Today On the bright Side, oncologist and author doctor Elizabeth Coleman reveals the not so secret history of sexism and medicine and what we can do to fight it.
It's Wednesday, May eighth. Danielle Robe.
I'm Simone Boyce and this is The bright Side from Hello Sunshine.
Bu bu banana, bum bum banana. What I'm spreading the news. I'm leaving today. I want to be a part of it New York.
Now, Yeah, yeah, we're going.
We're going.
We're taking the show on the road. We are doing The bright Side from New York for the first time. This is so exciting.
I know. I wonder if it's going to sound different in New York. Maybe we should have accents. Hmmm, we can have like East Coast bright Side moments. Okay, welcome to the bright Side.
We're here ready on the bright Side, you guys, it's what we need.
Something like that. So well here in New York and we have lots to talk about today. We just had our coffee and bagel and now we're ready for the show.
I think that's perfect.
Yeah, I agree. Okay, Well, I know that you are prepping to go out of town because you are a prepper. What are you doing?
Let's see, there's so many things. I gotta go pick up something from the dry cleaner. I want to wear a bow in my hair this weekend, so I have to go to the craft store.
Okay, it's just like one more thing on my list. Tashi made me do it.
You know that that hashtag Zendaiya was wearing a bow on her press store and I felt so inspired by it.
I was like, I'm going to try this.
Does it go with your fit or is it just for like a Friday night look elie wk.
It goes with the fit, it goes with fit. You'll probably see it, so you can be a judge. You can tell me whether it's a yeah or nay.
Okay, Tashi made you do it.
I love it.
I also have to pack. That's the other thing I'll probably end up packing, like way last minute. Are you a last minute packer or are you do you it early?
I am usually early, but you know, so we're going for an iHeart event and then we're going to do the show, and so we have all these fits. So now I'm last minute because I didn't get my stuff together. I'm literally gonna leave from here go pack and go run to the airport.
Red eye tonight.
Yeah, I'm taking a reddite tonight and I'm trying to pack food because the last time I was at last time I was on a plane, I sat next to this wonderful couple in their eighties actually from New York, and she had cooked her husband homemade chicken and she offered me some. And because they were a little bit older, I felt uncomfortable saying no, so I had to eat her chicken.
You ate a stranger's chicken on the plane I did? This is really unhinged.
She was so sweet though.
Wow, Danielle, Yeah, I'm speechless. I mean, on the one hand, that's very courteous of you not to decline. But on the other hand, who knows could have been in that chicken?
Girl?
I know it's the Midwest and me, but last time we traveled together, you made me try chicken chips or something.
I have a bag of chicken chips I'm bringing on the plane. Talk about unhinged. So, for those who don't know, chicken chips are chips that are made of really flat chicken. They've like flattened them out on some sort of machine press and they've turned them into potato chips without the potato.
What I'm learning is that you want to make pizza from chicken, chips from chicken, You'll eat anything made from chicken.
I'm one big chicken. That's just that's who I am. I'm just a chicken.
I didn't say you were a chicken, but I am. I.
Yeah, I'm leaning. I'm in my chicken era.
Okay, okay, sure, whatever that means. Okay, speaking of eras, Kendall Jenner is in her ex era.
Oh.
The Magala was this week and she was spotted cozying up at the after party with Bad Bunny, who's her ex.
Okay, so I don't follow her dating life all that much, but I remember seeing them dating and then they broke up.
Kendall and Benito broke up, uh, but they were seen canoodling, and I was just kind of thinking about I don't know if that's a good idea, Kendall.
I don't know how I.
Feel about exes getting back together, so rarely does it work out.
I don't know.
At the same I hear you, but like, on the same token, don't you go out and you'll meet couples who are like Yeah, we like broke up for a little while and then we got back together.
I feel like that's pretty common.
Do you have any friends who that's happened to.
I have had friends tell me that they got back together with an X. I'm thinking of one friend right now who got back together with this really toxic person and I like begged her not to go back with him because he's just so problematic. But that's a tricky situation to be in as a friend too, if you're like, don't get back with this person, and then what if they get back with them and then they get married, and then you always the friend who doubted them and their decisions.
And they know how you felt about it deep down.
Yes, there's no going back, there's no taking it back. Yeah.
So are you the friend who says something?
