#1307 Five Giant Firemen

Mark has had type 1 for over 20 years and he is an educator.

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends, and welcome back to another episode of The juicebox podcast.

So Mark has type one diabetes. He's got a couple little kids, and he's an educator. My note here says that at some point, Mark just went off about the education system, and I went with him. So apparently that's about to happen. Nothing you hear on the juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan. Hey, listen, if you have type one diabetes, or are the caregiver of someone with type one and you're a US resident, I would appreciate it if you went to T 1d exchange.org/juice, box and completed the survey, that's it. You're going to help. It's going to be easy. T 1d exchange.org/juice, box. You can help type one diabetes research to move forward right from your house. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juicebox at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40 percent@cozyearth.com 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.

The episode you're listening to is sponsored by us Med, usmed.com/juice, box. Or call 888-721-1514, you can get your diabetes testing supplies the same way we do from us med. This episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the Eversense CGM, an implantable six month sensor. Is what you get with Eversense, but you get so much more exceptional and consistent accuracy over six months and distinct on body vibe alerts when you're high or low on body vibe alerts. You don't even know what that means. Do you ever sense cgm.com/juicebox? Go find out. This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries, gvoke hypopen. Find out more at gvoke glucagon.com, forward slash juice box.

Mark 2:26
My name is Mark Picardo. I have been a type one diabetic since October 30, 2003 so that is over 20 years now. And beyond that, I am 33 years old. I have a small family, my wife and my my two children. I am an educator. You know, I'm really, I'm really excited to be here. And one, you know, something I'm passionate about is just bringing my experience and awareness with type one diabetes and being able to share that with the community around me and be able to help, you know, especially kids in my schools who are diabetic, looking for somebody who could be a mentor and just a shoulder to lean on.

Scott Benner 3:03
I'm going to pick through all this with you. Tell me how old your kids are.

Mark 3:07
My son, Angelo, and I don't mind sharing their names, he is four. He'll be five in June. Nice. And then my daughter, Alessia, just turned two in February. Wow.

Scott Benner 3:16
Oh, good for you. Congratulations. Have you not been married long? Or did you just get started with the kids? We

Mark 3:20
got married in 2016 so and we, my wife and I have been together for

Scott Benner 3:27
not a good look. Mark, if you can't come up with a quick 1414, years, very nice 14 years. Been married about eight he got two nice little kids. Okay, any other autoimmune in your family or with you. There is

Mark 3:41
no history of diabetes in my family. There's no history of autoimmune disorders in my family. Is it is just me. I am the special one, and

Scott Benner 3:49
just type one for you. Just type one. Okay. Well, I appreciate you coming on and spending the time with me very much. I feel like when I saw you for a little bit this morning, it looks like you're actually at a school right now. So I am

Mark 4:02
in, so I am in a classroom. I with my door shut, locked in, a sign on the door that says, zoom, meeting, but, but, yes, I am at a school. One of the good things about my position is having having some of that flexibility to be doing some other things, very nice, along with, yeah, yeah.

Scott Benner 4:19
Excellent. Okay, so let's see, how did you how did you find me? I'm going to start there today.

Mark 4:27
So I guess that would be a good opportunity for me to just talk a little bit. So during during covid, 20, what are your 2020? Feels like it was, yeah, yeah. It feels like it was forever ago. I wanted to start an Instagram account for myself that just focused on diabetes. I ended up creating a brand called type one wellness. And through my Instagram and through the social media i i was able to just honestly stumble upon a community that was much larger and much bigger than anything that I had imagined. And a lot of. Of the people that I had been speaking to and networking with and learning from, you know, so many people reference the juicebox podcast as a place where they learn quite a bit from and really appreciate the awareness that you're bringing. And in addition to that, you know, it's, it's, obviously, it's, it's good entertainment as well, because it's something that you can relate with. I appreciate that. And then last year at my at my old school up in New York, I had a teacher who has a son with type one, and she was on your show, I want to say at least once, maybe, maybe a couple times she had, she had mentioned to me, Hey, you should just reach out. Because one thing she one thing she brought up was that there's not very many men who who talk about, you know, what it's like to be a father, to be a male, to be a man with diabetes, and what that's like. And she thought there would be some value. Yeah,

Scott Benner 5:54
I appreciate. Tell her thank you. And I She's not wrong. It's a little more difficult to get men, and even then, when you get them, it's sometimes difficult for them to emote and like really connect while they're talking, so sometimes they feel a little stiffer while they're sharing. But, yeah, but it's, it's, it's definitely something I want to do more of. So would you say that you went to Instagram to learn something for yourself, or did you feel like you had something to share?

Mark 6:22
I think a little bit of both. I would say my initial purpose was, hey, you know, this is what I do. This is my management. Maybe I can share. And I think a little bit selfishly too, I said, Hey, maybe I could turn this into something that might be a another career path. What I didn't realize was that within even just a couple of months of creating my account and then just following, you know, a lot of people within the community, how much I would learn and how much it would impact my my personal management and the way that I approach diabetes, and since then, I've pivoted, and I use it purely Just for awareness and to share my story, and really honestly, again, selfishly, to learn from others. I come from a really supportive family, and so being diagnosed at 13 years old, it was necessary to have parents that were supportive, and my management has always been fairly Okay, fairly good. I would say, within the last two, three years, it has gotten to another level, something that I'm really proud of. My family and I, we moved from New York to North Carolina last July, and so I went in and saw the end though for the first time in February, and my first A, 1c since the move was 5.70 good for you. And I didn't, and I'm like, wow, with with the amount of stress and the amount of anxiety and this and that, with the move, and just to be able to still keep that management, and that's not me tooting my own horn. That's just it's something that I'm proud of.

Scott Benner 7:52
Is it fair to say that you think that in the past, in that scenario, you would have seen a rise near a one say, if you take insulin or sulfonylureas, you are at risk for your blood sugar going too low. You need a safety net when it matters most, be ready with G Vogue hypopen. My daughter carries gevok hypopen everywhere she goes, because it's a ready to use rescue pen for treating very low blood sugar in people with diabetes ages two and above that, I trust low blood sugar emergencies can happen unexpectedly and they demand quick action. Luckily, jivo kypopen can be administered in two simple steps, even by yourself in certain situations. Show those around you where you store GEVO kypo pen and how to use it. They need to know how to use GVO kypopen before an emergency situation happens. Learn more about why GEVO kypo Pen is in Arden's diabetes toolkit at gvoke, glucagon.com/juicebox, gvoke shouldn't be used if you have a tumor in the gland on the top of your kidneys called a pheochromocytoma, or if you have a tumor in your pancreas called an insulinoma, visit gvoke, glucagon.com/risk. For safety information.

Mark 9:12
I 100% Yeah. I mean just every, everything that so the the lift. I don't know if you've ever Scott, you know, moved, moved moved across states or this, but finding a house, finding a job, finding an area that you want to be happy in, moving your family, driving cross country with two little kids, it's beyond anything that I would ever imagine, that it's something I never want to do again when you add in the complications of diabetes, yeah, I would never have predicted that I would have been able to keep my management as strong as it has been.

