Scott Benner 1/30/25 Scott Benner 1/30/25

#1418 IDU: Social Media

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Scott and Arden don't understand social media

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Scott Benner 0:00
Welcome back, friends. You are listening to the Juicebox Podcast.

Hey. Arden is back today. She and I almost spoke about one thing right before we pivoted and talked about social media. Please don't forget that nothing you hear on the juice box podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan or becoming bold with insulin. Don't forget if you're a US resident who has type one or is the caregiver of someone with type one, visit T, 1d exchange.org/juice, box right now and complete that survey. It will take you 10 minutes to complete the survey, and that effort alone will help to move type one diabetes research forward. It will cost you nothing to help when you place your first order for ag one, with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year supply of vitamin D drink. AG, one.com/juice box. If you're looking for community around type one diabetes, check out the Juicebox Podcast, private, Facebook group. Juice box podcast, type one diabetes. But everybody is welcome. Type one type two, gestational loved ones. It doesn't matter to me if you're impacted by diabetes and you're looking for support, comfort or community, check out Juicebox Podcast. Type one diabetes on Facebook. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the ever since 365 that's a CGM that lasts a full year, ever since cgm.com/juice box, one year, one CGM, if you want to sleep and wear and dry yourself with things that are made responsibly, that are durable, have a commitment to quality, a superior softness, and they regulate your temperature, not too hot, not too cold. You want to check out cozy earth.com. Use my offer code Juicebox at checkout to save 40% off of your entire cart. How are you? I'm great. You're great. College, everything you hoped for. No, that's great. Okay, what is it? Mostly studying? What? What's most of your

Arden Benner 2:21
I don't want to, I don't want to get into this. Let's just move on to the topic. The topic,

Scott Benner 2:25
all right, well, I'm just going to choose the topic today. I'm not going to go back and forth with you and pretend that you're going to get involved and actually help me and etc. This is how I wish it would go every time. Well, maybe this is the new idea. I am looking here on the list, and we said that we don't understand where fat goes when you lose weight. So have you ever thought about this domino and where do you think it goes? What do you think fat is? I don't know fat. It's just fat. But what does that mean?

Arden Benner 3:05
I clearly don't know. That's why it's on the list.

Scott Benner 3:06
Okay, all right, well, let's see what we can start off, maybe by figuring out what fat is. It's adipose tissue, a type of connective tissue made up of fat cells called add up past sites. I don't know this tissue serves several issues in the body, energy storage, insulation and protection, hormone production, nutrient absorption. Now, a number of those things surprise me, like dietary fats are necessary for the absorption of fat soluble vitamins like A, D, E and K, all right, what is that going to do with what fat does hormone production? Fat tissue produces hormones like leptin, which help regulate appetite, metabolism and reproductive functions. That's interesting. I feel like we're going to get back to that insulating your body against temperature. I think that's pretty obvious. Fat stores energy in the form of triglycerides, which can be broken down and used when the body needs fuel. So triglycerides are fuel. There's white fat, brown fat and beige fat. White fat is most common, used primary for energy storage, insulation. Brown fat found more in infants and used to generate heat through a process called thermogenesis. And beige fat is a type of fat that can switch between white and brown fat properties depending on the body's needs. That's crazy. How do we do that? So that's what fat is, and what is a triglyceride? Let's find out what

Arden Benner 4:38
that is. I've heard of that. I kind of don't want to talk about this because I have to take a neuro exam tomorrow, and is going to confuse

Scott Benner 4:44
me. Yeah, do you want to pivot? I

Arden Benner 4:49
just feel like, if I'm hearing all these like scientific words, I'm gonna stop tomorrow my exam. Okay,

Scott Benner 4:56
well, listen, we could pivot and then come back to this. Find this very interesting. We could come back to it another time. Do you want to talk about something more cultural also? Wouldn't this have been great to have this conversation prior to starting?

Arden Benner 5:09
Well, I didn't know we were going to say triglyceride and we're just going to talk about fat people. You

Scott Benner 5:16
want to talk well, we were talking about, where did fat go when you lose weight? I know. But when you start talking about like, the science I like, we'll get back to it. You want to do gas lighting? We've been doing this long enough now, people probably understand how we like, like, our tone.

Arden Benner 5:29
Oh, I don't know. I'm in a bad mood today. I don't know if we should do that procrastination. I don't know. I'm in such a bad mood. I don't

Scott Benner 5:37
know, what do squirrels do, or why do squirrels exist? What do they do? What's the newer one we put on there? Why don't I see the stuff on social media in real life? Yeah, I always wonder that you wanna do that one instead? Sure. Okay, let's start with, sorry, if you guys were interested in fat, we'll pivot back to that. Don't worry.

Arden Benner 5:56
I just have a very big neuro exam tomorrow, and I don't understand anything. And half of those words like end in like, I'd everything ends in eyed. So if we start talking about triglyceride, I'm gonna actually dig my eyes out of my head. So do you want

Scott Benner 6:12
to do that one? Why don't I? Yeah, we'll do that. Okay, let's start with the most. Because you send me a lot of videos. No, I don't, not as many as you send other people, but for our relationship, like, tell people the one you just sent me this afternoon that you found hilarious. Oh,

Arden Benner 6:28
a kid slap me this newborn

Scott Benner 6:30
brother, so funny. So there's like a little boy, his dad's holding him, like under his left arm, or in his left arm. This kid's, what, two, maybe two.

Arden Benner 6:39
He looks like two years old, okay, but he's like, old enough to know right from

Scott Benner 6:44
wrong. I mean, okay, and then I don't know how smart is a two year old you want to find out? No. Okay, so the two year olds on one side the newborn, like, literally, like days old, swaddled newborn, right? And the dad's super proud. He's holding both the kids, and the mom's holding the camera, and she's like, be gentle. Be gentle. And then what happens? The

Arden Benner 7:08
toddler just slaps the kid across the face. It's great, but it's like, it's not even that he slaps the kid. It's like, the dad's reaction, that's the part you found funny. The dad's reaction, like, when he slapped the kid, I was like, that's hilarious, but when the dad reacted to it, I was just like, oh, like, Wow, that must suck. Having kids, you know,

Scott Benner 7:29
can you describe what made you laugh? His reaction, just the shock that he had just It struck because you thought it was hilarious. Yeah,

Arden Benner 7:37
it's the way the dad reacts to it. But I don't know. The point is, you don't see any of this stuff actually happen.

Scott Benner 7:43
You've never seen a little baby slap its newborn brother across the face. Like, really, it's like, Bitch slap the kid. But

Arden Benner 7:50
it's like a compilation of like, 30 videos that sort of thing happening. Or, like, every day I open my phone and I see a video of some crazy thing that has happened. Like, I don't know, someone falls on the sidewalk, or something happens like this, or there's a fight that breaks out, or some like, just something crazy, whether it's funny or mean or whatever. I don't see any of that

Scott Benner 8:10
tractor trailer tire comes off across the highway, bounces 50 feet, jumps an embankment, goes 100 more feet, runs down, a guy just flattens him, and you're like, I've never once seen anything like that in my life. Well, I don't want that to happen, but I'm just saying, like, I didn't say you wanted any of it to happen. I'm just saying you've never seen it happen. Yeah?

Arden Benner 8:31
Like, every day I get up and I take the same route to where I'm going, and I see the same people, and it's there's really nothing new that has ever happened. And even if it is something new, it's not like, internet worthy, you know what I mean. So where do all these people come

Scott Benner 8:46
from? And why is there so many of them? Because in that baby slap video that was one of, like, a multitude of different like, Baby assaults, that's

Arden Benner 8:54
what I'm saying. But also, like, you talk to people and you're like, you know, trying to get the vibe of like they've ever been in a situation where no, no one's ever been one of these situations. So where are these people? Where are they forming?

Scott Benner 9:06
Well, how much of this is because everybody's pointing a camera at something now, and do you think it's performing? Do you think even the two year olds, like

Arden Benner 9:15
basal, is this like a Am I certain conspiracy theory? Like, is the internet not real? Is it not? Well, I mean, obviously it's not. But what I'm saying is, like, Are all these videos that look like, you know, real things that are like, happening that are crazy, like, are some of them literally just like, set up by the people who own these companies, this Instagram, you know, put out these funny videos and they're just fake. But there's so many of them.

Scott Benner 9:41
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Arden Benner 12:55
Um, no, I think he's just in shorts, and they're like, pulled up because he's sitting down and there's kids on them.

Scott Benner 13:00
Okay, fair enough. That makes me feel better. Why do you like the more violent videos?

Arden Benner 13:04
Wow, this feels like a weird therapy. They're not violent. Just because someone falls and hurts themselves doesn't make it violent. Fair enough,

Scott Benner 13:12
soft where people tumble around and possibly are hurt when it's over.

Arden Benner 13:16
Because that's actually funny. It's obviously a situation that is not set up like it doesn't mean to happen. It's just, like, hilarious. Okay, you know that person, like, feels embarrassment when it's happening, especially when a camera's on them. They're like, you know, like someone tumbled, and they're like, oh my god, like, everyone just saw that, and someone's gonna put this on the internet.

Scott Benner 13:40
You're working your way through the entirety of the situation, like, that's funny, but it's also gonna have the internet. Other people are gonna laugh. Those people are gonna be embarrassed over and over again, etc. All that makes that laugh come out of you. Yeah, all right, I wanna tell you that a two year old knows between 50 and 200 words and has like, basic logic. They begin to understand cause and effect. They know that pushing a button may make a toy light up. Oh, so this kid definitely knows that if he hits somebody, it ain't gonna be fun.

Arden Benner 14:09
Yeah, I know I Yeah. I just learned about, like, language and stuff when you're like, too. Obviously, I don't know enough about it, because I didn't do all the exam. But you know, whatever,

Scott Benner 14:19
I didn't do well on the exam. So you don't know all about it, is that, what she said, apparently, awesome. I've heard other people talk about this, right? Just like, you know, there's this video, this guy's like, backing somebody into a garage, and somebody's foot slips, and instead of stopping, they like, hits the person, like, pins him against the wall. And there are some people who watch it and they're horrified by it, right? Because you don't know the ending of it. I don't know if the guy's insides popped or whatever. Like, you know, you don't know the ending of it. Some people find it hilarious, and some people find it just horrifying, because

Arden Benner 14:52
it's like, common it's like, common sense that if that man is dead, like, it's not going to be on the internet, and they're not going to post it as, like, a. Yeah, look what happened. Hahaha, there's

Scott Benner 15:01
tons of murdery stuff on the internet, though, if you want to look for it,

Arden Benner 15:05
well, I'm sure, but I'm, I don't think it's posted with, like, the intention of everyone to see it and enjoy it.

Scott Benner 15:12
Okay, right? That's for a different reason, like, that's, that's some dirt, like, dark stuff, right? That's the deep, dark web. If you got a, if you somebody sent you a video and it said, Hey, I mean, something horrible is about to happen here, like somebody's head's gonna explode or something like, Would you watch it? I

Arden Benner 15:28
mean, who sent me the video? I don't know.

Scott Benner 15:33
Is it someone I know I wouldn't watch it. Who sent me the video? Fine. It's a friend of yours. But they say to you, listen, this is, I don't know, like a tree falls and just lops this guy's head off. I wouldn't want to see it, is what I'm saying. Oh no, I'd be fine. I think I'd be fine. You'd watch it. I mean, like,

Arden Benner 15:51
if one of my friends sent it, like, I know there's no bad intention with them sending it, like they're not like a freak or whatever, but like, if it was like a random number that texted me, obviously I'm not gonna watch it. No.

Scott Benner 16:01
I mean, obviously, have you ever gotten a random text from somebody? Yeah? Do you answer or no?

Arden Benner 16:09
Obviously, okay, even a random text that you know, that you don't know the person, yeah, start a conversation, act like you are the right person. Somebody

Scott Benner 16:17
air dropped porn on my phone while I was walking through the airport once, did you accept it or decline? I had just heard the story, and so I kind of felt like I knew what was going on. I just hit decline. But that is definitely what was happening. Because you could see in the in the baggage claim, like, a lot of people went like this all at once, so they must have, like, mass dumped it onto people, and a lot of people opened it anyway. You shouldn't do that. As of 2024 there are approximately 7.2 1 billion smartphones in the world, meaning the vast majority of these devices are equipped with cameras. Okay? So nine, it says 94% of all photos taken globally are captured with smartphones. So the question is, is, when you have that many cameras, right? Like, a lot of crazy stuff is going to get caught while people are just videoing, yeah,

Arden Benner 17:11
it sucks to be anyone if you get caught in a video just just anyone doing anything nowadays, like, there might always be a camera on you, even if you're like, in the background of a video. You know what I mean, like you're just, do you think

Scott Benner 17:26
people should be able to video you without your without you saying it's okay,

Arden Benner 17:30
ooh, along, that's illegal, right? You can't do that. Can

Scott Benner 17:34
I just video someone if you're in public? I think you can do whatever you want. I'm waiting for your answer, but then I have more thought about

Arden Benner 17:41
it. I honestly, honestly in public, like, I think it's, I think it's fine, but like, someone comes up to you like, Hey, don't do that. Then just stop. I don't know. But no, people are stupid, so I don't know. Do

Scott Benner 17:56
you know the videos where people, like, they'll go to, I don't know. Like the courthouse in their town, it's public property. They'll stand outside and they'll film things until they can get, like, an official or a cop to come out and be like, Hey, what are you doing? And then they start a fight with that person on purpose. No, you've never seen a video like that cop walks up, goes, Hey, man, you know the people called from inside. They're it's freaking them out that you're out here videoing the building what's going on. And the guy responds back and goes, I don't have to tell you, this is public property and like is starts that fight on purpose. You've never seen one of those. No, this is a very common way to get views on the internet from old men, apparently, not from me. Just gonna tell you that the people who make those videos, I hope they fall on a fork multiple times where probably in the belly, it'd be nice and, like, in the leg, yeah, I don't want him to die. I just want it to be unpleasant. You're gonna say, like, up the answer or something. I find those videos upsetting. I've

Arden Benner 18:53
never seen that. No, really, I don't like you're the type of person to like. If something annoys you on the internet, you like, watch it more, and then the content feeds it to you more. And then you're like, Oh, these people are so annoying. They're so stupid. But like, if I see something on the internet I think is annoying, I just go past it.

Scott Benner 19:09
I want to say, I don't see them every day. I've seen them in the past, and I find them particularly annoying.

Arden Benner 19:13
You're more susceptible to watch something that you're annoyed by than I am. Like, what anything or like. If you find a person to be annoying, or, like, their voice to be annoying. Like, you'll watch the video longer you think so, yeah, you do that because you're because you want to complain about it. I do, like complaining, yeah, but I just, like, would be like, Oh, this really annoys me. And I just go to the next thing so I don't see it as much. So

Scott Benner 19:39
to your point about how is it possible these things are happening? I see them on social media all the time, but I don't see them in the world. I have some interesting stats here about videos uploaded to social media, starting with YouTube, around 500 hours of video are uploaded every how often. Five. 100 hours worth of video every how often? You guess two hours every minute, which totals over 700 and no sense. 720,000 hours of video a day go up on YouTube. That's YouTube now, Tik Tok. They say the exact number the video is not readily available. But it's estimated that millions of videos are uploaded daily to tick tock. That makes sense? Yeah, okay. Facebook stories like so a Facebook story, 500 million anything about Facebook video on Facebook, 500 million stories daily, many of them include videos, and more than 100 million hours of video content are watched daily on Facebook. 100 million hours worth of content are watched daily on Facebook, Instagram, 95 million posts per day. A large portion of those are videos. That's insane right now when you scroll and you do the thing, not just you, me, everybody. Do you remember it the next day? Like, if I sat you down right now and said, Arden, under penalty of death, you have to tell me all the things you saw while you were scrolling yesterday. Can you come up with five of them? Yeah, 10 of them probably. How about last week? Maybe, like, one thing I saw, then why do we do it makes us happy in the moment? Yeah, well, no, obviously you get that feedback, that dopamine feedback, right? But once you stop and step back from it, I think about this all the time. I do it sometimes, right? And when I do it, I'm like, why am I like? The entire time I'm doing it, I am like, I don't know why I'm doing this. I won't remember this in five minutes. You complain the whole time you're doing I'm complaining to myself about doing it while I'm doing in my head, not out.

Arden Benner 21:50
I know. I know that's what I'm saying. And then you do it longer, and when you you like to complain about already, you already want to complain about scrolling. And then you extra want to complain about something you don't like. So you stare at it longer. Look. You're learning a lot about yourself.

Scott Benner 22:03
I don't think most of the things I scroll are things I don't like, though, and now they are. You don't know

Arden Benner 22:09
what I'm like. I have literally been sitting next to you and you're watching a video, and you're going, I hate this. I hate this.

Scott Benner 22:19
Okay, so I'm hate watching Tik Tok. Oh, look, I'm correct. Yeah, you're a hater. There are people listening to us right now who are hate listening? I know that happens, by the way. Thank you, people. Appreciate that.

Arden Benner 22:33
I think that's so funny. Is like people I love, people who comment on other people's posts and just absolutely like, demolish them. Just hate everything about them and like, all they have to do is scroll like, and it just won't affect them anymore. But they can't. Yeah, it's just gone,

Scott Benner 22:51
and you're helping the person who you're complaining to, yeah, when

Arden Benner 22:54
you're interacting with them and, oh my god, like, such idiots. Do you remember?

Scott Benner 22:59
Even, you remember I wrote a book when you were younger, you must remember, Are you being serious? Yeah, you remember that? Okay, I'm setting it up for the people who are listening who might not know. Okay, so the book was moderately successful, like for Hey,

Arden Benner 23:14
next time, can we set it up like a brain in my head? Oh, my God,

Scott Benner 23:17
here's an example of that. Arden, when I wrote my book. How's that? Is that better? Oh, yeah, I remember that. Okay, the book was fine. Like, people who read the blog were real nice. They bought it. It was pretty high on the list on Amazon for a while. And then I realized, like, I was like, Oh, this is the end of this. Like, if I don't do some promotion for this, this just goes away. I've been writing this book for, you know, a year now and working on it, and, you know, a bunch of people bought it, and it's going to be the end of it. I'm not famous. I don't have any marketing I can do, so I kind of put myself out there for some marketing when I realized that the book publisher wasn't going to do any of that for me. By the way, for those who have not read a book or wrote a book, your publisher is generally not going to help you publicize it. So I was lucky enough to get picked up and I did a web interview with Katie Couric, which led to her having me on her TV show, which led to them putting up like a blog post. But that blog post was like on aol.com back back when it was or Yahoo News, maybe one of those, like sites when they were very popular, and it was basically just about the book and about me being a stay at home dad. So I don't even realize that this blog post goes up until one day someone calls me and says, Hey, your book is like number 50 on Amazon. Like, I don't mean like in parenting books or comedy books or lifestyle it was the 50 most popular book being purchased on Amazon. And I was like, oh my god, this is it? Like, you know what I mean, I've made it. But it turns out that's not what was happening. What was happening was you and J K Rowling, oh yeah, right. Well, what was actually happening was, is that in the comment section of this, like Yahoo article. So people were arguing about whether or not I was gay. Do you know this? No, okay, so it was me and mom. So the argument was this, look, in fairness, this was 2013 and I had been a stay at home, dad for 13 years already, but when I started being a stay at home dad in 2000 it was an incredibly uncommon thing, right? And so the argument was, either, if he's staying home with his kids, he's gay and doesn't know it, his wife is married to a gay guy and she's not sure of it, or the argument was, hey, this is a guy who's in touch and, like, comfortable taking care of his kids, and this is great, and we should, like, you know, feel good about this. Well, those two people, not two people, but those two opinions, they argued with each other non stop. And the side effect of that was people were buying the book so you can bitch and moan and argue in comments and call me like a bad podcast. Or do it really does just help me like so for every person who hears somebody go, like that, podcast sucks. There's 10 people who go, huh? I'll go check it out. So you're really doing

Arden Benner 26:10
the back and forth comments kind of sound like our 2024, presidential debate.

Scott Benner 26:14
It sounds like any debate. Honestly, I have an opinion. I think a thing, I have an opinion. I think a thing, you're wrong. You're wrong. You know, in the argument between us and them, everybody thinks they're us and everyone else is them. So they just argued. They they drove that book sales for months. It was awesome. I wish they would still be arguing about it. And

Arden Benner 26:35
what do you make now? 41 cents a year off of

Scott Benner 26:38
it. I don't make any money off that book ever like I've never got I got. I got paid initially to write it, and I never made another dollar after that. It is not a reasonable way to make money if you're not famous, if you're famous, it's different. I did get one, a one time payment to write the book. I think it was $5,000 that's all, yes, and then it took me six months to write the book. So yeah, I

Arden Benner 27:03
remember I used to get kicked out of the house for being too loud, exactly in my own living room. I was in my own living room after school, and I'd get told I was being too loud, which was crazy work. After a nice eight hours at a penitentiary, I think you mispronounced penitentiary. And wait, are you sure? I think so? How much? How did you just say it? Penetent,

Unknown Speaker 27:36
look it up. Look up.

Scott Benner 27:38
You're definitely wrong. I'm doing. I'm gonna find out how much I got paid an hour to write the book, keeping in mind, this is pre tax money. So I wrote the book. Took me six months. I worked at like a regular, 40 hour work week. I made $5.21 an hour for six months to write the book. So I could have made more money, I guess slinging fries back then

Arden Benner 28:03
probably what you can do at McDonald's. Yes, Donald Trump,

Scott Benner 28:07
we all learned that yesterday, that there's a What was our big takeaway, the people who make the french fries at McDonald's don't use their hands to put them in the boxes. Who

Arden Benner 28:15
knew? Oh yeah. He was like, you don't even touch him. He

Scott Benner 28:19
was so amused that. He was like, so not amused. He was like, isn't it great, like they don't touch the fries with their hands. And I was like, What the What were you imagining? Anyway, neither here nor there. Every day, billions of people walk around with cell phones and right? I mean, crazy things happen every day. They've got to be pointing them at something once in a while. You know what I mean, like, the fact that you haven't seen something like that is all just like, what is it my turn? Oh, you want this to happen. Oh, I want to see something happen. Oh, I am completely confused by you. Okay, so what you're saying is when, like, when am I gonna see a baby? Like, lay out another baby? Yeah. Do you think that if it happened in real life, you'd laugh?

Unknown Speaker 29:05
Yes, okay, you even mean,

Scott Benner 29:11
I don't know, like, don't you think you'd be shocked and just be like, Oh my God, no, no no, I'd start tackling it happened if one of these social media things happened in front of you and you weren't videoing it. Do you think you'd immediately be disappointed?

Arden Benner 29:26
No, I just like want to experience it. You just want to see it happen once. I feel like people my age want to go to the clubs and bars and get drunk and know like I want to see your two year old slap your newborn. Please. Please. Do for the loss of God.

Scott Benner 29:44
You tell people the new pet you're thinking would be the perfect

Arden Benner 29:47
pet. I feel like they know this a monkey. I want a monkey, a Capuchin monkey.

Scott Benner 29:51
So cute. How much video of capuchin monkeys are pushed through your face

Arden Benner 29:58
like the only thing that comes. Up on my phone, our capuchin monkeys, but they're always doing some crazy task. What do you mean? Like they're showering, or they're like, lifting weights, or they're like, smoking a joint, or, like, I don't know anything, just they're always doing something crazy. I love monkeys. They're amazing. Well, there are people getting their monkeys high. I don't think they're actually smoking a joint, but like there's a joint in their mouth. But listen, we should get one. Capuchins

Scott Benner 30:24
are highly intelligent, social animals. They need constant mental stimulation, interaction and enrichment. Without this, they can become bored, frustrated and aggressive. They live for 30 to 40 years. My god, that's longer than me. They're gonna require long term care and dedication. Daily care involves not only feeding them, but also maintaining a highly enriched environment. As they mature, they become territorial aggressive, particularly if they are not properly socialized, and if their needs aren't being met, they'll bite and be destructive. It seems like a bad idea. Capuchins carry diseases that can be transmitted to humans, like hepatitis and herpes, nothing I don't

Arden Benner 31:01
already have. Now listen, what if I brought a Capuchin monkey to class, and I just walked in and a monkey was with me? Would you say it was your, um, what would you call social support animal? Yeah, I would, no, you know what? I'd say it was a student in the class, and then I'd sit down with my monkey, and my monkey would climb around during my exams, figure out what the answers are, come back, point them for me, and we'd leave that's how it would go.

Scott Benner 31:28
Owning a monkey Capuchin is either highly regulated or illegal, depending on where you are. They have potential for harm, and you need a license and permits. There's health regulations. Also. You can't find yourself an apple. How are you going to feed this thing? Careful attention, including fresh fruits, vegetables and a balanced intake of protein, which can be challenging to provide consistently. I want one. Okay, now if you you could support one, like in an in a zoo or something.

Arden Benner 31:56
Oh, I want my own. I wanted to sit next to me, and I want to do homework together

Scott Benner 32:02
my own capuchin monkey. How? I bet it would be fun for a day or two,

Arden Benner 32:09
and he would have all his own outfits and get up every morning brush our teeth.

