organic chemistry and physics and crap like that, you know.

Jason Herbert (17:59.233)
Okay.

Jason Herbert (18:11.403)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Herbert (18:16.462)
I can only imagine.

N. J. Gallegos (18:23.256)
Then when you're in college, you take the MCAT, which is kind of like the like SAT, ACT for medical school. And then you apply, you beg people to like you. Eventually a medical school will accept you. That's a nice four years. So you do two years like classroom kind of stuff and then two years of rotations. So you have like

Jason Herbert (18:30.638)
Mm-hmm, right.

Jason Herbert (18:44.684)
Mm-hmm.

N. J. Gallegos (18:48.576)
core rotations, you know, like family medicine, internal medicine, OB, PEDs, surgery, that kind of thing. And then you get electives. And sometime in between your like third and fourth year, you need to decide what you'd like to do. Then you have to apply broadly, go interview at all these places for residency. And I mean, it's pretty exhausting. I mean, you have these tests called step one and step two that you have to pass.

and like score very well on depending on what you would like to do. And then you go to residency which can be for e-arts either three or four years and then you become a doctor. Well you're actually a doctor after medical school but you become like an attending after you do residency.

Jason Herbert (19:18.347)
Okay.

Jason Herbert (19:36.542)
Right, right. You're becoming like the John McGinley's of Scrubs and so forth. Do you like Scrubs? Tell me you like Scrubs. Tell me that's your jam.

N. J. Gallegos (19:42.992)
I do like scrubs, but I have not seen all of it.

Jason Herbert (19:46.914)
Well, they fall off towards the end of the career. So why ER? Like why was that a thing you wanted to do versus say, PEDs or family medicine or I don't know, osteology or some jazz?

N. J. Gallegos (20:01.312)
So I don't know, osteology, I like that.

Jason Herbert (20:02.258)
What? Is that a word? Is osteology a word? Is that a term? It's like bone dish. I don't know what the body is. All I know is like, you know what? All I do is post gym pics on the Facebook. And I'm like, look, I know where the bicepular muscles are. I don't know anything about humans. I remember...

N. J. Gallegos (20:09.504)
Bone something, yeah.

N. J. Gallegos (20:14.888)
I like it.

N. J. Gallegos (20:27.2)
osteology.

Jason Herbert (20:32.286)
I remember when I went, like, so when my wife at the time, who is not married to me as we all know now, when we went to the baby doctor place, what's osteologist, and...

N. J. Gallegos (20:40.89)
It's fine.

Jason Herbert (20:53.322)
She was like talking about it's the first appointment and this is like, she's pregnant and stuff like that. She's like, do you have any questions? I'm like, can you tell me where the G spot is? And

N. J. Gallegos (21:04.705)
I should like get out right now.

Jason Herbert (21:07.534)
Oh, she and Christine died, but I felt it was important to set like a standard, you know, to what to expect for over the next nine months. And it didn't get any easier for either of them because I was, I was coming to guns of place every time I was like, ha ha. So let me show you how dumb I am about the human, about the female body. And then my ex-wife was like, I can guarantee he's not really joking. So, you know, anyway. Oh,

N. J. Gallegos (21:37.244)
And then she gets like a laser pointer and she's like, right here is the corner of the fire.

Jason Herbert (21:43.538)
Sir, sir, can you pay attention? I'm like, ah, no. So where, okay. Okay, so, all right. So to go back in, why ER medicine? Like why, why emergency room? Do you like the soundtracks that, there's a soundtrack in the ER, right? On the TV shows, there's a soundtrack. Okay, okay. So.

N. J. Gallegos (21:46.923)
I'm sorry.

N. J. Gallegos (21:59.108)
Yeah, highway to hell usually. Yeah. And then during codes, we play staying alive by the BDs.

Jason Herbert (22:08.466)
Oh, I know this part. We're like, when I was, when, you know, I was doing the baby CPR stuff, they were like, you know, you have to do it as fast as you possibly can. Just don't there. They were like, I remember they were like, we say staying alive because you could really go faster than this. And then I took it like, it's a challenge on the, I tried to break the baby, like during the class of the baby CPR, I kept dropping it just to see what people would say. It was bad.

This is again, this is why there's no one here in the house when I do these podcasts, just me and an old cat. Are you, are you trained in therapy? Are you, are you trained in therapy as well? Cause that's what this might turn into. Um, so.

N. J. Gallegos (22:44.764)
and your osteology degree.

N. J. Gallegos (22:51.06)
I am not trained, but I can do some impromptu shit. Like an ER doctor, I'm the jack of all trades, so let's go.

Jason Herbert (22:58.814)
Totally. Right. You're I mean, your gig is an ER doctors really to keep the patient alive until they can get to the next thing. Is that basically the idea? I mean, to get through. What's the gig here with as an ER?

N. J. Gallegos (23:11.368)
Yep. I mean, generally, you do the initial workup and identify life-threatening stuff, right? Emergencies, and then you involve the appropriate specialists as needed. But yeah, the ER is kind of like the Wild West. It is just absolute chaos most of the time, but in a good way.

Jason Herbert (23:20.536)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Herbert (23:36.29)
Go on.

N. J. Gallegos (23:42.216)
Like you never know what to expect when you get there.

Jason Herbert (23:43.146)
I'm wondering...

What you get, I'm sure you get folks in the ER who don't have primary care physicians who just come in because they don't know where else to go, I'm guessing. Right? And then also tell me in Illinois, do you get like combine accidents? Please tell me yes. Like what, like are there lots of farming accidents that happen there? Like, what do you get? Oh my gosh.

N. J. Gallegos (23:53.072)
Right. Yeah.

N. J. Gallegos (24:04.56)
Yes. Definitely. A lot of like, yeah, ATV stuff. I've gotten an, I've had an old farmer that got kicked by one of his cows. I've had a guy get like head butted by goats. Except that's the thing, like farmers, they usually don't come in, like they will, they will get their entire arm like ripped off by something in the back. Well, we got to go put the hay in the barn and then they'll come in after they get all their stuff done.

Jason Herbert (24:32.843)
Right.

N. J. Gallegos (24:34.308)
Um, yeah, you get a lot of that. Um, get a lot of meth, meth's really big here. Um, yeah, I mean, as, you know, as, as you do, um, yeah, you get a lot of really interesting stuff.

Jason Herbert (24:41.262)
Sure, yeah.

Jason Herbert (24:49.99)
What does a meth person do? I mean, like what happens when someone comes in with meth? Like what's, forgive me, because I've gotten past my drug stage. I was like, fuck it, I was never cool enough for drugs, like ever, because it's like, you do want to get in trouble. But my brother, fortunately. Okay.

N. J. Gallegos (25:07.536)
Yeah, I wouldn't advise meth if you're gonna try one. That's not one I would go with. Yeah, yeah. So they usually are pretty hyperactive, very fidgety. Think of a break dancer that's just very excitable, might be hallucinating. And yeah, that's pretty much meth. So...

Jason Herbert (25:13.906)
I like having teeth.

Jason Herbert (25:22.018)
Okay.

Jason Herbert (25:27.072)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Herbert (25:31.639)
Right?

N. J. Gallegos (25:35.848)
You're jittery, you're sweaty, you're hallucinating usually.

Jason Herbert (25:40.426)
Okay, so is this the thing where you have to like, it's handcuff these, like, bind people to the, to the bed and stuff like that too, to like, or do you just get like a very heavy nurse to be on top of them? Like, I was like, I don't know.

N. J. Gallegos (25:53.372)
We usually give them some nice medication to just, you know, chill out and write it out and yeah.

Jason Herbert (25:57.63)
Okay. Well, okay. Well, I see this because you know, you're actually on your Twitter profile. You're actually seemingly honest about some of the stuff that you see day in and day out, you know, and I, you know, as your friend, I, you know, I kind of see, you know, you'll post this post that, you know, like, Hey, we made it through a day without a code or something like that. And it's like, Oh, I'm like, I'm like genuinely happy. And then you'll be like, yeah. Then also we had a bunch of people code today and today sucked balls, you know, is

N. J. Gallegos (26:25.961)
Yeah.

Jason Herbert (26:27.65)
Do you ever get used to that as a physician? So much of this movie is based on death. And I was like, not to get morbid, but shit, you wrote a book about murderers and we wrote a, yeah, so, I mean, what's that like? Is it a thing that you?

