SPECIAL: Celebrating 75 Years of The School of Social Work at The University of Texas at Austin

Support comes from the Relationship Counseling Center of Austin. Counseling to help couples, individuals, and families build and maintain healthy and happy relationships. Information and appointments at rccaustin.com. Hello again, folks. Hope you enjoyed your lunch. You've now made it to the afternoon programming. So we've got a full afternoon ahead celebrating the 75th anniversary of UT Social Work. And we are about to kick things off with KUT's two guys on your head. It is a live taping here. And I should point out, in case you don't know, that KUTs and KUTx are part of the University of Texas at Austin. So they're right over there in the communications building. And it's great to have them on campus and here with us to celebrate this 75th. So today, they're going to record this live podcast episode. It'll cover psychology, social work, mental health, and how all of that intertwines and plays together. This is going to be an excellent conversation. We're glad you're here for it. And please welcome to the stage the cast of two guys on your head and their guests. You're getting Dean Alan Cole, Dr. Octavio Martinez, Dr. Bob Duke, Dr. Art Markman, and Rebecca McEnroy. Here they are. [APPLAUSE] Thanks so much. I was just telling Bob, I'm going to have to get a PhD, because it's just Rebecca McEnroy-- no, just kidding. Thank you so much, JD and Ike and the team, and Elizabeth McQueen from KUT for setting this up and making sure we're all in our places today. We really appreciate being invited here. So I'm Rebecca McEnroy with KUT. And I was thinking about how to introduce this show, and what kept coming up for me is a friend of mine who sometimes gets really frustrated with teaching at UT. She'll say, what almost started here could have changed the world. And it's funny because we all love to make fun of models, of course, but it is really frustrating when we see the problems and the challenges that lie ahead and feel kind of like we can't do anything about it or change anything. But I was rewatching the commencement speech from 2014 of Admiral McRaven. Bob mentions it all the time, and it's one of the greatest speeches that I've ever heard. But what he said was really interesting. He said to those 8,000 students that on any given lifetime, those students will meet 10,000 people. One student, 10,000 people. And if each student impacts the lives of just 10 of those people, and then those 10 impact the lives of 10 other people, those 8,000 students will have impacted the lives of over 800 million people in five generations. So what starts here can, in fact, change the world. But the question that Admiral McRaven asks is, of course, what will the world look like after we change it? And while we celebrate new technologies and we celebrate scientific breakthroughs and Nobel laureates, I have faith that it is because of programs like the Hogg Foundation and the School of Social Work here at UT, that the world our students will change will be more humane and more connected and healthier and equitable. It is Art and Bob and I's great pleasure to speak with two of the men who are laying the foundation where this can happen, Dr. Martinez and Dean Cole. We'll talk about the vision-- [APPLAUSE] We're going to talk about the vision for the Hogg Foundation and the School of Social Work. What the next 75, 85 years is going to look like. We'll ask what the philosophy is behind teaching students how to build healthy, mentally well communities and societies that can thrive, how the arts and humanities can foster imagination and sustain wellness, and how we can ensure access to health care, food, clothing, education, and, most importantly, hope for generations to come. So let's begin-- I'm going to steal a little bit from Raymond Carver on this question-- by talking about what are we talking about when we talk about behavioral health? You guys want to take that one? Anybody want to start fielding that question? I'll start. So behavioral health-- let's start with mental health. Mental health is usually the term we use when we're thinking about people's feelings or emotions or interior lives, sort of the stuff of psychology, therapy, things like that. Behavioral health includes mental health, but it includes maybe more exterior factors, too-- behaviors, structures, systems, what we might think informs well-being more broadly speaking. So mental health is a subset of behavioral health. Well, I think one thing that's important to bear in mind, as well, is we have to think a lot about the way the environment that we're in affects our behavior and our well-being. And I think historically, the field of psychology was very much on the inside out. And so we assume that a lot of the drivers of our behavior come from the inside and then manifest themselves outward. And I think what I think is really important-- and I think it's one of the most significant contributions of social work as a field-- is the recognition of the influence of the social environment, the built environment, the physical environment on our behavior, and that there are times where changing behavioral health, changing mental health, doesn't necessarily start by trying to change something internal. It's actually changing some of the things that are external to the individual in ways that are going to guide them towards a better state. And related to what Art's saying, I think we, as human beings, all overestimate how much our conscious decision-making is driving what happens to us during the day. And one of the reasons the environment is so important is that much of our actions are driven by processes that are below our conscious awareness. I mean, we like to think, I like to think, I'm in charge of my own destiny, and I choose to do the things that I choose to do, not really recognizing how much my choices-- my apparent choices-- are influenced by things in my environment that lead me to do things that I might not have fully considered all the alternatives before I've taken that step. Yeah, and all of that said, so talk a little bit about the role of social work in constructing these environments and what that means in terms of leading to the behavioral health and wellness that we want to see. Well, social work is part of the environment, of course, but we also are attuned to the dynamics in the environment and to Bob's point, what are some things that we can look at and maybe change that change behaviors and therefore change mental health as well as behavioral health? So whether it's in substance use disorders, sleep problems, relationship issues, macro