Making Sense - Sam Harris - #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan

00:00:00.000 welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris just a note to say that if you're hearing

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00:00:44.100 i am here with caitlin flanagan caitlin thanks for coming back on the podcast

00:00:51.780 thanks for having me again so um i'll give that dog a moment

00:00:57.060 my god you sent someone over to kill my dog

00:01:02.820 i'll sacrifice a lot for a podcast but probably not your dog

00:01:09.300 okay good thank you so caitlin so now people have read the article that was embargoed

00:01:15.140 last time around that we couldn't talk about so we should start there but first i should say you

00:01:20.400 and i've already spoken about your health before we obviously had before the last podcast so

00:01:26.800 we'll talk about it here as well but i can't um feign surprise at uh the ordeal you've been

00:01:33.420 going through but let's take the article part first because people obviously should just go

00:01:38.660 read it it's this really just wonderfully luminous and wise and witty as i mean this is sort of not a

00:01:47.860 surprise with you ever but it all came together on this topic which is revealing you know both your

00:01:56.740 current health concerns and the way in which they're compounded by the covid pandemic and it was just all

00:02:04.380 you know interesting and beautiful and triggered an outpouring of appreciation on twitter which again

00:02:10.680 was totally unsurprising given who you are and how many people i know love you because having done

00:02:16.920 now a few podcasts with you it's just absolutely obvious the degree to which you inspire

00:02:22.840 love in an audience and this may not be something that was obvious to you but it was

00:02:27.540 very obvious to me because i've been on the receiving end of it so i guess my first question is

00:02:32.520 was there anything about the reception on twitter and anywhere else you saw it that surprised you

00:02:40.360 the more the bigger feeling was embarrassment you know because it's really intimate to open up your

00:02:47.920 health issue i mean some people are really comfortable with it and for me it's not something

00:02:53.880 obviously that i talk about so it was the first wave of it was i just felt embarrassed

00:03:00.020 embarrassed to have laid all this laid this heavy trip on people or to feel that i was getting i don't

00:03:07.720 know i don't know i just felt embarrassed but then after about 24 hours as always happens when you come

00:03:16.120 out of whatever closet you're in when the minute you come out of it you're like oh what an incredible

00:03:21.620 relief because i would be sort of tiptoeing around this many many many times in my work or in what was

00:03:29.060 expected or hoped that i could do in terms of sort of making appearances places so it just it's always

00:03:36.680 easier to just sit out there just to have told the full any relevant truth once people know it then

00:03:44.560 you're not hiding it anymore and it really gotten to the point that i felt like i was hiding my illness

00:03:48.560 and that felt really bad well let's uh summarize it for people who haven't read it what is your

00:03:55.640 diagnosis and perhaps just track through the stages of its presentation all right i'll tell everybody i

00:04:03.540 i bet they'll be super bored and just fast forward over this part of the podcast but for anybody who's

00:04:08.640 interested and i should say whatever we're going to say now is no substitute for reading your piece

00:04:14.220 because i want that read so please go thank you well so i was a young mom in the sweet spot of i mean

00:04:22.780 i was 40 so not a young mom but i had really young kids i had twins who were four years old

00:04:27.000 and i had like behind my generation i guess i was just one of these girls who really i didn't ever

00:04:34.680 really want a career i mean i thought about teaching school which i did and i thought about writing which

00:04:38.460 i do but i really wanted to be a mom i really wanted to be i wanted to be a housewife i didn't know

00:04:45.040 the dark side of it but i just thought having kids which will be the best part of my life and then

00:04:51.760 when they're little will be the super best part because my parents really hated having adolescent

00:04:55.840 daughters and i got i kind of remembered how horrible that was for them but it was no picnic

00:05:00.300 for us either but so everything was fine never been sick never thought of myself as sick nobody that i

00:05:06.700 knew in our family we don't have a lot of family history but nobody had had cancer breast cancer

00:05:10.980 and i went for this like routine checkup mammogram and then it was like well can you just wait a few

00:05:18.880 minutes we need to get another film oh sure you know i'm not really my ears aren't like pricking up at

00:05:23.420 this and then oh he wants to have a sonogram and two of my closest friends had had to have a sonogram

00:05:28.600 after their mammograms and been totally fine so i thought i guess that's what happens when you're in

00:05:32.200 your 40s you get the sonogram and then right then and there he said yeah you have cancer

00:05:38.800 and and he said and we're doing a biopsy now and he never asked me if he could do a biopsy just i've

00:05:45.980 just the things that happen to you and when you're really heavily medicalized it's really hard to assert

00:05:51.820 your will again or to even know like because i remember lying there thinking well do and i have a

00:05:56.880 say in this but i didn't say anything and then he said like this needle biopsy a little bit painful

00:06:01.220 and and then he kept saying you have to prepare yourself you have to prepare yourself it was a friday so it

00:06:08.300 would take i don't know till the next week early to get the results of the biopsy i guess it was

00:06:12.760 monday but and he just he kept saying he didn't want me to drive you know i got indressed he wanted

00:06:17.780 me to see him he wanted me to see him in his office at which point he told me it was aggressive

00:06:22.020 very aggressive and and then he said i don't want you to drive and i should call your husband and and i

00:06:29.520 just had this animal need to get as far away from him as i could and to contain the information as much

00:06:35.880 as i could i just thought i something weird has happened in this building i gotta get out of here

00:06:42.040 i gotta not have anybody know about it and so i'm sure i shouldn't have driven i'm sure i was in shock

00:06:47.520 and and then my husband called so the guy had called my husband and i'm not blaming the guy

00:06:52.200 at all it's just sort of interesting that you start losing your i don't know it's very easy to lose

00:07:01.520 your sense of who you really are in this but i'm sure the guy was right to call my husband but i got

00:07:05.820 home safely but wait but before before you yeah before we proceed that does strike me as an

00:07:12.440 anachronism yeah that does seem like a throwback to the 50s where doctors sort of messaged around

00:07:19.200 the woman to the man and in some cases didn't even tell the woman their actual diagnosis

00:07:25.800 this seems like a slightly madman era doc you were seeing or does it strike you that way in retrospect

00:07:33.140 now at the time you're thinking of so many things that's the last thing you're i remember really like

00:07:38.000 oh god damn it because my husband called on the cell phone and saying he knew you know what's i just

00:07:43.140 heard from so and so but i think the doctor whom i had really gotten to know he'd helped me with

00:07:49.560 another problem earlier i think he was freaked out and i think he was i just think there was a lot of

00:07:55.660 very human emotions going back and forth between him and me and i blame him zero percent for either

00:08:01.560 of those acts it just was part of the introduction to me of what it's like to have cancer what it's

00:08:07.340 like to have a really serious disease where like suddenly you think you've seen things i've had a

00:08:12.640 cesarean section i've been up against it you know you haven't been up against it till you get that

00:08:16.700 really serious disease and you're in a whole other world and so i got so i had so we turn out stage

00:08:23.800 three and i got slammed with the just this kind of chemo i don't think they give it anymore they've

00:08:30.900 written books about it's called the red devil i can't remember what it's taxotere maybe it's a just

00:08:35.980 a horrible horrible horrible experience to go through that kind of chemo but i had the chemotherapy

