Ross Douthat

But he noted that he'd had one before the cancer, too.

We all do.

Sasse served the state of Nebraska in the U.S.

Senate for eight years as a high-minded and, by his own account, sometimes ineffectual conservative.

Then he quit politics to become president of the University of Florida, pursuing a different model of civic reform.

Now he's facing mortality.

For Sass, the advance of his cancer has brought clarity, sharpening his focus on his wife and three children and the God whom he expects to shortly meet.

At the same time, he's doing a lot of talking.

He's running his own podcast entitled Not Dead Yet.

And he's doing interviews like this one about what life is like on the threshold of the undiscovered country.

Ben Sasse, welcome to Interesting Times.

These are interesting times.

Good to be with you, Ross.

I want to start with an important question, which is, why are we here?

And I don't mean why we're here in this physical location.

We're taping this in Austin, Texas.

And I also don't mean the cosmic question.

I think we'll get to that at the end.

But here taping this conversation, because people facing a terminal diagnosis have a lot of options.

travel the world, scratch items off the bucket list, seek out obscure therapies in Western Tibet, just hunker down and spend time with their families.