Extended interview: Ben Sasse on lessons for America

[0:02] 60 minutes overtime ben sass was told today probably wouldn't come by the time doctors [0:12] found his pancreatic cancer it had metastasized they gave the former senator and conservative [0:18] republican three to four months that was in december in confronting the time he has left [0:26] sass has found wisdom for the country he loves sass has spent his life teaching as a college [0:32] president and as a nebraska senator who served his district by collecting garbage back home [0:40] during senate recesses and finally as a man who walked away from power because he believed a [0:47] nation is not shaped in its chambers but in its communities sass has a degree in government from [0:55] harvard and a phd in history from yale now at 54 a remarkable new cancer therapy is buying him [1:03] time for one last lesson even if it comes at the cost of his appearance i spoke with him earlier [1:11] this month about where america has been and where it could still go this is an extended version of that [1:19] 60 minutes conversation well let's start here you don't have much time so why are you spending time [1:27] doing this you invited me so i assume you needed to fill some time but you said yes and i wonder why [1:36] this is so important to you i love america and uh i think there's a lot of big and meaty things that [1:44] we should have been talking about and we still can talk about and having a terminal diagnosis isn't really [1:51] that unique we're all always on the clock um some of us have the benefit maybe it's a weird word but [1:59] the benefit of knowing our time is finite and defined and it becomes an opportunity to talk about bigger [2:05] stuff and you have focus from that yeah i mean it's weird to be in your early 50s and get a terminal [2:13] diagnosis and uh people all of a sudden act like you're 93 or 94 and you have a lot of wisdom i don't [2:18] i don't know that i have a lot of wisdom um but i have a lot of things that i think we should be [2:22] reflecting on together and when you're in this life stage moment you spend a lot of time thinking [2:29] about theology and a lot of time thinking about your neighbors and the institutions we need to [2:34] build and rebuild let's move on to the politics section when americans look to congress what do they [2:43] see it's a weird time right we're at 250 years in this glorious experiment uh this republic [2:51] was something that the founders wondered if it could last a generation the generation was defined [2:55] at the time as 19 or 20 years basically the age of a woman's first birth and thomas jefferson was [3:02] very skeptical about whether or not we'd last a generation so at one level despite the pessimism of [3:08] what they see when they look at congress we should start with gratitude that this experiment is two and [3:12] a half centuries in nonetheless when your approval ratings are eight percent or eleven percent or whatever [3:18] they are and yet reelection rates are in the mid-90s something is wrong and that breeds a kind of [3:23] cynicism the public wonders why congress doesn't do a smaller number of big and important things and [3:30] stop grandstanding and then go back home for a while uh or for good cincinnatus was george washington's [3:37] model for what it would look like to go home and think how many times washington tried to resign at [3:41] the end of leading the revolutionary war as general washington he went back home uh and then the most [3:47] famous thing washington did as president was december of 1796 uh hamilton made it famous but it was [3:54] really madison more as washington's muse to give the farewell address and go back home we need a lot more [4:01] people in congress who have a servant leadership sense of why they were sent there and then they need [4:05] to go back home but we aren't doing big things in washington right now it feels like a kind of [4:12] instagram for middle-aged not fully attractive folks but when voters look to the congress today [4:21] what picture do they see a lot of self-serving a lot of um hyperbolic language but limited substance [4:32] all hat no cattle let's grandstand and pretend if you don't pass my piece of legislation this tuesday [4:39] or if i don't demonize somebody on the opposite side of the political spectrum the country's going [4:44] to come apart the public knows that the challenges we face are actually a lot bigger and more interesting [4:50] than anything legislation can really touch what i think historians will think 50 or 75 or 100 years from [4:58] now when they look back on our moment is that politics weren't really very important we're living [5:03] through a technological revolution which is creating an economic revolution let's be clear we're the rich [5:10] middle class median americans are the richest people any time and place in all of human history [5:15] and yet the economic revolutions that we're living through are unsettling culture and place and so [5:20] people are incredibly rich at a material level statistically and yet we're pretty impoverished [5:27] spiritually and communally and that we don't have thick community we don't we don't know our [5:32] cousins we don't know the people who live two rows away from us and we don't feel like we're in a [5:36] common cause with people right now and politics wants to trivialize that by screaming there's some [5:42] bad political actor somewhere and if only that person were ripped out of the public square [5:47] politicians could fix all this now neighbors are gonna have to fix this if congress is looking at the [5:54] wrong things what is it missing well at one level not to be too nerdy but i am trained as a historian [6:02] uh we are living through a digital revolution which is both glorious and horrific at the same time [6:09] uh when i when i give speeches uh inevitably no matter what my topic was it can be the future of college [6:15] athletics question one two or three after i speak is some version of do you think ai is going to bring [6:21] heaven or is ai going to bring hell and the right answer is yes it's going to bring both because [6:27] what what the digital revolution does is it accelerates almost everything about the human [6:32] experience anything that can be reduced to a series of steps which is most economic activity [6:38] is going to be routinized and become really really cheap really fast and really ubiquitous and so we're [6:44] going to drive the cost of quantification either all the way to zero or so close to zero that we won't [6:49] bother metering it anymore we are going to have i don't know if it's three years from now or 13 years [6:55] from now but we're all going to have a robot that builds robots for us and so economics has historically [7:01] been a discipline about scarcity and we are going to deal with the problems of ubiquitous abundance [7:07] and that is really great at one level at the level of consumption we're all going to have lots and [7:12] lots of stuff and lots of services uber for everything and amazon for everything and those things are [7:18] going to become higher quality cheaper faster but at the level of human meaning and production it's [7:24] pretty scary to not know what you're going to do to add value for your neighbor 10 or 25 years from now [7:31] we've never lived in a world where 22 year olds couldn't assume that the work they did they would [7:37] be able to do until death or retirement and we're never going to have that world again everybody is going [7:43] to have the experience of being 35 40 45 50 and have to figure out how to add value in the world [7:48] again and we've never had a civilization of lifelong learners and we have to build it right now and [7:54] congress doesn't talk about any of those kind of most fundamental issues the disruption of work [7:59] for good and for ill should be front and central the educational institutions we need and not just [8:05] schools or colleges as they exist today but all of the kind of institutions we should have for the [8:10] experiences of being 14 or 18 or 22 or 26 or 32 we don't have the right institutions right now and [8:17] congress doesn't even know how to have that conversation if congress is whistling past these [8:21] graveyards what's at stake well a reductionistic tribalism that distracts us with a stupid fake [8:30] conversation neither of these parties really have very big or good ideas about 2030 or 2050 at a national [8:36] security level at a future of work level at an institution building level the congress is [8:42] not wrestling with big or important questions right now you're talking about your own party [8:46] both yeah and it's more than two right like there's a we should probably have 2 000 members of the house [8:52] of representatives not 435 in the 100 days that the constitutional convention met in philadelphia [8:58] washington spoke one time and the only issue that he spoke about was he wanted to make sure [9:03] that a congressional district was only 25 to 30 000 people today a member of the house represents about [9:08] 700 000 people washington wanted to be sure that everybody could know their congressman or congresswoman [9:15] so the house should probably be much much bigger than it is but the senate should be the world's [9:20] greatest deliberative body and the hundred people in that institution should have a brotherhood and a [9:28] love and a friendship among them that they can help bring to the american people a rank order of the [9:34] three or four or five most important questions it's not screaming that somebody else is the devil [9:38] because they didn't pass my post office naming bill today and that's the level of most congressional [9:43] activity right now is it social media that's destroyed the politics that we've known it's a [9:49] central piece of it maybe let's back up a tiny little bit i think capitalism is the most glorious [9:56] economic system the world has ever known capitalism is not the same as consumerism and one of the things [10:03] about the largesse that post-1945 global capitalism has created for really rich american middle class [10:09] folks is a sense that maybe more and more consumption can make you happier and that's definitely not [10:15] true and yet we're really rich and so we're distracted by consumerism and one side effect of consumerism is [10:22] pure segregation and so i think one of the fundamental things that's wrong in america is young people [10:28] don't know old people and old people don't get to serve young people there's a lot that's glorious [10:33] about being 13 or being 17 or being 21 but one pretty terrible thing would be to be 15 or 17 [10:39] and think 15 and 17 year olds have wisdom because 15 and 17 year olds don't have fully formed frontal [10:44] lobes they don't have