andy walsh phd - podcast interview transcript
Announcer: 00:03
Welcome to the Purpose Nation Podcast, inspiring conversations with Christians in science, technology, and industries of the future. For more information or to make a tax deductible contribution, visit purposenation.org.
Brad Cooper: 00:16
This is Brad Cooper with Purpose Nation and on the podcast today, I am very ready to geek out on science, maybe comics, science fiction, superheroes, some really interesting and I must admit I'm, I'm a, I'm a nerd, a geek, whatever you like to call me. So these are the kinds of things I just love talking about all day. So I'm really excited to talk about all of that, uh, with, uh, my guest and very blessed to welcome to the podcast author and scientist, Dr Andy Walsh. Andy, welcome to the Purpose Nation Podcast!
Dr. Andy Walsh: 00:47
Hi. Thanks for having me.
Brad Cooper: 00:49
You're very welcome. Thanks for being here and thanks for being with us. And, so in reading your, your latest book and your podcasts, or excuse me, your blog posts, I think I came across that you kind of like comics and science fiction and superheros and things like that. Any big summer movies that you're most excited about along those lines?
Dr. Andy Walsh: 01:07
Sure. Uh, so I'm, I'm all in on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I am very excited about Avengers End Game. My whole family, we've been watching, my wife and I were watching the movies since they started and the kids once they were old enough, they've joined in. And so we are all, we're all looking forward to that very much.
Brad Cooper: 01:23
Okay. Any, any particular like, well, I don't want to, we don't going to get into any potential spoilers for people who haven't seen the films..
Dr. Andy Walsh: 01:30
Yeah, I have... no theories. I'm just waiting to see what they have in store. Uh, so that I'm excited by it and not disappointed that it wasn't what I thought it was going to be.
Brad Cooper: 01:38
Yeah. Yeah. We all hope... there can't be any more expectation or hype or that for a movie, I don't think. Right. It's like the culmination of like what a decade or something.
Dr. Andy Walsh: 01:47
Yeah. I mean, since 2012 one then I showed up in the end credits of Avengers. Right. We've all been waiting to see how this was gonna turn out. So yeah.
Brad Cooper: 01:55
Yeah. Excited. Yeah. And like you said, sort of. Yeah. Even my family, some of which are very much into science fiction and science and things and some... OK, I'll say my wife... maybe isn't always, but even she was like, "yeah!" just going crazy for the last one too. So yeah, we're all excited for that one as well.
Brad Cooper: 02:10
But before we dive into more of that, just a quick bio on Dr. Walsh. He's currently the Chief Science Officer for a public health technology company called Health Monitoring Systems. And before that he graduated from Carnegie Mellon with a BS in biological sciences and got his PhD in molecular microbiology and immunology, a lot of of "ologies" there.... from Johns Hopkins, Bloomberg School of Public Health and I, Dr. Walsh Spends a lot of time interacting with faith and science issues, especially for young people, he has an ongoing blog where he writes about science and faith for the Emerging Scholars Network, which is a ministry of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship...great Ministry there and, that network is just really exciting and we're very supportive of that....{he's] married with two young children as he just mentioned, his family there, and he has a book out, which I believe is your first, is that right?
Dr. Andy Walsh: 03:04
That's correct.
Brad Cooper: 03:05
Great. Which I and I definitely highly recommend it if you, if you enjoyed any of the first 30 seconds of our conversation, you'll really love his book, "Faith Across the Multiverse: Parables from Modern Science." And we're going to have a link to that book on our podcast page. So please do check that out. And I definitely want to talk about that a little bit more...
Brad Cooper: 03:24
...just real quick, about kind of your current work and what you do. So... Speaking of movies, so for me, you know, there's movies about pandemics and global epidemics and viruses and they almost inevitably there's a scientist, right, who pulls up the screen and it's like you can see the map of the u s or the world or whatever and you see like these, you know, just red blobs just going across showing the spread of the virus across the planet. In reading your description, that's sort of what I pictured you to be, if you don't mind, but is that anywhere close to what you and your company does?
Dr. Andy Walsh: 03:57
That is in the right ballpark.
Brad Cooper: 03:58
Okay.
Dr. Andy Walsh: 03:58
Not as involved in trying to forecast what's going to happen. We're more involved in trying to understand what is currently happening with actual diseases and actual health conditions. But certainly that is in the space of things I worked on in my graduate school days. That was something we were trying to build towards was being able to make a map like that, forecasting diseases. I usually like to say that the movie Contagion is the closest representation of the various things I've done. And there are several scientists in that movie where I've had their job or done some of the work at one point or another.
