#1938 Good at Talking to People - Part 1
Good at Talking to People (Part 1)
Elizabeth Maddock Dillon turns the microphone around. An English professor writing a book about sugar interviews Scott about how the podcast began — the diagnosis, the accidental blog, and the day Katie Couric told him what he was good at.
Jump to a moment
- The roles are reversed. Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, an English professor at Northeastern diagnosed with type 1 at 48, is writing Sweetness and Ruin: A History of Sugar from the Plantation to the Diabetes Epidemic — part memoir, part history. She approached Scott at ADA to interview him for it; he suggested they record it. So this is Scott answering the questions for once.
- The diagnosis, told at length. Scott walks through it: Arden’s second birthday with a pony in the backyard, a misread bout of hand-foot-mouth, a car seat he reached into on vacation that was soaked through, and a meter that read HI. He describes standing in a 24-hour pharmacy wondering whether, if he never left that aisle, it might not be true.
- The blog was an accident. Frustrated that a JDRF walk raised only about a thousand dollars, he emailed 500 contacts a play-by-play of a day with type 1 — then realized he shouldn’t have and moved it to a link. He didn’t know it was a blog until a woman in England wrote to say it was helping her. His takeaway wasn’t flattery; it was that a stunt reached England in thirty days, so the ceiling was limitless.
- He deliberately refused the prevailing tone. At blogging conferences he felt like an outsider — a father writing about raising a child with type 1, not a person with it. His objection to much of what he read: it was woe is me rather than aspirational. His framing then and now — it’s nice not to be alone at 2 a.m. treating a low, but it would be nicer if the blood sugar weren’t low and everyone were asleep.
- The podcast exists because of one sentence. After a book deal he talked his way into (his wife’s response: “you don’t read”), he promoted it himself onto NPR and Katie Couric’s show. Backstage, Couric stopped him to say he was really good at talking to people. Years later, watching readership collapse as the internet shifted to images, that sentence came back to him — and he bought a microphone.
- Bold Beginnings series — Scott and Jenny Smith for the newly diagnosed — the series discussed here as due for a remaster.
- Diabetes Pro Tip series — Episodes 1000-1025 — the management foundation: settings, insulin timing, and food impact.
- Defining Diabetes series — Short episodes defining the terms people hear but don't have explained — an idea Scott credits to a Sanofi contact's online glossary.
Every word of the conversation
Cold open & sponsors0:02
Friends, we're all back together for another episode of the Juice Box podcast. What do you say we get you over to t1dexchange.org/juicebox and have you fill out that survey? Are you an adult? Are you a US citizen? Do you have type one diabetes?
Your answers on that survey are gonna help to move type one diabetes research forward. It will not take you very long. It will be a big help to me. It'll be a big help to you. It will help the community.
T1dexchange.org/juicebox. Hey. Nothing you hear on the juice box podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise. Always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. This episode of the podcast is sponsored by MiniMed and the Kontoor next gen blood glucose meter.
MiniMed, of course, the innovators behind the MiniMed flex system, a small, sleek, and discreet insulin automated delivery system controlled from an app. Nothing comes close to freedom you can feel. To learn more, visit minimed.com/juicebox. There is one blood glucose meter in this house, the Contour NextGen blood glucose meter. That meter is on my daughter's person right now and at all times.
It is incredibly accurate and waiting for you at kontoornext.com/juicebox.
The professor with the microphone1:36
My name is Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, and I am an English professor at Northeastern University of Boston. I'm a type one diabetic, and I'm writing a book that is part memoir and part history. The memoir is about my own experience being diagnosed as a type one diabetic at age 48, and the history part is about the history of sugar. So the title of the book is sweetness and ruin, a history of sugar from the plantation to the diabetes epidemic. And I am here because I wanna interview you today, Scott, because you have made such a big difference in my life.
Juicebox podcast has made such a big difference in my life, and I wanted to learn more about how it came to be and and your thoughts on making it.
Wow. I'm touched and excited to do this with you. You approached me at ADA and were telling me about this. And you said, you know, could I could we get some time for me to ask you some questions for the book? And I said, why don't we just do it and record it?
So I appreciate you being willing to do that. And, I mean, I guess I should just turn the podcast over to you and let you go. I can I ask you a couple questions first?
Of course.
Have you ever written a book before?
I have. I've written academic books, but this is my first book that is for a general audience. So the academic books tend to be fairly, shall we say, academic. But this is really written for a broad audience, and and I hope will be of interest to a lot of people, a lot of diabetics, and a lot of people interested in the the history of sugar.
Yeah. That's that's wonderful. Alright. Well, let's pretend it's your podcast then, and you can start asking me questions. Whatever you want.
I'll just shut up and answer. Go ahead.
Okay. So I, again, would just like to say thank you to you because the Juice Box podcast really changed things for me a lot. And the the reason why it changed things is because it it gave me the kind of concrete information and advice I needed about how to manage my blood sugar that I really was not getting from the doctors that I was seeing. And I feel like it's made a difference for me and for so many other people. So I'm interested in in both your own history and also thinking about why it's so important to have this kind of information.
So first question is, could you tell me the origin story of the podcast?
Yeah. Absolutely. And thank you. Those are very, very kind words, and they they they make me feel good about the the time I spend working, especially because my my days seem to be I I seem to get it with the what do say? The gifts with one hand takes with the other.
Mhmm. I just got back from taking a group of people on a cruise, and I woke up in the morning to a note from one of the people just letting me know how much the cruise was valuable to them and how their their child was having a better outcome already from being around the conversations and everything. And then I I swear to you, an hour later, somebody online was calling me. Like, you know, I was I was basically the ruination of the world. And I thought I thought, wow.
I I wish I wonder which one is is true. Neither? I don't know. So, anyway, it's nice to hear something nice, and I appreciate it. How did all this begin?
I mean, how do you want me to go back to I I mean, I can give it to you from the very beginning. You you'd like to have notes that you can really, like, dig into for your book. Right?
Yeah. And I would love to hear, you know, starting from Arden's diagnosis and what that was like for you and then how I'm assuming that, you know, that that is is part of that origin story and what led you to feel that making a podcast would be valuable.
Before: a pony in the backyard5:44
Yeah. Sure. Well, I mean, no differently than most people who come on here and share a little bit about the time that they or their child were diagnosed. It was you know, our lives were going along pretty well. We had dug ourselves out of some holes that our parents and our situations put us in.
My wife and I had a son. He was really awesome. And we decided to have another baby, and she was equally awesome. We were just living our lives. You know?