Probably if I believe that it's a relationship that's like truly harmful detrimental for this person, I will I'll say something. I'd rather I'd rather stand in my truth, you know what I'm saying, Like only God can judge me. I'd rather stand in my truth and tell you what I really think, rather than holding it all in and then like feeling that remorse or regret over not saying anything.
What's your stance on that. Do you ever confront your friends if you think they're making a bad move romantically.
I always do, and it's because of this one friend who did it for me. You know. I talk about this one x on the show sometimes. He was not a great guy, but I didn't know it at the time, and all my friends kind of I think felt away, didn't say anything. And my one friend, Julia, we went to a farmer's market one day. I'll never forget. She turned to me and she said, do you you can't marry him? And I said why. She gave me the reasons and I looked at her and I said, thank you.
That is a real friend, and it didn't change my opinion. We dated for I don't know six more months after that.
So you didn't actually take her advice in the end.
No, But in the breakup, like in the aftermath, I kept thinking about her words and her honesty. I think a real friend is honest with you.
Yeah, And I also think a friendship that's meant to last can recover from something like that.
Yeah. Sometimes the repair is even better, like we have Danielle Bayer Jackson on and she's talking about healthy conflict. Yeah, sometimes relationships are stronger after that. And Julia gets to go on her and I Told you.
So tour and doesn't that feel good?
Folks?
After the break, we're uping our clitteracy, y'all with Elizabeth Comyn.
That's right, I just said, clitterasy.
Stay with us, Welcome back, Let's get into it.
Danielle.
You know we've talked a lot about how little we actually know about women's health and our society and just how our bodies are frankly misunderstood by the medical community. Well, today we are going beyond the stats to trace the historical roots of sexism in medicine.
This is a big one, that's right.
And today we're joined by doctor Elizabeth Coleman, an oncologist and medical historian who makes us hopeful about the future of women's health and medicine. She's the author of the book All in her Head, The Truth and Lies Early medicine taught us about women's bodies and why it matters today. Doctor colemyan Welcome to the bright side.
Welcome doctor Coleman.
Thank you who doesn't always want to be on the bright side.
I'm fascinated by your career not only because you're a noncologist who specializes in treating breast cancer patients, but you've spent years studying the underlying sexism in the medical community. I've never heard of a medical historian. What made you want to get into this type of work.
So when I was at Harvard, I majored in the history of science, and it was really because I just couldn't leave behind my love of the humanities and also my interest in science and biology and chemistry. And what I really found in that incredible time of my education was my real passion for understanding the experience of illness, and particularly for women, and especially in the context of women's healthcare. It is inextricably linked to history, culture, religion, literature,
the stories we've been told ourselves about our bodies. So throughout my really professional career, I've always held onto this tremendous interest in under standing where we come from and the legacy that we inherit when we show up as patient or doctor in the exam room and in our broader healthcare system.
I think understanding where we come from is the only way to figure out where we're going. And for years we've been talking about how medicine has been tailored to men and the male body. What are some early examples that you found in your research of that.
Oh, my goodness, everything. So Hippocrates and his disciples felt that one of the reasons why women were just so crazy was because we had this wandering womb, and that
was the source of all women's ills. And over the course of history, when we learned through anatomy that the uterus was actually tethered and it wasn't like wandering into our brains, it then became other parts of our body, our ovaries or estrogen that was bathing our entire body, and that's just what made us these unique crazy creatures.
Well, women then were viewed not as patients but experiments. Experiments, but also, depending on the time and history, inverted imperfect, more primal versions of the idealized man, and we see
that today. It wasn't until nineteen ninety three that women were even required to be included in NIH funded studies women and minorities, And for so much of medical history the idea was, well, whatever was happening to men would just be similar in women, and we obviously know that's not true and so much has been missed along the way. When you look, for example, at autoimmune diseases, eighty percent of autoimmune diseases are in women.
Some of these diseases we don't even have names for. They're just almost syndromes that we're still trying to figure out. And in large part that's because we're having a system. And it's not to say that all men were bad intentioned at all, but you had a system of men largely taking care of women, and in turn, there were biases along the way about what was seen as of value to be studied.
Hysteria is a term that really illustrates the sexism that's embedded in medicine. But it's also a term that has become this loaded insult. It's made its way all the way into politics as well. Yeah, I want to talk specifically about what you call the long shadow of the hysteria diagnosis. What's the history of that diagnosis and how does its legacy still rear its ugly head today?