00:08:41.400 i had the surgery the lumpectomy i had the radiation by a very charming doctor who i later

00:08:50.400 heard was kind of in the early stages of dementia but i totally dug him so he got along great he was

00:08:57.100 always telling me how beautiful i was and i was like this is the best doctor i've ever seen like

00:09:00.280 i'm bald i'm shriveled i'm like is that the first sign of dementia a compliment i think so i think so

00:09:07.000 i should have run for the hills but anyways i had a good remission and i was just at that five-year

00:09:14.820 point that's kind of hyped up as a significant point and and i had a huge devastating recurrence

00:09:22.260 where it was in my liver and my chest wall and my lungs and i thought oh my god i'm really gonna die

00:09:28.600 i'm gonna leave these kids you know and how old are your kids at that point they are just about 10

00:09:33.760 and so on the one hand i was like okay i got him through to double digits area you know but a kid

00:09:40.460 really needs and wants his mom especially a boy i think 13 14 15 up until then they have a very deep

00:09:51.540 need for a mom because they're so behind developmentally girls at that point obviously

00:09:56.540 girls and mothers etc but i've noticed that boys have a a deep need for mom until kind of that age i was

00:10:02.860 like oh i wish i'd gotten them there now give me a little more about your life at that point are you

00:10:08.920 now are you still married to your boy's father yes now okay so yeah i don't actually know the

00:10:15.740 backstory you guys are still married so oh my gosh yes he's the cancer husband of the year i mean i

00:10:21.200 he just you really that's one of the things about everyone's had a crisis and everybody's had a

00:10:26.940 tragedy and that's where you really find out yeah what people are made of you know yeah okay well i'm

00:10:32.020 very happy about that yes as is everyone listening yes were you at this point working

00:10:37.640 full-time as a writer are you still are you at harvard westlake school as a college counselor

00:10:43.040 what's your life no no no no i was by then i had quit the school to become a mother took me a year

00:10:48.200 and have to get pregnant i had the children and what was it what was i doing well i had just started

00:10:54.320 writing i was just writing these articles at the atlantic i just started as a writer and they'd

00:11:00.180 given me this chance to write right and they'd liked what i'd written so i'd written more and

00:11:04.140 more and then i had written one that caused this huge sensation and i had been given this huge book

00:11:10.180 deal and i literally am getting the deal at the same week that i'm finding out like i'm so sick

00:11:16.080 this is back at the original diagnosis so anyways i got better i published the book there was a lot of

00:11:20.600 press a lot of negative press but then a lot of people who really liked the book but of course i

00:11:25.980 ignored them entirely as fools and really trusted everybody who hated more dementia yes exactly

00:11:31.880 um so i had done that and i had a contract for the next book and i felt a lot of pressure about that

00:11:40.140 but but yeah i was out there in the culture i was doing my thing that i do and getting more and more

00:11:46.240 confident in it and then it hit me again and it was so bad because you know you hear like in your lungs

00:11:55.420 you know you're just like you see every every bad you guys are i mean you're a bit younger than i am

00:12:01.080 but we're kind of in the same range there where we grew up with these like really horrible like tv

00:12:05.740 movies of the week and it would always be like gosh my elbow hurts you've got elbow cancer and then

00:12:12.640 like the whole rest of the tv movie is the person like losing their hair and dying so so i thought this

00:12:18.560 this is so bad and then a nurse in the private practice i was in a really i knew i knew so little

00:12:25.640 about cancer when i when we started all this that we just thought you know we asked people for names

00:12:31.380 of practices and it just and it was a private practice cedar sinai excellent practice excellent

00:12:38.480 doctor i love him to this day but i so i thought oh a private practice that's got to be better than a

00:12:45.560 public hospital or a teaching hospital obviously you know if you pay for more for something or if

00:12:51.800 your insurance that's really the the hero of this whole thing is i happen to have great insurance or

00:12:57.000 my husband's job but it turns out that you don't always have access to everything that you could

00:13:04.000 possibly have access to if you're kind of down the line in a private practice they're kind of getting

00:13:10.100 the first crack at medications that are being put out there but they're not getting it the way the

00:13:15.680 labs are and when you're stage four nobody's going to question what they offer you you know so a

00:13:22.400 wonderful nurse took me aside at that private practice and risked his job by closing the door and

00:13:27.380 saying i think you should get a second opinion because i'd really trusted him and i asked him what

00:13:31.060 should i do and he said i think you should get a second opinion and that was profound maybe we should

00:13:37.080 define stage four for people who haven't been through this on any level so you originally had

00:13:42.780 breast cancer but now it has metastasized to your your lungs and liver and elsewhere and so stage four

00:13:50.320 is just the fact of having metastasized elsewhere in the body from the primary site in most cancers i

00:13:57.780 think that's the way the staging works it's certainly the way the staging works in breast cancer

00:14:01.720 stage four in most cancers and in breast cancer kind of just means it jumped the fire break

00:14:06.580 that you had it contained within just one you know with the within the breast or whatever the primary

00:14:12.820 form of cancer was and maybe it's even in the lymph node which was in my case true when i first got it so

00:14:18.560 that you really get whomped with the chemo and all that to try to kill it from ever getting into the

00:14:22.800 blood at all although it's in a little bit starting to get a little bit but when it breaks the fire you

00:14:28.680 know jumps the fire break as i say that's when that cancer has wildly gone through the system

00:14:33.800 and is attacking and finding locations to build itself in different parts of the body and that's

00:14:39.740 really serious and in my mind i'd always thought and it used to be kind of a pretty soon death sentence

00:14:46.480 but someone else i know in los angeles um and if she's listening she'll smile because she'll know who

00:14:53.180 she is who knows a lot about cancer she just looked at me said you have to get closer to the science

00:14:57.500 you know you have a particular kind of breast cancer it is you know it is marked by the over

00:15:04.580 expression of a certain kind of genetic material all of that work is doing being done at ucla and i

00:15:10.480 know you have to wait longer to be seen and it's a hassle but that's where you need to go because this

00:15:15.600 guy dennis slayman you have her two new breast cancer and he's the guy who's really hacked into that

00:15:21.900 so with this new drug herceptin and then with a whole armamentarium that followed that

00:15:27.500 so i i got an appointment with one of these brilliant young oncologists in his lab sarah hervitz

00:15:33.620 and my last practice it said well we're going to section your liver and take out the part of your

00:15:38.640 liver with the cancer in it i was like oh that sounds really bad she was like not at all she had

00:15:44.540 so many treatments she said i think this one will be the best we'll give you six treatments six it's

00:15:50.260 chemotherapy plus the herceptin plus some other things that were from their armamentarium

00:15:54.260 and after three treatments we'll give you a scan and see how it's going and uh you know you go for

00:16:01.920 the scan after three treatments that's terrifying but the really terrifying part is going to find the

00:16:06.840 result you know getting the answer and we had actually we booked a night actually because they're

00:16:13.100 her offices in santa monica and we're far east of there and we just thought okay we're going to book

00:16:18.700 a night in an ice hotel because if it's bad news we'll need time to pull ourselves together before

00:16:23.560 we see the kids and if it's good news we'll have a nice night in a nice hotel so she walks in and said

00:16:29.820 your tumors are gone like there's there's still traces in the blood we have to finish this

