Doomed to Fail - Ep 255: A week in hell - Memorial Medical

Episode Date: July 20, 2026

Post the initial storm of Hurricane Katrina the power went out at Memorial Medical Hospital. Doctors faced the near impossible question of - do we leave these people here in the heat and humidity, or do we help them pass on? Learn the story of Dr. Anna Pou and what she decided to do.  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In the matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so my fellow Americans. Ask not. Boom. Taylor, we are alive and this is my radio voice. You know what's happening? We are recording. You know what I was thinking? I was thinking that we should have a channel where we do the commentary on the next World Cup games where we're like, I don't know what's going on.

Why is there five minutes all of a sudden? What does this even mean? Where's the ball? I don't know. You know what's funny is today watching the finals, the final match arching in Spain, there was one goal that should have been a goal that wasn't, and it totally recombulated by perception of what off sides means. Were they showed at the elbow? Yeah, yeah. I had a whole perception of like what it was.

And I was like, yeah, it was totally wrong. Everyone is tired. I'm glad we need a break. No, it was fun. The bar we were at, the TV went black at like 15 seconds in the room that we were in. And everybody was like screaming and we went to the other room. It was really fun. It was very, I, it's such a gift to the world that we have the World Cup.

Like, I don't know, like the NFL at NBA. No sport is like that. Like it's, it's really, really. It was a blast. I was sitting next to like a younger young woman who came in. She was 23. She was telling me. But she came in just as he just.

Justin Bieber and she was like sobbing hysterically when he was singing. It was great. And I was like, I put my hand on her back. She was like, not okay. So I was like holding hands with strangers and like I love that. I love that stuff. So fun. Okay, can I point out?

I thought the Justin, the song Justin Bieber chose. It was like, can we can we do high energy bro? 100%. The middle of the game of like a world. It cannot anymore. You're following what you're following Dynamite by BTS, which is the fucking best. And it also like, what is he wearing? Did he cut up his own sweatshirt for $10 million?

Taylor, I was watching the, the BTS thing. And I was like, man, I know Taylor knows all of this. It's like some K-pop band. I thought what was happening. I was like, Juan, I was like, that's Jimin. That one is gin. That one is V. And Juan was like, thanks.

Like, just so you know, there's sugar. He's right there. I know. I know who they. I know all their names. I just printed. Oh, God, I don't have them here. But my sister's going to see BTS for her second time this year because they're doing

their North American tour. I just seen them in Baltimore in August. And I figured out, I found these, like, free prints. And I printed her, like, 100 BTS keychains just, like, hand out to people and, like, play with them. It's so fun. You know what's weird is I'm going to talk about, like, a disaster situation, which I'm so not in the mood to talk about, because I feel like the world came together and we all bonded and put our differences aside. And now I'm going to talk about a horrible event. I can't read.

It's weird, right? I mean. It's like you're not tapping to the zeitgeist. You're the opposite. You're like pivoting the lightguise to you. Why don't we bring it down a little bit? Yeah, yeah. Bring us down.

Bring us down. Let me introduce us and then you can bring us down. Welcome to doomed to fail. Very historical disasters. And I am Taylor joined by farce. Before we start, I do want to tell you that, well, I saw the Odyssey. You're going to see it next week. It's amazing.

I don't have to, that's not a spoiler. It's just incredible. It's so good. But before The Odyssey, there was a preview for another movie with Andrew Garfield called, oh my God, now I forgot. I put it on our Instagram because it's about the peasants revolt that you and I talked about on episode 172 of doomed to fail, the 1381 Peasance Revolt. And I can't remember what it's called.

It is called something. But it's a new... Okay, the uprising. The uprising is a new Ender Girlfield movie about the 1381 Pestin's Revolt, which you can learn about on episode 172 of Dune to Fial.

So be ready for episode 172 to get re-release, like once a week, every week. I'm happy to do it. Yeah. My only issue, okay, so I wasn't originally going to go see the Odyssey

because I just don't go to non-war movies at all. Rachel really was going to see so I'm like, and also, was Christopher Nolet and like I said to you like he cannot not make a banker movie

my only qualms with the with the Odyssey is like why are Matt Damon and Anne Halfaway like part of it like this is a Greek Middle Eastern FTAX no one is no one is

Greek or Middle Eastern at all yeah no there's very maybe like one like that's where I'm getting It's like, I say, okay, so they're like professional actors and they're bankable, so you have to put them in. But it's like, I don't know, like, we not do that. I mean, it's also, it's also like, you know, not a true story.

It's like a myth. And so it's like, it's like it can be, you know, you can reinterpret a myth however you want to. But also, yes, there's no, there's a bunch of white people. All right. Well, my point being here, Taylor, that I should have been cast in The Odyssey. You should have been. I'm sorry that they didn't call you for. I could be Achilles.