Brad Cooper: 04:27
Right, right. Okay. Well more specifically, tell us about your company and a little bit more about what you do.
Dr. Andy Walsh: 04:32
Yeah, sure. So at Health Monitoring we collect electronic healthcare encounter data from a variety of locations across the country, primarily emergency departments, but also physician offices. We collect de-identified data. So we're looking for aggregate patterns in diseases, in conditions, and we're trying to look at before diagnosis is made. So as soon as you come into the emergency department and say, I feel like I might have the flu, we get that text of what you said. And we try to put those into different categories. All the people that think they have the flu, all the people that have broken arms, all the people that are experiencing of drug overdose or some kind of mental health crisis, create those different categories. And then we look for trends in those categories that might suggest something that public health needs to intervene with because there's an increase or an unusual pattern. And then we notify public health and they follow up. We provide them some tools and software and additional data to follow up and try to identify what might be going on in their community.
Brad Cooper: 05:25
That's great. Is there any like specific types of cases or situations where your software kind of came in handy or was it useful or, or, or maybe useful in the future?
Dr. Andy Walsh: 05:33
Sure. So we are have been heavily involved in trying to understand the current opioid overdose epidemic. So previous data primarily came from mortality data and could take a year or two to get accurate numbers. There's been just a big backlog, unfortunately in the testing, the pharmacology and the toxicology that goes in when identifying drug overdoses. So we can identify as soon as the patient comes in. We may not know what substance was involved, but we can identify overdoses and give public health and much more up-to-date picture of what's happening in their jurisdiction. Our system's also used regularly for tracking the flu season, uh, in different parts of the country. And we've also handled some special events like Super Bowls or the most recent Democratic and Republican Conventions. We put on sort of extra monitoring in the hospitals in those areas around those events to make sure that if something unusual happens because of that event, that it's detected as quickly as possible.
Brad Cooper: 06:29
That's great. That's great. Very important. And so for example, if something, let's say, showed up in Minneapolis last night where the NCAA Championship was held, where my Virginia Cavaliers won an amazing victory (go Wahoos)...your software might help with that? Ha Ha...sorry, I had to get that in there...
New Speaker: 06:48
I absolutely understand. Uh, and I suppose in full disclosure, we don't currently serve the state of Minnesota, but we are in various places around the country. But yes, in general, that's the kind of thing that we would be looking.
Brad Cooper: 06:59
Okay. See Minnesota, you need to get their software in there. OK. Had to get there... fresh off the great win last night.
Brad Cooper: 07:05
So anyway. So taking a quick step back. We'd love to hear more about your background and kind of what got you into this, this kind of work in, in science and then a little bit about your faith background. So have you always been into science? Did it more start with kind of your love of science fiction or comics or something? What kind of got you interested in science growing up?
Dr. Andy Walsh: 07:22
Yeah, I mean, I don't really remember NOT being interested in science... From a fairly early age. I had some notion that I wanted it to be involved in science generally... you know, what I understood at five or six or seven of what that would look like. You know, who knows. But, uh, yeah. And I remember, you know, it was in junior high reading in, I think it was Discover magazine, but certainly one of those kind of popular press science magazines about the HIV emerging HIV infections and just generally infectious diseases and wanting to be involved in helping to uh, or cure or treat those, those kinds of illnesses. So that motivated the particular direction that I went in. In high school learning about DNA replication and cell biology. That really got me hooked into, OK, this is the kind of science that I want to do and obviously it's related to infectious diseases, so that helped. So that got me on the biology track and then in graduate school realizing that I wasn't so great at the lab bench in doing biology, but was always up for more time on the computer doing stats or programming, things like that. That's sort of how I shifted in the direction of applying statistical methods and computational methods to studying data related to infectious diseases. And that's how I wound up being prepared for the work that I do now at Health Monitoring.
Brad Cooper: 08:37
And you had mentioned in your book and other places too, just sort of a love for science fiction as well and I guess fantasy and they may be comics. I mean, did that sort of was, did that come out of the love of science and it or it just kind of reinforce it?
Dr. Andy Walsh: 08:48
Yeah. You know, being able to explore what the world IS like and what the world MIGHT BE like, through science, has always fascinated me. The overlap, you know, my biggest love in comic books is X-Men and there's, you know, the strong science fiction themes, strong biology, science fiction, theme of mutation and what are the limits of human biology, what are the possibilities that are open to human biology? Uh, certainly fascinated me. So I think, you know, it's all part of a piece and you know, which came first is hard for me to tease apart at this point.