00:16:36.380 but they were gone and they stayed gone for 11 years of durable remission 11 years and you just think

00:16:44.860 i mean if it had been five years earlier the thought that a woman with metastatic breast cancer

00:16:51.240 with lesions you know big enough to be biopsied in the or would be like not have a single one of them

00:16:58.480 after three treatments of chemotherapy that was much easier than my first chemotherapy yeah and then

00:17:04.560 and i was tiptoeing into there's a cohort a very small cohort of women in dennis slayman's

00:17:13.300 sort of research and work who doctors are starting to tiptoe around calling them cured

00:17:19.880 which you know stage four cancer there's no cure etc etc we're never going to use that word

00:17:24.360 but they have gone so long with no remission of any kind or no recurrence rather of any kind that

00:17:32.880 they're starting to wonder if they're actually cured of breast cancer and i thought i was going to be in

00:17:37.080 that group and then my tumor numbers started going up and sure enough eventually a scan came about a

00:17:44.720 year and a half ago or almost two years ago a year and a half ago that i'm once again metastatic so

00:17:51.300 it's not good news to find out you have metastatic cancer obviously and it was in my spine that was

00:17:57.540 really scary to me because i could just sort of see not being a person who did well in biology but was

00:18:03.540 interested in biology i could sort of see a tumor in a soft tissue kind of disappearing it was harder

00:18:09.880 for me to think of a tumor in bone disappearing but yeah they do the lesion goes and then the bone

00:18:15.640 starts to heal even in someone who's like what am i 58 and i've had all this treatment so my biggest

00:18:22.660 issues really are i have from all of this treatment over all these years i have a lot of health issues

00:18:30.420 that come from the treatment not from the cancer and it's mostly these issues that now i've been

00:18:36.080 taught before they were just my conditions i guess but now they're my underlying conditions it's really

00:18:40.440 bad if your worst condition becomes an underlying condition then you know it's like someone just

00:18:44.860 layered on another even worse condition so just telling the public to the extent that i have a public

00:18:51.040 or any public of people who don't haven't read me at all that i have stage four cancer in a shortish

00:18:57.460 essay was going to take a lot of unpacking anyway to explain that this tall subcategory that i've been

00:19:04.760 in and maybe still am in that's very good news relative to bad news and then trying to layer the

00:19:10.100 covet on over it it was just very it was like an exposure dream in a way even though it's been a relief

00:19:16.360 had you spoken about it or written about it at all because i i had sort of missed it but i got the

00:19:23.420 sense that you hadn't been completely in the closet with respect to having gone through the initial

00:19:28.300 round of cancer well in my first book in the very epilogue because i wrote it after i'd had

00:19:35.240 this first bout of cancer but was now back on my feet i wrote about oh i had other one other thing

00:19:42.220 to tell you i had cancer you know and this is what it was like it was just a few pages and then a few

00:19:48.320 years after that the oprah magazine asked me to write something about it and i foolishly agreed

00:19:56.860 and i just could and something came out that was kind of i don't know i didn't do a good job with

00:20:01.980 that and then i thought oh never again will i write about cancer and then what was the uh painful

00:20:08.240 response to that oh it wasn't the response it was my feeling that i hadn't done a good job in the essay

00:20:14.460 that i hadn't i didn't i didn't like what i'd done but the oprah reading public is not a big overlap

00:20:22.260 with the people who often read my i don't know it just was the thing is that it's true that this is

00:20:30.620 a very deathy situation and and so people who have no idea that you've been in a deathy situation

00:20:38.320 obviously respond thinking you're dying yeah which of course i am as we all are but then that kind of

00:20:45.980 makes you look anew at your situation like oh my god this is a really shocking terrible situation and

00:20:51.620 then trying to resettle yourself especially in a pandemic where you can't go and see the people you

00:20:57.400 can talk to them but i guess you know whenever whenever someone hears about it from the outside of

00:21:01.520 me and my family or people who really know us the reaction of the people tell me yeah i've been

00:21:07.160 through a lot in 17 years but when you're living your life that's not ever how it feels you know

00:21:13.000 it's just you live your life with whatever you know whatever hand of cards you have yeah well

00:21:18.480 there's a lot in there that's interesting first i want to flag that uh a deathy situation is a phrase

00:21:23.560 i'm going to use now okay it's yours take it it's yours that's one of the windfall profits of this

00:21:30.120 episode of the podcast okay okay good you know it is interesting the way in which talking about

00:21:36.120 something reifies it just based on the response you get to having spoken about it and then you're

00:21:42.900 dealing with the response and often that feels like it concretizes a problem in a way that's not

00:21:51.320 entirely representative of the experience of going through the problem right like i guess in microcosm

00:21:58.020 i've experienced this where i've this is highly non-analogous but if you i don't know if you have a fight

00:22:04.300 with your spouse right and then a friend catches you right on the on the heels of that and they ask

00:22:09.800 how you're doing and you say you just had a you know a fight with your spouse you know then the

00:22:13.760 next time they talk to you they're asking you how it's going you know in the marriage found a good

00:22:18.400 lawyer yet right you're like what are you talking about yeah like who's gonna keep the kids right

00:22:22.880 but that has no relation to what what you've actually gone through right and so i can imagine there

00:22:28.020 can be a kind of amplification that happens when you're now you're dealing with this huge public

00:22:35.080 response the other thing that's unique about cancer it seems is just the word the concept of this

00:22:42.120 particular illness being unlike any other and this this is still true but i'm sure it was even more true

00:22:49.380 17 years ago it's a scary word and it is the quintessence of a deathy situation how has the

00:22:57.560 concept of having cancer influenced the experience of having it in the beginning it was i remember

00:23:06.120 thinking that first weekend because i had the appointments friday afternoon and i remember the

00:23:11.320 first weekend just thinking i can't incorporate this information i just felt like it was outside of me

00:23:17.440 and i had to somehow get it into me you know that it's just you know the cliche that this is

00:23:25.020 something other people get you know we really you know freud we live by convincing ourselves we're

00:23:31.240 invulnerable when we're very vulnerable you know somebody's got to get breast cancer i i couldn't take it

00:23:37.440 in i just could not take it in and it does seem different from getting a diagnosis of heart disease or

00:23:46.160 emphysema or i mean they're obviously bad things to get that kill people

00:23:50.560 but don't have this same charge do you think it's the result of the difference

00:23:56.140 or the very common difference in treatment around cancer where you chemotherapy and radiation or

00:24:02.740 what you're now picturing and in many cases actually going to experience and so this this is

00:24:07.720 the the one disease you go to war with in a way that you

00:24:11.600 don't with say heart disease yeah i think that's a huge part of it for sure and i think that it is

00:24:18.680 again so deathy and that most of the i always felt and i used to say beforehand you know i just kind of

00:24:26.020 looking at you know you always look at obituaries and you read them and i remember thinking yeah the

00:24:31.280 three things i notice over and over are smoking car accidents and cancer they i mean it wasn't it was

00:24:36.960 not a scientific study but i noticed that the things that i tended to be like whenever i would

00:24:42.960 be about to take off on an airplane if i felt frightened at all i say you know it's not smoke

00:24:47.900 you're not smoking you're not this and you're not that you you know numbers are on your side

00:24:51.400 and it's just you know the war on cancer remember nixon had that and it was just that all of these

