Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/02/05/the-big-idea-justin-c-key/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59358

A good beside manner makes all the difference in your medical care. So how polite could a robot doctor or AI nurse be? Justin C. Key makes the argument that human connection in medicine is an absolute requirement, and empathy should be all the rage amongst hospital staff. He took this attitude into the creation of his newest novel, The Hospital at the End of the World. Grab you insurance card and come see how connection and community are some of the best medicines.

JUSTIN C. KEY:

It’s hard to keep your humanity in medical training.

It’s a potent thought considering the AI war brewing. We have a process of training doctors that desensitizes, burns-out, and enforces systemic biases. If we’re training people to be robots, why not let the actual robots do it better?

In crafting this book, I set out to make a case for the opposite.

I’m a science fiction author who happened to go to medical school for the same reason I’m drawn to writing: the belief in the inherent value of human connection. I learned early in my medical journey that our healthcare system makes it very difficult to uphold this value. Physicians are overworked, bogged down in red tape, swimming upstream against a for-profit insurance system, and have too many patients and not enough time.

Then there’s the training itself. I didn’t like medical school. I didn’t like the hierarchy. I didn’t like the glorification of battle scars. I didn’t like the environment that pushed my classmate to suicide just months before graduation. Though my alma mater did great work in teaching the art of medicine and the importance of being with your patient, the core culture remained.

It wasn’t until I’d gotten my degree, had some years of autonomous patient care under my belt, and had the chance to process my experiences through my writing that I realized how magical it is to become a healer. No, not in an elitist or ‘holier than thou’ way. But the privilege to build a partnership meant to enhance a human life and, in a lot of cases, save it.

My first novel follows young medical student Pok Morning. There’s the premise you’ll get on the jacket cover and in the pitches and in the interviews—AI vs medicine, who will prevail?!—but as the larger, existential battle rages on, Pok still has to navigate the brutal process of becoming a doctor. How could I strike the balance between my perceived experience and later reflections? I was also asking a deeper, more introspective question: how did I come out of training valuing human connection so much when the process could have very well stripped me of that? 

The importance for humanity in medicine isn’t a given. With delivery and mobile apps, we are more and more disconnected from the people with whom we exchange services. And one can’t deny that there are some tasks a cold, calculated machine might be suited for. Even then, usually the best result comes from a pairing with human intuition. I wouldn’t knowingly get on a plane that didn’t have both an experienced pilot and a functional autopilot computer system. Would you? 

And then there’s the risks of having a human in the driver’s seat. Computers can’t drink and drive. They can’t be distracted by texting. They can’t forget to check a burn victim’s throat for soot just because a cooler case rolled by in the ER (yes, I literally just rewatched THAT Grey’s Anatomy episode). 

And thus winning the war of AI vs medicine is less about showing the flaws of AI (and trust, there are many and if I were an AI I’d make up a fake statistic to prove that point) but rather in making the case for humanity’s value. The most rewarding part of medicine—certainly for me and I suspect a lot of my colleagues who still hold hope—is helping someone by tapping into our own human parts. Empathy. Perspective. Community. This power is separate from outcomes. The task is easiest (and possibly even in AI’s reach) when the treatment worked and the patient improved. But what about when things go wrong? What about delivering bad news? What about being with someone during the hardest part of their life? There’s value in being seen and heard by another human. if a generated likeness said and did everything right, I’d bet that, for the patient, the experience would be as rewarding as watching a robot win the Olympics (in any category).

And yet . . . our healthcare system leaves little space for quality time between physician and patient. Those seeking help are left feeling unheard, underprioritized, and scrambling for alternative solutions. I fear that AI is going to come in and fill in these gaps (ChatGPT therapist, anyone?). Which is a shame because technology is supposed to relieve a physician’s burden and create more time for deeper connection, not eliminate it altogether. That dichotomy fuels the background of this book. Pok learns the ‘hard way’ of doing medicine while discovering its value.

There’s a moment early on in Pok’s medical school career where he doesn’t do as well as he hoped and feels he’s the only one. That everyone else is doing fine while he struggles. It’s a horrible place to be. I know because I’ve been there. But as the author of Pok’s world, I was able to imagine what it would look like to be lifted up from that, to have such disappointment strengthen community, resolve, and humility. The same way no one gets through illness alone, no one becomes a physician in isolation. The experiences that shape do so through the social lens.

Connection begets connection and that’s why it’s essential that medical education doesn’t exist in a bubble. There’s various levels of socialization, from peer to peer (Pok and his classmates), mentee to mentor (Pok and his professors) and, at some point, mentor to mentee (the student becomes the teacher). Like much of life, these interactions can go well or they can be stressful. They can build up or tear down. The types of community one experiences while becoming a physician can very much inform what they will recreate with their own patients. 

The type of medicine I created in The Hospital at the End of the World reflects what I strive to achieve as a physician. How did I put it on the page? By combining the essentials from my own experiences with what I hope will change for future generations of student doctors.  Pok, and hopefully my readers, are better for it.