Scott Benner 9:48
So what would you say, hearing from, hearing from you're not hearing from them, right? They have Instagram accounts. You have Instagram accounts, so you're seeing their life, what they're sharing, of it reflected back and forth. Of you, maybe you read a little blurb or something that they've written, and are you actually interacting? Are you commenting on people's things? Are you having personal relationships, or is it just the the act of receiving what they're putting out? I have

Mark 10:14
established some really great relationships with people that I've never met in person, strictly through the diabetes community. I have relationships with someone in Australia. I had a relationship with somebody in Dubai, people that I would consider pretty close friends, that you know, we talk, we talk on a consistent basis, and not just about diabetes, just you know, about our lives. And I think that's something that's a really great part of the community. And in a sense, social media, you know, all the negativity that comes with social media, it can be hard, but I think there, there, if you approach it the right way, there, there are some positives. And, you know, for me and some of these people, it's okay. Do you have a common ground? Do you have something that you can share, you could be vulnerable with each other? And it's much easier to break down those barriers and create relationships based on something that that is meaningful. And, you know, there's also, there's all. There's always going to be some people that you're that you're following and talking to, that it's just, you know, you're commenting or watching or this or that. But I was, but where

Scott Benner 11:15
does the value come from that actually impacts your A, 1c, so,

Mark 11:20
so for me, you know, and this is not in any way, shape or form, trying to downplay the significance and role of what my doctors have provided me and what doctors continue to provide with other people with this condition, but I have learned it's those little, intricate things that people share Just from their experience that I was never told in a in a doctor's office something as simple as a pre bolus. And that might sound crazy to you, because I know you talk about it quite often, up until I started my like, nobody ever told me, Hey, you should pre bolus for meals. Mark

Scott Benner 11:55
and I said, Have you ever heard, have you ever heard Erica on the podcast, like in some of the more like mental health stuff. She's a therapist. I

Mark 12:02
have, you know, I've listened to quite so it's hard to keep them, No, I

Scott Benner 12:07
know. Listen, that's, that's my fault. I make a lot of stuff. But Erica is like, Erica's had type one diabetes for, I think, like, 35 years. She's on a recent episode where she said, I think I heard about pre bolusing from descott, and she she grew up for, I mean, three decades, and had a brother with type one on top of that, has a brother with type one, and she's still, like, saying, like, I think I heard about on the podcast. I mean, it's hard to call even pre bolusing a building block of managing yourself. It's, it's a fundamental, it's like putting gas in your car. Like, we don't think about that as being part of the process to drive. You have to do that part. And it's fascinating that that the timing of the insulin is not spoken about between doctors and patients very frequently.

Mark 12:51
It floors me thinking about some of the times of the way that I personally manage. And then, I mean, to be completely honest, like sometimes, you know you go into the Enter college's Office, and you have to tell them what they want to hear, and then you know you're going to walk away whatever, whatever it is that you talked about, it's not it's not even what you're doing. Because so for me, for example, I was at a pump within six months of being diagnosed, and I was on a insulin pump from 2003 just until 2017 I wouldn't say I had. I had an incident in December of 2017 where I was unresponsive in the morning, my wife woke up and was not able to to wake me up. I think my blood sugar was like a 13. I finally came to I had five gigantic firemen in my bed, and I was fighting, fighting out of them, but, and that was the one and only time I've ever had, I had a complication that's severe, but I I had so I ended up switching to MDI shortly after that, and then I also switched over to the Dexcom shortly after that. And I tell you what, I will never go back on a pump. And, you know, maybe that's a too concrete of a statement to make, but for me, this is just what works. And I think, you know, I talked about the finite details that I've learned through social media in the community, but I think the biggest message that I've taken away. And this is something too that I try to share as well, is that everybody has to figure out what works for them. And I wish there was a little bit more of that mindset at a doctor's office and with the endocrinologist. And I'm actually really, really lucky, because I do feel as though my current one down here in North Carolina does support that idea of, hey, if this is working, you know, don't break it, or don't, don't fix it, yeah. But, you know, I would go to my old end though, and I was at MTI, and, you know, my, my ANC was maybe low six. And every time I go, it's, Hey, I really think you should try this pump. Hey, I really think you should try this pump. Actually, probably a year and a half ago, I did, I tried an OmniPod, and I tried the T slim. And for some people up. Sure they're absolutely phenomenal. And I think, you know, in a in theory and in a perfect vacuum, the idea of the closed system and the closed like is wonderful, but for me, it just it didn't work. And my my management was worse again, and I ended up, after about six months, going back to shots. And okay, you know, not everybody

Scott Benner 15:20
your MDI right now with the CGM

Mark 15:22
I use the Dexcom g7 and then I use FiOS for my short acting. I use tracebo for my log acting.

Scott Benner 15:29
Nice. Well, that's great, Mark. I'm going to need you to say something very, very interesting in the next 45 minutes. It stops me from calling your podcast episode five giant firemen. So

Mark 15:42
that's absolutely fine,

Scott Benner 15:45
because right now that's far and away my winner. It's the way you said it, like I woke up with five giant firemen in my bed, and I was like, that's hilarious, absolutely terrified,

Mark 15:54
like, like, and I mean, and I'm not, I'm not a really big guy, but I had at least three or four of them had to keep me down because I was fighting like no other.

Scott Benner 16:05
Did you flip out because you opened your eyes to five people or because your blood sugar was still where it was so,

Mark 16:12
so my blood sugar was my brother. Trigger was, whatever 13 I thought I was, I was sleeping. I thought I was dreaming. And like I recall, I recall, in that moment, trying, like, I wanted to wake up. I wanted to wake up. So they were trying to get the IV in me to administer some sort of, some sort of glucose, and I was fighting with that. And, I mean, I think it might have been just, you know, part of that reaction, that fear. And, you know, it's

Scott Benner 16:42
weird when your blood sugar's low and a dream state and that, listen, I fell asleep with my headphones in last night, and for two hours I thought I was Billy Joel. Billy Joel playlist on. It was like in my dream, I was just singing Billy Joel songs. And when I woke up, I thought, I wonder if I was singing in my sleep, but Kelly was asleep, so I couldn't ask her, that's, that's hilarious. How long did you try pumping for? And how long have you been off it?

Mark 17:06
So my first experience with pumping was with various Medtronic systems, and that was for almost 15 years. And in a lot of ways, again, a lot of ways, it was, it was good, but my, my biggest problem was, in my opinion, even though I've been told I'm wrong, was my scar tissue in sites I had towards the Scott towards the end of my use of Medtronic. There was days where I was using 678, different site changes because, you know, I I insert a site, and you know, my number would be, I don't know, say, 102 hours later, I'm at 350 and I'm bolusing and I'm stacking and I'm bolusing and I'm rage bolusing, and it's just not coming down. And I think absorption was your issue. Absorption was 100% my issue. And you know, I would go to the doctor. And I would, you know, I beg. I say, what like something is, is wrong? What do I need? So we tried different types of silhouettes. We tried, you know, and I was always fairly good about rotating my sites. Again. I'm not a big guy, you know, I I'm an I work out. I'm athletic, so it's not exactly like I have an endless amount of of areas to try, but I did the best I could. I tried as hard as I could, and it just it was so unsuccessful and so frustrating. And you know, I would drive like, I would literally drive around my car with my car, and I would have multiple boxes, not just like individual sites, boxes of sites. Because at any point I knew that there could be a failure thinking about, like packing to go on vacation, I would probably pack, like, a six month supply, because of sometimes, how often I would have to change, and how how frustrated it was. Oh,

Scott Benner 18:58
my God. And you did fight through that for a decade and a half, you try. So,

Mark 19:02
I mean, for the first decade, it was probably, you know, great, you know, be brand new. But then I would say the last four or five years on it, it was tough, and then it was progressively worse towards the end, okay, by the end, it was like, this is not even it's, this isn't functional. And, I mean, ever since switching to shots, it's just been, it's like a brother. It's like a breath of fresh air. That's great. I'm glad you found what works. Yeah. And, and I tried, you know, because I've always been open minded, and I did try the OmniPod and T slim, and it was the same thing. It was, it was the absorption again, was just, it just didn't work for me. Have you considered

Scott Benner 19:40
getting an in pen so you can get a little bit of the functionality and the math behind pumping

Mark 19:46
so that's the one that communicates right with your Yeah, with

Scott Benner 19:49
an app, and it's sort of like it helps you with

Mark 19:53
that's a great That's a great thought. I haven't really thought of about that I was presented with the with, I. First I was using the geo or with the refillable cartridges. And then, since I've just been getting the straight the FiOS pens, as they are, yeah,

Scott Benner 20:09
I was gonna say, I also don't know if in pen and fiasp go together or not. But anyway, I mean, it's neither here nor there. That's something for me to definitely Note, though. Yeah, you can look into it, if you like, just to go back so that people can hear it clearly when you were on a pump and it wasn't working for you in the end, this wasn't you ignoring your settings. It wasn't you not bolusing like you were doing all the things that you had been doing prior, and it just kind of stopped working for you as you wore it longer and longer.

