Scott Benner 8/6/21 Scott Benner 8/6/21

#520 Chuck Alpuche, Insulet EVP, COO

Chuck Alpuche is the EVP and COO of Insulet. He oversaw the creation of the Omnipod manufacturing floor and he has a very deep voice.

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DISCLAIMER: This text is the output of AI based transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors and should not be treated as an authoritative record. Nothing that you read here constitutes advice medical or otherwise. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making changes to a healthcare plan.

Scott Benner 0:00
This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries g vo hypo pen. Find out more at G Vogue glucagon.com forward slash juice box. Hello friends and welcome to Episode 520 of the Juicebox Podcast.

Back in 2019, I was invited to speak at the Omni pod headquarters in Massachusetts, I gave a little talk to all the employees about why what they do is so important to people like me and my daughter and everyone like you. While he was there, I was given a tour. I didn't just get to see the offices. But I saw the actual place the production floor where on the pods are made. And let me tell you it is as futuristic and as amazing as you can imagine. Anyway, this tour was given to me by a man named Chuck and by how on assuming he was I had no idea of the important position that he held it insolent. He's just very humble. And I found his sincerity and his excitement about the production to be infectious. And I've wanted to talk to him since then, but he's not the kind of guy who gives interviews so it took me a little while but I'm really excited for you to hear Chuck story about how we got to Omni pod, how they designed the floor where the production happens and and so much more. Please remember while you're listening that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. We're becoming bold with insulin. Just one ad today somebody get it out of the way for you right now so we can listen to chuck straight through. g vo hypo pan has no visible needle, and it's the first pre mixed autoinjector of glucagon for very low blood sugar in adults and kids with diabetes ages two and above. Not only is chivo hypo pen simple to administer, but it's simple to learn more about. All you have to do is go to G Volk glucagon.com forward slash juicebox g vo shouldn't be used in patients with insulin, Noma or pheochromocytoma. Visit g Vogue glucagon.com slash risk. Just a second here. Before we get started, I need to tell you that Chuck's voice is incredibly deep. It is so deep that his recording equipment has trouble capturing the the richness and timbre in his voice. If you put Chuck next to Sam Elliot, and gave him lines from The Big Lebowski, you'd think to yourself, hmm, Sam Elliott has a really high pitched voice,

Chuck Alpuche 2:50
Potter's and folk. So it's got you got to get back to do another plant tour.

Scott Benner 2:55
Oh, well. Alright, so we're recording now. So just I'll introduce, I'll introduce you. So

Unknown Speaker 2:59
you don't have to.

Scott Benner 3:00
That'll be easy. I'll do that later. Just let me tell you that the minute I left the plant tour that I took, which now I think might have been a couple of years ago, it feels like I thought I want to interview this person. Because I just wanted to, I wanted to understand how you get to a position in your life where you're the right choice to design a manufacturing floor. So I know that sounds like maybe not what you expected. But, Chuck, I want to know where you went to college and what you thought you were going to do with your life and what path you took.

Chuck Alpuche 3:34
So that's a great question. And I grew up in Philadelphia. My family's still down in the Philadelphia area. I went to school down there. I actually started studying food science because I grew up in the restaurant industry. And I thought that, you know, that's what I was going to do. And growing up, I started thinking to myself, you know, you're working all the holidays. And, you know, is this really what I want to do with my life the rest of my life. And so I changed majors I actually moved over to business with an emphasis on industrial engineering, organizational dynamics at the University of Pennsylvania, which sets it simply, too. So when I graduated, I had a brief stint with the Detroit Lions that didn't last long with injuries and then got a job with PepsiCo. Okay, hold

Scott Benner 4:26
on. So you just you just skipped right over the fact that you sounds like you played for the lions for half a second. So did you play? Did you fail? Do you play football at Penn? No, no, I

Chuck Alpuche 4:36
did in my undergrad Delaware Valley University. Okay. Yeah, so I did skip over it because it was such a long time ago. It was only a year right. Then I hooked up with Pepsi in Philadelphia and started off as a third shift sanitation supervisor which is critical in plant food processing plant and then moved around with Pepsi. To go different parts of the country back to headquarters in New York, I ran their international operations, I ran our concentrate operations, which was a GM assignment. And then I moved to and ran North American operations. And I retire after 30 years to the day, one of the last corporations with the full pension and benefits, which was excellent. So I retired. And there's wanted to spend more time with family with all the travel that was required in my role as a head of operations, especially internationally. It was a prime time to spend with my family, especially my kids are so important to me and everything to me. So I would wake up and make them breakfast, driving to school, go play some stuff, pick them up at school, was just a wonderful time of my life and the perfect time to be able to retire. But then I started getting calls for consulting. Pepsi folks are everywhere running businesses, and I was consulting starting operations and supply chains for a lot of companies, internationally and domestically. Some folks were asking me to come back full time, which I had said no, I was enjoying my balanced life, as I called it. And then I started consulting for excellence. I got the confirmation that and that was a real easy one to say yes to full time. So I've been full time for five years now. Yeah.

Scott Benner 6:29
The I guess it might sound odd to some people, you know, Pepsi, insulin pumps, but it's the process of setting up the floor and understanding materials and workflow. That kind of stuff is, I would imagine, excuse me, I would imagine runs over top of anything, you're manufacturing, right. It doesn't need to be food. It doesn't need to be a medical device. It's it's, I mean, like, why would they? I know you said there's Pepsi people everywhere. But do you know how they found you? Do you know why they were looking for you? In select?

Chuck Alpuche 7:03
Yeah, yeah. So the Chief Human Resource Officer was x PepsiCo. So he knew me at Pepsi. He actually called home I wasn't home. My wife that answered and said, Brad call and we'd like you to look this company up. And I'll be honest, I looked him up. And this was December 2015. I looked them up online. And I said buddy calls back I'm not here. I'm not gonna consulting. A lot of positive news. Online back then in 2015. With product recalls and warning letters from the FDA I saw nothing positive from our Potter's but then bad call it and I did answer. And he said, No, come and meet the new team and see the product and all the potential we have. So because of my relationship with Brad I did. I came up I met Pat and Shea see their commitment to turn this place around. I said, Yes, I look consultant and about six weeks into consulting. They had started talking to me to do full time. I commute from Connecticut every week. Stay up here. I just love what we're doing. I love our mission. I love our team. The potential the trajectory for growth and changing people's lives living with diabetes, is why I'm still here five years later, after retirement,

Scott Benner 8:23
do you have any personal connection to type one or type two diabetes?

Chuck Alpuche 8:27
I have family members and when I traveled internationally, I have very, very good friends I still keep in touch with especially when I travel overseas to visit my sights. Live with diabetes. My daughter's best friend I got to see firsthand as grown up she was our star athlete in school. And I got to see what she had to go through living with diabetes what her parents has carried me caregivers had to live through and I just said I want to change change that left I want to change it like for that individual and then more individuals. Yeah. To me it's it's personally why I'm here five years later, still don't want them doing it to me to Connecticut

Scott Benner 9:14
and not being a short order cook and a golf pro.

Chuck Alpuche 9:19
No, not at all. Not at all. Again, I that was fun while it lasted but you know to your question on why Pepsi they here it's and I always say to folks is PepsiCo taught you quality first. That was our focus in every single plant. I had dozens and dozens of plants reporting to me. When you're producing billions and billions of cans and bottles a year you better get it right as you get a lot of folks sick very quickly. So believe it or not because it's soda. As we said the focus on quality was job one and when I came here I expected the biggest In 2015, the warning wasn't quite there. So I just wanted to bring that mindset here. Why?

Scott Benner 10:07
I think you definitely have there's, my daughter's been using Omni pod since she was four. And she turned 17 the other day. And the company has clearly not just, like turned a corner that would that wouldn't be giving it enough credit. It's somebody inside said, we're going to do this differently. And it just changed direction. In my opinion. I i've always, I mean, if I'm being honest, Chuck Pryor, I always

Chuck Alpuche 10:34
thought it was a company set up to be sold. And now it feels to me like a group of people who want to make insulin pumps. That's exactly right. And that's the biggest compliment that me personally and my team that we can get is I tell folks and I did a call last week with with a potter was in the audience and said, It's been three and a half years since they had upon fail. That's the couple of minutes that we get, yes, you saw our plant. We built a world class manufacturing operation here. But the pride is the quality improvements that have come out of that plant and our plants in China.

Scott Benner 11:12
So when you got there in 2015, what was can you say what some of your first direction was? But what were your ideas?

Chuck Alpuche 11:23
Let's see what there was many of them. You know, it was interesting, we have single days of inventory. We didn't have very good relationships with suppliers. And to make quality starts with every single component. We have dozens and dozens of components in there. But we had to get those more reliable, more consistent. So my number one priority first was to work with our suppliers to improve quality and consistency and reliability. And I think we've we've been working out for five years and continue to work it. Secondly, you saw the act of manufacturing, as I said is one of the first things I was very, very surprising to chasing the team's credit. I was surprised that, you know, a device that people's lives depended on to monitor diabetes was single sourced out of China. Again, I ran an international operation, I've been to China 100 times plus, I knew the volatility. So as we build capacity to support our growth, it was also to build outside of China for risk mitigation, redundancy. And that's where that's where the idea of I came from. So that was our supplier quality, redundancy, risk mitigation and building capacity. And that's where actin various manufacturing facility came from. So that's what I focused on first when I got here, right?

Scott Benner 12:54
I have to admit, when I saw it, I didn't know what I was gonna see. And there's this giant, you know, it's a cleanroom, right? It's it's completely sealed. There's, there's people working in there, there are robots moving things around the machinery that's that's putting things together and producing things. It's it looks like it's out of a movie. Like if I took a camera in there and did some close up shots and intersperse them in a Marvel film, you'd think I was making Tony Stark's costume. You know what I mean? Like, it really is fascinating. And does that come? Like when you decide to do that? You just say hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna stay here full time, you get you're in charge of that project. Is that right? That's correct, right? Do you then bring in a team? Or do you can you how do you build the team that's going to make this happen? We

Chuck Alpuche 13:41
brought in a team of very, very experienced automation engineers, upgraded the engineering department. I brought two other folks out of PepsiCo that used to run my operations out of retirement. And I say that because I think that says a lot about intellect and ambition that people come out of retirement to come and work here. But I knew I could depend on them to focus on quality first, they got the mindset, it starts with every single component. So one of them moved to China to fix the operation over there and improve the operation, while the other one manage the day to day building the active manufacturing and he had built plants for me at PepsiCo. So it's bringing in the right mindset, the right experience. And we wanted to build a world class manufacturing facility. So to your point on robotics and automation, it's funny folks up towards that it looks like a transformer movie. So it's funny cinema. It is but of all the robots. What we're really proud of that you don't say you may have remembered I pointed out the blue flashing that was taking place at the different cells as we call where we're building the sub assemblies, to eventually become a pod is the quality, the camera technology that we put in In each of the assemblies, there's 47, or seven camera technologies that are measuring every single quality attribute that wasn't measured before. And you know, a 10th of a second, we can decide, pass or fail. And by doing that, you're almost guaranteed if you will a perfect pot at the end

Scott Benner 15:20
of the production. Does the does the system learn? does it teach itself?

Chuck Alpuche 15:27
Well teaches us with the data collection, we're collecting so much data, as I said, over 2 billion quality metrics per year per line, we're gathering the data, then we take that data and we work back with our component suppliers, globally so that we can transfer those learnings to China manufacturing, which are distinct components. So they're teaching us, I don't know if I would say to robotics, or teaching or learning themselves, but we can adjust our automation and robotics based off of those learnings. Yeah.

Scott Benner 16:01
So the more pods you make, the more data you have back, the better decisions you can make in the future on things. Absolutely. What's the what is the rate of rejection does? Do you see a lot of part Yeah, I

Chuck Alpuche 16:14
don't want to get into specifics, I will say in the beginning, much higher than I would have ever anticipated. Again, but as I said, from the beginning, working with our suppliers to get more reliable, more consistent with quality. So we had a fairly high rejection rate from any manufacturing, best practice standards. But that has significantly significantly reduced the waste and scrap because, again, over the years, a couple of years just with those learnings, and all that data we've collected, we're able to go back with data to those suppliers and improve their systems and processes.

Scott Benner 16:51
Oh, I see. Oh, okay. So you have these better relationships. And I guess that even makes it easier for you to walk back and say, Hey, guys, look, this is coming like this. This is what we think will fix it, and then they work with you and get it together.

Chuck Alpuche 17:05
Absolutely. And it's all data driven. It's it's not emotions, it's no feelings. It's strictly the data coming off of that camera technology I talked about.

Scott Benner 17:14
It's amazing. You're making me for some reason, think about automated driving like Tesla, like they talk about all the time, they need more cars driving on the road to get into more situations so they can get more data and, and keep fine tuning. It's

Chuck Alpuche 17:29
really, really fascinating. It is powerful. Yeah, people always say it really is, especially on our pod when you're talking dozens and dozens of components and you know, 10s of millions of pounds a year that we're producing that many gather a lot of data. Absolutely.

Scott Benner 17:44
You got more than a couple days worth of back log made now. A couple months, maybe? Yes. So when when COVID happened, and and things are starting to not move around the world as quickly. You had a you had a couple of months to. But did it ever get in? Do you ever gotten to a place where you thought who would this is closer? Were you able to keep your your stuff flowing? No.

Chuck Alpuche 18:11
I guess the camera technology, the quality improvements we're making with our components are what we're most proud of. But I would say the unexpected. We talked about when we were building acting to support our growth, but also for risk mitigation, redundancy. It proved itself in the, you know, in the pandemic, we did not skip a beat. As we continue to grow double digits, we did not miss one shipment to one of our customers. And we're very proud of that. Because a lot of a lot of supply chains for going down scaling back. People don't realize we have plants in China and lost production capacity in China when COVID hit their first I had packed into continue to produce. And then when it came here, we got China back up and running. So we had both facilities running, we have lots of inventory that was never a risk to our partners, which we're most proud of. And that was the benefit of building an active and having a redundancy here closest to our largest customer.

Scott Benner 19:14
That's comforting. I mean, as a person who, you know, I watch my daughter put on a pot every three days. So it's got so much to do with her health and her the ease that she lives that you have to think of it just going away is frightening.

Chuck Alpuche 19:28
Ya know, it's we're not allowed to miss shipments to our partners as we always talk to our folks. And as you saw, the tour we have printed on the walls is every platter every time and it just simply means that we are able to ship the pod every single time and customer expects it. And it works every single time as intended.

Scott Benner 19:48
taxon so I have a question because I know people listening wonder all the time, like do you think the form factor of the pod will ever change?

Chuck Alpuche 19:58
We're always looking at improvement, the form factor, you know, we do hear from our customers, they would prefer a smaller pot. On the other hand, we also hear we would like a larger reservoir. So there's a lot of work on, you know, innovation form factor improvements. Do I think that someday? Yes, I mean, we are always going to look at improving the pod. And we have a lot of customer demands, but it's how do you make a smaller pot with a larger reservoir, but we have a lot of great folks in our innovation team in r&d that are working on those projects especially.

Scott Benner 20:35
That's excellent. That's now how, if you made a shift in I don't know, let's say it was narrower but wider. I'm just making something up. How do you how do you seamlessly transfer from what making one to the other in your act implant? You have to retool? And I mean, what kind of a kind of a process in your mind would that be?

Chuck Alpuche 20:59
Nobody some retooling? Obviously, but we knew that we had to be flexible, you will become less flexible with automation and robotics, obviously, than our China facilities, which are much more manual. But we knew that we would need the flexibility for change. You know, we also run the pod for Amgen, or Leicester, which is a different type requires a changeover. So there is some flexibility in automation and robotics. When you're up close, you will say that some are just basically rubber arms that can be transferred out. So

Scott Benner 21:43
yeah, that's interesting,

Chuck Alpuche 21:44
we'll be able to change for the innovation that should never stop or slow down or innovational

Scott Benner 21:49
attacks on what, um, how many pods? Can you get through there in a day?

Chuck Alpuche 21:57
We don't share exact numbers, but I don't think that's public. Okay. But very high speed that folks didn't think was imaginable. It is a amazing device. So complex with so many components, the speeds that we are running today, I have to say, Okay,

Scott Benner 22:19
alright, that's fair enough. It's is it making more today than it did when I was there?

Chuck Alpuche 22:25
Absolutely. I see. Yes, I mean, highly automated lives, highly technical, require some way of uptime. If we've been saying and show folks, the team has done a great job of ramping up and learnings. We put our second line in as you know, eventually we'll have our third line up and running by the second half of this year. And as you saw on the tour, we built capacity for fourth line. So as we learn, we improve and build into the next line and then make the improvements on the current line. So yes, we are running a lot more pods. And we did that a couple of years ago when you were here. That's that's really something.

Scott Benner 23:01
Alright, I have a question that I don't know if you can answer or not. If you are making new products that are coming out sometime, are you? I'm assuming that they run through the same line as the one you have now?

Chuck Alpuche 23:15
Yes, okay. Yes. So that's a good example, dashboard run inactive, just like arrows and eventually op five and Jen. Yes. Okay. So

Scott Benner 23:25
you run shifts, arrows, pods run for a while, and then dash pods run and on the pod five eventually will run through there as well. Absolutely. Very cool. I don't know how to ask this. Do you use? Do you start producing on the pod five pods before you have the okay from the FDA? Or do you wait for the moment and then start making them and then create a back a backlog of them and then make it go public? What's the way to do that?

Chuck Alpuche 23:58
It'll be our comfort zone based off our questions from the FDA is we may build a little bit ahead of time at risk, meaning there's very low risk based off the questions in a submission. Because we want to make sure that we have product available, that we're highly confident that the FDA will approve and so we will have some product that will today it's approved, we're ready to ship to our partners. That's right. That's the risk we take financially. And we did discuss that in our meeting is based off the FDA feedback and a comfort level. How are we? And how much do we want to produce ahead of time that the minute it's approved that we're available for shipment?

Scott Benner 24:39
How this is maybe a really like geeky question, but does the algorithm because the algorithm is going to live on the board? I'm right in Omnipod five, did that change the power that you have to like the batteries the same? I guess is the question. Well,

Chuck Alpuche 24:57
that's a very good question. I mean, because they are Rhythm is different, regardless whether it's on a pod or in a PDM. We're taking much more data collection, much more metrics on the on the pod five, yes, it does use more power. But, again, the benefit of building act and also, especially in Massachusetts building, our US manufacturing is we are right here on site with our r&d team. So we work very, very closely with them. No one that has more power, we're able to work with our battery suppliers to and we've significantly improved the performance of our batteries. Also,

Scott Benner 25:36
no kidding. Yes, I have to admit the the setup, there's kind of uncommon, it feels uncommon, like you're in an office that I was there to speak. So I'm you're in an office setting, then you go to a big room, you're speaking to somebody, and then you just walk down the hall and go through a couple of doors, and then suddenly, you're in a manufacturing place. It's, it's kind of, there's something I thought while I was there, this is kind of great, because everybody's in one spot. If and that does really bear out, I guess, like being all in one location is valuable for you.

Chuck Alpuche 26:07
It's very, very beneficial. A lot of folks ask, you know, how can you build manufacturing in Massachusetts, and be cost competitive, etc. But there's so many benefits of being on site with our r&d folks, our global engineering teams, our global purchasing team, you know, supplier engineering to work with our suppliers with real time data, especially if we have component concerns. So there's a lot of benefits of being on site right here, folks can you know, walk down the home and work with the manufacturing folks for immediate problem solving? Now?

Scott Benner 26:45
What's the, in your mind? What inside of the pod? is the most delicate? Is the Is it the injection process? Or like? What do you most amazed by this happening inside of that little thing? I guess is my question.

Chuck Alpuche 27:02
Well, I'll tell you, there's so many. I mean, when you next time you come we might have to go in the cleanroom. So you get up close and personal when you see the intricacy of the components. You know, our chassis I call, it's the transmission, it makes the pipe work. You know, the kanila forming the geometry required, and we automated that to make sure that we can be as consistent with the curves and forming your nail heads, etc. It's probably the kanila format is probably the most fascinating part of the process with inside the pod that amazes me. Okay. All right.

Scott Benner 27:51
So you're I'm gonna ask a question. I've been dying. This is such a strange question. But But Chuck, the people listening are going to be thrilled to ask, okay, great. So when you when you put the pot on, you start the process for insertion. There's this clicking that happens. And it's not Oh, and then the the insertion happens, the insertion doesn't always happen. On the same number of clicks, is that clicking tension building? Like, what is that whole process? What's happening when I'm hearing the clicking?

Chuck Alpuche 28:24
It's just the release of the Kenya. So I don't know why there be multiple clicks. It's something I'll take back to my team, but it's just the release of the Kenyan

Scott Benner 28:37
skin. Okay, so yeah, it's not it's not that the it's not that the candle is moving. There's this I always take it as a building of tension. But is that not right is the is the needle always at the correct tension?

Chuck Alpuche 28:51
Very, I will say, always at the specific tension levels that are supposed to be which are extremely tight tolerances.

Scott Benner 29:01
So when you push the button, and it goes, and it's just kind of goes, click, click, click, and then bang, and it goes, bangs the wrong word, but it goes, right sometimes, like, I watched my daughter, like, she counts them in her head. 1234 like she's trying to read it yourself. But sometimes, sometimes it'll go like six, and she'll be like, oh, six. And I just don't I guess I'm dying to understand what that is only because it is though. So while I'm giving you feedback, and not that I think you could change it, but I think that that click being audible is if you could make one thing different about the pod, I bet you making that click audible would be what most people would vote for.

Chuck Alpuche 29:46
Okay, I will definitely take that back to Archie.

Scott Benner 29:49
I have no idea if it's something you can do.

Chuck Alpuche 29:50
I don't know quite frankly, I will commit that we can do we can easily look at it. We have extremely tight tolerances for that one. emila discharge Yeah, we'll look at that. super interesting.

Scott Benner 30:04
I just I'm fascinated by the whole thing actually. Are you involved at all with the, with the adhesive process? Or is that just a part in your mind? I mean, obviously, it's because it's a components, political component. Because it's Here's to the skin of the planner, I'm involved in just as I am with the batteries in the canyon. So yes, I'm involved. So is the dance with adhesive always strong enough to hold the pot on, not so strong that it causes skin irritation is that the

Chuck Alpuche 30:40
is that kind of salutely. And I've learned more about adhesives since I've been here than I ever thought I would know about adhesives. But that's exactly the science behind it is, obviously we can make it much stronger. But you know, you don't want to irritate the skin, you know, so what's the right balance for three day wear waterproof, without irritating the skin. So we work very, very closely, as I said, with all our suppliers, but also with our adhesive suppliers. I'm always trying to prove that. And again, we learned a lot. We didn't only build manufacturing redundancy, but we built redundancy of all of our components also. So that even when some of our component suppliers went down for COVID, we always had a backup. It's the same with our adhesive. And that's why I learned a lot about adhesive. I thought it would just be as simple as calling a three amber so on and so give us an idea. So for the pilot, it isn't it wasn't but we we do have a second supplier. And that is the science behind the a piece of us. That's really interesting.

