For the past year, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, like others around the world, have dealt with a health care crisis that is both personal and societal.

Even without the coronavirus pandemic, however, members face moral choices about medical issues throughout their lives. They must decide whether to continue a doomed pregnancy, whether to test a fetus for a genetic disorder, whether to vaccinate their children for sexually transmitted diseases, or whether to discontinue treatment of a dying parent.

As they grapple with these personal questions — as well as the ethical questions surrounding health and healing in society at large — many people look to principles spelled out in their religion to provide answers and moral guidance. Latter-day Saints may turn to their 96-year-old prophet-president, Russell M. Nelson, who is a former heart surgeon with respect for medical and scientific wisdom.

On this week’s podcast, Courtney Campbell, a philosophy professor of religion and culture at Oregon State University and author of the recently published “Mormonism, Medicine, and Bioethics,” examines these medical topics — from abortion to birth control to vaccines and end-of-life care — and makes his case for why Latter-day Saints should support universal health care.

Why Latter-day Saints should back universal health care | Episode 174

Clinic

Placid

Luck Be The Lady(feat.Laker)

Read Your Mind

i’ll be the gracious one
if you leave 
it doesn’t mean 
it didn’t help 

i’m always out of line
out of step 
and tucked away
upon your shelf 

when you’re asking for a sign
and i keep looking all the time
it doesn’t mean 
that i believe in it myself 

and you’re always throwing fits
when you’re reminded that you’re sick 
and all the sludge between your head 
can’t be undone 

tell me does it feel nice
to be alone 
to be a name 
all by yourself?

patience is made unkind 
when i believe 
in your disease 
and all it’s wealth 

when your friends they drop like flies
and you’re aching all the time 
would you just push the tropes aside
and call for help? 

and you do it all the time
where you leave me on the line 
between the best and the worst things 
i’ve ever felt

A Name is a Word

mindless detention and helpless prevention from the
things you like more than yourself 
it’s easy to please when you don’t have to treat burns from 
a pain that you’ve never felt 

a portrait of lovers from millions of others 
who bid you well 
and will pick up the phone when you call 
it shatters and cracks and it starts to look bad 
if you stare too long
so it’s best not to look much at all 

i want more than goose strings and ladders
i adore all the talk 
faces in passing they try to convince you to 
eventually, eventually care

a figure of praise with a mind twice his age and a knack for 
selfish endeavors, he calls 
upon me i’m sinking and shrinking and draining into
something much slighter than small 

i want more than useless encounters
godless rooms in my head
i see the smile leave your face like a sure thing, could you 
eventually, eventually care?

i want more than you have to offer
tried to cope for a while 
i hate the way you hang me up as if you someday could 
eventually, eventually care

Cult Of Personality (demo)

Abundance

We had to wrap this one up. 

Thanks to Kevin Shields (and mbv), the Irishmen James Mealey and Brian Honner, Neil Young, Karen Carpenter, Charles Thompson (and Pixies) and the many unnamed to whom we are no less indebted.

Bluebird

Staff on Strike

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