Mark 20:37
Yeah, I mean always, to the best of my ability, you know, there's never, there's ever a perfect scenario, but, but yes, with, you know, with, with trying to do all the right things, and rotating sites, bolusing, increasing my basal, you know, talking to my doctors, and it just, I would again, like I would insert a site, and it wasn't like it was bleeding, it wasn't, you know, any of those types of things. You know, the pump was was good, and, you know, I'd be 400 before you knew it. And okay, I'm trying to pull and it's not coming down. And then I would change the site and give myself a correction, and I would see some progress. It starts to come down, but then again, it starts to go up. It's and it's like, What am I, you know, you mean, you can't help but think, what am I doing wrong? What? What is this? You know, what am I not? I'm clearly not doing something right. And I think circle back to, I wish somebody would, would have told me 10 years ago, or, you know, maybe less, but you know, you don't have to use a pump. You could, you could try something different.

Scott Benner 21:40
It felt like an imperative, and you were failing, because how long they hocked you about getting on a pump, correct? Yeah,

Mark 21:46
it felt like this was my only, my only option,

Scott Benner 21:50
right? And you weren't doing a good job at it. And that's correct. Then you have that pressure on top of everything else. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Hey, listen, just I'm not pushing you, but Humalog, Novolog and fiasp cartridges are accepted by the impen. Okay, I'm definitely gonna look at not a sponsor anymore, but Medtronic. I'm doing some ads right now for the Medtronic community stuff. But in pen, used to be a sponsor. They're they're not anymore. But yeah, I mean, I've just seen a lot of people use it and get something out of it. So definitely look into it. Yeah, when you decide to have kids, do you think about diabetes when you're making that decision, or does it not come to mind? How does that happen?

Mark 22:33
Diabetes factors into every part of your life. That is, that's for sure. But something an approach that I've always taken is that, yes, it's a part of my life and it's a factor, but it's, it's not going to be a deciding factor in anything that I do, if, if anything, I would say the biggest part of the thought process was, okay, my children have a 5% chance of getting diagnosed. And, you know, that's that scares the hell out of me, because I just would never want my children, or really anybody, to have to deal with the everyday struggle that you, that you, I know you as a father. You see that firsthand, and so but, but no, that that never deterred me to anything. Everything that I do is for my children. When I wake up at four in the morning and go work out and, you know, race to get home. And you know, when I try to take care of myself and keep my a 1c under six, that's not immediate. Is for me, but it's for them, because I want to be the best, the best parent and the best father that I can be for them. When I was growing up, it's actually funny. So we were having a conversation with my son yesterday, and we were just kind of joking around because he's going into kindergarten this year, and so, hey, what do you want to be when you grow up? And he goes, I want to be a daddy. And it's funny, because what I had the hardest time figuring out what I wanted to do professionally, and I still, honestly, I still really don't know what I want to do professionally, is for my the next 30 years, but I always knew that I wanted to be a father. Oh, that was always a driving point for me.

Scott Benner 24:07
Yeah, I can tell you, I, from a young age, knew I wanted to have a family, and so

Mark 24:13
it's a special, I mean, it's just, it's a very special thing, and I think that's a lot of the reason why I went to education, too, because, you know, I see, I see these kids, in many ways, as my own, but I just think about parents and the impact that they have on kids, and how meaningful it can be and and when I see that, when I see the flip side, and the parents who choose not to do that, it's hard, it's a hard pill to swallow. And so I enjoy being that person for for some of these kids who who don't

Scott Benner 24:43
this episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the only CGM you can take off to get into the shower, the Eversense CGM. Eversense cgm.com/juicebox, well, I mean, sure you could take the other ones off, but then you'd waste a sensor and. Have to start over again, but not with Eversense. Eversense is a six month wear implantable CGM. So if you want to take a shower without anything hanging on, you pop off the transmitter, jump in the shower. When you get back out, put it back on, and you're right back to where you started. Come to think of it, you could do that whenever you wanted to. Maybe it was your prom night or your wedding day. Maybe you just don't want the thing on for a little while, but you don't want to go all through the hassle of taking it off and having to restart it and, you know, starting back over with, like, wonky numbers and having to, you know, all that that goes with it when you take off a CGM and put it back on. Oh, but you don't have to do that with the Eversense CGM, because Eversense is the only long term CGM with six months of real time glucose readings. This gives you more confidence, more convenience and flexibility. The Eversense CGM is there for you when you want discretion, a break, or maybe just a little adult time. Eversense cgm.com/juicebox, pop that transmitter off, pop it back on. You're right back where you started, without any wasted devices or time. I used to hate ordering 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/juice, box, 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 dash, 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 usmed.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. Who don't get that at home. You think you see it more often than an average person because of your job. 100%

Mark 27:38
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Scott Benner 27:41
If you don't want to answer this, that's fine, but because you've used your name so like clearly, and we've belabored it over and over again. But what? What is it? Is it? Is it apathy, drugs, bad upbringings, intelligence, like, what? When you look across the desk and you see, you see who they are, do you know? Oh, I know how this is going to go already, because of, like, what's your generalization that makes you think it's going to happen, that you're going to be talking to a person who's not that involved or doesn't care so much? That's a loaded question. I know that's why you don't have to answer it if you don't want to. No, it's okay. I

Mark 28:16
don't I don't mind, because I believe in it and I'm transparent about it. I think, to back up a little bit, I think we have a and I don't, you know, I know this isn't necessarily political show, and this is a much bigger topic. We could probably go on for hours about this, but we have an enormous problem with our system. And I always say this is that when you go to a hospital, say, you you know, the absolute worst thing happens to you. You have, you know, a tuber in your brain. Imagine if your brain surgeon was getting paid the salary that a teacher makes,

Scott Benner 28:50
and you'd be upset.

Mark 28:52
You probably, you probably think, think twice, and I just think, how are we valuing education to such a minimal extent. You know, I would say just in my in my building here, you probably predict maybe 50 to 60% of the teachers have have second jobs, Second Incomes, because you can't live off of a teacher wage. And so when you go back to your question, so, what is it? So, I think it's a couple of factors. Number one, I think the my from my personal opinion, the institution of family is crumbling. And I think when you turn on the news and you see, you know, a lot of what we stand for as a country, I think it's really easy to see why. I think that the kids who are most successful are the ones that when they go home, are getting that support. I could be the greatest teacher on Earth, and I could sit here in the classroom and I could, I could speak the I could speak from, from the Lord. And what I'm saying is going into your brain, your alert, but then the minute they get off that bus and walk into that house, everything can be undone within seconds. You know, if you're trying. Into, you know, just is as simple as this. I want to teach my children about or I want to teach my my students about respecting each other. And they go home and Scott, you tell your your kid, you don't need to respect them. We don't like these kinds of people. Well, your word is much more meaningful than anything. And I'm going to say as a

Scott Benner 30:15
teacher. And so how do you think teachers are seen by some people?