N. J. Gallegos (26:43.825)
I wouldn't say you get used to it, but like, I mean, it's almost like a survival mechanism where you have to compartmentalize it, right? Like you can't focus, like, you know, if you have a patient that was a cardiac arrest and you don't get them back, like, you can't really like lose it because there's other patients that you have to see. So you have to like kind of put that off until later.

Jason Herbert (27:06.542)
Sure.

N. J. Gallegos (27:12.644)
It does help to have a little bit of a way to detach yourself, which probably some childhood trauma bullshit that we'll get into at some point later that probably uniquely helps me to do that. But yeah, no, it's rough. I hate telling people bad news and stuff, but I think of what I would want somebody to tell me. I don't like...

Jason Herbert (27:27.244)
Okay.

Jason Herbert (27:35.022)
Of course.

N. J. Gallegos (27:41.384)
to bullshit people. Like, this is what happens, you know?

Jason Herbert (27:43.726)
Totally. Right. Yeah, I, you know, that's what it's interesting you said because I just thought about like, if I died in your care, what would I want you to tell people about me? Right? I'm like, like he took that sword like a fucking champ, like, or something like, you know, like he went out in the blaze of, no, it was the nastiest paper cut I ever saw. Totally didn't cry the whole time. No, he was, he was awesome. A little baby.

N. J. Gallegos (28:00.774)
Exactly.

N. J. Gallegos (28:10.781)
Yeah, he was great.

Jason Herbert (28:13.462)
gravy kept start crying everywhere. Actually, he died because we had to knock him out. He hit his head on the way down. Fucking baby. I hope I don't get another one of those again. Kentuckyans are a little bit, you know, so, you know, that's, that's probably, I, you know, I wonder about this, like, so much of the job becomes, you know, you're saving people from, well, I don't know. Not every case is a life or death thing, right? It's

N. J. Gallegos (28:40.645)
No, no. Honestly, it's pretty, obviously you get sick people, but it's not like it is in ER where everything's like, stat, oh my God, give me a scalpel, we gotta save him. Sometimes it's like, hey, that guy has something stuck up his ass.

Jason Herbert (28:43.192)
You know.

Jason Herbert (29:01.994)
Okay, can we talk about Yarder for a second? Do you have a favorite? I was gonna ask you about this later on. Do you have favorite shows or films about the profession? Or is it like, do you wanna completely detach when you get off of work and not work? Because there's so many movies and shows about historians. So, is that a thing for you? Like, do you get tired of seeing it? I mean, every show's about a doc.

N. J. Gallegos (29:18.014)
Right.

N. J. Gallegos (29:27.009)
So I like Grey's Anatomy. More though, I like the interpersonal drama of that. But otherwise, I watch a lot of reality TV trash. I love the Real Housewives franchises. Like, I can't help it. Because I just want my brain to not work when I come home.

Jason Herbert (29:34.926)
Of course.

Jason Herbert (29:47.394)
God, I have to put you on, I have to get you in touch with the Real Housewives podcast that I did. Cause there's, oh my God, you don't, I'm seriously gonna put you in contact. Cause I did one, they're like, do you wanna do a Real Housewives podcast? I'm like, I don't watch Real Housewives. So then I binged a shit ton of it. And it's like, all of these people are awful. They're just, they're just terrible human beings. So yeah, I also want, I can't believe

N. J. Gallegos (29:53.095)
Yes.

N. J. Gallegos (30:08.497)
Yeah, yeah, it's great, isn't it?

Jason Herbert (30:16.738)
that Grey's Anatomy has lasted so long. Like it's been on.

N. J. Gallegos (30:20.561)
Yeah, it's got to be what 20 some seasons maybe.

Jason Herbert (30:23.49)
I remember when ER...

Great isn't even on the show anymore. It's just anatomy at this point in time.

Jason Herbert (30:34.29)
And they killed off my favorite character, right? Oh, it was Eric Dane, McSteamy. Yeah, he had the best arc. You know, they brought him in, it's like the dude that slept with his best friend's wife. And he's like, sexy, handsome man. And then he kind of turns into like the joke. He's like, he's almost becomes like the comic relief of the show. And then starts, then.

N. J. Gallegos (30:34.511)
Just anatomy. Who's your favorite?

N. J. Gallegos (30:41.761)
Mmm, mixed teamy. Yep.

N. J. Gallegos (31:01.013)
Oh yeah.

Jason Herbert (31:02.982)
hooks up with Lexi, which the age difference was large. So wasn't she a wasn't she a student when they she was like, teach me. And I was like, oh, my.

N. J. Gallegos (31:14.473)
Yeah, she might have been a medical student. And then she, I think, yeah, did the residency there. My favorite was Christina Yang. I love Christina Yang.

Jason Herbert (31:25.71)
Well, she's hyper confident and kicked ass. You know? Yeah, I actually was thinking about my favorite movie with her in it today, which is Sideways. Have you seen Sideways?

N. J. Gallegos (31:28.446)
She's so awesome.

N. J. Gallegos (31:36.713)
I have not.

Jason Herbert (31:38.846)
Oh my gosh, that's a guy film, you know, about wine and everything else. And she's in it. She's to rip. But she's great in everything. Our Roman. OK.

N. J. Gallegos (31:46.677)
She's perfect. I need to watch, what is it, Killing Eve. Isn't she in Killing Eve?

Jason Herbert (31:52.318)
She is in Killing Eve. I love her. I think she's great. Are romances that common in the... I'm setting this up because I know things, but like are romances... All right, but not romances between doctors and doctor students, correct? Or does that happen too?

N. J. Gallegos (32:00.821)
Oh!

N. J. Gallegos (32:04.121)
Yes, yes, absolutely.

N. J. Gallegos (32:22.589)
happens, but I would say that's like rare. I mean, my wife and I she was, she was an ER nurse when I was an ER resident. And that's how we met. So yeah.

Jason Herbert (32:27.5)
Rare.

Jason Herbert (32:31.85)
Right. Okay. Yeah, that's good. I was, I was softballing that I was like, take it away. Uh, yeah. You said like, it was like, I know. I think that's great because when I got my PhD, my mom is a nurse and I was like, Hey, I'm a doctor and you're a nurse. We can't talk to each other anymore. So, you know, that would have crushed you. And then she was like, I'll fucking murder you. So that was, that was cool. So, all right. All right.

N. J. Gallegos (32:59.42)
That's the standard nurse move right there, yeah.

Jason Herbert (33:03.242)
Well, nurses are like nurses are what makes the hospital go, correct?

N. J. Gallegos (33:07.825)
Oh yeah, I might get some shit if I say this, but I think that a nurse is probably more valuable than a doctor is, to be honest, sometimes. Because like, I in theory know what to do, but like I don't know how to give the medications, what interacts with what. I can't even make the pump stop beeping. Like come on.

Jason Herbert (33:13.218)
Please.

Jason Herbert (33:25.719)
Right.

Jason Herbert (33:30.518)
The physical care is actually given by the nurse in many cases.

N. J. Gallegos (33:34.949)
Yeah, and they're often the ones that are like, uh, hey, something fucking weird's going on in room three. You better go in there. And then you go in there and you're like, oh shit, you know? Like, otherwise you wouldn't know.

Jason Herbert (33:46.218)
Well, yeah, I got to get this. I would assume as much like just nurses see all the shit every single day. They know how to, I would imagine in most cases, they know how to recognize any number of symptoms as needing an osteologist to come in and fix things. All right, so this Flatliners movie that we chose, where are these students in their career path? They're still students, right? In...

N. J. Gallegos (34:04.294)
Exactly, yeah.

N. J. Gallegos (34:14.291)
Yes.

Jason Herbert (34:14.32)
in med school? Is that what we're seeing here?

N. J. Gallegos (34:16.849)
Yes, I think like maybe third years, but I'm not certain because they're doing like, because like Julia Roberts is in like what, psychiatry or something, talking to the people. Um, and then Kevin Bacon was like in the ER, I think he, so he must've been in his ER rotation. Yeah. So they had to have been like either third or fourth year, I'm thinking probably.

Jason Herbert (34:21.122)
Okay.

Jason Herbert (34:29.77)
Right.

Jason Herbert (34:41.858)
But they're still slicing people open in these classes. So I was like, maybe they're earlier than I thought they were. I thought that they were like ready to get out. But they're still very much students, correct? So, all right. Is there a lot of time like, okay, so we opened this up and this is like a deeply religious thing. I came in watching this, I'd forgotten Joel Schumacher directed this film. And this felt like.