or micro source of issues, the environment holds a lot of potential for overall well-being. And social work is really dialed into what Art was saying, the interaction between the person and the environment. It's not either/or it's the interaction between the two or the people. Yeah, and what I would add is, in my mic's OK? While we're trying to figure out your mic situation, I want to talk a little bit about or just explore a little bit about the history of the School of Social Work and the Hogg Foundation. When it started, what was the concept or idea behind why it was founded? And how has that evolved over the years? We can start with Dean Cole because-- we're having problems hearing and communicating. I'll start. It's so important. I'll start. So 75 years ago, Laura Lee Peterson is our sort of the person who started us formally. And she recognized a growing need in Texas for what we're talking about, expertise in mental health, what we didn't call behavioral health then, but what we now call behavioral health, the interaction of people and environments, individually, collectively, on micro and macro levels. And we need to understand more about what drives that, what is good about that, what could be made better about that. And so social work focuses not only sort of on the ground, but even at a policy level. What are the policies and the structures in the systems that are more conducive toward better well-being, i.e. better behavioral health? Rekha, can you repeat? Rekha, hello? You know what's really funny or not funny, but ironic about this is that as I was coming in, I was listening to a lecture that Dr. Martinez gave, and he was talking about the importance of effective communication and how important it is for people to be heard. You got it. So I just-- That's a good one, Rekha. Could you repeat the question? So I want to talk a little bit about the foundation. How did this all get started? The School of Social Work, the Hog Foundation, it's been 85 years since the Hog Foundation was founded. Talk a little bit about the beginnings and the orientes to what the project was. Sure, sure. Wonderful to talk about the Hog Foundation. Founded in 1940, as you just pointed out, 85 years ago. The foundation from the Hog family, children of the first native born governor of Texas, they felt the Texas has given them all this wealth, and they felt they needed to give back to the state of Texas, which is wonderful. But I'm a Hog, which was his only daughter, kind of laid the groundwork where we still looked actually to her, where she actually saw music and the physical environment were instrumental and critical to who it made you as a human being. And so as we look back, and when I took over executive director, one of the things that seemed clear to me was going more upstream. Let's take a look at what are the causes, the root causes, what are the impacts. And all three of us have already said the environment. And there are so many pieces. Those are major systems. And so the Hog Foundation, over the course of the last few decades, have been really concentrating on each one of those and identifying, how can we bring that to the community? Because it's always need to be person-centric, community-centric. Because that's who Texas is, and that's being impacted, their mental health and their well-being. And that's why we've been concentrating on that over the years. And we've helped to create, as the first mental health code for the state of Texas, we've helped to ensure the infrastructure that has become our state hospitals are of the 21st century, as well as bringing in peer recovery, the integrated collaborative care model, as well as recognizing that green spaces, housing, are equally important to one's way they see themselves, how they see their community. And as pointed out by Bob, subconsciously impacts how we behave. Yeah, yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about-- or just expand who we are up here. Because all of us wear various hats, many, many, many different hats. Three musicians in the bunch, right here. We have administrators. We have people who are thinking about how to teach, how we teach. Bob, that's you. And we have community activists. There's just so much that we all are bringing to our work, to our lives. And I want to talk about the philosophy of this holistic perspective. We talk a lot about psychology starting with philosophy. So how do we encourage build within the university systems that are thinking holistically? And so the LBJ school is working with the School of Social Work, for example, is working with fine arts, for example. How do we encourage that in our students and then build that within the university system? You know, I'll say something about that if I can start. You know, I think all of this starts with having a clear vision about what's possible in a human life. Like I was mentioning, just the physical environment that one lives in and green spaces, and whether there is adequate, nutritious food available, and whether you have opportunities for recreation, and whether your children can go to a school that's good and safe and those kind of things. And I think one of the ways to muster resources from disparate entities is for everyone to clarify what that vision is like. So everybody can see, how do I contribute to that, right? If I see something that's somehow disparate from what my idealized version of this is, where can I contribute to do something? Because I think all of us who care about other human beings are looking for where we can make a contribution that's meaningful and lasting and those kinds of things. And I think that becomes more prevalent and more obvious when we have a clear idea about, what should this look like? You know, what should someone living in this culture, in this society, in this country, what should their lives be like so that they have every opportunity to thrive and have families that thrive and be able to be fulfilled in whatever ways they choose to be fulfilled? I mean, that's an important thing, I think, to start with that sort of helps everybody point it in a good direction. And I want to capture one other thing, which is it's become popular to hate on universities lately, which is unfortunate. And I think that when we begin to think about the value that a university, the caliber of UT, brings to thinking about behavioral health, it is that intersection of education and research that is so important. Yes, we need to teach the leaders of the future. We need to get people up to speed on the latest understanding of things. But the thing about human behavior and that interaction between-- as Alan, as you were putting