Scott Benner 31:45
Any any surprises? like learning about the medical, the medical world? Did anything really shock you? was it? Was it impactful meeting people that have diabetes? Because there's something that sticks with you Like if if you were out of this for 10 years, and I asked you, you know, What do you remember about this? Well, what do you think it is?

Chuck Alpuche 32:11
It's where Potter's come to talk in our town hall meetings, we had the ribbon cutting, we had a met the groundbreaking. The Potter stories, how this device has changed people's lives positively helping more simply manage diabetes. And I said I got I saw what my daughter's best friend went through. And her parents always remember the potter stories more than building an act and or survival for COVID. With supply, I mean, they're all great things. And a team deserves all the credit. But the potter stories and you know, folks laugh, you know, I'm a driver driver. Results focused. But when I heard a potter stock, I'm a big baby, I've got tears in my eyes, I'm crying. That's what it's about, you know, the ribbon cutting when our Potter smoke. I had to get up and talk afterwards. And I couldn't. It's that's what I will remember. And as I said the biggest compliment is not building a world class manufacturing as we did in folk setting. It's the quality improvements we made in hearing folks say that they haven't had a failure in three and a half years of upon failure. So that's that's what it's about. That's what I'll remember.

Scott Benner 33:29
Yeah, I really, I think she should get a ton of credit because I know you guys have people come in to talk to the employees all the time so that people who don't have a connection to type one diabetes can understand why the device is so important. And I've given that talk before at a national sales meeting, and I looked down at one point, I was like, I am making everyone cry.

Unknown Speaker 33:51
I didn't mean I was one of them. me Oh, it's okay. I thought oh, I didn't I didn't mean to make everyone cry like

Scott Benner 33:59
it but but it is really great too. I mean, because honestly, somebody has a, you know, they have a certain skill, they're looking for a job. They're not necessarily out in the workforce, saying to themselves, I want to impact the lives of people with diabetes, they they get a job. And it's I think it's really important for them to understand what this thing does. It's not just a it's not just a stapler, you know,

Chuck Alpuche 34:19
it isn't I can say that with all sincerity. As I said, as I was retired, I commute, you know, three hours every weekend, just about, you know, I live up here in an apartment by myself away from family. But it really is about positively changing people's lives living with diabetes. And that's why I'm still here. And that's why we're all here.

Scott Benner 34:41
Yeah, I have a couple more questions for you. And then I'll let you go. First of all, I want you to know I was a little nervous because you are giving me a run for my money with how deep my voices I'm gonna sound like a soprano in this episode of the of the podcast, but I'm also excited to be talking to someone who doesn't hear any of my Philly accent and thank you Strange so

Chuck Alpuche 35:02
well, it's cuz we're both from Philly. Finally, go here, both of us with our Philly accent water. Where's the,

Scott Benner 35:12
the emails about the word water that I get are just unrelenting. I know, I don't say it correctly, but I can't stop myself. When I say it correctly, it seems wrong to me. So I'm stuck. So I, if you can, I just want to ask you a question about on the pod five is significant impact on people's lives? You think?

Chuck Alpuche 35:39
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. You know, you just look at all the pivotal data, the clinical data, I, that's, I can't wait for the launch of Omni pod five, I think it's significant. takes it to a whole nother level of improving people's lives living with diabetes, managing their diabetes, I've seen the videos, as I said, from partners and caregivers. We've shared them with our suppliers to make sure they understand the importance of their role in making sure that we always always have the best quality product, especially for this new launch. I think it's one of the most anticipated launches in the diabetes, med device industry in history. So I'm very, very excited. To be launched quickly,

Scott Benner 36:34
I am too I keep imagining people who have struggled for a long time, and have never been able to really figure out how how to use their insulin in a real, you know, in a in a well timed way. And just the idea of that being lifted off them, you know, somebody with an A one C in a in a in a high range that that could possibly within months see something significantly better. Is, is very exciting. Because I what I do, I think helps people but everything still reach and scale. If I if I can't, if you don't hear the podcast, you're not gonna know. And so and to put something on someone like this that would remove that from their life is I'm, I'm very, very excited. So I'm very excited. I'm very excited for what we've been able to do and the 30 days of freedom, the Omnipod promise to be able to offer to as many folks that want answers. There's no reason to wait. That's excellent. Now, I've been telling people for a couple weeks to just just get it and something new comes out. You can get that too. So

Chuck Alpuche 37:39
yeah, that's really why wouldn't you get this note, because it's the best platform out there. It will be the best quality, I'll continue to focus on that. I just can't wait. I'll Chuck

Scott Benner 37:50
I'd like to get one of those pods signed by you one day, I'm gonna hang it up on my wall. I really appreciate you doing this taking the time I I genuinely mean this when I tell you that since the day I left there, I thought about talking to you. So it's not it's Don't worry, it doesn't come into my head every day. But I have it up on a on a wish list that's hanging in my office and I'm gonna I'm gonna scratch your name off of it right now. I really appreciate you doing this.

Chuck Alpuche 38:16
Well, no, I'm honored. And I thank you is your welcome back for tour anytime it's changed significantly since we were here a couple of years ago, as I said, we put the second line in a third been installed ready for, you know, validation second half of the year. We're proud of it. But this is really a team effort. It's not just me. We have a great, great team here to truly focus on our mission.

Scott Benner 38:41
No, I I agree with you. I think that the people who have who came in and and were part of that restart, and that they're building on top of with it just gets more and more exciting as it goes along. So they talked me out of retirement. So it's a great team. I have to tell you, I think that that means a lot. I would imagine that people who are closer to retirement understand what you mean, maybe a little more than younger people. But that has to be a big leap to just it's it's not like you were sitting at home wondering how to pay your bills, right like you

Chuck Alpuche 39:13
were done with a pension and benefits. And it's not that at all. It's as I told folks at the national sales meeting, even referred to earlier is there's not many times folks in their career can really make a difference in people's lives. I mean, at Pepsi, it was fun. And I got to see the world I've toured you know, dozens and dozens of countries, etc visit. It's fun, right? But you're really impacted people's lives and it makes it a lot easier to wake up and come to work every day. Yeah,

Scott Benner 39:41
I agree. I don't think I am touching as many people as you do with that, but I am I feel very lucky to do a thing that I enjoy that also helps people I didn't even think I would get that in my life ever actually. So it's a great film. Yeah, it really is. Such like I'm gonna next time I meet you in person. I'm assuming now that I'm thinking about this Pepsi thing you've seen more than your share of Super Bowls in person.

Chuck Alpuche 40:06
I always had tickets but I never visit I always gave them to my team. I enjoyed having my own little Super Bowl party at home. I never went he never went oh no kidding. Well, we always had tickets. I just passed them on what are you trying to seem like a great guys this thing's

Scott Benner 40:22
over Chuck people already liked it. You didn't have to say that.

Chuck Alpuche 40:27
Well, I did it for my own reasons. Awesome. I enjoyed my place. The Superbowl was a lot of work for the Pepsi folks, you know, our customers there. So it wasn't the Super Bowl party that people think it was a lot of work also, so it was easier to do the Super Bowl party.

Scott Benner 40:47
Well, I really appreciate you doing this again. Thank you so much. Thank you, Scott. Yeah, thank you. Okay, take care you too.

A huge thank you to one of today's sponsors. Je Vogue glucagon, find out more about chivo hypo pen at G Vogue glucagon.com forward slash juicebox. you spell that GVOKEGL Uc ag o n.com. forward slash juicebox. Thanks so much to chuck for coming on the show. I'm super excited about what's coming from Omni pod. I hope you are too. I really want to thank him because I don't think this is the kind of thing he does usually. Can you imagine having a voice so deep that a microphone can't properly capture it. Chuck and Sam Elliot and Sam Elliott is a distant second. Real quick. If you don't get the Sam Elliott references, you really need to go watch The Big Lebowski. I'll be back soon with another episode of the Juicebox Podcast.

#519 Sunk Cost Fallacy with David Copeland, Ph.D.

David Copeland, Ph.D. is the father of a child with type 1 diabetes and a professor of Psychology.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome to Episode 519 of the Juicebox Podcast.

On today's episode, I'll be speaking with David Copeland David is the father of a child with Type One Diabetes. But that is not nearly why he's on the show today. David is also an associate professor of psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. And he's kind enough to be on the show today to answer a few of my questions. Not the least of which is what is sunk cost fallacy. Now, don't stop your player. Don't go oh sunk cost fallacy with Scott What? Just stick with me on this one. Okay. It's an interesting look into how our minds work, and how maybe they impact us when we make decisions about things like I don't know, life stuff, or maybe even diabetes. While you're listening, please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, please always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. We're becoming bold with insulin. I promise you this will be interesting. I promise sunk cost fallacy and other things.

This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is brought to you by touched by type one, a wonderful organization helping people with type one diabetes, learn more about them at touched by type one.org. Or you can find them on Facebook, and Instagram. Before we start, I want to remind you that if you're a US resident living with Type One Diabetes, or a US resident who is the caregiver of someone with type one, I would love it, if you'd go to the T one D exchange and fill out their survey. It's at T one d exchange.org. forward slash juicebox. Others who have done this already have contributed to their registry. And because they share their experiences over the past two years that he won the exchange has gathered the stories of nearly 15,000 people to better understand how the community is doing overall. And in the future. They'll identify trends and improve T one D care with the answers to the survey that you can give. You can give those answers at T one d exchange.org. forward slash juicebox. When you do that, you're going to be helping research for type one diabetes. And you'll be helping me a little bit because I'm going to get a little bit of money every time one of you signs up. T one d exchange.org. forward slash juicebox. I've done it It took me about seven minutes. And it really was super easy, completely HIPAA compliant. totally anonymous. The questions were not difficult. I did it on my phone. You could also do it on your computer. It's not a big deal won't take long at all. Alright, let's get to David, and talk about how your brain works. And how it sometimes it tries to fool you.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 3:11
My name is David Copeland. I'm a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, otherwise, typically known as you nlv. I've been a professor there for about 15 years now and I originally got my degree from the University of Notre Dame.

Scott Benner 3:25
You know, I said to my wife that you went to you and Lv and she looked right through me. And I thought for a minute thought and I was like, she doesn't watch college basketball. no memory of the right and rebel. Because if she would have grown up when I grew up, and I said you lie to her, she would have been like, yes, also, I believe Randall Cunningham son is a quarterback there, right?

David Copeland, Ph.D. 3:46
I not aware about the son, but I know Randall was Randall

Scott Benner 3:51
tech. Yeah. And I'm from Philly. So Randall Cunningham was the first like, real athletic quarterback in the league. In my opinion. Some may argue Warren moon, but you'd be wrong. Sun Moon was more of a thrower. So yeah, I know. I'm just telling you, Randall Cunningham. I saw Randall Cunningham do things that would just like fry your mind like leap over men who were standing up or get knocked down to basically do a push up to keep themselves off the ground, pop back up and throw the ball 90 yards and

David Copeland, Ph.D. 4:22
one new i think i think i remember some of those. I'm visualizing right now.

Scott Benner 4:27
absolutely insane. One time it was third down and we were trapped in our own end zone. And they had him punt. So who even know you can do that you can apparently punt whenever you want to. And it's third down he punts from our end zone. I believe it's the longest punt in NFL history. Get like rolled out at the wall. Yeah, cuz no one is back there probably kept rolling. No one was thinking he was gonna pump but he like really struck the ball. Well is my point. The man was an athlete, as I'm saying. And you went over and that's why my wife didn't understand what I was saying. So anyway, I really appreciate you doing this. I am going to tell you for a moment that your response made me feel like warm about the podcast. Because I had this feeling like I was like, I wonder what I couldn't wish for that might not happen. Like because yours is a real? Like I said online like it, can anyone come on and talk about sunk cost fallacy and I was like, no one's gonna respond. And then there you are. On a nerd like me. Excellent happens to know that, to be honest, you saw it, where you're like, finally, I'm being called on.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 5:39
Well, at first I thought, you know, I was in a different, you know, Facebook group or something like that, you know, for, you know, teaching related issues or something like that. And so then I was like, Oh, wait, no, this is juice.

Scott Benner 5:51
So when you? You know what I'm asking this question later. First, tell me what your connection to type one is.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 5:57
My daughter who is currently three years old, it was diagnosed as a type one diabetic at age of 14 months. So So we've been dealing with this for about two years now.

Scott Benner 6:08
Wow. That's pretty damn young.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 6:12
Yeah, so are and when we first met with them, he said, I've seen younger, but not very often.

Scott Benner 6:18
I mean, I don't know that you're trying to win that race. But you're pretty close. That's although i think i think there's a woman who gave birth to a baby that had type one. I can't I can't get that story straight or fine. seem to find her. But I've heard some crazier stories. But I mean, Arden was, you know, just turned two. And I remember feeling like she was, you know, a fetus though. Like she was so little.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 6:44
Oh, yeah. She's, I mean, it was tough at first, you know, seeing her in the hospital with, especially all the tubes and wires, you know, attached and everything when they first admitted her. But she has been a champ throughout this whole process. And you know, she'll have a little bit of resistance here and there. But she's, she's really good in terms of, you know, she knows it's time for your shot, for example, and she'll point to where she wants it. And, Wow, she's ready to go. No,

Scott Benner 7:10
not there. Over here, buddy. Right here. Arden does the same thing. I'm like, hey, it's time for a pump. And you can see her looking around herself. I don't know if anybody makes like, if that makes sense that actually what am I saying? everyone listening knows it makes sense to them. But I can see Arden kind of visualizing her body and she then she kind of chooses a place. So only child, your 17th kid like where does she fall in the family.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 7:33
She's our first child. And we read this past year, we have a son. He's now about nine months old. And so far, he's showing those signs. But as he's only nine months old, so we're keeping our fingers crossed and hoping for the best with

Scott Benner 7:47
David, obviously, the magic number is 14. So you can't you oddly feel that way. Like you have to get past 14 months.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 7:55
Oh, I know that it can happen in pretty much any time. And so so it's one of those things that we just you're just gonna progress through life. And it might happen and it might not.

Scott Benner 8:06
So it's just one of those things you have to accept. You don't have that kind of unrealistic idea. Like my dad had a heart attack when he was 46. And I'm gonna have like, you don't feel like that?

David Copeland, Ph.D. 8:15
I don't think we think of it as inevitable I think you can think of is in terms of probabilities. And that Yeah, because you know, sibling has it has diabetes, that there's a maybe increased probability of the second child having it as well. But I don't see it as inevitable or once we get past the marker, we're fine. You know, right. It's just always one of those things where Yeah, it's there's a chance.

Scott Benner 8:41
No, I I think that's a I think that's the right way to think about it. I just think that people's minds sometimes jump to you know, they started seeing connections that don't exist, and then they start believing in them. But

David Copeland, Ph.D. 8:52
oh, yeah, our minds, our minds like to put things together. That's why that's why there's conspiracy theories.

Scott Benner 8:58
Yeah, no, you don't. You don't think all that stuff didn't really happen to you? I like I like hearing about the, the UFOs. And I don't I can tell you that for certain. I don't know, if they're, you know, flying saucers and people from other planets and stuff like that. I have no idea that really very well could be in there very well might not be. But I know when people talk about it. It's fascinating to listen to them speak about it, because they have they have built in all of these like, well, you know how you can really tell? And they're like, well, what you just said doesn't have anything to do with reality. But okay.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 9:30
Well, that just there's been some recent reports out of the government that they're, they're saying that there are unidentified objects being reported by Navy pilots and things like that. They're actually admitting to this. But the key idea here is that it's literally an unidentified object. It's not saying it's a UFO with little green men in it. But that's where people's minds automatically jump to. Yeah, but the connections together, you really

Scott Benner 9:51
only have to read the first three sentences of anything that the government said or the news story to realize that what they're telling you is there's something moving around We think, and we're not sure what it is. Thank you. What a revelation.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 10:06
These things are funny though, because if you look back in history back before their aircraft, you know, people, when people see things up in the sky, they thought they were witches or something like that. And so it's all a matter of you know, what our current belief system and society, you know, has in their pop culture views.

Scott Benner 10:22
Yeah, I do love it. When you start hearing people give you reasons, and I'm making air quotes. You can't see me and neither can anybody else. And you're like, I think that's the plot of a movie I saw made is what you just said there. You know, wouldn't it be crazy if this happened? I'm like, I think it did happen. I think Steven Spielberg directed it, I think, I think you're confusing your thoughts with something you've seen before as a child. But nevertheless, and I like I said, honestly, and I'm not just like playing both sides of the argument. If I looked out the window, and a flying saucer landed, and people got off, and I'd be like, Huh, no, Kevin, like, I'm not telling you it couldn't happen. I'm just saying, I love hearing people talk about

David Copeland, Ph.D. 11:00
it really, I think one of the cool things about is that it really connects to my field, because it really kind of illustrates the idea that we don't always see things that are real out there. We over interpret things in our minds, and we place meaning on things that might be very meaningless, because, you know, we want to see patterns, we want to see, you know, make sense of the world. And so we just, we don't like things that were that are just two seemingly random.

Scott Benner 11:28
So I I feel like if I understand correctly, that the concept of sunk cost fallacy can be considered from two pretty specific points of view, right, like, from an economic point of view, an economics point of view, and from a psychological is that about fair?

David Copeland, Ph.D. 11:49
Yeah, and I think I think the two areas, you know, overlap quite a bit. But it's the basic idea of sunk cost fallacy is that we don't necessarily make a decision based on what's logical OR rational, or in our best interest based on the current moment, we also will bring into play factors or behaviors or experiences or things we've done in the past, and bring it into the the current decision. So So yeah, so it's not just a rational, logical computer, you know, making a decision based on the current pieces of information. It's bringing past for lack of a better term baggage into play as well.

Scott Benner 12:29
So is this something that is just the thing you see sometimes in people, or is it just incredibly common amongst everyone?

David Copeland, Ph.D. 12:39
It's, it's actually pretty common. Now. We're in psychology, a lot of times when we talk in generalities, we're talking about patterns that we see. So we test a group of 100 people, and we see this pattern amongst 60 of them or something like that. So. So yeah, we're not saying it's going to happen to each and every person in each and every circumstance. But we're saying it's a pretty common pattern that you see, yeah,

Scott Benner 13:01
you can kind of isn't it interesting to say this before I say the other thing, that you can see something like this in another person, and very, very frequently cannot see it yourself at all?

David Copeland, Ph.D. 13:14
Oh, yeah. We were not the best judge judges of and evaluators of ourselves and our own performance. And in abilities, we tend to be a little bit biased. And it led us to be a little bit more on the optimistic side of things. But, but yeah, we can be a little bit more realistic, and, and I think, unbiased when it comes to looking at other people and evaluating them. So yes, sometimes it's a lot easier to see it in someone else.

Scott Benner 13:45
So I just the generalized, made up example of a sunk cost would be I bought a plane ticket. And I bought boots, and a stick to climb with and a hat to keep the sun out of my eyes. And when I get to the mountain, and it looks like it's going to erupt, I'm still climbing it anyway. Because I put all this effort into getting here when common sense would tell you, this hill you were planning on climbing now looks like a volcano and we should run away.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 14:11
Yeah, I mean, I think you've nailed it on the head that, you know, if you just take in this snapshot of the moment, you're there, you arrive that morning at the mountain, and you're deciding, am I going to climb it? Or am I not going to climb it? The rational choices if it's going to erupt? Or there's horrible weather or whatnot, is to say no, it's not worth it, I might get hurt or even die, you know, in this endeavor. Whereas the sunk cost fallacy basically brings along all these things that you've done beforehand, such as buying those plane tickets, you've invested all this planning all this time, all this all these resources, all this money. And so you said to yourself, I put all this into it, I'm going to do Oh, anyway.

Scott Benner 14:50
So when you notice that the person asking about this wasn't on a teaching website, it was about this is the thing you follow for type one diabetes, which by the way, we'll talk about later and I appreciate your following But did you immediately understand why he asked?

David Copeland, Ph.D. 15:07
For me, it was one of those where I'm thinking to myself, okay, what's, you know, one of the cool parts about a lot of these biases that we talked about within psychology and cognition, is that there are applications to them. Otherwise, it's, you know, what's the point of talking about them, if you if the, you know, if it's not happening in real life, and so so, you know, I'm racking my brain a little bit, you know, thinking myself, okay, what's the application here? What's the kind of perspective here, and so one of the things you look at is, you know, I can see it from a perspective of maybe the approach someone takes to treating diabetes. So for example, maybe they're investing themselves and their time, energy and effort into a certain way of treatment. And then maybe there it comes a point where maybe they learn from someone else, or from their doctors, or from another source, that maybe there's a different way, maybe just even a tweak or a completely different way to to approach things. And they might be hesitant to make a change, because of all the time and energy and effort that they have already put into the prior

Scott Benner 16:13
approach. So yeah, and it for me, it struck me but but I started thinking about, I don't remember why I was thinking about it one day. And I thought, This is what I see with people who have had Type One Diabetes for decades. And it might be that I tried to help a person who had had type one for like, 30 years or more. And they wanted a change. Like they didn't, they couldn't take what was happening anymore. And had reached out to me privately. And I said, I I'd be happy to see if I can say something that, you know, might make sense. And it didn't matter what I said or what I suggested, or how I explained it. It was every time met with No, that won't work, or I can't do that, or this isn't right. And I finally just said, like, you know, you asked me, this is my opinion, like, it's cool. If you don't like it, you know what I mean? Like, I'm alright with if you don't want to do it is I'm not here to push myself on you. I was trying to help. But why can't you make the leap? And it was fascinating, because everything they were doing was leading to these like failures, but they weren't dying, you know what I mean? Like they were existing? Yeah, couldn't break away from it. And

David Copeland, Ph.D. 17:31
I think, you know, what you have coming into play is, you know, can maybe, you know, put, I'm not trying to diagnose it, per se, but I can say, you know, some of the difference

Scott Benner 17:41
is David just got a lot of a lot of electric noise from you. I couldn't hear what you said, What happened there? He said, What comes into play? And then you were gone?