N. J. Gallegos (34:55.293)
Yes, yeah.

Jason Herbert (35:08.982)
This felt like cold Lost Boys is what this movie felt like. So, well, you've seen Lost Boys, right? I mean, it's like Lost, it's so hip and so cool and Sutherland's in it and it's like, oh yeah, let's go to Santa Carla and be with the cool. I mean, I think Lost Boys is the best vampire movie I've ever seen in my life, which is why people can't see this right now. It's getting steadily darker here in my house because I refuse to turn on the lights. But yeah, I mean, so much.

N. J. Gallegos (35:12.545)
whole Bloss boys. Ha ha ha. Yeah, oh yeah.

Jason Herbert (35:38.046)
When you're in med school, is there a lot of discussion about death itself, end of life, care, and stuff like that?

N. J. Gallegos (35:47.297)
Honestly, not a lot. We, if I remember, we had like a lecture that was, you know, breaking bad news. But yeah, a lot of it, like you just have to learn it on the job, you know?

Jason Herbert (35:56.861)
Okay.

Jason Herbert (36:03.038)
Right, sure. I wonder, like, is there a person who holds the pillow over the person's head when they're like, just like, let me just finish you off. You're, you're, you're done here. You're coding. It's end of shift.

N. J. Gallegos (36:13.601)
write that like a nursing order. I'm like pillow over the head.

Jason Herbert (36:18.302)
Yeah, exactly. So but you know, it's like this deeply religious, like there's it's not so I mean, Joel Schumacher famously of the Batnipples, not exactly known for subtle to he in his films, there's all these religious the med school with did your med school look like an old French Catholic Church?

N. J. Gallegos (36:37.573)
No, it was pretty up to date, really. Yeah. Theirs is creepy.

Jason Herbert (36:42.678)
Cause I like, very right? It's like the place where like Kevin Bacon is, what is he doing when he saves the woman at first? I don't even know.

N. J. Gallegos (36:47.391)
Yeah.

N. J. Gallegos (36:55.465)
Cause so she was having a baby, right? Was that what it was? So, um.

Jason Herbert (36:59.486)
Right. She was like, yeah, but we never even saw a baby come out. Usually they do the baby thing. They're like, look.

N. J. Gallegos (37:05.105)
Yeah, I don't know if he was doing like, so there's a thing called a perimortum C-section, but like you should, like the woman is usually dead when that happens, but so like, let's say the mom has a cardiac arrest, right? And she's, it's like a viable pregnancy. So that's usually like 20 plus weeks. So you would be doing like essentially like a crass C-section in the ER, but like that lady was alive. Yeah. So I don't really know what he was doing to be quite honest with you.

Jason Herbert (37:11.278)
Okay.

Jason Herbert (37:15.167)
Oh.

Jason Herbert (37:22.734)
Okay. Sure.

Jason Herbert (37:28.982)
Right, to get the baby out. Right.

Jason Herbert (37:36.002)
I don't either because there was like, she was alive, it got real messy, and there was no baby that was pulled out and there was like, you shouldn't be here. And he's like, I was, I have a mullet. Of course I should be here. Did you see the mullet on Kevin Bacon in this film?

N. J. Gallegos (37:44.243)
Yeah.

N. J. Gallegos (37:49.693)
It was a great mullet. It was.

Jason Herbert (37:53.878)
Yeah. You know, so I'm trying to figure out, I'm trying to figure out like what this film was. And then of course, you got Sutherland who is totally playing creepy dude, which is obviously how he got Julie Roberts to be with him, who is fascinated with death. Is this a common thing where we see like, I know that, you know, in, in osteology, people lose. I'm just rolling with this from here on out for the next little while we're just going to go with it. It's the it's good.

N. J. Gallegos (38:07.325)
As you do, yeah.

N. J. Gallegos (38:19.795)
I love it though.

Jason Herbert (38:23.17)
Glad I could create this whole field of medicine. People pass and then they do, you're able to bring them back, is that correct? I mean, that does happen from time to time.

N. J. Gallegos (38:33.117)
Yeah, yeah, it does happen. It's a lot rarer though than it's depicted like on TV and stuff. You know, like in TV or movies, like CPR and stuff, it's like 90% effective. Whereas like in real life, that number is quite a bit lower.

Jason Herbert (38:41.395)
Okay.

Jason Herbert (38:51.294)
Really? Like, how low? Like, I just like, I tell people, like, if I die in the gym, put on more weights on the bar and just say, I went out like a champ. And I will. Well.

N. J. Gallegos (38:52.223)
Yeah.

Hmm.

N. J. Gallegos (39:03.345)
Right, right. I would say like one out of five people maybe like that come in like coding. Do we get back? Yeah. Maybe one out of five. So 20% maybe.

Jason Herbert (39:11.269)
Uh-huh.

Jason Herbert (39:17.002)
Oh, I owe my mother an apology because she had to, she was like, Hey, I tried to save this guy that could not like, well, maybe you're just not very good at your job. And then she said, don't come home. So yeah.

N. J. Gallegos (39:27.199)
And then she took you to the dentist the next day because she knocked all your teeth out.

Jason Herbert (39:32.922)
My mom, God bless her, who by the way, does not listen to my podcast, she's like, oh, it's nice that you have a talk thing. I was like, well, it's nice that you voted for Trump, mom. Anyway, just had to, yeah, I had to, I know now just killed, I just killed it. She should have gone to an osteo. I'm, I'm going to stop the osteology thing. I'm going to create another thing. Where's the doctors in star Wars? There's two, one B. Anyway, I'm coming back. Um, this is the weirdest.

N. J. Gallegos (40:00.363)
Well, they have. I don't know how big of a nerd you are, but have you read, you've read like some of the expanded universe stuff?

Jason Herbert (40:01.867)
Um...

Go.

Jason Herbert (40:08.654)
go on, have I, please?

N. J. Gallegos (40:09.845)
They have, God, what is it? There's two of them, two books that are in the Clone Wars where they're like the Jedi that are like healers. Oh, what is, med battle surge? I can't remember, but they have them, but they're Jedi.

Jason Herbert (40:18.046)
Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. Right.

Jason Herbert (40:24.702)
No, that's like new EU. I'm like old school. I got in trouble on TikTok recently because I was like, some people were like, oh, we've been waiting for Thrawn on screen since 2018. And I'm like, dude, Thrawn was in a book in 1991. You guys must be new here. You're gatekeeping. I'm like, I'm 46 and angry. So yeah, a little bit. I know Star Wars, the Thrawn trilogy is the best.

N. J. Gallegos (40:49.013)
Those are good books, though.

N. J. Gallegos (40:53.277)
Yep.

Jason Herbert (40:53.662)
It's really the best Star Wars that we ever saw. I mean, I just, and I was casting this with my friend Thomas Lecoq the other day. Like the bad thing about where we're at in Star Wars right now is that we don't have Mary Jane on screen. We don't have Talon Karrd. We don't have Jorah Sebeoth. It's just, we don't have, we don't even have Nogra.

N. J. Gallegos (41:11.445)
We need Mara Jade. You know what else we need? We need like Old Republic. That's what they need to do. They need to get like Darth Revan, like Darth Malgus. Like you need all of that shit. That's what we need to do, but.

Jason Herbert (41:14.71)
We do. Right.

Jason Herbert (41:26.314)
Well, have you watched those trailers for like the Old Republic video games? Cause they do better. They tell better Star Wars in the trailers for Old Republic video games than they do in most of the books in most of the movies. You get a better sense of like, this is what Star Wars was. Malgus is a complete bad ass. Revan is like, I mean, if we don't have Keanu Reeves played Darth Revan in Star Wars at some point in time, even in a flashback, we're probably, did you ever watch it?

N. J. Gallegos (41:29.445)
Yeah.

N. J. Gallegos (41:38.429)
Yeah, they're awesome.

N. J. Gallegos (41:43.839)
Yeah.

N. J. Gallegos (41:50.949)
Yeah, that's the only option, honestly.

Jason Herbert (41:57.434)
He could he's the only guy who could be Revan. Did you ever read the old tales of the Jedi comics series with like you like kill drama and X R Koon?

N. J. Gallegos (42:06.361)
No, I did not read those ones.

Jason Herbert (42:09.778)
See, you got to read those with like, Nomi Sunrider and the whole, oh my gosh, this is why I want a yellow lightsaber. That's like what I want in life. Actually, when we get done with this pot, I'm going to order one. Actually, you know who I dig is Kyle Katarn. It's my dude. That guy's badass. So Jedi battle mount. Okay. So pre, like pre-Rogue one, before they reset everything, there's the, there's the whole, um, there's dark forces video games and Kyle Katarn is like the dude. He's like this.