Scott Benner 32:14
I've asked chat, G, P, T, to offer up alternatives to capuchin monkeys. Says that you might enjoy raising rats,

Arden Benner 32:23
no ferrets, no sugar gliders. On your note, that means that's it sounds. That sounds sexual.

Scott Benner 32:31
It really does, doesn't it? Tiny, nocturnal. Marsupials are social animals that can bond closely with their owners, that need specialized care, but are much easier to handle than a monkey. Guinea pigs. Para I want a monkey. I want a monkey. Hold on, there might be something on the list. Parakeets, no cockatiels. Love Birds. You don't even know what a cockatiel is, right? I do, but I want a monkey. My friend Mike's mom had cockatiels when you're growing up. How about a turtle?

Arden Benner 32:57
I feel like I said four times that I want a monkey, bearded dragon. This is crazy. You know when Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, when veroca saw it's like, Daddy, get me that squirrel. And then he goes, and then he falls down the hole. Then she goes to get the squirrel, and she falls down the hole, and they throw nuts at her, or whatever. That's how I feel right now. Get me a Capuchin monkey. All

Scott Benner 33:20
right. This also says leopard geckos, bearded dragons, beta fish, a pre but a praying mantis.

Arden Benner 33:26
I want a Capuchin monkey. Okay,

Scott Benner 33:30
jeez, not a tarantula or a hermit crab. Oh, all right, that was the list of things that you might have enjoyed instead of a monkey. Yeah, I don't want any of them. Praying Mantis for someone who wants something truly different. Mantises are fascinating to observe. They are low maintenance, but require careful handling. Oh, my God,

Arden Benner 33:49
I'd definitely kill that thing by accident, like at least four days. Wait,

Scott Benner 33:54
I don't think you touch it. You just put it in occasion to leave it there. Well,

Arden Benner 33:57
I want to touch the animal that I'm Oh, I want to hug it. I want to hug the animal. You're

Scott Benner 34:01
definitely gonna not want a praying mantis, then, or a beta fish. I do think you might. Oh, she got a Capuchin monkey. I think you would enjoy a bearded dragon. No, I want a monkey. I also think Mom would, too. No one is listening to me. This is crazy. You're not getting a monkey out. What does, what does it cost? Like, $500 that did you really? Yeah, pardon, I see here 5000 to $10,000

Unknown Speaker 34:31
No, I saw 500 just 600 gonna

Scott Benner 34:33
cost $2,500 to set it up, about $100 a month in diet, about $1,000 a year in vet care, and you're getting at least $100 a month in like enrichment toys, plus hundreds of Wait, hundreds to 1000s of dollars for permits and licenses. Who do you think's paying for all this? Mom, now listen, we should get one. Is that really what you want to say? Like,

Arden Benner 34:57
we could be our own. Curious George.

Scott Benner 35:02
That's not a Capuchin monkey. That's a whatever. He's a monkey, isn't he climbs around. Did they call him a monkey in the show? Is he not a monkey? He's a monkey. He's not a chimpanzee. No, hold on a second. Is Curious George a chimp? Oh, he's a monkey, by the way. How old is Curious George? The story?

Arden Benner 35:29
Oh, like, how many years ago Did it come out? Yep, 2775

Scott Benner 35:33
years ago. Oh, I was off. George is a monkey. Okay, the series refers to George is a monkey, but he lacks a tail, which would indicate that he is a Barbary Macaw, macho or chimpanzee. George is probably a chimpanzee, since he is from Africa. No, he's most likely. He's most likely referred to as a monkey, so younger children can relate to him. Why would that make him more relatable? Why would they lie to me about Curious George being a monkey. That movie's good. The soundtrack is awesome. She doesn't even look like a chimpanzee. I'm just telling you what I read.

Unknown Speaker 36:10
Oh so adorable. Who's

Scott Benner 36:12
the guy on the is it Jack Johnson that wrote those songs for the Curious George movie? I have to say, conversation. Yeah. That one I well done. Jack. I don't know anything else you've done. Yeah, yes, you do. We listen to his. It's what is it his? What is it discography? What is that? What is the word discography? Is that the word? I mean, that is the word, yeah, yeah. Okay. What's the most viewed Social Media Video? Are you still looking at monkeys? You're

Arden Benner 36:42
so cute. Yeah, the most viewed social media video, when Charlie Bit My Finger,

Scott Benner 36:48
it's I'll give you three guesses. I'll see where Charlie comes up on the list. Oh,

Arden Benner 36:53
because we're talking about monkeys. Is it the Harambe video,

Scott Benner 36:58
no. Charlie Bit My Finger. Is number seven. It has so I was close. It has been viewed 120, 8 million times. Is it a music video? Baby shark dance? Are you serious? Pink Fong, Baby shark kids, songs and stories, seven, over 7 billion views. Are you serious

Arden Benner 37:22
that, like everyone who's ever watched that should feel bad. The

Scott Benner 37:25
next five are music videos. One of them, you would like, I don't

Arden Benner 37:29
know is one of them? Like shaken off by Taylor Swift? No.

Scott Benner 37:33
Number two is despacito. Oh. Almost how many views? Just about three. 4 billion. 3 billion.

Arden Benner 37:44
Wait, okay, tell me who the singer is, and I'll try to guess the

Scott Benner 37:48
the song. The next one, number three, is Wiz Khalifa. Oh, I don't know shit about Wiz Khalifa, honestly. Then he date that blonde lady that shaves her head real close for a while. I don't know who you're talking about. Okay, that's all I know about him. See you again. Okay, the next one, if I tell you the artist or the song, you're gonna know each one. So the next one is 800 million views. Psy, gang of style, Gangnam Style, that's right, right. Next one is 240, 5 million it's the beebs. Um, okay, wait, it could be a lot of different things. Is it? Baby? Yes, it's baby. Baby,

Arden Benner 38:27
oh, Justin Bieber's also in despacito, isn't he?

Scott Benner 38:30
Oh, you might be right. I think you are right. He does the bad rap in it, right? Or is that those?

Arden Benner 38:39
It's like something about the activity. I don't know. I don't speak that language.

Scott Benner 38:44
So then somebody who, like, think short lady who just ruined a movie franchise. Oh, Gaga. Hmm,

Arden Benner 38:52
what's to her videos? Follow your gut. I was gonna say poker face, but I don't think that's right. No wait, but is it featuring Beyonce? By

Scott Benner 39:00
chance is it telephone? No, it's bad romance. You didn't let me get there. Okay, that's right, we got there. The next one's Charlie Bit My Finger, which is adorable. Been seen 128 million times. Even I feel like that's not enough times. Maybe this hasn't been updated in a while, I don't know. Oh, sorry. Justin

Arden Benner 39:19
Bieber's in the despacito remix. Oh,

Scott Benner 39:22
there's a remix. They were like, You know what we should do? Make it worse. Did you want to tell people that you saw a troubling picture of Justin Bieber? You're concerned for him.

Arden Benner 39:38
I'm not. I'm sure he'll be fine. I think it'd be alright. He looks a little bit like someone who might be on a heroin Benner. But who knows? You know, not me.

Scott Benner 39:48
Since the Diddy news, since the Diddy news, I can't wait to see how that shakes out. So I'll think

Arden Benner 39:54
Beyonce while we're here today. Have you seen that joke that's like, everyone's like. Thanking Beyonce for everything. No, oh, because she's, like, behind everything too. So everyone thinks Beyonce all the time now because they

Scott Benner 40:07
don't want to get, get gotten. Yeah. So like, people,

Arden Benner 40:11
like, post a video in the comments, or, like, just wanted to take some time out of my day to think Beyonce.

Scott Benner 40:18
There's some pretty I can't wait till that all like to shake I actually have to admit, I'll pay attention to how that shakes out. You know what I mean, like a lot of big names have been mentioned, why doesn't anything exciting happen

Arden Benner 40:34
to me? They're probably I play to go to a mental institution. No

Scott Benner 40:38
kidding. So I was, yeah, you know what pops up? First, depression, substance abuse and mental health links. Oh, I didn't realize that. Yeah, it's all about depression. I was looking I'm

Arden Benner 40:51
a genius. I was looking for videos, like internet videos. You were not very you have to imagine, like a normal person saying that without any context. Why isn't anything exciting happen to me? Yeah, and you feel

Scott Benner 41:06
like, Oh, terrible. What are some of your favorite let's end with some of your favorite videos. Do you even remember any of them favorite videos? Well, the truth

Arden Benner 41:16
is that my favorite videos are edits of very attractive men from TV shows. So,

Scott Benner 41:23
like, so I don't get those when you're signing them around. That's good.

Arden Benner 41:26
You know, you can, you know, you can, like, save videos on Tik Tok, yes, all of mine are just edits. Every single I can't think of one video that's not an

Scott Benner 41:37
edit. So an edit is just what, like, like, a conglomeration of, like, video clips of of a certain guy, yeah,

Arden Benner 41:44
or, I mean, anyone doesn't have to be a guy, but I'm just saying, like, well, also, hey, here's what I have saved. You just said handsome men. Like, I don't know, but here's what I have saved. My thing, it's either edits of men, tips for taking the LSAT, makeup ideas, clothing ideas or hairstyles.

Scott Benner 42:03
Here's my DMs with you on Instagram. Please don't DM my daughter. It's a Capuchin monkey eating in a Captain America shirt. It's someone petting the face of a squirrel and the squirrel holding their finger. So they'll do it more. So funny. It's a kid dressed as Dobby. Wait you, you skipped a car crash? Yeah, I because I don't know I was gonna watch it, because I don't understand. It's just

Arden Benner 42:28
like someone banging their car into the side of another car. But someone's like, standing

Scott Benner 42:35
outside, then the old man, like, falls over, like a, like a dummy, right? Like a, like he was not a real person. Is that the one you mean? And then the cops pull up eight seconds later, like this person was and by the way, what kind of car are they driving? It's always someone in a what is it? A Subaru. It's a Camry. Okay, every problem on the street is someone in a Camry, as far as I can tell. Then, yeah, there's another driving one here that you sent me. Guy just walking across the street. Oh, God, everyone's seen that one. It was crazy. Car comes out of nowhere like sideswipes another car and goes right where the guy would have been. You sent me a thing about Taylor Swift's glitter freckles. Let

Arden Benner 43:16
me just openly say that I did not send you anything about Taylor Swift. You asked me about the woman who makes the freckle company, so I sent that photo for you.

Scott Benner 43:24
True enough, I have to put that out there. Capuchin monkey swimming. That thing that says, bro, you're an adult. Just eat the tomato. Was that directed at me? Or do you just find it was funny? No,

Arden Benner 43:35
it's directed at you because you don't eat tomatoes. Let's see. There's

Scott Benner 43:39
a picture of us together. I have here. What is this? Piano Black leather sneakers? What was that supposed to be for you? It was a sneaker company I sent you. Oh, you thought I might like those sneakers. Yeah. But all right,

Arden Benner 43:53
no one answered me. I missed it by the way. I want to just make it clear that I never get responses to these. I'm an

Scott Benner 43:59
adult. I don't talk to people through DMS. Interesting. Dr Doom, Robert Downey, Jr, what? But that's not what you're sending to other people. So like, Would you be willing to share what you send to your friends?

Arden Benner 44:12
Yeah. But did you read the tweet that says My mom is at the end of her life with Alzheimer's 99% non verbal but Coldplay just came on the radio and she looked me in the eye and said, turn it off. By the way, I love Coldplay, but he does not.

Scott Benner 44:27
My mom is at the end of life with Alzheimer's 99% non verbal. But Coldplay just came on the radio and she looked at me in the eyes and said, turn it off. I found that very funny when you said it just, you

Arden Benner 44:37
know. Okay, so like Sanj, I literally me and Sanj just send stupid videos and then edits of men to each other. That's what we're good for. Or have you seen this new trend on Tech Talk? And it's like subtle, subtle foreshadowing, and they like edit it so that, like, you're watching the beginning of the video, and then it like, jumps to the portion of the video where, like, something crazy happens, and then it goes. Back to the normal video, then it jumps back to the like, have you seen these? Like this, I don't have my sound on, but like, Oh, see what I'm saying. If it jumps to the and then I also like to watch clips of the basement yard. Yeah,

Scott Benner 45:16
you love that podcast. They're so funny. Answer this for me, these edits of of attractive men. How long are they like? How much video can you watch of like, a handsome guy, personally, or just like, No, yeah, you how long? Like, how long are the videos? Are they like? 30 seconds.

Arden Benner 45:34
I'll find you a video. I'll find you a video. Find you a good one. Okay, a good one. Sound is on and everything. I'm gonna find a good one,

Scott Benner 45:41
because I'm trying to decide what the length of the video has to be before I'm worried about you. And let me ask you this If, if I Oh, this is weird, because we're father and daughter, but like, if you knew a guy who was like, watching edits OF hot WOMEN, wouldn't you think that was creepy? No,

Arden Benner 45:56
because it's, it's not like, the edits aren't like weird. Let me say maybe I don't understand what here's like a here's like a Peter Parker. One

Scott Benner 46:05
for you. Peter park this is like a video clip from a Spider Man movie where Tom Holland is in class, and then suddenly they're out in the street saving people. And then back to

Arden Benner 46:18
you have to let him speak. You have to speak. Come on. You

Scott Benner 46:21
gotta put it on the microphone. Gonna put your speaker right on

Speaker 1 46:24
the microphone. You're great at geometry. You can do geometry. I'm pick

Scott Benner 46:33
you up next time.

Unknown Speaker 46:37
Hey, strange. You know what's cooler than magic? I don't

Scott Benner 46:41
know what I'm supposed to do with this. I'm disappointed that you watch this. You're missing it. Oh, now it's just a bunch of pictures of him as Spider Man and pictures of him without his shirt on, and then pictures of his face scrolling. Okay, first

Arden Benner 46:53
things. First, there's one photo of him without his shirt on. I would know if there was more. And second, they're just there. It's a great clip. So that's

Scott Benner 47:02
and how long does that clip like? A minute and a half,

Arden Benner 47:06
yeah. But some of them were quicker, like, you know, like this one, is

Scott Benner 47:14
that a guy from One Tree Hill? Oh, my god, yeah. Your

Arden Benner 47:18
face, you look so disappointed while I was playing that I am. But there's also some of, like, you know, things that you might appreciate more. Like, here's just like, you know,

Scott Benner 47:29
Sierra home, you know, is that the sound of music? What is that? It's just people outside running in a in a field with a mountain behind them, like these people that like, travel, okay, but, but going back to Tom Holland. How long was that video? And how many times have you watched it front to back? I don't know. It wasn't long enough. Let's say it's a minute long. How many times have you watched it over under 30? I don't know. Oh my gosh. Okay. And how many guys fit on this list? You know

Arden Benner 47:56
what the funniest video is, the repost of Thor from good boys that I have here that I cannot play because it's inappropriate. But everyone should go watch that movie. He's so funny.

Scott Benner 48:08
Oh, good boys, yeah, that's that movie where those, like young kids, like, had like 12, yeah, they head across their town with like a bag of dildos or something. What is that exactly?

Arden Benner 48:18
I think they have like, Molly on them or something, and the girls were trying to get it back, and then they have to like so it's so funny that whole show is so funny. Invited to recently, my repost have been of Jim and Pam. Jim and Pam edits from the office the office. They're normally Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, but they've shifted a bit to Jim and Pam, or some Derek and Meredith here and there. You know what I mean. This

Scott Benner 48:44
film synopsis of good boys is not also

Arden Benner 48:49
Donald and Marianne from normal people. Okay. Anyways, you can talk now, invite, oh, sorry, I'm gonna stop you again, TC and Schmidt, Nick and Jess Seth and summer,

Scott Benner 49:02
my God, great, great, okay, oh, I have a bubble on that one. Well, he doesn't say bubble. What does he say? A Bubba, a bubba. I have a Bubba like that. You have a bubba. I have a bubble. It's like, I'm

Arden Benner 49:15
going to see my bubble tomorrow. He's like, Oh, a Bubba, I have a Bubba

Scott Benner 49:20
invited. She doesn't react. She doesn't react to it. She looks right through him. Yeah, yeah. She's like, okay, all right, listen to me invited to the his first kissing party. 12 year old Max asks his best friend Lucas and Thor for some much needed help on how to pucker up when they hit a dead end, Max decides to use his father's drone to spy on teenage girls next door. When the boys lose the drone, they skip school and hatch a plan to retrieve it before Max's dad can figure out what happened is that in any way telling me what that movie is about. I mean,

Arden Benner 49:50
that's exactly what the movie's about, but they just leave out like the crazy parts of the movie, the

Scott Benner 49:55
crazy, dirty parts of the movie, where 12 year olds are saying and doing insane things. It. Know? Yeah, I really enjoyed the movie, so please don't watch but what's

Arden Benner 50:03
that? What's that one part where he's like, that's not a good burn? No, it's a good burn. Your dad has, like, like, your dad has two DUIs and has to take the train to work. That's a good burn. And he says it to a kid who's like, 11, oh, my

Scott Benner 50:17
God. But that gives you the same joy is when the little baby slapped the kid,

Arden Benner 50:23
yeah? Cuz it's hilarious. Okay, yeah, all right, well, it's hard to argue with. Have you seen the videos of you know what hope core is? Hope core? Yeah? Hope core? No. It's like people will make videos of, like, hope, like, just hopeful things, and they'll, like, put it all together, and that's like a hope core video. So it's like speeches or something like, you know, someone getting the last shot at a basketball game, someone winning the World Series, like, whatever, and they put the videos together, and it's like specific hope core, okay, but people like make jokes about it and put that word like hope core over videos that are just not like that at all. And so there's like this new thing where people, where people were like kindness core, but it's like the least kind videos I've ever seen in my life. And a lot of them are like from Impractical Jokers. And there's this one, there's this one episode of Impractical Jokers where they have one of the guys working somewhere. He goes up and, like, flirts with some woman, and he asks her, like, what's your favorite color? She says it or whatever. And then they're like, behind the mic, and he has to say, you know, whatever the people that are telling to say says, and they're like, she's black. And he, the guy behind the mic, is like, All right, now tell, tell her what your favorite color is. And then it gets quiet, and he goes, say, mine's African American. And then they, like the guy pretends to, like, drop the bomb, and they're putting like those videos behind other words, kindness. Oh, kindness.

Scott Benner 51:55
All right. The Internet, you guys love it, practical jokers. You guys love it in a way that, like, I never would have imagined.

Arden Benner 52:03
Seriously, this is, I don't, I don't know the world without the Internet. Yeah. I mean

Scott Benner 52:07
television like, you don't watch, like, ABC, CBS, NBC, right? I mean, I see clips of it, but I don't, like, sit down to walk you don't have a TV show that you're like, oh, I have to watch. It's one eight o'clock on Sunday night, or something

Arden Benner 52:19
like that. Bob's Burgers,

Scott Benner 52:23
really interesting. Where can it possibly go from here, like, we went from, like, one hour television shows down to 30 minute television shows down to, you know, 10 minute YouTube videos and or an edit that's a disjointed bunch of pictures of Tom Holland for a minute long. Like, where does it go away after we

Arden Benner 52:41
can't focus on anything that's like, more than 30 seconds long?

Scott Benner 52:45
Yeah, yeah, our minds are, like, ruined.

Unknown Speaker 52:48
But

Scott Benner 52:50
where could it go? Isn't it gonna flip around and go back to long form? Like, isn't that what just happens? Like, things ebb and flow, right? That

Arden Benner 52:56
makes sense. But we're, we're now, like, conditioned to only watch short things, like, we're not interested in things for a long time. So I don't know how that's possible. Like, we've conditioned people to like stuff at a faster pace. What

Scott Benner 53:11
would I have to give you? What would someone have to offer you to delete, a million dollars to delete Tick, tock, Instagram, all your social media apps for a month. Honestly, nothing you would try it. I'm not going to. But like cold deleted tick tock. He never put it back on his phone. He said it made his life better. That's really inspirational. I'm just saying, Maybe you should try it. Maybe you have more time than you think. You do. I

Arden Benner 53:37
do. I'm not saying I don't have enough time. You have even more.

Scott Benner 53:41
I feel like what

Arden Benner 53:43
I need is,

Scott Benner 53:45
I don't know, are you willing to open up your screen time? Yeah,

Arden Benner 53:49
but I think my screen time is, like, unfair.

Scott Benner 53:52
How come you opening it? I have mine. I think it's been up recently. Now I use, yeah, it's been up. Okay, somehow on Monday, I used the phone more than there were hours in the day. That's

Arden Benner 54:06
what I'm saying. Like it doesn't make any sense.

Scott Benner 54:09
Doesn't make any sense. Wait, here we go. Today's Tuesday. It says I haven't been awake this long. What the hell

Arden Benner 54:20
you know why? It's because you're up at like, 12am

Scott Benner 54:22
okay, so it's counting my browser time. That's really unfair.

Arden Benner 54:27
I think that's so unfair because that's like, my, that's my winding down time when I'm going to bed. Okay,

Scott Benner 54:33
I'm gonna scroll down here to, like, break it out. So it's like Logic Pro is, like, something I edit in and something I recorded. I've recorded twice today, so I have two and a half hours worth of recording. So it has me at two hours 21 minutes of logic. Pro, so that doesn't count. Also Safari one hour and 40 minutes. I have Safari open when I'm working all the time.

Arden Benner 54:52
That's what I'm saying. Like you have things open or so it's not, it's not like a fair. But

Scott Benner 54:56
here is where I will and again, chat, G, P, T, 49 minutes. Yes, but I have been on Facebook for an hour. But that's me. That's working. I know people probably don't see that, but here's something that's not working. And I'm 53 I've used YouTube for an hour and a half today. So I'm get, I get my stuff from YouTube as well. It

Arden Benner 55:14
shows me how many times I've picked up my phone today. Oh, really,

Scott Benner 55:17
yeah, but I'm like Instagram 17 minutes, which also was for the podcast. But how many times

Arden Benner 55:24
you think I've picked up my phone today? But also, this is since 12 o'clock AM. How

Scott Benner 55:28
many times have you picked up your pickups? Well, 280 No, 5454 What are you at today? 142 today. I think that's what it says. Yeah. So Spotify eight times, music seven times, messages six times, email six times. Logic, pro five times. Safari five times, YouTube five times. Instagram three, Facebook three, tick tock, three. That was just now. Camera twice, photos twice, settings and finder.

Arden Benner 56:01
I have messages seven times, tik, Tok six times. Snapchat five times, calculator three times. Instagram, two times. Chat GPT twice, music once, settings once, camera once, Find My iPhone once, Safari once, clock once and trio once.

Scott Benner 56:17
You use chat GPT to quiz you on your notes. Did that end

Arden Benner 56:21
up working? Yeah, and I opened it this morning to quiz me while I was walking to class. It Was that helpful. Doesn't seem like it was.

Scott Benner 56:30
Why you got a B? Why did you tell the world that I gotta be 32 out of 40, right on a test stop? Why that's pretty I think that's good. That's not good. That's bad, okay, but if people want to be they could use chat GPT. You took your handwritten notes, took pictures of them, fed it into chat GPT and told it to quiz you on it,

Arden Benner 56:51
yeah. And she gave me, like, a study guide too, and I gave it that I actually think that the downfall was that the questions were worded really complex, and I thought that while I was taking it, and then I walked out of the exam, and there were two girls standing behind me. We were all waiting across the street, and she was like, talking to our friend. She was like, why were they worded like that? Like, like, she doesn't speak English. And I was like, I completely agree with that. Because Holy Is

Scott Benner 57:18
this the teacher who you think is a former addict. No, this is not bad teacher. I like, actually, you like this one? Yeah? Okay, I do think one of my teachers might have been a drug abuser, yeah, but you don't dislike her, right?

Arden Benner 57:33
I don't know her. It's a lecture I like. Have talked to her once, probably I see all right, all right. Well,

Scott Benner 57:39
I had fun talking to you. Hopefully people enjoyed listening to it. I think we it. I think we talked about social media today more than we talked about, like, How come things like that don't happen in front of you? It's because we don't know. Yeah, well, I mean, there's no way to know, but it's got, it's an odds thing, right? Like, I mean, how many times a day?

Arden Benner 57:57
But there's so many people that will post the videos, and they have, like, multiple videos posted of crazy things going on. So it also might be where you live. I could be part of it, like population density, yeah. Like bigger cities like LA and New York have more videos. Maybe

Scott Benner 58:13
I will also say this, there is a lot of fake videos online. Well,

Arden Benner 58:17
yeah, but if you think about it like this, like LA New York, probably more videos there, because it's there's more people, and they're more, like, I would say, like, outgoing people. And then I think, I'm not going to say where, but there's some places in the world, but I think, you know, actually, I'm going to stop myself.

Scott Benner 58:34
Okay, how often do you think that you see a fake video and you're confused and believe it's real. Like never. I don't like if something's fake. I just a lot of times mom shows me something. I go, Kelly, that's stage. That's not real.