Mark 30:18
I think teachers are very, very undervalued. I remember during covid, there was, like this one week where I was at home working out, and I had the TV on, and I saw like this commercial that said, thank you teachers. I said, Oh my God, I've never seen this before. And then, and then the next week, it was, we hate teachers, and they suck, and they're teaching critical race theory, and they're trying to indoctrinate our kids. Oh, I

Scott Benner 30:43
see. So that was quick. Okay, so if a news story blows up, then it's everybody,

Mark 30:50
yeah, I got it, yeah. But it's the same with, I mean, you know, there's always gonna be some bad teachers, but there's always gonna be some bad cops, there's gonna be some bad giant firemen, and there's gonna be some bad podcast like, there's always bad seats and everything that you do, but it you might get a bad average size fireman. Even you might get a bad average size and let me ask a difficult question

Scott Benner 31:10
about the that. So, because that's a pretty common response, you know, you're not paying teachers enough, what do you expect? So does that mean that, because of the salary, it's not attracting the best candidates. Where does 1,000% if

Mark 31:26
you had so it and again, it's multi best and multi layered. But I think about this. I think about it during my experience in administration, how challenging it's been over the past couple of years to try to try to hire. And you know, we have vacancies left and right. We have special ed vacancies. We have classic teacher vacancies. We had at my school last year we couldn't hire a music teacher, so we had to cut music programs. And so I think about this when I'm an 18 year old, graduated high school, and I'm going to go to college, and I'm going to think about what career I want to go into. There's two things that you think about, hey, what interest? Interests you? And am I going to make money? And it's just this is hard to say. But I would not encourage my own children with the current state of things to go in education, because I want them to be successful, and I don't want them to have to deal with the things that I deal with day to day, to still not feel comfortable.

Scott Benner 32:21
Are there other impacts, though, like, Could I be getting a good candidate who is just maybe working a second job or feeling undervalued, and that impacts their performance?

Mark 32:32
Yes, okay, so, so I think there's, there's lots of those things. My take is on this. If you my buddy and I actually just a couple weeks ago, he's another he's an administrator as well. We were having this conversation because he's seen conversation because he's seeing the same things. In theory, say that, say the minimum starting salary for a teacher was 75,000 which is a very good amount of income from my opinion. I think you could live very comfortably off of that. Sure, you would have people lined up out the door to try to, number one, enroll in teacher education programs to try to get jobs. When I first walked into education, you know, there was hundreds of people applying for a specific job. We just hired something, you know, a few weeks, two weeks ago, there was like, three applicants, and we didn't hire any of them, because not one of them was little bit of effective. And there's so many things that would come with that is that, number one, you're to attract more quality people. Number two, you could hold the standards much higher, because if my teachers are making 75,000 and I see Scott, who's teaching first grade, and he's showing up late and he's not following curriculum, and he's not assessing the students, you know XYZ. And I could say, Scott, you know we value and we appreciate you, but I have a line of teachers outside the door who would be happy to take your role, and so you need to live up to those expectations and

Scott Benner 33:52
do the job. I'll replace you. And, yeah, and that's

Mark 33:54
not I mean, and that's, you know, that doesn't that comes off in a very cold

Scott Benner 33:58
No, no way. I don't think it sounds cool. You're misunderstanding how I think, yeah, no, no, yeah, I'm good with it, and not just in teaching. And listen, Mark, no lie. Okay, so this happened to me in the last two days. I needed tires on my car, and I called a couple places. I found a good price, and I asked them, please order the tires. And they said, Oh, absolutely, come in on Thursday at excuse me, Tuesday at 4pm and we will put your tires on. I was like, that's great. So I showed up and parked my car. I went inside. I said, Hi, this is my name. I am here for my 4pm appointment to have tires put on that you ordered for me, and they take my car in, they pull the tire, first tire off, they deflate it, take it off the wheel. And, you know, I'm watching it. It's a very nice day, so I'm kind of outside, like I'm always inside. So I just kind of stood out front the sun. I had a drink, and I was just. You know, enjoying being outside. I wandered back inside to ask a question, because I thought I they weren't able to get me tires for the back just the front. And I was like, I'm going to try to order them online, would you you know, I went in to find out what that would cost to have them put on. And so I walk in there, and now suddenly, the manager and the guy who's working on my car are next to each other behind the counter, and they're talking. As I approach, I get up there, neither of them address me. I look at the one guy and he goes, you know, like I see him take my key, and he heads back to the car, but he doesn't say anything to me. And now I'm standing there because I want to ask my question of the other guy, but he's doing something. And so I very kind of, I take a half a step back. I don't want to pressure him. He's busy, like, you know, he does not acknowledge me. It goes on for three or four minutes where we are four feet apart, and he has not acknowledged me yet. So I say, Hey man, and he looks up. I

Speaker 1 36:00
go, when you have time, I have a question. He goes, Oh, you can ask me anytime. And I'm like, okay, so I asked my question. I end up having two questions. He answers both of them. I don't feel very confident that he understood one of them, but okay. I walk outside, go back in the sun, and my car is backing out of the garage. And I'm like, so I kind of walked towards the guy, and I put my hands up, and I'm like, hey, hey, hey. And he puts the window down, and he goes, What's up? And I said, there's two tires like you, you only did one. And he looks at me like, I have six heads. And he goes, did the guy inside not talk to you. And I said about what. He goes, your tires aren't here. And I'm like, wait, the tires you ordered me that you told me would be here and I should come here on Tuesday at four o'clock they they're not here. And he goes, No, the guy inside didn't tell you. And I went, No. So he talks to me for a couple of seconds, and I just leave. They just leave because I'm going to murder somebody if I stay. And I'm just like, I'm fascinated that neither of them looked at me and went, Hey, man, I can't believe this, but we don't have your tires. But as I'm driving home, I get past that, and all I can think is, you put tires on a car. The first thing you do isn't to check to make sure you have the tires. It's pull the car in, take the wheel off, Jack it up, rip the rubber off the wheel, and then go check to see if you have the new tire. Like that's can't be, right? And you do this all day long. And I thought, oh my god, we're all gonna die. And then, and then you tell me that we're hiring teachers that aren't qualified, but by the way, the parents don't trust the teachers, but maybe they shouldn't in some situations. And so now we're in a perpetual circle. And then I get home yesterday, my wife tells me about a news story about one of the major airline manufacturers who's saying that their new generation of engineers don't seem to know their job as well as the old generation. And I'm like, Oh my God, my car's gonna explode. I'm gonna not learn anything, or a plane's gonna fall out of the sky. What's the through line? It seems like people don't take their jobs very seriously.

Mark 38:23
I think part of that is accurate. I think the other part too is it's just that we live in this state right now where it's a opinion is more important now than fact. And again, that's a that's a but we just, we live in this, in this, in this situation where all of our values and all of our moral like, everything is just upside down, people, it's, you know? So when I was in college for my undergraduate, I was a sociology major, and I did a lot of work about the difference between a collectivist culture, which means people who live for each other, not necessarily socialism, but like people who you know, like a family, for example, is an example of a collectivist culture versus an individualistic society, where everything is competition and everybody is going up against each other. And when you look at the difference between, for example. A very strong example is the America versus Europe. When you go into European culture, it's, it is a collectivist culture. People bring each other up, people, it's not necessarily competition. It's it's, how can we do better together as a society or as a country? Whereas here it's, and it has been extreme. It has been an extreme in the past eight years. It does not matter what the person next to me is doing. It does not matter. It is what only matters is, am I getting what I want? Am I Am I winning? Yes, but if that makes sense,

Scott Benner 39:56
it's not winning through good work. It's just winning. Yeah. It's

Mark 40:00
just winning, right? Yeah, it doesn't matter. It's ladder climbing, right? Yeah, right.