Well, have you ever been called hysterical before? I?
Have? You have?
Of course, I'm a hysterical crazy woman.
Of course, what do you mean? Who called you hysterical? Professionally or personally.
In every context, I've been told to calm down, behave I'm hysterical, I'm too emotional, i cry too much. I got all sorts of stories. We could do a separate segment on that. But throughout medical history you see the specter of the hysterical diagnosis, whether it's hysteria as a diagnosis, or the anxious housewife in the nineteen sixties that's being given valume, or the anxious woman today that may have symptoms that are ignored or dismissed it or are told
to calm down. The actual diagnosis of hysteria left the medical lexicon in the nineteen eighties, but women are still called hysterical and lots of different derivatives in our healthcare system and in our society.
As you say, is there a woman in the medical history books that we don't talk about enough.
One of the challenges of writing this book was reading these heartbreaking stories and textbooks where women who were presumed to have something wrong with them when they did not, or they had normal human behavior and were really stigmatized for that was wondering, gosh, where were these voices. Even the field of American kindecology was built on the backs of black slaves with Mary and Simms. And yet where
are the voices of these women? They are lost, and how would I honor them in this book where I don't have their voices? So I think there's countless, countless women that I wish we could hear from. There are, of course, some incredible heroines, like Elizabeth Blackwell, one of the first female physicians. They're incredible midwives whose stories we can try to capture. But I think what I am most haunted by are the women whose legacies we will
never know. That we can imagine how much they suffered, how much they were torture in some instances, and how much we have to honor their legacy even though we may not know the details of it.
I want to see biopics of all these women. I feel like that's fertile ground for narratives. Yeah, I think we also have to talk about the history of women's sexual health. The clitterist has this long history of being both ignored and misunderstood at the same time. Can you walk us through that specific history.
I love that you.
Asked me about the clitterists, because let's talk about the only organ that is for pleasure. Unique like why are we not considered superhuman? Why are we the inverted imperfect sex? If you go back to I know, I'm getting really excited.
We love that you're getting fired up about clitteracy right now.
I mean, yes, yes, yes, yes.
If you go back to like Greek literature, there's a famous physician Galen who literally talks about like women being almost like a hidden mole, like our anatomy, that we are inverted, tucked in and you know, men are like the cooler, better sex because it's all kind of like externally present. But hello, we are the ones that have
an organ which is not just a tiny pearl. By the way, it was mapped not until two thousand and five by a female urologist to show just how expansive those nerve endings are and just how all encompassing that is. You're the only ones that have this like pure pleasure thing going on the fact that it's been lost and
found and dismissed. There was even this one doctor who became the president of the Endochronology Society who claimed that more primal women had a clitorist and that with higher evolution, the glitterists would basically just kind of go away and therefore as you become more evolved, we would lose it. Is this guy just out of his mind.
I took a bunch of women's health classes in college and one of my professors was telling us that the glittorus is a small penis inside of you.
That's cute.
Well, but it's still default male. We still talk whether that's true or not. We keep talking about it like it's a male part.
Yeah.
And the number of times that men in the Renaissance and beyond claim to like discover label lose find again the clitterists, it's just amazing to me. And then when I was in medical school, so much of the anatomical drawings that we saw of like the heart or the lungs were in a male body and you only saw the female form and it related to our reproductive function. But yeah, the clitorist was like this tiny little pearl. It's way more than that. It's way more than that. Thankfully.
I want to keep going on this thread here and just talk about empowerment, Like where we go from here with this knowledge? Did you find examples in history where women were not only seen but able to shape the medicine that we practice today? I mean I'm thinking about the rich history of doulas and midwives and the role that women have played in helping us better understand childbirth and the postpartum period.
Yes, I think with the rise of gynecology as a feel, which was really a male dominated field, what you saw was that these extraordinary midwives who had ancestral knowledge passed down from thousands of years through women taking care of other women. They were sidelined at the rise of medical science, when we had germ theory and the idea that you
should wear gloves or wash your hands. There were so many things that midwives didn't have the chance to learn because they weren't even allowed to go to medical school, and yet they had profound knowledge. And I think what you see now is a movement to reinvigorate our healthcare system with these voices, with this knowledge, with this sense of empowerment, the idea that women should be trusted with understanding their own bodies and having agency over their own bodies.