David Copeland, Ph.D. 17:53
Can you hear me now? Yes. Okay. What comes into play here is potentially a number of different biases or heuristics, you know, that, that we you know, identify it from a psychological perspective. You know, there can be something for examples, such as the confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is a big one where we let our prior beliefs influence, you know, what we learn. And so essentially, this is why it's very hard to change people's views on a lot of things. Because when you, for example, teach them something or expose them to new information, if it doesn't fit nicely into their prior worldview, they sort of ignore that new pieces of information, and maybe only pick up the pieces that fit into that prior worldview, okay, and so, so people just basically want to confirm their existing beliefs rather than challenge them. And so, so learning new information or new approach can sometimes threaten that. And so, so that's one of the reasons why people kind of, you know, will dig in their heels, you also have the idea that our brains are somewhat lazy, for lack of a better term. You know, our brains require energy, just like the rest of our body, you know, we don't, if we don't have to, we don't necessarily want to get up and run five miles if we don't have to. And so the, you know, our brains kind of a similar manner, where if it doesn't have to think too hard, it's going to want to think in in very, the path of least resistance, if you will, and usually that's going to be in doing a habit or an approach that you're very familiar with, and you're gonna stick to it.

Scott Benner 19:28
Interesting. So the, the, you can look at a person and they physically appear to you like someone who's like, I'm just not gonna try very hard. This is working well enough. But there's an actual physiological component to that, which is, I don't have to expend too is that to save your energy in case you have to run from a tiger or something, or

David Copeland, Ph.D. 19:47
Yeah, I mean, like I said, it's just kind of an idea of, you know, our bodies just you know, want to, you know, just the same way we conserve energy from running you know, our brains gonna possibly conserve energy from overthinking if it doesn't have to. Wow So, you know, our brains an organ just like any other parts of our body?

Scott Benner 20:04
Is there a cut off where people, generally speaking, Don't Want to learn more? Like what like, because, as you were saying that all I could think was like, why would you want to not hear another idea? Or the truth? Or, you know, or whatever, like, I mean, if I, if I thought something for years that I was, like wrong about, I'd want to hear about it. And I understand it would be uncomfortable for somebody to challenge something, because you probably, I'm assuming your brain starts doing that thing. And you start thinking about kind of subconsciously, all the decisions you've made based off of this idea. How many times have I been wrong in the past, like wanting to not be wrong? Like I get all that, but it is,

David Copeland, Ph.D. 20:44
I think the key idea is they don't think of themselves as wrong, necessarily, because the past behaviors or approaches have been good enough. And so to them, it's like, well, why mess with it? You know, I know what I'm doing here. And a lot of times people have hesitancy about making changes, because they're afraid of they take action to alter their behaviors or alter their approach. And then let's say a problem occurs, they're going to feel really bad that they were the direct cause of it, because they didn't stick to their prior approach is that well, this never would have happened if I just stuck with my old approach.

Scott Benner 21:19
So if we all just keep our hand, our heads buried in the sand, then there's no problem. Wow. And that's how a lot of personal relationships ended up going. Right? Like, nobody wants to talk about anything for fear that it will explode the situation instead of heal it.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 21:33
Yeah, it's more of the thing that why rock the boat because it could create something worse. And you know, but in real reality, you know, if there's data out there that, for example, it shows that maybe that new approach is more probably, from a probability perspective, much more likely to lead to better outcomes. Our brains are most people, you know, don't think in terms of data and probabilities. We're not that good at that. And, you know, we can think that way, if we, you know, put ourselves you know, put our thinking hats on and say, okay, you know, I want to digest the numbers I want to think of from a rational perspective, but that takes a lot of energy and efforts. You made me think of

Scott Benner 22:14
the the idea of Moneyball for data driven baseball training. Like, like, if somebody came up to you and said, Hey, you know, your favorite team is going to try swinging in a different launch angle. Now we're going to see what happens. I don't know why people don't go Hmm, I wonder what would happen if they did that? Let me say, like, why do they feel so much? like no, you can't change that. That's not what baseball is. And like, I don't know, just understanding the angle your bats at versus not understanding the angle your bats that doesn't change baseball, again, might change your approach. And maybe you'd find out later that it doesn't work for you. But I don't understand the the unwillingness to even allow change, it's something that doesn't really impact you even

David Copeland, Ph.D. 22:56
it lets it's really just it, I think it's it's, that's a good, good analogy, because it took a while for other baseball organizations to really switch over into that Moneyball type of a mindset. A lot of teams were very resistant for a while. And even when the you know, the Moneyball team started winning more, they were still, you know, digging in their heels, because this is like, no, my, I've been doing this for years, I know how baseball works. And this is the way I'm going to approach it, I'm going to, you know, we steal bases, we hit for singles, you know, things like that, and we don't get anything, you know, you're not supposed to take walks, you know, those all those types of things, you know, from the old school baseball, that was just how they did it. And that was the approach. And they kind of scoffed at the new ideas, and people who did make the switch benefited from it.

Scott Benner 23:47
And so agreeing that maybe it's agreeing that something that you don't understand might be better makes you obsolete.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 23:55
And then, and, you know, and you know, it's it's a whole new world, in some regards, like I said, the executives in baseball today, they're all looking at things from a analytical perspective, they're crunching the numbers, they're making the decisions about which guys to retain on their team or design a free agency. And, you know, maybe which pitches for pitchers to throw more often and stuff like that. They're using data for that. And, you know, people wouldn't think otherwise nowadays, but you know, 10 2015 years ago, that just wasn't the approach for most individuals. And their worldview was, Oh, no, you don't throw that many curveballs, it's off, you know, fastball and slider, you know, and that's it, you know, or something like that. And you keep your to your to bread and butter pitches and whatnot. And that was just that was the worldview that was the way they viewed the game from that. Those are their core principle values. And if you're going to come in with the data perspective, that was going to change those core values, and people don't want to make that overhaul in their heads.

Scott Benner 24:59
I think That, um, the interesting thing is that they act like it will be the disillusion of the thing they're talking about, like, it will just disappear. But I think I don't, I'm gonna, I'm gonna show here that I didn't go to college in a second. But there's this kind of thought exercise, right? Like if, if you leave ashore on a ship, and through the course of your travel, there's another ship next to you that has all the parts. So every part that your ship is made out of, is on another ship next to you have a spare part ship. And through the travel of your of your, your time, you ended up replacing every part on the ship during the the, you know, the trip, did you arrive in the same ship that you left it? Right and everything? There's a that's a it's like, I'm sure you'd studied that when you were nine, right? What is that? I guess? Yeah. But is it called?

David Copeland, Ph.D. 25:54
Well, it's just the idea of, you know, kind of slow, steady changes. And, you know, and sometimes that is an easier way to do things, especially when people are resistant to overhauling the whole way they approach something, you know, it's kind of like, if it's like that death by 1000 paper cuts kind of an idea. Where if you just make slow, incremental changes that people won't resist, because they seem so small and minor, that you can eventually keep adding on top of each one, you know, each of the previous ones still, eventually you've made significant change. The drawback, too, is it takes a while to do that. And you have to be steady and consistent with it. But but it can be a way to avoid upsetting people who are having their core beliefs challenged, and then resisting it with everything they can, you know, muster.

Scott Benner 26:45
So is the use of I've heard people say that, you know, as far as progress goes, that you're born, you know, there's sort of that like, like, how do you explain it the best like, like everybody thought there'd be peace in the world because of the hippies in the 60s, right. But now the hippies in the 60s all have like $2 million in the bank, and they're getting ready to retire. So they stop their fight somewhere, and they're off doing this other thing. So there's this idea that you have this, this youthful exuberance to change the world through your teens and your early 20s. But then at some point, you make a baby and the baby needs to be safe. And then you sort of, you know, you keep moving down that, that that path until your best interests don't look like things changing or improving. And so you hear people say, Well, yeah, we'll we'll get that fixed when this generation dies off. And they stop resisting it, is that really just how it has to be? it? Well,

David Copeland, Ph.D. 27:47
it doesn't necessarily have to be, you know, that extreme per se. But I think one of the things that, you know, kind of, you know, just kind of fits into this whole, you know, idea that you just described is just the idea that, when we're younger, we don't have so many habits, if you will, or ways of thinking that are so ingrained over decades. Whereas as we grow older, as adults, we start really establishing this, these mindsets and these habits, and these approach ways of approaching issues in life. And we're really ingraining them and as long as they're working good enough, we're gonna stick with them.

Scott Benner 28:23
Yeah, I, I keep myself honest, by listening to rap music, because I am not inclined to enjoy it. And yet my son likes it. And I figure he must know, like, he wouldn't be listening to something that's terrible. And, you know, you always think of like, you know, at some point, I mean, the way I think is, you know, at some point, somebody's parents were yelling at somebody because they were listening to Elvis Presley, right? And then and then it was Pink Floyd. And then it was Aerosmith. And then it was Metallica and Guns and Roses, and that it's whatever it is now. And so I think to myself, to try to keep that muscle limber, I, I listened to pop smoke and other rap.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 29:04
I mean, I think I think what you're getting at with that idea is it's you're really getting at the idea of whether things are unfamiliar to someone, and whether exposure gradually leads to more familiarity to, to an idea. And when you become more familiar with an idea, it's that is It's not scary anymore. You know, when you don't know anything about, you know, know anything about a topic, you know, it can be really scary, you know, if, let's say, for example, the metric system is, you know, something, you know, if for people, you know, 50 years ago, you know, when the when the metric system was, you know, when they're making attempts to you know, convert people to it. Those who were not at all familiar with it, maybe didn't get it at all in their early schooling. Were just like, Oh, hey, what are you talking about metric and I'm using, you know, ounces and you know, pounds and miles per hour, I'm fine with that stuff. Let's not make any changes. Whereas people maybe who have a little more exposure, you know, let's say maybe Our generation where we've grown up, and we learn about grams and kilograms in school and meters. And maybe we're not using that all the time, but at least we're we have more familiarity with it. So we might not be as scared of that type of concept. If everyone, you know, third proposal out there, yeah, let's start making the conversion of metric system really, you'd be like, Oh, well, yeah, I guess I see liter bottles, you know, in the store, you know, not all that. It's not always just gallons. And so you have a little bit more familiarity with something. And so it's a little less scary to you, because you've been exposed to it.

Scott Benner 30:33
I always when I'm imagining endocrinologist hearing the show, I always imagine that it either falls on someone who thinks, Oh, that makes sense, even though it's not what I usually say, let me hear more what you hear from people, or it falls on, you know, the we don't change, this is how I do it. And I don't want to hear anything different. That won't work. And that's, I mean, partially why ash to come on and talk about it's partially because I believe that more endocrinologists are listening to the show. Now, it's partially because I think that people have had type one for many decades might be rigid about new ideas. And it's also about, listen, I want to be in the heads of people who right now are on the cutting edge, like the bleeding edge of how to take care of their diabetes, because I'm telling you all that five years from now, you know, 10 years from now, there's going to be something else, and there's going to be a better way to do it. There's always going to be a better way. And you I am in my heart, I want to I want to know the better way, as long as I can. Like, you know what I mean? Like, don't get me wrong. If I'm at five at one point, I'm like, Listen, I got to stick with this music player, because this new thing you kids got, that's a hologram. I can't make my fingers work. Like I'll stop at some point. But But I just think you need to, for your health. Stay on the edge of what this is?

David Copeland, Ph.D. 32:00
Well, yeah, and I think the the 85 year old example is kind of a good one, too. Because maybe at that age, you want those well established patterns and habits, you know, because if you're showing any type of cognitive decline, you don't want to, you know, to be sitting there thinking, Oh, what was this new approach is that, you know, do I do this, that or this, you know, and you don't want them overthinking it, and forgetting, you know, important steps, and maybe just following that routine is good for them. But for people younger, yeah, I think an openness to new experiences can be a very good thing. You had mentioned doctors as well. And I think there's two important perspectives to take on that. Number one, doctors can be just like the rest of us, they can, you know, cling to that prior worldview, those previous beliefs that they maybe learned earlier, and they, you know, hold their ground and stick to those even when there's new evidence out there. And then another perspective is, and this is something I'm seeing more, you know, in college classes is I'm seeing more pre med students taking psychology classes, because of the emphasis that they can have great advice, but if they don't take human nature and human, you know, psychology into account, they might not convince us or convey teach us how to do things in a way in which we're actually going to follow through and do that. I mean, a doctor can tell a patient Yeah, you need to lose weight. That doesn't mean the patient's gonna go home and lose weight, they have to present that to them in a way that's going to motivate them and get them to actually implement a plan.

Scott Benner 33:28
Yeah, so it's not just enough? Well, that's really something I brought up with. One of the psychologists that I had on the show recently might not be out yet. I'm not sure. Where I said, like, it's nice that we're getting together and talking about this stuff. But you know, most people don't put it into practice, right? Like, it's, it's, it became popular because of the internet, like, I'll get together, and I'll give you the 10 steps to make your sex life better. You know, like that started back in magazines. And you know, I'll do this, it doesn't mean somebody reads and goes, Oh, yeah, I'll do all these things. I do want my sex life to be better. Like, it's not how it happens. And when these things get more and more difficult, I think sometimes these conversations can serve to make people feel worse instead of help them because they're like, Oh, so you're telling me there is an answer. And I'm not taking it. And so it makes you feel like not only you're doing something wrong, but then somebody gave you the answer, and you ignored it, you almost feel like you're doing it wrong twice. So the idea, you know what I mean, the idea of getting someone to something is much more important than the something out if that makes sense.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 34:31
Well, and it's part of it, too, is Yeah, people just won't typically just change on a whim. They're like, you give them piece of information. They're Okay, I'll change you know, I'm there. And you're like, oh, wow, that was easy. It doesn't really work like that. Typically, you have to have the individual want or really want or need to make a change in order to really follow through, they need that little you know, kind of motivation to it. And, you know, and also you got to make it easy on an individual. You know, if there's There are barriers in the way you like, you know, it's like the whole idea of like with weight loss, if you still fill your fridge up with, you know, cookies and cakes and ice cream, you know, you're gonna walk past that fridge in the kitchen, and you might have the belief that, hey, I'm going to lose weight. But you know, that barrier of it being right there in front of you, you know, as the temptation is probably going to be too much to pass up. So you really have to get it to the point where someone really wants to make that change that, hey, you know, what, what I'm doing is good enough. But this could be really significant better. And I want to make, you know, improve my health, or my child's health to the point where I'm going to follow through and, you know, expose myself to these new ideas and implement them, right,

Scott Benner 35:43
sort of the, the people get kind of caught up in kind of that zero sum thinking, I guess, where, like, I have an idea, my ideas, the idea. There's no other idea, like, leave me alone. That's the end of it. I mean, when we see it, I mean, listen, I don't care what side of the argument you're on politically, you're, we're all being manipulated. And I'm not saying it like, it's some, you know, like, there's UFOs, what I'm saying is that, that it's marketing, right, everything is marketing. As soon as someone figured out marketing, we were all in trouble. Because Because someone figured out to say something to you, or to choose something from your childhood, or to you know, ignite one of those, those fires inside of you, that makes you defend an idea because you think baseball is going to be ruined by something. And then people who are trying to get you to cast a vote or buy a soft drink or something like that can reach into your brains and, and drive you in a direction that that you might not want to be in, if you were left on your own to stand at the mountain and say, Okay, I'm here, it was my intention to climb up the mountain, but it's on fire. So I'm going to go home.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 36:58
And that's one of the interesting things about that topic. And that issue is that you can use those powers for good or bad if you you know, depending on your perspective, you know, if you think of, for example, marketing, or maybe even tech companies, how they make our smartphones, so addictive nowadays, you know, you would say, okay, they're using those powers for evil, if you will. But we can use a lot of those same principles for good, when you're talking about changing our behaviors, you know, a lot of the things, for example, with their smartphones is based on very simplistic behavioral types of issues such as like, you know, like our, our smartphones almost work like slot machines, if you will, in that you get random bouts of force alert, or some kind of new new announcement or something like that from one of your apps. And by doing that, it makes it more addictive. And you can't put it down just like someone who's at a slot machine. And every once in a while it gives you a when you get that victory, and it once makes you keep going. And so so yeah, you have those little things. And we can use some of the same things with us. Like, for example, one simple thing you can do with when you're trying to change your own behavior, is if you successfully do it, reward yourself, you know, give yourself a simple reward, you know, for doing something, you know, do something that you've always wanted to do, or make a purchase you wanted to make or go on a trip or whatever it was, and your bed, essentially, it's just like, you know, giving that dog a treat after they successfully rolled over. You're doing it to yourself, you're basically rewarding yourself and increasing the odds, you're gonna do it again. Hmm.

Scott Benner 38:29
So take the way that that manufacturer manipulates you and manipulate yourself to do something good.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 38:37
Yeah, that's me, it's almost as simple as that. I mean, obviously, they're using algorithms and, you know, and in technology tools to to implement that. But But yeah, you know, we can do this, you know, similar basic things in our own lives.

Scott Benner 38:53
I guess that's what a chore chart is for a kid, right? Like, you fill in the line. And when you get to the end, you take a toy out of the thing or whatever, you get to go somewhere to a restaurant or whatever it ends up being. And so yeah,

David Copeland, Ph.D. 39:03
we'd like for my daughter, you know, in this over the past year, we were dealing with potty training, you know, and we were debating about well, you know, how do we you know, reward the behavior to, you know, to encourage it, and, you know, is one of those where, okay, well, you know, she's she has, you know, type one. And so do we use candy? Do we use, you know, like a toy we don't What is it? Essentially, regardless of what it is, it just needs to be something of value that the person is going to see is you know, a reward that's going to reinforce the behavior,

Scott Benner 39:31
you make me think of this person that I spoke of earlier, when I said to them, Look, if you if you do this, then you won't have the same outcome. And they were just so sure that it was going to go wrong. They almost kind of they skip to the end without trying the thing. And I'm wondering now, if there was, I mean, it's an adult like, I don't know how you would incentivize an adult in that situation, but there has to be something you know, you know, I'm jumping around here a little bit, but

David Copeland, Ph.D. 40:01
I think i think i think one thing from from your perspective is you have to understand is that not ever, ever, not everyone is exposed to the ideas or the information is going to make a change, because there's so many people out there who are fine with their current good enough approach, that it's just from the get go, there's a percentage of people who aren't even going to be receptive to it, they might think it's a good idea, but they're just not even gonna apply it to their own lives. It's kind of that other percentage that you're really dealing with.

Scott Benner 40:29
Yeah, and when it's a personal thing, I honestly, if I'm being honest, I don't care. Like if you're on a path to something that's not as good as it could be. And you're happy with that, like, right on, like, I'm fine with that. I don't care. I don't, I don't pretend to want to manipulate people into having a different outcome. But if you're sitting there thinking, This isn't right. But I don't know how to break free of it, that feels sad to me, you know, the edifice, and

David Copeland, Ph.D. 40:57
I think it's just, you know, the person has to want to make the change, or in some cases even need to make the change, you know, and the need comes more from there's something really wrong with the current approach. And, you know, it could be somebody who's just hitting too many lows, or, you know, staying up 300 too much, or something like that. And then it turns into, you know, a need at that point, you know, it's like, you can tell someone you know, who's smoking, you know, oh, you need to quit smoking, it could lead to cancer, you need to quit smoking leads to cancer, you tell them year after year, if they visit their doctor, and they don't see it as a need, because they don't have cancer, but then maybe one time they get diagnosed with cancer, and the doctor is like, Listen, seriously, you need to quit smoking at this point. And now suddenly, they're a little bit more motivated to actually try something else.

Scott Benner 41:41
So have you heard me say, I think anecdotally, I have not spoken to enough people who have changed their health, be for another person, that I'm almost positive that that's what happens to people. Like, if you can't do it for yourself, you could do it for a child, or for a spouse, like I've just met too many people who said, You know, I decided to get my blood sugar's together when I met this woman, or this man, because I suddenly could picture a long life with somebody, or I didn't really care until I had a baby. And then I realized I needed to be here for the baby. Like is that I mean, from your perspective, and from your, your learning is that a real thing that happens to people,

David Copeland, Ph.D. 42:28
there are certain things in the world that can be very strong motivators. And you know, you know, politicians have learned that, you know, instilling fear in people can be a very strong motivator, in some cases to get them voting certain ways. But as you noted, to, you know, caring for someone can be an also an extremely powerful motivator. I think a lot of people when they're single, maybe you know, and childless, will kind of maybe write it off, you know, but then once you become a parent, you know, it kind of it's, you know, there's a, you know, lights a flash in your head that suddenly that little person in your life is extremely important. And you're willing to do anything for that person. Yeah.

Scott Benner 43:06
I don't mean to jump around, but I feel like I have you here now. So anxiety is at an all time high in society. Is that fair to say?

David Copeland, Ph.D. 43:15
I don't know if I'd say all time high. But I'd say that, I'd say the pandemic is probably triggered, and maybe exacerbated some aspects of it. Yeah. Do you buy into the the idea

Scott Benner 43:25
that we have nothing to do with our focus? Because life is easier. And so smaller and smaller things? Feel like the worst thing that's ever happened to us?

David Copeland, Ph.D. 43:38
Yeah, there, I mean, there's something to the fact that focusing and thinking too hard on on certain issues can cause anxiety. I think one of the big things about his anxiety is when we feel that it's outside of our control, is that's a really big kind of contributor to anxiety. And when we're able to, you know, exhibit some control over a situation or change an approach where we do have control and we can make changes to it. Yeah, a lot of cases you do see anxiety decrease a little bit in there. I don't want to talk too much on you know, making claims there because I'm not a I touch on anxiety in some of my the areas that I research, but it's not, you know, kind of the focus of what I do.

Scott Benner 44:24
No, that's fine. I just I listen, the what I can confirm that I know fits in a thimble. Okay. But it's hard to imagine that we went from people who like won World War Two to, you know, a friend of mine that I had in high school I haven't seen in 30 years said something a little cross on Facebook, and I think it was directed at me and now I'm melting down. Like it's a weird it's a weird shift in a short amount of time and less that used to exist and I just not aware of it because I didn't live at that point.

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David Copeland, Ph.D. 46:15
Well, I think one of the things we have to look at is that, you know, fields such as psychology are relatively new in terms of their emergence, you know, we're talking, you know, 20th century and 20. Now, 21st century, and, you know, we have no real data besides anecdotes or stories, you know, from his store from history, as to what really was going on in the past, and they're very well could be lots of cases of, you know, of high anxious individuals, you know, throughout history, but we didn't really have measures and, you know, there weren't, you know, psychologists around, you know, to really study it, you know,

Scott Benner 46:51
is that the natural progression of healing, then, like you're hiding it, and then a generation learns to let it out. And then another generation learns to deal with it, like, is it not? Is it your sort of your piece of building the bigger fabric of society, like, maybe we're all not going to get the fix that thing for us, but we're moving the whole group forward?