Scott Benner 40:05
So I'll add my my opinion. I feel like it's possible that life is too good at this point for a lot of people, there's too many options of things to do to capture your attention, like cool things. But seriously, Mark from, like, I don't know, 83,000 different streaming services, yeah. And you know, you've got your computer and your phone, and you have an iPad and you have you could go outside. You could go for a ride in your car. Everybody has a car. Now, you know, like, you could used to be, everyone didn't have a car. You couldn't afford it. You didn't get one, and that was it. But now, but now, you know, you can get a loan without a job, and so, like, like, so now, everybody listen, there are some people who are broke. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is the Mendoza line for that has gone down and down and down and down. And there are more and more people who, I think, have access to things that are just, frankly, a lot more fun than working or being excellent at your craft or that kind of thing, like so when you have it used to be, you got up in the morning and you had an egg and you got in your crappy car. I don't know if people remember cars from the 80s, but they weren't a pleasure to drive in. And, like, now a car feels like a comfortable living room, like, you know, like, and so, like, you drag your ass to work and you do something that you if you weren't great at it, somebody was gonna fire your ass, and you needed to be great at it. So you were, and then you got home, and you'll, like, you know,

Speaker 1 41:40
I don't know what people used to do, stare at a wall, you know what I mean, and then probably read the newspaper. Yeah, he probably banged one out, went to bed at 830 Right? Like, so, like, That's it, over and over and over again. You couldn't go home and watch a guy play Twitch for 13 hours on your phone. You couldn't go play a video game that looked like you were in the middle of the goddamn Iraq War. Like, like, you don't even, like, there's so much going on now, I don't think anybody's got time to think about their job even

Mark 42:10
Well, there's a lot, there's a lack of urgency, because, because people, because of exactly what you said, there's, there's this great amount of privilege. And I think a lot of what it boils down to, too, is we just, we lack a sense of appreciation and a sense of reality. People don't, I don't think people understand how good in a large sense. I mean, yeah, everywhere you look there's people

Scott Benner 42:33
struggling. You've seen the first generation of kids whose parents lives were pretty easy. Yeah,

Mark 42:40
right. And so I'm a, I'm a big fan of Howard Stern. I don't know if you are, but he's one of, one of my most favorite things that he's has said recently is, you know, they go play tapes of, hey, we want a dictator here in America, or we want this or that. And it's like, Listen, if that's what, you go, go, move to Russia or go, and I care, you won't last two seconds and see what it's like, and people don't realize the opportunity that they're in. And I think a lot of what you're boiling down to is, you know, you said a plain, we're missing opportunity. And would you look at, you know, if you look at statistics, and see where we are as a country, as far as the, you know, what are we producing that's been exported. Where are we? Educationally, where is our? Where is our? Our economy? It's not the top 10, not in any of them.

Scott Benner 43:30
I would say, like, like, political stuff aside, if anyone is looking to be led instead of leading, I think that is, to some level, like an indication of, it's like laziness. It's like, I'll just let a person tell me what's right, and then empathetic, yeah, that's another thing I don't have to think about, you know, and, and I, honestly, I'm being serious, like taking any, like, left or right leaning ideas away from it. If you're in a position, in any spot in your life, forget politics, where you're just like, oh, I'll just go with what's being said. That, to me, feels like you don't want to think about it. Yeah, and yeah, so, but, but my, I guess my greater point is, is that I think it's possible that the guy at the tire shop is not qualified to be a guy at the tire shop,

Mark 44:24
and how it's pretty that's pretty challenging. How is

Speaker 1 44:28
everybody failing up? Is what I don't understand. Like, like, you know what I mean? Like, what happened? Like, did the manager at the tire shop stand in front of that guy one day and think to himself, I can't believe I gotta hire this guy, but I do. And by the way, the other guys that weren't like didn't have I went later in the day. Obviously, there were two guys there who were watching YouTube videos on their phones, like sitting in the garage, just the place wasn't perfect. It wasn't clean. There were stuff to be put there's stuff to do. Yeah, they were. Watching YouTube videos on their phone. One guy I tried to just like, say hello to, and he looked through me like I didn't exist. And I was like,

Scott Benner 45:09
Oh my God.

Mark 45:10
Like my what my experience is is that's a that's a lack of leadership. I think, I think in that instance, yeah, you have an employee who didn't change the tires and it was back. But he, as far as from my understanding, if I'm interpreting this right, he looked at you like my manager didn't take the time to explain to you why I couldn't change the tires, because he made this and and you know, you, if you have employees that are sitting there watching YouTube and not that comes down to the leadership, and that comes down to a top, from top from top to bottom, approach, right? There's no pressure. What am I teaching my employees and what is my expectations? What is my structure? Yeah,

Scott Benner 45:47
there's no onus on let's do let's all just do a good job while we're here. Yeah, yeah, yep. I worked, man. I worked in a sheet metal shop for years and years and years, and I got in there and I hit that time clock and I went for eight hours, you did not stop. You were happy if you had to take a in the middle of the day, because it was five minutes where you could just like, sit there and go, Oh my god, I can't believe how hard I'm working. And I made $4.75 an hour, and I'm still not sure I'm not going to get lung cancer one day from what I lived through and and I never went in there and thought they're not paying me enough, and by the way, they weren't. But I never thought this job sucks, which, by the way, it did. I never thought I deserve more. Like, I just went and I took the job and I did the job like I said I was going to do it, and I did it like, that was it. I don't understand the rest of it like, and I don't know if I sound like an old person at this point like I really don't, but you're gonna see a collapse of everything if everyone isn't working hard at the thing that they're being asked to do. And I think your point earlier, no one sees their job as their goal. They see it as something they're stepping on to get to their goal. You know, I don't know. I've seen it in a lot of different areas, like, forget guys in tire shops, you know, I know professional people who work with people who all make hundreds of 1000s of dollars a year, and they put about the same goddamn effort into their job as the guy at the tire shop does. So everybody's just like, I want to, you know, I'm trying to get to the weekend. I'm trying to buy a house. I'm trying to, like, go on vacation. I want this. I want that, like, and by the way, I want to back up from it for a second. Mark, you should enjoy your life, yeah, and you should be a focus. And you should be working towards all the things that you want and feel like you need, or whatever. Not if the planes are going to fall out of the sky. Like, you know what I mean?