We had bought a little crappy house that had a nice little piece of ground out behind it. And for Arden's second birthday, we lost our minds. You know? We I think a guy came with a pony and gave the kids pony rides. The the Philadelphia zoo showed up with three I think there was an eagle here.
I think there was definitely a snake and an armadillo, and I believe there might have been an eagle or a hawk or I don't know. A a bird of prey. And just everybody I'd ever met my entire life was in that backyard. You know? And we were having the greatest time.
I can picture Arden on the pony. And even to the point where you guys all don't know me that well, but having a pony walk around in my backyard ruins the yard, and that's not a thing I would normally do. And on that day, I just I didn't care. It was just it was it was really Elizabeth, it was almost a celebration of Arden and a celebration of how far we had come all at the same time. Right?
And, I'm going to say the Kontoor Nextgen blood glucose meter is sponsoring this episode of the Juice Box podcast, and it is entirely possible that it is less expensive in cash than you are paying right now for your meter through your insurance company. That's right. If you go to my link, contournext.com/juicebox, you're gonna find links to Walmart, Amazon, Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid, Kroger, Meijer. You could be paying more right now through your insurance for your test strips and meter than you would pay through MyLink for the Contour Next Gen and Contour Next test strips in cash. What am I saying?
My link may be cheaper out of your pocket than you are paying right now even with your insurance. And I don't know which meter you have on you right now. I can't say that. But what I can say for sure is that the Kontoor Nextgen meter is accurate. It is reliable, and it is the meter that we've been using for years.
Contournext.com/juicebox. And if you already have a Contour meter and you're buying test strips, doing so through my link will help support the podcast. Let's be honest. Most of us would love to spend less time thinking about diabetes. That's exactly what MiniMed had in mind with the new MiniMed Flex system.
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Somewhere along the lines of a week or two later, Arden got sick, but she had been sick previous. So previously, we were told that she had hand, foot, mouth. Mhmm. And it it appeared I mean, we didn't realize that it appeared it came back. She'd gotten sick again.
So it's after her birthday. We're sort of running around. We have a family vacation coming up, and I'm just making the rounds getting every because I'm this I'm a stay at home dad. So I'm the one, like, getting the laundry done, you know, prepping the house to leave, that kind of stuff. And this was a family vacation with my wife's side of the family.
So I took Arden to visit with my mom before we left. She's just two years old. Cole's in school. We take a little ride. I meet my mom at where she works, I bring the baby in.
I'm like, hey. We're leaving in a couple days. Just thought you might want to see Arden a little bit before we go. And then we get out to the car to leave, and I used to have a it was an SUV, and it sort of had a back gate that folded down. And Arden needed her diaper changed.
And I I laid her on the back gate, and it's so much different when you're, like, a stay at home dad. Like, ma. You know what I mean? Like, guys do stuff like that in places you don't expect, like, in parking lots and things. And I take her diaper off, and the the bowel movement is is bizarre.
It's like little round balls, and I'd never seen them look that way before, obviously. And the coloring was wrong so such that it made me, like, squeeze it. Like, I not with my fingers. I used the diaper. I just wanna say.
But they broke apart like dust. Wow. And I called her pediatrician, like, right then and there, and I brought her back. And he said, she has hand foot mouth again. And I remember him saying, that's really odd.
They don't get that twice. And then when I asked him to expand, he said it's like he's like, it's like chickenpox. Now you're like, get it, then you don't get it again. And I was like, okay. And I none none of us knew what that meant.
You know what I mean? But she seemed okay otherwise, and it was one of those, like, well, we'll see what happens things. Anyway, handful of days, week later, I don't know the exact timing, but it wasn't too long. We were in a car, in that same car, driving south to Virginia Beach. And about an hour outside of the house that my mother-in-law rented, we stopped for gas and drinks and stuff.
And my wife got one of those giant drinks, like the ones where you wonder, like, who buys those? You know what I mean? And not too long into the the the the last hour of the drive, Arden wants the drink. She had been off bottles for not long. We gave it to her and didn't look back.
We're just driving and music's on. It's warm out. I remember the windows being down, this idea that we had a week off that we like, that our lives were moving. You know what I mean?
The car seat full of water12:01
Mhmm.
Yeah. And we got there, pulled up in the at the house. Kelly started taking coal out of the car in bags, and I went to get Arden. And I I've said this before, but I reached down into the car seat to unbuckle the the buckles, and my hands went into water. Like, don't mean I don't yeah.
Like, I don't mean like a little. Right? I mean like submerged. And Wow. I thought, oh, she spilled this drink.
That was the first thing I thought. It was like this flipping like, oh gosh. We just got here. I gotta take this seat out of the car. I hope it's not in the seats of the car.
Like, you know what mean? Like, this whole thing. So I I pull her out. She's like I'm like, Kelly, here. Like, she's dripping.
You know? And I I unbuckled the whole chair because I I it's so, like, egregious. I'm just gonna, like, carefully take the chair out and dump it on the ground. And it felt like I threw a bucket of water on the ground. And then it hit me that it wasn't the drink that was in the seat.
It was it was urine. And I was like, well, that's crazy. Right? Like, absolutely crazy. But then you start doing the things that everybody does.
Oh, she just got off bottles. She's drinking more. Maybe this diaper doesn't blah blah blah. Do we have to get a better diaper? Do we you do all the stupid things that don't make any sense.
You know, they're not excuses. They're just like you're you're faced with something.
You're trying to make sense of it.
Yeah. That you've just never seen before. You know? And so you start going to common sense things. It would be crazy if, like, I walked outside, felt the sun on my skin, and thought, I probably have rectal cancer.
Like, you don't you don't like, you know what I mean? Like, you don't jump to, like, weird conclusions. So we're there a day. We try to go to the beach. Arden's sick.
She doesn't wanna go. I stay behind at the house. Next day comes, every I said I everyone went to the beach. I stayed back with her again. I tried bringing her out to the beach.
She stood there lifeless. I took her back. All she would do is eat and sleep. I think maybe the second night we were there, again, the whole family went to the beach. I stayed in the house with her.
And later that night, like, the sun went down and there was, like, an observatory nearby or something or a preserve maybe. And I said to Kelly, like, why don't the four of us go for a walk at the preserve? It's cooler now. The sun's down. And we're we're out there and everybody's trying to have fun.
Everybody's trying to, like, get Arden to, you know, like, joosh up a little bit. You know? And she just stood there. Like, she just stared and she stood there and I can picture her in, like, this little pink pair of pants with like a blue sweater on and and she's just so little. You know?