Brad Cooper: 09:15
Sure, sure. Yeah. How about your faith background and your Christian faith background? Did you grow up in a Christian family? Kind of talk about the beginnings there and kind of how that evolved over time.
Dr. Andy Walsh: 09:26
Sure. So, yeah, my parents were both Christians. I grew up going to church, uh, went to Christian school starting in kindergarten all the way through high school. So got a pretty solid grounding in the Bible and the history of Christian thought and belief through that, certainly through an American Lens, through a Protestant Lens. But that was, that was kind of what is growing up with, you know, it was probably early on it and when I was five that I decided that I wanted to personally follow Jesus. I think mostly just because I wanted to be with, you know, continue to be with my family and affirm what they were interested in. But that's certainly taken on more dimensions as I've grown. Was involved in Intervarsity at Carnegie Mellon and at Johns Hopkins, even though I was no longer in a Christian school setting, still maintained that connection to Christian fellowship through my education and obviously had been involved with Intervarsity now blogging for them since since graduating. And yeah, I continue to be involved in, in church as well and helping out with some different things there over the years, leading small groups and even trying to teach them science to church as well, helping him bridge some of those, those gaps or, or meet some needs there.
Brad Cooper: 10:36
So in your college or academic days, as well as in your current work, how would you describe the interaction between, biology and the work that you do, and your faith with your co-students, co-workers? Some people describe it as "no conflict," "mostly supportive," "some conflict..." ...biology, in particular, it seems like there's definitely opportunity for some conflict there. How would you kind of characterize that and your, uh, both school and work life?
Dr. Andy Walsh: 11:05
Yeah. So is there any part of the interaction between my Christian faith and my science studies is that part of my desire to, to help improved public health, to help make some contribution to health of the communities around our country is motivated by, you know, the compassion and wanting to follow Jesus and, and all of that. So there's a reinforcement there and I think that that's something that my, some of my colleagues can understand and appreciate. Some of them share that similar background and some of them may not share the same religious background, but uh, appreciate the same kind of desire and compassion and interest for public health.
Brad Cooper: 11:40
How would you say sort of your faith has inspired your work or vice versa,for you personally? You know, it definitely comes out in the book, but it just in terms of the work that you do and you mentioned kind of even early on wanting to look for cures and wanting to, you know, wanting to help... how would you characterize that in terms of your faith and work and how they reinforce each other for you personally?
New Speaker: 12:00
Yeah. So I think that certainly Jesus had a healing ministry, when he was here on earth, and had a heart for people who were suffering physically or who had needs that were unmet physically. And so I see working in public health as being a way of following that pattern. Certainly what I do is very different. I'm not helping to heal individual people directly. I'm not seeing patients or anything like that, like a physician, you know, I, I think that I'm contributing to the health of communities in a way that makes the most of what I actually can do. Well, you know, my skills are not in at the lab bench or in dealing with individual patients, but in dealing with large amounts of data and, and those sorts of things.
Brad Cooper: 12:41
Yeah. And you, and glad you mentioned that too. I mean, it seems like also just in your work. Yeah. In addition to, to biology being an important background and also seems like even computer science and math and kind of statistics would be important in your role. Is that right?
Dr. Andy Walsh: 12:54
Yeah. So, even though I don't have a formal degree in computer science or anything like that, I've been programming since I was in junior high and all through Undergrad and Grad school was writing little programs and to help make homework go faster or to help with different tasks around the lab. Uh, so that's always been a, an interest of mine and was that I was developing and it's turned out to be very helpful and the job that I have.
Brad Cooper: 13:19
And so your, your book, "Faith Across the Multiverse: Parables from Modern Science," again, I will have links to this to check it out... what's the book about? How would you describe it, and what did you hope to accomplish with it?
Dr. Andy Walsh: 13:31
Yeah, so it's really kind of an extension of all the things we've been talking about. My interest in science and in science fiction and a desire to tell more people about... invite more people to follow... Jesus. And so the pattern that I saw it, you know, people when they talk about science and they're talking about the Bible or Christian faith, they often talk in terms of overlapping set of facts or fact claims, truth claims, and whether they are in consonance or in disagreement. You know, does science and the Bible agree about where people came from, where the universe came from and those sorts of things. Um, but what I saw in reading the Bible where there was overlap between science and what was written in the Bible is the use of concepts and ideas, uh, in terms of illustrations, in terms of parables, in terms of poetic metaphors.