00:24:58.700 other diseases were sort of falling by the wayside and my mother told me my sister's older than i am so

00:25:04.480 she was a baby in the 1950s and my mother said sitting with the baby in her lap in new york to

00:25:11.480 go and get one of the first kids to get be in the cohorts that got the polio vaccine my mother said

00:25:17.100 she just thought my baby's never gonna have polio my child's like she just it was like such a joyous

00:25:22.960 amazing she couldn't wrap her mind around it because if you had been born in the 20s you knew

00:25:26.900 a lot of people would kids who had gotten polio and a lot of parents whose lives had been just

00:25:31.320 completely you know taken to a terrible place because their kids getting polio and so like all

00:25:36.640 these other diseases seem to be falling by the wayside and yet cancer has stayed with us for so

00:25:42.420 long and we know that it's the one that and i've always been adamant that i'll not be in this

00:25:48.160 situation that you could be treated in such a way that made your life even worse for three months and

00:25:57.100 then you die right after that you know that so it's kind of like this thing that can potentially

00:26:01.920 the treatment can be so horrible and it might not work so it's really kind of a heavy thing to think

00:26:08.600 about yeah although no bravery i can't tell you how many times i've been told in the last 72 hours

00:26:15.640 thank you to anybody who said that to me and many times in my private life how brave i am zero bravery

00:26:21.140 zero zero bravery someone comes to you and they say hey got a choice here you have a life-threatening

00:26:28.740 disease it can kill you in a few months or we could try out this treatment i'm like i'll take the

00:26:34.400 treatment let's give it let's roll the dice here you know i'll take door number two i mean maybe it's a

00:26:40.320 zonk but maybe you know maybe i'll get there so a lot of things i've learned about cancer are like

00:26:46.960 number one how you feel total method like you know if you have a good attitude you know you're

00:26:52.280 going to do better it's a lot of studies on that you can be a total bitch you can be upset you can

00:26:56.220 cry every day it's not going to you know you take the medicine you take the chemotherapy

00:27:00.520 sometimes it works for you sometimes it fails you and you have to try another one you don't have to

00:27:06.980 have a good attitude you don't have to be right with god you don't have to be you know it's nice to

00:27:12.340 be nice to all your caregivers and you will be because they are so great but you don't have to be

00:27:16.240 nice to anybody it's just the chemicals go in this there's a response you know i think probably

00:27:22.720 there's probably more compliance with treatment in people who have a good attitude i mean i've never

00:27:28.940 had a good attitude ever in my life and look at me it's 17 years later so wait a minute are you in

00:27:34.020 the total bitch cohort of this study well there have just been i remember asking somebody who knew

00:27:39.840 about this very early on who studies this and i said i just feel like i have to be so good

00:27:45.660 because i i'm in such a precarious situation she said oh no caitlin she says i have seen the nicest

00:27:52.720 people and you probably know many very good people who died of cancer and i'm like well that's really

00:27:58.740 true and then she said trying to cheer me up and i've known some real bitches who made it and i'm like

00:28:04.400 okay somewhere between total bitch and really nice person but maybe more to the former

00:28:10.360 there that it's irrelevant it's just irrelevant what obviously we know this children get cancer

00:28:17.580 who's punishing them for that you know what have they done nothing it's just it's beyond our knowledge

00:28:24.360 it's it's i mean it's not beyond our knowledge it responds well some cancers respond well to certain

00:28:29.580 kind of of chemotherapies so yeah so yeah so one of the aspects of your essay which i know

00:28:39.040 touched a lot of people is the way in which you discuss reaching these various landmarks by reference

00:28:45.020 to your sons you know their graduation from preschool and elementary school and reserving a hotel suite for

00:28:53.160 their college graduation which now is indefinitely postponed due to covid and just seeing the

00:28:59.960 psychological suffering based on uncertainty which again we all if we have our wits about us

00:29:07.200 should be experiencing in some measure without a cancer diagnosis we're all in a deathy situation

00:29:14.200 as you point out we're not you know no one knows how long they're going to live and therefore

00:29:20.600 we could be magnifying the preciousness of time in this way anyway and i think a fair amount of

00:29:28.620 wisdom is dependent on taking death seriously before you've had any kind of diagnosis but

00:29:36.020 in your case in the case of anyone who gets cancer it sharpens up the story considerably and i know i know

00:29:43.480 that moved me and i'm sure it moved a lot of people how has just thinking in terms of being a mom

00:29:50.320 and seeing you know various hypothetical dates out there on the calendar being the way in which this

00:29:57.900 whole experience has been framed for you well very helpful because it was just i've got a mission and

00:30:07.340 it's not a mission about my life it's a mission about my children's lives and to the extent children

00:30:14.180 can have their mother they want their mother so i just i will i counted my life in two ways by it just

00:30:21.760 so happened that they were in preschool when i was diagnosed and there was you know nowadays there

00:30:28.320 are all these gradual constantly graduations but there was so there's this you know sweet little

00:30:33.200 preschool graduation and everybody was just so happy and bustling and taking their pictures and i you

00:30:39.440 know was in a had no hair i was in a headscarf and i just remember thinking this is going to be the

00:30:44.500 only graduation you're going to get and kindergarten rolls around well they got a graduation and i'm

00:30:49.400 still alive and i made it a few more years and i thought i'm going to make it to elementary school

00:30:54.680 graduation and then i had my recurrence and i thought oh i'm not going to get there but i did well i made

00:31:01.520 it to elementary the years passed i'm like i think i've got high school in the back yep i got it to

00:31:07.660 high school and then i really thought this i had made it to to college and then i had this recurrence

00:31:14.640 halfway through there being in college but i got treatment i did well i like sat on the phone to

00:31:20.900 make the very first reservation allowable for the graduation of this year at kenyon wonderful kenyon

00:31:26.240 college in ohio at the mount vernon grand and then now because of covid you know it's been canceled so

00:31:34.040 like in the movie version of this i have to keep it getting canceled forever so that i can stay alive

00:31:39.540 because the graduation will be the end point that's your your appointment in samara exactly my

00:31:44.860 appointment in camp here exactly but you know what you ask about death two things and how we hold life

00:31:52.020 preciously i remember like 25 years ago do you remember when there was an alaska airline flight that

00:31:57.860 crashed maybe off the coast of santa barbara it was a big crash full of people from la so it was very

00:32:03.980 meaningful touched a lot of people and the weekend edition of the la times after that they had a one

00:32:09.460 pager where they they went and asked different religious leaders what meaning do you make of this

00:32:15.800 what meaning are your followers or does your faith hold for this event and you know some people said

00:32:22.880 there's you know predetermination or there's mystery or life is you know god is has plans that

00:32:28.900 we don't see but the last one was a buddhist and the buddhist said the cause of death is birth and i was

00:32:36.900 like oh yeah like that's really accurate there's one thing we can say for sure that once you're born

00:32:45.640 at some point you're getting out of here you know you're checking out it's temporary but the other

00:32:50.760 thing about how we should be holding our lives in such a tender close way all the time i think

00:32:57.840 that's kind of the lesson of the play our town by thornton wilder is that you can't you know it's kind

00:33:03.060 of a corny play but it's about a girl who kind of comes back to life and realizes how preciously she

