Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: I was really angry, I said, heart cancer. Nobody gets
Speaker 2: heart cancer, kidding? Is that even a thing?
Speaker 1: At just fifty nine years old, neuroscientist David Lindon received
Speaker 1: a startling diagnosis. He was told he only had six
Speaker 1: months to live, maybe a few more if he was lucky.
Speaker 1: But now it's been more than two years and David,
Speaker 1: thank goodness, is still here and in the face of
Speaker 1: his terminal diagnosis, he's still thinking like a scientist.
Speaker 2: Confronting my medical diagnosis with curiosity about the world and
Speaker 2: asking how can I interrogate my own mental processes and
Speaker 2: perhaps reveal something to myself about the mind or the brain?
Speaker 2: That's therapy.
Speaker 1: On today's episode, we hear how a student of the
Speaker 1: human mind is grappling with his own mortality. I'm Maya Shunker,
Speaker 1: and this is a slight change of plans, a show
Speaker 1: about who we are and who we become in the
Speaker 1: face of a big change. David Lindon is a professor
Speaker 1: of neuroscience in the School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University.
Speaker 1: He's written five books in more than one hundred peerod
Speaker 1: papers on the science of memory, addiction, and brain injury.
Speaker 1: David has always been a deeply curious person. As a
Speaker 1: kid growing up in southern California, he was obsessed with
Speaker 1: watching Jacques Cousteau on TV. For a while, he thought
Speaker 1: he become a deep sea explorer or a marine biologist.
Speaker 1: But then one day he had this life changing conversation
Speaker 1: with his father.
Speaker 2: My father was a psychoanalyst, meeting an old fashioned lawe
Speaker 2: on the couch, tell me about your dreams four days
Speaker 2: a week, talking cure psychotherapist. And my father and I,
Speaker 2: from as long as I can remember, I think, before
Speaker 2: even kindergarten to the very last week before I left
Speaker 2: for college, had dinner together in a restaurant every Wednesday night.
Speaker 2: That was our way, and we would sit there and
Speaker 2: we would talk about all sorts of things, and one
Speaker 2: of the things we would talk about, which is weird
Speaker 2: family conversation, was his analytic clients. Now, of course he
Speaker 2: didn't tell me any names. He obscured some details because
Speaker 2: you know, he didn't want to break confidentiality. But you know,
Speaker 2: family conversation would be something like, oh, so you know,
Speaker 2: how's your narcissist doing. Oh, well, he had this dream.
Speaker 2: I think it really was, and so I began to wonder.
Speaker 2: I said, Dad, clearly, you're talking to people makes them
Speaker 2: better in many cases. And he said, yeah, it doesn't
Speaker 2: work every time, but most of the time it works.
Speaker 2: People feel better, and they can feel better from things
Speaker 2: like compulsions or obsessions or depression. And that's rather remarkable.
Speaker 2: I said, how does mere conversation do that? And what
Speaker 2: my father said had an enormous impact on me. He said,
Speaker 2: when the talking cure works and makes people better, it
Speaker 2: ultimately does it not in some airy fairy realm, but
Speaker 2: by changing the brain, by changing the biology of the brain.
Speaker 2: And at that moment it was like some wheels clicked
Speaker 2: in my head and I went, wow, yeah, he's right.
Speaker 2: What's that? I thought, Well, I don't have the right
Speaker 2: personality to be a psychotherapist like my dad. I'm not
Speaker 2: nearly nice enough. But maybe I could study the brain,
Speaker 2: and maybe that would be a different way to get
Speaker 2: at some of the same issues that my father's getting
Speaker 2: at at a more small scale biological level.
Speaker 1: What were some of the big questions that have guided
Speaker 1: you over the course of your career.
Speaker 2: Well, I would say the fundamental question that I've been
Speaker 2: interested in is how does experience get stored in the brain,
Speaker 2: and how does it change the function of the brain.
Speaker 2: And that's something that we can now start to understand
Speaker 2: a little bit on a biological level, and that's what
Speaker 2: I've spent most of the last forty years working on.
Speaker 1: I want to fast forward in time to twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: You start feeling some unusual symptoms around this time. Do
Speaker 1: you mind bringing me back to that period?