David Copeland, Ph.D. 47:16
Well, I think I think what happens is when when a topic or an idea is, you know, kind of in his infancy, and people don't know much about it, we use techniques that we think work, and they could be superstitious types of things that you try out, or maybe were passed down, you know, from family members. And, you know, they seem to work or seem to do the job. So you do it. But it takes, you know, kind of a field to emerge to really start investigating a topic and exploring it and putting these ideas to the test to say, Hey, is this effective? What about this versus that which one's more effective? And, you know, then maybe you start tweaking the techniques to say, Oh, this one works. But what if you tried this, you know, changing part aids to a one or something like that. And now suddenly, you have a new approach to it. And the more people you have that are investigating exploring topics, you know, the more likely people are going to throw out new and innovative, you know, solutions to it.

Scott Benner 48:11
Well, so there's no sort of back to where I said to the therapist earlier, that, you know, I feel bad, because you're pointing out, we're pointing these things out. But there's no tried and true way. Like there's no steps one through 10 that make this better, like you, you know, your therapist usually says, go to therapy and talk it out. And maybe you can get through it. Which seems like the best at the at the moment. But what do you do when it's something like? I mean, the stuff we've been talking about confirmation bias, sunk cost fallacy, like how do you stop yourself from doing those things, especially if you don't even know you're doing them?

David Copeland, Ph.D. 48:47
I think one of the first things are to know are that psychologies, psychologists, and psychology professors, and researchers, have been shown to be susceptible to some of these things as well, maybe not to the same extent as the general public, but it is measurable. And so sometimes, you know, you get a chuckle out of it, like, Oh, this study investigated the confirmation bias with psychology professors versus the general population, right. And, you know, this, the psychology professors actually showed too. And so it's one of those things where it's human nature, but I think there are ways to minimize it. And part of the ways to do it are to start becoming aware of some of these things, you know, start understanding that, yeah, there are different ways to make decisions. And yes, I can be influenced by my prior beliefs, prior experiences or emotions. And maybe I need to just sit there and think about right now, in this moment going forward, what are the pros and cons of going down path a versus path B, you know, regardless of what happened beforehand, you know, you can learn you know about these types of approaches and you can make improvements.

Scott Benner 49:53
I have to say that one of the more difficult things that I've done is to say settle on an idea and put it out into the world. Because I am most of the time of the, the opinion that the thought I have is the best thought I could come up with. But it doesn't mean there's not a better thought and more likely there might be one. And I keep looking for one of my one of my favorite exercise, like, you know, thought exercises, is to try to imagine what lies beyond what I don't understand. I and

David Copeland, Ph.D. 50:29
I enjoy. And I think that I think that perspective is, you know, a great way to, you know, to approach things because, you know, one of the things you want to do is you want to tell yourself that there might be approaches, and there might be people out there learning things that are different and possibly better than what I know about. And now of course, it's very important to to take into account the source of information, especially with, you know, you know, what we've seen, you know, in recent years where people are using, you know, social media or YouTube videos as their exclusive news sources, you know, you want to ideally be using things that have been tested, where there's some data behind it, you know, where it's coming from, you know, somebody who's studied it, and it has some expertise in the topic. You just don't want to take, you know, advice, you know, from your neighbor, Bob, or something like that, you know, just because Bob said, so that must be true. Yeah. So So yeah, you have to take the source involved, as well. But I think it is a good first step to realize that my knowledge, my information might not be perfect. There might be some better ideas out there.

Scott Benner 51:31
I saw what you just use such a nice, like, example, you're like, you know, I believe Bob, but maybe there's more beyond Bob, I was like, literally thinking like Flat Earth conspiracy. Like what you said that, like I I'm fascinated that, and if anybody's listening who believes the earth is flat, you can still get diabetes, like, stuff for me, but I think you're wrong. And I think there's enough examples of why your might be wrong to to get me in that camp. But what makes someone want to believe it so fervently, because I have to tell you, David, I believe the world is a sphere. Yes, but I don't have enough Karen, that I don't have a dog in that fight enough to get into an argument with you about it. I can only be like, I if you said to me, it's flat. I'd be like, ah, alright, man. Yeah, I couldn't sit here and work myself up over that. But you could but what you don't mean,

David Copeland, Ph.D. 52:27
but I think what you're what you're kind of conveying in there is, is something that emerges is that, you know, whether or not that person believes that the world is flat, or that it's more of a, you know, sphere or round, you know, object is that, ultimately, in their day to day life, 99.9% of the time, that belief, regardless of which one they have doesn't matter so much. You know, they're, you know, the only time it might as if they stop themselves from travel, do taking a long trip, because they think they're gonna go over the edge, you know, or something like that. But, but other than that, you know, that belief really isn't going to have an effect on their day to day life. And so, so yeah, so I think I think your idea there were, your choice to not engage on that particular one is probably a good one, because it really doesn't have that big of an effect. Whereas maybe something was someone's house, that could have a big major effect.

Scott Benner 53:20
I even think about when I started the series within the podcast about how people eat, I got notes from people, like you can't do that there's going to be big arguments as like, first of all, I don't care. And secondly, like, I don't think there's really big arguments, I think that we, we do this thing where we we've told ourselves if if you're on the internet, right, or if you're on Twitter, or Facebook or Instagram, we we've convinced ourselves that that's everyone's opinion. And it's really a fairly small percentage of the people on the planet are even on social media. So there are there are things happening online right now that people online believe are the most important thing in the world that most of the people on the planet are completely unaware of, and could not possibly care less about.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 54:12
Oh, yeah. I mean, we we have a very egocentric worldview in that we we think our own interests, and our own beliefs are the most important things in the world. And and yeah, and we we emphasize and elevate that and projected on other people and think that they also are going to highly value those beliefs in those perspectives and those topics right and so so yeah, we think those sorts of things. But yeah, it really a lot of it goes back into you know, digging our heels into our own current belief system. And you know, you can present for example, you can present people all the you know, all this evidence that, you know, drinking heavily in smoking isn't good for a long lifespan. But if they have a belief that that doesn't matter, they're going to find that one example of their you know, Aunt Karen, you know, who smokes like a chimney and live to be 90 Six years old. Yeah. And they're gonna say, you know, see, look, look at aunt Karen there, that scene doesn't matter.

Scott Benner 55:04
You know, it's, that's the same, the same muscle that gets used for people are like, I don't want to dig in and get a real job because I might be Kanye West one day or Drake or, you know, the best. The, I don't know, the the best softball player in the world or whatever you're trying to be like it, you know, you need to realize that those people are are an anomaly. Like right there, they're a collection of luck, hard work, you know, more luck in maybe how their body works, if they can sing or run or whatever it is they can do. And you're only aware of them, because of the way social media works now, right? Like, even 25 years ago, you didn't know how much money like a wide receiver made, that that was not not even something you were aware of.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 55:53
And, and a lot of it too, is just depends on what's valued at the time, you know, that, you know, 100 200 years ago, nobody would care if you could dunk a basketball. Yeah, but now, you know, that's, it's a popular sport, that's entertaining. And so if you can do that, you're you know, you're gonna, you can make yourself millions of dollars, right. So, you know, it all really matters, what is valued by people and what they want. So,

Scott Benner 56:17
I have a question that you might or may not have input on, but why is it comfortable to pick someone out in the world, who you deem as not as smart as you not as good as you are? not as popular? not as successful? Like, why does it? Why do we like to find things that were better than? I mean, did I just get out myself? Nobody else thinks that way. I'm not saying I feel like that all the time. I do see people do it. Like, yeah, it's, it's pretty, it's,

David Copeland, Ph.D. 56:51
you know, I think it's fairly common. And I think I think it can be a boost one's ego and their confidence. And, you know, no one ever wants to, you know, feel like the the kid you know, picked last gym class, you know, because they're, they're not as good and not as talented. Everyone wants to feel like they're good, they have you know, skills and they can do something better than each other. And, and part of it also in this kind of bleeds into the, you know, the social psychology world to where we like to categorize the world into groups. And, you know, we have our in group of people who are like us, and we have the out group of people who are not like us, and things associated with our in group are all positive and good, and we like, and things associated with the other groups are bad and different.

Scott Benner 57:33
That's where that's the fascinating thing about watching people argue about how they eat when they have diabetes, like that, like, I think in the end, everybody's saying the same thing. Like I, I found a way to do this thing that leads to stability and health and happiness. And they can't just be happy that they found it, and it's working for them, anybody who's not doing it, they feel like they want to ram it down the other person's throat. But you only see that online, it doesn't exist in the real world. I've never seen two type ones meet each other in the real world, and be like, I'm low carb, and the other ones say, I'm not and then they have a fistfight like that. It doesn't it. So what happens online? Why do people feel so confident? To be so aggressive with their ideas online?

David Copeland, Ph.D. 58:21
Yeah, I think of them as like keyboard warriors, or, you know, kind of cyber bullies in the sense. But it's, it's really one of the big things about it is it's the feeling of being anonymous when you're online. And, you know, researchers speculated for a while there that that's why, for example, messageboards, for a while, we're just random people making comments. And then eventually they switch them where you have to log in with your Facebook ID, you know, to make a comment, because they thought, oh, adding your name, and you know, Facebook identity to it is going to make people feel a little less anonymous, and maybe slow it down. And I don't remember seeing any data as to whether that had a major effect, or not. But my impression is that it hasn't had that big of an effect. Because I think just hiding behind the keyboard, people feel a little bit more anonymous. I usually, you know, when I talk about this, this idea with students, I usually use the example of you know, driving versus pushing your shopping cart in the grocery store. You know, when you're driving on the highway, you're gonna see people left and right, you know, cutting in line or cutting other people off. And in the car, you're anonymous, you know, nobody really sees your face, you're gonna drive away, they're never gonna see you. But in the grocery store, you're not going to be you know, standing there right in front of the checkout line and have another person just cut you off and go in front of you. Because they're right there in front of you, you know, face to face. And so there's, you know, you lose that level of being anonymous in that circumstance.

Scott Benner 59:46
But do you agree with maybe you won't agree with what I'm about to say, but I don't think people in a personal situation like the grocery store, I don't think they're having thoughts like, Oh, I'm going to get in front of you. I'm going to cut you off. I want to win. That seems to go away. When the anonymity goes away, like even the desire

David Copeland, Ph.D. 1:00:03
does, though. Yeah, and I think that's just the the, the the whole lack of or presence of anonymity, you know, can just alter how you approach the whole situation.

Scott Benner 1:00:14
Yeah, in a second I am. I try very hard to apply that. The, the concept from it was a god, what's his name? Hold on a second. Isn't it funny I think about this constantly. And his name is David. David Foster. Wallace was a writer, he I think he committed suicide many years ago. But he he gave a speech at a college commencement. And it's, it's available now you can read it online or buying the book for him, or I think you can hear him on YouTube still, but it's called This is water. And at one point during it, he makes this point that has stuck with me forever, that the, these aren't his words, but here's the idea, like someone will cut you off in traffic, and they're a jerk. And maybe most of the people that cut you off in traffic are a jerk, but one of them has to go to the bathroom really badly. So what would it hurt for you to just imagine that every time you get cut off somebody who's in a dire situation, they really need to go, where they're going? And like, what would it hurt you to just believe the best in people. And I

David Copeland, Ph.D. 1:01:21
know that that's another egg angle that a lot of people we make assumptions, you know, very easily. And part of is just because we don't, we're dealing with incomplete information about the world around us and every other person been. So it's as easy for that's why we make stereotypes and stuff like that, too. But yeah, we're drawing assumptions all the time. And we're just going with what's the easiest, you know, assumption that pops in my head. And typically, like, when you're driving, it's the fact that the person's a jerk, right, you know, and trying to cause you harm. Whereas like you said, it's very easily could be a case where someone's having, you know, a bathroom emergency or something else, right?

Scott Benner 1:01:57
I'm about to go do something horrible. And a Burger King, you got to get out of my way. And well, not only do you fill it in with the easiest answer, but I do think it's part of the other thing that I said, where you fill it in with the answer that makes you feel superior to

David Copeland, Ph.D. 1:02:12
Yeah, and, you know, especially when you think, you know, you think of the other drivers as the outgroup. You know, there are others you don't know who they are, they're, they're definitely a part of your in group. Bad Guys, and

Scott Benner 1:02:23
good guys, I boy, I was talking about this with my son this morning. I don't want to say it's a family issue, because then if they hear it, they might know but, you know, let's say people I know that aren't in my house. And there's this one person that everything they talk about, they want the story to be there, the good guy, and there are other people and those people are bad guys. And, and when the bad guys aren't there, they'll make them. Because they don't seem comfortable when there's no drama. Like what makes people comfortable with x. I

David Copeland, Ph.D. 1:02:58
think I think one of the big things is we always try to present ourselves in the best possible way. Because we want other people to like us and you know, we want to make connections, you know, we're humans are social beings. And, you know, we want to make connections, and we want to have friends and, and good family relations. And so we want to and we we think in our perspective, that always presenting ourselves as good and positive and having, you know, you know, making the right decisions on things, you know, is the best way to do that. And so so we're not very good at always admitting fault.

Scott Benner 1:03:33
So if I don't feel good about myself, the next best thing is to make everyone else look under me. So I rise up. In Yeah, that's definitely can be a coping mechanism. Wow, people are so screwed up. I'm gonna have more and more therapists and psychologists and people who think about stuff like this on the podcast, because I, I'm fascinated by all this. And, and, and back to the original point. You know, it's funny, because I just wanted to talk about sunk cost fallacy because I think that people can get too invested in how they take care of their health, and that might keep them from seeing other stuff. But then you brought up confirmation bias, and I was like, This conversation is going to be terrific. So I'm having a very good time talking to you. Can I? Are there ways for me to see my biases?

David Copeland, Ph.D. 1:04:24
I think the simple answer is to recognize that we are not perfect and we don't have all the answers and that ways that we're doing things could be good or acceptable, but maybe not the best. And I think just simply telling yourself that, you know, is, you know, kind of a very good starting point. You know, a lot of philosophers you know, will state that, you know, a high sign of intelligence is admitting that you don't know something and being able to utter that phrase, I don't know. Because because too many people are Afraid of looking, admitting that in that scent making them seem unintelligent. And so maybe they you know, give some kind of other answer confidently even though it might not be the correct answer.

Scott Benner 1:05:12
Well, let me say this because I made it because I'm trying to be funny. I'm not sure if the next thing I'm going to tell you if I was right about or not. But I found myself recently talking to an 18 year old with type one. And this person wanted to wants to do something with their life, they have a goal, right? And they're struggling right now with their blood sugar's, they're probably just not paying quite enough attention to it. It's not a big misunderstanding that they're having. And I don't know what happened, I was maybe having a day. And I was trying to squeeze some things in. And so I'm talking to this person, while I'm on my way to see something else. And maybe my day was getting away from me, I wasn't as focused on being maybe the person that you hear on the podcast all the time. And I just said to them, Look, if you keep doing what you're doing, now, you're going to get to this thing that you want to do later. And you might fail at it. And you're going to want to blame the diabetes. But the truth is, it's going to be your fault. And I thought, like, as soon as I said it, I was like, Wow, it was harsh, like, I shouldn't have said that, like that. But I went back over it again. And I niced it up, and I said it again. But as I must have thought about it for hours afterwards. And I was right. Like they put if this person would put a tiny bit of effort in right now, to kind of tighten up a couple of ideas and get these things working, then this next goal in their life would would go so much more easily, and they'd have a great chance of success with it.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 1:06:49
But and you know what I mean, in the end, I think what you're getting at is a little bit of an idea called the attribution error of when, you know, when I make a mistake, it's due to some external circumstance, you know, affecting me, you know, it's somebody else's fault. So, you know, so to speak, where is if someone else, you know, you know, messes up, then it's something about themselves, they screwed it up, but, you know, kind of an idea. And so I think it really gets back to is that wheat as kind of a coping mechanism, again, you know, for our confidence is we don't like to admit, we're wrong, you know, and, you know, when you know, something goes wrong, we like to put the blame on other things, or other people, and it wasn't ourselves that really, you know, could have done better.

Scott Benner 1:07:33
Yeah, it's, you know, listen, I, I don't, I'm not saying I don't do those things, I want everybody to understand that I don't think David's saying he doesn't do things like this either. But being aware that they exist, is your only real chance to get ahead of them at some point. Otherwise, you know, your life could end up being a series of, you know, things that happen that you think are decisions that might be a lot less about your decision and a lot more about how you feel about yourself, based on what somebody said to you, when you were 10 years old, or you know, that kind of stuff, like I don't want, I don't want to feel like I'm being drugged through life by that kind of randomness. And I just wanted to pick an episode to talk about it here. So maybe other people could have a chance to see their biases and, and stop themselves from getting caught in repetitive decisions that are not the best that they could be for them.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 1:08:30
But yeah, and you know, part of it is that, you know, if you're perfectly fine of envisioning yourself five years from now in the exact same patterns that you're in now, and you're happy with that, maybe maybe you're good, maybe you just stick with what you're doing. Yeah. But if you want to picture yourself in five to 10 years as living an improved life, then you probably have to make some steps to to make some changes so that you aren't doing the exact same things and making the same patterns in your life. And so that you can make progress. And you have to understand that it is possible when you make change, that hey, maybe things you know, you can have some problem run into some problems. That's okay. Maybe you don't do it well enough. Or you don't learn quick enough. And hey, that's okay. We're allowed to fail in life. You know, people think that, you know, sometimes it's unacceptable. But people who are they tried something out, it didn't work, you know, so then I tried something new.

Scott Benner 1:09:24
Yeah. Is that why we break everything down into like these little like slogans so that everybody can wrap their heads around them? Like, you know, people will love to tell you that. millionaires have gone bankrupt like three times before they became millionaires, which is a nice way of saying don't give up.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 1:09:38
Yeah, essentially, it is. The problem with it is it's typically an empty phrase to most people, because most people don't think too deeply about it or just, you know, don't don't

Scott Benner 1:09:49
go back to themselves. Yeah, no, I don't. I've never once thought I'll have a million dollars one day, but I guess I would think most people don't feel that way. But that that That does become the problem is that these things are so they're so empty that they they'll ring true for a moment, but then you can't hear the bells anymore. You know, you're like, Oh, that makes sense. And then it's gone. And yeah,

David Copeland, Ph.D. 1:10:10
like the Nike slogan, just do it is great in terms of, you know, inciting people to take action to you know, make a change or, you know, do something in their lives. But we've heard it so often Now. Now. It's just this random slogan that just bounces off our ears when we hear it. It's super

Scott Benner 1:10:24
exciting, right till I jump up in the air and realize I can't get anywhere near the rim. It reminds me of when my son was super young, he might have been seven or eight years old, his friend is at bat at a baseball game. And the kid's father stands up and yells his name and the kid grabs his attention as he's like getting into the batter's box and says, just hit the ball. And the kid stopped and what? Oh, thanks. Yeah, that was not valuable advice. If it was that easy. A baseball wouldn't be fun to watch and be everyone would be amazing at it. I didn't know I just had to hit it. I appreciate you're doing this with me. And I do wonder if you'll tell me if you think I'm well, if you listen to this, and then tell me what you think. But I don't believe that everybody needs to go out and change themselves. I don't believe anybody has to. But I do think that if people were self reflective, they would change. I don't know if it would be better or worse for them that I can't say. But it would be different. And it would be progress of some sort. Do you think it's odd that I wanted to put this episode into this podcast? You listen to the podcast?

David Copeland, Ph.D. 1:11:35
Yeah, I don't think it's odd at all, I think I think one of the things to understand is that people work in different in different paces. And different people are different in terms of their willingness to try new things, their motivations, their goals, they're wanting to make change themselves. And so I think if people are fine, where they're at, then, then as long as they're getting good enough results, then they can do that. That's their choice. But some people will kind of hope they had better results, but aren't, you know, but that hope isn't enough to get them to make a change. And you hope those individuals can start to see that there is some psychology to this and that, we have to recognize that a you have to get yourself to really want to make the changes, you know, step number one, and then number two, you have to tell yourself that, hey, what I believe in what I'm doing might not be the best ultimate, you know, way of doing things and way of believing things. And maybe I should go out there and listen to other pieces of advice the best, especially from things, ideas coming from experts, and people who have tried them out and found great success with it, I always just think it's been specific focus to diabetes, I just always think find somebody who's doing it better than you and find out what they know that you don't know.

Scott Benner 1:12:51
Like, that just makes sense to me. Like if you're having trouble keeping your blood sugar stable, like, you know, go find somebody that doesn't like see that as hopeful instead of instead of them making you feel bad about it, which is, which is a thing i abrasca guess I don't think that sharing success makes people feel badly. I think sharing success gives people can give them hope they can choose to feel bad about it, I guess if they want but but the idea is pure,

David Copeland, Ph.D. 1:13:16
you know, again, if that information isn't out there at all, then there's not a chance at all that they're going to try something because because then they don't have any ideas because

Scott Benner 1:13:25
of what I said earlier, which is you can't imagine what lies beyond your understanding. Right, so you can watch your blood sugar spike up after a meal, and then crash back down again. But if you don't understand what Pre-Bolus means, if you don't understand how to make your Basal insulin, right, then this is just this thing that happens to you every day, it's just the thing that is happening to you. And if you don't have the words to put to it, or the tools to fix it with, then all you're left with is the idea of like, I know this isn't right, but I don't know what to do next.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 1:14:00
Well yeah, and then at that point, you might just try it through trial and error, try something and by chance it might work you know, and sometimes it could be an effective tool. Other times it could just be random that it just you know you did something and adjust your insulin, you know, regimes just happened to work that day and so you think that this random thing that you did works, but if it's not an effective tool that a lot of other people are using and and you and you don't know about it, then odds are you're not going to stumble upon

Scott Benner 1:14:26
it yourself. Or you might just give up and believe believe it to be unconquerable I saw someone today say something about my blood sugar goes up but then it comes back down. I know my body I know it's gonna do that. And I read that and I did not have the time to respond. But what I wanted to say was is this has very likely little to do with your body and what you know about it and a lot more to do about the fact that your insulin is probably not set up, right.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 1:14:53
Oh, yeah. And when when they think it's an evident when a person thinks is inevitable. It's kind of related to an idea like a learned helplessness It's like an idea of when you think no matter what I'm going to do, it's not going to fix anything, you kind of give up. And but when the reality there might be some real tools out

Scott Benner 1:15:10
there, but I think if people feel that way, if you're listening and you find yourself feeling that way, I mean, I get that that would be a gut punch for a second, if what David just said, you're like, Oh, god, that's what I do, like, you know, but now, you know, don't do it. Yeah,

David Copeland, Ph.D. 1:15:25
that's where if you can hear examples of people, you know, succeeding in overcoming that problem, exposing people to that, then that can, you know, give them inspiration, give them hope to that there is a method out there they can try. Cool.