it, that interaction between the person and the environment, the actual influence, the mutual influence of people in their environments is not obvious. It's why we need to do research. It would be great if we all just understood the way we acted. But I've often said, if we had great introspective access into what drove our behavior, we wouldn't need therapy. We'd just need a quiet room and some time. And we could introspect and then come out better. But it is because the relationships between our behavior, the environment, the people in that environment, the social world, because those relationships are not obvious and so variable at an individual level, that we need the research to really drive a better understanding of that behavior so that we can create the right manipulations. And if we do not continue to support that research, we are going to slide backward in our ability to provide a great environment for people to thrive. On the philosophy piece, I agree with you 100% art, Leo Tolstoy wrote a book called Resurrection. And in that book, he says, the meaning of life is service to humanity. And I think that's part of it. But I think the other side of that is the meaning of life is finding meaning in life. And you find meaning in life, I think, through loving and being loved and contributing to other people's well-being as well as your own. And so social work is founded on principles that echo those sentiments. So we're always drawn to this work because it's a way to get beyond ourselves and into service for greater humanity, but also to find meaning in that. And I would just add, Rebecca, going on art, what he laid out, neurodevelopmentally, it makes so much sense why it's so important. Thinking about, even before preconception, why we need to be worried about what we do behaviorally and how it will impact maybe that new human being that we're creating that's gonna come forth. And then when they're here on the planet with us, how, in fact, are we impacting them subconsciously, consciously, but as well as environmentally, so key. - Yeah, and speaking of research, so there has been a lot of research done about the impacts of arts and humanities on overall mental wellness, on storytelling and being able to understand the story of our lives and communicate that and to understand other people's stories, on the relationships between community and mental health and strengthening community and having overall better mental wellness. And also, there has been a lot of new research on new technology, on AI and how we're implementing that in medical schools, in social work, all over the university. So I wanna pull those apart a little bit and talk about what the School of Social Work and the Hogg Foundation are doing in those areas to strengthen the understanding of the importance of each of those areas and also to build that within the university system. And we can talk about why also, from a psychological perspective, these things are so important as well. So let's start with storytelling because yesterday we were having a conversation about storytelling and how important it is in behavioral health. So let's just start talking about that. - Okay, I'll start. I think we story our lives in ways that help us understand them and help us experience other people's lives as well. And so there are different ways of talking about it, but if you think about memories you have and memories that are important to you, they often time relate to experiences that take the form of a story. So I'm telling you about my childhood experience and this or that or my experience with my colleague last week or whatever. It's the way we sort of structure and live out our lives and the way we remember that we've had a life and why it's been important. And so if you think in terms of sort of structuring our lives according to stories, then social work can plug into that in ways that privilege in a point in time, another person's story in order to help them understand it better and to understand it as a practitioner better so that you can help the person through whatever struggles they may have. So there's a concept in narrative therapy, which is another way of thinking about storing our lives. It says if we externalize our problems or our struggles, and this is a metaphor, but if we do that, we can look at them in more of a 360 or holistic way and then re-internalize them and not only understand our stories better, but we can change our stories. And so social work is about seeing other people, hearing their stories, helping them tell those stories in different ways perhaps or in more informed ways so that their well-being is enhanced. - And for Hog Rebecca, where the storytelling comes into play and is so key, is in our development for grant initiatives, but then actually when we're reviewing the proposals that come in, those that are able to tell a story about the trials and tribulations or maybe even the future that they want to create, the vision that they have for their community becomes very key and it's a compelling proposal when we're able to tell the story and connect it to all of those that are within your geopolitical and physical environment to understand why this grant, these few dollars, how we plan to use them and how it's gonna change our environment as well as our trajectory to get to well-being. Not Nirvana, but a better place for all of us to live. And so storytelling is so key. Often they also include personal stories when we call the lived experience. So key and important. Very much a part of the work Hog has been doing in peer and in recovery is understanding how that lived experience is truly a story and helps you to be connected to the individual story, connected to what they've gone through and it creates empathy. It also does, which I think is beautiful, is also helps you to think creatively, how are we going to partner going into the future? - Yeah, you know, I just wanna say too about the research piece a little bit. You know, I mean, we live in an age where metrics seem to dominate. You know, like, can you scale this? That's a question that's asked a lot, you know? And one of the things that I think narratives do is humanize effects that are taking place in ways that statistics don't. You know, I've seldom been moved by a T-test. I know they're sometimes lovely, but yeah, come on, surround me. But I think the idea of connecting with the things that make us human beings, I mean, it's not that the data aren't important. I mean, you do wanna show that your efforts are doing something that you care about, but if it's only at that level, right, if we don't actually interact with people on a way that