Speaker 2: That's right, So the summer of twenty twenty, of course,
Speaker 2: is not a random time. COVID is raging. There's no
Speaker 2: vaccine yet, all kinds of people are getting sick, and
Speaker 2: it's a public health disaster. And in the summer of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, I started to feel very fatigued, and I
Speaker 2: had some respiratory symptoms, but the main thing is that
Speaker 2: I just felt surprisingly tired, Like halfway up a set
Speaker 2: of stairs, I would have to stop and catch my
Speaker 2: breath and huff and puff. And I thought, well, I'm
Speaker 2: testing negative for COVID, but it just must be a
Speaker 2: false negative. I've got half covid, because like everybody's got COVID,
Speaker 2: and these symptoms overlap to some degree with COVID symptoms.
Speaker 2: So I just figured, all right, I got COVID. There's
Speaker 2: really nothing to do about it, you know, I just
Speaker 2: have to stay by myself and wait it out all
Speaker 2: feel better. And I just wasn't feeling better, and my
Speaker 2: wife said, you know, you're just not feeling better. You
Speaker 2: got to go to the doctor. And so I went
Speaker 2: to the doctor and they saw that there was a big,
Speaker 2: huge mass poking up next to my heart that they
Speaker 2: didn't expect. So they imaged my heart and they found
Speaker 2: this huge mass and that was an indication that they
Speaker 2: needed to open up my chest and to open heart
Speaker 2: surgery and remove it. So they did that and it
Speaker 2: was a big, involved, unpleasant process, and I was in
Speaker 2: the hospital for ten days. And then they took the
Speaker 2: tissue that they had removed and they sent it off
Speaker 2: to the pathologist. And after a few days the report
Speaker 2: came back and the pathologists said, well, you have a
Speaker 2: rare kind of cancer called synovial sarcoma. And my oncologist said,
Speaker 2: you've got about six to eighteen months to live. And so,
Speaker 2: you know, that was quite the shock because it wasn't
Speaker 2: clear that this mass in my heart was going to
Speaker 2: be cancer or that it would be anything quite so bad.
Speaker 1: And do you remember what exact thoughts ran through your
Speaker 1: head when you first heard this diagnosis.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I was really angry. I said, heart cancer.
Speaker 2: Nobody gets heart cancer. You're kidding? Is that even a thing?
Speaker 2: You know? It sounds fake. You know I've even heard
Speaker 2: of heart cancer. I have never heard of heart cancer.
Speaker 2: I didn't even know it was a phenomenon. It sounded
Speaker 2: to me like a made for TV movie, not a
Speaker 2: real diagnosis. I'm like, you're kidding me. But really, the
Speaker 2: main thing I was thinking about, and I might get
Speaker 2: a little weepy here with my family. You know, I've
Speaker 2: had a life. I'm sixty one years old. I got
Speaker 2: nothing to complain about. But you know, I don't want
Speaker 2: to leave my family behind. I don't want to leave
Speaker 2: my kids, my twenty six year old twins. I don't
Speaker 2: want to leave my wonderful wife, you know. And that's
Speaker 2: really what I was thinking about at the time. It's like,
Speaker 2: my consciousness can go away and I'm at peace with that.
Speaker 2: Leaving them behind, that prospect is what I find so hard,
Speaker 2: so wrenching.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm wondering, David, if you could speak to what's
Speaker 1: been interesting to you about the way that you've responded
Speaker 1: to your diagnosis.
Speaker 2: So one thing I noticed was that when I got
Speaker 2: my cancer diagnosis, I felt two seemingly conflicting emotions at
Speaker 2: the same time. One was I was quite hot angry
Speaker 2: at the universe for having been struck with this obscure
Speaker 2: cancer at age sixty one, when I had so much
Speaker 2: left to do. But at the very same time, I
Speaker 2: felt a deep sense of gratitude about what life has
Speaker 2: given me so far. I've really, genuinely, and I don't
Speaker 2: think this is just a cancer guy looking back with
Speaker 2: rose colored glasses. I've really genuinely had a terrific life.
Speaker 2: I had wonderful parents, I had an unusually supportive group
Speaker 2: of friends in high school. We made our own weather,
Speaker 2: and it protected me from a lot of things that
Speaker 2: can be so painful and challenging in that stage of life.