I could be a Kelly's. I'd be a good. Achilles? Achilles wasn't ended it, unfortunately. Because Achilles, the Odyssey is coming back from Troy. Achilles is in Troy. He's like part of that, the Trojan War, but the Odyssey is,

Odysseus coming back home. I'm really showing off my lack of education on this topic, and you are a bit verifying it. Well, I mean, I also just, obviously, like, I'm a reader, as you know, but the Madeline Miller interpretations of C.R.C. and the song of Achilles are just fantastic. And if anyone knows, if you know, you know, they are great.

I cried a lot during both of them in good ways. They're excellent, but that's how I know a lot of those things. So I'll say this. Austin has three IMAX theaters. Oh, we did see an IMAX. Huh? We did see it in IMAX. So I looked up for the entire week, the IMAX showings.

And the only one that had tickets was, like, the 10 p.m. showings. like they're booked for the whole week. So I definitely know if they're going to watch the 9-Max. I don't think, I don't like super matter, but I know it was great. You'll love it. Sweet.

Well, let's get into our topic. I know you have to run soon-ish, and probably I do too. But we'll dive into our topic. And you're going to like it because it stars, well, I don't know if you're going to like it. It starts a woman. And we're split on whether it's,

a hero or a villain woman. I'm on the hero side of the ledger, and we're going to find out where you are. Cool. So we're going to cover a hospital, and it's a hospital that endured a lot more than other hospitals possibly would. And so we're going to go into the details,

but long or short is like, when we cover disasters, a lot of times the question is, like, who messed up? What measurement did they miss or what bolts did they miss? That's not what's going on here. This is more systematic than that. This is about what happens when every system fails from city to state to federal. And there's one doctor in this case, a woman named Anna Poe, P-O-O-O-P-O, P-O, O, O, O, O, O, O.

O, O, O. Okay. Hannah Poe who holds it all together. And you think she's a hero, before you tell me this story. You're a hero. Yeah, I do. I do. Tell me more.

I don't know what you think about. I'm keeping that in mind as you start. Well, I'll give you this precursor. We're in New Orleans in 2005. Okay. Anything? Yeah, a bad thing happened. Katrina happened then, right?

Sure. Yes. You know what's funny, Taylor? this whole topic came to me from researching Jack Corbyan. I was going to do a whole episode on Jack Corbyan. And it led me down this, like, winding path because his story's actually not that interesting. Like, I mean, his story is really interesting.

Like, what he did is really interesting. But it's also very, like, procedural and legislative. And it has, like, like, if I were to tell his story, it would be like, and then because of him, we have HB. 2712. But, like, you know, right? It's not super interesting. Yeah, it wouldn't be like something you'd want to listen to on a car or whatever.

So I'm going to cover this because it let me down this past. So yes, Katrina, we are in New Orleans circa 2005. So here's the story. Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on month. Sorry, real quick. This is not about Hurricane Katrina. It's about the effects of Hurricane Katrina on this one specific hospital. That's very interesting.

So we're in New Orleans on Monday, August 29th. that's kind of the starting point of the story, although we're going to start towards the end on September 11th, 2005, which is 13 days after the train actually hit the hospital. So we have recovery workers who enter Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans on that day, and they carry out about 45 bodies. that was the most number of bodies. Any hospital or nursing home had to deliver on that day. Disposive. Yeah. Disposive on that day. About 215 patients actually died like during the storm in New Orleans.

But what was interesting about this was that 41 of the bodies that were covered, toxicology reports would show that 23 came back positive for morphine. Or a thing called medazilum, which is like another lethal drug. Okay. Because I was going to ask, like, what are people dying of? And that's like it's what you're going to tell me. Yeah. There's a doctor, a woman named Anna Po, P-O-U.

I kept saying P-U-P-P-O. She was arrested in charge with second-degree murder. and then a grand jury made up of people who lived in New Orleans at that time, they were like, we're cool, we don't want to indict her. So technically I think this is what's called jury nullification, which is like you broke the law, we all know you broke the law, but we're cool with it, so we're going to move past it. That's actually what it reminds me that one case where this one,

guy's like kid, like his son, was abducted by his karate teacher. And then he was record on camera shooting the quality teacher in the face. In like the courtroom? No, no. It was in the airport. The guy was coming back to Texas from Louisiana or some shit. He was shot in the face. And the jury was like, yes, that is the man.

That is the bullet. That is his head. We're okay with this. And they were like, we're good. You go now. So I think this is one of those cases. In the end, the state of Louisiana ended up paying all their legal fees around $450,000, and state lawmakers formally apologized for even trying to prosecute her for what the events

that were going to happen. So we're going to start the story with Memorial Medical Center in uptown New Orleans. It opened in 1926 and Southern Baptist still. So I'm probably going to interchangely refer to it as Memorial and Baptist, just as the heads up, just so you're aware. This was a very, very, like, old school hospital. So it's been around since 1926. A ton of the people in that neighborhood were born there or their family had worked there.