Arden Benner 58:47
Yeah, mom, wow. What's not I'm trying to be nice. Okay, she's definitely

Scott Benner 58:51
gonna end up giving our money away to a scammer on the phone when we're 80, for sure, right? Yeah. Do you know I was listening today, apparently, one of the big Facebook scams is Liam Neeson. So they go after middle aged women and older, and they set them up for a long time. So apparently, first of all, there's a ton of Liam Neeson fan pages on Facebook, and the scammers pretend to be Liam. And I heard an interview with a woman today. She said, I was very successful in business as an adult, but I'm not stupid, but I got LED with my heart, and I've lost $27,000 to Liam Neeson. Scans like she thought she was sending Liam Neeson $22,000 for him to bring her to Iraq to be with him while he was filming a movie.

Arden Benner 59:42
Isn't that crazy? I can I tell you something? Go ahead. I could win a $5 coupon and not think it's real, like I have no faith. I'm gonna win anything.

Scott Benner 59:54
She thought she was gonna marry and have sex cruises.

Arden Benner 59:58
I've won. I. Cruises. So many. Yeah, so many cruises. Oh, you always

Scott Benner 1:00:03
get, like, you want to cruise, do this, like that. Yeah, I can't imagine, like, what happens to you at a certain age where you get this email that at some point in your life you would have said, This is ridiculous. Now you're like, Oh, I think that Liam Neeson wants to have sex with me. That's Liam

Arden Benner 1:00:18
Neeson. I actually it's funny that you'd brought him up because I just posted a photo of Andrew Lincoln holding that sign up from Love Actually, and it says he's defrosting.

Scott Benner 1:00:31
I have a question for anyone listening. Let's say you really love Liam Neeson, and you are a person who would enjoy a sexual encounter with him. Would you pay $22,000 of Liam Neeson? Because that's what she did?

Arden Benner 1:00:47
No, I wouldn't pay $22,000

Scott Benner 1:00:50
to do anything. Okay, but you don't have you never did my money away. You don't have any money. But I hear what you're saying. I'm just saying anyway, it's that that blew my mind. You

Arden Benner 1:01:00
could, you could put in front of me all of the men from those edits. Never, ever. Well, I give $22,000 to anyone.

Scott Benner 1:01:08
So if I said to you could have dinner and spend the weekend with Tom Holland and Zendaya and you guys would just be best friends. I don't

Arden Benner 1:01:15
want Zendaya there if Tom Holland, okay, what are we talking about? Why would I want his girlfriend there with us?

Scott Benner 1:01:22
All right, never mind. Then I don't. Maybe I don't understand completely. I mean,

Arden Benner 1:01:26
I love Zendaya, but no, thank you. Only $2,000 I'm gonna get my weekend with Tom Holland. All right.

Scott Benner 1:01:32
This is Arden telling the dumpster boys, or whoever they are, that, uh, what is the name of the basement yard, basement yarn that she'd love you respect, that employees, she'd love to be on your podcast. What would you do if you do, they ever have guests,

Arden Benner 1:01:43
they don't ever have guests. This could be That's why, if I ever could be a guest on that show, I'd screw the top of my lungs. But listen, they do, they do, like do shows, lives, yeah, like live shows, really.

Scott Benner 1:01:57
All right, yeah. So if they but I wasn't home. Would you? Would you sit there and talk and let it be recorded? Yeah, you would, don't they say something,

Arden Benner 1:02:09
they say some like crazy stuff, but they're very when they're about to say something that will get them canceled, they make sure that they pull back a little bit, they

Scott Benner 1:02:16
stop themselves. Yeah, okay, so you could have seen them at Radio City Music Hall, yeah, on October, really sold out, dad, I'm telling you, I wonder how much this cost. There's no because it's sold out. Wait, I can't seem but let me find one that's not sold out, because now I'm dying. We have, like, merchandise, all right. So they're going to be in Phil they were in Philly in May at the Met. Page not found yet. These are all in the past well, because

Arden Benner 1:02:48
I think that they film their podcast in New York, and one of them lives in Jersey, really,

Scott Benner 1:02:53
yeah, oh, wait, here's no one. Just happened in Austin, but it's over now. That's crazy good for them, but All right, I'll talk to you later.

Huge thanks to cozy Earth for sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast. Cozy earth.com use the offer code juice box at checkout to save 40% off of your entire order one year, one CGM, that's today's sponsor, the ever since 365 learn more and get started today at ever since cgm.com/juice box, and you may be eligible to receive the system for $199 for a full year. There's more details about eligibility at my link. Hey everybody. I know there's so many episodes you might be like, I don't know where anything is, but if you go to Juicebox podcast.com or go to the private Facebook group and look in the feature tab, you'll see a complete list of all the series that exists within the podcast. And I'm talking about after dark ask Scott and Jenny algorithm, pumping bold beginnings, defining diabetes, defining thyroid, diabetes, pro tip, diabetes, variables, mental wellness, type two diabetes, how we eat, and if we add something else, like, say, my weight loss diaries, which we did, you'll find them there as well. And as a matter of fact, we're about to add a new list right now about GLP medications, because we have a seriously nice grouping of episodes on that topic. This is a good way for you to keep up with what's going on on the Juicebox Podcast, and even a better way to find those series that are, you know, compendiums at this point, 1020, episodes that are all on the same topic. I can't thank you enough for listening. Please make sure you're subscribed, you're following in your audio app. I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way. Recording, wrong way recording.com.

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Scott Benner 1/29/25 Scott Benner 1/29/25

#1417 Silver Lining

Chelsea shares her journey through diabetes, ADHD, and major life changes, including self-discovery and mental health struggles. She opens up about resilience, motherhood, and finding balance.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

Chelsea is a returning guest. She was originally on episode 777 and the description of that episode was, Chelsea has type one diabetes, ADHD, anxiety and depression. She's here today to check back in to let us know how she's doing. Please don't forget 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 or becoming bold with insulin.

Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozyearth.com. All you have to do is use the offer code JUICEBOX at checkout. That's JUICEBOX at checkout to save 40% at cozyearth.com. If you are the caregiver of someone with type one diabetes or have type one yourself, please go to T1DExchange.org/juicebox and complete the survey. This should take you about 10 minutes, and will really help type one diabetes research. You can help right from your house at T1DExchange.org/juicebox.

If you or a loved one was just diagnosed with type one diabetes and you're looking for some fresh perspective, the Bold Beginnings series from the Juicebox Podcast is a terrific place to start. That series is with myself and Jenny Smith. Jenny is a CDCES, a registered dietitian, and a type one for over 35 years.

This episode is sponsored by Touched by Type One. Don't forget their Steps to a Cure Walk is Saturday, March 8, 2025. It's going to be a great time. TouchedbyTypeOne.org—head over now and register.

This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the Omnipod 5. Learn more and get started today at Omnipod.com/juicebox.

This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Eversense 365, the only one-year wear CGM. That's one insertion and one CGM a year. EversenseCGM.com/juicebox.

Chelsea 2:10
I'm Chelsea, and I've been a type one diabetic since I was two years old. I'm terrible at introductions. To be honest, I never know what to say. Like, what do people want to know? I feel like

Scott Benner 2:21
you've done it already. How old are you now? Old are you now? I am 29 Did you just have to figure out what year it was to find out how old you are? Yeah, you're 29

Chelsea 2:31
I don't know off the top of my head, yeah, 29 so you were diagnosed. I think that's right, like 27 years ago? Yes. Okay, 90. Let's say I was born in 95 I was diagnosed when I was two.

Scott Benner 2:43
And tell everybody you're an accountant,

Chelsea 2:46
right? I am an accountant. Far from it. You've

Scott Benner 2:50
been on the podcast before, though, yes, can you tell me where? What was that? Do you

Chelsea 2:56
know what? Like episode, it was 777 and I think I only remember that because, because it's 777

Scott Benner 3:03
70. Let me see if I can find out what I called it, unless it's a horrifying remember, remember,

Chelsea 3:12
if I could take it, I would, I think is what it was called

Scott Benner 3:15
interesting. I've, I've searched 777, and it's come back with 778776, and 711, I just can't wait for if I could take it. I would, yeah, was that innuendo or or was that was that like, was that a real title? Yeah, we

Chelsea 3:35
talked a little bit about, like, parents saying that to like,

Scott Benner 3:39
Oh that thing, yes, yes, yes, yeah. They'll all like, Oh, you got the diabetes. If I could take it from you, I would. And we talked about exactly

Chelsea 3:47
how well intended that is, but it's kind of hurtful. Yeah,

Scott Benner 3:51
yeah. If I could just change who you are so that you be better, I would do it. And also, I'm a martyr. Chelsea has type one diabetes, ADHD, anxiety and depression. What an opener for you. Congratulations. Yes. How do you find yourself back on the podcast? Because Scottie doesn't do a lot of return guests, so if I said yes, there had to be a good

Chelsea 4:11
reason, you told me to reach out to you again. And if I wanted to come back on the podcast, we could do it again sometime. And so I don't know I did that. And here

Scott Benner 4:21
we are. Yeah, here we are some sort of, like the Marvel movies for people with type one diabetes, because I think of my life as in segments of like, I just need to stay alive long enough to see this next film. And I feel like there are a great many people with type one who are like, I just have to stay alive long enough to get on that podcast. Because

Chelsea 4:41
it's great podcast. Yeah,

Scott Benner 4:43
it takes forever to get onto it. Is really what I was saying. It's worth it, is it? Did you, may I for a minute, did you have a good time last time? What was your experience once it went up? Like, a personal experience, I'm not even specifically with people online,

Chelsea 4:56
like recording it with you, or like when it went out, sure? How? Was it recording first. I mean, you're a lovely person to talk to. You're, you know, you're a fun person to talk to, of course. And then just like, sharing like your own story with like the community is, like, really cool, because I value all the stories I heard on the podcast, and it's kind of cool to just add my my own perspective, and it seems like everybody's shares something that's helpful. So it's cool to be a part of that. Okay, yeah. And then just like, putting it out there, it's kind of weird to tell people, like, Hey, I was on a podcast. Why don't you go listen to me talk for an hour? Because first of all, I'm not usually one that people sit and listen to talk. I'm more of like a listener, typically. So okay, it's like, hey, go listen to my voice for an hour. And then it's also weird listening to your own voice.

Scott Benner 5:40
Did you actually listen to it? Yeah, I did.

Chelsea 5:43
I did as like, what kind of crazy things did I say? Because you find it odd to hear yourself. I don't know I was. I was both, uh, impressed with myself and embarrassed. So, you know, anything,

Scott Benner 5:55
that's just how it is. I didn't mean to cut you off anything specific that you were embarrassed by it was

Chelsea 6:01
a little while ago. So, you know, apparently, not too embarrassing. I kind of forgot the

Scott Benner 6:06
list of stuff that you sent over here for this episode. Is fantastic.

Chelsea 6:10
It is a good list. Oh, my God. Oh, it's been a crazy year. So,

Scott Benner 6:14
yeah, yeah, no, it feels like I could do a 12 part series from this list with you.

Chelsea 6:20
What did I title my I emailed you? What was the subject of my email? It is

Scott Benner 6:25
every storm has the silver lining. I don't know. I'm not sure if that's true, by the way, but I guess we'll find out.

Chelsea 6:33
That's kind of how my personality is. I mean,

Scott Benner 6:35
can I just bang through this list and we see what happens?

Chelsea 6:39
Yeah, just Yeah, I don't even remember, but yeah, just go, go,

Scott Benner 6:43
oh, let me just, I'll blurt them all out, and then we'll figure out a place to start. Move to Colorado, live on a ranch, husband apprenticing under one of the world's best sculptors. Insurance changes. Lost my Dexcom for a long time. Difficulty finding new healthcare team. Hashimotos is behaving strange, working through some suppressed childhood trauma, realized I'm not straight, lots of stress and anxiety, thyroid behaving super strange. I feel like Hashimotos is behaving strange and thyroid behaving super strange. Pretty similar, losing weight quickly, without trying feeling really off physically and mentally, had to go to the ER. Diabetes management is terrible. I still don't have a CGM, struggling with ADHD, making it difficult to manage everything, and dealing with lots of invisible struggles that felt like they were ruining my life, all while trying to be a mom and support my family. God damn. This is like an episode. This is like an after school special that goes on for three days. So, oh

Chelsea 7:45
geez. It's been a big year. I feel like a lot of that has gotten has, like I figured out too. So

Scott Benner 7:52
that's That'll be exciting then, okay, well, let's just start

Chelsea 7:55
like in the thick of it. There is a silver lining to that storm. You're

Scott Benner 7:59
not in the thick of it anymore, right? Good. Why'd you move? Let's start there.

Chelsea 8:03
So we moved for my husband to do the apprenticeship. People he's apprenticing under are they live in Colorado, and they bought a big ranch and stuff, and so we're living on the ranch with them. Actually, we help take care of the ranch and the studio spaces and stuff like that, while he does his apprenticeship and everything so crazy. How long do you think that lasts? It's a three year apprenticeship, and we're into about our second year. So yeah, about one more year of that.

Scott Benner 8:31
How's it going? Where we go? Is he a decent sculptor? Yet

Chelsea 8:35
he's doing really good. He's progressing and learning a lot. It's it's been really exciting. So,

Scott Benner 8:41
yeah, what medium did they teach in? So he,

Chelsea 8:44
he got his bachelor's in fine arts, primarily doing stone sculpture and then, but here he's learning how to do more, like figurative work. So, like, you know, bodies and stuff, yeah, figures, think, like, like, the David that kind of stuff.

Scott Benner 9:00
Yeah, after you become amazing at that, how do you make money at it? Like, how does that become a life?

Chelsea 9:08
You try to be the best of the best, and people want to buy sculptures from you, commissions. Sometimes people come to you or you, you know, put your work in galleries and stuff like that. So yeah, he's actually, we're actually going to a big sculpture show next week in Loveland. For that, he got accepted to where he's going to go sell some sculptures. Congratulations. So, yeah, nice. Been doing pretty good.

Scott Benner 9:34
Just like that. Chelsea, we've gone through, moved to Colorado, live on a ranch, husband, apprenticing. Bang, bang, bang. Just like that, bam, bam, bam, bam. Now, how did you lose your insurance? Is it because he had a job and now he is on a ranch. So we're super poor. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the ever since 365 get 365 days of comfortable wear without having. To change a sensor. When you think of a continuous glucose monitor, you think of a CGM that lasts 10 or 14 days, but the ever since 365 it lives up to its name, lasting 365 days. That's one year without having to change your CGM with the Eversense 365 you can count on comfort and consistency. 365 days a year, because the ever since silicon based adhesive is designed for your skin to be gentle and to allow you to take the transmitter on and off, to enjoy your shower, a trip to the pool or an activity where you don't want your CGM on your body if you're looking for comfort, accuracy and a one year wear you are looking for ever since 365 go to Eversense cgm.com/juice box. To learn more. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the Omnipod five. Omnipod.com/juice box. My daughter, Arden, has been wearing an Omnipod every day since 2006 and it has been a constant friend in her life with diabetes, consistent, tubeless and worry free, Omnipod com slash juice box. Big

Chelsea 11:19
surprise, that's kind of how the artist life is. But we were on Utah Medicaid, and then we moved to Colorado, and it's was just like switching states, switching different to a new state, Medicaid, and me being ADHD and having a hard time prioritizing tasks. I kind of

Scott Benner 11:39
you did not prioritize holding on to your insurance. You'd think I

Chelsea 11:43
would, but yeah, that's kind of the fun thing with ADHD is, can you explain

Scott Benner 11:48
to me if it slipped your mind, or if you consistently knew that you had to take care of it and just didn't

Chelsea 11:54
it was like, Yeah, I need to take care of that. But then there's also, like, a million other things being put in front of me. You need to take care of this. You need to take care of this. And then it's not knowing how not knowing how to, like, sit down and do the top priority thing at the time. Does that make sense? Like it does.

Scott Benner 12:09
Do you end up just doing the last thing that was said to you, or the thing that, like, shines in your head for some reason? Yeah,

Chelsea 12:15
I kind of like, especially with kids, because kids come up right up to you and they're like, Mom, mom, mom, mom. You know, like that kind of gets your attention the most. So a lot of the time it's like, stuff that's like, getting my attention in the moment and where it's stuff that's like, on the computer, or, like, I gotta sit down, or call a phone number look something up online, that stuff is harder for me to, like, remember to do or or get done, because it's less in my face, you know, kind of out of sight, out of mind. How old are the kids? Let's see, my oldest is seven, and my second is six. What

Scott Benner 12:47
if you did this? What if you took the kids aside and you said, listen, next time you come up to me and ask for something, I need you to ask me to make sure that we have health insurance. Okay,

Chelsea 12:58
here's a lollipop. I just like, instead of like, writing notes on my hands, I'll just, like, write it on we'll put it on something. And then when they come up to me, I'll just asking for something else. I'll just remember, because I see my own notes written on them. I

Scott Benner 13:10
just think, if they're bugging the hell out of you and you prioritize what they're saying, let's have them start yelling stuff at you that's valuable for the family. Mom, I want you to scrub the toilet like, Oh, all right, hold on. My gosh. So have you been able, like, in two years to get insurance back again, because you said you were without CGM for a long time? Were you without insulin and other things?

Chelsea 13:33
I had, like, an excess. So I kind of like had a supply to use in between having it not having it, I got back on insurance, but I had to get, like, a pre approval or a new prescription or something read out, written out for the Dexcom specifically. So the Dexcom was actually, like extra work to get. And I can't remember what it was exactly, but sometimes you gotta, like, really jump through the loops to get it, you know, it's, it really has something to do with that. The way

Scott Benner 14:04
they have it set up sucks. Like, the you have to, like, prove and reprove and ask again and send me another

Chelsea 14:10
script, and then, like, also, like, I'm in a new state, I have to go see new doctors because, like, my old doctors in a different state, like, don't always take a different state's insurance, stuff like that, you know. So, like, it's like, different Medicaid. It just like, things get complicated. So it's like, it's not just like, I have to get the Dexcom or I have to get a script, I have to go get a new doctor. I gotta make the phone call, make the appointment, then I gotta go to remember the appointment, go to the appointment, and then remember to ask for this and this and this, you know, for prescriptions and Dexcom stuff. And then they've got to ask the insurance and get it approved. And if it doesn't get approved, then I got to remember to call the insurance, or be the in between, between the doctor's office and the insurance, or even, like, it's a lot of, like, remembering and then, and then with, like, my ADHD and everything else. Like, I just. You know, it's

Scott Benner 15:00
hard to writing it down. Wouldn't help setting reminders. Yeah,

Chelsea 15:05
yeah, it Yeah. I try. You should, you should see my fridge, and I have several white boards and, like, cork boards, and there's, like, notes hung up everywhere on my phone. It's just like, everything I can do to, like, visualize, like, externalized visual reminders, whatever notes on my phone with reminders, like, and still, stuff gets forgotten. It's just ridiculous. No,

Scott Benner 15:33
I understand. I really do. I just, I'm interested in, like, the process. So once the notes are everywhere, do you actually follow through on any others, you just become a storm of, like, words. Is it just a word jumble? Yeah?

Chelsea 15:44
Like, it's, there's a fine balance, because if I put too many stuff up on, like, a board of things to remember, then it just becomes a board of papers. Yeah? And, like, I'm not going to remember any of them, you know, like, like a word bubble,

Scott Benner 15:56
almost.

Chelsea 15:58
Yeah, exactly. So,

Scott Benner 16:01
well, listen, yeah. Are there any things you never forget to do that you're that you even are like, I can't believe I always do this,

Chelsea 16:07
going to the bathroom. That's pretty that one's pretty easy. But like, I forget to eat. You know, I forget, you know, it takes a lot of conscious effort to do things that are just like regular, even just like regular habits for people, or like things that I like struggle to remember to do, you know, so okay, I'm trying to think is, there's those are something that I just remember to do. It's like, if there's an external force like reminding me or motivating me to do something, I can remember that I can do that. But if it's like, all up to me to like, be that motivation, be that reminder. Oh, like, Kevin, help me like that your whole life. Yeah, I think so. Like, I did well in school. I was a straight A student. I like, you know, 3.9 GPA. I did extracurriculars, but, like, a lot of that, like, I worked well in that system, because there was a system. I didn't have to build the system. I just had to, like, follow it, and there's a lot of external pressure to be good at it, right? So, like, I did well with that. But like becoming an adult, and like managing being my own person, to like, my own motivator, and, yeah, is different. It's been different.

Scott Benner 17:20
Do you think has it changed at all based on your your thyroid levels changing like, are you more together when your TSH is lower, for example, or anything like that? Yeah,

Chelsea 17:31
yeah. And, and I've thought about this a lot over the last several years, since I got diagnosed with ADHD, and then also learning more about like Hashimotos and learning more about like diabetes and stuff. Like, since all of that in the past five years or so, I've really noticed they all play off of each other in like, the worst ways. So like, if one gets out of balance, the others get thrown off. And my life is just like a spiral downward. So it's like, it's really hard to just keep balance, because, yeah, when my thyroid is off, it makes my ADHD worse. I feel like and then also, and then diabetes management becomes harder to take care of and and same with diabetes, if my blood sugars are really off, I feel like that affects like that. Can I feel like that sometimes causes my thyroid levels to change if they're like, really off or and then that affects my ADHD too. So everything, kind of like, affects my ADHD, but my ADHD also makes it hard to manage the other things as well.

Scott Benner 18:33
Sucks because those things all seem like they're pretty inflammation related on one level or another. Yeah, I think so. What was the trouble you were having with your thyroid? Like, how does that like, are you not on a medication every day that keeps it in a space? Like, what was happening?

Chelsea 18:48
I don't know. It's just like, when, when we moved to Colorado, I felt like my like, thyroid levels were changing. Like, maybe, I don't know what it was, something, something was triggered. And like, the medication I was on was not, like, the right dose or something and but I just, like, kept with what I had, and then it just was. It was getting worse as time went on. And does stress have an impact on like, Hashimotos, like, can it like, caused the body, like the immune system, to, like, attack your thyroid and, like, really mess up your levels. Because I feel like that's a thing.

Scott Benner 19:28
So what happened? You get stressed out, and you feel like your thyroid levels move around.

Chelsea 19:32
Yeah, yeah. Like, extreme stress, not just like I had a stressful day, but

Scott Benner 19:36
like, the hell is happening this extreme in your life? Well,

Chelsea 19:39
when I kind of came to that realization I wasn't straight huge panic, and I was super stressed, and I didn't like eat for three days, and I was just overcome with anxiety, and it was this whole thing. And then, especially after that, my thyroid just felt it was really hot. I, I don't know it was my heart. Like was all felt all racy. I was losing a lot of weight, like it changes in my hair, like my hair was thinning, and like blood pressure issues, and I don't know, all this stuff. I just, like, felt like I was dying, really. Let

Scott Benner 20:19
me tell you what I learned from our our friends at chat, G, P, T, 4.0 while you were talking there, extreme stress can impact hypothyroidism. Stress affects the body in several ways, including how to manage thyroid hormone. Here's some key points, cortisol levels, autoimmune responses, HPA axis. Chronic stress can disrupt the hypothalam. I haven't watched Grey's Anatomy in a while, hypothalam, thalamic pituitary adrenal axis, which no wonder they call it the HPA axis, which plays a critical role in regulating thyroid function. Disruptions in the axis can lead to imbalances in thyroid hormone production. Can stress, can impact digestive health. Nutrient Absorption, iodine and zinc are crucial for thyroid function. If you're not absorbing them, it could worsen sleep and lifestyle, etc. So not crazy, but here's what sounds crazy to me, and I want to dig into more. You're 29 right? You telling me you woke up one day and you were like, Chelsea, doesn't like boys, like what like? And you didn't realize that, or what's going because how many kids do you have with the boy who's over there sculpting?

Chelsea 21:31
I've got two kids. Okay, okay, I'm bisexual, so we'll put it that way.

Scott Benner 21:37
All right, we'll put it that way. Well, you put it anywhere you want. What's the moment? Like, you know, like, there's, like, why all the

Chelsea 21:45
sudden it was really, like an epiphany kind of moment. I mean, it's, it's, I feel like, the past few years, I feel like I've kind of been, like, I've been going to therapy, and I've been kind of doing a lot of, like healing work from, like, childhood trauma and stuff, you know, in my teenage years, and my main coping mechanism was, like, suppressing things. And so I've been doing, like, a lot of, like, unsuppressing things. But anyway, I just had someone close to me. We were just talking, and they they came out, and they're like, Hey, by the way, you know, like, I'm, you know, they came out and said, You know, I'm not straight. And they were telling me about their experience and their story, and just like something about them talking and like, all of these things that like it, light bulb went on in my head, like, that's you. Like that. Everything just suddenly made sense. Like it just felt like this, this connection of like, Oh,

Scott Benner 22:36
more details. What did she say? Was it she that told you she was yeah, what did she say that made you go, like, because you had, like, a Scooby Doo boom. And you're like, and then, like, what happened then, yeah,

Chelsea 22:47
she's talking about kind of, like, her own childhood trauma type stuff, you know, like, and also, like difficulties with, like, parent relationship, and then how she came to terms with the fact that, like, you know, she's bisexual, and she realized that about herself and how that's been for her, and for some reason, all these things that I've kind of been uncovering and working through mental trauma, and stuff like childhood trauma, it just everything kind of just like, clicked in that moment. I don't really know how to explain it. It's just like, it just made sense in the moment. Like, Oh, prior. That makes sense, everything, yeah,

Scott Benner 23:22
yeah. But prior to that, had you ever had an experience with a woman or a desire? I

Chelsea 23:27
mean, looking, looking back on things, yeah, like, my, my relationships with, like, girls and boys and like, I've never had like a, like a, like a relationship with a girl or anything. But definitely, like looking, but there's like, there's crushes, there's attraction, there's, you know, like that. Have you

Scott Benner 23:45
ever been face first with the business end of a lady? No, no. Have you yet? No, no. I married Scott. Are you planning on it? I mean, listen, you guys moved from Utah to Colorado so he could learn how to, like, Chip stuff out of stone. I'm assuming bringing a girl over isn't the craziest thing you guys have ever talked about.