So I think there is a counter movement. There is that haunting thread in our history that we can expand upon today and use to empower women moving forward.
You know, as I was researching, I learned that heart disease is the leading cause of death for both women and men, but women are more likely than men to die after having a heart attack. Can you explain that to us, because I really think this information could save somebody's life.
Thank you for asking that. So despite my field of oncology and taking care of breast cancer, heart disease is the number one pillar of women in the United States. And when I was in school, was taught how women present with a heart attack, it's with atypical symptoms. How are we freaking atypical in our presentation when we're greater than fifty percent of the population. It's the number one killer of women. That in and of itself is ridiculous.
If you look at the movies and the late public presentation of a heart attack, it's that crushing elephant on the chest imagery. Women may not have that They may have fatigue, they may have indigestion, they may have other symptoms that they may not know are associated with a heart attack. Women are more likely to call an ambulance for their husband's symptoms than for themselves. They also are often the primary caregivers in their family and are less
likely to have people to take care of themselves. So there are so many factors that go into what happens before a woman has a heart attack, When she has a heart attack, a late diagnosis of those symptoms and a heart attack, and in turn, who's caring for her afterwards. We got a lot of work to do.
A lot.
I've heard that sometimes symptoms can present in women as anxiety and so they're not believed.
Yeah, well, that's that's the vicious thing. That's why my book is called All in Her Head, because so much of women's symptoms are dismissed as anxiety. And sometimes we are anxious, but maybe we're anxious because something's really going on and someone's dismissed us, and maybe we are just purely anxious. But we need to not have that as a default diagnosis when we don't know what's going on. There were so many doctors that I spoke to that said that becomes a default diagnosis when we are not
certain of what is really happening to a woman. And sometimes that's because we haven't unpacked the biology of them enough, so we don't understand it, and therefore it's like, oh, well, she's just crazier, she's just anxious. And we don't really know, so that's our default.
We've talked on the show before about how you have to be your own best advocate in the doctor's office, or bring somebody with you that can be your advocate. What do you make of that idea.
I can tell you from my own experience, which I chronicle on the conclusion of the book, which I had written the whole book, and then I had this horrific medical experience happened to myself, and I was horrible. I shouldn't shame myself, but I was. I could not advocate for myself. I did everything that I said not to do. I didn't want to bother anybody. I diminished my pain.
I knew exactly what was going on for me, both from my gut but more importantly from my years of medical training, and I believed somebody else who had absolutely no experience in it, and I believe what they were telling me about my body. So I think when you are in pain, when you are suffering, having somebody else advocate for you with you is so important. Because I don't care how smart you are, I don't care where you went to med school. I don't care any of that.
If you are anxious and in pain, it's impossible to then be forced to advocate for yourself. So the more we can have somebody with us to help do that, it's incredibly important. And I think yes, we've built a system that has not allowed for the space for women to express themselves in fifteen minute appointments. We don't have clinical trials that are necessarily set up to always include women. We don't have the laboratory experiments caught up to close
the gender gap. For years, we've been using male mice, male human subjects to study, including female specific conditions, and so this system has made it that it's incredibly hard for women to advocate. And again these default become, well, she doesn't really know or she's just anxious, when in fact we just haven't spent the time on women, both in the research setting, the clinical setting, and in the exam room.
Thank you for sharing that.
I read in your book that one of your goals is to reintroduce women to their bodies system by system.
What do you mean by that, Well, I.
Think so much of the way we think about women's healthcare is bikini medicine, that we've been taught that it's our breasts and our reproductive function, and maybe a little bit of our genitalia. And it's going to callologists who handle women's health, but our entire bodies head to toe are different from men. We are not small men. Our biology is different. We have female specific conditions, female predominant conditions,
conditions that are unique to women only. And I wanted to really highlight for women that women's health is not just your breasts and your uterus. There's so much more to understanding that. And it's not just your gynecologists that should know about women's bodies, but your gas reentrologists should know what can happen during menopause. Your cardiologists should know the menstrual cycle as it relates to the presentation of cardiac arrhythmias or changes in the rhythm of your heart.
It's not that women's health should be inelective in medical school.