N. J. Gallegos (42:26.773)
jog my memory.

Jason Herbert (42:39.722)
mercenary who the rebellion sends in to go and grab the Death Star Plane. It's that he's guy goes to death, does it. And eventually Luke finds him and finds out he's force sensitive. And Kyle Katarn ends up becoming what's known as a Jedi battle master, which is essentially the baddest ass fighting Jedi in the Republic. So during this Yuuzhan Vong invasion, Katarn's just cutting dudes down like nobody's business. So I have files to send you.

N. J. Gallegos (42:58.337)
Hmm.

N. J. Gallegos (43:07.247)
Alright, alright.

Jason Herbert (43:09.686)
I have links. So I should ask you, what are your thoughts on this movie on Flatliners? Did you like this at all? Like, how did you feel about this?

N. J. Gallegos (43:19.773)
I liked it. I watched it with my wife because she'd never seen it and she probably liked it more than I did, to be honest with you.

Jason Herbert (43:25.675)
Okay.

Jason Herbert (43:30.934)
What was your thoughts on it? Like as far as getting into this movie, cause I thought it was like a horror film and there was no real bad guy in this movie.

N. J. Gallegos (43:39.617)
I'd say it's more like a psychological kind of thriller maybe. Yeah.

Jason Herbert (43:43.946)
more of a thriller kind of, yeah, I mean, Kiefer Sutherland turns into a dick for a little while, but like, they don't even kill him off in this movie. He just comes back, he's like, sorry guys, I shouldn't have died. I mean, that's...

N. J. Gallegos (43:52.224)
Yeah.

N. J. Gallegos (43:56.789)
Today was not a good day to die.

Jason Herbert (44:00.05)
Yeah, it's like, okay, I guess now Julia Roberts is with Kevin Bacon. Least chemistry I've ever seen in the film. I was not, I was not buying the Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon thing. And I think I was talking.

N. J. Gallegos (44:07.517)
Yeah.

N. J. Gallegos (44:11.734)
You can with the Kiefer Sutherland for sure.

Jason Herbert (44:15.794)
Oh, she's totally into the bad boy phase. I think that's the reason why she runs off with Kiefer Southerlands for a while and then runs off with Jason Patrick. And then course corrects with Lyle Lovett. Yeah, it was a thing, I guess. I guess as one does. So, you know, I don't know. I think we were talking about this. Like my Julia Roberts pairing is actually with the In Notting Hill with Hugh Grant. Is that his name? Yeah, they're good in that. The-

N. J. Gallegos (44:22.901)
man.

As you do.

N. J. Gallegos (44:39.485)
Hugh Grant, yeah. I don't know, I really like her and Richard Gere.

Jason Herbert (44:46.438)
Are you a pretty woman believer or the runaway bride?

N. J. Gallegos (44:51.049)
He's a handsome man, that Richard Deer.

Jason Herbert (44:54.266)
Yeah, he did okay for himself. He was married to Cindy Crawford for a while. I don't think he's hurt. Is he married now? Or is he just being Buddhists everywhere?

N. J. Gallegos (45:01.185)
Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I want to say, don't quote me on this, but I want to say I saw somewhere that he was dating somebody much younger than him, but I honestly don't.

Jason Herbert (45:13.106)
Yeah, I see that stuff and that stuff does not bother me. I think sometimes Twitter gets an uproar when they see like the May, December romances, like the Leo is dating somebody who's like 22. And the thing that kind of drives me nuts about that, first of all, I don't give a shit if you're of age or I just don't care. Because I always feel like it takes away agency from the other person, from the younger partner says, yeah, I want to be with an older, successful man or woman or whomever they're with.

N. J. Gallegos (45:42.781)
I mean, as long as you're of the consenting age, go for it. Like, whatever.

Jason Herbert (45:42.934)
that night I don't have enough time.

Jason Herbert (45:47.786)
Well, you saw the thing with Dane Cook, right? Who got married. That's a little weird.

N. J. Gallegos (45:50.289)
Yeah, yeah, Dane Cook, though, is just he's I'm sorry, I don't find him funny. I really don't.

Jason Herbert (45:57.074)
Well, he's not he's not funny. And then he like got married to like a 24 year old woman who he's been dating for six years and he's. 40. Okay, that that's a little bit that that's a little. I was like, I hope it was only six years. So I guess you get like a Jerry Lee Lewis Elvis Presley kind of thing going on. So anyway, all right. I want to talk to you. We talked about trauma. Why did you write this book? Like what's going on?

N. J. Gallegos (46:05.65)
Yeah, math.

N. J. Gallegos (46:09.715)
Yeah.

Jason Herbert (46:24.778)
I want to talk about the broken heart, because I'm so excited for you. Um, you were meaning the shit out of this, like each day, which I like, I giggle. Oh, whatever. Whatever. When I see what I see, you put it, when I see what you're doing. So can you talk to us a little bit about this book and like how you like, this is you're the first author we've had on the podcast. Yeah. Like, like, you know, I've had historians, but who fucking reads history. So, um, so.

N. J. Gallegos (46:33.29)
Hahaha!

N. J. Gallegos (46:42.686)
Really?

Jason Herbert (46:52.394)
I want you to, if you will, talk a little bit, you can't give the book away entirely, but talk a little bit about not only like the book itself, the premise behind it, and then like maybe the process of creating and how you came to it.

N. J. Gallegos (47:02.653)
Yeah. So the idea actually came to me at work. I had finally gotten a moment to pee and went to the bathroom and I was sitting there, doing my business, looking at all of the crap that's hung up on the walls and I saw an organ donation flyer. And like it just, in my brain, I was like, oh, what happens if like you got a heart from like Ted Bundy or whatever, right?

Jason Herbert (47:22.837)
Mm-hmm.

N. J. Gallegos (47:32.209)
And then I was like, huh. And I just kept like thinking about it. And the idea of somebody that is otherwise like rather sweet and potentially kind of downtrodden and just kind of a meek person, getting that and then getting the agency to do what they would like to do and become their own person. Like I kind of ruminated on that. And it just like, it was a story that I had to tell, I guess.

Jason Herbert (47:43.904)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Herbert (48:00.526)
Sure. Had you been writing before? Is this the thing that you were doing previously? Was this a thing that you just kind of enjoy? Because I see you talk about, I have suggested I submitted this short story, that short story. And I know you've got some other stuff that you've done. But.

Why writing? Is this a, like, why do you write these stories? Or why do you write these books?

N. J. Gallegos (48:23.505)
It's almost a little bit cathartic, like we were talking, right? Therapy, like that, I think you get to work through a lot of like your inner demons and bullshit by channeling it onto the page. I've always enjoyed writing, but I didn't really have a lot of time to do it, you know, with school and things. Like in medical school, like I didn't read books for fun. Like I didn't read.

Jason Herbert (48:25.442)
Please.

N. J. Gallegos (48:50.705)
legitimate paperbacks or novels. Like it was just like you were doing your schoolwork. Um, so after, you know, I finished, you know, residency and things, I kind of got back into it and it had always been a dream of mine to do a, just write a novel, not necessarily like disseminate it to the masses, but just have it. And, um, so I had been working on a little side project beforehand that I'm hoping that one day I could turn into a book when.

Jason Herbert (48:50.798)
Thank you.

N. J. Gallegos (49:20.073)
this idea with the heart transplant struck me. And it just, it was like, it took like its own.

Jason Herbert (49:24.384)
Uh-huh.

N. J. Gallegos (49:30.199)
It was almost like I wasn't doing it sometimes, you know what I mean? It was just like coming out.

Jason Herbert (49:34.958)
It was like an out of body experience, like writing this thing.

N. J. Gallegos (49:38.497)
of like sometimes you get into this like I call it like the flow state where you're just like going and you're just vibing yeah

Jason Herbert (49:45.514)
Right. No, and I totally get you. Like as far as the idea of not be able to read, you would think like, you know, I came through, you know, doing my graduate work as a historian, they think, oh, I love to read. I was so sick of reading. After I got, I did not want to read a fucking thing. I didn't want to like, I didn't want to touch my dissertation when I got done. People are like, oh, it takes six months, take a year. I'm like, I haven't fucking touched it.