And we get back to the house. That didn't work. And six hours later, the whole family's playing a board game around this giant dining room table. Kelly's still in bathing suit, she's holding Arden. Arden's asleep on her.
And I, like, kinda talk across the room. I said, hey. I forgot to tell you something. Like, everybody's talking and having a good time and whatnot. And she looked at me and I said, I I forgot to tell you today that I thought Arden's breath smelled weird.
“I thought her breath smelled weird”15:10
She said, how? And I was like, I don't know. It was, like, metallic maybe or fruity. I'm not sure. And then Kelly's face just, like like, it appeared to, like, slide off her skull.
You know? And she just goes like, Arden has diabetes. And and then from there, you know, we did the thing. People have probably heard me talk about before. It's the middle of the night.
Went to a twenty four hour pharmacy to get a meter because we were you know, the Internet wasn't as prevalent back then. We had to steal Wi Fi from the house next to us to look up the signs and symptoms of of diabetes. And I remember finding a list of five things. I forget what they were. But the last thing was, like, with a blood sugar meter.
And so I went to get a meter. I found a twenty four hour pharmacy. And I think that that's the first time that all of this, like, hit me. And I I stood in the pharmacy. Like, I I found the meters.
Standing still in the pharmacy aisle16:09
I stood in front of them. I don't know what I was shopping for. You know what I mean? Like, so I'm trying to make sense of it. I figure out which one I'm gonna buy.
And then I think, well, she she she might have diabetes. If I just stand here for the rest of my life, will will that not be true? Yeah. And I really considered for a second just living my life in that aisle feeling like it would freeze time. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And, obviously, that wasn't actually gonna work. Would have made a great Black Mirror episode, but it it wasn't actually, still patent pending.
That's a great idea. Nobody steal that from me. I live my whole life in the, right, in the pharmacy, and people come in and out. I get to experience their lives and do their conversations. This is easily an independent movie from the nineties.
Where's Kevin Smith when you need him? Let's make this one. Jeez. There's references all over the place. No one knows.
Anyway, Elizabeth, I go back, and we check her blood sugar, and then we head to the hospital. And, you know?
And what was her blood sugar? Do you remember?
It was high because I said to my wife I have the same dumb story everybody else has. I said to my wife, how nice is this thing? It says hi to you before it gives you the number. That's exactly that's what I thought was happening because it said HI.
Oh god.
Yeah. Wow. So I think on that meter, that meant over five hundred.
Oh my goodness.
Yeah. And she weighed at that point, we thought she weighed nineteen pounds, but she, by then, weighed seventeen. We didn't realize at the moment. Although looking back on it, it's insane not to notice the weight loss. She looked like a she looked like a runway model in the middle of the seventies.
You know what I mean? Like, she looked like she had a you she she looked like she had a heroin addiction and was smoking cigarettes twenty four hours a day. She was so thin. But, like, you don't see it in the moment. You know?
Anyway, we go to the hospital and do the stuff. They take her from us, and it's just it's debilitating. You know? I I I've I've said it so many times. I I feel weird just saying it now because it feels performative, but I really mean this.
After they took her from us, we had to go into, like, a little like, a family room, but it was to call it a room was even ridiculous. Was like a closet with, like, a two seater, like, plastic couch in it. You know? And my wife and I sat next to each other. My wife's still in a, like, a bikini with a sarong.
And we laid together, and I I I swear I could've I felt the desperation, like, like, the sadness, like, through her skin. I don't know if that was just me or what it was, but it's not a feeling I'd ever felt before. Like when I touched another person, know, yeah, I don't wanna you know, when you're you're close to somebody and you hold hands or you make love even or anything, like, when your skin touches, like, there's feelings that come from all that stuff. Yeah. I had never felt despair before through a person.
I said it was the first time. I don't know if it was mine or hers or ours. I can't I can't tell. I didn't know. You know, you fast forward ahead and we come home.
A thousand dollars, and not enough19:24
And I don't know how long it is before I realized that there's something dire wrong with my kid that I can't help. And it occurs to me to try to find somebody who could. And, of course, I identified a JDRF back then, and we, you know, went to a walk and tried to raise some money for the walk. And I I think I raised, like, a thousand dollars or $1,100 or something like that, but I really, like, kinda, like I beat the bushes. You know?
I went out. I explained to people what was going on. And then when it was over and I only had a thousand dollars, I thought, wow. Like, people don't understand this. Like, I I kept thinking, like, if they understood it, I'd be carrying around a billion dollars to give to the JBRF right now.
You know? And so that, you know, that that year happens, and it's 2006. And around 2007, I still feel like I'm not doing enough, and it occurs to me to, like, try harder with the walk. And I did something that I didn't call day of diabetes, and but I I just woke up one morning to an email, like, you know, contact list of over 500 people. And I wrote them a note, all of them, in the morning.
The emails nobody asked for20:41
I said, you know, our next type one diabetes, I'm gonna be collecting money again for JDRF. Today, I'm gonna send you an email every time we have to do something with type one so you can understand what a day of Arden's life is like. And I sent the first email and the second, the third. By the time, honestly, by the time noon came, I, first of all, realized I didn't ask any of these people if they wanted these emails. But just to realize if you're listening, have to realize the Internet was different back then.
We didn't know about stuff like that. And, anyway, I I sent the emails out, and then I apologized to them. And, you know, I spent the whole morning trying to figure out a different way to do this. And I just I had a an iMac computer for Apple geeks. It was the old like, the lampshade.
It's really cool. Like, little round base. And, anyway, they're great computers. They don't make them anymore like that. And I was picking around on it trying to figure out another way to do thing other than to bombard people with emails.
He didn’t know it was a blog21:40
And I I happened onto a program called iWeb that promised that you could put your thoughts on the Internet. And it was a blogging platform. I didn't really know that. Being, like, candid, I didn't know it was a blogging platform, but I used it. And I sent out one more email, and I said, hey.
Listen, guys. I realized I shouldn't have done this. I'm really sorry. If you wanna keep following along, you can go to this link, and I'll I'll post this stuff there. Which, by the way, I know now sounds like just like an like an obvious thing to do.
But I'm telling you that back then, like, blogs weren't really a thing. Like, there were, like, some WordPress blogs, and it was taking off, but it wasn't prevalent. You know? And I kept doing that. I started learning how to, like, put a picture in with it, a title, and, you know, write a little something, and I kept making it.
I did not have a counter on it, so I didn't know if anybody was looking at it. So, like, WordPress, you could do page counts with or click v or view counts or something, but iWeb didn't offer that. So I genuinely had no idea if anybody was looking at it or not. I was just making it.