Speaker 2: I have a job where I can follow my own
Speaker 2: own curiosity and inclinations every day, and I get paid
Speaker 2: decently for it. And that's a gift like no other
Speaker 2: to wake up in the morning and be able to say, Huh,
Speaker 2: what interests me today and what do I want to do?
Speaker 2: So I was very grateful for that and all the
Speaker 2: people who've been around me. My kids are terrific. You know,
Speaker 2: I have a wonderful family life, I have good friends.
Speaker 2: So I was simultaneously feeling very grateful and also really angry.
Speaker 2: And my training in neuroscience made me think, well, how
Speaker 2: can that really be? I mean, we think in terms
Speaker 2: of oppositional states, like you're either fighting or you're fleeing,
Speaker 2: and that's not the case at all. We can simultaneously
Speaker 2: occupy two very distinct mental states simultaneously, and I think, well,
Speaker 2: for many other people that would have been obvious to
Speaker 2: them to dumb me, that was a revelation.
Speaker 1: You know, David, I'm so interested to hear. You've just
Speaker 1: given me one example that I'm so interested to hear.
Speaker 1: How your perspective as a neuroscientist has informed how you're
Speaker 1: processing your terminal cancer diagnosis. In a piece you wrote
Speaker 1: for The Atlantic, you shared how it has led to
Speaker 1: some new and fresh insights about life and death and
Speaker 1: what it means to be human. And I pulled up
Speaker 1: one quote that really had a powerful impact on me.
Speaker 1: He wrote, the deep truth of being human is that
Speaker 1: there is no objective experience. Our brains are not built
Speaker 1: to measure the absolute value of anything. All that we
Speaker 1: perceive and feel is colored by expectation, comparison, and circumstance.
Speaker 2: I think everyone, if they think about their lives, is
Speaker 2: led to the same conclusion. You know. The example people
Speaker 2: always use is, well, half an hour in conversation with
Speaker 2: a good friend goes by in a flash, But half
Speaker 2: an hour waiting at the Department of Motor Vehicles in
Speaker 2: a hard plastic chair seems interminable.
Speaker 1: Right, Oh gosh, yeah, it's.
Speaker 2: The very same thing. Because I'm interested in the sense
Speaker 2: of touch, you know, one of the examples that comes
Speaker 2: up for me is that imagine you're with your sweetheart
Speaker 2: in a very loving, connected time and they stroke your
Speaker 2: arm and you go, oh, that's so nice, what a
Speaker 2: what a nice gesture. Oh that feels good. And then
Speaker 2: imagine that you're with that very same sweetheart and it's
Speaker 2: in the middle of an argument and it's not resolved.
Speaker 2: You're right in the middle of it, going back and forth,
Speaker 2: and they go to give you that very same caress,
Speaker 2: and it's exactly the same. It's the same place on
Speaker 2: your arm, it's the same pressure, it's the same speed
Speaker 2: moving along your skin. In terms of just the physics
Speaker 2: of it, it's indistinguishable. But are you going to feel, Oh,
Speaker 2: that's so nice, and you can be like, oh, get
Speaker 2: off me. It feels like a bug. It's terrible. Now
Speaker 2: what are you doing touching me that way in the
Speaker 2: middle of an argument? We're in the middle of an
Speaker 2: argument right now, right, and so the very same caress
Speaker 2: is delightful and bonding and one experience and feel so
Speaker 2: welcome and intrusive in another. In neuroscience and in psychology,
Speaker 2: we call this perception as inference, meaning that there is
Speaker 2: no objective truth out there through the world that somehow
Speaker 2: fights its way through our senses. Everything that we perceive
Speaker 2: through all our senses is colored by what we expect,
Speaker 2: what our mood is, what's going on in our lives.