Like, the picture in front of paint is like it was very human and community. Like, it was a community center kind of at that point. One detail about it is that at some point, many, many years before Hurricane Katrina hit is a helipad was bolted to the top of the parking garage. And then like nobody used it. So by the time Katrina hit, nobody knew if this thing was rusted all the way through or

it was functional or whatever. Can you ask this stupid question? Like, what do you need special to be a helipad? In case you just be like a ground? Well, if it's position on it, that means that it's probably raised and the raised infrastructure is bolted

to the garage itself. And And so if you haven't done anything to it, it might fall apart is a theory. But that's long story short, like, that's a piece of the puzzle of like we don't totally, like, the people who are dealing with everything that's going to come next don't totally know what's happening. So this hospital, I'm going to call it interspersally Baptist First Memorial. It was also kind of like a, like a default. hurricane shelter for the community. Like, I don't know how

an artillery, like, it was a place for the whole city to come together. Like, it had a, it had an effect on the people. And it had gone through a historic 80-year run of hurricanes where nothing bad had happened to the hospital. And so people in the neighborhood were like, hey, if we don't feel safe, we're to go to the hospital. Yeah.

Yeah. I feel that way, like, whenever I'm in the south, I don't know if it's, is it in the Austin airport, too? They're like, the bathrooms are like storm shelters. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you never know. Yeah. And then like here, I mean, in here where it's hot, like there are places that you can go in the community that are cool. You know, so probably something like that. Yeah, exactly. I looked, I looked up the number of hurricanes this place that dealt with.

And I actually learned a lot about Hurricane Katrina in the process because I didn't actually understand that it wasn't a strong hurricane. Like, it actually was not like a huge hurricane. It was just at the levees. It was the fact. It was the fact that it sustained over time that caused the levies to break in the levies. So I'll talk about that. Tell me more. Tell me more.

Hurricane Betsy in 1965 hit the hospital. And that was at the time of the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history, costing a billion dollars of damages. It was called billion dollar Betsy, apparently, by the time it ended it. But it was fine. Nothing happened. Then you have Camille in 19. which was a cap five hurricane. And that also hit and nothing happened to the hospital.

You have Georgia in 98. You have Ivan in 2004, which I do remember. And nothing happened. No issues. The only thing worth noting is what we just said, which is none of those hurricanes, despite how big they were, caused the levies to break. So these, like, three of the last four I read out,

hit that hospital and they were bigger than Hurricane Katrina. But Herrington Katrina was what caused the levies to break. That was just like a compounding stress on the levies or whatever. Exactly. Exactly. Also, I don't understand any of the science around this at all or the geography. But where Memorial slash Baptist was, was an uptown New Orleans, which is roughly around. Does that mean higher also?

Yes. Yes. It was when the flooding was at a time. peak, the wards that you would see, like the ninth ward were 20 feet flooded. Meanwhile, Baptist slash Memorial were about 10 feet flooded. So that's context. In 2005, Memorial was owned by a company called Tenant Healthcare, which, like, I thought was like a really, it's kind of a freaky name to name. It reminds me of a Chris for a Noland movie.

I literally, every time, I've never saw it. I never saw a tenant, but I just can't believe that Tenant is not a biography about David Tennant. That's what I just think it is. Even though I know, I know it isn't. Wait, who's David Tennant? The actor from like, Dr. Who, and he's in a bunch of stuff, he's famous actor. But I just, I don't, I don't have no idea what Tennant's about, but I just assume it's a biography of David Tennant, which I know it isn't.

So that's a lot of it. It was a lot of it. It was a very good movie. I don't think it was his best. I still think the Dark Night movies are his best movies ever, but. I can't wait to hear what you think about. I think it's okay. We're going to see.

So, anyways, Tenet owns this hospital. hospital. During Katrina, when Katrina hit, about 2,000 people were inside a bit. And the breakdowns explains, explains a lot. Because you have 250 patients, you have 500 to 600 staff. And the thousands of others are people for the neighborhood. We're like, this is safe. I'm going to go here. I'm coming here to like hunker down. Exactly. Exactly. Wait, I have another question. I don't know if you know this. Does, did Hurricane Katrina happen? Like, how long, how long was it? Like, how long would you have had to hunker down? It was, it was, so it hit August 29th. Most of our story happens after like Katrina passed. So I think it was like a day or so that, that like you

actually dealt with it. That was actually a piece that I deleted, which was like, part of it was, people thought, okay, the hurricane passed. We're good. Everything's fine. Like, the sun is out, light is out, and we're good. Was it just the eye? But it was over, but it was all the levees. It was the levees that collapsed because of the weight of the water that was being pushed into them after the storm passed. So the fact that the storm passed had nothing to do with how dangerous this was.