00:33:07.520 should be holding and everyone in the room should be holding each moment but you just can't do it even

00:33:13.440 after you've gotten the word about it you if we lived life with the intensity of somebody who's

00:33:19.740 looking at their kids after getting cancer diagnosis we wouldn't be able to to do anything

00:33:23.780 and to some extent we're in such a precarious situation at all times that the only way to deal with

00:33:31.980 how precarious it is is to almost pretend it's not precarious you know i think there's one strand of

00:33:39.220 that kind of wisdom in extremis that we can seize and and maintain at its highest level and i'll grant you

00:33:46.580 that we can't say goodbye to everyone like we're mounting the scaffold every time you know someone

00:33:52.420 who's just leaving to run an errand so there's so there's there's an intensity to uh our awareness of

00:34:00.000 our connectedness to other people that we can't quite maintain but i think we can resolve to not

00:34:08.380 suffer over trivial things the way we would it would be obvious we shouldn't be suffering over those

00:34:14.720 things under the shadow of a cancer diagnosis right right although like maybe someone is kind

00:34:22.220 of a jerk to you and you have cancer you don't have to necessarily think to yourself i must see

00:34:29.020 the humanity in this person because it's like i think you get to still know you still get to have

00:34:34.540 i mean it's very refreshing let me tell you when you're in a deathy situation the minute some small

00:34:39.560 trivial thing bothers you you're like oh what a wonderful sensation you know to just be like

00:34:46.540 annoyed by something god it's excellent okay well speaking of that i i wasn't sure i was going to

00:34:52.640 bring this up but you did have one response on twitter that was just amazing i mean amazing to a

00:34:59.640 degree wasn't it great wasn't it the best thing ever it was for all twitter kind yeah it was glorious but

00:35:07.120 it was so perfectly crafted that it was one of those moments where you think okay this is a

00:35:10.900 simulation we're living in and it's showing it seems because you know this is just too on the nose

00:35:16.760 so you receive a tweet which has since been deleted i think you know oh has it yeah which is

00:35:22.560 i guess maybe shows some scruple no no it shows anxiety yeah it shows anxiety if it had been a

00:35:30.660 lauded tweet it would be the pinned tweet yeah it wasn't based on any scruple

00:35:36.840 i'm sure you're right about that but i'm going to bend over backwards to be charitable to this

00:35:40.820 person but all right and you don't even have a deathy situation i should be actually i was

00:35:45.960 charitable to this person but carry on you were actually you were perfect in your response no i

00:35:50.440 was even more perfect in my response but i'll tell you at the end okay it was private communication

00:35:54.760 oh good i'm sorry i want to hear everything so anyway this woman dr amita kalachandran who is a

00:36:03.620 doctor and a i was surprised and doubly horrified to learn a new york times writer

00:36:10.480 tweeted at you in response to your cancer article in in the atlantic yes but open your eyes to the

00:36:19.280 other karens in the room you're gonna have to explain what karens are to people uh yes but open

00:36:25.140 your eyes to the other karens in the room like caitlin pacific that's your twitter handle her piece was

00:36:29.920 slightly less overt and was likely edited down for tone i read caitlin's cancer story and sincerely

00:36:36.460 hope she uses these last years of her life to learn to be a little bit less racist and an anti-feminist

00:36:43.220 okay so isn't that the best thing ever i mean i'm not saying it in like a badass way it's just

00:36:50.540 if we just needed any evidence that i'm sure if she met me she wouldn't have said that but that

00:36:58.160 twitter is just this kind of this place where you float all these trial balloons you know

00:37:03.740 and and sometimes and they're kind of meaningless you know they're just absolutely meaningless and

00:37:11.880 even as i saw it i thought i knew there'd be a ghoulish response by from somebody because you're

00:37:17.700 always hearing about you know how in um the murders in the the elementary school in connecticut

00:37:24.080 sandy hook yeah and there's this whole branch of thinking that they were not killed and it was a

00:37:29.800 simulation and parents can't even go to their children's graves which was even the phrase children's

00:37:35.940 graves is so obscene so you know that it's a big country with a lot of people but i didn't think it

00:37:40.980 would be somebody who is a physician it writes for the new york times occasionally and the big path

00:37:50.640 the other really horrible discovery was that she wrote her first thing on her own twitter site was

00:37:56.900 here's my first article for the atlantic yeah which two weeks ago she wrote for the atlantic and i was

00:38:02.060 like oh is there and then also mindfulness mindfulness is one of her main passions which

00:38:07.840 was fantastic for my brain i felt like the only thing i was gonna find like what else is who like

00:38:12.760 and she slept with your husband you know it's like what it's like what else has this woman done to me

00:38:18.480 so that it just became kind of droll you know there was nothing but drollery to be had well so i i'm

00:38:26.620 less interested in singling her out for abuse than in flagging what was so interesting about seeing this

00:38:33.820 tweet for me but first of all my obviously i feel very protective of you and as did many people following

00:38:41.460 you and so the response from twitter you know collectively was just analogous to i mean this

00:38:48.600 will date me and and you perhaps but you do you remember the film silkwood with meryl street yeah

00:38:53.840 okay so you're telling me that that's not a current movie snap out of it sam half of our audience

00:38:59.700 will have never heard of this on any level but there's a scene where she's leaving the reactor and

00:39:05.420 sets off the the radiation alarm right and everything goes into just emergency mode and she gets that

00:39:11.460 a horrific shower with the you know the bristle brushes and it's like everyone following you on

00:39:17.100 twitter just had that reaction it was just oh my god this is the most toxic despicable hot take

00:39:23.920 possible and people were fairly modulated in in how how much they slammed her but i mean the one thing

00:39:32.040 that could be said in her defense is she couldn't have been referring to your cancer article for having

00:39:37.620 been edited down for tone she must have been referring to some other piece that she thought

00:39:41.880 oh oh well this is the thing so i published a long piece about megan markle about two months ago

00:39:50.120 and it was a it was a very positive megan mark it was sort of saying explicitly she's the best thing

00:39:56.520 that ever happened to the royal family you know it's a multicultural britain and that's an all-white

00:40:01.280 balcony up there and really talked about what she had been through and ultimately ultimately decided

00:40:08.440 that that the queen of england is really an admirable person because she is someone who just no matter what

00:40:14.720 has put her own desires last and what she perceives to be the country's desire first and so at the time

00:40:20.780 of that article there was a perception that it was motivated by racial animus and i was really

00:40:27.960 interested and i was what i sort of engaged with people i said what is it that you find here that's

00:40:33.940 racial animus and they would say you never said this you never said this you never said this you said

00:40:38.460 this you said this you said this and i said i did say all the things you thought i should say i never

00:40:43.240 said any of the things you thought i shouldn't have said and then i started replying to the twitters

00:40:48.040 with the tweets about it with lines directly from the article itself so that they would see that

00:40:54.220 i think that they just saw the article and that it was about megan and they're very protective of

00:41:00.440 megan which i certainly understand because when i was young i was very protective of princess diana

00:41:04.180 who uh whatever but so that had been kind of what what she was responding to for sure was this two

00:41:12.480 month old megan markle piece so a karen and a becky i don't know what happened to becky i don't know

00:41:17.460 if karen killed becky and now karen is ascendant or if becky and karen are like cousins and like