Speaker 2: And the way it came up for me in terms
Speaker 2: of my cancer diagnosis had to do with time. And
Speaker 2: so if someone had said to me prior to my diagnosis, hey,
Speaker 2: we know that you've got five years left to live,
Speaker 2: I would have said, oh, no, I should have more
Speaker 2: than that. Oh that's terrible, Oh whatoe was me only
Speaker 2: five years to go? Whereas if someone tells me right
Speaker 2: after my cancer diagnosis, when I've been given the diagnosis
Speaker 2: of sixty eighteen months. Oh well, actually you'll have five
Speaker 2: years now. I'm going hooray. Five years. That's a whole
Speaker 2: lot better than eighteen months. Boy. I can do all
Speaker 2: kinds of things, you know. I can go traveling, I
Speaker 2: can spend time with all my good friends. I can
Speaker 2: get some work done. Five years is terrific. Thank you
Speaker 2: for the five years.
Speaker 1: I mean, given that you're now perceiving units of time differently, right,
Speaker 1: five years feel so expansive in a way that it
Speaker 1: never would have before. Has that changed it all the
Speaker 1: way that you're spending that time. Has it changed the
Speaker 1: way that you think about moments?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sure does. I definitely feel like I need
Speaker 2: to ring all the delight I can out of life
Speaker 2: in the moment. I realize it's a little bit of
Speaker 2: a trite thing, but it's true. So this, I think
Speaker 2: has been manifest in some, you know, straightforward ways, like
Speaker 2: my wife and I take mortifications then we used to
Speaker 2: before my diagnosis, but also in some rather deep interpersonal ways.
Speaker 2: For example, my wife and I were not big arguers.
Speaker 2: It's not like we have a really contentious marriage, but
Speaker 2: in any serious relationship there's always some back and forth,
Speaker 2: a little bickering, and now you did this, and you
Speaker 2: said that, of course, And I think it's definitely easier
Speaker 2: to let stuff go when you're thinking, well, maybe my
Speaker 2: time left is limited, and I don't need actually to
Speaker 2: die on this hill of how the dishwasher was loaded.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with a spike change
Speaker 1: of plans. Neuroscientist David Lindon received a devastating diagnosis of
Speaker 1: heart cancer just shy of his sixtieth birthday. Soon after,
Speaker 1: he found himself fascinated by how his brain was reckoning
Speaker 1: with his mortality.
Speaker 2: When you're still with yourself and you think I won't
Speaker 2: be here there will be a time when I'm not here.
Speaker 2: I really find that, even doing my very best to
Speaker 2: be quiet and concentrate on that, at some level I fail.
Speaker 2: I really can't engage in a deep way with a
Speaker 2: world without me in it. And I thought, well, this
Speaker 2: just might be because I suck and other people can.
Speaker 2: But I suspect it's not. I mean not saying that
Speaker 2: I don't suck. I do, But you know, I think
Speaker 2: I don't think that's the entire story, David.
Speaker 1: I don't think you suck, for it's just putting it
Speaker 1: out there.
Speaker 2: You know. Part of this, I think is revealing something
Speaker 2: that's fundamental about being human. I think we as people
Speaker 2: have a hard time truly imagining our own demise a
Speaker 2: world without us in it. And when I think about
Speaker 2: what we know about the brain, I speculate about how
Speaker 2: this may have come to be. And for me, I'm
Speaker 2: an old guy. Now, I've been doing brain research for
Speaker 2: forty years, and so I've been in it long enough
Speaker 2: to see a shift in the way we think about
Speaker 2: brain function. Forty years ago, people thought about the brain
Speaker 2: as a fundamentally reactive structure. Oh, you're just sitting there
Speaker 2: and then you wait and something comes in through your senses,
Speaker 2: your eyes, your ears or whatever, and then some processing
Speaker 2: happens and then you react to it, you contract a muscle,
Speaker 2: you speak, whatever, And that's fundamentally what the brain is
Speaker 2: there doing. And what we have known for about more
Speaker 2: maybe the last fifteen or so years, is that really
Speaker 2: the brain is a prediction machine. That the brain's when
Speaker 2: nothing particularly is going on, you're just kind of spacing
Speaker 2: out an idling. Really, what you're doing in the background
Speaker 2: all the time is trying to make predictions about what's
Speaker 2: going to happen in the very near future. Is that
Speaker 2: ball flying through the air going to hit me in
Speaker 2: the error or will it zing by? Is this person
Speaker 2: coming up to me, friend or foe? Am I likely
Speaker 2: to become hungry in the next two hours? And how
Speaker 2: should I plan for that? It's something that happens continually subconsciously,
Speaker 2: and I think the fact that our brains are always
Speaker 2: predicting the future in a deep way presupposes that there
Speaker 2: will be a future, right. The wiring of our brain
Speaker 2: is built on the idea that there will be a
Speaker 2: next moment and a moment after that, And so I
Speaker 2: think this makes it very hard as a human to
Speaker 2: truly imagine yourself gone, because that next moment is a
Speaker 2: thing that's deep in our consciousness. So that's really true
Speaker 2: is on an individual level, but it really got me
Speaker 2: thinking about the world's religions. In almost every religion, not everyone,
Speaker 2: but nearly everyone, there is a concept of the afterlife
Speaker 2: or reincarnation or melding with the divine, or some way
Speaker 2: of going on after you die, that your consciousness endures
Speaker 2: after you die. And so my hypothesis about why after
Speaker 2: death stories are a near universal around the world is
Speaker 2: because our brains are wired to imagine that there will
Speaker 2: be a next moment, and that through culture, this has
Speaker 2: come up with all these different after death stories.