It was more dangerous after the fact. The original building that Memorial was in was built in 1926, like I mentioned. And all of the heavy machinery, like the electrical stuff, was placed in. in the basement because that was the way you are protected things over time. Obviously, I'm going to go into more detail here later. You could have changed that, but we'll sort that out here a little bit. After Ivan in 2004, one year before Katrina hit, Memorial's own facilities, people, they put into writing, quote, it won't take much water in height to disable the majority of the medical center, end quote.

So they knew they had a problem here. you have a city and a hospital is built below sea level all the critical components to help that thing survive or built under sea level and they're like this thing's going to die soon

long story short is like this thing was going to cost millions and millions of dollars to like replace and so like we're not dealing with that at all and who if you're thinking like who could have predicted Katrina was going to hit and

the levees were going to fail. I actually, like, booked in an actuary table for this because, like, actuaries actually have to figure this out. Like, we talk about this in the city group building thing. It's like a one or seven hundred year storm

versus a one and a hundred year storm. Like, they have to sort all this stuff out. Actuaries would be the guys who were doing this because they're talking about, like, the money. That totally makes sense. There you got. And the answer to the question,

like, who would have guessed that a hurricane like Katrina would hit and the levees would fail? The answer is FEMA. FEMA actually literally knew this. So this is, I'm going to interview a bunch of times. This is the first time I ever heard of FEMA. Was Katrina.

Oh, I thought you meant this story. I was like, shit, you're way behind? No. I mean, Katrina was the first time I've ever heard of it. So in 2004, which is like one year before Hurricane Katrina hit, the federal government ran a planning exercise for a fictitious hurricane. called Hurricane Pam, which was a slow-moving cat three,

again, not even the most powerful. But it's just slow-moving, it's always, like, over the area. And they ran the model to predict, well, what happened if this type of hurricane were to, like, station itself over New Orleans and the levies were to fail. And it told you everything.

Like, I literally wrote down, beat for beat, that's exactly what happens. 12 months like it was exactly what happened 12 months later um wow so anyways within memorial the seventh floor wasn't actually theirs it was owned by a separate company so a separate company owned the seventh floor of memorial slash baptist hospital that was their place to do a lot of it's not palliative care it was a lot of like intense care issues, like people who need, like, respirators or, like, things that, like, you have to have electronics to stay in life, basically. The day of that company was called life care.

And, yeah, it was, yeah, it was like a hospital to a hospital. And, yeah, they just owned that whole seventh floor. And the whole point of it was it was just, like, very, very sick people who were, been a liter dependent and there was no backups beyond the generators if something were to go wrong basically unless the person was there to deal with it so that was the treasoner finding themselves in there were nine people on the 7th floor who died on the Thursday after Katrina hit so four days after Katrina hit and we're going to get a little bit into that story um we are going to talk about the differences between what happens when a hospital leases property versus

owns the property. If you think about it, if it's your building, you're responsible for the evacuation plan for that building, right? Like, it's your stuff, right? Life care was responsible for their own evacuation process. So they're based out of Texas. Like, they're not in Louisiana. nobody from life care outside of the contracting staff that are there are from the headquarters. And so they don't actually have an evacuation plan if something were to happen outside of the government, which like historically, like just do not depend on the government. Yeah. I mean, I feel like every building ever worked in has an evacuation plan.

So this is different because, so there's a whole systematic thing I was going to talk about later, but I'll talk about it now. This was a failure from the city, the state, the federal government, and the companies that own these hospitals of like how we ended up in this situation. You have the seventh floor, which is, yeah, the whole hospital is 2,000 people. A lot of them are like civilians, like just people who were there from the neighborhood. But yeah, they sound on force, like, the sickest of the sickest that are, like, being leased out to this company called Life Care, right? Right. Life Care has no plan, but they're in the building that functions the entire apparatus of the hospital. Okay.

Yeah, this woman at the center of this story, her name is Anna Powell. And from everything I read about her, like, she, she, like, the pinnacle of her. doctors, right? Like, she's a family person, like loves her patients, patients love her. She's well respected. She's a practitioner, but also professor. When hurricanes hit in places that could be compromised because of hurricanes, usually is what's called a storm team that operates places that are critical, like hospitals. And that's like a skeleton crew. That's like the bare minimum. Most of the high-level doctors, the people, who have like, you know, beach houses everywhere.