there's a human being there and that person has an experience and I have an experience and how can I contribute here, then I think we're a long way from actually being motivated to take action. You know, I mean, there are data and there are values. And, you know, we can know a lot about something and still not take productive action because our values don't line up with what needs to happen. So I just think I always had that caveat about data and whenever I hear somebody talk about the value of narrative, I wanna jump on that 'cause I think it's such an important message. - And I think one other aspect of the value of stories is the recognition that the primary human adaptation to the world is not that we're set up to thrive in a particular ecological niche. It's that we are able to learn from each other about how to navigate the world. So there is no nothing in our evolutionary history that prepared any of you for the concept of a panel discussion. And yet you're all good with it because of the set of experiences that you have. - Well, as far as we know. - Well, you know, they're tolerating it. - Pretend. - But it is the stories that we tell each other that help us to learn how to navigate the complexity of the world that we're in. And the power of those stories is if we don't like where we are psychologically at any given moment. You know, as Island was saying, by changing the nature of those stories, by listening to different stories, we learn a different way of being that may turn out to be a better way of being within the environment that we're in. - And I want to talk about the importance of stories, but not just stories about community. Dean Cole, you have created an incredible community around people who have early onset Parkinson's with your work with PDWISE. And in the documentary about early onset Parkinson's that you put together, a lot of them say, it's so important for me to have these connections with other people who have gone through this experience and share my stories and connect. And it gives me strength. Talk about the importance of community in all of this. And how do we foster community? And how can we use new technologies in order to foster and strengthen communities as well? - Well, thank you. First of all, thank you. I think human beings are relational by nature. I think we are in part, we have to be relational in some form or fashion. And when life gets hard for us, we look to our relationships, our primary most important relationships as a shelter from the storm, if you will. And so when I was diagnosed with Parkinson's almost nine years ago this month, it was important to me to look for a community and to be in a community and contribute to a community as a way to make meaning and to understand my story as it was evolving in new ways, but also to have people who understood at some level what I was going through or what I would go through. I think we just do that all the time. If we lose a loved one, being with someone who's lost a loved one can have a connective point or opportunity that we wouldn't have otherwise. We can identify with one another by virtue of our struggles, if you will. That's relational and it's inherently communal, I think. The School of Social Work, I think among our virtues, one of the things we do really well is we build and foster community. We pull for each other. We don't function with a zero sum mentality. There's enough success for everybody. Everybody's contributing, making meaning, growing. We're not perfect, but there's a real ethos of that at the School of Social Work. And I think that's deeply human. I think we all want that at some level, whether it's in our professional lives or a personal life. - Yes. Dr. Martinez, do you wanna add to that? How do you build community with the Hog Foundation? How are you working to ensure that community will prosper? - Yeah, community is so key, absolutely. And in philanthropy and the Hog Foundation, the work we've been doing here in Texas, it was shortly after I became executive director and as we were looking toward what are we gonna be doing for the next 10 years? Where should we really be looking to? And it was community that really stood out for us. Now, we're National Advisory Council that we have with the Hog Foundation, helped us to also explore that issue. And the more that we explore, the more we looked into the power of community, we realized this is it. And it still remains, I think, very central to the work that we're doing and moving forward. Because it is through community, as Alan is saying, where people feel connected. And everyone has to have a community. And we have multiple communities. It's not just one, right? I mean, as a physician, I have my community of physicians, but that's different from the community I have in my personal life, right? And yet each one of those contributes to who I am and how I feel in this world that we navigate all together. And talking about relationships and relational, you know, that's one of the key things. And one of the things that's impacting society, including Texas right now, and because of COVID-19, the number of folks that feel disconnected or lonely. It is a pandemic right now. And one that we really need to key on. Hence the reason we want to continue to remain with that. And as we think of community, to me it's the centric part of what everything else that we're doing, even the grant that we're doing with the School of Social Work in reference to bringing the arts and humanities for increasing the research for our assistant-tenured professors in schools of social work. It is contributing to the entire ecosystem of what a community ought to be and how to utilize hopefully the outcomes from that research and then translate it into actual changes that can happen. - Yeah, and you know, we just did a show. Two guys on your head is our show. And we just had a show a couple of weeks ago and it was on how do you maintain mental wellness in the age of pretty dire news headlines every day. So talk a little bit about how do you foster in community and why is that so important for our health psychologically? - You know, I teach a human learning and behavior class and I was just talking to my undergraduate students this morning about the difference between interacting with people face-to-face or as my students say, IRL in real life and interacting online, particularly when you're texting or posting things on social media. And you know, Art mentioned our evolutionary history and we have learned to respond to what we see in other people when we're interacting with them. And what social media has done to many people is taken that away, right? That