wisdom and one of the things 15 and 17 year olds need is 60 year olds and 80 [10:51] year olds in their life and so pure segregation is i think a fundamental sociological problem in america [10:58] and social media is like dumping gas on that where we create incredible short-term incentives to do [11:07] and think and kind of bubble yourself into something that implies only your narrow demographic cohort or [11:15] identity politics or market niche is where life is lived and so i do think social media is one of [11:21] the fundamental problems that we're dealing with right now right now almost all politicians impulses and [11:27] incentives because of social media or because of just the cheap barrier to entry to any kind of [11:33] media is to go narrow but deep and to do a lot of fan service it doesn't encourage a lot of [11:39] self-scrutiny it doesn't encourage a lot of humility it doesn't encourage someone saying you [11:44] know what i used to believe this but i listened to somebody else and i realized i was wrong and i've [11:48] learned this new thing there's there's no audience for that you want to just say more of we're definitely [11:55] right and they're definitely wrong and that tribalism makes us pretty stupid fan service what do you [12:02] mean tell your audience whatever your impulse is it's definitely right but that's not true confirming [12:10] information what you already think is right yeah and the reality is learning requires a humility [12:17] that says actually um i'm i'm wrong about a lot i'm ignorant about even more and i get a chance to [12:25] learn one of the glorious things about the american experiment is believing in souls that can do [12:31] deferred gratification we can do deliberation that says maybe i don't have all the answers right now [12:38] at my fingertips and maybe the glories of a big and diverse creation is i can learn a lot from my [12:44] neighbors you walk into a room full of people these days they're not talking to each other they're right [12:53] here yeah cut off from one another standing shoulder to shoulder yeah and it's true of people our age [13:01] think about what it's like for the digital natives who've only grown up in this world how weird and [13:07] tragic is it that teenagers and 20-somethings don't know how to date they don't know how to ask [13:13] somebody to go have a meal together including the risk and the awkwardness of being rejected in that [13:18] approach but there's a lot of scar tissue uh for future character in being rejected it's one of the [13:25] reasons why a lot of people who are successful in their work lives are people who've done sales at some [13:30] point along the way because you just get to be rejected over and over and over and over again and [13:35] it toughens you up and it also teaches you um how to present ideas in a new way so how does america set [13:43] a better course well first let's let's be a little bit agnostic about where this lands because i don't [13:51] know um in in 2040 or 2050 or 2060 does the republic survive i suspect yes and i would bet yes but it's [14:03] not a 90-10 bet but i do think i know this if the republic survives we will learn how to have public [14:12] discourse even in an environment with near ubiquitous information fire hose fire hydrant spray coming [14:22] from every side and we'll learn how to get back toward wisdom about what voices we should diminish [14:28] and ignore we're going to need a deliberative republic again where people are able to do long-term [14:37] processing of information about higher value things over lower value immediate things and right now [14:45] we know that the average 15 to 35 year old male is more likely to have current online gambling debt [14:53] than to read a book this year a republic actually requires people who do deliberative long-form [15:01] discourse learning humility and community building we're not doing that right now you seem to be saying [15:06] that right now is an inflection point on whether the republic survives i do believe that i think the [15:15] the only way we have a portion of this conversation right now is the jobs apocalypse debate is ai going [15:22] to bring ubiquitous economics yes lots of economic growth is ai going to end a lot of jobs or unbundle a [15:31] lot of jobs also yes and we're going to need to figure out how to help our teens and 20-somethings [15:40] become 30 and 40-somethings that can be lifelong learners and can get retrained for the new job [15:45] in a sector in an industry that doesn't even exist yet we're having a little tiny bit of that debate [15:51] but bigger and broader than that we should be talking about what educational institutions we need [15:57] for 10 15 20 and 25 year olds what in the world is happening with the natalism crisis all across the [16:04] industrialized rich world people have just stopped having babies in the last couple of decades we're [16:11] at replacement rate birth rates nowhere in the industrialized world except mormons and jewish [16:18] populations in israel and in some parts of the u.s except for those two categories every other [16:24] industrialized nation has stopped having babies that is super weird we've stopped having sex sex [16:31] has collapsed demographically premarital extramarital marital it is very weird i don't have a phone on me [16:39] but that we carry around these super devices in our pockets that have distracted