00:41:25.480 kind of like midge and barbie where there's some slight distinction but these are middle-aged white

00:41:33.080 women who are maybe any age woman maybe karen is the middle-aged one and becky's the younger sister

00:41:39.900 i don't know but they're clueless white women whose casual expectation of privilege which they

00:41:48.680 wouldn't even think of as privilege in the world comes at tremendous cost to other people and to in

00:41:54.440 particular to african-american women and i think they have the people who believe in a becky karen

00:41:59.680 continuum i would say they're absolutely right about that i have no argument have seen it many times and

00:42:05.560 i wrote 15 years ago a long cover story was that really the first story in a big national magazine

00:42:12.800 that really said at length though what we think of as a women's movement is feminism has been tremendous

00:42:19.520 gains for wealthy white women and and not only has it been far fewer gains for women of color

00:42:26.240 and poor women but in fact white women have leveraged you know rich white women have successful

00:42:32.740 professional white women have leveraged their gains on the exploitation of darker skinned women so i'm

00:42:38.780 really i agree with them about a lot of that but she was dead wrong about this essay and then and then

00:42:46.500 you would sort of think but not only wrong about the essay she seemed to be suggesting that that the

00:42:51.680 transgressions were all the more conspicuous for their absence right it had been likely edited down

00:42:57.280 for tone so now we have to deal with the dog of racism that doesn't bark right it's incredible and

00:43:03.420 the thing that i think provokes such delight in people certainly in me is that this was a crystallization

00:43:10.820 of the problem that we've you know we've been commenting on for now years but the way in which

00:43:15.820 the antecedent good intentions that get organized into wokeness become a kind of mental disorder

00:43:24.840 right i mean this is just such a bad take at this moment

00:43:30.340 on you and your cancer story from a doctor

00:43:34.520 and again the fact that she's a new york times writer is

00:43:39.000 i mean she's she's written i don't know six or seven pieces for them and that's enough to call her a new york times writer

00:43:44.020 for sure it compounds the horror of this i mean honestly if she were just a doctor i'm not sure

00:43:49.200 i'd be inclined to even name her in our discussion here but she has a journalistic responsibility not

00:43:55.000 to be this clueless beyond the hippocratic oath of a doctor you know you could imagine

00:44:00.320 a doctor who uh just doesn't know how social media should work but you know that's not the case here

00:44:06.460 upon reading that how much of your brain's real estate was given over to being

00:44:12.320 offended or annoyed and how much of it was just pure delight i will be honest that in the moment

00:44:20.000 it was extremely painful yeah it was and uh i always remember this great routine nz's ansari had

00:44:28.560 where he said you know he scrolling through you know his tweets or whatever and there was some young

00:44:34.340 woman who said i just love aziz ansari and he said she just assumed that like i would never find that

00:44:40.560 tweet and he's like of course i found the tweet that's all i do i'm a comedian i sit home looking

00:44:43.920 at twitter and then i go to work at night so it's sort of like a lot of times people tweet things out

00:44:48.620 assuming that the other person won't see them or maybe won't react to them as a human being in a

00:44:56.480 sense and it was such a shocking thing it was so shocking well the fact that she's the remaining

00:45:05.620 years and yeah first place it was a lie to say i sincerely hope she spends her remaining years so

00:45:12.280 the conflict the idea is like okay she has decided that i am anti-feminist and a racist and i'm going

00:45:18.320 to spend my few remaining years which she's done she's you know giving me a prognosis now and then

00:45:24.020 when i am a perfect vehicle of cleanliness i can die like there won't even be like that i can bring

00:45:30.140 this out to the world you know it's just that i must prepare for death by cleansing myself of sins

00:45:37.660 that she says i have but cannot prove that i have right which were all the more evident by their

00:45:44.320 absence in your article because you had been so successfully edited right yeah i mean the fact that

00:45:49.740 she's a doctor i mean there's there's something truly vile about a doctor playing the prognosis card

00:45:58.880 in some way to dunk on you to make a social justice point that is obviously an error i mean it's just

00:46:05.420 the fact that this is what's so fucking vile about this the fact that the social justice triumphalism

00:46:12.940 could co-opt the hippocratic oath the role of a doctor in talking responsibly about about cancer

00:46:21.160 a cancer diagnosis and all of the suffering and uncertainty and sheer chaos that is in that bag when you open it

00:46:28.880 that's what i think everyone found so despicable and i think rightly so and so i mean she's deleted

00:46:34.960 the tweet you know for reasons that are i'm sure self-serving it would be nice for her to actually

00:46:40.360 apologize to you let's pivot to that because for me it's interesting to consider how we repair

00:46:48.380 our public conversation around moments like this because you know it seems to me that there should be

00:46:54.640 some apology adequate to this moment that you and anyone else could accept right it's like for me

00:47:02.980 this is something i've referred to in previous conversations as the the physics of apology i think it's an

00:47:09.540 interesting question to consider what constitutes and what should constitute an adequate apology so you

00:47:17.920 you do something wrong you say something stupid you reveal intentions that were despicable and you think

00:47:25.820 better of it and you actually want to repair the situation and so that really the only instrument available

00:47:32.340 is an apology the closest i can get to it is for an apology to be acceptable it has to be clear

00:47:41.940 what process you went through so that you're no longer the same person who committed the original

00:47:50.460 transgression it's like so for her to successfully apologize to you the apology it would have to

00:47:57.240 reveal that she stands in the same place or at least a relevantly similar place to her original

00:48:06.120 in this case tweet that you and everyone else who found it despicable do she has to be able to say

00:48:13.380 to look back on what she did with more or less the same horror that everyone found appropriate in the

00:48:21.620 moment the tweet was seen and to apologize from that place and it has to be intelligible how a person

00:48:29.980 had that epiphany otherwise people will think they're just faking it they're just trying to get out of

00:48:35.940 hot water and it's not a sincere apology so for an apology to be sincere you have to be able to

00:48:41.880 articulate or at least seemingly display a journey out from the place where you were the the asshole who

00:48:50.320 was so clueless as to say or do this wrong thing and now you're the person who you're able to say i can't

00:48:57.900 believe i did that that's just mortifying i'm so sorry i hope you accept my apology it can only be credible

00:49:04.360 if that journey is plausible well i think a lot about apology i've had to make a lot of apologies

00:49:12.040 in my life because i screw up a lot maybe everybody screws up to some extent but this is for me when i

00:49:18.840 make an apology and number one i have to own every part of the thing that was hurtful about what i did

00:49:25.820 yeah you know so it's not about i and not about a lot of explanation for why i would do that thing

00:49:31.980 it's just that thing must have hurt you in this way and this way and this way and that is grievously

00:49:38.960 wrong and i am extremely sorry and i really want to know if there's anything i can do to in any level

00:49:46.420 repair this you know and so that's to me is a the gold standard for apology now the gold standard for

00:49:54.560 forgiveness there is no gold standard i forgive her a thousand percent and the reason for that

00:50:02.720 isn't that she sent me what i consider a very not good apology and sort of the pantheon of apologies

00:50:08.900 the reason for that is i don't want to be changed to her in anger you know i have to if i don't release

00:50:16.380 her in a complete forgiveness so that i can look forward you know hey she's 31 she's learning