there are opportunities to interact with another person that you can't see. You might not even know who they are. And it creates an entirely different kind of experience. And I think many students and young people and maybe some older people too who have had a lot of that experience find it a challenge to interact with people face-to-face and have a conversation. And I think the trepidation to even begin a conversation with a stranger looms large with many people. I remember when I was out with one of my granddaughters when she was very young and I don't know, I was in a checkout line at Central Market or something. And I was talking to the clerk and we were walking out the door. My granddaughters said, God, you talked to everybody. And well, yeah, because I'm enriched by that, right? I learned something from other human beings that I choose to initiate an interaction with. And I think there are so many things in contemporary society that work against that. I mean, there's so many ways to get stuff you want without having to actually interact with a human being. I think all the opportunities we have to point human beings toward one another and foster those interactions, that's the way community comes about, right? Because you know something about the people you're interacting with. And the reason success isn't a limited resource, but it's something that everything can have because I know something about you that makes me sort of revel in the fact that something good happened for you, you know? And that's a different way of creating a community, I think. - But I think one of the things we need to be wary of is there are multiple ways of creating community and defining community. And I think there's a very positive way of doing that, of seeking connection with others and really trying to find those points of commonality. Unfortunately, in the modern world, we've also become adept at defining our communities by, through exclusion, by arguing that there are others who are different from me and therefore I'm gonna make a big distinction between my community and those who are not in my community. And so, you know, when in times of trouble, in the, you know, as Allen was saying, you know, in times of trouble, in the best of times, we seek out a community and we seek connection and we try to build, you know, a wonderful and loving and caring community. But I think we've seen in some of the events over the last several weeks, even, of, in times of trouble, people creating division as a way of grappling with difficulty. And I think part of what a university can do, what a school of social work can do, what the kinds of research that is rooted in the humanities and the arts that Octavia was talking about, one of the things that that can do is to help us to re-envision how we should engage in community, to really try to find those points of common humanity that bind us together in difficult times rather than trying to immediately retreat into a community that is defined in opposition to others. - Well said. - And I really want to pick up on that and talk about how the arts and humanities can help us do that. How can art, literature, music, how can it help us unite in a way that we find that commonality and can build that commonality? Why is it so important to go see live music together and go to museums and experience art to read novels? Talk a little bit about the humanities and the role of behavioral health, mental wellness, community connection, and positive work in our lives. - Well, I think the beauty about the arts and the humanities, it really is about the human condition. It truly is about us. And when art is created, literature is created and developed, you're putting some of yourself into that. That's what makes it so special. And when others are able to interact with it, they can be confounded, maybe they're confused, maybe they connect. But it causes, in my opinion, some thought processes to be, you know, those synapses are going off, why do I like this, why do I not like this? And can lead to them discussions and thoughts of why this is so important. And in the field of medicine, the medical humanities, the 2020 report, the double AMC that was put out, that showed the foundational role of the humanities in medical education, in which Hogg is very much very interested in, I know the School of Social Work is as well, 'cause the work that Alan is doing with the Dell Medical School is so key, because one of the key things, Rebecca, that it also does, it really gets to that human condition of the provider, and helping them to develop what, and we were just talking about this earlier, the soft skills, I was talking to Greg Wallingford about that. And I don't really like the term soft skills, 'cause these skills are critical. You know, you can be taught how to suture, but can you be taught empathy? It's very challenging and difficult. And that's where I think the arts and humanities brings that in. And I feel that our medical students and our undergraduate students, they hunger for that. They want that connection that they can have, because one of the most important things when I was a physician that I learned, it wasn't my skills in psychiatry that were the most important. It was that bedside manner. Did I connect? Did I see my patient? Did they really feel heard? And those are the pieces that are about where humanities and the arts can help to develop that in each and every one of us. - Just pushing off of that in the medical humanity space, we know over replicated studies over time, that if a patient believes their provider, a doctor or a therapist, some provider, really cares for them as a person and recognizes their humanity, we have better outcomes. So there's something that's healing in the power of the relationship itself before you get to any intervention or any treatment. And the arts and the humanities remind us, among other things, of what it means to be human, whether it's through beauty or through an encounter with another person's story, whether it's a poem that turns us inwardly in ways that we haven't been turned before or not in a long time. And that prepares us to know more about ourselves, but also to experience others differently and more appreciatively and to build empathy and compassion. - You know, one common theme about a lot of therapeutic interventions is finding ways to get people out of themselves to focus in other ways. And I think the arts and humanities provided that, but I think there's an interesting misperception on the part of many learners about what they need to be learning. You know, you're talking about whether we call them soft skills or not, but I work