us from some of the most [16:44] fundamental human activities and aspirations having a baby is a bet on the future and almost everywhere [16:52] in the world and the world is richer and richer and richer statistically than it's ever been [16:56] people have decided actually babies are kind of an inconvenience babies have always been an [17:01] inconvenience and the most glorious thing you can do to enrich your family and to make a bet on the [17:06] future how weird that we've stopped having sex we've stopped making babies we've decided that being [17:11] distracted by a dopamine hit around a candy crush might be a good way to spend your time not if you're a full [17:19] human i have never been in politics before it was 2015 when ben sass came to washington he voted [17:26] conservative more than 80 percent of the time and in 2020 he was re-elected with more votes in nebraska [17:33] than donald trump then came january 6th that day sass called out quote the screamers who monetize hate [17:44] you can't do big things together as americans if you think other americans are the enemy later in trump's [17:53] impeachment over january 6th sass was one of seven republicans who voted to convict his stand against [18:01] the insurrection offended the nebraska republican committee so he sent them a message personality cults [18:09] aren't conservative conspiracy theories aren't conservative lying that an election has been stolen [18:16] it's not conservative acting like politics is a religion it isn't conservative january 6th was [18:24] grotesque and stirring people up was a terrible thing but it's against a bigger and more important [18:31] backdrop which is the glories of the peaceful transition of power like when i history nerd say [18:37] we don't do enough civics i'm sincere that i think the fact that march 1801 is not something that all [18:45] of our fifth seventh and ninth graders know that's a tragedy let's let's review the amazing thing that [18:50] happened washington leaves office and it isn't clear after adams and then jefferson both in his cabinet [18:57] when they run against each other in 1800 we think that our politics are brutal now there were charges of [19:04] everybody going to hell north versus south and adams versus jefferson federalists versus democratic [19:10] republicans and they really believed across the globe that america would end in civil war immediately [19:18] and adams leaves office in march 1801 he doesn't attend jefferson's inaugural and he moves back to [19:27] massachusetts and king george in england said obviously these people are going to go to civil war [19:34] now and adams goes back home and peacefully hands over military power to jefferson adams and jefferson [19:42] were of opposite parties right and this is the first time a contested election perhaps in world history [19:48] that's right that a party in power handed it over to a party that was against their view it's it's we [19:55] should make sure your viewers understand inauguration because of snowstorms back then used to happen in [19:59] march now we can do it in january because we know the travel is going to work out but in march 1801 [20:04] we're four months after the election and it wasn't clear that you would have a peaceful transition [20:08] to power we thought there might be a civil war right away we should at every inauguration this [20:14] was some of the tragedy of of january 6th is that we should at every inauguration use it as an occasion [20:21] to teach the american people we don't have kings in 2023 with four years left in his term sass quit to [20:30] become president of the university of florida there had been too little substance in the senate and [20:37] too much absence from his wife and three children what was it about the senate that led you to quit [20:45] in your second term the senate should be the world's greatest deliberative body and i think it can be [20:51] again but i was flying away from my family four or five nights every week and most weeks we were not [20:57] getting anything done in the senate in the senate we just we didn't do real things and it felt like [21:02] the opportunity cost was really high i want the senate to be a grand and glorious calling for people [21:09] right now it's pretty tough to justify if some random guy or gal calls me up and says i got kids at [21:16] home should i fly away from my family five weekdays every week and go to the senate will i be able to do [21:22] enough to make a difference that institution isn't that productive right now many senators i know would [21:28] not be able to breathe without that job it would kill them to leave i don't want what you said to be [21:39] true but i fear that that is true and that is a sign of a much much deeper problem we got a lot of people [21:48] who serve in government who really do think the highest and greatest thing you can ever do is have the [21:53] title senator or congressman the best thing you can do is be called dad or mom lover neighbor friend [22:03] governor senator house member it's a great way to serve it should be your 11th calling or maybe sixth [22:10] but never top what makes you a republican i'm i'm of the party of abraham lincoln and ronald reagan [22:20] i first of all let me say i'm a constitutionalist first like what i love about america [22:26] um is the idea that we don't believe government gives us rights um we have rights from god