Nichole Baker, adventure athlete, philanthropist, and medical professional

Nichole Baker is an adventure athlete, philanthropist, and medical professional (who also happens to be Payson’s girlfriend). Her work as a pathologist’s assistant and athlete has taken her all over the world, including to Uganda, where she founded a nonprofit that supports pathology students and medical facilities. In this conversation, Nichole talks about how she became a pathologist’s assistant after an unconventional and at times difficult childhood. She talks about dissecting body parts, saving lives by identifying disease in patients’ tissue before it spreads to the rest of the body, and how the pandemic has caused a life-threatening decrease in cancer diagnoses. She also talks about her brief stint as a deputy coroner, when her job was to show up at crime scenes by herself and retrieve bodies. She talks about picking body parts up off the side of road, and one of the times when an autopsy turned a straightforward accidental death into a homicide investigation. 

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