Mark 47:45
Like, you know, there, there has to be some of that intrinsic motivation to sadatmos. I'm a tire shop, you know, mechanic, but I'm going to be the best, I'm going to do a

Scott Benner 47:57
really good job at this mechanic that I could possibly be. That's how I'm gonna get out of this one day. If I don't want to be here,

Mark 48:02
there's a lack of pride, and people don't. It's just, I mean, you, I think you hit it. It's just very people are very apathetic, to an extent, and

Scott Benner 48:12
it's not everybody, and I'm not, I'm certainly not saying it is, but I'm saying that when it happens, it's so obviously this thing right here. Yeah, you know, and I don't know, it's just fantastic. It's crazy to me. Somebody said to me the other day, do you make a living talking to people? And I said, I do. I was like, I don't know another way to put it, like I do. I sit down, I have a conversation with somebody, I draw out their thoughts, I add my thoughts. It is popular enough that people want to buy ads on it. That's how I make a living. And they, they were really perplexed by this. I and I know them personally. I said, That's so interesting. Like, so, so they're like, so you just talk. And then they kept getting stuck on it and and then the conversation went towards, you know, do you ever think you'll have a real job again? And I said, this is a real job. Like it was like, I said, I know what you mean, though. Like, you mean, am I gonna have to pick something up or hit something or carry something nine to five? Yeah, yeah. And I said, I don't know. Maybe, you know, I'm sure this could all fall apart. And then I you know, I'd have to go back to work doing something else, just to watch their heads spin about it. And I think in their minds, I'm part of what I just described,

Mark 49:27
yeah. And I yeah, I could see that, yeah, that was

Scott Benner 49:30
so that was really interesting. And I so I start talking about how it helps people and their health. And I even said, like, I have a an image of my mind, of a triangle with, like, three points, obviously, because it's a triangle. Can you imagine if I had a triangle with four points? Because what I would have

Mark 49:48
is a square, but quadrilateral?

Scott Benner 49:52
Oh, could I smush it around a little bit? I didn't really pay attention to geometry, from what you're telling me, it's not my fault. I didn't have a good teacher. But I said, like, I have. Something that I feel like I'm good at and I'm it pays my bills, and it helps people, and I feel very lucky to do something that touches those three points every day. And as I tried to explain how it helped people, what I could see in their face was they don't have a medical issue. They don't have this thing that they nobody's given him all of the details for, and he didn't understand why the value was there for people listening. And I thought to myself, I didn't say it to him, but I thought to myself, I hope you never know why this podcast helps people, because that's going to mean that you're having a pretty significant health issue. Yeah, you know. But he, he couldn't, like, make sense of it,

Mark 50:43
yeah? And I think it's, it's hard when you, when you are struggling to communicate a message and but people aren't open to understanding it, or even wanting to understand, oh, this is different, and it's okay that it's different. Let me, let me. Let me take meaning from it in my own way, doesn't matter that it's helping hundreds of 1000s of other people, but if it's not helping me, then it's worthless. Yeah, listen, before we I want to back up for a second and go so go ahead and so just to go back on teachers. And I just want to make sure my point is clear, that I think that teachers are the most wonderful, like some of the most wonderful people in the face of the amount of work that's done for for the turnaround, the income that's given is incredible. And I think if we didn't have teachers, you would have some serious, serious issues. I mean, not beyond the fact that we have education, but the teachers do what they do, not for the money, because of the passion for the work, and what I was just a circle back. And my point is this is that imagine how much better it would be if our teachers felt valued and were and were actually being paid something that matches the work that they put like it goes. You know, are we? Why isn't education valued? And just how incredible our teachers would be in the schools would be if they were funded appropriately. And yes, that what that does turn into is that you have people going to education because it might be a backdrop, or it might be it's not their first choice. And yeah, so the quality of what we're seeing and the people coming in is maybe not what we had hoped for, but it's not necessary. I don't think it's on the fault of the teachers. I think it's on the fault of the system. And I would say

Scott Benner 52:27
that just assessing your comp like your input, I would say that it doesn't really matter if it's money or what the reason is that it gets sideways, like, is it that we're not attracting the best people? Is it that they don't feel valued, so they don't give a full effort? Is it because they're working a second, it doesn't really matter. What matters is, is that that is that's the prevalent vibe, which is, teachers are very important, but we don't value them enough to do all these other things for them, and so that just has to be what's in your head. And I'm sure you come out of school. Listen, my guess is there's two different people that want to be teachers. There's people who want to help people, and there's people who don't want to work in the summertime. I'm going to guess that coming out of college, like, that's like, where you get like, that's probably the buckets that people come out of. Like, mainly, I'm sure there's others, but I'm obviously generalizing. And so the people who just want the summer off are probably not putting in a full effort to begin with. You probably were never going to get it out of them and and, God bless, like, whatever. You know, they still went and got their degree and everything. And then the people who were there to be like, I'm going to change the world six months into it, when they realize there's no way I can change the world from here like that probably weighs on them, that that's probably burnout. You probably get burnout. Yes,

Mark 53:47
oh yes, yes, yes, absolutely. You want to. You come because you want to save the world, and then you realize you can't even save the 20 something that are in front of you,

Scott Benner 53:57
and 15 of them don't want to be saved, by the way, yeah, right, yeah.

Mark 54:01
It makes you, it makes you reflect on what you you know, how can you serve that same purpose, and are you gonna be able to fulfill that, you know, doing what you're doing?

Scott Benner 54:09
It's interesting because you're describing, if you've heard any of like, kind of the Grand Rounds and cold wind stuff I've been doing this year where we basically, there's been a number of doctors who have said, look, at some point you can only say something to somebody so many times before you start thinking they're not going to listen to me. And you can see how it like, drags them down. And now I'm hearing that in this conversation about teaching, and I so I think it's not about the it's not about the specific job you're trying to do. I think it's just, again, it's just a human thing. You know what I mean? Like, like, you can't ask somebody to beat their head against the wall forever and expect that they're gonna willfully smash it into the wall forever. And, yeah, you know. And so is that not again, the problem of the person on the other side, whether it's the patient or the student. Or the family, or, you know, whatever, like, if you're not receptive to what's being given to you, you're just taking the ass out of the person who's trying to help you, and then at some point they're going to give up, and then you can't go, well, it's their fault. They didn't help me. Like, you know, yeah, yeah. A tough, a tough circle that I think we get caught in all the time. Yeah, and I think if we sat back and thoughtfully went through a lot of other parts of society and life, I certainly think we would see that happening over and over again.

Mark 55:32
It's as simple as just identifying the fact that I'm not perfect, and if I'm this, I always say this, if I'm the smartest person in the room, that's a problem. You know, I want to surround myself people with people who are smarter than me and who can, who I can learn from. And if I'm, if I'm closed off and refusing to take input and learn from the people that are around me, whether it's through education or through medical situations or whatever, then what's, what's the point? Like, I'm not, you know, that's your are you so that egotistical? Are you that self centered, that you think that you have nothing to gain from from others? And I just, I think, I think that's something that's helped driven me, is just identifying that I want to, I want to be a sponge and just soak in as much as I can for the people around me, whether it's type one diabetes or teaching or fitness or mental health, you know, whatever.

Scott Benner 56:28
I don't know if this is going to feel one to one at first, but when I my first real girlfriend, somebody who I dated for a stretch of time, she came from a family that was messed up, and my parents were divorced, and so I remember having this conversation one point when I said to her, I don't know really how to be a good like partner in this because I have no like, no experience seeing it firsthand, I said, but I think if we started with I'll put you first, and you put me first, and then we'll see. Like, I think if I have your best interest at heart, you have mine, we should probably do better. Do you know what I mean? And like, that's it's where we started, because we were young and we didn't know what we were doing, and neither of us had a good example. And so I still, I think that about this, about, like, life and and working and society, like, if, if you just realize that you're a small piece of a big thing that won't work as well without you, I'll put it first. And I don't mean you know that the first 90% of my effort goes out to society and, like, I don't care about myself, just when you're making decisions, you know, start there, like, just start with the greater good, and then, you know, get to you, I don't know, 10%

Mark 57:53
later, part of contributing to the to the bigger picture, sometimes, is just as simple as doing, doing your part. Yeah. I mean, you think about any sports team, and how many times do you see the pregame speech and the captain or the coach, it's just like, do your part, do your role, do your part, and the team will come together. Yeah,

Scott Benner 58:12
I've never seen the right guard of a football team interviewed once in my entire life. But you know, they got through a whole game and nobody got sacked on that side, or they ran through that hole. No problem. All day, I've never seen anybody put the right guard on television and go, Yo, man, you were blowing holes open left and right. Yeah. VP, yeah, yeah, you're gonna, you want to go to Disney World, baby? It's you. Yeah. No, they're gonna give it to the guy that ran through the hole you made and and that has to be okay to some degree. You know what I mean, like, if you're going to be a good right guard, you have to know. No one's going to know my name or give a crap about what I do. I'm just going to do this thing quietly, and if I do it, well, I get to keep doing it.