Dr. Andy Walsh: 14:17
And so there's really just a strong pattern throughout the scripture of God and the various writers of the Bible, uh, communicating ideas about God, about what He is like about what is important to Him in the language of creation, the language of the natural world. Whether that's the parables of Jesus talking about sowing seeds or whether it's writing to Paul, I'm talking about grafting branches on to olive trees, whether that's uh, the psalms and the proverbs talking about different animals and plants and you know, look to the ant or describing, you know, the sun going across the sky, you know, and it's some kind of chariot or being, you know, pulled across the sky, those kinds of things. There's lots of language about the natural world and it's drawing on the common experience that everybody has of the natural world to help get across ideas about God that maybe not everybody does have experience with or abstract notions about God that we can only partially understand because of our finiteness.
Dr. Andy Walsh: 15:11
So I really wanted to explore that further with modern science to say, okay, well now the language that we use to talk about science is no longer drawn from common experience. Yeah. Now we have things starting with the telescope and the microscope and now we have things like Large Hadron Colliders that allow us to do science but only a very select number of people have experience with those observations of the natural world. So trying to take that language and say we can still use that language to talk about the concepts of theology to talk about God. We just have to do a little bit more work to understand what the concepts mean in the science world. And then some of us who are not familiar with the Bible have to do a little bit of work to understand the concepts of theology and the concepts about God and so trying to have that conversation together by building more of a shared vocabulary.
Brad Cooper: 15:55
Yeah, that's great. I really loved the book and loved how you interwove those things that you just described in trying to pull out, I guess, you know, the science parables within the natural parables within the Bible. And then also kind of relating that to, and a more modern, um, concepts like x men and comics and superheroes and, is it Douglas Adams? ...Douglas Adams books and things like that. So just really, really, really good stuff, especially for young people. You definitely have to have a geeky side. I would say. I fit in that category. And I assume by this point pretty much everyone who even listens to our podcast probably is somewhat scientifically minded...
Dr. Andy Walsh:
16:33 ...I think there is something somewhat inherently geeky about just subscribing to a podcast....
Brad Cooper: 16:37
That's, that's correct. That is absolutely correct. Yeah. So we combine like, you know, Christian theology, science and podcasts, you can't get any more kind of a nerdy, geeky audience in that, I guess. So anyway. So that's why everyone will love the book that's, that listens to our podcast because it combines all of those things together so you can really enjoy all of, all of them merged together. Um, any particular feedback? I mean, or are know, especially young people and I know you write for Intervarsity, the blog that you write, you know, kind of more geared towards young people, but what a, I mean, what did you hope as far as young people, I mean, is that, was that a particular audience in writing this or, or not particularly?
Dr. Andy Walsh: 17:11
Yeah, it was definitely trying to be relevant to my peers and hopefully to a younger generation as well in referencing, you know, the kinds of movies and books and things that are out there right now. I try to keep a lot of the, the references as current as possible. Some of them might be a little bit older, but you know, tried to stay away from just movies that are 30 years old. Uh, I had a little bit of experience with the Youth Ministry at our church and was finding that, Oh gee, I'm talking about things that to me seemed very recent, but actually like movies like the Matrix that are 20 years old, they have no idea. They haven't seen that. They have no idea what I'm talking about. Yeah. And, and in terms of, you know, hoping what I, what I hope people are getting at it is just instead of a richer vocabulary to have conversations with people that maybe they wouldn't have otherwise been able to have conversations with. So maybe maybe that is this a scientist for a science colleagues that they have at and you know, at school, Or in the neighborhood, or in their church. Or maybe that's somebody they're coming from the science background and coming from it comic book background, but they are not familiar with the Bible, might allow them to have a conversation with, uh, a Christian or somebody that they and their family or otherwise that, uh, that they wouldn't have otherwise known how to talk to about those kinds of things.
Brad Cooper: 18:19
Right, right. Yeah. Well, and you said you mentioned that it's funny and I have younger children as well not younger, I wouldn't say... Teenager, an almost teenager... they're actually covering Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in one of his English Lit classes right now. So very timely. Whether they see it in public in movies, current movies or books. They're still covering these kinds of things. So it's all definitely content that I think people resonate with a young, young and like me, old. Whether it's in the Bible and Jesus using parables, or in these kinds of movies about superheroes, and science fiction and things, what attracts us to, to these types of things that helps helps us to understand more abstract concepts. Any, any thoughts there?