Speaker 1: You know. One thought experiment I've used to try to
Speaker 1: imagine a world without me is simply to imagine the
Speaker 1: year before I was born. And for some reason it's
Speaker 1: very very comfortable for me to imagine that that world existed.
Speaker 1: So like nineteen eighty four, that was a year everyone
Speaker 1: was in it. Mayo is not here. And so I
Speaker 1: do wonder, David, whether it's possible to kind of transfer
Speaker 1: that psychological state of comfort where it's like, of course,
Speaker 1: the world existed without me in it. In fact, it
Speaker 1: existed without me in it up until that very point
Speaker 1: where I came into existence, to the current situation you're in,
Speaker 1: because in many ways, your pre birth state is exactly
Speaker 1: what you're going to be occupying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that is a really interesting and valuable point,
Speaker 2: And yet somehow it doesn't seem quite.
Speaker 1: The same, doesn't It doesn't Because we have this entire
Speaker 1: lived experience and self identity that we're clinging onto and
Speaker 1: a consciousness that we're clinging onto, and that because that
Speaker 1: consciousness is now going to be annihilated. I completely agree.
Speaker 1: It is not easy to view things effortlessly through the
Speaker 1: lens I just described. I just wondered if it was
Speaker 1: something that can make all of us feel a little
Speaker 1: more comfy with the idea of our non existence.
Speaker 2: I think it's a great idea. Yes, I'm with you,
Speaker 2: And I also think it's crucial to ask the question,
Speaker 2: you know, if there's something that is so prevalent in
Speaker 2: human culture, and even if you don't share those beliefs,
Speaker 2: it's arrogant and annoying to just say, well, people who
Speaker 2: believe that are just dumb, and what are they thinking?
Speaker 2: In these are made up stories? You know, that doesn't
Speaker 2: I mean, first of all, it's a dick move, and
Speaker 2: second of all, is intellectually it doesn't get you anywhere
Speaker 2: at all. So, okay, maybe you're a non believer. But
Speaker 2: if you're a non believer, then you should be really
Speaker 2: interested in why are certain things so prevalent cross culturally?
Speaker 2: I mean, these are fundamental aspects of our being human.
Speaker 2: And to have your answer be well, people are stupid.
Speaker 2: I think it's not just arrogant. I think it's fundamentally incurious.
Speaker 1: It seems like you're really calling upon your curiosity about
Speaker 1: how our minds work to help you navigate this time,
Speaker 1: to help you get through this time. Tell me more
Speaker 1: about the role that this kind of curiosity is playing
Speaker 1: in your life right now.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think curiosity to me is like
Speaker 2: the grease that makes all the gears go around, right,
Speaker 2: It's fundamental, as like oxygen. And I think generally there
Speaker 2: are many endeavors not just science, where you think about
Speaker 2: in question the world around you. And when you get
Speaker 2: a cancer diagnosis or something similar like that, you're really
Speaker 2: feeling buffeted and at the whims of fate. And you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of the medical treatments you have to endure, chemotherapy, radiation,
Speaker 2: you know, it's not an empowering process. You really don't
Speaker 2: feel like you're in charge. And so I think it's
Speaker 2: so crucial in these times to have some sense of
Speaker 2: agency and individual volition. And so for me confronting my
Speaker 2: medical diagnosis with curiosity about the world and asking what
Speaker 2: does this make me think about the world generally, and
Speaker 2: how can I interrogate my own mental processes and perhaps
Speaker 2: reveal something to myself about the mind or the brain.