N. J. Gallegos (50:00.96)
Yes.

Jason Herbert (50:12.302)
He almost too at this point in time. And I don't even know if I'll ever complete that. I was just done. And I kept thinking, it was like, all I wanted to do was go back and read the shit that I wanted to read again. Like not, I wanted to go back and read Hemingway and all this other, I've got a Hemingway story I wanna pitch you. I have this idea. You know, I'm just saying that it's Hemingway meets John Wick, but I'll talk to you that and involves cats and dogs.

N. J. Gallegos (50:23.181)
Mm-hmm.

N. J. Gallegos (50:35.995)
Yeah.

Obviously.

Jason Herbert (50:40.782)
Oh, there's actually this whole I'll tell you now. Did you know that like the Batista regime killed Ernest Hemingway's dog in Cuba? Shit, yeah. Yeah. So Hemingway was back in like America. And, you know, wonderful history, Batista, you know, like his had some thugs who went into Hemingway's place and apparently killed his dog. Right. And all I can imagine, right is a movie set.

N. J. Gallegos (50:49.478)
No.

Jason Herbert (51:10.626)
that goes back and does this alternate history that shows up where him and he like goes back to Cuba to avenge his dog. Right. And starts kicking this shit. Like he like has these two, like swords or baths. He's got these two arms and he's got tattoos on them. Right. One arm says old man and the other, the other arm says the sea. And he just beats the shit out of people with them. Right. And like in doing so, turn the, and he, you know, who he has as his best friend, Fidel Castro.

N. J. Gallegos (51:30.719)
Yes

Jason Herbert (51:39.598)
Fidel Castro becomes his right-hand man and becomes a good guy. Like this is my whole thing. This is... All right, we have to write this story at some point in time because it's a bad sh- It's gonna be the first HATM Productions film. I don't know who we get to star as Hemingway but I'm pretty sure it's me. Because, you know...

N. J. Gallegos (51:46.537)
You know what? I'm in. I like it.

N. J. Gallegos (51:56.445)
Yes, I like it.

N. J. Gallegos (52:03.753)
You have to start drinking a little bit more, I think.

Chug it, chug it.

Jason Herbert (52:09.698)
that cool. So all right. Did you Okay, so how long did it take you right to write this book?

N. J. Gallegos (52:16.725)
Oh man. So it probably took about like a year and a half for like the first draft. And that's not me working on it like every single day by any means. And then once, so I got my editor through Pit Dark on Twitter where you pitch and everything and you send them your manuscript if they like it. And so I sent them the manuscript probably like October of last year.

Jason Herbert (52:34.369)
Mm-hmm.

N. J. Gallegos (52:45.861)
and worked on it like, I mean, fairly intensively until about April of this year. So like the, the last, the, the round of edits that really made the book, like six months of pretty intense work.

Jason Herbert (53:01.494)
Is this a nerve-wracking experience, the idea of submitting this thing you've been working on?

N. J. Gallegos (53:04.961)
Oh, yeah. And it was kind of difficult to like get over my own ego with it because like, okay, like in medicine, you know, if you're told that like, you're not doing something correct, like that could be potentially like life threatening for somebody, right? So like, it's kind of hard to sometimes take feedback in that way. Cause you get like defensive, I guess. Yeah.

Jason Herbert (53:30.37)
Absolutely. Yeah.

N. J. Gallegos (53:32.053)
So I had to get over a lot of like my own bullshit to do it. But once I did, yeah, like it was 100% necessary though.

Jason Herbert (53:35.671)
Uh huh.

Jason Herbert (53:41.71)
Do you find, did you find that your writing style was modeled after anybody that you wrote or like, how did you, I mean, it's such a big fucking deal to like write a novel. I'm like, I, I'm in awe that you did this. So I'm kind of wondering, did you find yourself as you were writing, did you find yourself mimicking other authors that you liked or is this purely a, your voice kind of a thing?

N. J. Gallegos (54:02.373)
If it was, it was probably subconscious, but my biggest inspiration hero is Stephen King. So I guess potentially if I was, oh, I love that man, he's the best. Yeah, so if I am, it's probably subconscious.

Jason Herbert (54:13.682)
So many questions. I was hoping you were going to say that. OK, I was hoping you were going to say that.

Jason Herbert (54:24.21)
Yeah, I had the same problem when I was writing. I actually would stop reading other authors because I would get so worried that I was writing like them. And then I was just like, I just sort of like, my hero is like Dan Flores, who was like this cool ponytail dude up in like, like in Utah, friends around with a dog and writes this cool ass shit. I was like, Dan, you're so pretty, I write like you. Which I just gave up. I was like, fuck it, no one's gonna read my shit. That's what I'll do. So.

N. J. Gallegos (54:47.541)
Yeah.

N. J. Gallegos (54:52.719)
Hahaha!

Jason Herbert (54:53.598)
So you go through, you get this thing done, and then the process of creating a physical book that's like sold on Amazon and other sites was a freaky. Like first time you've seen the book and like print.

N. J. Gallegos (55:04.809)
Oh, it was surreal. Yeah. And it was interesting because I never really thought of like how do they come up with covers? How do they divide, you know, like what do you decide the chapter, what's not? So a lot of it, you just have to like kind of learn on the fly. But yeah, it like, it was almost like a out-of-body experience when I got to hold the book for the first time.

Jason Herbert (55:16.129)
Right.

Jason Herbert (55:32.598)
Well, we've been talking this whole book. I don't think we've even mentioned the premise of this book. You've talked a little bit about the idea that there's a heart that gets transplanted into a woman. Can we talk a little bit about the basic idea we've got? We've got our heroin Casey, right? Um, who is what she kind of downtrodden. I would say it feels like, I don't know, like she's a housewife, right? And then what happened? Like what, what's, what's the premise of this book? Like what, what happens to Casey basically? Or.

N. J. Gallegos (55:44.991)
Yep, yep.

N. J. Gallegos (55:50.893)
Yeah. Right.

N. J. Gallegos (55:59.39)
Hehehehehehe, wah!

Jason Herbert (56:01.579)
What's the start of this? Okay.

N. J. Gallegos (56:04.049)
Yeah, so Casey is a woman who kind of follows the life script that's expected. You know, you, you get married, you have kids, you, you maybe put your own wants and dreams on the back burner to nurture a marriage and whatnot.

Jason Herbert (56:21.282)
This sounds like a Reba McIntyre woman. Like in the video, is there life out there? Go on. I fucking love Reba, but go on.

N. J. Gallegos (56:27.081)
It's a country music song, yeah. And essentially, you know, her husband is a deadbeat alcoholic piece of shit. Her son is like a budding Ted Bundy, and she ends up getting pregnant with her daughter, who she very much loves, but in the process has heart failure during her pregnancy and ends up requiring a heart transplant, which luckily she gets from a...

serial killer, not that you, not that anybody knows that. And, you know, she begins to kind of come into her own, you know, get, sees her own wants, needs, she's fed up with people's bullshit. And she sees her daughter and she sees the danger to her daughter with her own brother, right? And shit goes down.

Jason Herbert (56:57.998)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Jason Herbert (57:25.646)
Okay. So here's a question where you do this talk chat. Why are all men evil in your book? And also on this podcast.

N. J. Gallegos (57:34.701)
Um, that was, that would probably be like some daddy issues of mine, I would imagine. If we, if we go back really far. Um, but more so just, I want you to hate them that way you root for Casey.

Jason Herbert (57:40.078)
Hahaha!

Jason Herbert (57:46.754)
Oh, no, it's good. Daddy issues are fine. In fact, that's one of the two questions I ask any particular date. I'm like, do you have daddy issues and how low are your standards? And then that's, that's actually everything kind of how I would offer. It was like, just keep, keep the bar low. And I'm going to be, I'm actually going to be right there at it. So, um, so you've got, you've got the book out now. Are you, is there a followup to this? Like, like, okay. Ooh, here's the question I had. If this.

N. J. Gallegos (58:00.469)
Genius, genius.

N. J. Gallegos (58:07.507)
Hehehehehehe

N. J. Gallegos (58:14.655)
Hmm.

Jason Herbert (58:16.278)
book or a film, can you cast it? Can you, can you, have you done that?

N. J. Gallegos (58:18.785)
Oh, I've already, well, I know who Casey would be. I know who Casey would be. Kate Siegel from like Haunting of Hill House, Haunting of Blind Manor. That's 100% who Casey would be. Otherwise, no, I have not cast anybody else in it. Just Kate Siegel.

Jason Herbert (58:23.477)
Okay, tell me.

Jason Herbert (58:28.514)
Uh-huh.

Jason Herbert (58:34.562)
Okay.