So thinking about how we empower ourselves when we're in the doctor's office, can you give us three ways we can advocate for ourselves and perhaps even other women when we're interacting with the medical community.
First thing I would say say is bring somebody with you, a family member or friend, to take notes. I would say Secondly, come prepared with questions. Again, if it's especially something new or different, or you're worried about it. A lot of times we want reassurance, and if you feel like you're not getting that, it's important to ask your doctor. Can you explain to me the rationale for why what
you're saying is true. If you think that I don't need this extra test or I don't need this blood work, and you really understand what's going on with me, walk me through your rationale and understanding of what you think is wrong with me. Thirdly, I think it's very important in our imperfect complicated healthcare system now to ask how
information is going to be communicated with you. Now, we have often these my charts or this instant access to our healthcare results, but that's not going to be in context of an explanation from a doctor or a nurse or a nurse practitioner really understanding how you're going to get that information, how you want that information, and how you want to have a dialogue with your provider about what's actually going on with your body as a opposed
to having to google word by word random medical language that you might see in a report.
What can we do to influence medical research and make sure we're represented there as well.
So there's enormous movement and pressure to make sure that we are including women in clinical trials and also that we are voicing what we need to have happened before clinical trials even are designed. We need to make sure that we're listening to women to understand what the problems are. But if you are part of a medical system where somebody asks you to participate in a clinical trial, it's
incredibly important that we do. We know that often women are underrepresented, minorities are tremendously underrepresented, especially in the cancer world, and we need to make sure that the research that's being done is of course with informed consent, that people understand that they are not quote unquote guinea pigs what the research is about, and that the results of that reflect the diversity of our society as well.
What gives you hope when it comes to what's being done in the medical industry to close the gap between genders. What are the bright spots that you think we should know about.
There are so many bright spots, and I think a lot of it has come from this groundswell in our society saying this is not good enough. There are incredible female specific startups that are happening right now. You see entire movements in academic medicine to focus on women's health. You see in medical schools that it's not just a random elective, but that all medical subspecialties, all medical students are being required to learn about women's bodies in a
more holistic way. There's tremendous momentum and lots of reasons to have hope.
Doctor Coleman, I was so interested to read that you ask your patients this question, what brings you joy? Why do you ask that question?
Oh, it's my favorite question to ask, because that's where life is. We are all we all have this fear of death in varying existential ways, but we're here because we want to We want to thrive. We want to have those incredible days that are never perfect, but have these bright sides and moments of just pure bliss. When I ask my patients what brings them joy, it gives me this unique window into who they are, whether it's you know, dancing at home to Latin rhythms or playing
the piano or going for a hike. And especially in my field, there's so much focus on surviving, surviving, surviving and getting through some horrible treatment, when in fact people want on the other side of that to feel like they are still alive and they are not just surviving but thriving. And for me personally, I have a hard job of talking about really anxious topics and fear of
death and mortality and recurrence. And to be able to have those moments of energetic connection with the patient, to know what they love and what they enjoy, gives me so much pleasure and often I learn about cool things in New York City that I can do too. You know, who doesn't want to swing from a pole everything?
Now and then? So I want to ask you, because you did mention you have such a tough job and you're with people at some of the worst and hardest moments of their life. What brings you joy?
I love to dance. I'm definitely a little bit of a WEIRDO.
What kind of dance? Ooh?
Everything? I'm really good at hip hop. I grew up dancing hip hop. I love sausa dance, I love Latin rhythms. I'll pretty much dance to anything. And I you know, there's like those diaries that are like dance like no one's watching. I will dance like no one's watching, and like everybody's watching.
Doctor Comyan, thank you so much for joining us and just enlightening us today.
Thank you so much, Doctor Colemen my pleasure.
Doctor Elizabeth Coleman is an oncologist, medical historian, and the author of its All Inner Head, The Truth and Lies Early medicine taught us about women's bodies and why it matters today.
We just talked about the importance of advocating for ourselves and each other in the doctor's office.
That's right, Danielle.
After the break, we're going to open up about our own personal experience with what it means to have each other's back in the workplace.
We'll be right back. All right, besties, We're back, Danielle.
I think we got to end today's episode a little differently.
Yes, we are not doing what we usually do because we had an experience unlike anything we've ever had.