Chelsea 24:09
So, like, so he was really nice. Like, when I, when I told him about these, oh, my god,

Scott Benner 24:13
really nice. He was like, thank God. He ran around Chelsea, like you won the Olympics. Am I wrong?

Chelsea 24:23
He's like, I just it's a concern. Like, I don't know. Like, was he

Scott Benner 24:27
heartbroke? I would let me just tell you, from my perspective, I would have been heartbroken. I would have been like, I said, I'm getting divorced. This is over, but I'm some guys. Like, maybe he's handsome, maybe he's running around thinking, like, she's gonna bring a lady over one day. This is going to be the greatest day of my life. Like, I don't, where did that situation? Like, how did

Chelsea 24:44
it? Well, I was super stressed about telling him.

Scott Benner 24:47
I mean, I could tell you screwed up your thyroid, yeah, yeah.

Chelsea 24:50
And I didn't. I didn't eat for three days. I was like, at the point I was like, I'm gonna have to, like, go to the hospital if I don't, like, eat something or do something, like. I get to talk to somebody about this, but I don't know, like, when I, when I told him, he was actually, like, really chill about it. He's like, okay. He's like, but you still like me, right? I'm like, Yeah, I still love you. It's just, I just this, just this thing about me that I realized about myself. You know, it doesn't like, change our relationship or anything, go find

Scott Benner 25:19
his best friend Chelsea, and find out what he said after you guys walk, he's he's probably like, Bob, listen to me. Listen very closely. It finally happened, Mecca. I made it. Hold tight. There's gonna be more than one lady. Have you guys talked about that? I don't want to. I almost said I don't want to dig too deep in your life. That's ridiculous. Of course, I do. Have you talked about that?

Chelsea 25:38
I mean, that's not something that like want to do. Nobody wants that in our marriage, you know, but fair

Scott Benner 25:44
enough, I don't think you should have to. And my joking part is over now. But like, so then what do you do with that thought,

Chelsea 25:51
that first, like, epiphany. It was like a good experience. It was like a, like, a really wholesome, like, healing, kind of, like getting a piece of me back, you know, like, I just felt more connected with myself, you know, this thing I'd been suppressing for so long, like, Finally, just like, I took it back, and that was a good feeling. But immediately following that, in the next days, it was like, panic, like, suddenly I don't know where I belong in anything anymore. And that was like, What's stressful is like, I don't know if people are gonna accept me. I don't know if I belong places. I don't know what people are gonna think of me, or, like, if people still love me, you know, like, that's the question is, like, I don't, I don't know how people, you know, do I still have a place in the world? That's kind of like how it feels.

Scott Benner 26:35
No, no, no. I think, I think I understand. I feel like I have to go back to this one part that I feel stuck on, like, if I met a if I knew a guy, like a friend, and we sat down one day and we were comparing the lives, and every traumatic thing that happened to me happened to them, and like, our lives really matched. And then that, at the end of that conversation, the guy said, and I realized, I'm not straight, I would go, Oh, I am. Like, what does that conversation do to like, I'm not saying that the conversation, like, made you gay. I take you at your word, that it uncovered something that you that you felt like you were suppressing. But like, how, how does that happen? Do you know what I mean? Like, was there, like, a thing that was said that, like, how do you go from I had a traumatic childhood or whatever, to I think I like girls too, yeah,

Chelsea 27:21
yeah, so, so for me, I think I was, I was starting to understand that about myself back in high school, you know, freshman, sophomore year, like, you know, realizing maybe I look at girls a little differently than, like my peers, do, You know, and, and that thought kind of emerging, but also right at that same time, my dad got fired from his job, and my home life just became really stressful, and things became really hard, and I didn't have room for big thoughts like that, you know. I couldn't process stuff like that, you know. And like, you know, I'm Christian. I'm, you know, LDS and so, like, also, there's that stress of being gay and being Christian is hard to process. And, yeah.

Scott Benner 28:13
So on top of all this other stuff, your family live is in the Mormon Church, is that? Right? Yeah, yeah. And so there's no, I mean, I've spoken to my fair share of Mormons. My understanding that if you're in the church, you're not gay, is that about, right?

Chelsea 28:28
It's complicated. But, I mean, there's plenty of gay people in there. Oh,

Scott Benner 28:33
no, I know they're there. I'm just saying it's not a thing you say, you don't raise your hand and go, Hey, by the way, it's not

Chelsea 28:38
always the most well received thing. Yeah, it's hard to understand. And yeah, reconcile. So you've got

Scott Benner 28:44
all this turmoil inside of you. Obviously, this stuff all boils up. Then you got to tell your husband. Then you realize he's probably hurt by this to some degree. You have to make him hard for him to kind of, yeah, boy. I mean, yeah. I mean not that. If you are, you should hide it, but like, it's gonna have an impact on the other person too, right? So then you comfort him, which is, now you isn't that crazy? You're in this situation. You're like, oh, wait, now I have to be comforting to you. Like, holy crap. Yeah, I

Chelsea 29:14
feel like coming out. That's like, I don't know. Half the time that's what you're doing. It's like, they're not, they're if you come out to somebody, there's a good chance you're going to end up

Scott Benner 29:23
comforting them. It's okay.

Chelsea 29:27
It's okay. I'm okay. It's all right.

Scott Benner 29:30
Because you're married to a guy and you have, I mean, you're going to designate by you know yourself, as a bisexual but you don't want to cheat on your husband, so you're not looking for him to be with another lady I imagine right now. No, okay, so it's just going to be this thing that doesn't happen. Does that seem reasonable?

Chelsea 29:50
It's incredibly hard because, because, well, there's like this, this thing they call a lot of a lot of people call it like the gay adolescents. What do they call it? Like, queer puberty or whatever. Where, like people who don't come out until they're older, they kind of, like, go through this like, process of understanding that part of them, yeah, that like the like teenagers and stuff, go through like, a second puberty almost exactly. And that's exactly how it feels. It feels like I went back to, like, 15 year old me, and like, how I was, like, my brain was working, and it felt,

Scott Benner 30:23
are you just creeping on ladies at the mall, like 15 year old boys? Is that what you're

Chelsea 30:29
doing? No, but like, I don't know. It's like, suddenly you want to understand this part about yourself, but you feel like, like, I'm not in a position to do that. You know, like, this is the wrong time of life to be doing that. And, like, especially, like, married and kids and so, like, it's really complicated and it's really hard, you know, no, no,

Scott Benner 30:47
that's what I'm saying. It seems, it seems like big, so hard, and I don't know, like, I'm trying to figure out how you ignore it your whole life, yeah,

Chelsea 30:55
suppressing it to survive. I mean, in high school, I was, like, my my parents were really struggling after my dad lost his job, and like, they were not very present, like they loved us kids and they and they took care of us. But it was also it was stressful because, like, their mental health was was really bad. And my dad, especially it was, he was, like, in a constant anxiety attack, like, all the time, and my mom was really weighed down to and really depressed. And it's just like, like, felt like we couldn't, like, lean on them or anything, even though they were, they were there for us. But like, it's like, I really, I was very aware of their own struggles, so I didn't want to be more of a struggle, you know. So, like, it's just, like, you just suppress things to kind of

Scott Benner 31:42
survive, try not to make waves. What if your dad lost his job, was hit with so much stress over that realized he was gay, went home, told your mom he was gay, and she went and the stress of hearing that her husband was gay made her realize she was gay, and then and then, everyone would have been happy if they told each other, but no. What happened, drinking, fighting, what happened when the job went away?

Chelsea 32:04
Like, my dad seemed kind of like, on the verge of, like, suicide. That kind of stress, like, sometimes he'd just like, leave the house and we weren't sure that he'd be like, coming back, you know, that kind of stress and financial, you know, stress of being able to afford things, especially like me being the diabetic, feeling really guilty about that, because, like, I have expensive needs, you know, like, it's not easy when you don't have a job. And yeah, so if you

Scott Benner 32:34
think that every married person, man or woman, hasn't stood outside of the door of their house for a minute, go, am I gonna go back inside, or am I leaving? I think you're, I think you're crazy. But I take, I said, it's terrible that he it got to that. Did he get help? Or did he make his way through? Is he still alive? He's

Chelsea 32:50
still alive? Yeah, yeah. He, they work through it. And they're, they're doing like, good now, nice. It was rough for, you know, a while.

Scott Benner 32:59
I wonder how much of when big life things crash like that, and you're very religious, meaning you have a lot of faith that there's somebody looking out for you. How many times somebody's like, well, where's God in this? Like, I've been, I put a lot of faith in this situation. Now I don't have a job, my kids got diabetes, like, except, you know what I mean? Like, probably harder to take than if you don't believe in God, and you're just like, oh, man, ups and downs of life, huh?

Chelsea 33:22
A bit of a faith crisis, yeah, yeah, like being mad at God or whatever, yeah? So I think there was a bit of that too, you know, going on,

Scott Benner 33:31
yeah? I was gonna say, like, just feeling abandoned by an idea more than anything else. It's interesting. Okay, so how does this end you up in the ER?

Chelsea 33:40
Ended up in the ER because, like I said, my thyroid was was behaving really weird. I was under a lot of stress. I just had one one day, my husband was out of town for doing something for work, and I was just at home with the kids by myself. My heart felt just really off, and I was, I thought maybe I was having like, a heart attack or something, like, I didn't know what was going on. I ended up having a neighbor, like, drag me to the ER, and they checked on my heart and everything. And I guess they think, they determined it was just like a panic attack or something. But felt really stupid because it wasn't actually anything. That's okay, yeah. But, but after that, I was like, Okay, I've got to figure out what's going on with my thyroid. Like, I can't, like, keep going on, like this. And I was also, like, I was losing a lot of weight, and I was really thin, like I was weighing less than I was, like, in high school, like I was, I lost 30 pounds, I think, in like, two months. And like, I was, and I'm, like, already not, like I'm a pretty like small person to begin with.

Scott Benner 34:42
You lost 30 pounds in two months. Yeah, from what weight to what weight, I

Chelsea 34:47
went from like 155 to 125 how tall? 540 my goodness. I. Yeah. And so I'm like, Okay, I've got to figure out what's wrong with me. Away. It's really rough. So I ended up making an appointment with an endocrinologist. I'm like, my regular doctor isn't enough. I need to actually go see an endo for my thyroid. And yeah. And I hadn't been to an endocrinologist in a really long time, because back where we were living before, we didn't really have one in the area, and so I was just seeing, I don't know, some family doctor or whatever. So I go to the Endo, and they're like, what's going on? I tell her about all this stuff going on, and she's like, What meds are you on? And she's like, Oh, okay. And she's like, we're gonna switch you off of your thyroid medication and switch you to a better one. And I guess I was, I was, I was taking armor thyroid. And apparently that was, she really disagrees with that for most people like for most, at least people with Toshi motos that like it, it's not helpful. What did she put you onto? Uh, she switched me back to Le both thyroxin, well, she switched me to tyrosine.

Scott Benner 36:06
Oh, tears in Okay, that's what, that's what Arden takes. And

Chelsea 36:08
that's been even better than, I feel like, than just Synthroid, even, yeah. So I really like the tyrosine. It works really good for me. All

Scott Benner 36:18
the people in my family use tyrosine, yeah, and so, yeah, it's amazing. My son does tyrosine with armor. Oh, really. He does both, yeah. He does both, like a little touch of the armor. Arden does tyrosine with uh, cytome, which is t3 a little, just a little tiny, little bit for energy. I didn't real look at this. How did I miss this disordered eating diabetes? I didn't know that was happening. Tell me more. Yeah,

Chelsea 36:42
so I know for me, it's, it's not always something I like seek out to do. It's almost like something I fall into. And I feel like everything else in my life is out of control, and it gives me like a sense of control. And I mean, I also struggle with like, like appearance and like stuff like that. And so tell

Scott Benner 37:08
me more. I didn't realize that, so where I'd forgotten one of the other. But like, are you find yourself judging yourself or feeling judged? Or, how does that work?

Chelsea 37:16
So I it's something I'd struggled with before, kind of after having my kids struggling with body image and realizing I could kind of just like, neglect my diabetes and that would help me lose weight, or that would help me stay thin. And part of that is also dealing with, like, bad depression and just kind of feeling enabled to, like, stay thin any other way, and this just seemed like an easy way to do it, and also managing diabetes was overwhelming anyway, so it's like, I just was like, Okay, well,

Scott Benner 37:50
you know, do you remember how you figured out that you can manipulate your weight like that? You

Chelsea 37:55
like hear it from people. You know, it's like something you if you talk with other diabetes and listen to people's stories and stuff. You kind of, if you don't realize it yourself, you realize it's not hard to put one and you know, one on one together.

Scott Benner 38:10
And is that something you're still doing now, or is that something you've worked towards not doing? It's something I

Chelsea 38:17
still struggle with, especially as like, I start putting on more weight. Like, if I'm, you know, when I'm being healthier and, you know, eating a good diet and really taking care of my blood sugars, and maybe I start putting on more weight. The more weight I put on, the more stressed about it I get. And that's not really, I feel like that's not really something I think I've overcome entirely, you know, okay, because I'm still kind of figuring out my other health issues that are kind of like keeping me thin, but I'm not trying to abuse them. Does that make sense? Like, I think

Scott Benner 38:55
so. Honestly, I think it does. Yeah, yeah. Have you ever sought, like, outside help. For that a little bit,

Chelsea 39:03
I like, reached out to some organizations. I like, joined some groups, like on Facebook, some like support groups and stuff. And I've talked to my therapist about it, and so I have some support. And my husband's aware of it too, and he's, he's always been really good to, you know, help me have good body image and support me, you know, in that way. So but before this last year, it's not something I ever talked about to anybody with and now I people are aware of it, and so that helps me kind of feel more capable of handling it. I guess,

Scott Benner 39:34
sure, when you talk to when you've a couple of times have said, like, when I've talked to other people like, or I, you know, I have to come out to other people like, are you have a large group of people that you are sharing these things about yourself with? Or is it just people who you encounter and you feel like, okay, I want to say something here, usually

Chelsea 39:54
like family, close friends, and then there's, you know, Facebook groups, if. I are great for, like, support communities, like, you know, the Juicebox Podcast group has been, you know, really great for diabetes and stuff like that. So lovely.

Scott Benner 40:08
I'm happy to hear that that's nice. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, you did write a nice note to me. It really laid this out, which I think is making things very helpful. By the way, you feel like you're pulling your life together that I get, yeah, but you say that, even though I might not be managing my my diabetes, Well, right now, can you put context to that? Like, what is your variability look like? Where your highs and lows? Like, where do you peak and paying and what's your A,

Chelsea 40:37
1c, Oh, geez. Lately, my my blood sugars have been all over the place, and that's because I've been dealing with medication changes, which has been hard. I haven't I haven't had an A 1c in a while either, because I keep forgetting to, like, schedule the go do one again, the ADHD. But I recently started ADHD meds, and it's, like, amazing, the difference it makes like I can actually, like, get things done just like, in the last couple weeks, actually. So I'm just, like, really feeling like I'm on a turnaround with stuff like that. The first thing that really helped was switching my thyroid medication, because my thyroid being off just made me feel like a crazy person, and I felt like I was dying. So like, that was, like, the first thing that really helped, right? And then getting my Dexcom again, that helps. I mean, any everybody I feel like, should have a CGM of some sort, because, like, that data is just like, you know, you can't compete with that, you know, and it really helps you manage, yeah. So I got that, especially with ADHD, because, like, out of sight, out of mind, is terrible with diabetes, and it kind of like puts it in front of you all the time, and there has alerts and alarms that go off, you know, when you're going out of range. So, like that it's having a CGM is crucial for me in managing my diabetes. And so, yeah, I got that back and and now I'm, like, started ADHD meds, and that's helping me, actually, like, approach life. It's helped with my anxiety and my and my depression. And, you know, I can focus on things. I can handle routines better and and my mind is just clearer. And, yeah, I don't know. I feel like I'm had

Scott Benner 42:13
you never tried those prior

Chelsea 42:15
ADHD meds. Yeah, I didn't get diagnosed with ADHD until, I don't know, 334, years ago, and they they started me on. I feel like this is common thing they do nowadays is they first try you on, like, Wellbutrin, okay, and it's not technically, like an ADHD Med, but it helps some people with ADHD. And it's like, I feel like they try that first. So, like, I did that. They also prescribed it to me for, like, seasonal depression. And, like, I didn't, I didn't really notice it doing anything. So I went off of that and and then I moved out here to Colorado, and I had to start the whole process over again with, you know, getting a new therapist, a new psychiatrist, and doing the meds again. And they're like, Okay, first, my psychiatrist is like, I even think you have ADHD, because I told her, like, I don't know. I did really good in school and stuff like that. She's like, I'm not so sure you have it. And I still don't know if she meant that or not. If she's just, like, talking out loud, I honestly don't know. Like, I had the diagnosis already So, but anyway, so she's like, let's treat your anxiety. Because I was really dealing with anxiety, really bad. She prescribes me Prozac. Take that. That helps a little bit, because when you're not super anxious, it helps you be a little more functional, right? So that helped a little bit, but I still felt like I was really struggling with ADHD. And so over months and months after that, she's like, Okay, well, maybe it is ADHD. Let's prescribe you something for it. So they put me back on Wellbutrin, and I reacted really terribly to it. This time I was mentally it really, it really messed up thinking like I was like, suicidal, like I was at a really bad day, one day, and I I really think I was gonna, like, go out.

Scott Benner 43:56
And the Wellbutrin made you feel that way. You think, yeah,

Chelsea 43:59
and I mean, for me, having thoughts of healing myself is not uncommon. Like, that's been, like a daily thing almost, you know, but like, I work through it just fine. And like, I know how to, like, cope with those thoughts and like, move on from them, but with, with whatever was going on in my brain, with the Wellbutrin, it's like I was incapable of working through that the way I normally do. And, and instead, I was like, I was like, diving into it and and didn't know how

Scott Benner 44:28
to pull out of it. Are you harming yourself physically?

Chelsea 44:33
No, but do you want me to go into it? I mean, I feel like it's

Scott Benner 44:37
if you want to be I mean, fine with me. If you want to talk about that's fine, okay,

Chelsea 44:42
I I've struggled with suicide ideation pretty seriously in the past, too, like in high school. And luckily, I've just had, like, people, good friends and stuff that that have kind of helped me, you know, stay afloat, I guess. But I learned how to like, deal with deal with it. It and work through it. And depression and anxiety has been part of my life for, I don't know, forever, but, yeah, like, self harm. I don't want, I've never been enticed by self harm, because if I, like, cut myself or something, you know, because I don't want people to see it, I don't want people to notice. I don't want people to comment on it, or, like, realize I'm struggling, like, if, if I wanted to go out and kill myself, you know, I want to do it without anybody knowing about it or having any idea that that it was going to happen, you know. Like, that's, I don't want to weigh people down, you know. Does that make sense? So

Scott Benner 45:35
when you say daily, like, daily now, still as an adult, and when you were younger,

Chelsea 45:41
yeah, ever since I was like, 16, yeah, kind of, kind of mostly since, like, since my dad lost his job back in high school, I mentally, I really started to struggle. It's kind of ebbed and flowed over the years, but yeah, and, and, you know, the thoughts of, like, I don't know, like, daily driving a car and having thoughts of, like, oh, it would just be nice, like, if a car just, like, swerved into my lane and hit me or something, you know, like, like, but you know,

Scott Benner 46:10
how long does that feeling last for? I'm

Chelsea 46:13
I move on, on from it pretty quickly. Like, you know that, you know, like, it's like a that would be nice. And then, and then move on.

Scott Benner 46:21
Have you ever seriously had a plan to to end your life when I was

Chelsea 46:25
in high school? Yeah, I was planning out several different ways I could possibly do it, and I was getting really close to, like, a point of maybe trying one of those ways. I know for me to this day, I won't, I don't want to know if I could kill myself by overdosing on insulin. I know like that's a thought I have, and I won't look up whether that would actually work or not, because I don't want to know if it would or not, because the ambiguity of that answer kind of keeps me from, you know, like pursuing it, okay? Does that make sense, or moving on from it to find a better solution that would be more sure? I feel like I've lived my whole life, kind of living in this space between wishing I was dead and trying not to die, and I feel like that's been most of my existence, and then just trying to find happiness, you know, in the middle of those two things along the way, even

Scott Benner 47:25
prior to your dad's losing his job, yeah,

Chelsea 47:29
yeah. I mean, I've been diabetic since I was two, and I think that's been really hard to I don't think I ever really learned how to cope with it. Well, I think that's

Scott Benner 47:39
cope with the knowledge that you just, do you have diabetes, or with the the day to day stuff? Yeah,

Chelsea 47:44
diabetes is an ADHD, and I think those two have been my biggest struggles. And not knowing I was ADHD made management hard because it's just like, why can't you just do it? Chelsea, why can't you just manage diabetes like other people are doing it, why can't you just do it? And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know why I can't just do it, you know, like, I didn't have an answer. So I just start saying, like, Oh, I'm just forgetful, or I forgot, you know, playing it off like that. It's like, No, I'm not forgetting. Like, I'm aware of it. I just don't know how to, like, get it done. And that's the thing with ADHD, is like, it doesn't make sense. You can be like, I need to do the thing, but not feel like you can make yourself go do the thing you know. It's like there's a connection in your brain that just isn't happening to like, initiate the things you know you need to do and and, like diabetes, it requires you know, like, routine, motivation, self awareness, prioritizing, you know, like regulation, consistency, control, you know, like all these things and like ADHD makes all of those hard. Like, there's, you know, executive dysfunction. You know, struggle with like task initiation ADHD, people have an increased like difficulty with like developing habits and and maintaining routines and just being like, distractible, you know, like, like, all of the like, so, so put those two together and and give them to a kid, and it's just like you're just setting them up for failure, you know. And then don't tell them they have those struggles, those invisible struggles, and then expect them to do this really complex thing, to maintain, while also having all of these deficits that make all of those needs hard to meet. You know,

Scott Benner 49:28
so, but now that you're 29 Yeah, and you've, I mean, you listen to the podcast for a long time, right? Oh, yes, basically speaking, you understand that the management your diabetes is getting, setting straight Pre Bolus in your meals, not looking at high blood sugars. Don't over treat lows. You're pretty much you should, I mean, just that, should put you in like the mid sixes. Yeah, right. And is that not happening?

Chelsea 49:53
That all depends on remembering right. Like to do things, and I've always struggled. With just like maintenance. So yeah, and diabetes is constant maintenance. So I guess that's

Scott Benner 50:08
what happened. If alarm went off on your phone at 8:45am that said Bolus, and then it went off again at 850 and it said, Eat. Would you do that? Or do you think it actually wouldn't happen? I

Chelsea 50:21
think for a while that would work. I get frustrated with the whole alarm thing. People like, why don't you just set an alarm? I'm like, that works for like, a week. And then I'm like, Yeah, that's what I want to get to. Then I start turning off the alarms. Or, like, being like, okay, but right now I'm in the middle of something. I can't do that right now, and I'll, like, turn off the alarm, or I'll snooze it, and suddenly the alarm becomes less important, and then it loses its effectiveness, and then it just becomes irrelevant. Let me

Scott Benner 50:48
ask you a question. It's gonna sound like it's coming out of left field. Do you run out of gas often

Chelsea 50:52
in your car? Like, like, run it all the way down to low fuel, yeah? Like, like,

Scott Benner 50:56
when you're like, oh my god, the car is not running anymore. It doesn't have a gas in it. How do you ever run out of gas?

Chelsea 51:00
Like, completely, yeah. Like, it's that's happened once or twice, once or twice, but no time I've been driving cars

Scott Benner 51:07
not I had somebody tell me recently, a person who has ADHD, like, what's the thing where you pay for it and they come out triple A. I have triple A because of how frequently I run out of gas. And I was like, Wait, like, because your brain goes, I mean, just put gas in your car and, you know, like, well, they, you don't understand, I drive a lot of my car. Well, then every time you go out, put some gas in your car, like, like, that kind of like, feeling

Chelsea 51:33
it seems so simple, right? It seems like stupid simple. Just, it's so but I get it, like,

Scott Benner 51:38
right? It's so counterintuitive to how a person whose mind doesn't work that way, mind thinks that when it said to you, you're just like, wait, what? Like that's that's got to be the most frustrating part. It's something that is forget, like easy for other people, just happens automatically. You know what? I mean?