with a lot of people who are teachers and preparing to be teachers and those kinds of things. And one of the complaints I hear sometimes, you know, I'm teaching a class in the student system, so when am I ever gonna use this, you know? And I have a response for that, that I advise people to use. After someone says, "When am I ever gonna use this?" I say, "Well, did you go to a movie last week?" I said, "Yeah, I did. "Was it a good movie? "Had you liked it? "When are you ever gonna use that?" (audience laughing) Well, you're not, that's why you went. I mean, the idea that there has to be some direct utilitarian application of anything we invest ourselves in is completely false, but somehow when people come into an official learning environment, there's this misperception, well now, you know, I need to be able to apply this in some way that's gonna get me a job or whatever, you know? But I think the thing about the arts and humanities, in addition to getting somebody outside of themselves, 'cause you have to be somewhat outward focused to do that, to engage with a poem or make music with friends or whatever, is that it provides an opportunity for you to invest your attention in something that matters to you. And, you know, that's a gift. I mean, for those of us who have the capacity to read a long novel and get all the way to the end, that's a gift to be able to do that. And one has to learn to do that. And learning how to do that is more than just teaching somebody how to read, right? You have to teach somebody to like to read, which is a different thing, right? And I think in school, in general, we focus on the how to do stuff and not necessarily the how to like stuff part. And that seems to me as important a component as anything about the knowledge and skill. - And one other element to this as well is if you think about therapeutic environments, when people are struggling with something, there is a tendency to believe that your own struggles are unique, right? It's, you know, every happy family is the same, you know? And, but every sad family is unique, but it's not, right? I mean, in fact, there are there are connections we can make in, you know, with people who are in pain. They need, those individuals need to feel understood in those situations. And one of the, you know, and oftentimes, a therapist, a doctor, a physician may not be able to connect directly with the experience of someone who's struggling, but through the arts, you can often create those ways of helping people to feel like they are understood because there are others who have experienced something that is like what they have, they are experiencing right now. And until people, I think, can get to the point of feeling understood, it's hard to then shift a mindset to also begin to think about how to change and be better. And that can be true in mental health, but also physical health. I mean, I think, you know, when we think about behavioral health, for example, you know, so many important long-term health outcomes are not driven by a medication. They're driven by the consistent application of good habits to your life that enable you to live well. And you're unlikely to make those changes if you feel poorly understood. But, you know, and so to the extent that we can use the arts and humanities to make those connections and help people to feel understood, we are building a bridge that enables them to take the steps they need to take towards behavioral health. - Rebecca can add something to what art, 'cause you may be thinking of something art, which is the flip side, we've been talking about the delivery of care and being a good health provider, but it's our health providers as well who are in crisis. Burnout is out of control, unfortunately, folks. But the humanities and arts have a role that can, it's not the complete answer, but it definitely, to Art's point, gets you connected to yourself, to your environment, what you care about, and bringing fulfillment and joy back into why you probably started and wanted to be a provider in the first place, regardless of your psychologist or social worker, a nurse or a physician. - Yeah, and in terms of how we make sure that all of the things we're talking about right now are valued within, not only the university system, but within our society, what role does the university play in ensuring that we value storytelling, community, the humanities, what role do we have, responsibility, and from an administrative point of view, how do we do that? - Well, we talk about 'em on podcasts. (audience laughing) I mean, I think education is about exposing people to new vistas or new horizons of information and experience so that they may consider them for themselves. And I think, classically, education has included the arts and the humanities as fundamental to what it means not only to be a learner, but to be a human being in the ways that we've talked about, an individual human being, a collective human being, in public settings as well. And on the technology piece, I think, no one's more excited about technology than I am in what it offers potentially to humanity. I think technology, for the most part, is value neutral. It's how it's utilized that becomes value laden. And the humanities, for me, remind us that as we're proliferating with technological capacity, it's all the more important to stay tethered to what makes us most human. And the arts and the humanities make us or help us understand how we're made human in ways that I don't think we find elsewhere, at least not without the remainders that inevitably come into play. - Yeah. And, Rebecca, I would add that there were some wonderful things happening here at the University of Texas at Austin. For example, Alan is faculty in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, but he's also working with the medical school when it comes to infusing the humanities. And, of course, you can talk more about that. But the Hawke Foundation, by the fact, what we do, and we're part of the University of Texas at Austin, as well as the UT system, and partnering with School of Social Work, Dell Medical School, as well as interdisciplinary, reaching out to our colleagues in psychology, as well as in nursing. And that interdisciplinary approach that we have here at the University of Texas at Austin is a tremendous opportunity. And then, also, the ecosystem of Austin itself, which is so dynamic when it comes to, especially, you know, technology for the future, thinking about the new health science center that we're building, well, those two new hospitals. I'm sure Art and Duke, you got plenty to say all night, which would be just wonderful. What are