The Cancer Episode

**Ben Wilson** (0:00)
Hey, everyone, it's me, Ben. You might have noticed recently that you haven't seen me around as much. And I wanted to explain why that is and what's going on in my life.
Because I feel like we have some sort of relationship, even though I don't know all of you. I think many of you feel like you know me, and I hope you feel that way. And I try and share a little bit about my life as I share some of these lessons that I learned. And this is important context to understand what's happening with the show. So for the past few months, I have just really not been feeling well.
And finally, it was enough that I went and got checked out. My doctor referred me for a CT scan, and the CT scan found extensive tumors in my liver and lungs. I then went in for what's called a PET scan. The PET scan found more tumors in my spine. And then I went in for an MRI, and MRI found even more tumors in my brain. So, it's been a month of bad news.
I was diagnosed with what's called stage 4 high-grade neuroendocrine cancer.
And it is a very aggressive, very deadly form of cancer. My doctors have told me that I should expect to live for about another year. So, that's the bad news. The good news is, I mean, that's all true. The statistics are what they are. But, this is an age of miracles. More and more interesting cancer therapies are coming out all the time. I've got an excellent medical team. And we're working as hard as we can to make sure that that's not the case, that I am still around in a year and hopefully three years, five years and even beyond that. So, the diagnosis, the prognosis is not what you would want, but I'm fighting to find a way through. Many people have asked me how I'm feeling through all of this. Physically, physically, you know, I've already started treatment. Still got my hair for now. It's starting to fall out, so that won't last long. But the treatment is actually chemotherapy. It's interesting. My tumor load was so high, I'm actually feeling a little better. Emotionally, you know, I feel prepared to meet my maker. If you've listened for a long time, you know I'm a man of faith.
And I also feel a sense of, you know, I want to live, but there is a sense of adventure in finding out what comes after this life and seeing it and experiencing it. So while I would like to live, and I'm fighting very hard to live for as long as I can and see my kids grow up and continue the podcast and achieve all these things I want to achieve in life, if it's my time to go, I feel quite at peace. So emotionally, I'm doing fine. Physically, yeah, I mean, things felt really bad, but right now, I do kind of feel okay. I'll go in for chemotherapy again next week, and that'll probably lay me low for a little bit, and there's kind of a cyclical nature to this. So that is my situation. What does it mean for the podcast? First thing, the podcast goes on, and it's not going to change too much. It's not going to be a podcast about death. Even though this is a big thing going on in my life, the podcast, I always wanted it to be about the leaders and these great men and women of history and what we can learn from them. I really wanted to connect you directly to them as much as I possibly could, and kind of remove myself from the equation. Of course, I have my own lens of interpretation, bringing my own experiences to the table, but it's going to be about leadership still. It's going to be the same podcast, and it's not going to be morbid and talking about death all of a sudden, all the time.
My energy is much lower than it was, and I'm going to have to slow down a little bit, so expect simpler episodes with a little bit less research. It's probably more like instead of, hey, I read six books on Benjamin Franklin and compared all these different perspectives, it's probably going to be more like I read this one biography on Benjamin Franklin, and this is what I learned from it. So it's going to be a little simpler, a little more straightforward, maybe a little less sound design. Some of the more interesting things that I've been doing recently just to match my energy levels and what I think I'm capable of producing in the near term.