Jason Herbert (58:40.997)
Okay, because I cast the deadbeat husband for you. It's Eric Trump.

N. J. Gallegos (58:44.295)
Who is it?

N. J. Gallegos (58:47.989)
Hahaha, he doesn't have enough of a chin to play Jack, I don't think. Yeah.

Jason Herbert (58:53.454)
Oh, that's too bad. Like, you know, maybe, maybe a good prosthetic. Uh, but I was like, who do I hate? And who, who just, who just completely makes me want to punch them in the face. And he was the first of many trumps that come to mind. Like I would punch Baron Trump. I would punch Trump kids. I, yeah, that's fine. I just, you know, at this point, that was fine as one does. You mentioned Stephen King. All right. Let's talk about this. What are your favorite Stephen King books? Like.

N. J. Gallegos (58:57.81)
Maybe.

N. J. Gallegos (59:12.637)
Yeah, as you do.

N. J. Gallegos (59:18.637)
Ugh, yeah.

Jason Herbert (59:23.286)
What's your jam with King? Okay, all right.

N. J. Gallegos (59:25.333)
The Stand is number one hands down favorite. I like Pet Sematary quite a bit. I mean, I can't pick one, but Dark Tower series, obviously.

Jason Herbert (59:40.763)
Oh my God. That, can I tell you, Dark Tower, I think we were talking about this. Dark Tower series made me throw a book across the house and put it down for a year.

N. J. Gallegos (59:46.11)
Yes.

N. J. Gallegos (59:51.616)
Was it the one with OI when he... No.

Jason Herbert (59:55.302)
No, but no, it was, it was the oi bit. Actually, one of my favorite quotes in any book is ever, is when Jake dies, when he says, go then there are other worlds than these. I'm like, that was literally the thought I had in my head when I moved to Colorado. I was like, there are other worlds than this. No, when Roland's girlfriend dies.

N. J. Gallegos (01:00:10.813)
Yes, that's a great one.

N. J. Gallegos (01:00:16.938)
Yes.

N. J. Gallegos (01:00:21.728)
Oh, Susan, yeah.

Jason Herbert (01:00:23.014)
Yeah, when Susan, when Susan Delgado dies, I was like, because we all know she dies, we know from the very beginning, she's going to die. And then when she still dies, I took the book and threw it across. I was in my grandmother's basement and threw it across the house and didn't, couldn't pick it up for a year. I was so upset. It's like, how do you, well, they burned her a lot. I mean, so, you know, there was that, so that part was bad. All right. What else you got on Stephen King? Was it, was, what was your first Stephen King experience? Yeah.

N. J. Gallegos (01:00:39.376)
Yeah, that was rough.

Yeah.

N. J. Gallegos (01:00:50.473)
book. So it was the stand actually. Yeah, so I was reading, you know, just kind of like your standard like young adult, like Goosebumps, Animorphs, like whatever. And I would read them like within, you know, like a couple hours. And then I'd be like, Mom, I need another book. And she's like, damn it, like, I'm not buying you more books. So one day she got

Jason Herbert (01:00:54.864)
Was it really?

N. J. Gallegos (01:01:15.073)
fed up with my bullshit and she literally tossed her copy of The Stand at me and she's like, read this in an hour you little shit. And I was like, okay, I will. Obviously I didn't. So I, yeah. And she had the uncut version with like, you know, trash can man and his whole thing. So that I think that might have been the first book that I at least remember. But then

Jason Herbert (01:01:22.062)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Herbert (01:01:26.046)
No. It's like 1200 pages.

Jason Herbert (01:01:34.377)
Uh-huh.

N. J. Gallegos (01:01:41.661)
I went through like Carrie, Misery, The Shining, all your standards, old stuff.

Jason Herbert (01:01:47.374)
I remember the first one I read was the Dead Zone. And then, which was, it's, yeah, it's fine. And then I remember reading it when I was in seventh grade at my dad's house over the summer. I remember reading, I'd go into his camper and I would just read all, cause he was like this big buff, like Kentucky guy. And I was like, I'm a dork, I'm gonna read all day. And I remember reading it. And then Tommy Knockers, I read his early, so I haven't read, I haven't read King in forever. Like.

N. J. Gallegos (01:01:49.985)
That one's a good one.

N. J. Gallegos (01:02:09.235)
Hahaha!

N. J. Gallegos (01:02:15.997)
His new stuff's good too. I have a fondness for his old stuff more, I would say, but like his new stuff's still great. I'm reading Holly right now.

Jason Herbert (01:02:20.311)
Yeah.

Jason Herbert (01:02:23.982)
Well, I think that's what we have a tendency to do. You were talking a little bit earlier about your love for the prequels. And I think we tend to fixate on the things of our childhood. Right. It's a reason why I think that maybe Lost Boys is probably the best vampire film I've ever seen. I mean, it is obviously, but it's so, it's so fucking cool. It's sexy and cool. And you've got the greasy sax player guy and Jamie Gertz, who's just first time you ever see her, she's doing the dance thing and it's God damn it.

N. J. Gallegos (01:02:40.639)
Duh.

N. J. Gallegos (01:02:51.038)
Yeah.

Jason Herbert (01:02:53.45)
Um, you've got the Corey's. I mean, I could do a lot. I could do a lost boys pod just all day long. And I think they do have some really cool shit playing around with the mythology of, of vampires in the modern day. But I think that, you know, I think we have a Tennessee to fixate. That's the reason why everything's always better when you're a kid. The music is always better. It's the reason why I want to listen to eighties music. Then today or anything like that, you know, it's.

N. J. Gallegos (01:03:10.409)
Mm-hmm.

N. J. Gallegos (01:03:17.077)
That's true. I heard somewhere that like your musical pace or pretty much whatever you were into as like a teenager. Like that's almost kind of fixed.

Jason Herbert (01:03:24.003)
Tell me.

Oh my gosh, that explains everything because I remember I was listening to country and then the girl I was going to take to prom, Melissa Baird, who doesn't talk to me to this day cause prom, um, got me listening to like alternate and I was watching like the movie singles and started, uh, I listened to like pearl jam and everybody's and then that was like, that was my thing, you know? Um, Oh, she didn't, doesn't talk to me because like I made some comment about how pretty some other girl was. And then that was it.

N. J. Gallegos (01:03:49.194)
Mm-hmm.

N. J. Gallegos (01:03:56.647)
OOF

Jason Herbert (01:03:56.982)
No, yeah, not the best, turns out. Stephen King's done a prom film, or a prom book, Carrie. So yeah, so I guess what's the plans now? I see that you are writing other stuff. You've got a short story that just came out. I was on it like last week or something. Like, what? Is there other stuff on the docket for you? What's going on as far as writing goes?

N. J. Gallegos (01:04:04.073)
Yes, yes.

N. J. Gallegos (01:04:23.061)
So I recently had a novella that came out with Alien Buddha Press called It's Me, Hi, I'm the Zombie, It's Me, which based on my weekend at StokerCon in Pittsburgh when StokerCon was taking place as well as the Taylor Swift concert, which that was hilarious, because in the hotel, you have all these Swifties and they're glitter and they're all bubbly and they're spraying.

Jason Herbert (01:04:32.988)
Yes.

Jason Herbert (01:04:40.35)
Right. Uh huh.

Jason Herbert (01:04:51.478)
Are you a Swifty?

N. J. Gallegos (01:04:53.061)
I do like Taylor Swift. I wouldn't, I don't know if I'm like diehard Swiftie though, you know, cause like, I don't know enough about like all the songs and whatnot, but yeah, like, I mean, she's incredibly talented.

Jason Herbert (01:04:54.454)
I did too, I think she's fucking awesome.

Jason Herbert (01:05:02.156)
No.

I think just from a business sense, just from a personal autonomy, doesn't take shit from anybody, has complete control. The whole, I'm going to go back and re-record my albums as a fuck you. How can you not respect that? I think that that's...

N. J. Gallegos (01:05:16.169)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Exactly. And she's like her lyrics, they're insane sometimes, you know, they're brilliant.

Jason Herbert (01:05:28.374)
She's really crafty songwriter. She's very open about her own experiences and people give her shit about that because there's this thing where women can't be sexual. You know, it's like, or can't be, you know, Madonna could be sexual, but has to accept the fact that people are gonna think she's a tramp or something like that. And Taylor's like, yeah, I have relationships with men and that's what you do as a woman. You know, or you have, you know, it's like that's.