00:50:22.200 she's trying to get her hustle on with this website you know if i don't turn away from that and just say

00:50:27.900 forgiven and mean it even though i can laugh at how cruel it was and how much it hurt me

00:50:34.000 then she'll be i'll be chained to her forever and i can't even really remember her name right now

00:50:38.420 so i totally really legitimately forgive her right oh so so i missed that part of me perhaps you

00:50:45.800 telegraphed that in the last few minutes did she send you an apology that was so i look back on at

00:50:51.820 the i looked back on at the twitter that day and and somebody said that was really cruel and she said

00:50:58.920 i've apologized privately and i that was my only second tweet it's like i didn't see any apology

00:51:04.320 and she said it was sent out at 5 28 p.m as though like i was maligning her about her apology and she

00:51:12.820 had the receipt for it but then i found it she'd sent it to my uh my work email and it was a super

00:51:18.980 long it started with this that in the sense well first place as an editor told me and i was like

00:51:25.620 you're really right about that she's like why a private apology for a public wrong yeah that's the first

00:51:32.220 mistake yeah she said something really terrible about you in public but you didn't apologize for

00:51:37.460 it in public you're sneaking it around this age but i kind of scanned it it was more upsetting to

00:51:43.880 me in many ways and then i thought hold on there's a really good game i rarely play and i can always

00:51:49.520 but it's always a good game to play which is like what if i were an incredibly evolved good person

00:51:56.520 which i'm not yes what would the buddha do exactly they would for accept the apology and not be lying

00:52:04.520 about it they would accept that there the there was some apologetic intention and then my brilliant

00:52:10.140 son patrick whose picture was in that the article you're talking about his picture when he was a

00:52:15.920 little boy the day before i got cancers in there he said and then you would tell her to stay safe

00:52:21.920 in this pandemic and i'm like oh patrick that's the killer right attitude can i have it and then i

00:52:30.280 had to think through that several different ways and i was like yeah i hope she stays safe you know

00:52:34.800 she's a young woman she's a physician she's she did something really hurtful i don't see any evidence

00:52:42.000 that she's i don't know i just hope she does well and i do forgive her completely now forgiveness

00:52:47.860 doesn't mean that you're open to be hurt by someone again you know you don't make yourself

00:52:52.340 vulnerable you're not kumbaya we're not going out for high tea anytime soon ever but it just means

00:52:58.040 i'm not chained to her anymore i got a lot of other enemies to keep chained tightly to my body

00:53:03.520 well you you you think out loud uh rather freely and it that's what makes you such a delightful

00:53:10.020 interlocutor and so no doubt you have provoked people to send tweets of this sort in the past

00:53:16.740 never this bad i've had some bad tweets sent to my way i've had some horrible reviews no one has

00:53:22.800 ever said i hope she spends her remaining years atoning for sins she doesn't have no one's gone

00:53:29.840 that far yeah well i think we all hope that the good doctor spends the remaining years of her life

00:53:36.040 learning to be less sanctimonious i think that would be a good use of it you know she's going to

00:53:40.600 be writing we will like in two days see her new york times piece about how horrible we are to have

00:53:45.440 had this discussion so yeah well i'm trying i'm trying to have it in a way that i will not feel

00:53:50.420 the need to apologize for i mean again i'm not i'm holding her so even on the heels of a bad apology

00:53:58.020 i think there would actually be a way for her to adequately apologize can you apologize for a bad

00:54:04.760 apology can you pull yourself up by the final bootstrap here and get back to zero i mean can you

00:54:11.960 imagine i would not have had that level of self-knowledge when i was her age i'm 58 what if

00:54:18.160 we could get her on the line right now and have a conversation do you do you think there's any way

00:54:23.880 that conversation would go well it would converge on a full reboot of basic human decency and we could

00:54:32.620 all be friends i would start it with someone much higher up on the feeding chain of my enemies than

00:54:39.260 this one i don't see any need to have any any you know i really think that you know maybe you need

00:54:45.520 to be a lot more deathy to really really understand how apology and forgiveness works and to really

00:54:51.780 understand that you know forgiveness releases you and you don't have to do you know you'll see these

00:54:59.300 people who like forgive the killers of a loved one yeah i'm i'm never gonna you know you can spare me

00:55:04.840 from cancer for 500 years i don't think that's going to be happening but i can free myself from

00:55:11.480 her but i don't want to have but part of it is what i'm trying to say is just because you've forgiven

00:55:17.520 someone doesn't mean it's a love-in and it certainly doesn't mean as i always tell people who are in any

00:55:22.780 kind of abusive relationship it doesn't mean you let the abuser back into your life if they haven't shown

00:55:27.380 any possible sign of having changed you know you forgive them but you keep your you keep your

00:55:32.800 fence closed to them yeah you're talking about there's two layers of forgiveness here or two

00:55:38.540 forms i mean so you can forgive somebody who is actually unrepentant who's still a even in the

00:55:46.840 extreme case a danger to you without losing your awareness of the danger they represent you want

00:55:53.920 nothing more to do with them but you can forgive them in some deeper whether the christian model

00:55:58.940 summarizes it or the buddhist what you can notice is to fail to forgive is to grasp some kind of hot

00:56:08.700 coal of suffering which you actually can release on your side i mean you there's no there's no reason

00:56:15.520 to be carrying this person around in your mind with your hatred of them or your your anger or resentment

00:56:20.820 so you can perform that miracle on your side all the while leaving this person out there in the real

00:56:28.980 world completely unchanged what's interesting for me is the warranted forgiveness based on that person's

00:56:36.760 true apology i would love to fully understand what makes it possible for someone who has really

00:56:45.240 wronged another person to become aware of it and apologize and for that apology to be so sincere and

00:56:54.260 real such that genuine friendship between those two people is you know thereafter possible that's the

00:57:01.400 thing we we need more of in our world we also need the former we need people just to be able to put

00:57:06.320 down the burden of their reaction to assholes but well i often talk to young women about because some of our

00:57:13.080 the best minds of our the best minds of our generation or of their generation some of the best minds of the

00:57:17.800 generation that's young now that are female female half of it they just feel for reasons to protect

00:57:24.620 themselves they can't go on any kind of a public platform such as twitter because these hideous hideous things

00:57:33.400 that flow back to them are so poisonous and boy once you once it gets gendered once you have really angry

00:57:40.500 anonymous men saying things to very to young very public women it gets into a place of far far far far beyond

00:57:49.140 what this was about and so i'm always telling them don't worry about that pay no attention it's nothing it's

00:57:56.100 pixels it's somebody else on the other side who's just you know you're as remote to them as like richard nixon

00:58:04.740 who's dead and gone you're just like a public figure they don't think if they're not having any

00:58:09.760 kind of personal communication with you just ignore it so i tried to live into the advice that i always

00:58:17.700 give young women which is just this had a little more bite as i say because she publishes where i publish

00:58:22.600 and because she like i said i have children i want to live for their graduation and she told me to

00:58:28.340 like i should use my remaining years atoning for a sin that she's divined that i have but that was

00:58:34.160 edited out so forget your children just spend the free hours becoming less racist and less anti-feminist

00:58:40.580 yes that's the project and if she thought that the atlantic would public i mean the atlantic began it