So so let me ask you a quick question. When you say you felt like you weren't doing enough, did you do you mean you felt like you weren't doing enough for Arden, or you weren't doing enough for people in general with diabetes?
Yeah. Arden.
Arden.
Okay. I wasn't thinking about anybody else.
So you you felt like if you raise money for JDRF that, they would, do more research that could help her situation?
You don't know me, but I don't generally have a feeling that I can't accomplish anything. Okay. Nothing seems nothing seems out of the question to me. Like, I think that if I put if I had enough time and attention and sometimes money, I don't imagine anything I can't do. You know?
Okay. That tracks?
Yeah. Okay. You've been listening long enough. Yep. And so I I joke with people all the time.
Like, you should be very grateful. I'm a I'm a I'm not a crappy person because I have the kind of the motivation that turns makes cults and, you know, steals your money on on pyramid schemes. Like, I've got that kind of energy. I just use it for good. So but I could definitely like, I I swear to you, I know this probably sounds crazy, and I'll I swear I'll get back to the story really quickly.
But twelve years, 1,900 episodes. I think I am one of fewer than 200 people who has accomplished that many podcast episodes and that much time making a podcast. I have a online community of hundreds of thousands of people. And if you get me into a quiet room and ask me how I'm doing, I will let you know all the ways I'm failing at this. But I don't feel failure.
It's just an honest assessment that will make sense, hopefully, contextually right here, that I don't have enough tools. I don't have enough supplies. I don't have enough hands. Because if I did, I'd I'd reach every living person with diabetes. Like, I know how to do it.
I just don't have the the structure to do it with. Does that make sense? So I don't feel like a failure. I just know there's
Yeah. I mean, it it makes sense. I I was trying to go back and listen to episodes that I haven't heard, and I quickly realized there was no way I was ever catching up.
Well, if you try hard enough, Elizabeth, then don't break my
heart I know. Head.
Okay? And some people do.
Clearly, I have the wrong attitude.
So yeah. You don't have you don't have a can do attitude like I do. Okay? Loser. Now go write your books.
No. So so so anyway, like, I I just don't nothing feels like enough because I'm trying to help Arden. Like, that they're like, I don't know another way to put it. Like, I I grew up flat broke. I own a house now.
Right? Like, I can afford my food. I can pay my bills. No one taught me to do that. I just wouldn't not let it happen.
Does that make sense?
Absolutely.
Okay. Alright. So I feel the same way about Arden and her health. I eventually end up feeling that way about all of you too, but I guess that'll come out in the conversation. So a month into writing on this this website that by the way, I think this is important to note.
It wasn't like ardensday.com or juiceboxpodcast.com. It was literally iweb.something.com forward slash, and then I'm not kidding, maybe 50 characters, ampersands, and, like like, you guys don't know about the Internet if you're if you're too young, the way it started. So, like, you couldn't Google it. It wasn't findable through Google. It you had to literally have this link.
If you did not have that link, you were not on that blog, which, by the way, I didn't know it was a blog still, until a month later when I received an email from England. And this woman in I don't remember where in England, but she sent me a note, and I don't know who she is because back then I didn't know to keep stuff like that. She said that my blog is helping her and her daughter, I think. Her and her child. I'm not sure if it was a son or daughter anymore.
A stranger in England27:10
And then during that conversation, she said about how much my blog was helping her. And I thought, I don't have a blog. That's that that was my reaction when I when I saw that. But my takeaway was that I bombarded 500 people with an email, and I don't know anybody who lives in England. That was my takeaway.
I do not know anybody who lives in England. I do not have an email address from anybody who lives in Europe. My dumb stunt reached England in thirty days, and then that was it. Then I was off to the races. Like, I once told my wife, don't know how to make a million dollars, but if somebody would give me a million, I'm pretty sure I can make 50.
And, like and that and that's how I felt when I realized that woman was was in England. I was like, oh, son. Let's go. Like, I I
That you're re you're really reaching people.
Yeah. Oh, not just that, but, like, it's limitless. It's from a computer. Don't I even have to go build a wall or dig a hole. Are you kidding me?
I know how to work. You know what I mean? Like, I I can do this. So
You're making me think of that that dial up noise.
You know? My god. Listen. You don't know torture till you try to download a photo on dial up, and thirty minutes into it, realize it's not the goddamn photo you wanted. And it's only an eighth downloaded, and you gotta stop it and start over again.
And then when you click on the next one, realize, oh god. This might not be the one I want either. So you know that pain. You don't know the Internet. Yeah.
So I just start going. I just I I open up I probably have this my whole life, but there's a pathway from my heart to my mouth that doesn't have checks and balances. Right? So I just start writing about that. But I quickly realized I can't I can't make it about Arden.
And no disrespect to people who do this, but, like, I didn't wanna write a blog about my daughter. I wanted to write a blog about what it was like to raise a child with type one because I didn't think it even back then, I was like, I don't know. I've never seen one child star turn out well. Like, I don't wanna put this flashlight on her. You know what I mean?
So I started writing what it was like to be a stay at home dad with a daughter with type one diabetes, and I just kept going. And for years, I did it. And this is gonna be before, like, the the advent of, like, Facebook too much. Like, I was just writing that blog. And some some pharma companies, insulin companies, and device manufacturers back then, like, they they were just starting to understand, I think, the power of what was going on online.
And they're they'd have a couple of, like, blogging conferences. I wouldn't get invited to those. I think I was, like, maybe one of the only men doing the thing. And but eventually, my thing just kept getting, like, I guess, more and more I don't know even know how to measure it. Like, I wanted to say bigger, but that's only theoretical from my perspective because the damn thing didn't have a counter.
Thirty-sixth out of four thousand30:10
Until one day, I got a note from a woman named Laura. I won't give her last name, and she worked at Sanofi or Sanofi, depending on which snooty way you wanna say it. And she asked me if I'd come in to their New Jersey location for a lunch meeting about my blog. And I don't remember when this was anymore, but it was a number of years into it. Anyway, we get to the cafeteria at Sanofi, not to a luncheon.
It would have been nice to go to a restaurant. I just wanna point out, but that's okay. We were in the cafeteria at Sanofi, and we sat down. And she put reams of paper in front of me. Again, this is how long ago it was.
Like, piles, stacks, and folders. And she starts saying, we've been looking into diabetes blocks, and, you know, we've been doing a lot of research on them. And I I pointed to all the paper, and I said, that's all the research you've done on diabetes blogs? And she said, no. That's the research we've done on your blog.