via [22:33] nature pre-governmentally and then government is our shared project to secure those rights john [22:38] locke the founder john locke is is great the the founders constitutional convention builds out some [22:46] of the glories of this debate that every american school kid should be reading a lot of james madison [22:51] the modern political spectrum from this version of the republican party or maybe let's say the 80 [22:57] years version of the republican party in the last 80 years version of the democratic party it's kind of [23:04] an inside the family debate until the last 10 or 15 years about one cheer for government intervention [23:12] in the economy versus two cheers the the right place to begin our conversation is zero cheers for [23:18] government or three cheers for government are both un-american ideas zero cheers for government is [23:23] to say we don't need government at all well that's just anthropologically naive human nature is broken [23:28] there's somebody who wants to take your life and your liberty and your stuff and so we need government [23:31] to hold evil things at bay and to protect people's lives and liberty and stuff you ought to be able to [23:36] walk home from a restaurant in the evening and not be worried about being mugged that's a shared project [23:41] for us to have government against the backdrop of a sinful broken world three cheers for government [23:47] is soul denying because it implies that power is the center of life which isn't true the center of [23:53] life is your neighborhood your dinner table and your loves it's your family and your community right [23:58] like that's the meaning of life and that can't be solved by power edmund burke well done edmund burke is [24:05] a perfect way to say it little platoons because at the end of the day we are a 330 million person nation [24:13] which is a glorious inheritance but it's only four percent of the globe we got eight billion souls on [24:19] this globe 330 million are americans 330 million sounds small as a share of the earth but 330 million [24:26] is still way too big for anybody to get their heads around you can't love 330 million people you can love [24:34] your immediate family you can love your cousins you can love your neighbors you can love your co-workers you [24:38] can love your co-religionists at church or at synagogue this weekend you have to learn in the [24:44] little platoons how to love real flesh and blood people that you can hug that you can cry with that [24:52] you can break bread with and then the maturity of that love can be transferred onto something larger [24:58] like your nation but you can't start at a 330 million person nation and decide who i supposedly love [25:04] and who i supposedly hate and then figure out how to become a good neighbor you need to actually coach [25:10] little league you need to actually throw up at the rotary club or the lions club you need to shovel the [25:16] the driveway of the widow next door to you because she can't do it when this surprise storm came [25:21] right and so we build out from there you asked why i'm a republican i'm a republican because i think [25:27] the lincoln reagan continuum does the best job of building constraint on thinking washington is our [25:35] fundamental political community i think your fundamental political community is your [25:39] neighborhood and your your city hall and maybe even your state legislature and right now we are [25:45] sacrificing a lot of our national politics to weird folks who want their main community to be their [25:52] political tribe at a federal level and that should be like the ninth thing or the 15th thing you care [25:56] about not the first or second thing you ended your republican pantheon with ronald reagan and i wonder [26:04] when you look at the trump administration today what do you see i mean it's it's no secret that the [26:11] current president and i uh wrestled on lots and lots of issues but i i don't spend much time commenting [26:18] on our current politics because i don't really think our current politics are driving what's happening i [26:24] think it's mostly an echo of what's happening i think we have really thin shallow community right [26:31] now and unless people know the thickness of their local community it's hard to make sense of what [26:37] national politics are for i think our national political dysfunction is an echo of larger problems [26:43] when you speak of the thickness of community and is that possible in a secular society or is god [26:51] necessary for that wow that's fine um i am a lutero calvinist christian who believes deeply in my [27:01] theology i don't want the state to constrain theology at all because i don't i don't want it to compel [27:09] or prohibit i believe in the in sole dignity of every american comes with it the freedom to worship [27:16] and so i want to defend the right of everyone to believe what they believe and to assemble with their [27:21] co-religionists whether i agree with it or not the state's job is to take violence out of the public [27:27] square so people can wrestle with more important questions so in my view yes god is absolutely [27:35] essential to all of these questions but as ben the secular american citizen or office holder my job is [27:44] to prohibit violence so that all 330 million americans come to the conversation on an equal plane [27:51] to then have that debate