00:58:46.320 was founded by abolitionists that thought that they would be oh we have this racist writer let's just

00:58:51.640 lightly edit her for tone is absurd there was another thing i noticed i don't know if this is uh

00:58:58.340 i've thought about this before i don't know if i don't think we've spoken about it this doctor's

00:59:02.820 obviously very focused on the problem of privilege and you know as i looked at her twitter feed after

00:59:10.400 i saw this tweet and there's just a lot of stuff about privilege and wokeness i mean more or less wall

00:59:16.220 to wall but i i couldn't help but notice that she's a very attractive woman right and this is a form of

00:59:25.180 privilege that few of us are talking about but it's it is as real as privilege gets there's just

00:59:32.860 being a beautiful woman or a very handsome man is not nothing in this world and i guess it sort of

00:59:41.100 compounds the irony here but it struck me as a final layer of a lack of awareness i mean if you look

00:59:50.120 like padma lakshmi and you're going on and on about privilege there's a ridiculousness to the project

00:59:56.500 when you think of the advantages that just effortlessly flow to people who are very attractive

01:00:04.620 in our culture you have to at least take the wokeness game a little more lightly than you would

01:00:10.620 otherwise how do you think of that form of privilege in our society well first place if there's anything in

01:00:19.860 the world she is not unaware of it would be her beauty i would say just the way she displays

01:00:24.280 herself rightly so beautiful young woman there's a wonderful english expression that at age 50

01:00:30.420 you get the face you deserved you know like that it is going through life as a beautiful or pretty or

01:00:38.200 attractive young woman oh man a lot of doors fly open and and you're intensely aware that there's it's

01:00:46.040 going to stop but then you kind of charter over into you know confused older older lady and they open

01:00:51.120 the doors too so um maybe it's not as dire but for sure i would say more to the point is that she's

01:00:58.980 canadian and she's presenting herself as a sufferer of the ancient wrongs against people of color in this

01:01:09.080 nation which is just a very odd yeah i missed that point odd part of it but i don't even want to

01:01:17.020 oh let's not talk about her anymore i don't think about maybe she's a russian bot maybe we just have

01:01:21.400 been successfully trolled well only a russian bot could troll the uh op-ed section of the new york times

01:01:28.140 so yeah it's yeah it's just a matter of time yeah okay well not to put too fine a point on it but

01:01:35.160 the goal of this post-mortem amita was not to be mean-spirited but to try to extract whatever

01:01:43.100 lessons can be found in yet another amazing installment of social media in the midst of the

01:01:50.980 deathy situation we call life right oh that's a good title for a book kind of a cheesy book but one i

01:01:58.320 wish i could write and make a fortune on because it sounds like something i would buy

01:02:01.320 okay so before we move on to uh even more superficial topics okay then twitter so what is

01:02:11.420 your understanding of of your prognosis now and just i mean one of the points of your article was

01:02:18.420 the way in which this covid pandemic has compounded the the hassle among other things of just dealing

01:02:26.100 with ongoing cancer treatment give us you know a picture of your current situation and

01:02:32.360 these are some of the implications of of the pandemic that people aren't really thinking about

01:02:37.980 i mean we think about elective procedures not being done but an elective procedure is a cancer scan or

01:02:45.640 even in some cases a cancer surgery bring us up to the moment with your your health well part of

01:02:51.520 having cancer at this stage is that you have to get a lot of pet ct scans because you have to find

01:02:57.840 out if the treatment you're on is working and if it has the cancer stable or if the cancer is growing

01:03:06.460 during in the presence of this treatment meaning you have to get a different treatment you have to

01:03:10.300 change your treatment so and then because of very long story with these other cancer treatments i've

01:03:16.740 had in the past they have given me certain other problems that have to be checked a lot that i

01:03:21.660 gained because i was treated for cancer so i should have really had a pet ct scan probably a month ago

01:03:29.380 and i will have it this month on the 27th because they're really trying to push anything they can do

01:03:36.580 i don't know really in the beginning if it was because they felt that the hospitals out here in

01:03:41.680 california would be overrun as they are have been in new york city or if they just wanted patients

01:03:48.160 that have these underlying conditions to stay out of hospitals that are so full of every kind of thing

01:03:53.020 floating around could be covet as well as much as possible i don't know but at a certain point you have

01:03:59.080 to get your scans so i'll go there and then i have to go a lot to get my infusions so with that it's

01:04:07.280 just a lot of like they call you first and ask you the questions and then you're out in the about

01:04:11.280 symptoms do you have any of the symptoms no and i would love to have a test for this thing because

01:04:16.540 i wonder if in early january i might have kind of been exposed to it because i was a bit sick in early

01:04:21.080 january and so was my husband and he'd just come back from new york but you know there's the beautiful

01:04:25.780 perfect available tests are not as perfectly beautifully available as we've been led to believe but anyways then

01:04:31.200 they take your temperature and then finally they let you in to the infusion space and you're kind of

01:04:37.140 like ah i've made it you know to this horrible place where i get treated for cancer but everyone

01:04:42.060 there is really nice so there's a lot of just things you have to jump over and i'm not parking

01:04:46.900 down in the basement because i don't want to have more people in my car but i want to go down there to

01:04:51.220 give a tip to the guys i know so it's all it's all it's all a little bit challenging i'll admit but a lot

01:04:57.580 of people are in a lot worse a lot worse situations so and are you still taking herceptin or is it

01:05:03.520 has it moved on to other drugs it's still well now i take herceptin because obviously it failed me

01:05:10.660 because i'd been on herceptin every three weeks for 11 years so it it started to i started to the

01:05:16.440 cancer assert itself more strongly against it but i still get it in combination with this other drug

01:05:22.020 that's now in the armamentarium called progetta and then with an injection of huge horse horse

01:05:28.980 sized injections of something else every three weeks the first one that the thing is i'll be on

01:05:33.720 treatment the rest of my life until or unless something better comes along or more definitively

01:05:39.640 curative so the first one that i tried was doing a good job but i i just couldn't imagine living my

01:05:45.600 life on it i was just too sick from it right i mean i was nowhere near as sick as i was on actually

01:05:50.140 being on chemo and the new it was a chemo but it was this smart bomb kind of chemo where it goes

01:05:56.320 through your body and it only explodes inside a cancer cell which is wonderful but it does still

01:06:01.380 so you don't lose your hair or anything but it does still leave left me really tired and kind of sick

01:06:05.760 so then i switched up to this new treatment so there's a lot there's a lot in the armamentarium and

01:06:12.400 it just goes to show when you throw a whole lot of money and a whole lot of science at one very

01:06:18.240 particular problem you start getting some answers to it you know it's science is real i guess

01:06:26.020 well needless to say um vast numbers of people love you who haven't even met you because your

01:06:33.420 spirit comes through so clearly in your voice both on the page and in conversation so i think not

01:06:39.320 meeting me it's probably inducive to this could be the sweet spot yeah just just enough caitlin

01:06:45.700 it's my next book your next book okay so pivoting to um in some ways these are equally existential

01:06:54.360 topics because we're talking about the fate of global civilization here when we're talking about

01:06:59.380 politics at the moment but in our last podcast you and i said that i think we called that the new

01:07:05.140 times but in general journalism would have to deal with the tar read

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - May 13, 2020

#203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan

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