It was an experience that I don't want to speak for you, Danielle, but I feel like it brought us closer together and in talking with some of the women that we work with, I think a lot of women can relate to what happened.
So yes, I want to include you. Yeah.
Yeah, And in the spirit of honesty, I feel like when Channy came on this show, one of the things she told us was to not shy away from hard topics.
This is one of those tough conversations. So here we go.
We were doing some press interviews for the show, right, and we did a bunch of interviews, and then we got to the last conversation, and that's when things got really, really bizarre. One of the hosts said the most degrading thing that has ever been said to me in a professional setting.
Yeah.
This host told me that he's been following my TV news career over the years and that he has a recurring dream about me where he bends his head down and I pat him on his head and say, good boy. He said this in an interview to my face.
I know you're even shaking recounting it.
But it gets worse.
Unfortunately, he said, tall, gorgeous women are supposed to just be on the cover of Vanity Fair or Cosmo or something like that, not there on my TV telling me interesting stuff.
How did you feel in the moment when he said it to you?
In the moment, I was really shocked and flustered, and I kind of froze, to be honest, it broke my spirit because I've worked so hard over the past fifteen years to be taken seriously, and when you hear a comment like that, it just makes me think about all the other women who are working so hard to be taken seriously and to just gain an ounce of respect.
You know, I actually learned something from the interaction too, because you reported it, and I have felt uncomfortable in so many situations over the last ten years of my career, and I've never reported anything. I get mad at myself for how I respond, because I should have said something else.
That's what I was feeling too.
I could feel that in you, you're more mad at yourself than you are them, which is the messed up part about it.
It's a messed up part because I shouldn't be mad at myself, but I still, of course I'm thinking of all these you know, great shower comebacks that I I would have said if I didn't feel so damn conditioned in the moment to just.
Be a good girl.
But thank God that you were there, because I felt so supported and cared for by you in that moment, because you really came to my defense.
In a really big way, in a powerful way. Danielle, you're gonna make me cry.
No, but you said you pushed back, and you said, listen, the reason why we're doing this show is to combat everything you just said, and and to let people know that women can be multi dimensional, that we can be attractive and informed, that we can be funny and smart, that we can be direct and curious. So thank you. How did you find the words in that moment? It seemed like it wasn't hard for you.
Well, first of all, I just want to I'm I cry when other people cry empathy crying. I'm also crying because I felt you so deeply, like you always have the words, and so I could feel you not being able to find the words. And I have been there so many times. The reason I found the words in that moment, I think were because I hadn't found the words countless other times when I've felt put down and
disrespected and degraded at work. And I also think it's a lot easier to find the words when it's not you, Like you got the brunt of it. It was a lot easier for me to have your back than it was for you in that moment to have your back, and I think being a woman as a team sport. I have one more question for you, though, Yeah, how did you find the courage to not minimize it and to report it?
I think I'm over it. I'm thirty six years old.
You reach a point where you're just like, no more, I'm not going to let this happen anymore, you know, like we have let it happen, sometimes to preserve our own safety, sometimes to preserve the safety of others.
But I'm over it. I'm done.
Like we should be calling out this behavior, we should be declaring it as unacceptable.
I feel amped up by what you just said. No, really, that's because that's kind of like the whole freaking point of the show, you know, like we're all so over it.
It is over it.
I'm never not having the words anymore, like I'm not, We're done. And I think the more we have each other's back in that, like there's so much power in numbers and support. I think part of the point of the show is regardless of what industry you're in, like we are making a shift. Hello, Sunshine has given us a huge platform. I'm an opportunity and kind of lit the torch for that. I think the takeaway for us is, let's come to this show every day and do that.
Yes, yes, So the more that we look for ways to do that, to edify, to unify.
That's powerful.
Get you with all the words again, edify. I love the word outify chi vocabulary, so do you.
I'll look here.
I feel like I'm sitting next to an sat prep over job.
Thank you so much for listening, besties. We are so happy to be on this journey with you. That's it for today's show. Tomorrow we have Peloton instructor Ali Love. She's giving us insight into how to up the anti on energizing our lives. Listen and follow the bright side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Simone Voice. You can find me at simone Voice on Insta, Jaga and TikTok.
I'd love to hear from you.
I'm Danielle Robe on Instagram and TikTok. That's r O B A Y. We'll see you tomorrow. Keep looking on the bright side.