Speaker 2: That's therapy. And so to me, curiosity is what allows
Speaker 2: me to continue to have a positive outlook even in
Speaker 2: dire circumstances.
Speaker 1: You know, it strikes me that curiosity is one of
Speaker 1: those things that you can hold on to that the
Speaker 1: world simply cannot take away from you in this moment.
Speaker 1: It cannot deny you the right to be interested and
Speaker 1: intrigued and to marvel at how things work.
Speaker 2: That's right. And you can even make you marvel about
Speaker 2: things that are deeply unpleasant in the moment. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm blessed to have a rather sunny disposition. I've been
Speaker 2: fortunate to not have much of a predisposition for depression,
Speaker 2: and I don't take any credit for that. I was
Speaker 2: lucky to be born that way. But when I was
Speaker 2: undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, the radiation was aimed at my heart,
Speaker 2: but it then burns your esophagus because you can't help
Speaker 2: it hit the esophagus when you're aimed at the heart,
Speaker 2: and it means you can't swallow. So for weeks I
Speaker 2: couldn't eat food. I could only swallow liquids. I couldn't
Speaker 2: eat anything solid, and it hurt like hell all the time,
Speaker 2: and my energy was low, and thing just didn't feel right,
Speaker 2: and I felt messed around with, you know, and you're
Speaker 2: talking about a sense of agency. I always feeling like
Speaker 2: I do not have my normal sense of agency. I
Speaker 2: am at the mercy of these treatments. And you know,
Speaker 2: even though I'm a pretty positive person, I started to
Speaker 2: feel pretty low in those days. Day after day, you
Speaker 2: wake up and you feel bad in your body. It's
Speaker 2: almost impossible to have a sunny disposition. But the one
Speaker 2: thing that really kind of kept me going then was curiosity.
Speaker 2: I'm like, well, why am I feeling so bad? Is
Speaker 2: it because of inflammation? Is it because the radiation and
Speaker 2: the chemo are causing my immune system to produce a
Speaker 2: class of molecule we call pro inflammatory cytokines, and we
Speaker 2: know that those tend to lead to depression in the brain.
Speaker 2: So while I'm lying there feeling terrible in the midst
Speaker 2: of chemo, I'm kind of going, huh, I wonder if
Speaker 2: I wonder what I interlutin six levels. You're like right now,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, which is a deeply nerdly thing
Speaker 2: to do. But it's also empowering, right, It's also it's
Speaker 2: also you know, claws back a tiny bit of agency
Speaker 2: from a situation that is otherwise pretty bereft of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, it's it's such a charming story. And
Speaker 1: you know, I will say I think I'm a pretty
Speaker 1: curious person, but I think my curiosity has limits. And
Speaker 1: you know, it feels relatively easy to feel wonder about
Speaker 1: the world or how things work when things are going well,
Speaker 1: But man, is it hard when you're in the middle
Speaker 1: of chemotherapy and radiation or you're facing a terminal illness.
Speaker 1: Like I can tell you, if my esophagus was being
Speaker 1: burned in any way whatsoever, you would hear zero curiosity
Speaker 1: from me. Okay, I'd be like, what the f this
Speaker 1: is awful? Well, I'm not that interested in whether it's
Speaker 1: a roading tissue or whether the cells are doing x RA,
Speaker 1: while if you like, this effing sucks. And so I
Speaker 1: want to get some advice from you in this moment,
Speaker 1: Like you know, the mere plebeians among us, the normal
Speaker 1: people here who are listening to you, David, the neuroscientists
Speaker 1: who aren't empowered with all the knowledge you have and
Speaker 1: maybe aren't as curious as you are. How can we
Speaker 1: cultivate more curiosity during moments of extreme hardship, because that
Speaker 1: is actually a tall order.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I guess it's almost like a procrresplanation problem.