Scott Benner 1:15:37
Alright, so I'm gonna Thank you for coming on. But I want to ask you one last question before I let you go. So do you listen enough to the podcast that you have a vibe for it?

David Copeland, Ph.D. 1:15:46
I've listened to a handful episodes, I've gone through different sources, you know, with citizen books or conversations with their endocrinologist.

Scott Benner 1:15:55
So you feel but but I'm talking about just me specifically, like the thing I'm laying out like, do you have a grasp of what I'm doing? Yes. Okay. So is it hard for you, when you're listening to something like this with your background? to not see what I'm, how am I want to ask the S? Do you see how I'm trying to help people along? And is it hard for you to listen to something when that when there's a secondary thing happening that a lot of people are listening to don't hear, and maybe you don't know what I'm talking about? I'm interested to know.

David Copeland, Ph.D. 1:16:28
I think I think that providing the information out there is it in its of itself is a way to do it. And I think another thing that's very important is that it's got to be presented in a way there that people want to, you know, listen to it, you know, you if you present it, you could you know, very well present all this information in a very dull, like scientific conference way of just like reading something in a very monotone voice. But if you make something a little bit interesting, you know, add some story to it, then you're actually going to get people's attention to it. And it actually make them want to listen, and that and people want stories,

Scott Benner 1:17:06
right? Like that's Yes, sir, very much. It's a very human thing. I just, I always wonder like, I wonder if a person like you, like, it's almost like sitting in school again, after being through like, the first time you go through you, you just think you're having this experience. And the second time you go through, you're like, oh, the teachers getting me somewhere there there on purpose, moving me from where I am to this other place?

David Copeland, Ph.D. 1:17:29
Well, it kind of gets the idea of when you don't know anything about a topic, most people shy away from it and call it boring, or you know, something that they're not interested in. But as you get exposed and learn more and more about a topic, you'll find people actually develop an interest and sometimes even a passion toward it. And so it's a really kind of an interesting thing. So when you have the availability, the resources out there for people to continue learning, once you kind of snowball up that, you know, knowledge base, then people can really get into it.

Scott Benner 1:18:01
Alright, I appreciate your time. I greatly thank you so much for doing this. You did it kind of on short notice even and I'm gonna put it out pretty soon. So I'm excited about it. Is there anything you want to share with people I know, we were for four seconds, we're like, My daughter has diabetes. And then we were like, jump right into this. But is there anything diabetes wise? I never usually asked at the end. But is there anything about diabetes, you want to talk about that? We didn't? Ah,

David Copeland, Ph.D. 1:18:26
I think just like anyone else, I'm, you know, continuously learning about this. And I think it really to bring it back to one of the points that you'd mentioned earlier. You know, I think that I care more about it, because it's with, you know, an issue with my daughter than even if I think of it was about me. And so I think it's one of those types of things where it's, you know, being a parent makes it you know, a little bit more motivating, even for me to learn more and more about this, this particular topic, and to, to improve, because I want her to live a fantastic life. Yeah. Oh,

Scott Benner 1:19:03
God. Well, what's your Cheers to that, that's a that's a great way to end. Thank you very much. And thank you for inviting me. A huge thanks to David for coming on the show and sharing his expertise with us. I'd also like to thank touched by type one, who you can of course find at touched by type one.org on Facebook, and Instagram. And I just want to remind you one last time, head over to T one d exchange.org. forward slash juicebox. fill out the survey. If you're a US resident, and you have type one diabetes, or you're the caregiver of a child with type one, it won't take but a few minutes, it'll benefit the podcast and it will benefit everyone living with Type One Diabetes even you.

#518 Brownie

Shaun Brown is an adult living with type 1 diabetes.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
Friends Hello, and welcome to Episode 519 of the Juicebox Podcast.

Today's episode I'll be speaking with Sean brown Sean's an adult living with Type One Diabetes. And he and I go on a journey together, we talk about a little bit of everything. If I remember correctly, I was sick when I recorded this one. So I'm not 100% certain what I said. So you can't hold me accountable. Please remember while you're listening that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, please always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. We're becoming bold with insulin. Now, there are some things you can do without consulting your physician for instance, you can listen to the diabetes pro tip episodes of the podcast. They begin at Episode 210. And they're also available at diabetes pro tip.com. So what I did there was like a weird little. Anyway, I turned it into a thing for you have a little extra stuff here? Oh, yeah, Sean's on Instagram. I wanted to tell you that because I really like him. And I thought if you want to check him out, you could he Shawn brownie, sh a un, br o w n IE.

This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries. g vo cuyp open, Find out more at G Vogue glucagon.com forward slash juice box. We're also sponsored by the Contour Next One blood glucose meter. I'd very much like it if you would check it out at Contour Next one.com forward slash juicebox. There are links in the show notes of your podcast player and links at Juicebox Podcast comm to these and all of the sponsors. Check them out. This one's gonna be interesting. I don't feel well this is the closest you're going to come to having conversation with me when I'm drunk or high that you're ever going to find because my face feels like it's seven inches in front of my skull for some reason. That's not good. I don't know what's going on. Exactly. I don't have any the COVID symptoms. So I'm feeling pretty good about that part. I just got sick the other day. But I don't I don't have any symptoms other than my head feels a little dancey and I'm a little achy, but that's about it. So, bomber. Yeah, sorry. Sorry to hear that. It's okay. I'll get through it. I usually the fit. I usually get sick and I usually kick my illnesses in a day. And this one's cuts quick. Yeah, this one's Hold on to me a couple days. So this must be worse than usual. My immune system is probably what killed Arden's pancreas honestly, it's really strong. I just don't normally get second face, Eric.

Shaun Brown 3:02
My name is Shaun Brown, type one diabetic, just turned 40. And honestly didn't have anything prepared. I thought you're just going to ask me questions.

Scott Benner 3:14
Because I just need you to introduce yourself. That's all you listen to the show. Right, john? You know, I listened to it pretty frequently. Yeah, I think beginning of every episode, someone's like, Hey, I'm Sean. Like, Bob, you knew this was coming. Did you? Yeah, I honestly didn't premeditated it very deeply. So I'm kind of I'm good with that. I appreciate that. Actually.

Shaun Brown 3:33
Yeah. Um, yeah, I figured it out. I actually at first, I had written some stuff down that to kind of think about what I may need to say. And then I thought, That's absolutely pointless, because I already know how you do the show.

Scott Benner 3:45
We're not gonna ask a bunch of like, scripted questions. That won't be right. Well, listen, you You said you're 40 years old. I just turned 40. Yeah. Happy birthday. And you've had diabetes for quite some time. How old were you and you're diagnosed.

Shaun Brown 4:00
So here's the funny thing. Like, I don't ever I always have to kind of quantify it by the grade I was in because I I never deeply thought about, like, even the idea of when people call a diversity. Yeah, that's absolutely new to me. Like I've never even heard of such a thing until I kind of joined the ecosphere of Instagram and such.

Scott Benner 4:22
Yeah, that's a social that's a social media construct, I think.

Shaun Brown 4:25
Yeah, it must be because I'm like, What is that? And I honestly was completely foreign to me to celebrate it to it seems kind of weird, but I guess I get it. But so I was in sixth grade and are just starting sixth grade. So that puts me probably around 12.

Scott Benner 4:45
Okay, cool. Well, I and I completely have to say I completely understand you thinking about that. We've never had a celebration marking Arden's day that she was diagnosed. I don't know that I could. Well, I do know about myself that if I didn't have my vlog, I wouldn't know when Arden was diagnosed other than to know that it was after her birthday, which would put it in the later summer. But I do know it was in August. But even as I'm being pressed, I don't know the date. So, yeah, and you know, it's up to you, right? Whether you how you want to deal with it or not deal with it or, you know, I think it's one of those things. Maybe you see people do that. That has a lot of value for them. And if you don't need that, then then oh, no, I didn't. Yeah, I didn't mean to like, downplay it like that. You didn't. By the way, don't forget, I'm sick. So this is gonna go. This could go awkward. Like, I don't know, I've definitely recorded when I had a head cold like this.

Shaun Brown 5:43
I'm pretty sure I already said that foot because I was all nervous about how to introduce myself. I did. I did the hard work for me.

Scott Benner 5:52
No, no, I listen, I What I'm saying is I can see their side of it. I can see wanting to mark the occasion, and celebrated like, you know, look at me, I've gone another year with this thing. And, you know, I completely get that. It's just not something that is occurred to us to do.

Shaun Brown 6:06
Yeah, I mean, it just kind of happened. And then it became my life. So I didn't beyond that. Right? I never. But yeah, I vividly remember specifically because, you know, I was not diabetic until sixth grade. So

Scott Benner 6:21
maybe the sixth grade gave me diabetes.

Shaun Brown 6:24
I think it was Yeah, although it was nice getting to go to the nurse office. And and ivig class. I used it as a tool not gonna front.

Scott Benner 6:35
Hey, I'm a little what would you say you were to get out?

Shaun Brown 6:38
I would I feel so bad admitting this. I just would you know, because it was it was totally new to me. And I knew I could leave the class. If I said I didn't feel well. So I you know, went to the nurse office, which in retrospect is terrible. And and kind of, I don't know, it makes me a crappy person.

Scott Benner 6:59
You think so? I don't think a 12 year old can be a crappy person for Oh,

Shaun Brown 7:02
no, no. Well, I you know, what's, what's ironic too, is when I think about it, I would tell the nurse like I feel low and she always had these Donald Duck juice OJS in the fridge. And she would have me test my blood and I know for a fact and right in retrospect that wasn't always low but she was still give me the oj I'm always scratching my head when I think about that one because I'm like, she was the she gave me the juice even though I didn't need it. Which would you know, do worse arm in the end?

Scott Benner 7:35
Maybe Maybe it's it's, um, maybe it's more sinister than that. Maybe she just wanted to, you know, she's like, Look, I need to, I need this job. So I need to, I think she felt bad that she was trying to be consoling, probably making juice make you feel better? Well,

Shaun Brown 7:49
there's, you know, there's psychology wrapped around it, too. Like she probably was aware I was going through stuff. I was newly diagnosed. She was hanging with you. Yeah, I think she probably was humor me To be honest, even though it was a poor choice.

Scott Benner 8:03
I'm thinking of sixth grade. I, my God, it was as it was a long time ago, sixth grade, I had algebra. Now that's pretty common or not. Nowadays. I think they teach kids algebra in like preschool. But I did not understand algebra. I was not good at it. I couldn't follow it. Mixing letters with numbers was not a good idea for me. And I tried for a while I finally came up with it. I was like, I can't do this. I have to drop this class. So that I don't fail it. You know, I'll go back into some general math class, I went up to the teacher. And I don't remember any of my teachers names. But this man, his name was Ted combs. And I remember going up to him and saying, Mr. Combs, I gotta get out of this class. I don't understand algebra. And he laughed. He said, Yeah, I've seen your grades. We know you don't understand it. I was like, Okay, see, this guy's on board, you know. And he goes, but it's too late to drop this class. So you're just gonna have to try harder. And I was like, I don't think that's gonna work. So I tried for a little longer. And one day, I just went up to him. And I basically just made him a deal. And I said, Listen, I will sit in the back of this class. I won't bother you, I won't cause you a problem. I am going to fail this class. I'm not going to hand it homework. I'm not going to do assignments in class. I'm not taking the test, zeroes fail. I'll go to summer school. And he said, Okay. And that's what the education system used to be like. Just see, do you can you imagine now that happening? No,

Unknown Speaker 9:29
no,

Scott Benner 9:30
that was sixth grade, sixth grade. I was 12. I was very premeditated and forward to tell the teacher Oh, the only thing stopping me from ruling the world as an evil genius is I have a pretty big heart. Otherwise, I would just like it, which reminds me that two years later, my guidance counselor said Scott, we we don't talk much. But you should consider becoming an attorney. And I was like, Oh, no, no, no, I don't want to do that. And he said, Why? I said, Well, two reasons. I don't want to do the same thing every day for the rest of my life. Be it Be an attorney. And then I was like, I guess it's three things. And I said, I think I'd be bad at it. And he's like, No, I think you'd be good. And I'm like, No, no, you're misunderstanding me. I was like, I think I'd be bad at it. And like, you know, and he was like, Oh, I'm like, I feel like there's like a sinister part of me that could take over and I could just be, you know, like a bad guy in this story. I was like, I don't want to do that. So I just know that I, I just know that I could be a televangelist. If I had the right heart for it is what I'm saying, Shawn. I definitely didn't go that route. Yeah, I definitely think I could get up on television and be like, just send me some money and everything will be fine. But it work. Yeah, I can see that I broke for you that when I was younger, but when I was younger, I was broke. And I grew up kind of poorly. And I knew I was bright. And I always was afraid I'd I'd like, it's funny. I never had any thoughts about it. But I was always concerned for it not to happen to me. But anyway, there's a long way to go to say that I think your your nurse, I think you're right. She's probably somewhere between trying to be kind to you. And maybe not even understanding the whole thing completely. How long did it take you? Yeah, I think it was a mixture for sure. How long until you understood. Man, I'm embarrassingly still figuring it out. So I think that's good to admit, actually. Well, well, how did you manage back then? cuz I've you and I've emailed back and forth for a long time. Now. I feel like

Shaun Brown 11:22
yeah, I guess it's, it's been a while I'm one when I was diagnosed, it was like old school, I was put on mph and regular. You know, he had that he had the vial, you had to like roll in your hand gently before you drew out into the syringe. And it was it was a pretty like set schedule where it was just like, here's how much you take. And this is when you eat type of thing. Yeah. And man, looking back, but kids these days, I will say, You're so lucky. As far as information is concerned, because it's still scarce, ironically, but with the internet. And with, like communities, like on Instagram, where there's like a thriving community amazingly, yeah. Man, I wish I had something like that when I was younger. That's all I can say. Because information is like the vital component to put you on track. And, you know, obviously, you can get bad information too. But being able to actually interface with other people that live the same life also, and see how they deal with their problems and what works good, what doesn't work and things like that is highly beneficial. And I've never had any of that when I was, you know, younger. And I'm an old guy now.

Scott Benner 12:51
So. So for decades, you were just was it really wasn't that long, you were just shooting at certain times and eating at certain times. And that was it.

Shaun Brown 12:59
One so I wasn't I wasn't on mph irregular for like an eternity. That's what they started me on. But I remember moving into the rapids, like as soon as they became available. And so after that, it was pretty much lantis and homologue or lantis and novolog. And ironically, I'm still on the same type of insulin regimen, even though at this point, I'm so done with it to be honest.

Scott Benner 13:29
Well, okay, so um, I have here, I just did some quick googling. And it looks like humor blog came out in 1996. Hmm, that sounds about right. Sounds about right. So that would have made you How old? So 96 I was 16. Okay, so you did it the first way for about four years, then? Yeah, it wasn't forever, right? And then into the fast tracking stuff, but like you're saying with no real information about how it worked? And is it even more looking back? Is it even more confusing? To go from the just put it in and make sure you eat at the same time to this new insulin that basically works completely differently?

Shaun Brown 14:08
Are you referring to comparing, like mph and regular to novolog? and such?

Scott Benner 14:14
Yeah, like, what was that transition? Like?

Shaun Brown 14:16
It was pretty seamless. I remember just kind of it was the same type of thing. But the problem is, is that we I had always, like, I was never I never got an endo. Even I still to this day, don't have an endocrinologist you've

Scott Benner 14:31
never had.

Shaun Brown 14:32
Dude, I've been my own endo since day one. The day I was diagnosed, you know, I was pretty much like doing it myself. Which is insane. The more I think about it, and I did, I did definitely like once I ironically started to learn more from a health scare that kind of put me on a different track about a year ago. And I started really digging in and saying I you know, I can't Keep doing what I'm doing. I need to re examine what I'm doing. I got so angry at my past because I realized that this entire time, like, I had not been given the proper tools, you know, it's not like I'm a dummy. I'm a pretty smart dude. But I've never been given like the right tools to, to, you know, really succeed properly. Some honestly, it's in so many ways. lucky to be here. Lucky to you know, still be healthy. Yeah. As far as I understand, you know? And, yeah, that's one thing I can say is I'm I'm thankful that it didn't go a different route. For sure.

Scott Benner 15:45
So you basically live like 2025 27 years, with just winging it?

Shaun Brown 15:53
Yeah, it's like the ebb and flow of like, I don't feel good. Let me check it. I The thing was, is I was always, like, pre good about checking my blood. I've always been like, you know, if I don't feel right, I'll check. And if a tie, I deal with it, I don't like sit on it. And, you know, watch it go crazy. I admittedly, during my, you know, teen through younger college years, I was a little rambunctious and did not take it as seriously as I should. Like, I wanted to be in the moment more in certain events or occasions that would allow it to kind of go high when I shouldn't have. But most of the time, you know, I had always been pretty good about it, like, my age, I wish I could find out what my agencies were like when I was super young, because that information is gone now, and I can't get ahold of it. But like, the data, I do have a, I was always in, you know, high sixes to like, low or mid fives. And so I was always kind of managing it, obviously. But sorry,

Scott Benner 17:04
were you getting low a lot back then? Yeah, okay. I

Shaun Brown 17:08
definitely do. I had, I had a lot of experiences where, you know, I got used to waking up with paramedics around and it was just like, this is just diabetes. This is, you know, see what it's like to be diabetic.

Scott Benner 17:20
Sean, that's really interesting. So you had somebody told you lower a one see better, so the number was lower. So you felt like you were doing well, which had to have meant that passing out and then needing an ambulance was just part of it?

Shaun Brown 17:34
Well, I just was never, like, corrected, and I never had I never had proper guidance. Really? Yeah, is the thing. Yeah. And so, and sadly, you know, my, my parents always did everything they they knew they could do to I think but we were all uninformed. And, and, you know, like, I don't want to throw anybody under the bus. But like, I am frustrated that I love my folks. They love me to death. They're amazing, but I wish they had searched out like, you know, finding an endocrinologist I think they they understood that we were in good hands. And arguably we were to a degree but you know, my needs were specific and, and then rapturous, back and

Scott Benner 18:24
exploration, though, I was just saying, reflect if somebody sets expectations in a certain place, and it feels like you're meeting them, and your parents might not have any reason to want to look exactly

Shaun Brown 18:33
and that's what I wanted to kind of know is it's not like they weren't making sure I was it was okay. It's not like they were just like, you know, you're not caring about

Scott Benner 18:46
my well being Yeah, you weren't a dog bed at night, right? They didn't like like put on their plate on the floor and be like you're showing ads for you know, you were being well cared for by people who were given a certain set of things to do and they were doing them for you. And that was

Shaun Brown 19:01
Yeah, it was pretty much you know, like I one of your old shows, I remember you saying you know that Turner what he called it like the kind of don't die, toolbox or whatever.

Scott Benner 19:12
Yeah, I tell you give advice that I consider to be do not die advice. It's just enough to keep y'all that's exactly

Shaun Brown 19:18
what I was given. You know, I remember when I'm when I'm, you know, I might when I was diagnosed, we we basically kept my pediatrician till I think I was like 18 ironically, maybe 16

Scott Benner 19:37
it's actually common nowadays to keep them longer. If you really if you go into college, they'll kick me out, kicked you out.

Unknown Speaker 19:44
It's like yeah, Shawn, I

Unknown Speaker 19:45
don't let people come in here that can kick my ass. You gotta go. He was like, dude, you're so old. You gotta you gotta go to another doctor. You know? That's funny.

Scott Benner 19:56
But yeah, nowadays. Like my kids pediatrician will Be happy to keep them until they're done college. Night. Oh, wow. Yeah. Never heard of such a thing. Yeah. So you don't have to be looking for a doctor while you're going to college. So through college age?

Shaun Brown 20:13
Well, that's kind of good. I mean, if you can stick with somebody, the longer the better I figure.

Scott Benner 20:19
No, I think so too. I agree. Well, I want to dig a little farther into this. So you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. And you're just in that world. And by the way, you're not the nearly the first or the 100th person to tell me that I just feel like waking up with a paramedic overtop of me is part of having diabetes. And it usually does come from people have to say, who have had type one for a couple of decades, usually or longer, like, people who got that, that initial like, Hey, here's humalog You know, this is new and exciting. It's so much better than the stuff you've been using. And wow, look at your meter. You can carry it with you now and stuff I get like in that space and time of diabetes. A lot of the people with expectations like that come from that space, I find, but it's amazing. Yeah. So what what changed for you like what happened two years ago?

Shaun Brown 21:14
So I was progressively getting like stomach discomfort. And it wasn't like excusing it bump the wire here fine. So so I was getting kind of like a cramping but it wasn't like intense. And then it progressed into almost like, it moved into my chest area. And I was starting to freak out thinking like, Am I potentially having a heart attack and it kind of kept getting worse? One evening, I could not get it to go away with, you know, taking antacids or pepto or anything like that. And I just remember, nothing made it better. And it was so intense that, you know, I nervously submitted myself to the ER, to go see if I was having a heart attack. I wasn't apparently. And then I then I thought, well, maybe it's pancreatitis, and it wasn't that my bloodwork came out, okay. They did it like a rib scan. Everything was good. It's really strange. And so I stayed there till like 3am, I came home. And then I saw my doctor. And he he inferred that it was like, severe GERD or something. And so he put me on a proton pump inhibitor for a bit. And that actually made me worse. I felt terrible. I felt terrible on this. And I kept telling him, you know, I think I might not need this. And I don't think it's I'm reacting properly to it. And it was really bad. And then eventually, you know, I told him, I think I'm having an allergic reaction to this drug because it's it I'm feeling way worse. I was feeling like sick from it. And, and at first, I thought I felt better. But then it progressed into an area where I was just, I knew something was wrong, and it was the drugs. So I told him, I'm not taking this anymore. So you kind of partially bicker with me on at first, but then you decided that, you know, the patient knows best type of thing. And then, and then I quit taking it. And I felt immediately better. Well, you

Scott Benner 23:27
didn't have any stomach acid to help you with your food.