Mark 58:50
Everybody wants to be the quarterback, yeah, but not everybody can be the quarterback, unfortunately. Well,

Scott Benner 58:55
no, almost nobody can. Actually, some of the quarterbacks can. That's how hard it is, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know what we've decided here today, Mark, but I think we've done it well. And I'm going to ask if there's anything we haven't talked about, and I did not answer you, and I did not want, I didn't mean to not answer you. I've been listening to Howard Stern since I was a sophomore in high school. Okay? He came to New York. He was in New York in the 80s, right? And then he expanded into Philadelphia, and I used to, I saved up to buy a Walkman that had an FM receiver in it, and I would walk out my front door in the morning, put on my little metal strap with the two foam things on my ears, and I would, I'd listen to Howard Stern on the bus walking into school as long as I could every day, we would set up double sided cassette tapes to record as much of the show as we could so we could listen to it in the afternoon. Noon. I was at the de Bella funeral in Philadelphia when John de Bell, when John de Bella fell out of number one. I was at his first book signing in Manhattan. I've met Artie Lang. I once flew in a private plane from Philadelphia to upstate New York with stuttering John

Mark 1:00:20
thanks. He's in Buffalo, right?

Scott Benner 1:00:24
So do you want to know how that happened? Before we go, I do want to know that my buddy worked at a little private airfield in Northeast Philadelphia. We were all hanging out one night after midnight at a movie theater where all my friends worked and where I met my wife, and guy comes up screaming up in his car, and he's like, Yo, you guys want to meet stuttering John from the Howard Stern Show. He's going to fly out of the the airport tonight, and we could, we could meet him. And I was like, I'll do that. So it's like, one o'clock in the morning. We drive to the airfield. We're waiting in the office. This car pulls up, and John Melendez, who most people aren't going to know, was eventually the, I mean, I think he was the announcer on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno for a little while. And he comes up, he had been playing in a band in Philly somewhere. Howard Stern was in the middle of a radio stunt where he was running for Governor of New York. Yeah, and he could have won, probably, he was polling really well, right? Yeah. And so he was going to announce his I know there was a big announcement, I think in Buffalo, right? Is that right? Buffalo? I

Mark 1:01:32
think so maybe.

Scott Benner 1:01:33
Okay. So anyway, John and his friends show up. We chat him up for a little bit. It's two o'clock in the morning at this point, and we actually wander out on the tarmac with him, and we're still talking to him, and he goes up. It's a twin prop plane, like, I want to tell you, it's like a it was like the pilot, the co pilot, and four seats, okay? And so we climb up, and he climbs up on the plane. He turns back to his buddy and realizes that his buddy is not getting on the plane with him. He goes, Yo, man, what are you doing? He goes, doing? He goes, I can't go with you. I have to go back to the gig and clean up. And John goes, I don't want to fly on this plane by myself. And he looks me in the face, and he goes, you want to come with me? And I went, yup. And so I just I walked away from my friends. I was like, five or six of my friends with me, my best friend in the world, Mike and some other guys I'm very close with. I didn't even think for a second about them. I was like, you guys can compound sand. I'm doing this, right? So, like, I start walking forward, and I look at my friend, Mike and Brian, and they look like puppies. And I said, Can I bring some guys with me? And he looks at the pilot, he goes, can we how many people can we put on this plane? He goes, you can bring that guy in one more. And I did turn around and pick somebody. I picked my friend Mike, and we get up on the plane and we're just chatting, and he's, like, I really appreciate it guys. Like, I'm nervous to fly by myself. Blah, blah. He goes, You can hang out when we get there if you want. Or I can. I'll have the pilot bring you back. Like, I didn't even have that much thought when I got on the plane, like, how am I gonna get home? Like, oh yeah. Didn't even think about it. And so, you know, I'm about 19 years old at that point, and I led a fairly sheltered life. I grew up pretty broke. So that's important, because as we're taxiing down the runway at 230 in the morning with stuttering John and some guy flying a plane, I don't know, the plane that feels like a goddamn car with a propeller on it, and it's getting ready to lift off the ground. My buddy looks at me, and he goes, you've never been on a plane before. And I went, oh my god, I haven't. And John goes, what I said, I've never flown before. And then the plane just picks up off the ground and goes. And then we talked about the show and music and stuff for, I don't know, maybe two hours for the flight. And we landed at four o'clock. The pilot's like, I gotta go to the bathroom before we go back. And that's when me and my friend were like, what do we do? And John goes, Listen, you can sleep on my hotel room floor if you want, but I don't know how you're gonna get home. And we were like, and the pilot's like, I gotta fly back. You can come and so we climbed back on the plane and flew home. And then we, of course, arrived at 6am our no there was no car there. So then my buddy and I walked for like two hours to get home. After that, I got home at like, 830 in the morning, and then I kept in contact with John, and I think I saw him a couple more times. I actually did spend the night in this hotel room once when he was playing a gig somewhere. And anyway, that's, that's my stuttering John story. I'm

Mark 1:04:37
pretty floor that stuttering John as a private jet, or I was able to get access to a private

Scott Benner 1:04:41
plane. Yeah, I'm assuming the show like they wanted him there. So I'm so assuming the show paid for it to get him there.

Mark 1:04:47
I so my quick two cents about Howard Stern. I mean, obviously all the antics and everything is hilarious, and it makes for great listening. But I I think. In our generation. He is one of, if not the best interviewer. And I don't know how many people that he has in the show. I think you know, one example for me is and for whatever reason, just because I'm an idiot, like Lady Gaga, I never liked Lady Gaga. I don't know why. You know, she's phenomenal. He has her on the show in, I don't know what the first time was, 2018 maybe, and I fell in love with her because of just the way that he, he conducts the interviews and pulls out the information about these people and gets down to their core and makes them vulnerable. And you know, beyond her, how many other people I've listened to him interview, and it's like, holy, I didn't know that about this person. Or, you know, he had during the election or after the election. He had Hillary Clinton on and and just to hear about her story, and whether you support her, don't support her, like or don't like her, but you have to appreciate her as a person, interesting

Scott Benner 1:05:50
story. Yeah, so Mark, can I tell you something that's there's a couple of ideas in there that I employ on the podcast. Yeah, I so mimic what you're saying that I can tell you that I know that Lady Gaga sang a song called I Am My hair during that interview, and I remember she started singing. I thought, What the hell are we doing right now? I still like that song. I don't know if the song's any good. What I know is, is that he introduced me to ideas from her head that I would not have gotten anywhere else. And I will tell you that you and I started talking before we were recording, and you said something about, like, you know, I appreciate you having me on. Like, a lot of these podcasts won't have you on unless you have, like, some big social media following. And I said, I prefer people who have no like, like, even once about that, because I like to talk to regular people, because I think they're more forthcoming, I think they're honest and they're not guarded, and all of these other things, and everyone's story, the part I didn't say to you back then is I think everyone's story is incredibly interesting, and the reason I know that is because in the 1980s I heard Howard Stern interview a porn star, and never once asked her about porn. And, like, just talk to her about her life and and that's kind of how I do this. Like I lead with the idea that you all have something really incredible, but you don't even know what it is like, you need me to, like, lead you through it so that you can let out the parts that are interesting. Because if you ask people about themselves, they say the same banal over and over again that nobody cares about, because that's how they see themselves, but they don't see the part that I see. And so, like, I think that that's why, that's how I do it. And if I'm going to be honest, I learned that from Howard Stern like that everybody has a story and it's interesting. I