Speaker 2: In other words, it's like, how do you take the
Speaker 2: first step? If you can get yourself like a little
Speaker 2: curious about one aspect of it, maybe you'll feel enough
Speaker 2: reward that you'd be motivated to go a little further
Speaker 2: and a little further. This is really speculative.
Speaker 1: Now, right, Yeah, you're getting your foot in the door.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just imagining.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I also think maybe a more modest recommendation
Speaker 1: for people who are just trying to get their feet
Speaker 1: wet filing a bit more curious is to say, look,
Speaker 1: you don't have to be captivated by the details of
Speaker 1: your illness. Okay, that is a tall order. It might
Speaker 1: require some biological or neuroscientific expertise like that, that's too
Speaker 1: hard of a task. But we can be curious about
Speaker 1: something in the throes of hartshet. We can be curious
Speaker 1: about why we feel the way that we feel. We
Speaker 1: can be curious about why the sun sets in the
Speaker 1: way that it sets. There are endless topics for us
Speaker 1: to be curious about and to learn about. And what
Speaker 1: I'm hearing from Your whole story is that curiosity can
Speaker 1: be a companion for us in these really tough moments
Speaker 1: because it won't abandon us. It's always there. It's always
Speaker 1: something that we can feed and that's a very stabilizing
Speaker 1: force against the backdrop of complete uncertainty and calamity, which
Speaker 1: is what we often experience when we're going through the
Speaker 1: hardest moments of our lives.
Speaker 2: Right, And I would add that you can be curious
Speaker 2: about the social world, you can be curious about art.
Speaker 2: Your curiosity can manifest like how can I convey what
Speaker 2: I'm feeling now in a song or a poem or
Speaker 2: a painting or a.
Speaker 1: Drawing, yeah, or what the meaning of life is?
Speaker 2: In other words, these are all fundamentally acts of curiosity,
Speaker 2: and they don't have to involve science. Those are the
Speaker 2: ones that I'm drawn to because that's my background. I
Speaker 2: would say, in a more global sense, harnessing curiosity can
Speaker 2: happen in so many different ways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you are living well beyond the prognosis you were given.
Speaker 1: So as you mentioned in April twenty twenty one, you
Speaker 1: were told you had six to eighteen months to live,
Speaker 1: and now it has been over two years. As you
Speaker 1: look towards the future and what lies ahead. How do
Speaker 1: you feel? What do you see?
Speaker 2: It's all gravy, That's how I feel. You know, there's
Speaker 2: a cognitive shift in the sense that I've got these
Speaker 2: extra innings and so it would be a shame to
Speaker 2: not use them in a way that is enjoyable and
Speaker 2: connecting and empowering and fulfilling. So yeah, there's a silver
Speaker 2: lining to terminal illness when you're granted a little extra
Speaker 2: and I certainly feel compelled to live it as well
Speaker 2: as possible.
Speaker 1: Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this
Speaker 1: conversation with David, you may also enjoy another episode called
Speaker 1: The Life Changing Diagnosis. It features my friend Scott, who
Speaker 1: I spoke with just after he received a stage four
Speaker 1: cancer diagnosis. I then followed up with him a year
Speaker 1: later after he successfully completed cancer treatment. We'll link to
Speaker 1: both episodes in the show notes. And I'm excited to
Speaker 1: share that this summer we're curating a series to showcase
Speaker 1: your favorite episodes, So stick around for some of the
Speaker 1: all time greats recommended by your fellows Slight Change listeners,
Speaker 1: and later this fall, we're back with brand new episodes
Speaker 1: of a Slight Change of Plans. I hope you have
Speaker 1: a wonderful rest of your summer. See you soon. A
Speaker 1: Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive produced
Speaker 1: by me Maya Shunker. The Slight Change family includes our
Speaker 1: showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate Parkinson Morgan, our
Speaker 1: producer Trisha Bobida, and our sound engineer Andrew Vestola. Luis
Speaker 1: Scara wrote our delightful theme song and Ginger Smith helped
Speaker 1: arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is a
Speaker 1: production of Pushkin Industries, so big thanks to everyone there,
Speaker 1: and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee.
Speaker 1: You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram
Speaker 1: at doctor Maya Shunker.