Shaun Brown 23:29
Yeah, it was it was intense. And so at that point, I kind of just I had like a wake up call where I'm like, I already was like for a while progressively for about 10 years, cutting things out on my diet that just were junk. You know, I grew up on a very standard American diet. And I, over the years kept pulling things away and being more meticulous about how he thinking about, you know, eating healthier foods as much as possible, removing processed food as much as possible. And at a certain point, I just figured I need to examine my diet even more. I also had been pretty, pretty consistently a drinker for a long time. So I was concerned maybe it had something to do with alcohol. I'm not like a binge drinker or anything, but like, I would definitely have at least a beard a night to take the edge off or whatever. I think in retrospect, I realize ironically, I was probably kind of self medicating with alcohol, not knowing it.

Scott Benner 24:43
So stuff self medicating,

Shaun Brown 24:46
dealing with the stressors of diabetes. I also am a you know a father to an amazing kid who's nine now but he he is on the autism spectrum. He also has Has Tourette's? And it's a full time job, you know? And so that kind of added to the equation when we had my son.

Scott Benner 25:13
Well, that's not. I have to say, I just wanted to take a detour for a second. Not sure off, but I see online. There are plenty of dads of kids with type one. And drinking does seem to be their major way to deal with it. If I'm Yeah, and it's, it's no good man. Wow. So yeah. So you come home at the end of the night, you're having a beer every day, you're having these pains, stomach chest, and it just generally makes you feel like, I need to do better for myself, because especially because they didn't come up with anything, right?

Shaun Brown 25:48
Yeah, the crazy thing is, is they could not find anything. And I was quite determined to figure it out. So I had them scheduled me for a full abdomen scan, they didn't find anything. The only thing that was left was like a what? When the scope you and I never got the scope done, because I changed my diet. And I improved dramatically after I changed my diet.

Scott Benner 26:11
I have to tell you that I've tried very hard over the last couple of years to remove processed foods, certain oils. And I thought that was hilarious, actually. And I feel much better. Last night as an example, like, everybody wanted something specific, and I made it. And then I had some and I just didn't. I was like, uh, later I was like, I'm not gonna eat that again. Like, I shouldn't have that you don't I mean, like it just it just wasn't worth it. And when you're younger man, your body just like your body can eat tin cans when you're younger. You don't I mean?

Shaun Brown 26:50
Yeah, absolutely. You get into the hat. That's the problem is you form habits. And yeah, I certainly formed a lot of bad ones when I was younger.

Scott Benner 26:57
Right? Well, so in the, in that process, then that taking care of your diabetes just came along with eating better. You just were like, Well, let me manage this more specifically as well.

Shaun Brown 27:09
Yeah, what so what's it's so weird, because I'm like a completely different diabetic now. I mean, very much the same, but totally different in that. You know, in the past, I was only testing on a meter. I finally acquired CGM that changed everything for me. Just having that data. And and then I found out about in pen, amazingly, through Instagram, and so ironic how Instagram has informed me. It's so it's so like, in retrospect, it's just silly to me, because I've learned more from this from social media and podcasts such as yours, than anything that my doctor could have given me,

Scott Benner 27:59
Sean, you're just old enough to understand when I tell you that. I'm incredibly proud of this podcast. I think it's one of the better things I've done with my life. And yet, when I stand in front of someone, and they're like, Hey, what do you do? I'm like, Well, I have a podcast. It feels stupid when I'm saying it. And you know, and if I was younger, I wouldn't if I was 25, or 30. And I think I have a podcast you know about AI? That would seem realistic to me, but I am older. And when I say it, I understand anyway, how you feel when you're like, I can't believe that Instagram is where I get good information from it just seems ridiculous now. Yeah, yeah, I totally understand. So you learned about in pen through there.

Shaun Brown 28:45
I think I think I stumbled on someone that was using it. And I was like, Oh my god, you can take half units. Sean, you're pretty far behind that. I know. I'm a dinosaur now. So I almost didn't want to do the podcast because I was like, I'm gonna embarrass myself so bad. I'm just gonna sound so I'm educated.

Scott Benner 29:05
No, no, I listen, I think that what you're doing is valuable because I believe that the other side of Instagram is that you're usually only see from people who are doing really well. And I think more people lived the way you did than you think. And they get no I think you're right. Yeah, they don't speak up as often so I'm glad for you to do this. Yes, sorry. So okay, see a diabetes for 27 years and you're like wow, half units, game changer.

Unknown Speaker 29:34
I mean, really

Shaun Brown 29:35
was I'm not gonna lie. So but the thing is, is if I can jump around a lot here, but I'm absolutely still totally sick of not having enough precision. And I never really even had you know, pump therapy pushed on me so much as just mentioned by my doctor like, Hey, you know, you could get a pump, right? And that was about it. Like I was never informed on like, Here's why you should get a pump. This is what a pump can do. When you have pumps, this is what you can benefit from, you know?

Scott Benner 30:19
Gee vo hype open pan has no visible needle, and it's the first pre mixed autoinjector of glucagon for very low blood sugar in adults and kids with diabetes ages two and above. Not only is chivo hypo pen simple to administer, but it's simple to learn more about, all you have to do is go to G evoke glucagon.com forward slash juicebox g vo shouldn't be used in patients with insulin, Noma or pheochromocytoma. Visit g Vogue glucagon.com slash risk.

Stop right now and think, ask yourself this question. Is the blood glucose meter I'm using or using on my child? Is it the best one I could have? If you don't know the answer to that question, I'd like it if you could go to Contour Next one.com forward slash juicebox. To check out the Contour Next One blood glucose meter, this meter is ultra ultra accurate, it is super simple to use fits very well on your hand or your pocket or your purse, or your bag, or wherever you needed to go. It has Second Chance test strips, right? Meaning you can hit the blood not good enough or mess up a little bit, you know, and go back and get more without wasting the test strip or ruining your accuracy. Now I'm not saying that it needs a lot of blood, cuz it doesn't. I'm just saying if you shouldn't quite get enough The first time you know, like sometimes you'll squeeze in and it won't come out. That's when that that's really helpful. Anyway, that wasn't a very clean explanation. But you get what I'm saying you can go back and get more blood without ruining your test trip for your accuracy. accuracy. Oh, what letter was I leaving out their accuracy, accuracy accurate? Whoo, hello, Contour Next one.com forward slash juicebox. Head over and check it out. It's a terrific website. It's well designed, it'll be easy to get around and use. And you'll be able to learn all about the Contour Next One blood glucose meter, you may actually be eligible for a free meter, you have to see also, there's some test strips Savings Programs, you can look into what else Oh, supplies might actually be cheaper in cash than they are through your insurance company. That'd be crazy, wouldn't it? There's only one way to find out. Contour Next one.com forward slash juicebox. Let's get back to Sean

Shaun Brown 32:53
when I was younger, and it was kind of like, you know, the only thing I was told was don't mess up or you'll have problems. You know? No, I was just fearful of screwing up all the time. I just tried really hard to not screw up as much as possible. But I also didn't know like, you know, I honestly in retrospect, may have gone on a pump like much younger. I was really aware of the benefit. And I can see like how much I could improve control with one

only someone would have invented podcast 25 years ago, you would have been saved? Well, you just said that you were told to just not mess up, or else. Were they specific with you? Did you get the like, you want your legs to fall off and your eyes? The pop out was? Yeah, that type of thing. I was really yeah. Yeah. So first, my pediatrician was kind of on the same. The same thing. And then, you know, when I graduated out of him and went to a new doctor who was recommended to me, who was I was told was a specialist in diabetes, but not technically an endocrinologist, we only have like one endo in town, ironically. And I didn't know that at the time, but my parents were referred to him, you know, and we just went to him because he was highly recommended. And he's a great guy. I'm not gonna, you know, I don't want to throw him under the bus or anything. He's a really nice guy. And he's always helped me out with financial issues that I've had along the way too, right? He's always been like caring about, you know, making things affordable. And I've always appreciated that and he's always been, you know, available via email if I need them or something like that. And he gets back quick. So I can't complain, you know, but at the same time, it's, it's not like I was getting guidance, a whole lot either. You know, he definitely made sure you had the insulin and the syringes. He just didn't

that's about it. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. If he ever listened to this. I'm sorry. I'm not Trying to say you're a bad dude.

Scott Benner 35:03
You think is he still practicing? Yeah, I still see him. have bad blood with my doctor even though Can you imagine? That is an adult need, like Didn't he was like, oh, Sarah, you're here for prescriptions for me? Yeah, I suppose I overthink stuff. It'll be fine. Well, listen, I'm not gonna lie to you. A lot of doctors do listen to this podcast. But I was just interviewing someone yesterday who said they were in the office and doing much better, you know, than they had been doing. And the doctor looks at her and goes, are you being bold with insulin? And she goes, do you listen to and the guy goes, I do. So

Unknown Speaker 35:44
that's pretty cool. does

Scott Benner 35:45
happen. Yeah, I have to say, too, and I'm going to, I'll say it here. And I'll say it in a couple other places. If you are one of those doctors, and you're listening, who recommends the podcast, if you would come on the show anonymously, I'd love to interview you. So

Shaun Brown 36:01
they should do that. I really, I would be impressed if someone stepped up to the plate and did that.

Scott Benner 36:06
You don't have to say your name or anything where you're from, or anything like that. But I would love to, I would love to pick the brain of a person who is in that position and has said to another person. Hey, there's a podcast I think you should listen to. I think that's kind of fascinating to me. Actually. That'd be brilliant. Yeah, but yeah, you'll be alright. Listen, and here's a disclaimer for your guy. You're off the hook. Man. Sean thinks you're cool. Let it go. We're just trying to get out what happens when you're diagnosed A long time ago. And for reasons that, you know, I think we've picked apart now a little bit, your parents didn't look much farther into it a little that you just didn't know. And then you know, you have a kin, who's got a lot of responsibilities with your family. And, I mean, luckily, I guess your stomach started hurting. Seriously.

Shaun Brown 36:50
Yeah, you know, it's so ironic because I tell people now like that. I'm so glad it happened to me, because it really changed my life for the better. Like, you know, I'm still trying to get to where I want to be at. But man, I put me on the right track for sure. And I the irony, though, the irony about that is I've always very, very, very strongly not wanting to be that guy. I've always not wanted to be the guy that waits for you know, shit to hit the you know, yeah. You know what I mean? hands dirty to do something about it. Yeah, you know, I've seen that happen to too many people. And, you know, I I've always been adamant about not being one of those people. Which is ironically, I guess why? I don't I'm not blind yet or something. But, you know, at the same time, I'm not gonna pat myself on the back and Sam like him? Well, I think diabetic either

Scott Benner 37:45
No, it sounds to me like you were playing in the side of the pool that was more aggressive with the insulin. So while your issues were wrapped around lows, which might have helped you a little bit, stay away from the higher one so that you don't know you didn't have a CGM. You could have been 400. And then 50. Right, you have no idea. You

Shaun Brown 38:02
know, that's another thing I think about all the time. And I'm actually very, like, hyper aware. And so I probably because of going hypose so much in the back. I mean, here's a funny thing, like just as a side tangent, just to inform me on like how uninformed like I was for very long. Like when I would give myself insulin, I would just say I took insulin, I didn't even know the word Bolus.

Scott Benner 38:29
here that's not uncommon though. Shawn,

Shaun Brown 38:31
man like stuff like that. I had to I had to like cram for a test for like a year straight pretty much is how I've felt

Scott Benner 38:38
learning diabetes

Shaun Brown 38:39
since last October. Yeah, it's been an interesting. Yeah, because I like, I'd be like, Huh, Basil profile. I'm gonna search that now to like,

Scott Benner 38:53
do you find the defining diabetes episodes helpful?

Shaun Brown 38:56
Yeah, I do. Ironic stuff like Pre-Bolus ng I, it's not like I was unaware of what Pre-Bolus was, but it helped put the idea of it a lot more front and center in a way that was way more expansive than I ever thought about it. Because I was always just told, you know, wait 15 minutes. Yeah, right, you know, and that it doesn't work that way, especially depending on activity level. And I've learned all this like, in a very short span of time, ironically. Now, how much hydration you have, what how sensitive you are at the moment, like all these things change, and I would have never known you know, in the past

Scott Benner 39:40
Yeah. I don't know. I don't get deep into a lot of things. Then and you know, I'm, I'm a, basically a person who enjoys like living like I like being around people I care about. I like having a little bit of entertainment. I like being rested. I like You know, I like watching my kids do things like I'm not a person who picks something and, like, digs super deeply into it all the time I have the interest, I'd never have the motivation, but it wasn't hard to want to pick into the diabetes. Once I noticed that, but even in the beginning for me the first couple of years, I was just you, like, you know, you 18 months ago was me when Arden first had diabetes, I was just like, I don't know what any of this means. I don't know why this is happening. The guy said, 15 minutes, the lady said, half an hour, you know, like you I was doing everything like that. Yeah. And it wasn't until one day where I just, I don't know, I just started picking through it. And I found one little like, it feels like, if diabetes me feels like I'm picking paint off a wall. Like I just I saw a little chip and I pulled it off. I was like, Oh, I wonder what else is under there. And I just kind of kept pulling and pulling until I stood back in it, you know, look like that wall for a memento. And I was like, Oh, I understand all this. And, and I know why this is important. Like, and I and maybe one part of my personality that helped was I don't like platitudes. They make me upset, like so saying something just to say it bothers me outside of diabetes as well. And so that statement, oh, that's just diabetes, which you said here earlier, which was part of your life? And was an answer that I would get back all the time or find online, by the way, because as valuable as online is right now, up until a handful of years ago. Nobody was really being that helpful. It was always very, like aspirational stuff, which I I'm not, I'm not shitting on I think is really valuable. But I mean, it never went farther that nobody was ever like, Hey, you know, here, here's a Pre-Bolus broken down into why and how I no one was telling you that except in maybe a couple of books like I might have to give. You'd have to give john Walsh credit for pumping insulin. That book, like where he broke things down there. I've never read it. But I hear from everybody how amazing it is. And he's and he's been around for a while. Oh, certainly a long while. I think he wrote that book with his wife got I think she's his wife anyway, maybe not. JOHN, come on the show. That'd be nice. But um, but that digging through it. Once I dug through it, and it made sense to me, then it felt really wrong not to tell somebody, like, you know what I mean? Like I thought like, well, now I know, somebody else needs to know toe, I'll just start writing, I'll start telling people that that really, to me is how, you know, I'm not taking credit for the entirety of the space. I'm certainly not saying that. But people doing that is how you ended up. Moving forward. You know what I mean? And had no one ever done that you probably would have just written this, you know, this dumpster fire out to the end and been like, hey, and

Shaun Brown 42:55
I would argue No, no, really, I don't mean I don't I don't, I don't think I would have, I still don't think I would have gotten see I'm like, I'm the type of person where I will read a book. If I have if it's really going to have some nuggets of info information that'll help me out. I really just want to get right to the meat and potatoes of what's going to help me get on track fast. And then I can dig into the the you know, details later. And that's what your podcast offers, in my opinion. It's, it's like it's like, well, I don't I don't I hope I'm not, you know, glossing over all the other great things that it does offer. But But for me, in my experience, it kind of just narrowed it like you know, gave put a bull's eye on what I needed to hear. Right when I needed to hear it instead of having to weed through a ton of other nonsense.

Scott Benner 43:45
I'm glad. And you also said the most masculine thing I've ever heard in my life, which is I'll read a book if I have to. I do read, I actually enjoy reading something I would say by the way. I don't mean it like that. I know. It's funny. No, but I hear what you're saying. Like I got what, like, I'm ready to hear it. Give it to me Don't

Shaun Brown 44:06
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I, I find a lot of authors like to really kind of, it's almost like they need to fill the pages or something.

Scott Benner 44:17
So people asked me to write a book about diabetes that happens every once in a while. I'll give publishers will come and say Hey, could you turn your podcast into a book? Or would you do this? And I'm always like, I don't know, man, like diabetes keeps changing, you know, make a book and then amended and amended and amended, and then people have to read it. And what if they read one page and not the other? Yeah, I don't know. You'd almost have to only live in the digital realm where you could just have it on online space where I could constantly change and it would still be a never ending battle and not for nothing, but don't people read books a lot on tape. And so isn't that what this is? And then why do I need to be published about it? Like it just seems? I mean, also, I've been published before, I guess so this excitement of that, isn't it? know what that is, you know what I mean? Like it was, it is really nice, but I don't need to do it again, kind of a feeling. But at the same time I going back to what you said, I agree with you. Less is more. And often it is be direct, right? So tell them what they need to know, don't like you write a book a lot of times it's a lot of filler. And I mean, I could I could write an amazing book about managing your diabetes right now probably about like, 35 pages long. Like is, you know, that's a pasture not a book. Yeah. So and, and I don't and the other thing, too, Shawn, no lie is just had this conversation with somebody on over the weekend. I, I don't like the idea of you or anyone else listening having to pay for this? Like, I don't like that. So I don't think you should have to pay somebody 1995 to know how to Pre-Bolus I don't feel like I should I am not a person who would put up a program online and be like, for just $60 a month, you can understand what I know about that, like that stuff. I don't like that at all. I'm trying not to be harsh about it. Because I know people who do this as a business model. And I don't think that all of them are. I don't think they're bad people. But it rubs me the wrong way. Like

Shaun Brown 46:20
I could I couldn't understand why I mean, you're connected to it in such an intimate way to you know, being that your daughter's diabetic, I mean, you're giving something back to the community. That's, you know,

Scott Benner 46:31
it's such a, it's such a very strong feeling for me that that money should not be the the the the access point to you understanding how protein affects your blood sugar, you know, and so that's why I'm like, while there are some people run around and like, get on people, like you take ads and like take ads, I'm actively looking for ads. I'm like, I want the podcast to get made so that someone can find it. Like Sean, you found that a year ago. And it's done for you what it's done, which is great. But the podcast has been alive for five years prior to that, too. It helped other people who are long gone now. And I need to keep making the podcast to the next you finds the podcast, has these experiences and moves on to a healthier situation. And I just don't know, I'm an American, Shawn, like, this is how things work. I build something popular. You buy an ad on it, I use your money to get my thing to people. Like that's basically what I do I take advertisers money to make a podcast, and you use that podcast for what you use it for. Hopefully it works for you. If it does, you tell somebody else about it, that keeps the podcast moving forward, it's very transparent, and I make some money so that I can spend the time doing this, like you and I are talking right now. I feel like I'm going to die. Just so you know, like, like, I really don't feel good. And, but but this is my job now. So I do this today. And I will edit the show later today so that you have a podcast to listen to on Monday. And like, you know, like, and that takes money. Because if I if I didn't have money from the advertisers, I you know, I'm still I'm a stay at home dad, yes. But I still have to make some money, I'd have to go get a job. At the very least I can't sit up here at this desk for five or six hours every day, which at this point is about what the podcast takes to run. And then what go down to my wife and say, Oh, don't worry, I'm helping people. You know, it's just, I don't know what people think. But that's not how the world works. So you know, but and and I don't want to take money from listeners. I trust me there are people who come along all the time. And they're like, hey, how many downloads do you have? And I tell them and they're like, why don't you charge 89 cents for a download? You'd be wealthy? And I'm like, Huh, seems wrong. really does like seems wrong to me. So you'll know if that ever happens that all the all the advertisers are gone. If all of a sudden you're like, I don't know, back in 2021. He said, he didn't want to do this. But now suddenly the podcast costs money, you'll know that I couldn't get an advertiser for that. And by the way, if I can't get an advertiser, it means no one's listening to the show. So you should probably move on anyway. Seriously, you know, like, think about it. It's just common sense, right? I really am a little woozy. Sean. My head's dancing around a little bit. Hang in there. Hang in there, Scott. Don't worry. I have clear instructions for people for how to release all of the recorded episodes if I should die prematurely. So this could be the end of it right here like and Shawn was the last one ever talked to him? He said he doesn't read and he's he just learned about diabetes after having it for 30 or 30 years. Wow. Can you imagine if you were the last one you'd like come on. Just one more cup out after this terrible summary of who Sean is.

Unknown Speaker 49:56
Yeah, no,

Scott Benner 49:56
you're not obviously you're not in this. You know, I like to really In this last quarter of the show, like really summarize who you are, you're a person who a year ago, figured out a ton of new stuff. And I want to hear about your life now.

Shaun Brown 50:12
Yeah, okay, well, now I eat completely different. And I approach food differently. Also, I also work out every day now, which is completely new to me. I, you know, in the past, it was never a part of the culture of my house, even like, you know, getting exercise and that type of way we play ball, we played, I played baseball, I played on soccer teams, I skateboarded growing up, like, intensively, right, a lot. And after that, you know, I just kind of stopped doing active stuff, but I never, there was never like this idea of like, you know, do this to take care of your diabetes also, but also do this because it'll just, you know, keep your body in tune. It just wasn't a thing that my family did. And I, that's another area where I wish it was part of my routine. And early on, because it would have, I think, just that even alone would have set me up for a lot more success.

Scott Benner 51:20
I'm gonna find out more about that. So how did you change your eating first.

Shaun Brown 51:24
So I had already been like toying with the idea of, you know, cutting me out of my diet for a while, because I would always notice, I just didn't feel very awesome when I would eat it. And I enjoyed it. I it's not like I didn't like eating it. But I, I always found like, it just, I would kind of feel sluggish, I would feel good gross afterwards. And it wasn't like a blood sugar thing. That was the concern so much. It was more just like, I didn't enjoy how I felt. You know? And so I it kind of weirdly graduated me to going completely vegan, weirdly, I just, I was like, Well, here's another thing I don't really want to have in my diet anymore. Let me see if I pull this out if this will help. And and then I kind of was like, Well, I'm already pulling this out. Let me see. You go down rabbit rabbit hole real easy once you start kind of just researching, you know, different new ways to proceed with you know, diet, and I stumbled upon the mastering diabetes guys, by complete happenstance, it wasn't I the name of their, their organization, or if the anonymous they are organization, but the team of two guys who who are like real hardcore about, you know, teaching about what causes insulin resistance and informing you on how to how to reduce your insulin resistance via diet and exercise, essentially. But I didn't mean to go to them for diet advice or diabetes advice. I was actually googling online, how to figure out my insulin to carb ratio, and it came up. So I was like, oh, check this out, too. You know, because, for me, like, it's even the idea of the math of doing like, insulin dosing was never something I really did until recently. And so I and I had periodically asked my doctor over the years, like, well, like, how do I figure this out? And he just be like, you know, that's something you just get it changes, like, he would always kind of give me a wishy washy answer. And then I think he honestly didn't know what to tell me. Yeah. And, and so he would, he would write at the time, we did have one endo in his practice, but I didn't see any purpose of going to one because I was always told I was on the right track. And my agency was in range and doing good, you know, so I just thought, like, what is the purpose of Siena, endo? At that point. And so but I also needed advice on like, how did I figure these things out and like, have like a starting point. And so I would periodically Google these things over the years, not not just up until a year ago. Now, I would always feel kind of dumbfounded because I wouldn't just find like, exactly what I was looking for. So just keep doing what I was doing, which was go by the ebb and flow of how my blood sugars were, and just, you know, correct as needed. And I finally found like one website that actually really did summarize how to get your insulin to carb ratio and your ISF. And, I mean, I'm assuming it's accurate, because I've been using this information for years like now Come

Scott Benner 54:53
to think of it. I just did find it on the internet. It was a What is it? Should I not name a website right on your show, it doesn't matter to me. Okay.