Chelsea 51:56
There's no way to explain it. And that's what's frustrating is people, it just makes you look like you're giving bad excuses for being lazy or forgetful or not.

Scott Benner 52:05
If you know that's not true, why can't you go past this part? Like, why do you care what people think of it? Like, stop telling them, just go do the thing that. Just go do it. Like, I'm afraid you're feeling judged all the time and stuck in that space.

Chelsea 52:19
Like that causes anxiety. But even if I'm not worried about what people think, it's like, I still struggle with these things, you know, and

Scott Benner 52:27
it's frustrating to you, because even though it's not a thing you're remembering to do, you can recognize it should be maybe,

Chelsea 52:34
yeah, yeah. And you're just like, why can't I just do what other people are doing? Like everybody's telling you you should be able to it's easy, and you can't, and you can't figure out why you can't, and you just like, it must be a willpower thing. I don't have enough willpower, and so you must stir up as much willpower as you possibly can. And then, okay, maybe you figure it out for like, a couple weeks, but then you run out of maintaining that willpower for you know, this extra willpower can't maintain it like it's doesn't feel sustainable. And then you just yeah, you fall back into Yeah. Just,

Scott Benner 53:14
did you hear the episode a couple of weeks ago with the person who said that GLP medications, they were using it for their daughter, and it ended up clearing a lot of her, like, bipolar issues. That's really cool. Yeah, sitting here, you know, listen, I got a weird job, right? I can't just blurt out everything that pops into my head, because if I say it's like, Oh, I wonder if this word work, there's gonna be somebody out there. It's like, I heard on a podcast that this works.

Chelsea 53:41
I didn't say that, right, right? What you say carries a lot of weight. It's

Scott Benner 53:45
tough, like, because I'd like to philosophize with you a little bit and, like, wonder out loud, but I know that there's, like, a small percentage of people are going to be like, I know for sure that that guy said that this works. And then you're going to go back and find it, and I'm going to go, oh yeah, he didn't say that, right? I was sitting here thinking, I wonder if there are any GLP trials for ADHD and and Psychology Today says that there are emerging discussions and some early stage research suggesting that GLP one receptor agonists such as ozempic might have potential benefits for treating ADHD symptoms. These medications are primarily used for managing type two diabetes, blah, blah, blah, but they also have effects on brain function that could be relevant for ADHD now, of course, at their current dosage levels, a person your size and your weight like you're not looking to not be hungry, you know what I mean. But I wonder what they're going to figure out, because so many things are are happening through these, these meds that are impacting autoimmune stuff, I think probably through, probably through inflammation. And I just wonder how much of your that you deal with every day isn't in some way, shape or form, inflammation, slash auto immune. Yeah. Anxiety or ADHD, or even depression. Like, I mean, you got to hear this episode that was just, I mean, I almost said nuts, but I don't mean it that way. It was crazy. Like, her kid has bipolar, and, yeah, and she discussed the things that trying to find the episode number, it's 1253, can GLP meds impact mental health? Super interesting. Yeah, you see, because if there are trials about gambling in GLP or, you know, like that kind of stuff, which is compulsions, right? Like, is it all like, what else is it going to impact, you know, like, I'm not saying I know anything, and I'm certainly not saying, I mean, you should really listen. If anybody is listening, I'm glad you like the podcast, but you probably really shouldn't listen to me, okay? But like, you know, it's just me wondering out loud, but it says here, studies indicate GLP, one agonist, can cross the blood brain barrier and influence neurotransmitter systems, including dopamine pathways, which are implicated in ADHD. Some research has shown that these drugs can improve cognitive function and reduce the impulsivity and hyperactivity in individuals with ADHD. However, the findings are preliminary, so, okay, they don't know for sure, but people are looking into

Chelsea 56:15
it. I'm saying that's interesting. Yeah,

Scott Benner 56:20
I think so too. Anyway, I don't know anything. You shouldn't listen to me. I'm just saying this is that. Let's just say this. Chelsea, 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 there. But I've had enough conversations that it popped into my head and I was like, I wonder if this wouldn't be something for her to like, I mean, you're gonna have to find a legit doctor to pick through these ideas. You know what? I mean, yeah,

Chelsea 56:47
I did. I mean, I did start by Vance that has helped my ADHD, like, wah, wah, wah, okay. And it's, it's been incredible, like, it's been like, almost emotional, the difference it is, and realizing I could function like this with the Vyvanse, and realizing I've gone my whole life not functioning or feeling this way, you know, like it's uh, so it's, it's Yeah, so I'm actually like, I'm on by Vance, and that helps my ADHD tremendously. And I feel like I'm actually capable of, like, getting a hold on my life, you know, like I felt like I was drowning before, and now I feel like I have the ability to, like, actually take care of things, you know, like, it's,

Scott Benner 57:30
yeah, no, it's wonderful. It says, it says vivance works by affecting the central nervous system to help improve focus attention. How does it do that? It's a pro drug, meaning it is inactive until it is metabolized in the body. Once ingested, it converts into the bloodstream to Dex C Trobe, oh, my God. Dexytro, an active form of the drug. Something else. Let's see, no neurotransmitters regulated, dopamine, long lasting effects, Binge Eating disorders are Vyvanse and GLP impacting similar things, if so, which brain function and cognitive effects GLP, one, metabolic regulation, distinct areas of impact Vyvanse Hold on a second, implications of treatment? Yeah. Okay, so Vyvanse is primarily focused on neurological effects related to ADHD and impulse control GLP have a broader range of metabolic effects with emerging potential for treating neurodegenerative diseases and possibly certain cognitive dysfunctions. Both types of medications show how treatments targeting one system of the body, nervous or metabolic, can have secondary effects on other systems, reflecting the interconnected nature of the body function. I don't know there's something. I mean, it sounds like somebody's looking into it already, but I'd keep abreast of that if I was you, because yeah,

Chelsea 58:56
yeah, that's really interesting. I'm curious to see if they find more, yeah, like, how it affects ADHD

Scott Benner 59:02
and, yeah, it's very cool. It's like, you saw an oncoming car and you were just like, whatever. Well, yeah,

Chelsea 59:07
well, since I started by Vance, like, My anxiety is better, my depression is better. And I, like, actually surprised me the other day, I was, like, pulling into an intersection. That's usually when I'm like, Oh, what if, like, I missed the car and it hit me and I died, you know, like, root over, like, I had that thought of, like, what if I got hit pulling through this intersection? It was like, That would be awful. And then I was like, whoa, wait, I think that would be awful. I don't want that to happen. And I was like, Oh my gosh. Like, yeah, I don't feel so overwhelmed by my day to day life that I actually want to be here. You know, that's, that's what ADHD does to people sometimes, like, yeah, you

Scott Benner 59:44
know, it's so funny. Like, like, I'm not saying that pharma companies don't do some stuff that I all, we all wish they wouldn't do. But like, when you hear a story like that, you're like, man, thank god somebody's out there trying to do stuff like that. That's really, like, miraculous, you know? Yeah. Yeah, wow. Is there anything we haven't talked about that we should have?

Chelsea 1:00:03
I don't know. We cover everything in that ridiculous list I sent you, not a ridiculous

Scott Benner 1:00:07
it was a great list. It's fantastic. Plus it stops me from, like, just rehashing things. That's my biggest fear about having people on like, more than once, is that I'll just forget what we talked about the first time, and then you'll be like, yeah, you already asked me all

Chelsea 1:00:19
this. I think the first time we were all over the place and what we talked about. So

Scott Benner 1:00:23
you're terrific. I'd make a podcast with you every day. You're fantastic. Thanks so much. No, seriously, seriously, I absolutely. I mean, as far as I mean,

Chelsea 1:00:31
I've got 27 years of experiences to share. So, yeah, trust

Scott Benner 1:00:36
me, I'm so old I can't remember the first 27 years of my experiences. What do you think of that? That weird to think one day you'll be an age where you'll look back on 29 and not really recall it,

Chelsea 1:00:45
yeah, like tomorrow.

Scott Benner 1:00:49
I like that idea because it reminds me that nothing that's happening right now is all that important, right, right? Just,

Chelsea 1:00:55
yeah, don't be forgotten. It's not that big a deal. Just

Scott Benner 1:00:59
isn't, you know, it's interesting. Hold on. I'm looking at the last little bit of your of your note here. I want to make sure I'm not forgetting anything. Oh, you're saying nice stuff about me. Oh, this is lovely. Thank you. You're like, I sent that email six months ago. You haven't read it yet. Asshole. Like, No,

Chelsea 1:01:15
I know you get a lot of

Scott Benner 1:01:17
emails, so I'm just seeing this for the first one is really nice. The Facebook community is helpful to you. That's excellent. You're glad the podcast reaches so many people. Oh, you're very nice. Thank you so much. Yeah, and you do a great thing, Scott, well, I'm fantastic. There's no other way it could go. You know what? I mean, Frodo was always getting that ring to Mordor. It just was in him. And I'm only thinking about that because you're

Chelsea 1:01:43
5454, you know, you wouldn't be the first person referring to me as a hobbit. So,

Scott Benner 1:01:49
I mean, it's pretty short. Are your parents short?

Chelsea 1:01:52
I come from a very average sized family.

Scott Benner 1:01:57
Least exciting thing I've ever heard anybody say in my life, we're average size people?

Chelsea 1:02:01
Yeah, everybody's pretty much just average. What

Scott Benner 1:02:04
does that mean? Five, seven for a guy? 598,

Chelsea 1:02:08
I don't know. I think that's about where my dad is at,

Scott Benner 1:02:13
yeah, yeah. Do you think your parents have any of the problems that you have, and have you ever spoken to them about it?

Chelsea 1:02:19
Well, we all have Hashimotos to not my last episode, yeah, my parents and all my siblings and me like mental health stuff, and my mom has, like, OCD, and I think probably ADHD too. I know my dad really struggles with, like, anxiety and depression, but he's never been, like, treated for it, you know. So I just know it's been a common struggle of his.

Scott Benner 1:02:42
But can I ask one question before I let you go? What if I said no? I mean, I guess we just end the podcast. Oh, okay, sure, you can ask questions. I think it would be sexier if you said no, because people always think it's funny when

Chelsea 1:02:55
people say, can I ask a question? Yeah, like, do most people saying yes. I feel like most people say, like, I don't know what the question is.

Scott Benner 1:03:01
Well, when I say, can I ask you a question? What I mean is I'm about to say something uncomfortable. Ready yourself.

Chelsea 1:03:10
Okay, go for it. Now, now, now I'm in. I'm curious. I'm more curious, what

Scott Benner 1:03:14
if you would have figured out that you were into lady bits earlier, and I almost said, dove in head first, which is not a joke I was trying to make. You're

Chelsea 1:03:24
trying to go back to your your previous I

Scott Benner 1:03:27
had no intention. I wanted to say, like, I wanted to say, and then you started up a relationship with a woman, and you were like, strictly lesbian. But then I started to say, dove in head first. Then I realized what was happening. I was like, Oh, that's fun. What if that happened? What if you just went the lesbian route at 17? Have you ever thought of that and then realized you wouldn't have you might not have your kids? And does that like, I wouldn't

Chelsea 1:03:47
have this amazing family I have? Yeah, how does that make you think Colorado living this crazy life I'm living? And also, before

Scott Benner 1:03:55
you answer, I want to be really clear, because now I'm hearing myself, this is not like an anti gay rant, like, I don't have any, I have none of those feelings. Like, I'm just wondering, like, because you've had such an epiphany, did it make you look back? Like, what's that Charles Dickens thing where the kid can't walk and then they get a turkey, like, that thing? Like, have you, like, almost like, the ghost of Christmas something, have you,

Chelsea 1:04:15
oh, yeah, because, like, that's, that's not a part of me ever got to experience, right? So there's like, a little bit of grief around that, like, I don't get to know what that's like, right? Yeah, that's hard to express to people, because people are like, okay, but you're married and you have a family, like, how could you say that? Like, that makes it sound like, I'm not grateful for what I have, either. Yeah, I don't think

Scott Benner 1:04:38
so. I was just wondering how it made you like, if you've ever thought, like, oh, that's crazy, I almost zigged instead of zagged, and then this wouldn't have happened. Yeah,

Chelsea 1:04:46
yeah. It's interesting to think about, because it's like, yeah, my life could be completely different if I wasn't severely depressed and suppressed this thing about me when I was a teenager, like, and, you know, I could have had a much to. For life. Yeah, it's weird. It's weird to think about the yeah,

Scott Benner 1:05:03
that's all I was actually, that's all I was saying, is that it's just weird to think about, like, no differently than if I walked out of my house decided to go for a run, which is ridiculous. So I'm not running anywhere, let's say a walk. And I just was like, I'm gonna go left, and then I go left, and then I get hit by a car, and then I realized, if I would have went right, I would have run into the ice cream man and got a bomb pop, like that kind of thing.

Chelsea 1:05:26
Yeah, yeah. It's a, it's, it's a curious thing to Yeah.

Scott Benner 1:05:31
Think about, do you ever get that ice cream and it has the gumball in the middle? That

Chelsea 1:05:35
sounds gross, it is. It's really hard, and you don't want to have ice cream and gum at the same time. That's awesome,

Scott Benner 1:05:41
though, because once you get it soft, it's a gumball Fantastic. All right, I think you gave me ADHD. What do you think of that? Well, Chelsea, I hope you know that it's obvious why I invited you back. I've now had a lovely time speaking to you again, even though I can say with some certainty, I don't remember talking to you the first time, but I do remember

Chelsea 1:06:01
those, like, what Episode Are you on now? Like,

Scott Benner 1:06:04
1260 something,

Chelsea 1:06:06
yeah, so that was like 500

Scott Benner 1:06:09
conversations ago. Think about all

Chelsea 1:06:12
the recordings You haven't even posted yet. So, I mean, it's, yeah, that's a lot of conversations. I don't know how you'd even I don't, I don't know. I don't know how you're saying, to be honest,

Scott Benner 1:06:22
if I'm saying that's, that's questionable. But 1269, went up today. Wow, yeah.

Chelsea 1:06:28
Because, like, for me, every conversation I have just like, I feel like lives in my head forever. So to do what you do, I think I would go insane, or you just become really numb to it. I don't know. Like, Oh, I just had a conversation, and you move on and you like, never think about it again. Like, like, like, that's gotta be, how you have to be to function at doing what you're doing, you know,

Scott Benner 1:06:49
well, so the way I think I handle it is, like, after this, I'll be tired for 10 minutes, like, I'll have almost have brain fog when this is over. Like, just like, wow, that was, like, a lot of listening, and

Chelsea 1:07:01
that, Chelsea girl, no, no, no, no. Might be even more, like, 12 minutes this time.

Scott Benner 1:07:06
Yeah, you maybe get me to 20 minutes. But, like, but I'm saying this is for everybody, right? Like, because I'm listening, I'm forming an opinion, trying not to talk over you. I'm trying to, you know, do a bunch of different things. I am keenly aware that people are listening to what I'm saying. So that's like, you, the whole world doesn't matter. You're just you're the guest. Nobody holds you accountable. Like you're fine, like, at one point in this conversation, you said something to the effect of and that impacted the whole thing. And I thought, don't make a lesbian joke like that actually popped in my head. I was like, don't, don't make the lesbian joke here, and like, and so because, why? Because it not because I thought it was, like, distasteful or weird or anything like that, although I'm sure some people think it is, but because it would have broke the flow of the conversation. Right there. It's like, now it's not the time to interject. Like, so I'm having a conversation with you, and then I'm having a conversation with myself, and I'm trying very hard to disseminate ideas to people who are listening, and I'm trying to keep those things all together while I'm talking to you. So I get really tired of

Chelsea 1:08:09
awareness. Yeah, that's a lot of mental focus gymnastics

Scott Benner 1:08:13
going on. So then I get off of here. I'm a little tired. I'll pet myself back up. I will definitely eat something because it uses up a ton of, like, calories talking and thinking, and then from there, I will integrate some of the things that you shared into my understanding of the world, but not specifically relate them to you, right? So I don't have to be that specific, a lot of

Chelsea 1:08:40
bookmarks to keep in your head. Yeah? Like, if you had to tag them to each person where those ideas came from,

Scott Benner 1:08:46
I couldn't possibly do that. So the way I look at the podcast is, so when I look at life, I think one of the sad things about life is that obviously it's finite and that there's only so much time to absorb things and experience things and then coalesce them and make sense of them, and then make better decisions based off of them. And as you get older and older and older and clearer and clearer, you almost don't give a anymore. Like, you know, you start getting to the spot where, like, Ah, I'm old. I'm gonna die in 15 years. Like, like, what, who? I don't care that I figured out something. Let them figure it out. But I think that's sad that we can't turn it back around and tell people like, you know, instead of struggling through the next 10 years, just listen to these five ideas and trust me, they're true, you know. Go look into them specifically, maybe you'll leap forward. So I see the conversations as the ability to leap forward. And I like that idea because it makes me feel like my understanding of the world will be farther along than it should have been if I wasn't making the podcast, and that maybe this conversation will hit people earlier and earlier in life, and I wonder how far they'll get along then,

Chelsea 1:09:51
yeah, exactly. I mean, like, what you do on the podcast is you let people share their experiences, and then people get to hear that and learn from that. You know, it's like. But I feel like, as a as a people, we've forgotten how to like, listen to each other and like, consider each other's opinions and and like, add that to our own like, understanding of the world and stuff, you know, like it, I feel like we're always like, so quick to be up in arms and defend our own thoughts that we don't leave enough space for other people's, you know. So

Scott Benner 1:10:19
it's my favorite part of doing this, like it really is, yeah, so it's a really, really cool thing you do. It's fun. I don't find it overwhelming. Like to answer your question, like, I just, I know I need a break. Because, I mean, there's just a lot of ways I know I need a break, but I am going to at some point miss this. Like, there are going to be four strangers on the island I'm going to who after I leave them are going to be like, I feel like that guy just interviewed me for a podcast. So I'll probably be very quiet for the first couple days. Then I won't be able to hold it anymore. We'll see what

Chelsea 1:10:54
happens you quiet. I want to know what you're like in normal conversations. You say, you say, you have all this thought processing and like, like mediating of yourself and for like, podcasts, what do you like in a normal

Scott Benner 1:11:07
I let it go in person, like I'm not, like, managing if I did, my wife would like me, but no, I just say whatever pops into my head. It is interesting to watch the four of us sit around and talk, because we all think similarly but differently. And it's interesting to watch us talk about I think it's interesting to listen to us talk about big world ideas, because we all bring a slightly different perspective. We are the people. This sounds douchey. Am I going to say that out loud? A lot of people in our lives come to us for answers.

Chelsea 1:11:44
So you guys, because you guys are

Scott Benner 1:11:46
open minded, right? I think so. I think I think open minded to think through things, and you don't like, I don't care where the thinking gets us, like, I'm not like, I'm not trying to make it turn out, in my opinion, it's so weird. You're not like,

Chelsea 1:11:59
you're not like, you're not like, trying to push people one way or another, but you're like, let's process ideas. I'm so

Scott Benner 1:12:04
opinionated, but I really, at the same time, I don't have an opinion about how people do things. Like, I have my opinion about how they do things. I don't, I don't. I'm missing. I'm using the wrong word. I have an opinion about everything. Like, I could have been a dick, just like everybody else in the world is during any of my episodes. Like somebody could be talking to me. I don't. Talking I be like, I don't agree with that. I think you made a mistake. But the truth is, like, I hope you're happy, and I heard some things that I think maybe you're keeping you from being happy, but I don't think me telling you that, and I don't mean you, I mean everybody I'm talking to. I don't think, generally, I don't think me saying it to you is going to change anything. And the truth is, is that I'd like for you to be happy, but if you're not, I'm still okay. And so

Chelsea 1:12:51
you didn't, you don't need to, like, put yourself in other people's spaces. I'm like,

Scott Benner 1:12:55
I don't understand when people care so much about stuff like that. Like, why do you have an opinion about how somebody votes or thinks or where they put their penis? Or, like, I don't understand any of that. Who cares?

Chelsea 1:13:07
I don't either. I don't know why people get so worked up over other people's decisions. I honestly it's something I don't understand either. So I guess we're both at a loss.

Scott Benner 1:13:17
I remember seeing that news story about the guy who wanted to have sex with a bridge? I like, wanted to, like, marry a bridge, whatever. Listen, if you're gonna marry it, you're gonna have sex with and if you're not, I don't understand you either. But I remember hearing that for the first time 20 years ago, probably, and thinking, like, Huh, that's weird. And then I was like, but the bridge can't move. Like, how's he gonna like, they can't live together. Is he gonna live at the bridge? Are they gonna

Chelsea 1:13:46
have sex? Like, what are the pragmatics of all of this? Yeah, like, is

Scott Benner 1:13:49
he gonna adopt meaning, like, will he go build trellises over top of small streams and be like, that's our baby. I thought about all that stuff, like, for a split second, and I went,

Chelsea 1:13:58
Oh, okay, okay, yeah, move on with my life. I would

Scott Benner 1:14:03
never run around going, you know, there are some people who want to have sex with a bridge. We have to fix it. We don't need to fix it. We're good. It's fine,

Chelsea 1:14:10
great. Anyway, I don't need to trouble myself with

Scott Benner 1:14:13
that. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure somebody will take that completely out of context and be like, You know what he's for? He's for having sex with bridges. I heard him say it on the podcast. I'm gonna go into every private Facebook group now for diabetes and tell everybody what a scumbag. Like, I know who you are out there, by the way, and I'm just, you know, I'm thinking of a couple of people specifically,

Chelsea 1:14:31
and I hope you follow this month. Scott has had it. I can't take

Scott Benner 1:14:35
your fingers anymore. Like, seriously, you small minded heads running around trying to undermine my thing like it's not working, like here, Chelsea, can I say something? Because only the fans are listening now, yes, I'll give you permission. All right. I'm speaking directly to a handful of people in the world, not many more. I'm sorry, my thing's more popular than yours. It's not my fault. Yelling about me is. Isn't gonna make your thing more popular. I don't know why people don't like you, but they don't there.

Chelsea 1:15:09
Do you feel better? No,

Scott Benner 1:15:10
it doesn't make me feel any better to know that there are four lunatics in the world who are out there like complaining out loud that they think I'm their problem that is annoying. You don't know me, you don't you do not know me. You still don't know me. You could listen to every one of these episodes and you still don't know me. I probably agree with you about some of the stuff you're complaining about. It's a weird position to be in. Absolutely this, this exactly. I love how I've turned this into a conversation about me. I'm really, no,

Chelsea 1:15:42
I like it. Oh yeah, I'm a listener usually, so I like it when other people talk about

Scott Benner 1:15:48
them. Yeah, I'm very interesting. And it's exciting for you to hear about me. I hear what you're getting at. It is exciting. Now, I got to go, because I think we just went over time, and the guy's going to charge me more to edit this now. Oh, shoot. Well, I'm sending you a bill.

Chelsea 1:16:04
Forget that. Well, I'm too poor, so I won't get paid.

Scott Benner 1:16:07
Also, while I'm while I'm complaining to people. Chelsea, yep, yes, I think we're in a bonus time. Anyway, great. My cell phone bill was higher this month because I had to call internationally because my person who helps me with Facebook is an international person, so when I call them, I have to pay extra, and I had to call her so many times this month to talk about you nudniks That my bill went up, and I'm going to send, I know the I know the specific nudnik. I send the freaking bill to him and be like, Listen, you owe me $50 for my at&t bill, because that's how crazy you are. And also, I don't want to make it feel like the group is crazy. The group is lovely. It's literally, it is lovely. It's like, very, really great

Chelsea 1:16:52
people. Oh,

Scott Benner 1:16:53
my God, I'm gonna just, I don't know what to do. All right. This is I gotta go on vacation. I gotta go goodbye.

Chelsea 1:17:01
Scott's out.

Scott Benner 1:17:03
You heard the end of it? If this is the last one, you know peace, love and soul, I hope. What did Ringo say? Peace and Love, peace and love. But after the Have you ever heard that? Nope. Hold on a second. Ringo star, peace and love. This is important. It is incredibly going over. It actually. It actually intersects it. Let's see. At some point Ringo Starr had been so, like, inundated with people asking for him to have, like, things signed and stuff like that. Hold on a second. What was his message to followers about no longer signing things. It's hilarious. If you can find the audio, yeah, it's coming up right now. The direct quote is this, he gets on like, this is before people shared a lot of things with like, you know, video. He gets on this little video, and he goes, and you gotta imagine this in a British accent. He goes, this is a serious message to everyone watching my update right now, peace and love. Peace and love. I want to tell you, please, after the 20th of October, do not send fan mail to any address that you have. He goes on, and he's like, it's gonna be thrown in the rubbish. I just thought, like, I'm not equating myself to a beetle. I just want to be very clear about that, but you can relate. I can I can relate a little bit about his he was just like, leave me alone. Just

Chelsea 1:18:38
please

Scott Benner 1:18:41
hold on. I think I found it. Yeah, it's 42 seconds long, serious

Speaker 1 1:18:45
message to everybody watching my update right now, peace and love. Peace and love. I want to tell you, please, after the 20th of October, do not send fan mail to any address that you have, nothing will be signed after the 20th of October. If that has a date on the envelope, it's going to be top when you put out the tone,

Scott Benner 1:19:12
as you say, hilarious.