i wonder what you think the citizens of our country can do to fix our broken [27:58] politics citizen is a great word um a friend neighbor co-laborer there are so many big and profound [28:15] callings that we have we're living through a time a period of profound change we are meant to hug [28:24] we are meant to make babies we are meant to break bread together and we are going through a moment [28:31] of profound confusion about what it means to be human and we're not preparing ourselves or the next [28:36] generation for that our citizenry is going to need to do that together little bits and pieces of that [28:41] are going to touch on politics but the vast majority of it is going to be about grit gratitude entrepreneurship [28:48] family what advice would you give to the senate majority leader today john thune holy smokes well [28:57] first of all i wanted to say that before him being a politician john thune is my friend i think it is the [29:07] responsibility of the senate as it has been for more than two centuries to be the saucer where the boiling [29:16] tea overflows and needs to cool down the senate needs to be less like instagram the senate needs [29:22] to be more deliberative and that means less smackdown nonsense one of the fundamental mistakes we've made [29:29] over the last 30 or 40 years is putting cameras everywhere in washington dc this is not an argument [29:35] against transparency we should have reporters around we should have pen and pad we should have people [29:39] recording what's happening but we should make the senate less of an institution that is built [29:45] as a backdrop platform for people to get sound bites and own the libs or own the conservatives or have [29:52] some smackdown short-term sound bite that's not what the senate is for the senate should be plodding [29:59] and steady and boring and trustworthy what is your parting wish for america i think we need to have [30:11] more deliberation about our mortality and our finitude to therefore get back to [30:17] wisdom about what living a life of gratitude looks like and i'd like a lot more dinner tables [30:22] to turn off the devices put them out of the room pour a big glass of wine break bread together [30:28] and wrestle with some really grand questions about what you're building for your family and your next [30:33] generation optimistic or pessimistic about the republic i think the right answer should always be [30:42] optimistic and pessimistic about the complexities of human nature for the republic i'm optimistic [30:51] if we do the work that is available for us to do as neighbors i'm not optimistic about washington dc [30:58] but i am optimistic about what a free people and a republic can build if they start with the little [31:04] platoons of their family their extended kin network their neighborhood their workplace and their place of [31:10] worship to be too frank you were expected to be dead by now that's frank i like it let's be blunt what [31:20] changed let's go with uh providence prayer and a miracle drug uh in mid-december i was given a three [31:29] to four month life expectancy i am on extended time already i have a pancreatic origin cancer that is [31:36] metastasized a number of places so i've got lung vascular liver other liver is pretty far along you [31:44] have five cancers yes sir he's in a clinical trial for a drug called diraxon racid a new idea in therapy [31:54] in many cancers it's a defective gene that signals cells to grow non-stop the drug blocks that signal i have [32:04] much much less pain than i had four months ago when i was diagnosed and i have a massive 76 percent [32:11] reduction in tumor volume over the last four months so maybe i'm gonna crank and live a year instead of [32:17] a handful of months and i feel incredibly blessed do you pray for a miracle sure it's not it's not my [32:24] biggest prayer because i um mortality is not news right like we we're all mortal we're all on the clock [32:32] we're all going to be pushing up daisies eventually and i think wisdom requires us to grapple with our [32:39] death and our finitude early but i i do pray for a miracle as well just this month the drug maker [32:46] revolution medicines reported that patients who had six months survived a median 13 months you are [32:56] completely devoted to your faith what's known as reformed christianity or calvinism and one of the [33:06] tenants of that faith is that god ordains everything and i wonder why you think god has put you to this [33:16] test death is wicked death is evil death is not how it's supposed to be and me getting a cancer diagnosis [33:30] again it's pretty small on the grand scheme of things but it's a touch of grace because it forces [33:41] me to tell the truth and the lie i want to tell myself is that i'm the center of everything and i'm [33:50] going to be around forever and i can work harder and store up enough that i can atone for my own [34:01] brokenness i can't and so i hate cancer but i'm also grateful for it i tell a lot more truth to myself [34:10] than i used to do it when i thought i was super omni competent and interesting tim keller was a pastor [34:19] in new york city he's in my denomination and he died of pancreatic cancer a couple years ago and he [34:25] had a line he said i hate pancreatic cancer i would never wish it on anybody but i also would never want [34:32] to go back to a time in life where i didn't