Shaun Brown 55:02
Yeah, it was, um, I'm trying to remember it was like I you know, I don't remember anymore. It's a popular it's, it's it's something it's like diabetes info dotnet or something like that I can't honestly can't remember what it was now, even just

Scott Benner 55:18
like anyhow, probably just sent everybody to a porn site. So yeah,

Shaun Brown 55:20
sorry, guys. So anyhow, what I did was I started, you know, doing the math with that the best I could. And I started kind of, like getting me at least started with, like having a truer idea of, you know, how it was really dosing. And, and eventually I even like found a really cool app that lets you take an Excel spreadsheet that that you can, like, you know, put math into, and then you can make the Excel into an app. And so I have a little app on my phone that I built, essentially, that uses that math that I call ratios, I just it's like right next to my and pen app, and I'll adjust it on the fly. Like I'll, I'll assess my seven day, report in in pen. And I'll go off of that. And I'll kind of keep changing my baseline is on the carbon ISF from that. And then I'm still too much of a dummy to like know, how to, like, mathematically quantify what what my daytime and nighttime icy and ISF are. But I know just from the feel of how things go like in the morning, I usually need to have to a unit more on top of recommendation. And at lunch, I'm about recommendation. And that dinner, I'm like a half unit to unit less than recommendation often interesting what whatever that quantifies to so like in, in this little, you know, app thing and I made based on the information I found on that website, I set one field to my way, another field to my Bolus, my total Bolus amount, another field to my total base basil amount, and that gives me my, you know, total daily dose. And then after that it spits out the insulin to carb ratio. But you know, it's like their formula was like 2.6, you know, times your weight divided by your your total daily dose type of thing. And that's, that's what I'm going off of. So that's correct.

Scott Benner 57:31
If it's working for you, it's great. Yeah, it can be working.

Shaun Brown 57:34
But I still feel like it always needs a little fine tuning like, I feel like so then there's the ISF and I kind of built this into the app to where you kind of play with the rule, the standard rule was always like 18 100. But then I learned on that same website that I guess if you're, if you're a real 5050 split, this is my understanding anyways, like if you're, if your your basil is about 50, your Bolus is about 50, then you kind of apparently, and please don't quote me on this because I could be absolutely wrong. But that's more when you use 1800. But if your basil is less, and your Bolus is a little more, you kind of play with the rule and move it down to like, you know, 1750 or 1700. So I because of my ratio, excuse me, I have mine at like 1700. And then that kind of you know, helps me calculate out my ISF.

Scott Benner 58:34
So I think Jenny just explained the 1800 rule on the podcast the other day, it's interesting that you're bringing it up right now about how endos find those your insulin sensitivity factor, but by the way, just so people know, whatever. I just checked the the URL you said and it is not where you

Shaun Brown 58:53
Yeah, you know what here don't go you're done cuz I got my boots, that's all. But now that I know that was wrong, it's diabetes net. Let me see diabetes net calm.

Scott Benner 59:05
Sorry about that. Okay, so yeah, the other one is just like a link farm. Sorry. It's just it's one of those somebody grabbed it because I thought it was a good URL that people might type in. It's funny. I've never heard the one handed there, man. No, you're good. I appreciate you talking about I it's funny. I've never seen this website before in my life.

Shaun Brown 59:26
I only found it because it was like the only place that that really dug into insolent action times. And also, what else? Just like, you know, figuring out your insulin to carb and all that, like in an understandable way that, you know, my simple brain can figure out

Scott Benner 59:43
I'm glad you found something. Give me that cisors I've never seen this website my life. That's interesting. Yeah, look, it almost looks fake. You're not exactly selling it. Just enough. Yeah, so I'm

Unknown Speaker 1:00:03
cracking up for a second,

Shaun Brown 1:00:05
though. That's really dope on those guys as well. guys actually helped me out. I just wanted to let you know,

Scott Benner 1:00:12
for your trouble, I wanted to let you know that your site looks fake. No, um, I think that's cool that you figured stuff out like that, that you were just like, I need to know how to do this. No one's telling me but she wanted at this point, like, how can we haven't just found an endo that you really like? You just don't think it's necessary.

Shaun Brown 1:00:30
So I never was really, I was always reassured I was doing a good job. And I was always put the whole like, sorry,

Scott Benner 1:00:40
do you think you were Do you think somebody was just telling you that he didn't know what they were talking about?

Shaun Brown 1:00:44
Well, naively at the time, I really did think I was doing well. And I guess I knew like, you know, I definitely knew for sure, you know, I need to cut back on my drinking at the time. I always knew that was like, a big No, no. But like, you know, I knew I needed to lose some weight at the time, I was pretty, I was getting heavier. And I knew I needed to get more activity. But beyond stuff like that, you know, I just thought like, Well, every time I would always be super nervous to get my labs and then my labs would come back and I wouldn't have red flags, or anything look good. You know, eventually, I began to have really high cholesterol. And that was one of the that was another one of the main reasons I changed my diet, which I totally forgot to mention was for about maybe five years straight. I had really bad cholesterol, and I completely annihilated that going off and plant base.

Scott Benner 1:01:40
I have to ask you a question. It's gonna sound like I'm joking, but I'm not. What you wake up. There's three paramedics standing over top of you. You think this is okay. Doctor said I'm doing good. No, no, no, absolutely

Shaun Brown 1:01:51
not. I never thought it was okay. Or, you know, it always just made me feel like well, you know, I really, I really messed up and I see Okay, let me try not to repeat what got me there the last time.

Scott Benner 1:02:04
So it felt like a fumble. Like I'm playing a great game. I just dropped the ball for a second.

Shaun Brown 1:02:09
Yeah, gotcha. Yeah. You know, and I guess you can say got it just got normalized because it happened throughout my life, not like a ton, but enough to to the point where it was just part of my life. You know, like, I remember in high school, which was probably the first time it happened. I passed out on the quad. Like on my way from one class to another, I had just gotten Oh, yeah. And I and I didn't realize it, I passed out. I woke up with paramedics. I was told I even seized

Scott Benner 1:02:42
HD my whole goal was to see everything I just said my whole goal used to be just that Arden was never the kid who passed out at school. That was like the first way I used to think of it but then that led me to you know, her blood sugar higher than I wanted it to be. And then soon my goal morphed into how can I keep her blood sugar down but stable in a way where it won't just randomly drop anywhere? And then you know, he just kept picking through things and picking through things and until the the insulin made more and more sense to me about how to use it where to put it where to take it away you know when to be more aggressive and less aggressive and all that stuff. But yeah, it all started with that like oh god I just don't want Arden to like I don't want the story to be that girl passed out at school. You know, it was like my first thought when she was a little you testing your blood sugar now.

Shaun Brown 1:03:40
I'm actually given a Bolus because I am blue it when I I kind of heavy handed my breakfast and I ended up kind of going low right before the the podcast and I was like, Well, I don't want to go on go low. During the podcast,

Scott Benner 1:04:00
I find myself wondering how often people are like, I really have to do a good job with my blood sugar water.

Shaun Brown 1:04:06
Pressure, like I actually kind of blew it. So I ate a whole persimmon which persimmons are kind of that's like 20 grams,

Scott Benner 1:04:13
then you went up? Yeah, just a little too much. So I did an interesting interview with an older person the other day. Who has gastro precice on top of you know, other stuff. And she got low during the show. And we kept going was really interesting like she treadle allow it didn't come up, but she traded it again. Her diabetes alert dog started bothering her. It was really like we can stop and she's like, No, no, it's okay. She's like, Yeah, and I was like, okay, so we kept going and it was it was interesting. It really it really was. I felt like I was watching it happen to my daughter but through headphones, kind of a kind of a thing.

Shaun Brown 1:04:53
I often wonder if that's something that it may be linked to the stomach issues that I was having, because I didn't know about Either and I had just learned about that recently, the Gasser purchases?

Scott Benner 1:05:03
Well, I think if I mean the very basic, I'm obviously not a doctor, but if your food is digesting the way you expect it to, you're not having any other neuropathy issues or nerve issues.

Shaun Brown 1:05:17
So that was another reason that I definitely was like, I need to get my act together was I was, you know, when I didn't go to sleep, I started getting to the point where I was worried I was beginning to experience neuropathy, and I wouldn't I would tell my dog like, Hey, is this neuropathy? I think I might have it, you know, me and he would kind of quiz me on it and then tell me no, no, that's not really neuropathy. So I don't know if he's just, dude, where are you gonna sleep here?

Scott Benner 1:05:45
What public state you live in? You're in California, aren't you? Yeah, I mean, California. That seems like a place where they have doctors. We got them exist. Let me just give you the neuropathy quiz real quick. Batman or Superman, Shawn? Oh, yeah, you're fine. Don't worry about it. Let's get out of your crazy kid. How many times have the ambulance come to here twice? Doing great buddy. Yeah.

Shaun Brown 1:06:13
I mean, I don't know. I honestly, I debate if I do I if I do. It's extremely minor. But like, to give you an example, I hate the weight of the sheets on my toes. If my toes are, like being pulled down by this by though, like the weight of the conference or too much. But I don't know if that really like qualifies as neuropathy. To be honest, have

Scott Benner 1:06:41
you had that your whole life or just more recently,

Shaun Brown 1:06:44
more into like my, into my 30s? Yeah. And so I always like that was what started me being all paranoid about it.

Scott Benner 1:06:52
Do you have any other tactile issues, the things you don't like touching you? Or sounds or tastes like things textures in your mouth? anything weird like that? case, really, just like stuff that throws your way off or you don't like the feeling of something in your mouth? Or you can't talk No,

Shaun Brown 1:07:09
not like that. No, no, no. Okay, but like, I like if I get a high blood sugar, and I think this is more a symptom of hyperglycemia. But like, I will experience like, in my sciences, my sciences will feel like dry and almost like I'm smelling metal sometimes. And that drives me nuts. Like, I will almost think like that's odd, you know, just because my sciences always seemed a little off.

Scott Benner 1:07:44
Or your is your blood sugar a certain way when you smell metal high?

Shaun Brown 1:07:50
No, it could be like, so for me, like I here's, here's a tidbit. Like just when No, it's not like that high. Like if it's just maybe going up. But like, if if I'm even like above 130 these days, I hate it. Like I can't stand it. Like I have to make sure that like it's one of the things that I think in general always kind of kept me taking care of myself pretty well. Is I absolutely despise the way it feels like to be terribly out of range anyways, even though I admittedly I was worse, but I was younger.

Scott Benner 1:08:24
Well, I think that's, listen, I I'm sorry, if you don't feel well, but I think it's great that you've because that what that tells me is that you've gotten your blood sugar so stable, and in a good range that you can tell now when when things aren't the way they're supposed to be?

Shaun Brown 1:08:41
Yeah, I would, I would definitely say that time and range was completely foreign to me. When, you know, not very long ago. I mean, I knew what time and range was, but I never understood the emphasis of it. I never understood like, how vital that is compared to other things ironically, because like now, you know, I can probably say like, you my standard deviation, which I also had no idea what what what that was, you know, ranges anywhere from, like, 20 to, you know, 28 often on an average basis as long as I have my basil locked down, which I'm really proud of, because I can only imagine it wants to be in complete garbage in the past, you know?

Scott Benner 1:09:22
Yeah, dude, I can't imagine either because you said you lost your data, but I had I was thinking that the way you were going especially from such a young age on your own like you're a one sees must have been pretty bonkers at some points,

Shaun Brown 1:09:34
I would think Yeah, and I mean, we ate like typical, you know, regular stuff, you know, go to pizza. I'd have like three slices type of thing. So

Scott Benner 1:09:44
think about that. Now, like if you had three slices of pizza now, how much insulin would that take?

Shaun Brown 1:09:49
Well, so here's the weird thing is since going vegan, my insulin needs dramatically dropped like so, so much. And also what I've learned is Removing or reducing fats as much as possible dramatically improves my sensitivity, like your measure to the point where I will have problems with hypose quite frequently, if I get a lot of activity Plus, I mean, I've eaten very lean that day.

Scott Benner 1:10:16
Yeah, right. Well, keeping the fat out of your diet helps the food to digest more quickly and get through you. And, and not Yeah,

Shaun Brown 1:10:22
it builds insulin resistance, which I never understood until now, you know, so

Scott Benner 1:10:29
the fat Yeah, the fat in your diet builds insulin resistance, I would think of it as the fat in your diet is slowing digestion down, which keeps the food in your system longer impacting your blood sugar. I don't know that I call that a resistance to insulin. It's an it seems like a need for insulin to me. But it might just be semantics. I'm not sure exactly how you're thinking

Shaun Brown 1:10:48
No, well, that that's correct. And like the immediate I think, but when when you're say consuming ample amounts of like, you know, animal protein that also is bundled with cholesterol, and, you know, saturated fats even, or you're also eating processed foods that have saturated fats or dairy products that have a ton, which dairy typically has a lot of saturated fat. And you're eating that consistently in the immediate Yes, it's like slowing your digestion and, and changing your insulin needs and kind of stretching them out and awkward, more dynamic ways. But

Scott Benner 1:11:27
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. No worries. I was just gonna say it's really kind of fascinating, because I've been talking to people about how they eat more recently. Excuse me. And that same argument made by I hear made by a vegan, or by somebody eating carnivore, they're making the same, the same claim about eating a certain way. And I know I've heard that and each person's argument is poo pooed. By the other side, it's very interesting like this, you know, I'm not trying to Oh, no, no, no, don't do No, I understand. Go on. Sorry, I just I weren't, I wasn't saying you were starting some, like turf war about eating. I just, I'm like, I'm just kind of, it's fascinating, that it can work really well, for one person. Like eating the way you're eating, obviously, is doing a great thing for you. And it's really fantastic. And then I've had people on here, like, I just eat meat, and they have the exact same outcomes. I just, I always wonder why. I always wonder why they have opinions about the opposite, the opposite way of eating. That's the part I'm always confused about. I'm like, why does it matter to you? If this is working for you? And that's working for them? Yeah, who cares? You know, but

Shaun Brown 1:12:41
I don't personally, I care more about just, you know, my, I mean, people can eat however they want to eat. But when it comes to how I consume food, with anything, really, I want to know, you know, is it back? Is there science backing these days? Anyways, when I approach eating food, I want to know, is there like, you know, sound science backing the way that I'm choosing to eat? And does it make sense at all? Aside from pleasure, you know, like, does it make sense that I'm cutting this out of my diet? or putting this back in? And there's a lot of, like, evidence supporting, at least to my understanding, you know, removing animal products and dairy because of, you know, how they because like, one of the number one things that diabetics die from, is, you know, heart attack, or basically, cardiovascular related issues. Yeah. Right. And that's, like, it's one of the number one things and when you, you know, consume a lot of high saturated fat foods, you're contributing to that, essentially.

Scott Benner 1:13:51
So I have two separate thoughts here. I'm gonna lose one of them if I don't get it out of my head. I think I am really woozy. What was the first thing I was gonna say? Dammit, dammit. Dammit. Dammit, dammit. Oh, I loved what you said earlier about this. The way I'm eating now fits me. Like in the end. Like, that's my opinion of eating like, everyone's body is going to be different to some degree. Yeah, totally. You gotta eat something that works for you. You know, I don't think it would matter what it is it needs to work for you on all levels. And the other thing I want to say is, while I'm not making the point that being unhealthy is good for your heart. I am saying that a lot of people with diabetes die from cardiovascular issues because they're uncontrolled blood sugars, cause rips and tears in arteries that then repair themselves and eventually clog arteries and stop blood flow and give them a heart attack. So not that not that having a healthy heart otherwise isn't really important. But I don't but I don't want to leave anybody with the idea that if you just eat a bunch of stuff that's bad for your heart, that you're automatically going to have a heart attack because you have diabetes. Is it in my understanding that is got a lot to do with your, your blood sugar management, you're keeping a good time and range, you know, not fluctuating up and down all the time. That sort of stuff is is Yeah,

Shaun Brown 1:15:14
absolutely. I mean, no matter how how you eat if you're if you're not, I mean as as a type one if you're not controlling it at the same time. I mean that,

Scott Benner 1:15:26
yeah, you don't ask for complicated you don't want to compound it by doing two things at the same time. Right? Right. It's just, it's really, it's, I don't know, I find the whole thing kind of fascinating. I feel way better when I eat more meat, and less carbs. So like that, that works better for me. You know, a lot of my eggs, Turkey, chicken, some beef. Like that whole, like, like, leaning in that direction. leads me to a better day. It's fascinating. And I that's why when you said earlier like that, that really wasn't good for you. I was like, Oh, that's really interesting. How people are so different. You know? It's really cool, actually.

Shaun Brown 1:16:10
Yeah, I mean, I'm really just trying to kind of plan out being able to be here, man, I just want to stick around. And so you know, when I when I it's it's like, it's this it for me, it's the same thing is like cutting toxins out of out of, you know, the things that I consume, or whatever it is, you've been

Scott Benner 1:16:29
out of your body that your body doesn't want their and longevity, by the way. I'm glad you said that. Because in the end, that's really what we're all talking about. It's about Yeah, yeah, it's about staying here.

Shaun Brown 1:16:39
Yeah, absolutely. And so, um, you know, it just makes sense to me. I mean, if you guys if there's people out there that want to eat nothing but slim gems, and they have standard deviation and 15 or something awesome, dude. I mean, I hope that works out for you. And then but

Scott Benner 1:16:58
I gotta say, I don't think Slim Jims is exactly what we're talking about. Let's go with slim Jen. Yeah, I think I think that guy was on a little while ago. And I think he you know, he made the point at some point that when I'm talking when he said I'm talking about eating meat, like he wasn't talking about, like hotdogs, and you know, like, like, that doesn't count. It was a bad sorry. No, no, bad. No, no, I don't think it's a bad thing. Because I do think people can get confused. And think, Oh, I'm very, like, you know, I do this this way. I yesterday I had ring Bologna. Yeah, that's not the same thing. As as a, you know, maybe a well prepared, I don't know, well raised piece of meat, like, you know, I don't think they're, I don't think they're commiserate in the same because you're still processing with food, then when you're making hotdogs or making stuff like that, just because there's no carbs in them doesn't make them not processed. Anyway, I

Shaun Brown 1:17:51
had no idea what I what I found with food is that people are very attached to the way that they eat. And so I mean, most people will, very vehemently argue whatever it is, in the way that they you know, you know,

Scott Benner 1:18:04
it's funny, I take your point, because I've seen it too. But I sort of think of it as more of it's more of an internet thing. I don't I don't it to become that for sure. Yeah. Meaning if you put 10 people in a room and gave him you know, and we were all sitting around talk and somebody said, Hey, I'm eating vegan, that's been really good for me. I don't think someone across the room would stand up and go, you're wrong. I think people would just be like, oh, wow, Sean's a vegan. That's cool. And let it go. I think it becomes something you attach your it's not like an identity component. Yeah, it's not unlike other things you see online where people are virtue signaling, right? They want to make sure that you know that they are on the right side of this argument. Whenever I forget food from it, whatever the argument is, I know better. And I want to make sure everyone knows that I know better for I don't know what psychological reason that is that. I don't know how that helps you. But it seems very important to people.

Shaun Brown 1:19:02
I think it's I guess it's what like a kind of a dominance thing, potentially. I don't know.

Scott Benner 1:19:09
I always thought it was just currency. Well, yeah, I would, I would probably say that more. Yeah, it's Yeah. And then you get a group to accept you. And then you have, then you have community. Right, because you're against it. Again, yeah, adoration for the way that you think you could do it with politics. You can do it with food, you can do it with a lot of different things like, Oh, I'm on the side of this, because good reasons. Like I've, you know, it's I've never heard anybody argue one side of anything, and not come forward with a ton of good, you know, good, reasonable ideas. like nobody says, You don't mean like no, one side doesn't say I'm for good eating. And this is what good eating looks like and the other side's like, eight paper and weeds I find in the yard, and I smoke black tar heroin, and I'm helping out And I want to make my argument about being healthy now like nobody ever does that, like everybody thinks they're you. Because probably because they're doing it in a way that's obviously working for them. And so then you get that feeling of like, I need to tell other people like I just talked about it earlier, right? Like, I learned how to use insulin. And I wanted to tell other people because I saw how it saved my daughter.

Shaun Brown 1:20:20
Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. Yeah. And I think when you feel like you're on the right track, you do want to inform people and like, Hey, man, this is this is doing a big thing for me. Yeah, you should try it out to type of thing. I mean, I think in that sense, is quite harmless. If you're just trying to help people, it's when it becomes you know, like your those are the kind of you get on a soapbox, and you kind of have to tell people like this is the way that I think when when you get to that degree, then you've kind of crossed the line. Yeah, potential.

Scott Benner 1:20:51
Oh, no, no, yeah, there are fringes to everything. So you know, you're, I think most people are pretty, you know, I'm gonna use a word that sounds political, but it's not but I think most people are moderate and they're thinking about most things. Right. And there's some people don't lean in different directions. I'm not saying left or right. I'm saying like, you know, a little more vegan, I'm a little more beefy, I'm a little more about, I don't eat processed foods. And some people are like, screw you. I'm gonna have a Twinkie but I learned how to Bolus for like, everybody's got their own kind of like, vibe. It the people who scream and yell I always think of as being on the as far away from the centers as possible. Like they're they're

Shaun Brown 1:21:30
probably the most undecided in the end to ironically, I would think that's interesting. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:21:35
I just know that.

Shaun Brown 1:21:36
Maybe that that confident in themselves after all, and I feel like they need to be louder about it. But who knows?