Chelsea 1:19:14
He's like the tone in his voice. He's just

Scott Benner 1:19:16
like you guys have got to I can my whole life. Can't be signing your goddamn record sleeves. Get me out of this. Would you please? I'm glad you like Rubber Soul, but it's fantastic. Anyway, the life of a celebrity, I feel like I feel like that just a little bit right now, and I'm gonna go take a break. So do you consider yourself a celebrity? No, you think of yourself that way. I do not know, but I well, you are so sorry. That's ridiculous. No, that's really, that's really strange. Like, yeah, no, that doesn't make any sense to me at all.

Chelsea 1:19:51
I think it's funny that, like you, you have a hard time like thinking of yourself that way. There's a role of duct tape. Obviously, that's how you're treated. You are a celebrity like you. Were like the diabetes community. Celebrity, you're up there for

Scott Benner 1:20:04
sure. Well, not to these four, those four people. They're very they're very upset. They want to be them. Listen, by the way, God bless. Go be the diabetes celebrity. Leave me the phone. I don't want that. I'm not looking you don't need to revere Me like I'm just making a podcast, for God's sakes such a silly thing. Oh, my God, everyone's gonna have a, you know, any podcasts there are, at this point, a lot. Yeah, way too

Chelsea 1:20:26
many. I don't know, I pretty much just listen to

Scott Benner 1:20:29
this one so well, that makes sense. Mine's the best. But I do really wish I shouldn't say this out loud.

Chelsea 1:20:36
It's okay. You can edit out whatever you want, right? I'm

Scott Benner 1:20:39
not going to that. I would like to make a podcast that's not about diabetes one day. But I think, would you talk about just like anything? Oh, my God. You have no idea of lists and lists of things that I think I would like to talk about. Of Scott Benner, no, they're not deep. They're just, I don't know. I'm sure there are plenty of people who hate me, but there are a lot of people who don't. And I think I'd like to conversate with those people more often. And I think that I'm being limited to some degree, because this is a diabetes podcast, and people are there are plenty of people who won't try it, even though, if you go back and listen this hour and a half, I don't mean you have diabetes, but that's pretty much the extent of like, diabetes in this podcast. You know what? I mean? Yeah, yeah. Anyway, this that and the other thing I gotta go. Hold on one second, Chelsea.

If you'd like to wear the same insulin pump that Arden does, all you have to do is go to omnipod.com/juicebox, that's it. Head over now and get started today, and you'll be wearing the same tubeless insulin pump that Arden has been wearing since she was four years old. Today's episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the ever since 365 you can experience the ever since 365 CGM system for as low as $199 for a full year visit. Ever since cgm.com/juicebox from more details and eligibility, a huge thanks to touch by type one for sponsoring this episode. Don't forget to sign up right now for steps to a cure happening Saturday March 8, 2025 at Lake YOLO Park in Orlando, Florida, touched by type one.org Go to the Programs tab and click on Steps to a cure. Are you starting to see patterns, but you can't quite make sense of them. You're like, Oh, if I Bolus here, this happens, but I don't know what to do. Should I put in a little less? A little more? If you're starting to have those thoughts, you're starting to think this isn't going the way the doctor said it would. I think I see something here, but I can't be sure. Once you're having those thoughts, you're ready for the diabetes Pro Tip series from the Juicebox Podcast. It begins at Episode 1000 you can also find it at Juicebox podcast.com up in the menu, and you can find a list in the private Facebook group. Just check right under the featured tab at the top, it'll show you lists of a ton of stuff, including the Pro Tip series, which runs from episode 1000 to 1025 Hey, you listened all the way to the end. You might want to know more about the Juicebox Podcast. If you do, go to Juicebox podcast.com scroll down to the bottom and subscribe to the Juicebox Podcast newsletter. Each week. You'll get a rundown of the shows from the past week, just in case you missed something and you think, Oh, I would have loved that. Now I know. Hey, what's up everybody. If you've noticed that the podcast sounds better and you're thinking like, how does that happen? What you're hearing is Rob at wrong way. Recording, doing his magic to these files. So if you want him to do his magic to you, wrong way. Recording.com, you got a podcast. You want somebody to edit it. You want rob you.

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#1416 Force of Nature

Angela, a fierce T1D advocate, navigates family-wide autoimmune battles, looping, and relentless advocacy for her daughter’s health.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner (0:00):Welcome back, friends, to another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

Angela has four children, one of them—her daughter—has Type 1 Diabetes. Today, we're going to talk about advocacy, looping, Hashimoto's, chronic kidney stones, and other autoimmune conditions in her family. This is a complete story. Nothing you hear on The Juicebox Podcast should be considered medical advice. Always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan.

Don't forget to save 40% off your entire order at CozyEarth.com. All you have to do is use the offer code JUICEBOX at checkout. That's JUICEBOX at checkout to save 40% at CozyEarth.com. When you place your first order for AG1 with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year's supply of Vitamin D. Visit DrinkAG1.com/Juicebox.

If you are the caregiver of someone with Type 1 Diabetes or have Type 1 yourself, please go to T1DExchange.org/Juicebox and complete the survey. This should take you about 10 minutes and will really help Type 1 Diabetes research. You can help right from your house at T1DExchange.org/Juicebox.

[Music Plays]

Today's episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the Contour Next Gen Blood Glucose Meter. This is the meter that my daughter has on her person right now. It is incredibly accurate and waiting for you at ContourNext.com/Juicebox.

The episode you're listening to is sponsored by US Med. Visit USMed.com/Juicebox or call 888-721-1514. You can get your diabetes testing supplies the same way we do from US Med.

Angela Kritzberger 2:02
Hi, my name is Angela kritzberger, and I am the mother of four, spouse to one, and our daughter is a type one diabetic. You

Scott Benner 2:14
just made me think, Angela, one day, I hope somebody says I'm the spouse to four, mother to one. I can't use my whiteboard because I used it during a call for Arden for school, and she still hasn't written down everything she needs from it. So you have four kids. What are their ages?

Angela Kritzberger (2:27):So, the ages are 26, 24, 19, and 15.

Scott Benner 2:33
You're my age. You're 53 I'm 5252 it just turned 53 How long you been married?

Speaker 1 2:40
We've been together 36 years, and will have been married 29 so yes, we were 16 and 18. Wow, were you the 16? I was a 16. Yes, my husband's going to turn 54 tomorrow. I have a question.

Scott Benner 2:55
Do you think that just happens? Because eventually girls mature more quickly than boys, and then they want to talk to somebody that doesn't seem Dippy to them. So they go with older guys

Speaker 1 3:09
Most definitely. Yeah, I found a good one early in life that

Scott Benner 3:13
sounds like it that I was gonna do the math 36 and I have to, like, carry a one, and that makes that four. And this is a six, and then the 316 you've only you were 16. Well, you knew that, but I was just proving it with my

Speaker 1 3:27
math. We've been together a lot longer than you've been married than we were ever were alive. Yes, yeah, that you were wherever. How old were you when you got married? I think we were 22 and 25 Wow, somewhere. No, yeah, something like that. You

Scott Benner 3:39
met a boy when you were 16, dated him for six years and then married him.

Speaker 1 3:44
We didn't go to the same school. We grew up in the same area. We're both farm kids, and after we started dating, we found out that our dads happened to be best friends back in the day, when you know, they were showing animals and all those connections. So it's been a pretty cool life because our dads had been friends since 1960 I think, oh my gosh, went to proms with each other, sisters, cousins, whatever. So anyways, it's been a pretty cool life because our dads, both my husband and I, went to college, to our State University, and got our degrees. He was engineering, I was communications, and we moved back home to take over our family farms. So it's pretty cool. We were able to spend our lives part of maybe later. We just lost my father in law this year, but and my dad suffered a stroke in March. So our lives changed quite a bit in the last last few years, but we were able to farm actively with our dads for a number of years, which is pretty

Scott Benner 4:42
cool. Isn't that amazing? At first, I was going to make a joke that you were grown on a farm, and you said you were farm kids, but this is much more interesting. Did you go off to school with the intention of learning something that would help the farm? Or did it just work out that way?

Speaker 1 4:54
You know, you really don't know if you're going to marry the person that you've been dating. I think that was probably in the. Back of our minds. And there were certain things I knew my heart belonged back here, so I knew that I wanted to have a degree that was very useful. And anything that I, you know, education was something I could have looked at. But when you put yourself in a very specific rural area, and if there are teaching positions for what like, let's say music. I love music. The, you know, the music teacher that we've had at our school system hasn't retired, you know, for 30 years. So, you know, I guess I went into communications. It's something that I was really interested in. Didn't know it was going to take me business. Knew it was very appliable, but I knew that my husband was going to farm, you know, so, but there were things, certain things that I wanted to do before I got married, you know? And so I achieved those and we got married. So one of them was going to Europe, and I sang in the concert choir in college, and was able to tour all over Europe, which is a pretty cool things, geez. So yeah, so anytime our kids have opportunities for doing those kinds of other way,

Scott Benner 5:56
yeah, yeah, that's excellent. You're going to tell me, there's a lot of autoimmune in your family.

Speaker 1 6:01
There's so much I had to write it down. I used to hate ordering

Scott Benner 6:05
my daughter's diabetes supplies. I never had a good experience, and it was frustrating. But it hasn't been that way for a while, actually, for about three years now, because that's how long we've been using us Med, usmed.com/juicebox, or call 888-721-1514, us. Med is the number one distributor for FreeStyle Libre systems nationwide. They are the number one specialty distributor for Omnipod, the number one fastest growing tandem distributor nationwide, the number one rated distributor in Dexcom customer satisfaction surveys, they have served over 1 million people with diabetes since 1996 and they always provide 90 days worth of supplies and fast and free shipping us med carries everything from insulin pumps and diabetes testing supplies To the latest CGMS like the libre three and Dexcom g7 they accept Medicare nationwide and over 800 private insurers find out why us med has an A plus rating with a better business bureau at US med.com/juice, box, or just call them at 888-721-1514, get started right now, and you'll be getting your supplies the same way we do,

Speaker 1 7:27
okay, in the context of how you like to outline it, so I'll just kind of review it. So for myself, I've had hypothyroid Hashimotos for 30 plus years. I've had celiac for 10 years, kidney stones for as long, unfortunately. So our family on the female side has thyroid issues, and then we have type one diabetes ladder. My maternal great uncle was diagnosed in his 20s and passed due to complications at 59 from not well controlled diabetes. We have on my paternal side type two, a ladder, and just kind of the the normal aging process. So my dad, his grandmother, I've gotten into a lot more of the type two care recently because I'm close with my parents, and he suffered a stroke, and so that's been a little bit different with hospital stay versus home stay. So really kind of digging into that and got him connected so that he could get the glucose monitor, like our daughter, to really study those trends. And then, on my husband's side, he also has type one, late onset. His sister was diagnosed in her 20s. She's since passed not from diabetes at 39 and then also type two ladder, just again, kind of the later in life, genetic maternal grandpa. And then our daughter was diagnosed with type one diabetes when she was seven. So, you know, had grew up in the 80s, and I think 70s and 80s, I guess. But you know, diabetes is the first thing that comes to your mind, there's just been now, determination between type one, type two and so really trying to or juvenile diabetes, really the conversations about, Gosh, who had this and and whatnot, and then all of these things start coming to your mind, like, Oh, I remember that lady at church, we always had to have frozen orange juice. We're rural area, frozen orange juice in the freezer, and we have to make it quick for her, you know, when she start passing out, you know, so, just things like that. And, oh, my uncle, I remember, what did he have six Snickers bars, you know, the week that he was diagnosed, some of those things. But you're, you're like, dang, I didn't know it was going to be, you know, how did I not own the sign? So, you know, my story, I would say, isn't much different than many. No, everybody has that. But tell me again, which one of your kids type one? It is our youngest. She's 15. Yes, I think I'm at the point now. Uh, she was seven. She was 15. Now she's had it for eight years. It is important. And the more that I you know, I do work with advocacy, it's important. Really for the testing and the things that we've heard about and finding out where the connections, you know, is it environmental? Is it genetic? Yes, it's all of those triggers. But at the time, we were experiencing a lot of trauma. My father in law was diagnosed with non Hodgkin's lymphoma the same week that our daughter was diagnosed with type one diabetes. And so everybody's story, you have a lot going on. We're farming. My husband had been taking my father in law to the doctor every other day, 30 miles away locally. Our first born was graduating from high school. We have a large farm. We were trying to get the planting in. There's just a lot, you know, a lot going on. Did we see the signs? Didn't we see the signs? But just, you know, my husband and I kind of conquered it and divided. I took my daughter's care, my husband helped, you know, with his his mother, with his dad's care, and so there's just a lot going on there.

Scott Benner 10:52
It's a lot to do with having your own business and not being able to stop. Yeah, I see other people like, something goes wrong, and they're like, Well, I took some time off and I, I'm, I'm always like, Well, I I got up earlier and stayed up later. Like, that's how I handled my problem today. Because, you know, I can't, I just can't do that, even my it's so odd that you said about your father in law. My father in law is at the end of his life right now, and my wife just went to just now, like, literally 20 minutes ago, she left to meet her mom at the hospital to help her mom understand the care that they're going to give him at the end of his life, so that, you know, she can understand what they're doing all that. And even my wife's got a, at least, has a job where she can call somebody and say, I'm going to go for a little while. I'll be back. But they also under it's not a day off, they understand she'll just stay up till two in the morning and do her job or something like that, you know, right? But I watched everybody else last night. They were like, well, I took the day off or I had time. And I was like, Oh my God, that's fantastic. I tell the guy I work for that I need off, and he yells at me so

Angela Kritzberger 11:56
and I think that's the benefit too for us, is that we have the opportunity to be able to have a more flexible schedule. Yeah, you know, I'm in the Midwest, so we have inclement weather that prohibits us from doing, you know, really any outside work from, you know, freeze up until FAW. But, you know, we work year round. I don't work in the shop specifically on equipment, but we do a lot of the vet work ourselves on the equipment My in laws we are actually on. We're fourth generation, fifth generation, technically, because the great, great grandma came with the family here on the original farmstead for my husband's family and his parents built their retirement home just half mile away from us. So we're very close and and my parents are 15 miles away. And now, since my dad's stroke, I've been, I guess, really, the primary advocate for him as well the wonderful and the flip side of my father in law getting diagnosed eight years ago was he just passed this year, so we had a lot of time with him. He decided to stop treatment when he had a recurrence, because it was, you know, lymphoma was going to it was going to surface again somewhere.

Scott Benner 13:05
The contour next gen blood glucose meter is sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast, and it's entirely possible that it is less expensive in cash than you're paying right now for your meter through your insurance company. That's right. If you go to my link, contour next.com/juicebox you're going to find links to Walmart, Amazon, Walgreens, CVS, Rite, aid, Kroger and Meyer. You could be paying more right now through your insurance for your test strips in meter than you would pay through my link for the contour next gen and contour next test trips in cash. What am I saying? My link may be cheaper out of your pocket than you're paying right now, even with your insurance, and I don't know what meter you have right now. I can't say that, but what I can say for sure is that the contour next gen meter is accurate, it is reliable, and it is the meter that we've been using for years, contour next.com/juice box. And if you already have a contour meter and you're buying test strips, doing so through the Juicebox Podcast link will help to support the show. The

Speaker 1 14:16
worst side effect, I guess, for him, after the chemo and the treatment was he lost the ability to walk, but he was able to transition and be in a wheelchair and and lived a full life, and was on hospice for, I can't remember, four years, but was kicked off because they

Scott Benner 14:31
were like, listen, you're not really dying. You got to get off. This. Is that what it was? Yeah,

Speaker 1 14:35
our family joke was like, Okay, kids, we better go, you know, make sure we go to Christmas, because this might be grandpa's last Christmas, and we had like, six last Christmases with grandpa, and so it was amazing. And he just passed this spring, and yeah, we've just had a lot of things everybody has lost in their life, but, you know, he was just an amazing person, and my dad's best friend, and so it's been hard on my dad, too. And then my dad had a stroke in my. Search, and it was just kind of crazy, because we had just buried my father in law, like six weeks before that, and my husband had to on a regular, not regular, but often help his dad. When he had fallen in my dad had fallen it was kind of like, my dad is a seven backseat. We just thought it was his back. It's like, what's going on. Then it was a stroke. But the wonderful thing about all of it is, although we're rural, we're about 45 minutes from two major the biggest cities in our state, in North Dakota, we have an amazing facility right here in my hometown where we live. And before I started farming full time with my husband, my job was the Foundation director at that medical facility, and we had a $13 million building and expansion project, and so we really have a full scale facility that is, I think, really hard to match, because we have clinic X ray, P, T, o, t, assisted living, nursing home, skilled care, nursing emergency room. We just have an amazing facility, and I was really proud of being part of that, because we had to raise a million and a half for that building project, locally, for that project, and my grandma was one of the first residents in the nursing home, long term care, and I helped license the assisted living portion, portion of it. I think just using my skill set, again, why did I get a communications or business degree? I don't know. You know, I use it somewhere. Do you think your kids

Scott Benner 16:25
think the same way you did? Like growing up like because it's obvious speaking to you that like your focus was on community and coming going back to it, and building on top of what was there already. But when I hear younger people talking now my kids and other it's either like, what do I want to do, or where can I make money, like that kind of thing. But do your kids have the same community feeling? Or do you think they're Do you think that's a time passed too young

Speaker 1 16:52
to tell however our son, our oldest son, is an educator, a wonderful person, and one of those lifelong learners, of which I think I am, but not to the level of he is, like, if I could phone a friend, I should give you his number. Yeah, he is. He's like, Cliff Clavin from cheers. Yeah, you know, we have the board game factor crap, and he knows a lot of facts. Yeah, he's just a lifelong learner. But he moved back to our community because he did want to very family oriented too? Yeah, I don't know. I think all of us want to see the world, but maybe we want to come back to our roots. And obviously, with the family business is a little bit different for some of us. Yes, you can choose not to do that, but just for me, inherently, my call is to be close to home, part of this community. When I quit working, when you're a Foundation director, you're involved in a lot, you know, obviously asking for money from people for supporting the programs that are, you know, at our facility. But, and that was a big one after we had kind of got all the money in the bank from our capital campaign. Is when a is when my mom had her first knee replacement, I think. And I just decided, you know, this is a time both of our parents retired within two years. So it was, it was a bigger operation where I just, I needed to focus on the farm and focus on my family, because I had been, you know, raising free, raising four kids, kind of on my own, managing a senior care facility on the side, besides Foundation director, just a lot of different things. I still am involved with that. And president of our Kiwanis Club, which is a civic organization that provides scholarships to our seniors. It runs a local food pantry. I'm on the subsidized housing board for senior citizens. We have 52 apartments. And then I chair a community foundation. And then I work with our local historical society. We have a five course prime rib meal with wine pairings at a Victorian Christmas. And so I do all the tickets for

Scott Benner 18:45
that. When's the last time you were bored?

Unknown Speaker 18:48
I keep myself busy. Yeah, no kidding, I

Scott Benner 18:51
don't get bored either. And I wonder sometimes I hear people all the time talk about like, I was bored today. I didn't know what to do, or I just hung out. I'm like, Oh my God. I think that would be upsetting to me. As a matter of fact, everyone left a few weeks ago, and I made this big pronouncement to myself. I was like, I'm not gonna do anything today. It was Saturday. I was like, I'm gonna watch a baseball game. I'm gonna get lunch, like I was gonna and by like, three o'clock in the afternoon, I started getting uncomfortable. I was like, What am I doing? Like, there's so many things that could be accomplishing, right? I don't think I come off that way, but I feel like that. And you were, I mean, are you unless there's, like, I don't know, murder a couple of people at college and you're trying to keep the voices quiet or something like that, what's going on exactly? Do you think? Why do you think you are are wired this way? Is my question.

Speaker 1 19:34
I was born with a servant heart. That's all I can say. Really, I'm a very empathetic person, which is good in some situations and not in other situations, I guess. But I just, my calling is to help people, and I guess that's why I really wanted to touch a little bit on advocacy work. So it's just, I guess that's just who I am, and I've accepted that. And I, when I have spare time, it's, I don't feel it should be wasted, although trust. Me, I do get bored sometimes, and I can't think of something to do, and then I feel guilty for even thinking, Gosh, should I sit down and read for 30 minutes? No, I can't do that. I have this to do. But I think, you know, all of us have our ups and downs and whatnot, but I guess this is just Yeah.

Scott Benner 20:15
I believe some people hear that and think, oh, you know that, poor woman, she has no downtime. And then there are other people who think the way you do that are like, no, no, this is great. Like, I don't feel like, like you don't feel like you're working, right? No, no, I never, yeah, I never feel like I'm working.

Speaker 1 20:32
Well, it's funny, because, you know, for all of my life, my kids grew up, my office was in a senior apartment complex. It was a congregate housing and so I was manager of that, and that's where the Foundation office was, and it's a beautiful place. It's not connected to our medical facility, but it was initiated by our foundation and medical facility. And my kids grew up with knowing, oh, mom's gotta go. There's, you know, have somebody moving in. So we, I mowed the lawn there. I did snow removal at that time. I also did all of the bookkeeping for economic development group help promote housing in town. I mean, they just, you know, use the skills that you have. And anyway, my You're

Scott Benner 21:12
the living embodiment of that joke about, like, sticking a feather duster up your ass while you're running around the house. You can do one other thing while you're doing it. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 21:22
Like, I think my kids would, well, they have shared the memes about the mom cleaning before Christmas. And I think the funniest one was, everybody's sitting in the house at Christmas. Obviously, we have snow here waiting for me. You know, I've done the cooking, the cleaning, I've wrapped all the presents. You know, they're just waiting to open presents, and I'm out shoveling the driveway. And by any means, my husband is he work. He gets up at 530 he, you know, we don't have animals on our farm. We're a small grain farm. Gets up at 530 and goes, gets down with work at 830 he's, you know, he'll say, I work as hard as him, but that's not true. But anyway, we get in and then I open my present, and I can't remember. It was a sign that I had for years, and it was something about, Nobody works harder than me, or thanks for watching me. So I don't know it was just, it was some meme, but, and my kids like to say, you know, I turn into that monster. Peck I bear room. I'll never forget, I never forget telling my son, you know, in the laundry room, if you don't get your stuff out of here, I'm going to have a heart attack

Scott Benner 22:23
right now. I was gonna say, do you think you have anxiety, or is it just from growing up on a farm that you just work focused?

Speaker 1 22:29
You know, I was involved growing up, I've put to the extent it was so different in that lifestyle. Growing up, we didn't have the scale of farms. Farms have grown considerably just from economics and being able to make things work. You know, a small farmer just can't make the numbers work. You know, you can't have hobby farms, really and and make a living at it. So just the scale of it, it was, it was really different. You know, for me, with my husband being so busy, I don't remember my dad being gone as much as him. So it was, it was, it was different raising kids like, oh, Dad's not home. That was always hard. It's like, Daddy will be home later. It's okay. You know, I had these little kids that just, yeah, love their dad and they don't see them. His hard work pays off, you know, in the end, too, because this lifestyle is one that supports generations. Do you think

Scott Benner 23:17
any of the kids will keep the farm going? I can't even get Arden to decide to like be on the podcast more often. So I'm wondering how you would accomplish that

Speaker 1 23:25
too early to tell but for us, we're fortunate that my husband, when we started dating, he had a brother that was born. So that was new to me, because I grew up in a predominantly Protestant, you know, community, and my husband's family's Catholic, and he's my husband's the oldest of eight, and so when we started dating, he, you know, a couple weeks later, when he asked me to prom, he's like, Oh, I just had a baby brother. I'm like, Oh, okay. And it's been awesome, because I love kids. And he started farming. So the transition for us is him at this point, if our kids want to farm, you know, maybe there's an opportunity for them. But,

Scott Benner 24:01
oh, so he's 17 years younger than your husband. Maybe

Speaker 1 24:04
he's 36 right now. Wow, that's us, which is kind of crazy, because, you know, I saw something on an ad on whatever, and it was cocktail came out with starring com Tom Cruise. And what is it? July 26 1988 I'm like, I know that because that was the first movie that my husband and I went to. It was 36 years ago, cocktail.

Scott Benner 24:24
So wow, look at you showing your age. Yeah, that's crazy. I haven't

Speaker 1 24:29
gotten carded in a while, so I can't, you know, use that, but you know, it is what it is. I guess I woke up and I'm alive today. So we have to go with that.