the possibilities for the future, for this community, for Texas, and the world at large? - You know, I think one of the things that we have to do as a university, is we think about the stories that we can tell. I mean, Alan, you sort of started off with a joke, which I dutifully laughed at. - Thank you. - Saying, you know, talking that podcasts are the way to do it. But actually, that ability to get out there and actually tell the stories of the value of having certain kinds of expertise is incredibly important right now. We are seeing a devaluation of expertise in our political world at the moment. And I think we, and you know, the thing about being an expert is, you do have to learn a somewhat exclusionary vocabulary in order to be an expert, not with the intent of excluding often, but rather because we need very fine-grained vocabulary to talk about the very detailed concepts that are part of our areas of expertise. But it can feel exclusionary to people on the outside of that in ways that may begin to make them feel like, well, who needs all this? You know, I can talk in ways that you don't understand as well. And so I think it's really important for us to take the expertise that we have here and to bring it outward as much as possible to help people understand that there really is insight that everyone can gather from the expertise that we have here at the university and that by sharing that, we can make everybody's lives better in a way that hopefully integrates the university with the community and creates more of a partnership which has been lacking over the last few decades. - I'll add one thing to that. It really has to do with what opportunities there are to help the students who are in our charge here and our colleagues and staff and everybody else. And the community at large see a different perspective about what's really important. When I see my students in the hallways often, you know, when I do my, how you're doing, for the students who don't just say fine, right, what the answer I get most often is busy. And it's not happy busy. It's not like I'm busy and it's great. It's like I'm busy and oh man, you know, we create that environment, you know, and we're talking about the value of environments and we're at a time in our society where speed is a really highly valued thing. I mean, one of the reasons AI is so attractive is that rather than my slogging through an email response to somebody, I can just have my AI write it and it's close enough to what I would do that I can send it. Well, there's a lot missing in all of that. I'll respond to it with AI though. Yeah, I know, I know. So that's how we communicate with each other. But I think, you know, one of the things that is interesting about being in an environment like this is there's a potential to change the pace for the people with whom we interact. And by doing that, shifting their perspective about what's valued. You know, I mean, I think, you know, almost all the great things in life that I know are slow, you know, a good meal, a good conversation, good sex. Can I say that in here? I don't know. Anyway, I already did. All that stuff is slow. It's behavioral health. Yeah, behavioral health, thank you. Thanks for saving me on that one now. Okay, so, and if you think about what most people's days are like as they unfold, they're going really fast. And I feel privileged because I have an occupation and I have family around me that allow me to take in the things that I'm experiencing in a way that I think a lot of people can't because they're going really fast. And, you know, I mean, I think it's important that we sort of externalize the way we do that so people see that it can be done. You can be successful without, you know, running yourself into the ground. You know, you can do things well. And I know when my students hear me say that, it's like, yeah, easy for you to say 10-year-old man. But I want to tell you, if that is a life lesson that we can convey to people, what a healthy pace is like, that's as much a part of the environment as anything else, is the speed at which things happen. And we who are in positions of influencing other human beings, you know, which is all of us 'cause we all influence the people we're around, we have an opportunity to create a different expectation about how quickly or how slowly things can go and still be successful. - There's one more quick piece on this. I think it has to do with what's valued and what's permissible in the sense of, you know, what leadership at the CSU level or at the highest level of administration here at UT says is permissible and valuable. And I think we're in a moment here at UT where the arts and humanities are affirmed as being valuable, not only for education, but for humanity. And so, whether it's Dell Med and Social Work who are working in medical humanities that you mentioned, Octavio, Greg Wallingford and I lead a writing group of physicians and faculty members who are writing about their experiences with patients and what motivated them to go to medical school in the first place and some of the challenges in the system that sort of eat against that and burn 'em out or, you know, worse have 'em leave medicine. Well, the administration says that that's not only okay but it's valuable and we put resources toward it and follow it and see if it has a good outcome. So it takes some decision-making at the leadership levels to say this matters enough to put resources toward it and to spend time on it. I think you're absolutely right. - What you reward, right? And I would also be remiss if I didn't bring up the importance of public radio in creating community and giving us access to arts and humanity. It's the reason I got into radio in the first place and so, yes, please support your local public radio station, KUT. So as we wrap up, I want you all to leave us with a little bit of future thinking. What is possible? Where should we put our attention and our focus, our energy, our budgets? What should we look forward to if we want to create healthy communities, healthy societies, and healthy people? Art, you wanna start? You guys wanna start or what are you guys? Who wants to start? - I can start. - Okay, go for it. - Go for it. - I'll tell you, you have a budget, so. - No, I didn't say so. (audience laughing) - You know, the upcoming, especially artificial intelligence which is a mind in everyone, but all the technology that's being developed and that's coming, it has great, tremendous potential as we all well know. But to Duke's point, it is speeding up a lot of things, right, and there's a lot of things that people worry about is, at least I think about is, how