Scott Benner 1:21:42
I have no idea in the in In the meantime, and super sincerely. I think that's fine. If you're out on the fringe, and you don't really relate to anything anyone saying and you feel passionately about it. You young I've never looked at one of those people and thought, oh my god, they have no right to be you know, I don't care. Like I think it's great if everybody says what they think so yeah, should go with me. That's all. Sean, this was good. I probably used up every ounce of energy I have today to talk to you. And I think it was well worth it. But it's possible. I'm gonna stop this recording and crash. Not not wake up for a couple of hours. Did we not get to anything you want to talk about? Um,

Shaun Brown 1:22:26
there's so much more I can say. But you know, I'm gonna let you go, man. Sounds like you're not doing well.

Scott Benner 1:22:30
No, no, listen, I'm just you know, I'm a little euphoric at this point. Like, things are coming back around. I'm seeing colors. And now I'm just kidding. No, but seriously, is it? Did you have anything you want to talk about that? We didn't get to tell me if we did? I wouldn't ask if I didn't wanna know. You know, not really. It was a good chat, though. Scott had a good time. Did you really have fun? Yeah, man, I'm glad you had me on. I was thrilled that I was glad to hear from you. I think it's amazing as an adult, for you to have found. I mean, you move to so far from where you started, in a year, like your first emails were like, they had panic in them almost. It was, it was like someone showed you a completely different world that you didn't know existed, and you were excited to find out about it. And absolutely, yeah, it's really cool to see how much you've like absorbed on the way do you think you're gonna get a pump?

Shaun Brown 1:23:25
So I actually tried to like six months ago. And then it was a weird thing where I was told by the doctor's office that my insurance had slowed it down. But then I left it alone, because I was bummed about it. And I didn't I figured, well, I'm not going to get it then. And then I think, I don't know if it was like three months ago or so I had called my insurance to check in again, just to see like, you know, how much is it going to cut? Am I going to be covered on these? And they they are apparently going to cover it? So I don't know if there was a miscommunication or what, but I guess I could have already been online like six months ago.

Scott Benner 1:24:06
Oh, no kidding. Well, I hope you get what you want.

Shaun Brown 1:24:08
I have to tell you that you I'm a little terrified of trying to figure out how to make the I'm so used to like low tech, so I do need guidance on it. That's the only thing is I really want to feel like I'm making at least an informed starting point with one well, you know

Scott Benner 1:24:25
your settings, right? Like you do know how much how much do you use in a day. So here let me look at set your pump up right now. You know,

Shaun Brown 1:24:38
my bad I don't even need to look that up. So I take right currently I'm taking nine units of lantis. Which, just as a side note, man, I absolutely love lantis these days, like it was working for me quite well. And then as I leaned out and lost weight and became more sensitive and needed almost like half units which I can't administer with Those solo stars. It's just a pain in the butt.

Scott Benner 1:25:05
Okay.

Shaun Brown 1:25:06
Well, it has a terrible peak to like Jenny noted in one of the podcasts. Yeah, it has, it has a terrible peak that it will always wake me up at like two in the morning. It drives me insane. And the thing is, is if I'm like, it's a very like, like hair trigger type of insulin. So if you take if I take, like seven units at night, and two in the morning, I get an even keel through the day. And in my mind, blood sugar's look amazing. And my graph looks quite flat overall. But if I but I'll go hypo at night, which I don't want, obviously. So then if I back off on my lantis, split dose, and I go to six, and then I swap that unit over into the day, right? And so I'm doing like six and three. All my night will look better. But then it just, it completely takes a dump of my day, like to the point where I no longer have any coverage for Dom phenomenon at all. My am cortisol spike like is like a sledgehammer. I need like immense amounts of Bolus insulin throughout the day for every meal

Scott Benner 1:26:14
shown here. It's love a pump.

Shaun Brown 1:26:17
It's tough man. And so I'm just sick of that. And I'm honestly, one thing I'm worried about with the pump is I'm so damn thin now. I'm like, I'm worried about like trying to put one on my legs. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:26:30
now I'm sure you'd be able to find place I've seen thinner people than you wear them less and less, your basil is gonna start at around point 375 point three, five, like somewhere around there an hour, you probably need a little more It sounds like you know, in the in the morning, then you'll need you know, overnight, and you'll just you'll make a couple of GDC I think the way you're thinking about all this really would lend to digging deeper and and

Shaun Brown 1:26:56
I honestly want to loop like I would love to start looping that sounds amazing. Do my iMac is like seriously antiquated and I in it. From my research. I don't think I can build the app or whatever you might have with my computer. And I'm doing we're scraping by right now. So I can't really get a new computer.

Scott Benner 1:27:17
What I'm what I'm pumped Are you thinking about

Shaun Brown 1:27:20
I was I really never was interested in palms when I was younger, primarily because of the tubing. And so when I saw when I saw Omnipod hit the market before I even knew about your podcast, I thought it was intriguing, but I didn't learn much about it. It's kind of the same thing with like, the Dexcom what I was watching it, I was always watching diabetes tech, but I was always unimpressed. To be honest. Like I I remember seeing like the the earlier Dexcom and just being like, ooh, the applicator does not look fun, you know. And then when the six came out, I was like, I can mess with that, you know. So then the more I listened to the podcast and heard you guys kind of pitching it to I thought well, actually doesn't sound that bad. I saw a lot of people on it using it. And I actually looked quite painless. And I that was one of the best things I ever did for myself was getting the Dexcom Yeah, to

Scott Benner 1:28:10
be honest, I have to be honest, either applicator works fine. Like the auto one with the G six is great, but I didn't have any trouble putting it on but the G five and before I get that it looked more

Shaun Brown 1:28:20
it was intimidating for sure. Coming from you know, an old head like me,

Scott Benner 1:28:25
you're not the only one who thought about that way either. I don't think that they made that applicator for fun. I think they made it because it was a it was a an impediment for a lot of people to try.

Shaun Brown 1:28:33
Yeah, it looked like a science experiment, but

Scott Benner 1:28:36
just pulled up on the ring and pushed down to the thing at the same time. I remember, oh my God, I've done so many of them.

Shaun Brown 1:28:43
Yeah, so any Anyhow, I would very likely if I'm gonna go pump it all going on the pod just because to my knowledge is the only one of its kind.

Scott Benner 1:28:53
So your play in my opinion, that is you wait until 2021. And you try the on the pod five the horizon? And is that one that drops? That's Yeah, it'll, it'll be in the, from what I understand it should be in the first half of 2021 you won't need a computer. And the really cool thing about it is that the algorithm will be burned, right, like baked right into the right itself. So you don't even need to be near your phone for it to work.

Shaun Brown 1:29:21
I'm definitely very interested in that. I'm just more wary of like, like making user error with programming. Because I want to feel like I'm starting on a on a like a safe starting point with it. Well, you know, I'm a smart Dude, I can figure it out from there on out but like, you know, I do feel like I I need a little guidance in that department. I understand. I definitely don't think I'm gonna get it from my doctors.

Scott Benner 1:29:46
Well, I agree with you. I think that algorithms in general as they're coming into the market, are the I think one of the problems they're having is the support of how to set them up. But really, you're just looking to get your basil right your you know, your sensitivity Close and then you'll see what happens. You can move it around a little bit till you find it.

Shaun Brown 1:30:04
You're trying to go but humor me real quick joking. You can program your basil to like, build around your knees through the day, correct? Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:30:15
man, you could have point three to five overnight for a couple of hours and then say you're gonna wake up every day at seven. And you get some feet on the floor some kind of a rise around seven 730. You can have your Misal go up the point for born four or five at 6am. So that it's build up for when you wake up in the morning. Oh, yeah, yeah,

Shaun Brown 1:30:34
I know exactly. When that happens. Now, too, I would have never known it without, you know, seeing my data from the CGM?

Scott Benner 1:30:40
No, no 100 per day, you can absolutely do that. And if you like, you know, look, if you you know, if you get low every day, blah, blah, blah, you can change if you have a meal that you eat, and you know, you get higher from this meal, but it doesn't happen with any other meal, you could like do a Temp Basal increase like you can, I don't I don't know

Shaun Brown 1:30:57
this stuff is that's so foreign to me. That's why I'd be like a little intimidated, those only thing, just think of it this way.

Scott Benner 1:31:03
Think of it having your lantis on a dimmer switch like a light. And you being able to like Turn it up or turn it down when your needs and you can automate the light. So it happens at certain times. That's awesome. A weaker, that's all it is. It's having control over your Basal insulin. I think that's still the biggest deal about a pump. And that's the side of algorithms because in algorithms, you there won't be Temp Basal increases and decreases, because the algorithm is going to do that kind of stuff for you. But But yeah, I mean, just on a regular if you just got a regular old on the pot right now you'd have, you'd have, you know, control over all that stuff.

Shaun Brown 1:31:42
That's what I was going to get. And then I kind of I don't know, got lost in the ether, and I just didn't get it.

Scott Benner 1:31:48
Yeah, I think if you um, I mean, it's November now. I mean, I don't really know when it's going to come out come out. But if you've got the okay to do it, try the Omni pod now learn how to use it kind of more manually, the way it is set up now and then make your decision. If you want to go to the algorithm when it's available. What

Shaun Brown 1:32:04
is the minimum amount of insulin that you put it into the pot at?

Unknown Speaker 1:32:09
I think 70 or 80? I haven't used that a minimum amount in a while. But you'll use,

Shaun Brown 1:32:15
like, good. I'm just doing the math real quick, because I use it about and that'll be about right. Yeah. Although I'm assuming that we weigh less actually, because you're only using one insulin?

Scott Benner 1:32:28
Well, because Wouldn't it be or Wouldn't it be more because you're you're going to use so you're going to use point, but I just say

Shaun Brown 1:32:37
well, I was looking at my total daily dose, like you know, Basil plus Bolus type of thing. And at the moment, I'm at 24.40, you're

Scott Benner 1:32:45
not need more than 80 then because you're going to use Yeah, I'm gonna use 27 units at a minimum, I would think for just your basil. And then 24 times 372 plus 27, you're gonna probably use about 100 units every three days.

Shaun Brown 1:33:00
Okay, cuz that my concern too was like, I don't want to waste insulin. Sure. Just but I'm very naive to it, because I don't know like how much it actually be using. And I just know I'm using a dramatic Li less amount than I used to use.

Scott Benner 1:33:15
Yeah, I'm looking at now the pot holds 200 units. at its maximum, it holds a minimum of 85 you won't waste that you're going to use more than 85 every three days. You know what what rapid do you guys do? Arden uses a Peter.

Shaun Brown 1:33:29
See, I've never experimented with any other analogues beyond novolog and Himalayan, which are essentially the same thing.

Scott Benner 1:33:36
Yeah, we've used novolog. I found it to peak like too harshly for Arden. And she'd crash a lot afterwards. And try it and

Shaun Brown 1:33:47
I experienced that myself, which is which is kind of that was what I want to ask.

Scott Benner 1:33:51
Yeah. So then we tried to Peter I find a feature to work very predictably and smoothly. Like I know how a pizza works after using it for so many years, and I'm good at using it. But Arden tried fiasco recently. And that was really good. And yeah, I caught that episode. He said it stung. Yeah, but it didn't work for her. Her physiology but the way it worked specifically was good. Like, we didn't have to Pre-Bolus as long we could be she could like have food that was I don't know how to put it like like stronger carb food. Because it was working more quickly. We weren't seeing as many like spikes her but I think if I could have kept her on it for a long time. I actually think I could have brought her a one c down a little farther. And I think that I think that her stable times would have been more stable. It worked really well. It just burned and Brewster and she just couldn't use it. Yeah.

Shaun Brown 1:34:45
So it does a Peter have the same type of action or is it different?

Scott Benner 1:34:50
a pizza doesn't I? The way I used to explain a pizza to people is that I haven't seen double arrows up or down and I don't really see single out arrows up or down ever on a pizza? Huh? So it can be very user, like driven but I am good at it. I'm not saying that but I'm saying Yeah, I just I was good at it when I had no vlog and it didn't matter. Like, I wasn't as good with no vlog as I am with a pager. And that's interesting. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's got like a different slope, then. I don't know, dude, I don't know what it is. But no vlog felt like it went in, took forever to work and then worked really, really intensely and then stopped. And

Shaun Brown 1:35:32
that's Yeah, that's my experience. That's I mean, I pretty much use novolog my entire life. I'm just kind of used to it. It can definitely be a pain in the butt.

Scott Benner 1:35:41
fiasco times started working right away, and felt like it was out of our system

Shaun Brown 1:35:46
sooner. Really, in a Piedra, say I wish we talked about it. And instead of me talking about my my mess ups all the time when we talk about this stuff before we are talking about it. Don't worry, I don't want to keep you man. I

Scott Benner 1:36:00
know. I still haven't thanked you. You do this thing that I don't know that you realize is the thing for me. But when you really like an episode, you share it on Instagram. And oh, yeah, I'm happy to share him. No, but it's not because that's not what I'm saying. I'm happy to share them too. But you're one of the people that when I see you share it. I feel like oh, because you don't blindly share everything. So I know when I did a good job because you share the episode. Like that's one of the ways I tell how I'm doing.

Shaun Brown 1:36:28
I would not use Shawn as a barometer. But I appreciate that. Shawn is not a good barometer. No. Is that the title that I do? I'll take the pat on the back. I dig it.

Scott Benner 1:36:39
You're just one of my little metrics I use so and you know, one day you'll be gone. I hate to say it like this one day you won't. And and then I'll find somebody else. But you're a person that I identified as, like Shawn doesn't just like throw kudos at me. You know, like, I'm at a wedding and he's got a bag of rice. Like so like he's very you're you're you're stingy with your praise. Yeah, I am a little bit yeah, no, dude, I it's interesting that you would notice that damn right. I did. How do you think I make this podcast popular? I know. Yeah, no, but you're one of my people. Like I'm like when I when when you're like, this was a good episode of My Damn, that must have been good.

Shaun Brown 1:37:18
See, I'm the same way with music. I'm absolutely the same with music. Like I won't. I won't just like Pat artists on the back just because, you know, they want the adoration. I actually come from a music background and I think a lot of young kids that wanted to make music with me thought either I was amazing, because they looked up to me or they probably thought I was a big app.

Scott Benner 1:37:44
I lately over the last year or two I can't tell people enough about Gary Clark Jr. Oh, he's amazing. Yeah, but I don't spend a lot of time on big fan actually. Yeah, I don't tell a lot of people about my my music likes i'm not i'm not i don't really share my music. interest. But if I go if the world ever gets right again, I want to see Gary Clark play live. And and the last I think he'd be amazing to see live man. Yeah, the last person I made the effort to see live was yo yo Ma. I don't don't go to a lot of live music. But I want to see Gary Clark play live somewhere. And I haven't been to a show for way too long. I used to go all the time. You got old man. Tell him I know. It's so sad. I told my daughter the other day. I said the best live show from just performance I was ever at was Guns and Roses. I said oh, that would be fun. Axl Rose ran and you're thinking you had to think of Axl roses. You know, like, not the not the old man. He is now but he ran around that stage for three hours. 100 miles an hour and sang the entire time. It was the most impressive thing I've ever seen. He was really impressive. I thought Metallica was really great live. I could never get into Metallica. But I know everyone seems to love Metallica or love they were very good live. You know who else was really good live thing of all things staying that Oh, you saw staying dude. Yeah, he was really good live. I saw him at an outdoor concert with Kelly when we were really young. actually want to sing songs. A remake he does is my wedding song. So but yeah, he was really good, but I've seen some max out do Hoover's great life, the Black Crowes. Really, I sat through a heart concert to watch the Black Crowes open for heart. I don't mean to insult anybody who likes heart but that Barracuda song gives me what the kids called douche chills. It's really bad music. And for me at least, but yeah, I lived through an entire heart a concert so I can see the blackrose open for them. But, you know, and and Alyssa told me I should come to Germany and hear her play. She was on the other day. So I was that where she was. She's actually in Germany. I think she was talking about this one concert hall that I think she said it was in Germany that she said, it's just amazing to see her play. She was a really, really cool episode. I like that one. I appreciate that. Thank you. I love the cello. So by the time this comes out, I should have another I can tell you now cuz nobody will hear it. I think I got the Hey, everyone jumping in for a second here. I'm sorry, I can't tell you who I got yet. still working on it. It's taken a long time. And then somebody just like during the broadcast, or like he has type one diabetes. So I've been trying to get him on the podcast since then. I can never get any traction on getting him on. And I did something for I did something for a charity the other day. And when we got done, the person was like, hey, this was great. Thank you. If you ever need anything, let me know. And who was playing at the charity event? I said, Give me up Give me the address the email address of his manager all were even. She's like, All right, here it is. So I think I got him. Excited. I love I think that's a I don't know why very strange mix of

Shaun Brown 1:41:19
No, you know, that's, that's pretty cool. And I think it's, it's interesting when you you learn how music touches people. And music is such a, like, amazing component of our lives, even if we don't realize it. Yeah. And I mean, I've been surrounded by it since I was a kid. And I can't imagine a life without music,

Scott Benner 1:41:41
music or play when you were playing. Went out? Well, I'm sorry. I played Yeah. Or that I was just around. No, I thought you said you were playing. You've had played music for years. Oh, so I

Shaun Brown 1:41:54
come from more of a like hip hop. Production background. Okay. Engineering, mixing. And I ironically, have a bachelor's in Recording Arts even though I learned everything on my own. It's more just a fancy piece of paper on the wall. But um, I just I've always loved being able to, like create something from scratch with friends. And I've kind of lived and breathed hip hop since I was a little kid. I had like, you know, fat boys on cassette. So it's just always been a part of my life. My dad actually managed Tower Records for 30 plus years. No kidding. Yeah. And so I grew up, I get it. I grew up in a record store. It was it was amazing.

Scott Benner 1:42:45
Well, let me measure my, my, my rap likes, and then we can get out of here. I like Dave East a lot. Do you know him?

Shaun Brown 1:42:54
So yeah, I'm, I'm kind of an old school head. Even though I do listen, I try to tune in to newer stuff, right? I'm gonna, I'm probably gonna kind of square myself out a bit. But I can't really dig a lot of the new stuff these days, even though some of it I kind of see where they're going with it. Yeah. So I'm not familiar with that guy. But they're there. What happened to me, in my opinion, along the ways, I started just noticing too much redundancy and music. And it made me kind of like, not care about a lot of the new stuff coming out. It just it felt so predictable, during the 90s. And I hate to you know, pitch up the 90s, like a lot of people do and say it was the golden era or whatever. But there there was a lot of push to be like a unique version of yourself, at least in hip hop. But I think across the board, really. And there was the dynamic between record labels was different. I think it's all for the better these days, to be honest, because there's more, even though there's saturation, and there's too much out there. There's a lot more organic stuff being created these days, which is also great.

Scott Benner 1:44:07
At least the artists have control of their stuff for the most.

Shaun Brown 1:44:10
Yeah, totally. I mean, it just goes to show he really didn't need those labels in the first place. And they were just kind of milking. Yeah. But at the same time, they did become sort of like a vessel to put people into more people, you know, ears. And I think that that was one thing that you can't deny about certain record labels. There was there was good labels along the way to that they really grew artists. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:44:36
well, they had distribution channels, too, that exist until the internet

Shaun Brown 1:44:41
Exactly. And distribution is vital. Like if you don't have a distribution, you're back when it was hard copy. You know, you weren't you weren't going to get into anybody's household. So that was a big deal. And I think that's part of what played into being a very original version of yourself. With music back then. Was It was like, there wasn't, there was way more push to create something that was highly unique in that not just the way it sounded, but like, you know everything about you even, like, from the way that you even your style was a component. Ironically, it's

Scott Benner 1:45:19
interesting because I probably have a mix of that because I brought up Davies because I like his voice. And when my son listens to him, and I'm like, this guy's got a great voice. I don't think he cares. Like my son hears like the beat underneath of it and all that other stuff like that. And I don't care about that as much I I even like, I like pop spokes voice. Like I hear voices more, but I don't. It doesn't open up a doorway for me to talk about it with younger people who like rap music. That's interesting, because most people do gravitate to the beat more. Yeah, yeah. I don't really care about the beat so much. I'm like, this guy's voice is really neat. And and my son's like, What is wrong with you? And I'm like, you don't hear? I'm like you're listening to the same thing I'm listening to you don't hear that. He's like, Nah, that's not the part I care about. My God sent you this very interesting. So Alright, I'll let you go after you tell me what's the best rap app ever?

Unknown Speaker 1:46:06
Who you love

Scott Benner 1:46:07
the Best Rap? What act Who's Who? Who? Did it right in the 90s.

Shaun Brown 1:46:11
Okay, so, man, that's completely like so you know? Yeah, of course, your opinion. I can't honestly like I've been influenced by so many artists. But like a top one for me would be Pete Rock and CL smooth. Those guys were phenomenal. They were kind of like, for me personally Anyways, what made me want to be part of the culture what made me want to make my own version of whatever that is. and contribute in my own way. You know, their their music kind of really set a fire under me. But so many because I I've had I've had I really do like all kinds of music like I really enjoy almost everything. Mine is I suppose country and I can listen to like older country, like Johnny Cash type stuff. I can't I can't listen to modern country that makes me cringe. But I love the blues. I will listen to the blues any day. Yeah. You know, I listened to all kinds of stuff like Afro beat, whatever. I really enjoy a variety. I you know, it's kind of boring. I only listen to one thing.

Scott Benner 1:47:23
I heard the you know what i heard recently that threw me off as I started watching justified. It's available now on Hulu. And the theme song is a bluegrass rap mix. And I can't tell if I I really liked the show. But in the beginning when I think the like I wanted to watch another episode to hear the theme song again. I was like, Well, that's it. A mixture I've never heard before in my life. Yeah, it almost sounds confusing. We'll have to hear it to get an idea. You find the justified theme when you get off of here and tell me it's not a little catchy? But Cool. All right. Well, Shawn, now we've gone from an hour an hour 45 minutes. Okay, but but I really I had a really good time talking to you. I'm really glad you did this. I'm super happy that you found your way and, and you're, you know you're making so many positive changes for yourself. It's fantastic. Yeah, thanks, Scott. I enjoyed chatting with you, man. Me too.

A huge thank you to one of today's sponsors. Je Vogue glucagon, find out more about chivo hypo pen at G Vogue glucagon.com forward slash juicebox you spell that GVOKE gL use C ag o n.com. forward slash juice box. You know where to go to find a great blood glucose meter. Contour Next one.com forward slash juice box. Thank you so much to the Contour Next One blood glucose meter for sponsoring this episode of the podcast and of course, a huge thanks to Sean for coming on the show and sharing so much.