Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hi, I'm Solana Pine.
Chapter 2: What is Ben Sasse's experience with terminal cancer?
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Chapter 3: How does Ben Sasse navigate oncology and clinical trials?
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From New York Times Opinion, I'm Ross Douthat, and this is Interesting Times. How would you live if you knew when you were going to die? When Ben Sasse announced his diagnosis of stage 4 pancreatic cancer last December, he called it a death sentence. 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.
Chapter 4: What insights does Sasse have about his political career?
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. And this is not the first interview you've done.
Chapter 5: What civic achievements could a senator like Sasse pursue?
Let me put it this way. You've chosen to spend time with journalists. And we're grateful, but I want to know why.
Well, you invited me, so I assume you had a cancellation. Let's be honest. I mean, the bar must be pretty low.
Chapter 6: How does Sasse view the state of academia and liberal arts?
I mean, I'm probably here for my looks, right? That's why I got the invite.
We had actually Clavicular, you know, the looks maxer, scheduled and he bailed. I don't know that.
Cloaca is a word I've been learning a lot lately, but I don't know this show.
You don't know about Clavicular? Then that is actually one of the small mercies of your own life and will let viewers figure out for themselves who Clavicular is. But yeah, in all seriousness, you're doing a lot of talking. You've actually, you've become a podcaster yourself, right? You have a podcast.
I'm a Monty Python fan, and I've been looking to do IP theft on Not Dead Yet for a long time, and now I kind of got a way to go. And now you have it. I did not decide to die in public. Um, I obviously ended up with a calling to die, uh, mid December. I got a three to four month life expectancy and I'm a day 99 or something since then.
And I'm doing a heck of a lot better than I was doing at Christmas.
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Chapter 7: What does Sasse mean by facing mortality as the 'final enemy'?
But even at three to four months left to live, you got to redeem the time. And there's only so many bits of unsolicited advice I can give my children. So you journalists want to talk and I'm like, well, if you don't have anybody better, I'm your, I'm your man. I'll be your huckleberry.
All right.
Chapter 8: What advice does Sasse offer to those living with terminal illness?
All right. Well, we are very grateful. Just tell me a little bit about the diagnosis and how you ended up where you are right now.
So I just turned 54. And so you get into your 30s, 40s, and 50s. You're like, how do I stay fit? And so I used to do a lot of sprint triathlons. And this fall, I'd been training for some short tries, and I ended up with a ton of back pain.
And I realized, oh, maybe it's stupid to be wearing the 45-pound weight vest all the time, not just when you're training for running events, but also on your bike, because it turns out that's not the right posture to be wearing a lot of weight.
And so I ended up late October, Halloween-ish, with a lot of back and abdominal pain, and I thought I just pulled some ab muscles from stupid forms of training.
You hadn't had any pain before nothing before this training, nothing until the last couple days of October.
But over the course of November, I ended up in significant enough pain that I went to my executive doc at the University of Florida. And I said, something's not right here. and we did a bunch of tests, couldn't find anything. And they said, we're gonna refer you to a GI specialist. We're gonna figure out whether it's undiagnosed celiac or lactose intolerance or something.
And I said, I'm farm kid by upbringing, not the toughest guy on earth, but I don't have a cheese allergy. There's something really, really wrong in my back. And so they sent me for full body scans on the morning of December 13 or 14. And they called me back 45 minutes later, and you could just hear them hemming and hawing. And I said, stop beating around the bush. Like, give me a hard fact.
And they started talking about, well, we don't want to be too premature. And there's been so many changes in oncology care. And I'm like, dude, you have not told me I have cancer yet. And you're talking to me about how great oncology care is.
We've had so many changes in oncology care is never a phrase you want to hear.
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