Like, they leave. They go elsewhere. Anna Powell actually volunteered to work the storm team. Like, she actually was like, this is my community. I'm going to serve my community. And like, that's what I do. And so she actually volunteered for it. So let's get into the timeline.

So we have Sunday, August 28th. And everybody's aware that Katrina's coming. You have about 2,000 people. occupying the hospital. On Monday, the 29th, you have landfall, which is Katrina hitting, windows getting blown out, the power grid fails, which means the generators in the basement kick on. Right.

The storm's gone. Like, the storm leaves that day. Like, that's it. It's stopped. Like, it's over. Tuesday to 30th is when the levees fail. And the water column starts going up. And by the end of the day, the hospital is an island outside of the super Like you have a Superdome, you have the hospital. Like there's like the two safe havens that exist. The city's official disaster plan was to treat hospitals like stay in place facilities.

You might remember like, what was the same, Nagin, I think it was. It was the mayor who said if you're in the city, you have to try and evacuate, with the one exception being people who are in the hospital because that's a different challenge. to deal with. So there was no, there was no plan for evacuation of those people. The helicopters would show up every day and then. A lot of times it was Coast Guard or the National Guard. And yeah, there wasn't a lot of options in terms of how people, how the staff could deal with the patients or in the hospital. One report I read said that they were dealing with patients like they were luggage on baggage conveyors, which,

can be good. I just, I feel like that's like, that feels also look kind of unfair. Like, what are you supposed to do? I don't know. So exactly that. Exactly that. There was, there was some attempts to transport some people through water boats, or whatever, what they're called, those boats are the big fans on the back of them. There was some attempts to migrate those people out to dry land that happened every down there. On Wednesday the 31st, around 2 in the morning, the floodwater reached the electrical switching and it shut down the generator basically.

So that meant there was no ventilators, no monitors, no IV pumps, no elevators, no air conditioning, and no running water. And then like just so many people must die instantly? Is that real? So yeah, not instantly, but there's

legitimate reports. I wrote down that it sounds like the poop cruise from Carnival. Because because Because they were saying that there were people physically just standing in front of ventilators squeezing them. Like, squeezing the pumps. Yeah, yeah. Can you imagine that?

Like, you're, like, this person's life depends on you're just standing here, just, like, popping like that. Oh, man. The solution was obviously trying to evacuate some people as much as you possibly could. There was a delineation between types of people you would classify for, for, for, sending out outside of the hospital for further support. You had a one, two, three system, which was the healthiest people. This is weird. I don't know how to, like, I don't know how to describe this.

The number one people were the healthiest. So get them out first. Number two were the next biggest and number three were the do not resuscitate class. I feel like that's like battlefield rules, you know? Like if someone's close enough to. closer to dying, you save them last because they're probably going to die anyway, right? I know. There's something weird about that. It's weird. It feels bad. Yeah, it feels bad. You need the most help, but I'm not going to help you because I can save five,

I can save five lives in the time it would take me to save yours, probably. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And I see, I get what you're saying with that. It feels, it feels wrong, but. Logically, there's a logic to it. And also, like, when I first read this, I was like, I don't know. I probably tried to fix it out first, but this is why I'm not in charge of anything. So number three priority, the last priority were the DNR patients. So these are the patients that were like do not resuscitate. That doesn't mean like kill them. That means like if I do die on my own, like don't try to save me any further, basically. Right. The one piece that I thought was interesting was like, again, there was no process around this. It was

being instituted by anybody other than the people are in that building. Like, they were making up the process as they go. Which, I don't know, what else they're supposed to do? Well, it's more of an indictment of corporations and governments than anything else. It's like, like, is it that,

like, the government literally ran a model saying that this is what's going to happen. And nobody in that building knew what was happening. So we're at Thursday, September. first, which is the fourth day after Katrina had passed, apparently at this point, the building is 110 degrees. Right. And super hot, again, poop gross. Um, word apparently comes down that by the end of that day, everybody has to be out. So you have to get everybody out to that helipat or on the water boats to get them out of this place, basically. So imagine, like, your doctor, you've probably been awake for four plus days at this point.

You're not eating or drinking water. And you're trying to take care of all these people. And meanwhile, like the staff of the seventh floor, they were like just mostly like palliative care people. Like they're not in charge boss kind people. Like you get memorial doctors are the ones who are having to make decisions for what's going on in the seventh of floor basically at this point. Yeah.

Here's what is alleged to have happened. According to life care, which is the seventh floor owners of the leasehold, the pharmacy director there said that Dr. Powell, this main physician in charge, told him that morning that a decision had been made that lethal doses should be administered to patients. and he says that he also witnessed her holding a bunch of vials of morphine in medazepam. Medazepam. That is like some Schindler's list stuff. It kind of is.