The Hospital at the End of the World: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|The Rep Club

Author socials: Website|Instagram|TikTok

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/02/05/the-big-idea-justin-c-key/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59358

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/02/03/today-in-okay-what-the-actual-fk/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59333

To be clear, I did not expect to find myself in the Epstein Files, inasmuch as I have neither ever met nor have ever communicated with Jeffrey Epstein, nor do I hang out with the sort of people who find themselves on the private planes or islands of known sexual traffickers of children — a fact I’m deeply relieved about, if you want the truth of it.

Nevertheless when I learned that the database of the files is searchable, I put “Scalzi” in it to see what would pop up. I expected — and thus was not surprised by — several references to that name, because a banker with that last name handled some of Trump’s accounts at Deutsche Bank several years ago (no relation, as far as I know). But one of the references is indeed to me: Writer Rachel Sklar referenced me in an article she wrote in 2013, which is in the files for some reason, I assume because someone forwarded it to someone else in an email.

And, look: If one must have the appalling fortune to be in the Epstein Files, a one-sentence reference to an essay one wrote, located within another essay, neither about a topic that has anything to do with the exploitation of children, is almost certainly the best-case scenario. But it doesn’t mean I didn’t look at the reference when it popped up and say “oh, fuck” to myself. What a wild, unsettling and unhappy context in which to find one’s self.

So why mention it at all? One, because when people inevitably come across that reference to me in the files and email me about it, I can point them to this as a way to say “Yup, seen it, what a weird fucking thing that is” without having to type it out every single time. Two, I have enough detractors out there that one or more of them will loudly proclaim to their little pals that I am in the Epstein Files, and then slide past the actual context of being referred to tangentially, rather than being an actual participant in atrocities. Pointing this out before they do gives me “first mover” advantage, and the ability to point out what my appearance is actually about. This won’t stop some of them from misrepresenting my appearance, but that’s because they’re sad little weenies. Here’s the actual file I’m in. You can see it for yourself.

Nevertheless, a declaration:

I trust that will make my position on Epstein and his party pals clear enough.

What a strange and unpleasant time we are living through, nor are we out of it. And once again I have cause to marvel at the weirdness of my own life, that I should show up, even as an aside, as part of one of most horrible political scandals in US history. I would have just as soon sat this one out. But since I can’t, at least I can tell you how I got there.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/02/03/today-in-okay-what-the-actual-fk/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59333

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/02/02/trying-out-a-new-recipe-half-baked-harvests-really-good-chewy-chocolate-chip-cookies/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59301

Last week, I was having a serious craving for some fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. Between the weather and the world, I really felt like a cookie would help improve my morale.

So, I decided to try out Half Baked Harvest’s recipe for what she calls “Really Good Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies.” Let’s get right into the process of making them and how they turned out!

Looking at the ingredients list, it’s pretty clear that these are definitely pretty standard cookies made with just everyday household items. Sugar (white and brown), flour, eggs, butter, some vanilla, chocolate, it’s all the usual suspects. Thankfully I didn’t have to go out and buy anything, I could just get right into baking.

The first thing to do was to brown the butter. I was surprised by this step because usually if browning butter is required in a recipe, the food blogger will include such information in the title of the recipe. Like, if I make Binging With Babish’s brown butter chocolate chunk cookies with flaky sea salt, I make a point to mention allll of that.

Anyways, I browned the butter and let it cool off for just a bit while I mixed together the sugars, eggs, and vanilla. Normally I use a stand mixer, but the recipe says that all you need is a bowl and a whisk, and really don’t need an electric mixer. I decided to follow in the spirit of the recipe and keep things simple. Simple ingredients, simple equipment.

After adding the butter (which was still melted but not hot so I didn’t cook the eggs), it was finally time to add the dry ingredients. The recipe calls for 2 cups of flour, and pretty much the second I put in the two cups, I could tell that it was too much flour.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I packed the measuring cups too full of flour, resulting in extra unaccounted for flour in the mix. I’ll have you know I am a pro, and I spoon all the flour into the measuring cup, resulting in a nice, loose cup of flour rather than a tightly packed one. So it wasn’t my fault (this time, anyway).

The dough immediately became very dry and crumbly, and wouldn’t hold any type of ball shape. It would crumble apart so easily that the dough wasn’t even retaining any of the chocolate chips, they would just fall out.

I knew there was only one thing to do (besides cry and throw the bowl of cookie dough off a cliff). I was going to have to press all the dough into a 9×13 and make cookie bars.

I wasn’t sure how to adjust the cooking time for that, but I figured the initial temperature of 350 would be okay, so I put them in and basically eyeballed them until they were done, which took less than twenty minutes, I think. Here’s what they looked like:

Honestly, they didn’t look too bad! They were pretty okay right out of the oven, but as they cooled they quickly got harder and harder, until eventually all I had was a pan full of chocolate chip bricks. I can only assume it’s from how dry the dough was due to all the flour, but these were definitely more like biscotti. Certainly no “chewy chocolate chip cookie” in sight.

I was definitely a little disappointed, but at least they tasted pretty good and could be slightly softened in the microwave, then washed down with a nice, cold glass of milk.

Do you like cookie bars? Is chocolate chip your favorite type of cookie? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!

-AMS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/02/02/trying-out-a-new-recipe-half-baked-harvests-really-good-chewy-chocolate-chip-cookies/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59301