Was like, I thought, how is that even possible? There were so many pieces of paper there. Anyway, she goes on to tell me that there are now over 4,000 type one diabetes blogs in the world. 4,000. But she doesn't but that's not how she tells me.
She tells me by saying this, would it surprise you to know you have the thirty sixth most popular diabetes blog in the world? I said, sharp as a tack back then I was. I said, that would only not surprise me if you told me there were 37 blogs. And she said she and she said, there are over 4,000. And I said, well, then, yes, that surprises me.
That was it. That's how I found out I was a popular blogger with a with a one of one of those plastic lunch trays in front of me at the Sanofi cafeteria with a lovely lady named Laura who was trying to build a diabetes community online. She was tasked to do that.
Did you get yourself a T shirt that said I'm 36?
No. I didn't. Because I hope you know from just this half an hour conversation two things. A, this isn't gonna just take an hour, and b, I all I thought was how the hell did 35 people get in front of me? Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah. Once I once I wrapped my head around. Once I stopped being, you know, like, what's that thing when people pretend to be, like, humble? Once I did that once I was doing Humble brag.
Yeah. Once I once I was done going like, oh my god. Only if there's 37, I thought, how are these other 35 sons of bitches getting ahead of me? And so so, anyway, like, that's it. I started to understand my my reach, I guess.
And then it just started to, like, come together. But I want people to know back then, like, there were people, like, taking free products to write blogs. I didn't do any of that. Like, I just I just wrote the blog. I didn't I I actually told my wife, like, I wouldn't even take, like, a Google Ad Sense ad because I thought, well, then how will people know, like, why I'm writing the blog?
You know?
Like What did what does Sanofi want from you?
At that point, I think they were just fact finding. They were looking for ideas. By the way, everyone's always coming to me. Forget Sanofi, and don't and don't put this on one person or another. This happens to me all the time.
People get me on a call and then ask me what they should do. I'm like, am I consulting for you? Feel free to send money. You you you know what I mean? Like, they don't know.
They they they have an idea. She she she worked really actually, she was lovely. She tried really hard. I think Sanofi actually they bailed on it at some point. But actually, one of the things she did I should give her credit for.
One of the things she did is why the defining diabetes series exists, because she created an online dictionary for diabetes terms, and I thought that was brilliant. So I stole that idea and called it defining diabetes and did, like, short episodes, like, defining each term in the podcast. Thank you, Laura. That was real it's a it was a great idea. People don't understand the terms they're throwing around in their own lives very often.
The rooms he didn’t fit in34:23
So, nevertheless, I started getting invited into blogging conferences, and it soon became obvious to me that I was either going to fail miserably or be the only one who succeeded. Because everything I said in those rooms was met by people going like, weird guy. Don't get him. Don't like it. That was the vibe I got back mostly from people.
My favorite story is that one of them I don't know how many hundreds of bloggers they invited to this thing. But they went around the room and everyone introduced themselves. This is gonna sound like a brag, but I don't really care. And they went around the room. Hi.
I'm Elizabeth from doing diabetes. Hey. I'm Bev from diabetes defines me or I'm like, everybody was like know what mean? It's like sweet and sugar and blah blah. It's going around the room.
Right? And they got to me. I was like, I'm Scott. I make a blog called Arden's Day. And somebody from the next table over said, Arden's Day.
How are they gonna know it's about diabetes? And I said, how are they gonna tell the rest of you apart? And then people didn't like me again. So I was like, okay. I think I was I was definitely in a subset because I think people with type one didn't like that I was writing about diabetes and I didn't have it.
And I get that, but I wasn't really writing about diabetes again. I was writing about being the father of a child with type one. But but neither here nor there. People were cordial. I don't want you to, like, misunderstand, but I was not brought into any inner circles.
I wasn't part of the part of the fun. You know what I mean? So but I didn't care. That's not I I couldn't possibly have cared less. I chugged along, did my thing.
And then were what were they doing that was so different from what you were doing, would you say?
I I don't mean to I I I certainly I think everybody's stuff has value, and they're if they find somebody and it helps them, I'm I'm all for it. But the biggest takeaway I had back then was that I felt like everybody was woe is me or this is so hard or it was always that. It was never aspirational. It was always, like, let's all get into a boat and fill it with our tears and see if we can sink it. It's how, like, the stuff felt.
And the more Yeah. The more it was like that, the more popular it ended up being sometimes. And I just had this I had a very clear thought. It sticks in my head. I think it all the time while I'm making this.
It's nice to be up at 2AM treating a low and realize that you're not alone, that there are people all over the world doing the same thing. But wouldn't it be nicer if the blood sugar wasn't low and we were all sleeping? That's that's how I thought about it. Like, I I like the the I don't know. Like, you know, written from the heart, this is hard.
I'm not saying it's not. Like, please don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's not hard or it's not sad, and I've got enough tears to fill a boat. I'm not you know what I mean? Like but I don't know what value that has twenty four seven.
And then I started noticing that there was this thing called diabetes blog week, this lovely woman put together. And I'm gonna forget her name too. Damn it. I'm so sorry, everybody. I'm so bad with names.
But I decided to get involved in it one year where the I think they gave you a writing prompt one day for five days, and everybody wrote to the same prompt. And there were a lot of diabetes blogs. And I wrote my thing, and then I thought, oh, let me just bang around, look, and see what everybody else wrote. And then I realized everybody wrote the same thing. And then that made me think, well, why do we need 4,000 of these if everybody's gonna write the same damn thing?
Mhmm. So I am gonna make sure that no matter what I say, it's not what somebody else would say. Right? Because that that that was another moment for me that that I I would call, like, seminal for me.
You know, when I when I was diagnosed and I was first trying to figure out figure out, like, you know, how do I manage this unmanageable thing and all of the elements of it. And I I just I made this rule with myself that I wasn't going to complain in my head to myself. I wasn't gonna I like, every time I said to myself, oh, this is too hard. This sucks. I was just going to say, okay.
Stop it. And the reason for that was that I just felt like I didn't that wasn't gonna help me, and I it wasn't the way I want to live my life in my head. Yeah. You know?
Yeah. I think the therapist would call that, like, having positive self talk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
But if you if you listen. I'm in the middle of a bad professional moment right now. It's like it's a back end thing, and I could easily I could easily stack up five very real thoughts in my head and make myself sad about it. But instead, I'll stack up five paths forward, and I'll set upon doing those things. And, you know, I just I just shared with Arden this morning.