know the prayer of pancreatic cancer and i feel that to [34:40] be true i started being symptomatic the last couple weeks of october i wasn't diagnosed until mid-december [34:47] we had trouble figuring out what was going on because i was training for some sprint triathlons and i was [34:52] doing some stupid stuff in my training and so i thought i pulled a bunch of muscles in my abdomen [34:58] i was in really bad pain for a number of weeks i'm now on a lot of morphine and i've also got [35:03] the benefit of this drug which is you know scare quotes but miraculously reduced my tumor volume [35:10] enough that i have a lot less tumor pressure on my spine so the combination of a great drug and [35:15] morphine another useful drug i'm in so much less pain now than i was halloween to thanksgiving but at [35:24] that point i was on the floor in the shower running the water trying to remove a valve on my shower to [35:30] make it hotter i'd be five times a night up in the middle of the night in the shower um trying to [35:36] scald my back to try to make the throbbing of what turned out to be tumors pushing on my spine [35:42] cease it was horrible i'm super grateful that i had that pain cancer has made you closer to god [35:51] definitely because i can acknowledge my dependence in a new way if you had another 30 years what would [36:00] your priority be i wish we'd had more babies we have three great kids i wish we had four or five [36:11] if i had 30 years left from now i'd be working hard to take my zealous achiever daughters [36:20] and try to figure out how you build something that's a little bit like a family compound how do [36:26] you build something where you can have different generations come and go from it and have a thickness [36:32] in a support system how could you spend more time around your cousins or build the opportunity for [36:37] your kids and your grandkids to spend more time around their cousins um i would uh travel a little [36:45] bit less for work i have kind of three different work histories but one of them was i was a road warrior [36:49] as a strategy consultant and private equity guy for a while and i spent way too many nights in hotel rooms [36:57] and i don't know if my family even knows this but i never really threw away any of my hotel keys [37:03] i'd come back from every trip and i threw them in a box in a closet in my office and there are thousands [37:10] and thousands of hotel room keys and sometimes i just look at it and feel a heaviness of regret [37:17] i would make better decisions about that if i had another act at a work level i think i might [37:22] pursue my long-term dream of being a football coach dad was a football coach and he was dang good at it [37:28] and what a chance to mold young men but i mean i would continue to think and write about the digital [37:35] revolution that we're entering and going to pass through because i think we come out on the other [37:40] side um richer and more textured but it's going to be a big bifurcation we we talk a lot in our politics [37:47] about um socioeconomic um difference i think the great coming divide is going to be between people [37:57] who figure out how to use these tools and people who outsource their attention and their affections [38:03] and their habits to these tools and it's going to be disastrous for the latter category and i want [38:08] that latter category to be small i want all americans to benefit from some of the glories that we're going [38:14] to get out of the digital revolution but the idea that you could outsource your attention and your [38:19] affections and your habits to these things is disastrous a casino might be a fun place to go for [38:25] march madness weekend but it would be a hellacious place to live and we're all walking around with [38:32] casinos in our pockets right now and they want to steal our attention and reduce our humanity and i think [38:38] we need to have a big shared project where we lock arms and again this isn't a governmental or regulatory [38:45] a regulatory prof project chiefly but we need a communal conversation about how you use the [38:51] technology instead of letting the technology use us i make no comparison to what you're going through [39:00] but there was a moment on 9 11 at the world trade center that i knew i was dead and in that [39:07] lightning flash of an instant the only thing that crossed my mind was leaving my family behind [39:17] and i wonder how you reconcile that yeah i'm incredibly blessed my wife melissa has we've been [39:36] married 31 years i um we're gonna be apart for a time um but she's tough and gritty and theologically [39:50] rooted and she's gonna be fine my daughters are 24 and 22 and they're extraordinary i want to walk [40:01] them down the aisle when they get married um that's not likely to be that's not the the math of my time [40:07] card my son we have a providential surprise he's a decade younger than big sisters he's 14 and uh he's [40:16] gonna be fine he'll have other um other wise men and women to put a hand on his shoulder but i'm [40:24] super bummed to not be there um at 16 and 18 and 20 years old in his life i want to give him more [40:32] advice than he wants and i want to put my arm on his shoulder and i want his shoulders to get taller [40:37] but it's not a surprise to god and god you believe has a plan absolutely there are no maverick molecules in [40:50] the universe