N. J. Gallegos (01:05:38.979)
Mm-hmm.

N. J. Gallegos (01:05:50.228)
Right.

Jason Herbert (01:05:53.19)
That's who I am and that colors my experiences as a human being, as my relationships, right? So no, I dig it. So like you go to Stoker Cod and then you see all these Swifties and you come up with my son Jackson's reading, is reading Dracula right now. He's reading Brom Stoker and he's like, oh, he loves it. So you write this piece and then, what else is on the docket for you? Are there other?

N. J. Gallegos (01:05:58.822)
Exactly.

N. J. Gallegos (01:06:12.306)
Oh, nice.

Jason Herbert (01:06:20.258)
Have you thought about writing other non-horrors? Are you writing Star Wars fanfic yet?

N. J. Gallegos (01:06:27.057)
I've honestly thought about it. It would be a lot of like lesbian shit, which I'm, you know what, I would make Sabine and Ahsoka run away together with their tucca cat. That's what I would do.

Jason Herbert (01:06:28.862)
I bet you could.

Jason Herbert (01:06:39.554)
No, no Sabine and Sokka are not running away together. Sabine and Shin Hati are running together. I mean, not that I've thought about that many times. I mean, this is a PG audio, so yeah. Do you think Sabine is gay?

N. J. Gallegos (01:06:44.834)
Mmm, I could get down with that.

N. J. Gallegos (01:06:52.586)
Hahaha!

get vibes from her. Because I think like her, to find Ezra, it's more of a like sibling kind of thing. Yeah. No.

Jason Herbert (01:07:03.874)
That is a platonic non-relation. That is a not a relation. Like he in the card, in Rebels was like, hey, what's up? She's like, she shot that shit down immediately.

N. J. Gallegos (01:07:13.725)
Right. I always thought her friend that was like the bounty hunter in, um, I thought that they might've had a little thing.

Jason Herbert (01:07:20.04)
Uh-huh.

Jason Herbert (01:07:24.542)
I get, yeah, I also see, and like, if she's gay, it doesn't need to be like, oh, let's show her in a relationship. I have no problems with having her in a relationship. This is like, this is, it's fine. Yeah, of course there are gay people in Star Wars, right? And that's what I've loved about Andor. It's like, it took us way too long to get there. I don't, have we seen gay men in Star Wars yet?

N. J. Gallegos (01:07:53.749)
Hmm. I can't think of any on screen, but there's definitely some in the like newer books Yeah

Jason Herbert (01:08:02.674)
Are there? Because I haven't read the newer stuff, but I'm trying to think about on screen. And I mean, we only saw like, we haven't seen a sex scene in Star Wars. All we saw was in Andorra, we saw people getting out of bed together, which is as close, which. Well, I get, you know, I get where Star Wars is trying to go, where they're trying not to be rated R and stuff like that. At the same time, it's like if you're going to express relationships in their in their fullest thing.

N. J. Gallegos (01:08:16.673)
Oh yeah, that's as close as it gets.

Jason Herbert (01:08:31.09)
Yeah, absolutely show people all sorts of, you know, relationships. So but yeah, I get that feeling with Sabine. It would surprise me if Ezra. Well, what if Ezra were bi? Or just none, I don't know. Like, but Asoka hasn't had relationships either. Like we never did she ever have relationships on the on the Clone Wars or anything like that?

N. J. Gallegos (01:08:38.209)
Mm-hmm.

N. J. Gallegos (01:08:47.637)
Yeah.

N. J. Gallegos (01:08:56.325)
No, I think the closest is that, um, Bonturi, the, um, God, it's the Senator guy that like his mom was part of the separatists and then she got like bombed or whatever. I think that was like probably the closest it ever hinted towards a love interest, but.

Jason Herbert (01:09:14.036)
Right.

Jason Herbert (01:09:22.01)
But they've never explored that at all to my... I mean, Jedi are supposed to be no attachments, but that's completely silly. I mean, even Obi-Wan fell in love. So although I wish what they had done was make an Obi-Wan, Anakin, Padme love triangle, I thought that would have been far better than what we got in the prequels.

N. J. Gallegos (01:09:24.55)
Not, yeah, not that I know of.

N. J. Gallegos (01:09:47.518)
I'd pick Obi-Wan.

Jason Herbert (01:09:49.314)
Who wouldn't pick Obi-Wan? First of all, he's Ewan McGregor. Although I'm digging, I'm digging like this new found love for Hayden Christensen, because people hated on that man horribly back in the day. And this whole, the revival, I mean, first I feel like we get too much Anakin right now in the new series, but I'm glad for Hayden. I'm glad he's getting a paycheck. Star Wars doesn't.

N. J. Gallegos (01:10:02.046)
Yeah, they did.

N. J. Gallegos (01:10:14.269)
Yeah. Well, you know what, I think some of what the, I mean like the prequel dialogue's cringy. We're all gonna just like, it is, it is.

Jason Herbert (01:10:21.138)
Yes, it's bad. George Lucas cannot write. He can envision.

N. J. Gallegos (01:10:26.021)
No, yeah, he needed some help there. But I think some of like my issue too, with like the prequels, like when you watch Attack of the Clones and then Revenge of the Sith, like his fall to the dark side seems just very abrupt. But then when you add the Clone Wars and you watch all the way through, you're like, no wonder he fucking lost it. Like I would lose it, are you kidding? So I think that like leads legitimacy to his character and like.

Jason Herbert (01:10:41.622)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Herbert (01:10:50.442)
Yeah. They're, they're, they're

N. J. Gallegos (01:10:55.677)
kinda strengthens it.

Jason Herbert (01:10:57.842)
I think so. I think that my only kicker is like, we're getting so much of them now. And I, I almost hate the retconning of the focus of the shift of the focus on the Anakin. Cause in my mind, the story was actually always about Luke and Luke's quest to redeem his father. But you know, and I, again, this was my issue with the sequels was that, well, we never got the, with the sequels, we never got the Thrawn trilogy, which really brought out Luke, brought out Mara.

N. J. Gallegos (01:11:12.681)
Yeah.

Jason Herbert (01:11:27.082)
some of the other stuff, you know, and we also got to see Luke as just a complete and utter bad-ass. I mean, just, it's well established in the old EU that nobody can touch Luke, like ever. So we never saw, we never saw Mara, we never saw Talon Card, we never-

N. J. Gallegos (01:11:37.81)
Yeah.

Jason Herbert (01:11:44.03)
I can go off for days on this. So that's, that's maybe, that might be fun to speak for. Like I thought you guys were going to talk about the Kiefer Sousal and Kevin Bacon, Julia Roberts. Oh yeah. Well, what about Oliver Platt? Oliver Platt was in that movie. It wasn't William Baldwin.

N. J. Gallegos (01:11:52.745)
Hahaha!

N. J. Gallegos (01:11:58.741)
What about we just talk about Star Wars if we want, man?

Jason Herbert (01:12:02.21)
Dude, actually, you want to come back and do the Ahsoka pod. I'm down for that because, or not, yeah. You want to do the Ahsoka pod? Cause like you and my buddy Alan Malfavon would be awesome on that. Alan did, he did the Star Wars pod and we talked about it as a border and stuff like that. So, well, okay. Well, let's just do that. I mean, not that Flatliners wasn't awesome, but did you see, I have a question. Did you ever see the remake of Flatliners? Like...

N. J. Gallegos (01:12:07.957)
I would love that.

N. J. Gallegos (01:12:19.945)
I would totally love that, are you kidding? That's like my dream.

N. J. Gallegos (01:12:30.333)
I haven't. No, I plan on it eventually, but not yet.

Jason Herbert (01:12:34.647)
No one saw the remake. It was apparently so bad that when I was reading through it on Wikipedia, I got bored and started reading other things. And I had a podcast to do about that this afternoon, which is what we're talking about now. So, like I said, and apparently Kiefer Sutherland is in it in a bit part because apparently he becomes a doctor still.

N. J. Gallegos (01:12:41.678)
Hahaha!

N. J. Gallegos (01:12:55.761)
Yeah, but it's like, it's not him, it's not his like character's name or something. Yeah.

Jason Herbert (01:13:01.934)
No, he's assumed a false identity. I guess, see, I guess there's some blowback off all this. Like things don't go as well as they'd hope to be for these dudes. I mean, I don't know. Like I feel like you could make this film, but it wasn't malevolent enough to me. I mean, I don't know. What are your thoughts on Flatlanders as a film? Is it, is Flatlanders a medicine movie? I always ask people, is a movie a history movie? Is Flatlanders a medicine movie? When you were watching it, did you feel like there was any medicine going on in this thing?