It kind of is. Yeah. According to witnesses, Pal and two other nurses, a woman named Sherry and Lori, they were going room to room with syringes. And they were basically, what was being putted by witnesses was that they were telling patients of this this is going to make you feel better. That's what we're going to say to people. By Thursday evening, nine of those patients with the life care patients were dead. All within a rough three-hour window of each other.

Like, they all died. Yeah. One patient, man, this is what sucks. Like, I get it. I get it. I'm a hero. I'm a hero right now. I don't want to be taken out on like a helicoptered out on a boat and all the things.

I don't want to sit there in my own death in 110 degrees in humidity. I know, but I know, but it's like, like, it's more so like I'm like thinking myself, like, if I ever got admitted to the hospital, not knowing a hurricane, not knowing that this horrific show was going to happen. I mean, like, just like keep me at home in like a cryogenic state and then take me. you later. You know, like, I don't know. I feel like, I feel like it would have, anyway, there was one patient. Well, that's not an option. I know it's not an option. I'm just saying if I, if I had known, there's one guy, this guy named Emmett Everett. He was a 61-year-old man, and he had a lot of problems. The guy was like nearly 400 pounds, and he was also paralyzed

from the waist down anyways. He was there in the hospital. Like, again, like, he was there for non-necessary treatment, right? Like he was there for like a bowel obstruction that like they could have done any other time. Like our only solution is to try to take this 380 pound dude down like the slightest. Like how are we going to do? Like it's impossible. We haven't slept in a couple days. Nobody's had water.

Like how are we going to do this? So the only options were let's just leave him there. he dies alone in the dark in 110 degree weather and however many days that takes or we do something. Yeah, no, that's worse. There's one doctor.

It's definitely worse. There's one doctor this guy named Bryant King who he started suspecting that doctors were going to do like euthanasia and he got on the boat and got the fuck out of there. He quoted the CNN saying quote, I'd rather be considered

a person who abandoned patients than someone who ate it in eliminating patients. And that was his perspective on it. But why is just those dicey? That's gross. That's kind of gross, right? That's gross. Like, I feel like that's,

if it's like, do no harm is your, what is that, the thing, the, like, say as a doctor. Hypothomones of. Hypocratic. You, abandoning them is worse. I think so.

I don't know. I think it's worse. Yeah. So I'm going to bring that topic back up here in a little bit. On Friday, the Friday before they found these people, the last 2,000 people had been evacuated and the dead people were put in the chapel. And they just stayed there for like 10 days baking in the sewage sun for 10 days. There's so much stuff about Katrina where I remember seeing something where they were like, if. even if you have your family jewels in your refrigerator, in your freezer, do not open your refrigerator

to get them, throw it away. Like, it's just so awful in there. Like, everything was just so, because it's so humid and wet and moldy on top of everything else, you know. Yeah, yeah. We have that now in Texas. The floods hit Texas, and all these people in Lake Travis are, like, trying to get their kids out there to wakeboard.

Like, this thing is full of fecal matter that washed in from. 50 states away. Like, it's just, it's just shit water sewage. Like, do not put your kids in here for the next, like, six months. Anyways. So, so, so in the investigation opened into what happened to all these people. And there was a all-star team of forensics that were kind of put together. And they kind of led to the conclusion that this was euthanasia. These nine people probably on the sudden four died by being killed. It's a weird dicey thing. I was researching this a bit.

Like in palliative care, it's palliative care. It's like pain reduction care. It's like you know that person is going to die anyways, and you're just trying to make it less painful. But like a lot of times in palliative care, like what you have to administer could be fatal, and it's like subject to the doctor's intent

of like whether they try to kill that person or not, basically. Like, that's kind of what it boils down to. But it was clear by the version these folks gave on the prosecution side, this was euthanasia. There was a coroner for the county, a guy named Frank Minyard, who also consulted other pathologists on this. There's a guy named Steve Karsh, who was like, did people live in baking in the sun in sewage water

for like days. I can't tell you what killed them. Like there's nothing. It's just gelatin. I don't know. So what is? That was his perspective. What is the definition of euthanasia? Like, I don't know. I don't know. Legally, I would assume it's something on the lines of voluntary suicide.

But suicides are term of art. So the voluntary killing. So you can as a pet. Right? Use the same word for that, don't you? Yeah. This is where the Jackal-Work-in. Yeah. This is where the Jack-Forgian thing took me.

So anyways, you have, in 2006, you have Dr. Powell and the two nurses who were witnessed going to these rooms with these needles charged for secondary murder. There was a bunch of people that were part of that. there was like about five or six people that they thought were killed because of this. And the prosecutor was very young home, was we're going to do justice. It felt like a real, it reminded me a lot of the Duke rape case where that prosecutor was like just so like we're going to solve this forever. Like, I don't know. Trying to be a do-gooder can have its false. false. What were the families saying of the people who had died? I'll tell you. We'll get to that.