I said when I I I always feel bad about like, when you see people who are struggling, it's it's terrible. It feels hard to, like, to help them. And I I said to Arden, like, I always say the same thing, I hope it's valuable to people. When you're going through something terrible, I find it valuable to look back at other terrible things I've gone through that are over now and to tell myself that this thing that I'm going through right now is not good, but one day I won't remember it. And that that's sort but but if you sit and think about it constantly, you can't leave it.
It's it's like that you know, it's a I I don't know. I don't read enough, but, you know, there's a lot in literature about, like, rooms you can get into that you can't get out of and time slows down and you never leave. You know what I mean? Like, it's that that's what that is. Like, you just have to set a path out and take a step on it.
And then take another one, and they suck, and that's fine. But one day, the path will be behind you and you're on your way again. So, anyway, I just didn't listen. If if you want me to be critical, I didn't like the tone that a lot of those blogs set, and I didn't wanna be a part of it. What I wanted to be a part of was this is how this works.
This is how you get out of it. Here. Do these things. Let's get free of this thing. Right?
I always tell people I have the worst business model because my business model is to find you, which is incredibly hard, and then talk you into believing that I might have something valuable, which is also incredibly hard to do. And then my goal is for you to get so good at it that you leave me and don't listen to my thing anymore. I'm I'm the worst business person in the freaking world. I ended up I this no. You know, I'm not gonna tell you that.
Never mind. And I was about tell you about a private conversation I had with an advertiser, and I'm pretty sure that's not a good idea. And so but I'll I'll prob by the way, you don't know me. Maybe you do by now, but I'll probably end up telling you that story twenty minutes from now. So so, anyway, I have another moment where an acquaintance of mine, Leanne Callantine, gets to write a book.
“You don’t read” — the book deal41:36
It's it's called Kids First Diabetes Second. And she wrote a diabetes blog that was pretty popular back in the day. Wish I could remember the name of the blog. I don't think I do right now. Anyway, she wrote a book, and she contacted me and asked if I would write a sidebar about she liked something I'd written about, like, how to deal with schools around diabetes.
She wondered if I'd write a sidebar for her book. So I did. And then not long after, her publisher contacted me and asked me. I think they just called me to see how I wanted to be attributed in the book. And just so you guys know, like, I to to to know how little the popularity of it means to me personally, even though you're not gonna believe that if you're listening, I really only care about making it bigger so that it helps Arden.
And even that it helps all of you guys is secondary to me. I'm happy about it, but I'm trying to help Arden just so everybody understands. I'm still doing that thing I set out to do. Anyway, they got ahold of me, and they were like, you know, how do you wanna be attributed in the sidebar? And was like, how don't I just put my name on it?
And they're like, well, don't you want, like, a web address in there? I was like, yeah. It's not really necessary. And they they were like, no. Don't you should put your URL in there.
I was like, yeah. I said if you guys want to, I don't care. Like like, it's I just I thought it was nice, but my real takeaway was that's not actually gonna help anything. Like, even when you guys like, when people make posts online like, I'm watching this one organization right now that does diabetes stuff. They are overspending on production, making this really great looking stuff.
No one's looking at it. And then and then their their reaction to no one looking at it instead of stopping to do it is to just post it more. And I just sit here giggling to myself. I'm like, no one understands how this works. Like, putting my URL in a book sidebar is not gonna make my podcast bigger.
Like, it it it makes me more, what's the word, legitimate in the space, but it doesn't reach people. And that's what I care about. Like, I get like, nobody reads.
Sorry. And what reaches people?
People who need the podcast so that they can come on and tell their stories so I can learn something, and then everybody else will hear it. And maybe my kid will benefit from it. Is no one paying attention to what I'm doing, Elizabeth? It's so like like, I just need people to come on to build this compendium of ideas. That's how I think about it.
And and, obviously, now twelve years later, you guys all mean more to me than you can possibly understand. And I'm thrilled at how far it's reached and and who it helps. I I'm about to put up an episode with a mother from Zimbabwe who listens to the podcast. So it's touching beyond words. I'm literally not good at putting it into words.
It's overwhelmingly positive, and it makes me feel amazing. But I'm not good at talking about that. I'm I'm better at this part. So I I anyway, I'm on the phone. And what I really wanna know from this from this from this book What was she?
She was the is she the editor? Yeah. She's the editor of the book. And I said and she helped run the company. And I mean, it's sort like a publishing house.
You know? And I said, hey. Question. How did she get this book deal? She goes, well, we're always looking for blah blah blah, she's going through the whole thing.
I was like, gotcha. Okay. I kind of stopped and she goes, your sidebar is very good. I said, thank you. She goes, do you ever think of writing a book yourself?
And I was like, no. No. No. I'm not a very good writer. And she goes, no.
You're a very good writer. And I was like, I I don't. Like and, Elizabeth, you don't know. Like, I I I I didn't I didn't pay attention in school. You know what I mean?
And and so she says, well, we'd love it if you wrote a book about diabetes for us. You know? And I said, no. That's not a good idea. And she said, why?
I said, well, it won't be evergreen. And I also am not confident in my knowledge such that it should be written down. And, but I could write a really good book about being a stay at home dad, I think. And she said, let me see an outline. So I hung up the phone.
I'm only gonna tell this part because I think you'll appreciate it because you're writing a book. I hung up the phone, called my wife. I said, hey. I think I might have just gotten a book deal. And my wife goes, to do what?
I said, I'm gonna write a book. And she goes, you don't read. And I said, I don't think we should let the details get in the way. So and she's not wrong. I don't think I've read 10 books in my entire life.
I'm that's not a brag. I'm just I don't read. So, anyway, I said, no. I'm I'm gonna get off the phone with you. She said, can you do it?
I was like, yeah. I said, and if I can, I'll just give the money back. Like, I said, they'll they're gonna for they're gonna give me money in advance. I was like, we'll put it in the bank. Don't touch it.
If I can't write the book, we'll send them back the check with an apology letter. Done. Right? And my wife's like, whatever, man. I'm like, okay.
I gotta go back to work. She's like, I have a real job. And I was like, alright. So she hangs up the phone. I sit down and hammer out a glossary, basically, or just an index of ideas.
Basically, like, liners about what I think of. Like, the the story is front to back. I look at it for a second. I go, that's good. I start to write an email.
It's been an hour since I got off the phone with the editor. And I was smart enough to stop myself and go, she's probably not gonna take me seriously if she thinks I wrote this in an hour. So I sat on it for five or six days, then I emailed it to her. And then she said, this is great. We'll pay you $5,000 to turn in a manuscript.