Dr. Andy Walsh: 19:06
Yeah, so I think part of it is just that we relate well to stories and you know, it's not an original observation, but you know, human beings seem to be able to process information well when it comes through a story and through being able to dramatize what we're trying to talk about through through narrative plot and through character interaction, it seems to help. And then also, you know, when you're dealing with really abstract ideas like the science of the microscope, you know, the microscopic world or the science of the, you know, the vast astronomical distances as the cosmos or things that are billions of years old. You know, that's all really abstract. It's really hard to wrap your head around that. And when you're talking about a god who is infinite and who somehow despite being, you know, God became a human being, like all those are really kind of hard concepts to think about it as well.
Dr. Andy Walsh: 19:50
We don't have any experience to directly connect to that. So finding something that has a human scale that's human relatable as a way to gain entry into those ideas, get entry into those concepts, I think allows us to have something to grab hold of, you know? And even that, you know, as a metaphor, right? We're not actually literally grabbing anything, but that's the kind of, that's how we talk about these things. Like our language is so full of these metaphors about human scale interaction with Creation that it's really hard to get away from. And it seems to be a really powerful tool that our brains are well equipped to deal with.
Brad Cooper: 20:21
Yeah. So, you mentioned billions of years, we talked about evolutionary science a little bit here and there. So there's inevitably in Christian and science discussions, these controversial issues, you know, whether it be billions of years in terms of the age of the universe or evolution or origins of life or origins of humans... Obviously there's a different spectrum of folks even within the Christian community who kind of fall in different thought patterns there. How would you, rather than diving into those, because as you say in the book, that's kind of been done so many times ad nauseam and we don't often cover it on their podcast here either. But just in terms of the conversation, are there particular approaches that you found in conversations with Christian audiences in particular, whether it's pastors or people in church who you may suspect may not agree with you on some of these issues...any particular approaches that you've found most helpful and kind of not shutting down the conversation and keeping the opening dialog and maybe coming to some point kind of common ground or coming to at least a respectful dialogue with with other Christians?
Dr. Andy Walsh: 21:21
So a couple of things that I find helpful. One, I think you know, a lot of people feel like science is taking something away from them. It's taking some thing that you previously was the domain of God or religion and now it's the domain of science is we've taken away from them. And I think it's important to not frame it in those terms and to try to emphasize that it's an additional explanation that God, I still believe that God created the world and that science, including the science of evolutionary biology is how we collectively as a human race are trying to understand how God did that. And part of what I am trying to accomplish with this book is to give people something back in terms of the language of science right here here or concepts and language and words that science has given us that we can use to talk about God and to talk about what we believe when we say that we believe in God.
Dr. Andy Walsh: 22:06
And so, you know, there's less sort of feeling of, science just takes and takes and takes. But that there's actually something positive about science and it's giving back to believers even if they're not particularly interested in studying science as a vocation. And then I think the other thing is just again, reiterating that common ground that, I still believe in God's will, trying to follow Jesus, still affirm that God somehow became incarnate as a man, lived on earth, died, came back to life. I don't know all the biological, physical mechanisms of that, but I do believe that that is something that happened based on the testimony of the gospels. And like I said, I think that science allows us to understand how God accomplishes the creative acts that are described in the Bible. And just like developmental biology helps us to understand how individual humans and develop from single cells to the fully complex beings that we are. I still believe that, God, I still affirm, you know, what the psalmist wrote, that God knit us together, right? That's developmental biology helps us understand how he did that. And likewise cosmology helps us understand how He knit together to stars and the planets and evolutionary biology helps us understand how He knit together the full diversity of, of living organisms.
Brad Cooper: 23:16
That's great. Yeah, and I, I love what you said earlier about using a common language and they don't even before that, earlier in the podcast, you mentioned things like quantum mechanics and these vast distances in the universe and Large Hadron Colliders... And the science part of things has gotten so complex these days. I imagine it's...well, and I know this not being a scientist...just coming to a language where you can communicate with a scientist, for example, on some of these issues is, is very difficult. So, I think people are somewhat intimidated by it and like you said, concerned about what language we can use and what is kind of the domains that are sort of acceptable to talk about. So it's, it's kind of shut things down a little bit, but you know, what would you say as far as educating ourselves as a church with pastors, young, people, parents, I mean, is there, do you feel like there's a need to sort of bring up... and beyond just getting to a kind of a simple common language... but just bring up the level of, of education and in the sciences?