is it gonna impact the individual in the community, this new technology that's coming along? Especially from the standpoint of creating a cohesive, inclusive community. We have been dealing with health disparities for a long time in this country. All constraints on mental health disparities. How is AI has the potential to diminish those, but also worry about does it, the unintended consequence of creating maybe new mental health disparities we're not even aware of yet. If we're not including those voices, those communities, those experiences into the development process. Because as we all know, especially with AI, it is just taking information that already exists. And we know that, unfortunately, we have created already these disparities. How are we going to ensure that we're not going to do that as we go forward? And so it's a bit bittersweet in like, looking forward to it, this is so cool, we're gonna change the world, it's gonna address a lot of different issues. As an example is, avatars are being created to provide already therapy. And you can change the avatars that it has the voice and the language and it looks like maybe the individual is gonna be receiving the therapy. But it makes me think about, but we haven't solved the workforce issue to ensure that the human component, us, do we represent all of our communities as we are going forward? And so we have to be mindful of that. And I think if we are, then we're gonna have really a great new place that we're going to with great outcomes and really decreasing those disparities and actually increasing mental health and behavioral health and wellness for all individuals in our communities. That's the vision that I'm looking forward to. - I got a couple in mind, but I'm gonna go with one that's, I think about much of the day every day. I think we are in a moment in history where we do well to pay attention to understanding what makes us most fundamentally human and being able to learn to see perhaps what is fundamentally human in others, especially across differences. And to recognize the sacredness of humanity and the intrinsic good of being human across differences and recognizing that, learn how to talk to each other and to be in relationship with each other in ways that are edifying and not destructive. - I'll say too, we're in a time right now where people are setting the agenda for the conversation that sort of leads everybody to think about certain things in certain ways. Can I be more oblique than that? I don't know. Anyway, but I think one of the things that's important is all of us externalizing, saying aloud, the things that are important to us as human beings. I mean, I think when art was mentioning what when times are tough, people sort of circle the wagons and there's our team and the other teams and those kind of things. And of course, often that leads to some characterization of the other team is something that doesn't resemble vaguely what the other team is really like. And I think being more vocal about what you're really like and the things that you really value and the things that you really care about, especially when those things represent an inclusive, healthy community, I think it's important for people to hear that. And rather than just getting in a defensive crouch and waiting for stuff to blow over, to be able to say, not in any way argumentative, you're just talking about yourself and saying, well, these are the things that I really care about. I want my students here to thrive. I want people in my community in Austin to thrive. I want them to be healthy. I want them to have opportunities to do things that matter to them as human beings. I think just saying those things aloud does a lot, I think, to create a different sense of the usness and themness than if we just keep silent and let other people define what the issues really are. - You know, I think one of the ways that universities can help to contribute to creating a better sense of societal wellness is to focus on two things. How we can help ourselves as individuals and communities to be a little less reactive to situations and how to be a little less concerned about winning. So I think if you look at where a lot of of poor behavioral health comes from right now, it often emerges in one of those two ways. So a lot of us are very reactive to circumstances, reactive to something that somebody just said, reactive to the most recent thing that happened or the most recent problem or the most recent slight, as opposed to asking how do I want to spend my time? How do I want to have my impact on the world which doesn't have to be done in reaction to some specific thing that just happened? And how can I do that in a way that is intended to be inclusive and not to win? I mean, I don't know how many times I, I mean, it would be weird, right? If you said to somebody, you know, how was your visit with your good friend? And they said, oh, it was wonderful, I won. You don't win a visit, you know? You just had a good time, you had a kind, you connected with somebody, you know? Those connections aren't about winning, they're about engaging and engaging often outside of the context of the things that force you to react to one thing or another. And I think as universities, we can demonstrate that, we can teach that, we can create environments in which people are thriving and connecting rather than reacting and winning. - Yeah, and build those environments that are, that have this mutual goal. You know, one of the fun stories that Bob tells a lot is when Kennedy was touring NASA, he ran into a janitor and he asked the janitor, what do you do here? And the janitor said, I'm sending a man to the moon. And I think that's what we need to understand. We are shaping the future. How do we wanna do that? So thank you so much, Dr. Martinez and Dean Cole, Bob, Art, thank you to JD, thank you all of you for coming out today. We are so honored to be able to celebrate the 75th year of the School of Social Work and the 85th year of the Hog Foundation with you. And we're humbled too to have had you invite us. So thank you. - And I have to say before the applause start. - Oh. - I have to say, because I think this is one of the most important thank yous together. Rebecca McEnroy, who's just a wonderful person who works with us all the time and makes Art and Me look good. Thank you so much for doing this, Rebecca. Thank you. (audience applauding) - Support for Two Guys on Your Head comes from UT's Human Dimensions of Organizations, offering a master's and certificate programs for those who know that tackling people-centered organizational challenges drives results. More at hdo.utexas.edu.