And I went, okay. So I worked the next six months for $5, which, by the way, I could have sold pencils on the street corner and made more money. And my son often comments that I was maybe the worst stay at home dad while I was making it writing a book about being a stay at home dad. But but I wrote the book, got it to them. And this is a long way of saying that eventually the book comes out, people really like it.
It's been reviewed well, etcetera. But I'm not famous, so the publishing company doesn't put any effort into publicizing me. And then as I'm talking to them more, it comes very apparent to me that they had an author drop out on their slate, and they had a book they need they needed to put a paperback out that that in that quarter or something like that. Like, it was just, like, structurally a thing they had to do. And because I didn't trip over myself making the sidebar, they thought, well, we'll let this chucklehead write the book, and then we'll get it out.
Except I confounded their expectations and wrote a book that they really liked, but they still wouldn't put any money into publicizing it. So I did it myself. I got on NPR. I got on Katie Couric had a a web show on Yahoo, maybe. I got myself on that.
Katie Couric, and what came next48:28
I got myself a bunch of, like, print stuff. The NPR thing was just for my ego. That was just great. Like, I just enjoyed that. And but I did this this thing with Katie Kirk.
I went up to Manhattan. I think we were in the CBS News studios that they were, like, repurposed during the day. So, like, his office is full of people working at CBS News. I'm sure they fired them all. It's being run by an AI and a and a guy at a at a prompt right now.
But there's the all these people in this room, the soundstage is there, and she and I are shooting side by side. And I am just telling the craziest stories, like like, from the book and from my life and etcetera. And she's laughing and laughing and having a great time. Before I realize it, I look up and, like, the CBS News crew, the staff, like, people working at computers, they're not working anymore. They're listening to me, and they're laughing.
And I was like, I am doing this. I end up telling a story about my wife and I having sex in a field in the middle of the night, not realizing that a slow passenger train was about to go by and that we had nowhere to, like, hide. The lights on to the train, people sitting in the windows, us just there, and they're just chugging along. Anyway, I tell all these funny stories and everything, and and I get done. And and she just goes, you're so good at this.
And I was like, thank you. And she goes, we're not gonna use any of that. But that was awesome. And I was like, thank you. And then I left.
And her producer grabbed me, and she's like, seriously, I don't think you told one story we can put into an article or put online. She goes, like, this was fantastic. And I was like, oh, okay. But I made that decision because they they they interviewed a guy before me who was a stay at home dad too. And he was so he was so boring, Elizabeth.
Nothing he said wasn't true. It just I thought to myself, I wouldn't listen to this if I wasn't stuck in this room right now, and I'm not going to make that mistake. So I got up there, and I just, like, lit it up. I went as hard as I could. Anyway, I get an email a couple weeks later from the producer, and she said, well, we did put together a short clip for you.
And I was like, okay. And she goes, and and Katie read your book and liked it, so we're gonna publicize it a little bit. And I was like, thank you. She goes, but the full content of what you did is on everybody's hard drive, and people are watching it at their desks. And I was like, right on.
Thank you. So it's not much longer later. Actually, I was driving to the NPR interview in Philadelphia, and I got a phone call on my big brick phone. Does any remember the gray plastic phones that had the little
I do.
Yeah. Yeah. The Motorola's. I got the call on that, and she's like, hi. I forget her name.
She goes, I produce Katie Couric's television show. And I was like, oh, you're not the person. She goes, no. No. Not the web show, the television show.
And we're doing a panel with with stay at home dads, and we were just in the we were in the pitch meeting for the panel. And Katie looked across the table at me, and she said, why don't we have that Scott Benner guy doing this? And I said to her, yeah. Why don't you? Because I was on my way to NPR.
I was like, it's possible I'm gonna be, like, famous, like, in a couple more days. So, you know, I was like I'm like, I'll do it. You know? So, anyway, I go up to New York City, and it's a panel, and it gets done. And I'm walking off stage just excited that they got me a town car, and I was gonna drive home in a town car like a famous person.
And I'm walking off stage out the back. I'm gonna go out the door or out on the street, and I'm gonna leave. And a hand grabs my shoulder, and I turn around, and it's Katie Kirk. I've never gotten to tell her this, I'm sure I never will. But she said, you are really very good at this.
And I said, what is it I'm good at, Katie Kirk, from the Today show? Like like you know? Because I don't know what she's talking about. And she said, talking to people? You're really good at talking to people.
And she's like, when I didn't talk to you, when I ever when I threw to the other three guys, she's like, there's 600 people in this audience. They were all mad at me. They were mad at me for not talking to you. She's like, you made them laugh on purpose. You made them gasp on purpose.
They were following your every word. She's like, you are really good at talking to people. And I said, thank you. It was twenty thirteen, I think, and I left. I didn't think of another thing about it until people stopped reading, another thing the Internet did.
We suddenly someone found a picture of Leonardo DiCaprio looking fat on a boat. Nobody read anymore. I don't know how to tell you differently, but that is what happened. Like, we switched to pictures, and people were, like, reading? This is bullshit.
And so I started realizing that my clicks were going down. I was doing a couple million clicks a year on my blog, and and I was really starting to figure out diabetes a little bit too. And I was, you know, writing about how to do things or how we were doing things, and and it was helping people. I was getting a lot of good feedback. But I start seeing people are not reading anymore.
And then it puts me into a panic because this thing that I built, now 2013, but almost seven years after I started writing that blog, it's gonna die. Like, I'm gonna get phased out by a platform change or by a by a societal change. And it panicked me. I thought about it for a whole year. And then one day, I just thought Katie Couric said I was good at talking to people.
And I grew up my whole life listening to talk radio. I love listening to Howard Stern. I love Kevin Smith's podcast where he just talks endlessly about god knows what. I like listening to people talk. And she said I was good at talking, and I'll make a podcast about diabetes.
That's what I thought. 2014, I started thinking about it. And I bought a microphone and took the leap. And in 2015, right after Christmas, I tried my big idea out, which was I was gonna take my most popular blog post and read them into the microphone, which as you can imagine so it took me about ten minutes of reading to realize, like, this is this isn't right. It's not gonna work.
I was bored by it. I had the same feeling I had listening to that guy talk about him being a state owned dad. I was like, ugh. If I wasn't doing this, I wouldn't be listening to this. And and I just thought, well, this isn't right.
I'm not gonna I I have to figure this out. But while I was trying to figure it out, this kid named Adam Lasher was on American Idol, and he had type one diabetes. And his his uncle was Carlos Santana, if I'm remembering correctly. And he's on there, and I sent him an email back before the Internet worked the way the Internet works now. I don't know how I found him, but I figured out how to find him, and I emailed him.