Dr. Andy Walsh: 24:11
Yeah, so it certainly, I am as a big fan of science, think that there's value in learning more about science. Even if you don't plan to have a career in science. I also appreciate that not everybody has the same enthusiasm for that or that people's willingness to listen to science or to read about science. Uh, they have a shorter attention span for that sort of thing. We're short, less taller, but I, you know, I think that we live in a world where the, the vocabulary of science is all around us. You know, and that's part of the focus in science fiction. There's a lot of people who really love science fiction who aren't scientists themselves and you may not actually know any more about science then you know, the folks in your church that, that aren't scientists. Right? But, uh, you know, we're were all kind of ignorant about a lot of science, myself included.
Dr. Andy Walsh: 24:53
There are lots of fields of science that I have only know very little about, but we know the words and we recognize the value that that science has brought in terms of technology. Right? I may not know how special relativity and general relativity and quantum mechanics are involved in making my cell phone work and making the GPS that my cell phone relies on work. But I can know that those, that that's true, that, uh, that my cell phone wouldn't be able to get me from my home to the grocery store if quantum mechanics and general relativity special relativity weren't true or weren't accurate descriptions of reality. And so I think a lot of us had that sense. And so being aware of how fruitful science has been helps us to engage with people who share that awareness and who are steeped in that kind of culture. And then we can all kind of acknowledge where we need to learn more, where we're just kind of saying the words, but we don't know what we're actually talking about and maybe learn together to, to understand a little bit better.
Brad Cooper: 25:51
That's great. That's great. And again, I love what you do in terms of your, your work as well. And sometimes it's a little bit more abstract, even more abstract I guess when we're talking about, you know, so I've had the astronomers on podcasts and all of it's super interesting to me and other people too, but it's less kind of sort of concrete and you can't really put your hands on, okay great. We know, you know, something about the galaxy and dark matter and all these things and how does that really help the average person here on the ground so to speak. Um, and I think with your work at least you can kind of see a connection there, you know, in public health in terms of diseases and preventing the spread of disease. And you know, I'm having hospitals and, and doctors be more aware of things that could become, that are, it could become a problem and things like that I think kind of make it more concrete I guess to people. And actually see, as you said, sort of the benefits of science.
Brad Cooper: 26:35
So let's say that there's parents out there who have children who are, you know, science minded and May, maybe interested in kind of pursuing career. What would you say to them? What would you say to young people to encourage them to pray for a calling and science?
Dr. Andy Walsh: 26:47
So, you know, I think that there's plenty of value in understanding more about the world that God created, right? God created us with the ability to understand it. He created a world that is understandable and he created us with the ability to understand it. And we see that all the way, you know, and the story of Genesis, right? One of the first things that God caused Adam to do is to name the animals, to interact with the rest of the creation that God has made and to understand it better. And so, while I think there are plenty of good callings, I think science is one way that we can serve God and worship God and glorify God by understanding more of the world that He's made, that we're a part of. Um, and so it was, I think there are plenty of ways to do that. There are plenty of different science careers and then you should, you know, especially in school, get an opportunity to explore a lot of them. You know, I thought I, I really liked biology, but I still needed that familiarity with computer science and math and statistics to be able to actually work in biology the way that I could best contribute. And so getting exposure to a wide range of things and just sort of being open to, to what you find and see, you know, see what opportunities are out there.
Brad Cooper: 27:56
That's great. Yeah. Thank you so much for that. And again, we've been chatting with Dr Andy Walsh and his book is called "Faith Across the Multiverse: Parables from Modern Science." Really great book. Look for the links on our podcasts are just, check it out at ChristianBook.com, or Amazon, or wherever you want to go grab your books. It's a, it's definitely a great read, especially again, as we've been discussing, if you have any interest in, in science, in faith and the intersection of the two and X-men and lots and lots of other great comics in science fiction that he interweaves into, into the book. It's a, it's a really great read.
Brad Cooper: 28:31
Great. It's been so amazing to talk to you, Dr. Walsh. Thank you so much for joining the podcast with us today.
Dr. Andy Walsh: 28:37
I've enjoyed this as well. Thanks so much for having me.
Brad Cooper: 28:39
Very good. And we'll talk soon and we'll, we'll catch up after the Avengers End Game and we can talk about what you liked and didn't like about it... hopefully it'll live up to the hype here!
Dr. Andy Walsh: 28:48
Yep.
Brad Cooper: 28:48
All right, Dr. Walsh. Thank you. Talk to soon.
Dr. Andy Walsh: 28:50
Take care.
Announcer: 28:51
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