Again, remember, like, you have, like, a grand jury's pulled together from the constituents of that jurisdiction, right? So you pulled together a grand jury of people who have to look at the evidence, but they live through Katrina. Right. And it's like, can you believe someone in these conditions? It's like, they're like yeah yeah all all of us would understand that and so they also it's worth noting that a second degree murder charge which is what she was being attempted and died it on carried a life sentence in in louisiana and so all these people who were people who from that community who knew dr poe were like yeah no we're not we're not doing that like she doesn't deserve that at all yeah um eventually she

did not get indicted. She was released. And her conviction or, sorry, the charge is not conviction. They were all expunged. The state paid for all of her legal fees. The lawmakers, again, formally apologized to her. And there was actually a class action lawsuit that the seventh floor hospital called tenant owned and paid up to the tune of $25 million.

And Dr. Powell, who was also in the building during this entire time, was able to collect a piece of that. And so she got a piece of the settlement as well. It's worth noting that she afterwards went on as advocate for three laws that eventually passed a legislator in Louisiana around granting health care workers immunity in cases of disaster relief in terms of what they're doing in that moment. One thing we brought up earlier that's worth mentioning, just so you know, like there were a lot of hospice care slash nursing home slash hospital workers who left, who literally left people

to rotten sewage alive during Katrina. None of them were charged. None of them were charged with anything because apparently abandonment is none of the problem. But in her perspective, she's like, what are they going to leave these people just like rot here? I agree.

It's worse. Seven days? Like, I mean, like, I feel like you, that's your responsibility as a doctor. Like, if there's an emergency, like when we worked at our job in downtown LA, I had a map that I printed out and how I could walk to my kids daycare. It would have taken me like 10 hours. But I was like, if there is a catastrophic earthquake and we cannot drive there, you know, I will leave my job immediately.

Obviously, who cares about my job? And I will walk to my children's daycare and go get them, you know, because my job isn't saving people and helping people. But as a doctor, I feel like you make that decision saying you're going to do that, like I should stay. I feel like you shared that map with me because I remember I had to go to your kids' day some weird time during the day. I was like, I'll tell her something out of this.

Just in case you and I would have walked there. We would have climbed over the broken freeway and walked to get my kids out of daycare. We would have done it. I remember that wasn't the daycare painted like a weird dark blue? Yeah, it was like dark blue

was called ABC Edge it's closed now it closed after COVID but it was wonderful oh my God it was lovely so but but anyways

like the whole point is like man imagine being in that position where like you're like looking to the guy and you're like I'm sorry

but you're 400 pounds like there's no shot of getting you out of here without like killing half of us trying to get you out and

yeah, that sucks. Yeah. It sucks. Like, it actually does suck. Like, that's got to be a horrible, horrible. It's not an easy decision, you know. It's hard. Which at some point, I would like to do an episode on Katrina because I don't understand

a lot of it because there's a lot of weird geology stuff involved in Katrina that I don't like, I actually, I mean, totally honest, I don't actually know what a levy is. I know, I said levy a lot very confidently. during this episode, but I also am not sure what Livy is. Is it a... I don't totally know. A tiny dam? Is it like a baby dam? If you work on

baby dams, can you tell us? Can you write to us and tell us? I mean, I think it's just like a wall. I think maybe it moves to like hold, to like let ships come in and out. Another guess. I don't know if you're a levy expert. I think it's called a lock. Oh, that's a lock. You're right. That's definitely true.

Yeah. No, Katrina has a lot. lot of weird nuance to it. I think we could like spend years researching that. I'm sure there are many, many, many books and things, but I remember, you know, just like, you know, knowing like the horror and then just the humidity and the, on top of everything else, the heat, you know. But if you're listening and you would kill your patients versus let them rot and sewage for a week, tell us. Tell us what you would do. I think. Come on, doctor. 100% I'm not even hesitating.

I think she did absolutely the right thing. Like, otherwise, I think abandonment is so much worse. Fuck that guy. I'm like, I'm mad at that guy who was like, I'd rather be known with someone who abandoned people.

Ew. I think that's gross. I think it's really gross. Yeah. It's gross. I'd like that you phrased it as gross because I was wondering like how I thought about it.

I was like, oh yeah. Okay. When Taylor said that was like, yeah, it's gross. That's how you feel about it. It's gross.

Yeah, it's gross. I don't like it. well that's my story cool I hadn't heard of her because you're right there's so much stuff that happened yeah

I wish well I don't wish any of this but if I if Katrina were to happen I kind of wish I was my age so I actually understand it more than when it did happen

and when it happened I was like just trying to like go to bars in college news, but you weren't, like, you weren't, like, critically thinking about it. You know. I remember Kanye calling George L.B. Bush a racist. Like, that was fun in front of Mike Myers, remember that?