N. J. Gallegos (01:13:32.001)
that there was a fair amount, especially, you know, with how they were inducing them into death and whatnot. I was trying to think if that would actually work or not.

Jason Herbert (01:13:44.162)
What were they doing? Were they giving them like medicine and then just chilling their bodies down? Is that what they were doing?

N. J. Gallegos (01:13:51.957)
So yeah, they were chilling their bodies down and then didn't they like kind of put them like submerged some part of them in water and then they defibrillated them, which would like, so if you defibrillate somebody, it's a whole thing.

Jason Herbert (01:14:08.458)
Okay, dumb. How does one defib? How you, I assume you have defibrillated people before. So, okay. Yes. All right. Oh, we have, okay. Cool. Are you using the Royal we as a, as a, yeah, that's a Southern thing. Yeah. Okay. So how does one defibrillate? Do you get, do you get to yell clear?

N. J. Gallegos (01:14:14.601)
We have, yes.

N. J. Gallegos (01:14:18.825)
The Royal Wee, me and Cat Bane, wherever he is. But, uh.

N. J. Gallegos (01:14:26.045)
You do actually.

Jason Herbert (01:14:27.434)
Okay. So here's my thought. Right. You said this earlier, like how anybody can go to med school with any major. And I was like, would it be awesome if someone like with the med school, like with a performing arts major, they're like yelling clear and stat would be so much more dramatic. So, all right. So how do you, how do you kill a person?

N. J. Gallegos (01:14:40.405)
Mm-hmm.

N. J. Gallegos (01:14:49.611)
Now that's a whole thing in itself, really.

Jason Herbert (01:14:53.418)
No, no, like if you were going to kill a person with the, here's the question, if you were gonna kill a person with the intent of bringing them back to life, how would you do it?

N. J. Gallegos (01:15:03.609)
I think that they actually did have a thought there with the defibrillation. So there's, you know, like in movies, they're always like a flat line and they're like, oh, we're gonna defibrillate. I'm like, you can't do that. It's not gonna work. No, it's so that there's not like, there's not any electrical activity really in the heart if there's like asystole. So it's just, I mean, it's just not gonna do anything. So there's only,

Jason Herbert (01:15:14.346)
Yes. Right. No. Why?

Jason Herbert (01:15:25.07)
Okay.

N. J. Gallegos (01:15:32.033)
two really two heart rhythms where you can defibrillate. So it's like V fib where it's like the wiggly line and then V tac which is more of a kind of, yeah. Now you can actually have somebody with like a pulse and everything in V tac. So you can't technically defibrillate that. You have to cardiovert that. Like, so if you defibrillate somebody like with a normal, like me, just sitting here talking, you can actually stop the heart.

Jason Herbert (01:15:40.768)
Mm-hmm.

N. J. Gallegos (01:16:01.885)
that way. Yeah, so you're supposed to like, sync the defibrillator thing before you were to do that on somebody with a heartbeat because you can actually kill them by doing it. If that makes sense. Yeah.

Jason Herbert (01:16:17.038)
Okay. Yes. So, essentially, that's what they're trying to do here is like get the body to a spot where they can shock them to death almost.

N. J. Gallegos (01:16:26.281)
Pretty much, yeah. It would like interrupt the heart's rhythm and just, yeah.

Jason Herbert (01:16:29.697)
Right.

Jason Herbert (01:16:33.194)
And then they just bring them back to life by, well, you say this wouldn't work, which is essentially warming them back up and restarting. It's almost like they're jumps. Like they've got jumper cables. Right. I mean, is that essentially what they're, I mean, so this is the jumper cable way to go to kill them. I'm not that I want to know, but just in case it did like.

N. J. Gallegos (01:16:43.986)
Right. Yeah.

N. J. Gallegos (01:16:54.385)
Yeah, I would say yeah, because you know, we see people like that get hit like by lightning or whatnot, and it'll just dead stop your heart.

Jason Herbert (01:17:02.358)
You've seen people get hit by lightning.

N. J. Gallegos (01:17:04.121)
Not like seen, but I've seen patients that have come in. Yeah.

Jason Herbert (01:17:05.866)
Right. What happens? What happens? Are they all fried to a crisp? What happens?

N. J. Gallegos (01:17:11.317)
So they actually don't get like, you would expect like, you know, like massive burns or things like that. They get more of a, it has a name. I can't think of what it's called now, but you'll get these like red marks and stuff on you that almost look like ferns. So it'll, you know, wherever you got hit, let's say you got hit your head or whatever, it has to exit somewhere, which usually it'll exit like, you know, your foot or whatever.

Jason Herbert (01:17:16.663)
Yeah, totally.

Jason Herbert (01:17:25.87)
Sure. Okay.

N. J. Gallegos (01:17:37.821)
and you'll see these like little fern mark things where the like electricity kind of went.

Jason Herbert (01:17:44.022)
people survive these things?

N. J. Gallegos (01:17:45.641)
They can, yeah.

Jason Herbert (01:17:47.742)
I'm guessing they also don't. Dirt is like, they're like, yeah, they can also, maybe if you get, yeah, maybe if you're on a combine or something and it goes, it goes. Do you have a lot of problems, like people have wonder around the cornfields of Illinois going, boy, I'm like, my mom's husband is terrified of the doctor. He will not go.

N. J. Gallegos (01:17:50.601)
Yes.

N. J. Gallegos (01:17:57.861)
Yeah, yeah. Or you have prompt medical attention, essentially, yeah.

Jason Herbert (01:18:13.45)
You know, you said, certainly like the farmers won't do it either. Is this like, is this like a thing for people? Do you see, do you see like super masculine dudes terrified of details and such? I mean, what happens there?

N. J. Gallegos (01:18:22.849)
Oh yeah, yeah. Most of the time too, it's people that are covered in tattoos that are afraid of like IVs. Yeah, which I don't have any tattoos. So I don't, I mean, I don't know, but it just, it seems weird to me.

Jason Herbert (01:18:30.27)
Oh for real? Okay.

Jason Herbert (01:18:39.978)
Yeah, you would think that would be a thing they could do. So, yeah, I can ask you like a billion questions about the medical practice and also the field of osteology that we are going to create. Aren't we though? It's like, we have to find, yeah, world's foremost osteologist is what I'll put when they do my blurb on the History Channel, like creator, historians of the movie slash osteologist, be like right there. So let me ask you this.

N. J. Gallegos (01:18:51.401)
Pioneering.

Jason Herbert (01:19:08.738)
Where can people find you on the interwebs out there in the world as you were doing your thing? Where can people do that?

N. J. Gallegos (01:19:16.105)
the interweb. So on the website, formerly known as Twitter, you can find me at Dr. Spooky underscore er, which is my favorite. Um, and then I have a personal website, which is NJ

Jason Herbert (01:19:17.581)
Yes.

Jason Herbert (01:19:20.962)
Oh my gosh.

Jason Herbert (01:19:30.061)
Yes.

Jason Herbert (01:19:33.901)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Herbert (01:19:42.242)
Right, exactly. Where can they find your book?

N. J. Gallegos (01:19:45.649)
Well, you can find that on Amazon.

Jason Herbert (01:19:48.322)
Find that on Amazon in the world's finest retailers. So are you gonna write another book? Is it gonna be a little while? Are you ready to rock? What do you think?

N. J. Gallegos (01:19:51.306)
Damn right.

N. J. Gallegos (01:19:58.749)
I'm actually, I'm working on something right now. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Jason Herbert (01:20:01.415)
Okay, oh I hope that is it gonna be about a doctor?

N. J. Gallegos (01:20:04.849)
It is actually.

Jason Herbert (01:20:06.126)
Is he, is he an osteologist? She, they? Please do so. Like there's gotta be some inside joke to this somewhere. Just make the doctors. Yeah, the doctor's name is Mara Jade.

N. J. Gallegos (01:20:08.137)
Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to change it now. Yes. I'll put something in there.

N. J. Gallegos (01:20:19.802)
That would be great.

Jason Herbert (01:20:21.318)
Or JeraMade or something, JeraMade sounds, JeraMade actually sounds like something you'd drink when you come home from school. I'll have some blue energy JeraMade.

N. J. Gallegos (01:20:28.993)
Would you like to have a glass of JeraMaid, please?

Jason Herbert (01:20:31.246)
That sounded good. All right. All right, AJ, I'm going to hit stop here and give you just a quick sec here. All right.

N. J. Gallegos (01:20:37.117)
Yeah.