And I invited him to be a guest on my type one diabetes podcast, which Elizabeth was not a lie because I had, in fact, put the podcast online. I did technically have I did technically have a type one diabetes podcast. And Adam and I made did an interview together. I don't know if it's any good. I couldn't begin to tell you.
But I like talking to him. And I put it up, and I already had a really good following online. So it kinda, like, spun up and started to take off. And by the end of that year, I had figured out what I was doing. I made an episode called the time I decided to share where I just talked about why I'm doing this.
I got to an episode where I don't even know what it's about. It's episode 11. It's called bold with insulin. And I it's not even about that. It's just I think in the app in the conversation somewhere, I said I found the nerve to be bold with insulin, and then I made that the title.
Anyway, I was making that podcast and chugging along. And a couple years later, I'm still doing it. Once a week, I'm putting up an episode, and it's getting hard. It's a a lot of effort and time. And I was at that point, I think I had one job in diabetes.
I was writing a blog for Omnipod. I think I would write them six yeah. I I owed them six pieces a year. I think they paid me a thousand dollars for each piece. That was the only that was the all the money in the world.
I made I made $6,000 a year. You know?
You were raking it in.
I really was almost I I was thinking about where to invest, talking a lot about the S and P 500 people. And and so they have a changeover, a turnover in the company, and they bring in a new person a new person named Natalie in in in PR. And Natalie puts me on a call like she should with everybody in her group, and she wants to talk about what I'm gonna write for her blog next year. And I said, I don't wanna write for your blog anymore. I just want you to give me the money, and I'm gonna make a podcast with the money.
I'm doing it already, but I need ads. And she's like, what do you mean? I'm like, I can't I said, it takes a lot more time than the writing. Like, I had to tell my wife that it makes money. That was literally what I said.
And so and I kept explaining it, kept explaining it. Nobody was following along. This is a long conversation, me talking, like, really selling. You know? And I eventually said, listen.
I'm gonna help people do better with their diabetes. You'll be the people that brought it to them. And then that voice, like, on a conference call, Natalie's voice, she just said, I understand what he's talking about. Let him do it. And that was it.
She gave me $6,000. I gave them ads. It legitimized the podcast because the podcast had ads on it, which was helpful. And it attracted Dexcom at some point, And I that's how I learned kinda more of the business side of it while I was growing the podcast.
And It's interesting that advertising legitimized the podcast.
Well, why would somebody buy an ad on something nobody was listening to?
Yeah. I guess that makes sense.
Right.
So One of the things
Go ahead.
One of one of the things I wanted to ask you about was the bold with insulin because I find that to be really I mean, just a great phrase and one that was helpful to me, in part because I think that endocrinologists kind of tell you the opposite oftentimes. Right?
Yeah. Well, it's a great example of how the the community builds the podcast. Excuse me. It turns out when you talk nonstop for an hour, it's hard on your voice. Sorry.
I'm sure you'll get to ask a second question at some point. So I I agree with you. So it's not so so people understand, to this day, I don't preplan an episode of the podcast. I do not know what I'm gonna talk about before I start talking about it. Even if I'm doing, like like, aces and paces with Erica, I just say to Erica, like, hey.
I wanna talk about the aces. And I'm like, come ready. And then she comes ready, and I don't know what I'm talking about. And I just start talking. So that episode, episode 11, I don't know what that was about.
That was just me opening up the microphone and talking as far as I'm concerned. I didn't preplan it. I also didn't plan to call it bold with insulin. I wasn't making a a thing. The end of that bold with insulin story is that some years later, I saw people on Instagram talking to each other and saying you just have to be bold with insulin.
And when I saw it, I thought, that's not a coincidence. That's me. She's my lady in England, this lady on Instagram talking about being bold with insulin. I said a thing on a podcast, and two years later, a woman on Instagram is telling another woman on Instagram to be bold with insulin. Mhmm.
That's the kind of stuff that gets me going. That's where I start thinking, give me one. I'll make 10. Give me 10. I'll make a 100.
Like, that kind of thing. And it's you know?
It's a phrase that is really a mind shift. But it's not but
I didn't pluck it out. They did. Like, the listeners plucked it out. That's that's the important thing about the podcast. The the thing you have to understand about the podcast is that I'm not a genius writing down Torah.
Like, it's not the Torah. And and for non Jews, it's not it's not the bible, okay, just in case you don't know the word. Also, I'm not Jewish. I don't know where all my Jewish phrasing comes from, Elizabeth, but nevertheless. And so so I don't it's not like I'm an expert, and I go, hey.
Here it is. A b c d. Do it in this order. You win. I tell stories.
I tell stories about how things work for me. I tell stories about how things occur to me. I say things about, like, pre bolusing, but it's a tug of war. I say things people wouldn't say, and it's all the reason I told you this whole story is because it's how it gets to this. Like, my my insistence to not do things the way everybody else is doing it.
That's an important part of it. Not caring what people think. I left out the part where where I started this podcast. That community came after me. Right?
I got I got I got somebody came to me and said, you're gonna hurt somebody sharing how you take care of your daughter. I don't like the way you make your podcast. And I was like, well, I didn't ask your opinion. And god thank god I didn't listen to that person, who, by the way, to this day still shit talks me twelve years later to people and thinks I don't know. I know.
Okay? In case you hear this, and you will. Okay. So so, anyway, not the point. The point is is that, like, if I listen to the way things were done, none of this is gonna happen.
And so whatever it is that's me or how I occurs to me or whatever, I don't know how to quantify it. What me and the stupid microphone and me talking. Whatever whatever that makes, other people, it's not their job to follow it like the Torah. It's their job to hear the parts that make sense to them and build their own story with it, and then to go out in the world and share it with other people so that we can all continue to build that story together. Until one day, no one's gonna walk into an endocrinologist and not be told to count their fat when they're bolusing.
Like, I'm gonna fix that. Trust me. Okay? Like like, that's that that's the thing. By the way, it's literally my only goal.
My only goal is to get people to, like, bolus for the food they're actually eating, have their settings right, time their insulin well. I have three goals. That's it. If it's not obvious every time I'm talking, I'm doing a bad job. You should have your settings right.
You should be preballsing meals when it's appropriate. You should understand the impact of your food and cover it appropriately. That's it. I mean, you wanna I can add on to it forever. It might be nice to have a little GLP mixed in there for some people.
Like, I there's other things you can do. Like, don't get me wrong. Those three things would save the world, the world that uses insulin. Right? Those three
What I love what I love about what you just said, Scott.
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