Yeah. And then he goes on to, like, create Nazi paraphernalia. That was fun. Damn, Michael. Yeah. I usually ask you to read off listener mail. Mm-hmm. But in this case, Daniel Shepard are...

Oh, I have listener mail, too, but you go first. All right, I have a listener. Um, he... I actually talked to chat, GBT, about this too, before Daniel didn't mess with me. But I'm going to give Daniel the credit for this. Basically, every other country defunded Girl Sports when Title IX passed in the U.S. And that is why women's international soccer is good. That's why we're good.

because we invested in it because of Title IX. And literally every other country de-invested in it at the same time. Just like happened to be around the same time? I mean, we're talking about a range of like 10 years, give it, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then as far as I understand, we invested in it more because you get more money than more teams you have. I mean, I assume there's a logical financial reason for doing so. Yeah. Interesting.

Well, good for us. but I'm excited for August 1st women's professional baseball to start. Daniel also, oh my God, hold on, let me pull this up. I have a actual player in the league, Amanda Giannolone. So anyways, Daniel also sent me video of her talking about the difference between the MLB and the WPBL and it was incredible like she just like walks through

like here's the differences like here's what we care about the defensive positions I'm gonna send this video to you yeah it sent to me I'll share it was really cool yeah follow her on the gram anyways that's what I had I love it oh she's having a baby

I have mail from Morgan And Nadine and I also talked about this a second. Let me grab my texts from her. And there's some countries where we say what they say in their language. In some countries where we don't, like based on like the language that you were speaking. So there's two different things. There's an endonym, which is the name that a place uses for itself that locals say. So Cabo Verde is the endonym.

If you live there, you'd be like, I live in Cabo Verde, but you'd say that in like, Portuguese. And then the exonym is the name used by outsiders. So we say Cape Verde from the outside. So there's some examples that like I wouldn't say when I'm talking to you in English about Germany. I wouldn't say Deutschland, obviously. But in, but you know, in German, you say Deutschland when you're saying Germany. So some countries like Turkey has asked everyone to start spelling Turkey with like the umlaut, which is like T, Ullaud, which is like T, Ullaud, K-I-Y-E rather than Turkey, like the bird, and I'm in English. So there's, that is their endonym is saying Turkey spelled that way.

And then the exonym is spelling it like Turkey the Bird, like we've been doing it. So they've asked people to switch and we are like working on that. So like my text to you say during the game, like we see up in the, up on the top of the screen, it was like ESP versus ARG. So a Spania is obviously the endonym of how you say Spain in Spanish. But we would, we wouldn't say a spagna unless we're speaking in. Spanish. And then I was talking to Nadine, who's in Canada, and she was saying how she would say the United States rather than America, because she would think first, like, America is part of

North America, which is not just the United States. And then I was telling her that as someone who lives in the United States, I use America and the United States interchangeably. It's strange. Wait, so is, sorry, Cabo is Indo. And Cape is Endo. Yep. Okay. Cape is Exo. Like that's what other people call them. And then if you live there, you would be the endo, which is the in Cabo Verde.

They call it Cabo Verde. But like in Cape Verde, they call it Cabo Verde. Interesting. Yeah. Is they Dean, like, like, a linguistics? And Dean and I were just chatting about it. Morgan, I think, just knows as much trivia because she watches her jeopardy all the time. Is he about her to learn league?

No, she was in it before. And then she left when she's like smarter than us. She, like, the people that introduced her to learn her, people who have been, like, on Jeopardy. Morgan, you're so smart, you know everyone. That's it. It's interesting. That is interesting. It's, uh, I might do Corbyn.

I was looking into, like, the, um, they're not directly and connected. Like, this was not, like, assisted suicide. It was more sort of, like, self-prescribed suicide. Like, I was looking into, like, the suicide movement in general in the U.S. And some states were gravitating more towards it. I thought there was something about like that. that was, I don't know. There's something there.

It's interesting and I think it's interesting. I think maybe like the what is euthanasia question that I had also I think is interesting. Like, why do we do it to our pets and our people? I mean, you have to introduce it. You'd have to introduce it. When I was a kid, if you told me like when I got like strep throat, I had the choice to kill myself or live with it. Right.

I feel like I'm out here. I'll never feel normal again. I will never be able to swallow. of. There's like degrees to it. That's fair. But anyways, that might be an upcoming series. So let us know you're interested in that topic.

Fun. Cool. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. If you have any suggestions or ideas, do you feel pod at gmail.com. Kira emailed us some ideas, one of our listeners as well this week.

So thank you. And doomed to Philpott and all social. You know, I'm going to