Scott Benner 24:38
We're gonna keep going. Your mother in law, her uterus fell out in what year, 96 like, when did she just like, I don't know. How many kids did she make? Eight? Well,

Speaker 1 24:48
yes, eight. That eight that I knew, Oh my gosh. Well, I shouldn't say eight that I knew they had. They did have a son that died early. Oh, I

Scott Benner 24:56
say but oh my gosh, yeah, I have couple weird. Little questions. So this one's just thinking in my head so long, and it's none of my business. So you can just tell me to, you know, go to hell if you don't want to answer it. But how does a 39 year old woman die? Is that like tragedy or an accident or an

Speaker 1 25:13
autopsy wasn't performed and she died in her sleep? She had complications from, I wouldn't say complications. It wasn't from diabetes, her blood sugar was normal that we

Scott Benner 25:22
know of. There's no way you don't know. How about that? No, that's really something like

Speaker 1 25:25
my great uncle. So I talk about him or not my great uncle. I'm sorry, my uncle. So my dad had a lot of tragedy at a young age. He had a brother that was died tragically in a farm accident at 14, and then his father passed away a couple years later. So my dad at 19, kind of had to help guide and support his mother, who had a four year old at home still. So that Uncle again, you know, my grandma had him later in life. He was more like a cousin than an uncle because he was, you know, closer in age to us. He laid onset with diabetes. And this was the 80s. They didn't have Juicebox back then, Scott, it was, we knew insulin did something to food, but Were you counting sugar? Were you counting carbs? What were you counting? I just look back now, and I was trying to help my uncle get a CGM, just to help train him and teach him and and trying to get, you know, he's trying to get disability, and he just, you know, we think about the lifelong complications of missing work and not keeping a job and and whatnot. So it was, it was hard to watch, and I didn't truly understand the effects of type one until I look back at his life. Because ultimately, what led to his he had neuropathy from head to toe, literally in his intestines, in his hands, his feet, everything. And he suffered a massive heart attack, went in from went into diabetes coma, suffered a massive heart attack, and passed away in a nursing home at the age of 59 and it was obviously many, many years leading up to that. But, you know, you just, did he test? I just remember him always carrying, you know, I suppose it was a syringe, a vial, of insulin. I don't know if he tested, maybe, maybe not. I wouldn't say my mom was hesitant to my dad getting a glucose, you know, monitor, we have the information. Let's use it, you know. Oh, well, they're, you know, you just, it's a snapshot of time, but now, when you have the data and you can see the trends and and that's why I'm fighting so hard, I don't think people really understand other than people in our arena, why I work so hard to keep our daughter healthy, because I don't want the bad things to happen to her later in life. I want her to have the tools that she knows so she can go on to live a long and healthy life, and now we have the information, so we should be using it.

Scott Benner 27:46
Your daughter's diagnosed, how much of that memory floods to you? I

Speaker 1 27:50
think, like many stories, you start thinking, Is it cancer or is it diabetes, without even verbalizing it. So I had the normal, took my daughter, and I wouldn't say normal, but it's a common theme along a lot of people. I had taken her into the emergency. The emergency room and she had lost a significant amount of weight, and the provider, you know, she's just at that age, she's starting to lose weight and look at herself in the mirror more and like, no, 10 pounds in a month. No, she's seven. That's like, happens when they get their periods and they're like,

Scott Benner 28:18
10. Doctor thought that your seven year old looked in the mirror and thought, I need to drop 10 this month. It wasn't that interesting, okay, but go ahead, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 28:25
It's just one of those things, you know. So anyways, and she was just sick. And yes, like I said, the lady at the church who we had frozen orange juice, my uncle who, you know, had just all of the people. And then my sister in law, you know, my daughter did get to know her aunt that suffered with type one diabetes, and she didn't have, she had access to a pump, but not to a glucose monitor, you know, insurance and all this and that. And so she would talk to our daughter, Nina, talk to her about what's your care and what are they telling you? And you know, to kind of doing comparison, and I know that's weighs heavy on Nina's heart. Sometimes her aunt didn't have what she had. Maybe we're self employed, obviously, so we don't have access to insurance, other than paying for our own commercial plans that are available in our state of North Dakota. And North Dakota only has three major carriers, and obviously it's about your risk pool, right? So we have not a big risk pool, and we don't have a lot of options. We pay a lot of money for our family to have insurance. We've just stuck with it because it's what gives her her glucose monitor, it what gives her her pump supplies, a part of the advocacy for us. It sometimes feels self serving, but you know, it's everybody needs access to insulin. Everybody needs affordable insulin. And when I went in to fill her prescription, this wasn't the first time that I got in. It was $1,100 for four months, or excuse me, four weeks supply of insulin. Yeah. So that's what we were paying for insulin, and I can touch on that a little bit later. But getting back to Nina and her diagnosis, she was born, you know, the mom guilt, so you tried to psycho analyze, like, what happened here? She was born prematurely because I had chronic kidney stones. I was externally begged, and they had to take her early. So about five weeks early, I didn't get to hear that first beautiful cry from the baby. She went into the ICU for a month, then she's brought home, and she really was a healthy baby. At five years old, she had strep throat inflammation, which I had three kids that had their tonsils removed. So you know, it's just ear earaches and sore throats. It's just stuff that happens with kids. But when she was five, she had this bizarre thing. And I went back on her medical notes just to see, you know, when you ask about triggers, where do you think Angie? Did it happen? Well, maybe genetically, but she had swollen lymph nodes around her entire abdomen, and she could hardly sit up or lay down, and she was moaning and groaning, and it something that her body was fighting off. Didn't really have any specific diagnosis for what it was. And then I look at the blood work at the time, and it shows her, her blood glucose level was 110 and, you know, I'm like, why didn't they see it then? But again, that was just a snippet in time. So then fast forward, two years later. Here we are, right ear infection, respiratory infection in the ER, oh, just, you know, generalized abdomen pain. And looking in the mirror, she's lost 10 pounds in a couple of months, and and then you start going, okay, thirsty, weight loss, headaches, belly pain. And I just remember sitting at softball and just it was hot, just saying, Mama, I just, I can't today, Mama. I'm just, I don't feel good. And then I, like, looked in her throat, and I saw something on her tonsil. And was like, this is weird. So we made another doctor's appointment, and she looked her over and she said, Oh, that's a tonsil stone. I'm like, that's what it is. This girl's got to get her tonsils out. She's sick. I figured it out. So, yeah, I figured it out. Yeah. Anyways, so that's the first time I heard about tonsil stone, but our physician's assistant that I you know, I know everybody here. Obviously, I worked at the medical center with everybody, and growing up with some of them, and have known forever. But anyway, she said, let's do some lab work. And we were at an off site location clinic, not one right here, just a few miles away. But okay, so Nina said, I want to do it back back in town. So we did it there, and then went to see my father in law, who's in the hospital. That's why I remember exactly he had gotten his diagnosis. We did labs, and then went to see grandpa. And then we got home, and I got a call from this physician's assistant, and you don't get a lot. She said, I'm going to come out. We need to review her labs. How many times do you get a house call coming

Scott Benner 32:39
out to your house. Yeah, wow, yeah. Did that scare the shit out of you? You

Speaker 1 32:44
said your life's going to change and it'll be okay. And so, yeah, she's like, Yeah. She said that on the phone too. Yeah.

Scott Benner 32:51
Oh, you got the weight while she got to your house to figure out how your life was going to change. I don't remember

Speaker 1 32:56
if she told me over the phone. Oh, okay, all right. She probably, probably did. No, I don't, I don't remember, but she came out with the papers showing me. And I think one of the primary reasons, well, obviously, she's a compassionate individual, but I think one of the reasons that she did is it touched her personally. I think because her roommate in college was a type one diabetic, so she lived directly with somebody and understood the, you know, the gravity of it. So anyway, so we're always very thankful for her, you know, for going that extra step and and whatnot. So then in North Dakota, I'm not familiar with all of the care, but with our, one of our major providers, one of our major medical systems, which is just Fargo, not the movie, nothing like that, but the wood chipper is at our tourism center. If anybody wants to come to Fargo, North Dakota, Cohen brothers movie. It's terrible. I don't talk like that. I don't think, but our major hospital is there. So that's where we drove and found out that our blood sugar was 600 and our a 1c was 12. Oh, and then they and the provider had said, well, they have three pediatric endocrinologists, so we're really fortunate in the eight years of her care that we have. Two of those providers are female and have type one themselves and another provider. So we've just had phenomenal care. So we're really lucky in that sense. You know, they say when you with an A, 1c, like that, she's had it a while, and you're like, huh, how did we not see

Scott Benner 34:22
it? Angela, you saw something. You just couldn't figure out what it was. Apparently,

Speaker 1 34:26
I was really busy to see everything, because at her son's high school graduation party, Nina admitted she's like, Well, yeah, Mom, I had six sprites and I had like, 10 cupcakes. Like, Oh, why did nobody count those

Scott Benner 34:40
you have a farm and four kids and a husband that works 18 hours a day. And I mean, do you feel badly about it still?

Speaker 1 34:49
There's nothing that I can have. There's nothing I could have done to prevent it.

Scott Benner 34:53
No, I know. But does it? It doesn't weigh on you? Or did you have to talk yourself out of it weighing on you? I

Speaker 1 34:59
probably talked. Myself out of it a long time ago, because you don't have time, right? Yeah, well, you don't, I mean, no, but mentally, I mean, you have to live in the moment. And just a little bit, we didn't get a glucose monitor. You know, this is back in the day before they gave them to you when you were first diagnosed. So I slept by her side. My husband doesn't remember this, but I slept on the floor in her room and finger sticked her every two, three hours, 24 hours a day. And her honeymoon lasted in a year, and it was rough at first, because, you know, with that honeymoon, you don't know when they're going to spurt out some insulin, so she'd have some bad lows. And I remember she was, I think it was 32 I didn't think your monitor could go below 40, but I remember 32 and just kind of holding her, and she just kind of looked at me with her little eyes, said, Mama, just let me go. I can't do this. And it's like, oh yeah, no, I'm not letting you go. We'll be okay, you know. So we've had a lot of experience. I

Scott Benner 35:57
have more context with that. Let me go. What was she saying? I

Speaker 1 36:01
have no she idea she was seven. I don't think she has a clue what she was saying. She probably just wanted to say, let me go to sleep. Oh, no, but not my brain, not my brain. You

Scott Benner 36:12
heard. Let me drift into the ether. It'll be okay. I'll see you in heaven. Yeah, no. Oh, okay.

Speaker 1 36:17
Jesus. What? Don't look up dead in bed.

Scott Benner 36:20
No, I know what that is. Yeah, okay, yeah, did that? How long did that panic you for that idea? I've

Speaker 1 36:27
had physical therapy. I have degenerative disease, like my dad and some other things. And my physical therapist, I listened to another podcast about chronic pain, and she said, You are in a constant pattern of fight or flight. And I said, Yes, I think I am. So I'm working on that. But I think with this disease, knowing that I am a primary caregiver, you do feel like you're trying to keep them alive, yeah,

Scott Benner 36:50
but let me tell you something too. You also have, you have auto immune stuff, right? And anxiety, like I see with a lot of people with auto immune, the inflammation in general, even, like you said earlier, you said, like, I get a lot of kidney stones. And I thought, That's not autoimmune, but I looked into it. We never got back to it. But it could be something like hyper parathyroidism could generate, right?

Speaker 1 37:15
I have done all of the work up at the Mayo Clinic. I've had my kidney stones actually analyzed, and mine are from lack of I'm supposed to drink two gallons of water a day, I think, just

Scott Benner 37:26
not hydrated enough for your for your body, because you have too much calcium. Yes,

Speaker 1 37:30
interesting, that is correct, huh? I don't have Diet Coke kidney stones, so I'm not like drinking tons and tons of sodium, where I'm creating them myself. No, it's just for me having a lack of fluids. I can't remember where we're at, but Angel, it's

Scott Benner 37:43
okay, because I'm gonna pivot you. That's okay. Okay, all right, because you are, I don't know if you're aware of this or not. You're chatty. I am, yeah, which is fantastic for a podcast, but I don't want to miss the things that you want to talk about, either. So I think you went over how important you think advocacy is. But what about looping? You want to talk about looping as well.

Speaker 1 38:03
Yeah. So just for the glucose monitor, we didn't get it covered for, I think, like three months to somewhere on that time frame. So we got the glucose monitor, then we had to wait six months to get a pump. So we waited six months to get a pump. That was what she wrote in our local paper for Christmas. Is all she wanted for Christmas, was a pump. Well, she didn't get it, but her birthday was January 6, then she got it then, so we had the Omnipod. I think everybody has this. Well, maybe not. Things have changed dramatically, but she got the pump, and we're like, yay. And you're like, what the Googles monitor doesn't like? Put in the blood sugar into the I swear that control for the Omnipod, the original one feels like a game of Pong. You remember that growing up? It's just so archaic.

Scott Benner 38:44
It was something, wasn't it? Yeah.

Speaker 1 38:47
Well, so anyway, she was on the Omnipod for however, and I had heard about this do it yourself, hacking, you know, the insulin pump or whatever. And at that time that I was reading the articles about it. It was getting a solder gun and welding your own right, like link, this is before the makers of Riley link. I think, Oh, I remember that, yep. And I'm just like, Oh, hell no. It's that's not in my I probably could ask my husband, but I'm I'm not getting a motherboard and trying to that's just not in my arena. I came back to it in the fall and started thinking about it, and then COVID kind of hit. So I had been working on it and reading, you know, the loop docs. And so I decided, you know, I'm going to jump in. And then COVID hit. And was like, this is the perfect time to do some testing. And so got in a few Juicebox pod zoom with everybody. And, you know, I joined So Cal loopers and got to know everybody there, and if she has been looping now for over four years, and it's just been amazing, you can't even understand people don't realize. I'll never forget. It's one of those memories is burned into your mind. I don't remember if it's the first night. First a week after we started looping, but I went to bed and I slept for six hours. It actually held, you know, so our numbers were fairly good in her system. But I woke up and went, huh? I hadn't slept like New Years. I had,

Scott Benner 40:17
was it like a light went off? You're like, oh my god, I might not die. This is gonna be fantastic. Yeah, hey, weren't those zooms great during COVID? I did that. It just felt like everybody needed a place to go. And I know that wasn't like, a unique thing. A lot of places tried it, you know, a lot of orgs and like, Oh, we're gonna do live zooms. But mine really took off like we were doing, like, 300 people at a shot during COVID. And, I mean, there were just screens and screens of faces, just chatting about diabetes. Is that when you found the podcast?

Speaker 1 40:46
No, I heard about the podcast early on, actually, kind of getting back to advocacy and whatnot. But when she was diagnosed a couple of things, I found a Facebook group, a local Facebook group by a mom who started it, who didn't want anybody to feel alone, and she actually has become one of my very best friends. She's in Minnesota, so she's done advocacy work with the Alex Smith insulin affordability act in Minnesota. I'm on the North Dakota side, but we're, you know, a state divided by a river is all anyway. She sent a video. I was freaking out, because you remember the G, g5, yeah, that horrible plunge. I didn't do it in the doctor's office, and I'm 50 minutes away, and I wanted to have it, but I'm freaking out because I didn't know how to put it on her. And you had to do this first, and then that and plunge it and yada yada. Anyways, she sent a video, and she's like, it'll be okay. It'll be okay. This is how you can do it. You know, she, she helped me there. And of course, since I'm a talker, I lost my train of thought, no, you

Scott Benner 41:46
want me to help you maybe. How did you find the podcast? Was it the Facebook? No, I met a friend. Go ahead. Thank you.

Speaker 1 41:53
And then, because yes, thank you for that. I need you in my life more often. Scott, no, not really.

Scott Benner 41:59
Am I in your life too much. Angela, lately, yes, because I've

Speaker 1 42:03
been walking two miles every night, listening to a podcast every night, I'm really trying to hone in here and catch up. Okay, but no, it was the important thing for me, was for Nina to find somebody else that had, you know, had the same disease, that somebody looked like her, felt like her. And so I went to a mom's group, and we were sitting there, and we weren't on a pump at this point, and they started talking about the pumps and how you figure out your basal rates. And my eyes started to roll back, because at that time, we were on traceba and short acting, I don't know what you're talking about. And and then one of them said, well, actually, they had started working with Jenny, or not Jenny, I don't think, but with Integrated Diabetes. Yeah, they took it upon themselves to do that. Said that, you know, we learned about it on the juice basal podcast. And so that's what we're doing. And so, you know, something sticks somewhere for somebody, right? And so I'm like, Huh? Well, that's interesting. So then I started, you know, listening to it off and on. And so that's where, you know, I I started, I haven't listened to all 1600 episodes. Well,

Scott Benner 43:04
there's only 1200 don't make me sound like a lunatic. Angela, okay, well,

Speaker 1 43:07
I think you were like, at 300 when I first started listening, you know. So it's just, yeah, it's, it's amazing, you know. So kind of got it on it early on. This looping community is just amazing, and it is just mind blowing. And I think that was my tag along to you when I emailed you about being on the podcast is growing up in the 70s with bionic woman. You know, there's just that moment where your your child's body is taken over by electronics. It's a choice for certain, but it's a choice you make to keep them alive, to give them the best life forward. And so she had her CGM on one arm and her Omnipod on the other arm. And I actually, like, I had the Bionic Woman doll, and I was thinking, this is really cool, and everything. Like, God, I remember on her arms, you could plug in stuff and do that. And then I looked at the one online, like, I should get one of these and give it to him. Like, no, I don't think so, because I think you can take part of her face off, and, no, I don't think so. But Angela,

Scott Benner 44:04
I just want to prove what a television kid I was, so the bionic woman who was in, like the CIA, you know, like, you know, for real, but she had a job. Remember what her job was? No, was she not a college professor, but like a tennis pro too, or something like that. Ah,

Speaker 1 44:24
that's tennis is, yeah, visually, there's a lot of I can pick. I can picture Linda Wagner and I can picture the million dollar man too.

Scott Benner 44:32
$6 million Man, don't short him. Okay, sorry, that's Lee Majors. He was also the fall guy. Okay, yes, and

Unknown Speaker 44:41
Knight Rider. Oh, there's, yeah,

Scott Benner 44:43
that whole time of those TV shows is crazy. But yeah, I remember one of the feats of strength was her crushing a tennis ball. Do you remember that in the opening Yeah? How ridiculous that idea is. Like, oh, she broke a tennis ball. Does that mean she's that?

Speaker 1 44:56
Yeah? All I can think of was those ports on her arms. Yeah? Interlinks. That's just all that came but so kind of just getting back to advocacy a little bit. I'm just very I'm very proud. And I think my tagline to you about advocacy is we got in early because another mom whose daughter had been to the children's Congress for JDRF, which is now T 1d breakthrough, it come back and was working on the strategies for getting insulin affordability. Because that was a hot topic. You know, eight years ago, we've been through three sessions. We've had a concurrent resolution, a failed bill, and then last, last legislative session, we were able to get Senate Bill 2140, passed in the state of North Dakota, because of the laws and the mandates, we weren't able to get it for everybody on all plans, but for state employees for two years, kind of as a study, and then we'll be going back out. But Nina has been directly involved with this advocacy work with me since that time. The first bill that I helped with, I don't remember the number, was to get people that were on Medicaid a CGM, and so that was expanded for people. So just trying to get some of this technology, but insulin affordability, you know, there's just a lot of thing anytime you can get in front of anybody, education is always, obviously the number one thing that we have to do, and we continually do, is just educating people on the disease. So they're, they understand, like law enforcement thinking that your child is drunk. No, they're not drunk. They have low blood sugars, you know, just so there's just a lot of any kind, anytime you can do education and advocacy is good. But for her, she has presented at when she was a member of our 4h club at her school. She's gone to diabetes camp. She puts together care packages for kids, and she mentors young people that are diagnosed with type one diabetes and will be a counselor at camp. She hand wrote a letter to our our governor, who ran for president, Governor Burgum, gave it to him at our district meeting and asked him to please make insulin affordable for everybody, because that's something that really weighs on her mind, is when she ages off of our insurance. Yeah, you know, will she be able? She's like Mom, I think I want to be this. And I looked at her and I said, Sure,

Scott Benner 47:04
you don't want a job with a fortune 500 company that has really great insurance.

Speaker 1 47:08
Are you sure? Yeah, that's, that's pretty much, you know what we've talked about. And we just say we're working harder for you to make things better. And hopefully it'll be, you know, better than and but she's been an advocate with the American Diabetes Association for, you know, a major giving program that happens every year in the state, and she was actually on the House floor and was able to push go for the vote to pass. It's been a really, really neat, I don't think that all kids have been able to have that experience, but she is just really out there and not afraid to talk. And then in our school, we have a program called close up, which allows you to look at the government close up. And so are we take kids that are juniors and seniors out to Washington, DC every two, three years, and it's a whole program called close up. I'm

Scott Benner 47:55
going to call this episode Angela makes you look lazy. And that's, that's going to be, that's going to be the title people are gonna be like, Oh my God. Like, you're either making this up or you're super person. You know what I'm saying? No, no, no, I don't think you're making it up. But like, still, I can't get my head wrapped around. Like, Arden applied for children's Congress. They turned her down. So, like, but Nina,

Speaker 1 48:16
hopefully we're going to apply this fall, and I'm really hoping, because it's her last chance to get out there. But if we don't, we'll be going the next year, or maybe it's the same year, actually, for close up, because, yeah, when she's a junior, she'll be able to go to close up and do this as well. But when I was out there, that is when the Senate passed, I can't remember now, Congress was looking at insulin affordability, and then, of case, of course, you know, everything fell apart, and here we are. We haven't gotten anywhere federally, and we won't, just because of the environment that we're on right now with an election year and, you know, getting things done. But we feel pretty proud of the work that we've been able to do, and we'll be going back out to try and get them to get this affordable insulin. Our actual bill was copied off of Colorado's bill, and what it does is provide insulin for $25 for 30 days, as well as basic insulin supplies. And there was a lot of education. And right now, capitalism is something that we hear a lot about in our state, and they don't, like, you know, necessarily, like having some people have opportunities for a reduction of their medicine, I was going

Scott Benner 49:24
to ask, how does it work? Like, it's not $25 for like, every living, breathing person, right? So what is it who qualifies for it right

Speaker 1 49:32
now, people that are on the state man, state plan, so that would be your legislators, and any North Dakota employment, public employment, Retirement System employee. So whoever North COVID. So whoever is part of that plan, it could be whoever opts into that. So it could be, you know, your state employees, most schools have gone to self funding. Their own plans, state employees and other people like that, which includes the legislators. But there's a lot. Of things that we learned, and there's a lot of things that we just continue to educate on. They didn't want to Well, you know, some of it's HIPAA, but the data is there. At the time we were pushing for it said, Well, there's only 700 insulin dependent people. The second time we were out there that, you know, it's only going to affect 700 people. Oh, who cares? 700 people can have access to insulin,

Scott Benner 50:22
right? And if that could spread from state to state and it, I mean, if it's the least fortunate of the of every state that can't afford it, then that's really fantastic, because you got to imagine, people with insurance are probably not paying that much more for it to begin with. I mean, they're paying for their insurance as well. But, I mean, like out of pocket, is that not correct? Well,

Speaker 1 50:43
and for us, here's the crux that we have. So I just want to touch on one other point. So we had been working with drafting the bill before it was actually introduced and hitting the floor, so there was some high level involvement in committee work done before the bill could be introduced in the regular session, because we can get every other year. And so there's a lot of things that we were able to work with legislators on, but some things that we learned were that the rebates that the insulin company or the pharmacy benefit managers give to the insurance companies, they use to spread across all the premiums. And so it was like $2 million that was being subsidizing the premiums for the plans. And it's like, shouldn't we be getting that? Because we're being the ones prescribed that. So there were some things that, just like on the federal level, you know, things that come to light that you're trying to advocate and educate people. So when people say, Well, you're making our insurance plans go up. No, we're subsidizing your policy. Because these insurance companies did have a little bit of a heads up that we were working on this. I went out to give testimony in January about, you know, this bill. I went to the pharmacy to fill my daughter's insulin. It was $5 it used to be $1,100 but it was $5 because this insurance company had proactively been working on getting insulin, or some of the top top tier drugs, more affordable. So it's just kind of interesting that that happened. But for our particular plan, we have a high deductible plan, so we pay, I really don't want to talk numbers, but a lot, a butt load of money in premium, over $2,000 a month. How many

Scott Benner 52:21
bags of grain is it? Let's think of it that way, a lot, right? But

Speaker 1 52:26
then we have a high deductible plan. So then what happens is, you pay the premium every month, but then we also have a high deductible plan. So we have $5 insulin, but we have to pay, you know, when I walk into the pharmacy, we have to pay the first $5,000 for any of the glucose monitors and insulin pumps, yeah, diabetes supplies. So you know, there's just a lot of education, and very thankful that because she has type one diabetes and that we have healthcare environment right now that allows a person with this pre existing condition to have access to to insurance, I have a very happy and healthy daughter, and I'm very, very, I'm so, I'm so glad that we have, you know, we're able to have access for her, but there's so many people. We did have an instance in our, you know, we network with people. We have over 1000 people in our Facebook group that's for advocacy resources and support. And we're just everyday people. We're moms, but a lot of us have backgrounds. So the primary people that were working on the insulin bill in North Dakota was me, another mom, as I said, whose daughter had gone to children's Congress. And then we had a another mom who was a lawyer, and we had, there was a core group of about six to eight of us that were working on this, with a couple of us being the most vocal you know, on the news and whatnot. But change can happen, and I just want people to get to know who your local representatives are, because it's about making contacts. I mean, I have all three of my district members cell phone numbers well, and most of them are published on the state site. So I've got our website as a regular tab that's always open, and it'll be an election year this year. So a lot is going to change the landscape, but there's just a lot of things that you can do where people it comes down to people's stories, talking to people, making them understand, because everybody has somebody with diabetes in their family. How

Scott Benner 54:19
would you say that people could go about getting involved locally if they wanted to? I

Speaker 1 54:25
think, as just a everyday citizen, what you need to do is finding out, well, vote, get to know who you're voting for. Vote and find out what committees do they work on. Because, you know, they all work on different committees. One of mine is on education and infrastructure still is going to vote on the bill, and they're in the Senate, and because we have one senator, two House of Representatives in our in our state, so it's opposite on the federal level for us, we've had meetings with our senators as well. Very frustrating. Things don't move fast, and. Don't feel like you're really being heard, but we continue to have those meetings with our congressmen. The way you can get involved is just don't be afraid to tell your story. I think everybody thinks they have to have all these statistics in one statistic that I'm going to throw out there, because I think it shocked a number of people when we went out because Governor Burgum had announced his candidacy for presidency, we didn't get our lovely little photo op after the bill had passed, because he became very busy. So it took us almost a year to get that photo op, and we were sitting around, not with him in the room, but with some other people, kind of waiting for him to, you know, arrive and and whatnot. And the reporters were there and him talking, and Governor Burgum has talked a lot about his wife's advocacy in their work with addiction, which is very important cause as well. Don't ever pit cancer against diabetes, against addiction, that affects all of us in many different ways. But the thing that's very frustrating is people that overdose have access to narcon and clean needles. People with type one diabetes cannot get access to a life saving drug, and they can't even get needles unless they go to a pharmacy that's open 24 hours a day and get it behind the counter. Because we've had all of us, we've forgotten supplies where we've needed to have a needle just to load our pump, kids, pumps or or whatever, and you can't get them because it has to come from a pharmacist. Angela, can

Scott Benner 56:19
I tell you, I first want to say I've incredibly enjoyed our conversation, and I want to keep having it, and I respect everything you're saying. I don't understand that argument. I don't either. I don't understand why someone would say we need a thing. Somebody else is getting the thing they need. I'm mad at them because we don't have it too like I don't. I honestly, I can't wrap my head around the narcon argument. But, I mean, if you have a perspective on it that you want to share, I want to hear it. Well, I don't get trying to make hay out of somebody else's problem. Statistically,

Speaker 1 56:51
there's as many over there's as you know, as I said, the platform has talked about a lot of the deaths from addiction. There's been over $100,000 not dollars. 100,000 deaths from a, you know, overdoses, equally or probably more, because people don't always necessarily say that, you know, only die from complications, but diabetes, there's equal amounts of people dying from diabetes. It's just, we have to be able to it's not pitting one thing against the other. It's making people understand that there are other diseases that are out there that are very similar access to medication that is needed, yeah,

Scott Benner 57:32
and so saying, if you're going to do it for one person, why are we not doing it for everybody? Is that right?

