In this ethics installment of Study Hall, Dominic Sisti lectures on the UFO cult of the Raelians while Michael Yudell teaches us about Alexis St. Martin and his digestive system.

ABOUT DOMINIC SISTI: I’m a medical ethicist who is trained in moral philosophy. Most of my research focuses on ethical issues in psychiatry and mental health policy, particularly surrounding involuntary treatment of seriously mentally ill people. I also study and write about challenges in clinical bioethics, including end of life care, euthanasia, and medically assisted dying. You can see: I’m a lot of fun.

ABOUT MICHAEL YUDELL: Michael Yudell, the steady lecturer of Study Hall, is the Chair of the Department of Community Health and Prevention at the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University. Yudell is a researcher in the fields of ethics, genomics and the history of public health. His work focuses on the history, risk communication and ethics of autism spectrum disorders, as well as the history of the race concept in biology.

CAST: Rob Alesiani, Fred Brown, Sarah Clemency, Keane Cobb, James Knight, and Lora Magaldi