Speaker 1 57:36
Right? It had to have been somebody that pushed to get that, yeah, you know, I don't know. I don't know, and I don't care, right? Because it's just, it should be accessible for everybody, everybody, if you can get clean, you know, for everybody. And that's what it's about, is we want people to live happy, healthy lives, regardless of who you are, what you are, where you are. That's just, you know, basic human thing for me, I guess,

Scott Benner 58:01
you know, there was a time where you didn't need a prescription for insulin. You could just go into the pharmacy and buy it, and you needed the prescription for the needles. And that was in the like, late 80s or early 90s. You could still do that. I mean, in the end, what happened, if I had to guess, is that, you know, oding and addiction became such a big story in the country that people, you know, like you, except for over you know, except they're more focused on probably, they probably had family members who OD and they were trying to get laws passed around that they probably had an easier time pushing it through the the political system because it was out and the Politicians probably wanted to be seen as supporting it. Like, you know what I mean? Like it said, It sounds crazy, but like, diabetes needs, like, enough of that. And I think that's what you're saying too. Like, if people got out there and told their stories to local politicians, maybe they'd hear about it enough that they'd be willing to do something the next time something rolled around. Is that the idea?

Speaker 1 58:58
Well, it's just, it's a part of Preventative Medicine too, you know, we're going to have less ambulance calls where it's it's such a burden on the health care system for all the complications that come from lack of insulin, you know, and, and, yes, what you're saying, I guess, to generalize, what I'm, you know, trying to say, too. We have a rural health care system and an ambulance, an ambulance ride is very expensive. You know, it's we just need people to get involved and tell their stories. And a very good example of that is the Alex unfortunately, it takes somebody passing sometimes, and in Minnesota, the Alex Smith insulin affordability Act that allows people to have access to insulin was because a young man and I saw this post actually happening on the Juicebox Podcast, Facebook group, saying, I don't know if this is true or not, and is this real? And it's yes, it's real. It's my neighbor. Yeah, right next door. He died. He didn't want to ask his mom for help. And I think that comes down to shame. You know, oftentimes, right, there is a shame factor. People don't say, Well, I can't afford my insulin. Well, why don't you work another job? Well, I'm trying to work a job, but I. I can't, because, you know, there's just so many things. And let's just get shame out of the way. Is

Scott Benner 1:00:05
Alex's story, the one where he he moved to a new location, is that, right? And then he got there, no, that's not him.

Speaker 1 1:00:11
He's a 26 year old that didn't have health insurance, and he had aged off of his moms, and he just, you know, said, Oh no, I'm okay. I'm okay. And was waiting to, I think, get health insurance. But I, you know, I don't remember the specifics, but it's less than a week with DKA, yeah, you know, for somebody to pass. And he'd been rationing all along so, you know, as a slower progression there. But so she's been very vocal his mom and pay or die, is the video that you can watch about it. You know, it does happen. It's out there. And we had an instance not that long ago of somebody, you know, in our group saying, I'm out of insulin. I need insulin. They'd already been to the, er, I'm trying to get on, you know, trying to get some help. It happens, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:00:58
no, I've seen the, I mean, I've seen those posts over the years a number of times somebody's just like, I don't have insulin. And then people, you know, try to give them the best advice they can, but oftentimes it ends up being someone who drives out and hands them a vial of insulin,

Speaker 1 1:01:12
you know, yeah. And the thing that's so hard, you know, in our advocacy work is, which really ticked me off in the last session, was not all insulin is created equal. Well, why can't you just go to Walmart? Why can't you do this? And it's like, you know, and what I had said in one of my arguments was, if you want to, if your loved one is diagnosed with cancer, how about you go get a bag of chemo that was developed 30 years ago? Yeah. Is that good enough for you? Yeah, that's

Scott Benner 1:01:39
that ends up being so

Unknown Speaker 1:01:40
let's do it past that. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:01:42
right, right. No, I mean, and that person should be able to just walk into a pharmacist, yeah, and say, I'm a type one diabetic. I'm out of insulin, I'm in medical trouble. Like, help me, instead of, like, having to go to Facebook and say to people I don't know what to do, or being afraid to tell your mom, or, you know, any other of the endless possibilities. It's like

Speaker 1 1:02:03
food. I mean, as I said, I work with in our community, with our food pantry, and there's a lot of shame that comes with it, you know, people think there's a lot of people that abuse the system, you know, but there are a lot of people that are in need and and we know it, and we just, yeah, I

Scott Benner 1:02:16
have to say, there's another argument I don't understand. So I've said this a number of times, like I tried to get in the past, I've tried to get companies to do things that oftentimes their lawyers say they can't do. I've tried to get people to give away pumps. It's hard to do, you know, like it's you can't really give away medical supplies. But at one point, while we were having the conversation, I said, why don't we just make it open to people in a certain financial situation, and they said, well, someone's gonna lie. And I said, Well, isn't that. So that's just the cost of doing business, right? Like, so if you, you know, if you help 1000 people and five people cheat the system, oh, well, like, you know what I mean, like, you help the other people that. But that's another one of those arguments that always stops those conversations. Well, somebody's going to cheat the system like so don't help anybody because of that. That doesn't make sense to me. Either.

Speaker 1 1:03:08
Doesn't make sense. And what the statistics show, I think this was in 20 I can't remember the years if it was 2021, that the Alex Smith insulin bill came into effect. You know, when we were legislating but if you Google it, 459 people in the year 2022, or 2023, 459 people had access to insulin because the element bill that didn't previously. Now, I don't know what the year after that number was, but that's 459 people that needed insulin, people that were put shame aside and put their health first. And so, you know, we have, we have the numbers there. But you know, obviously, you know, I'm, I'm passionate about that. I'm just, I asked, ask a lot of questions. I talk a lot and and, you know, I just for people. Just don't be afraid to share your story. Find your people, and I guess finding the juice boss podcast, finding the Facebook group, you know, finding people in your arena and seeing what you can do to do. When I one of my testimony, when I finished it, what I had said is, if not you, then who? Yeah, because I think we just think, oh, they them. No, somebody will handle it. We're all a part of this. We're all a part of this. If it's not you, we suffer

Scott Benner 1:04:27
a little bit too, because, generally speaking, a lot of the people hearing this are probably, I mean, if you have time to consider your a 1c or your kids a 1c and you have the finances to, you know, get the equipment that you need, and you know you have the time in the middle of the day to, like, go for a walk and listen to a podcast or something like that. Like you very well, might be a person who's not impacted by the cost of insulin, and then, therefore, you might be less apt to be involved in something like this, you know what I mean, because it's not impacting

Speaker 1 1:04:58
or maybe you don't have the time. And. Certainly, everybody's circumstances are different. You know, with my what I was going to say is, when I quit my job, the first thing, you know, I was like, ah, What? What? You know, the kids asked mommy, what's your title? And that was like, that's the crux of it all. Like, what is my title? My mom, no, I don't know my title is right now, but I'm working on it. The other things, if you don't have time, well, then find time with your kids to go to the JDRF events. We have walks. You know, there's a lot of things that you can connect with other people, connecting other people. Just find something to connect with. You know, if you don't have time, you have time to do something, yeah, you know, contribute in whatever way you can, in fashion and no, not everybody can, but if you think you can, I just want to push you a little bit. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:05:44
go try it, and you can give as little or as much time to it as you can, like, it's not, it wouldn't be bad if it was a couple hours a month or, you know, a couple of days, educate

Speaker 1 1:05:56
yourself on the system, right? You know, just find out. Because I think you have to do that. I mean, you with your own insurance, you just have to be an educated individual. Yeah, well,

Scott Benner 1:06:05
that's it's really wonderful that you're doing, that It seriously is, and that your daughter got involved, and it's all it's lovely. It really is. I tried for years to do stuff with JDRF, and eventually I got to the point where I thought, like, nobody's listening to me anymore. And like, you know, I just tried a different way, and I did this, but in the big it was, I found it really fulfilling. In the beginning, like raising money for the walks, going to out to the talks and stuff like that. I've given a number of JD ref talks. I still do that, but yeah, I think any way you can help,

Speaker 1 1:06:41
yeah, you know. And so many of these, and I think that's part of it, is so many of them in JDRF, too. We've seen it here. These are big organizations. We saw it with the Girl Scouts, you know, when my daughter was in it. They now it's a tri state organization, you know. So it's, there's just less and less people that are in office to support doing the work. So it lands on the volunteers, so it comes back on us. You know, to do a lot of the things for the walks or,

Scott Benner 1:07:07
well, they really scaled back it during COVID, yes,

Speaker 1 1:07:11
yeah. Think everybody did it. It was just the law of numbers. Yeah. You know, it is what it is. So yeah, and maybe we'll have an uptick. I know that even the camps for kids. I've been really pushing hard for just advocating for kids, because we do have, we do raise money for helping subsidize kids to go to diabetes camp with our local camp, but just trying to get kids to go to those camps too. But same thing, you know, it's just the camp directors in charge of three camps in the tri state area. You know, what can we do to help support them, get it out? Because it's, you know, for the benefit of the benefit of the kids, yeah, use the resources that you have. We all have gifts that we can share and see what you can do with that to

Scott Benner 1:07:51
it somehow, make it, make it better. Just, yeah, yeah, incrementally, even just make things better.

Speaker 1 1:07:57
No, it's wonderful. I guess. I guess that's really all that I have you were being a talkative person. I think I've touched on all the things. I

Scott Benner 1:08:03
swear to God, I was like, there was a moment when I was like, this one's great. I'm not really gonna have to do much, and she's so interesting. This is a nice week offer they offer me, but I still got to have a great conversation. Hear a lot of wonderful stuff. There was something you mentioned before we started recording, but you didn't bring it up here. Do you have questions about it, or would you prefer not to talk about it?

Speaker 1 1:08:25
No, I think I'm good. You know, the thing that's that I found out for myself is just a helpful tip, and then I put it on the Facebook group too. Was there are different things over the years that I have wanted to go back on. You know, maybe for me it's iron or female hormones, or maybe it's GLP ones, or, you know, testosterone, or whatever the subject is that you've been having. I was really struggling to find the subject. And when I actually went and searched in the podcast and looked in my library, Ah, there they all are, there was with, yeah, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:08:57
I had a decision to make. I started making it during I've said, I feel like I've said COVID 1000 times today, but like during COVID, I've said this before, but I feel like when it first started, overwhelmingly podcasters thought, Oh, well, people aren't going to be in their cars anymore, and that's where they listen to the podcast. And those people started scaling back on their content. And I was like, I think people are gonna have a lot more time, and I'm gonna make more I had more time, and they had more time. And I thought there's so many other things I'd like to talk about, like, you have no idea. Like, I'll sit down at the beginning of the year and I'll think, like, I want to talk about this, this and this, this year, and I make a list for myself. And now here it is August, and I'm looking at my list, I'm like, I haven't gotten through half of this yet that's with me putting out five episodes a week. So back when I was doing one and two and three, I felt like I'm never gonna get to everything. I used to have this horrible feeling of like, well, if I put too much content out, that'll bother people. And then during COVID, I was like, All right, here's two. Are you bothered by two? And I would, and luckily for me. I had the Facebook group, I can actually go in there and say, Listen, I just put out two episodes this week. Is that, are you annoyed by that? And people would be like, No, put out more. And I was like, well, here's 30. And they were like, more, and I'm like four, and they're like, five. I'm like, Well, there's only five days, but here take five. And then I started doing these, like, little like, there's some episodes that are, I think of as more, like, not fill in, but they're shorter, you know, or they're more, like, focused on, like, my weight loss story or something like that. I was like, Well, I'm putting that on Wednesday, and I'm taking a episode away for people who don't care about my weight loss thing. Oh, hell, I'll put that out on Saturday. Yeah, people have been really, really lovely about it, and they download and they listen as much as they can. But it just occurred to me at some point. I don't know how crazy this sounds to you, Angel, but when you first start doing this, you feel like everything you record is gold, and you put it out, and you're like, Here everyone will listen to this all the P and I'm finally one day, I was like, everyone's not gonna listen to every episode. So here's five of them. Pick the ones you want, you know. And maybe you won't want, you know, feet on the floor, defining diabetes, but maybe one day, you'll think, God, what is that that people talked about? And you'll go back and find it, and it'll be there for you, you know. So I think of it as a

Speaker 1 1:11:13
lot. That's where I've gotten to too, because I had that guilt feeling like, oh my gosh, I haven't listened to all 1200 of the podcasts. But, you know, I don't know that some of the after dark series pertains to me, you know, or I'm not the type one that's living with it, you know, that it's to them. But I just think it's a very vast resource for everybody to go back to it and find the things you know, or go back to it again. And then the other thing that I really like is, I like the transcript underneath. After I've listened to it. You can do a search and look for keywords that maybe you are, you know, looking for, you can copy and paste and send them to your friends, and, you know, forward to friends and you know. So I do a bit of promotional and advocacy work with your podcast, just by sharing, you know, and that's part of it too, is just getting people educated, helping people along with it. So I think your platform does that.

Scott Benner 1:12:03
I appreciate it. It's hard listen. It's you mean, there are people who help me on the Facebook side, and I don't want to say but they're not full time, like they're not employees or anything like that. But so generally speaking, this has just been me, like, raising a barn by myself, basically as, like, I was like, All right, you know, I put one thing down. I was like, Okay, what does it need? Now, I'll add this to it. You know, what would support?

Speaker 1 1:12:23
Wish we could do the juice box cruise, the juice cruise. But,

Scott Benner 1:12:26
oh, would you really go? That's lovely.

Speaker 1 1:12:28
Oh, yeah, yeah. But children's Congress, you know, I'm kind of weighing and right? What can we do? And, yeah, and without abandoning my husband on the farm completely, because I am in the tractor, I when we were doing some of our loop and learn videos. Or, yeah, Joanne Milo, I usually am, Hey, it's your tractor friend be unloading grain, and

Scott Benner 1:12:50
she really is, yeah, yeah, no, it's another person who's very dedicated to helping people with diabetes. Just there's, they're everywhere. Like, people are, like that are everywhere. They're it's absolutely fantastic. I think you did a good job of representing them today, like all the people out there who are helping. So I really do appreciate that. Well, that's kind of you to say, thank you. No, no, it's i Listen again. You're either lying about this or you're you're literally doing the work of 93 people. So thank you. It's fantastic. You're a force of nature. To be honest,

Speaker 1 1:13:19
I don't feel that way. No. Why? Why would I have a friend that texted me, you know, and I told like, I'm not sure I'm doing the podcast. Maybe I should just give it up to somebody else that go. Maybe they have something you know better than myself to say, and you know, my friend had said, I'll read your book someday. I'm like, I know. Maybe it just takes one person, you know. Maybe you can just inspire one person. I

Scott Benner 1:13:41
need you to be more introspective. Why do you not feel like a force? I mean, you've just described the efforts of you know, a dozen people. Seriously. Are you not able to take that as a compliment? Or do you genuinely not think you're doing enough? I think

Speaker 1 1:13:55
I'm horrible at accepting compliments. Okay? Generally speaking, that's just my personality. You know, you look good today. Oh, thanks. I bought this at, you know, thrift store,

Scott Benner 1:14:08
probably the light, I don't know. Well, listen, this job beat me into taking people's compliments. And I know probably people laugh about that, but you can hear me over the years, just like joking my way through it, because I felt so uncomfortable, you know, like even you talking still about, like, oh, the platform does a good job of making data this available. Like, all I thought about was, I hate making those goddamn transcripts, like, it's such a pain in the ass for me, but like, at the same and I wouldn't read them, because it's not how I would access it. But when people told me it was important, I was like, Okay, it's important. If it's important to them, then it's now it's important to me, and I make it happen. But instead of feeling that when you say it, I just think I hate making the transcripts. Instead of just going, Oh, thank you. I'm glad that works.

Speaker 1 1:14:56
I'll give you one more plug too, that I would. Say that with the advocacy work, one thing that is also very helpful, you know, there's many different resources that you can find. I mean, I do try to do research. I watch, I love to watch Katie Porter, you know, try to take down the PBMs or something like that on Facebook or on YouTube. Excuse me, but you have had some interviews. You know, the orange book I read, listen to that when I had three hours on the way home from a camp with Nina and I had my air pods in, she had it. It was just so fascinating. It's really beneficial for somebody like myself that's doing advocacy work to have these resources outside of it and get kind of that personal, yeah, but in factual too, because you do have to have good resources when you're doing advocacy work. I mean, you can tell your story, but if you're actually trying to make effective change, you do need to have information. And so there's just so much to learn, and I'll never know enough. Yeah, oh, that people. And I'm 52 and it just rolls off of me. Sometimes I

Scott Benner 1:15:56
genuinely think that I'm never gonna understand the PPM thing. I really I feel like I'm there. I just

Speaker 1 1:16:01
say, it's a coconut in a shell game. That's it just feels like that. And I just, I don't know who's gonna crack that nut, but,

Scott Benner 1:16:07
and Scott did a great job of explaining, he's really, but really knowledgeable about it too. And, yeah, and that's the other thing, like, I can't, like, I can't, those

Speaker 1 1:16:16
tabs are still open. I'm still reading through his thing, and I'm really be listening to it, to understand it and let it sink in. Isn't

Scott Benner 1:16:23
it funny too? Because I when I said to him, I'm like, there's more stuff you could come on and talk about. He's like, I don't know, like, what people would be interested in. No, trust me, I'm like, come on and talk about now you can tell him, yeah, nobody believes you. Like, listen. You had the same thing. You're like, oh, I shouldn't go on the podcast. I'll be wasting the space. I tell people all the time, you listen to the show, right? And they're like, yes, and I'm like, did stuff help you? And I'm like, yeah. I'm like, well, your thing will help somebody else. And they're like, Oh, not me. I'm like, everyone thinks, not me, but everyone is the people who helps everyone

Speaker 1 1:16:50
else, if not you, then who exactly. I also

Scott Benner 1:16:54
want to thank you very directly for saying rut about 20 minutes into this was my favorite. It's my favorite part of the right, yeah, you said you wanted to say root. You don't understand that. You said root because you're, like, because you're from the Midwest, but Right?

Speaker 1 1:17:09
Well, and I went to international music camp, which is the border in Canada and North Dakota. And so we, you know, we had the Canadians, the roof. Is it roof?

Scott Benner 1:17:17
Oh, the roof, roof, roof. Thing is fantastic. But No, you said rut. And I was like, Oh, that's fantastic. I didn't stop you because, yes, oh, please don't. Thank

Speaker 1 1:17:26
you. I told you my accent might be out there, but I I've gotten used to yours after listening for quite a long time. Thank you. The Jersey accent.

Scott Benner 1:17:33
Is it jersey? I don't know. I grew up in Northeast Philadelphia. I don't know what it is. It's something, but no, it's definitely something that's we're all something. It's easy to point out, because I can't say water or water, or I don't know exactly how to say it. Obviously, my

Speaker 1 1:17:46
mom grew up saying hearing your mom say Warsh, and instead of wash, and so she gets very upset when I say that. But I think it's kind of cool. It's that German whorsch,

Scott Benner 1:17:55
the Warsh, yeah, well, so then you might hear a little bit of that with me, because my grandmother was Pennsylvania Dutch. So, like, I've said that before on here. I said, like, I knew what that meant. Oh, she's German. It's people in Pennsylvania who are sort of like Mennonites. They're German descent. Yes, we have Germans from Russia and North Dakota. Of course, you do. People are everywhere, yeah. But my grandmother, like, she spoke backwards, and I think that's in me a little bit. And what I mean by that, and I always use the same example, because it's the example she taught me when I was little, is she said, you know, if there was a cow on the other side of this fence, and we were supposed to throw it, hey, she would say, throw the cow on the other side of the fence some hay. Like, if it's all just like, backwards, you know? And so I think I have some of that, but I really see it when I'm writing. So when I when I sit to write, writing a book was horrible, because when I sit to write, I write out my thought, and then I always realize that the first thing I wrote is the second part of the thought, and then I have to swap it and put it back together

Speaker 1 1:18:56
again. That happens. I have to cut out about 80% because I wrote a letter to the editor in our local newspaper when I was advocating. And it was just so interesting to me, because I found out in 1922 a congressman actually went to Canada to get insulin when it was discovered for his child. I can't remember the name of him right now, but so I wanted to make this really effective letter to the editor in the paper. And, I, you know, I get flowery and wordy, and it's like, nope, I've got to cut it to, like, 100 words or less. And I was really proud of it when I was done, and it was what it needed to be. But well, and here we are, what an hour and a half in the podcast. So,

Scott Benner 1:19:34
hey, tell me that again. Though, the congressman did what and what was the year? So he, he went to Canada to get insulin for his kid

Speaker 1 1:19:43
from what state, if you learned that life saving medicine was readily available in a neighboring country to save your dying child's life, would you go to any length to find it? One father did in 1922 the son of a wealthy American Congressman smuggled the newly discovered experimental drug we now know as insulin from. Canada so that his son would have a chance at life, and I would have to look, but you can Google it. I didn't reference who the person was. It wasn't Leonard Thompson, because that was the first child that got it, but it wasn't Leonard Thompson. But I just found that so interesting, because I was trying to write an effective letter to the editor, and I'm like, Huh? This is interesting, because now the year 2023, many Americans without wealth, political connections or access to insulin are facing that same reality today. You know, one in four people with diabetes have reported rationing or skipping doses. In North Dakota, we have over 50 South 57,000 people living with diabetes. Wow. So it was just really interesting, and like I said, I tried hard to pare it down, but I just thought, Well, I think that touches a little bit on the reality of what the landscape of our politics are right now. Google that find it out, but you know, it's still happening. Give some

Scott Benner 1:20:52
that'll give people something to do. All right. Angela, thank you for doing this with me. I really appreciate it. Could you hold on for one

Unknown Speaker 1:20:57
second? Yes. Thank you. You.

Scott Benner (1:21:07):A huge thanks to the Contour Next Gen Blood Glucose Meter for sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast. Learn more and get started today at ContourNext.com/Juicebox.

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