Mark 1:07:46
mean, I think that's wonderful, I think, and I think your guests will appreciate that too, because, you know, just again, from my experience today, and you know, when I listen to it's it's important people want to feel valued, and that's also what makes a great content, is when people feel comfortable enough to open up and share, and you hit the nail on the head is that everybody has a story. Some are some might be much more fascinating than others, but everybody's story is important, and everybody needs an opportunity or an outlet to tell it, and you never know what might come from it, and you never know also who might resonate with it. That's

Scott Benner 1:08:19
the most important part. Like, it's nice for you to tell the story, but it's the people who pick up the tidbits on the other side that's important. And it doesn't matter if I agree with you or I don't agree with you, you would never know. While I was talking to you, you just you mentioned your experience listening to Hillary Clinton be interviewed. I have an opinion about that. I'm not it's not important. Like, you know what I mean? Like, my opinion, one way or the other is not important. It's, you know, it's, I mean, I could hear some like, you know, in your conversation today, there were some like, politically, like, marked things you were saying. But I didn't care where you got the idea from. I cared about the concept behind the idea. And also,

Mark 1:08:57
Scott, and if I, you know, I don't, I don't know you that well. But if I could make an assumption too, is that you and I, if you know, if you and I went to a bar and had a drink, we don't have to agree and and I think that that's another piece that we're missing, is that it doesn't matter if we agree. But can we have a discourse about it? Yeah, can we have a conversation about it? It doesn't have to be not everything has to be so volatile. I would find

Scott Benner 1:09:19
it more interesting if we didn't agree. Honestly, yeah,

Mark 1:09:22
let's have a conversation. Let's talk about why you feel that way. Let's but, and that's what our country was, was based on. And I wish more people would be willing to have that conversation. Have a conversation even

Scott Benner 1:09:33
when I end up doing the the stuff with Erica that I mentioned earlier. It's mainly about me trying to figure out how people's minds work. Yeah, like, that's the part I find fascinating. Even, like, moderating the Facebook group, like, like, I like that at this point I can tell which way something's gonna go, like, like, like, it's interesting how people fall into lanes and they don't know it. They think they're being very unique, and they and, and I'm like, oh, no, this is. Gonna happen, and then that's gonna happen, and then this is gonna like, I had a woman yell at me the other day online, and so she was being very unpleasant to people on Facebook, and let's call her Karen. Well, he called her Karen. I might call her something else, but she's being very unpleasant. She had a particular point of view, which I didn't I didn't agree or disagree with. It didn't matter to me, like she could have gotten out her point of view without being horrible to people, right? Yeah, so I removed her comments because they were horrible, not because of the content, not because of their their opinion. And so I hope that people can take me at my word. I don't. I didn't care what her opinion was or her perspective was. I cared that she wasn't being kind to people. I took it out. Well, in my mind, I was like, I'm going to get a direct message from this woman in 5432, here it comes, just because blah blah, blah and blah blah, and I'm not going to, like, sit by while you, like, push this liberal agenda. And I'm like, I'm like, All right, here we go. Like, I don't have it. Here's the agenda I have, lady, I want everybody to be nice to each other, yep, just be that hard be nice and have your incredibly conservative opinion about this, and that's fine. Or listen in getting away from that, go rant and rave at people about how great it is to eat Twinkies, or how great it is to not eat any carbs or anywhere in between. Like, I don't care, just be nice about it. Yep, right? Like, and I have, I have a thread I have to go back and look at after I'm done with you here where a woman is not being nice about it, and I'm gonna have to say, Hey, listen, you need to be kinder, and then 54321, Mark, she's going to do exactly what the last person did. She's going to send a nasty message and suggest that I don't agree with her, and that's why I'm doing this. And then I'm going to give her back a very reasonable response, that she will ignore every reasonable aspect of it, and then call me names and then leave the group. It happens every time it happens.

Mark 1:12:04
And honestly, in my opinion, good riddance, yeah, but, but

Scott Benner 1:12:08
the point is is, like, I don't have an opinion about you, like, just be a cool person and have your opinion. It's great. Like, it's fine. But my point is that the next five steps they take are always the same, yeah, and it's always in the same order. And then every once in a while, I get a save at the end where they'll go, You know what? I don't know why I'm doing this. I'm so sorry. And like, please, I'll, you know, I'd like to forget this happen. Yeah, those people are never a problem again, yeah? But like, if I read to you, like, the horrible things that this person said to me the other night, like, like, it went from like, and you can go back to their posts. Oh my god, this podcast is amazing. It saved my life. This helped me. That helped me. My a one sees better, my kids healthier. Blah blah blah, blah, blah, blah blah. This thing is Mecca for me, blah blah blah. And then five seconds after I disagree with you, you're a asshole, Scott, and you're blah, blah, blah, and you're, then I'm like, oh, which is it, did I save your life? You die? Yeah. Oh, my God, oh, very close. Mark, like, you know, like, like, so which is it, did I save your life, or am I a prick, like, you know, like, and by the way, if I saved your life, who cares if I disagreed with your point? Which, by the way, which, by the way, Mark, I didn't the irony is, agreed with her.

Mark 1:13:26
It's be it's people can't communicate and people can't

Scott Benner 1:13:35
think thinking is hard. Mark,

Mark 1:13:37
thinking is hard, and thinking for yourself is hard, and having a unique opinion is is difficult, and it's much easier, as you said before. It's much easier to let other people lead and and go along with the loud crowd than it is to say, You know what, I don't necessarily agree with one one piece. And I'm going to just tell you why. The

Scott Benner 1:13:58
point here, in case she's hate listening and still listens? Is that?

Mark 1:14:01
Oh, she, oh, she 100% is, yeah, there's a lot. I he might not be listening to get to my episode, but she's 100% still listen. Yeah, there's,

Scott Benner 1:14:10
there's just a few hate listeners. That's fine. I'll take your downloads. The point is, is that I agreed with her, like, personally, I agreed with her, but as the moderator, I can't let her be unkind to people while she's making her point. And also, those people have a point, which, if you thought about, you could find a way to agree with also, because it's not a black or white situation that we were talking about, and there's a lot of gray in it. But if you ask me, personally, I lean towards the person who was calling me all kinds of names, hoping that I exploded, and, you know, said I was pushing a liberal agenda. And by the way, I have a lot of liberal leanings. You're a teacher. I'm sure you do too.

Speaker 1 1:14:52
I also have, like, a lot of conservative ideas. And I have ideas all over the place. If you talk to me, I'd be a quite. Complex little person, which I think most people are, yeah, but there she was. She's like, I know what you're doing. I'm like, I don't know what voice in your head you're

Scott Benner 1:15:07
arguing with, but it's not me. I just happen to be the focus of it at the moment. So anyway, between you and me, Mark and no one else, I think she's out of her fcking mind.

Mark 1:15:19
I'll bet I'll make sure that tell anybody

Scott Benner 1:15:21
I think she's crazy. Don't

Mark 1:15:23
worry. You don't have to worry about anybody.

Scott Benner 1:15:26
She's either nuts or she was drunk. I don't know which one it is. I don't actually care.

Mark 1:15:29
I always, I always wish to, like, I wish I had that much time to, I mean, I don't have, I barely have enough time to give myself a shot of insulin, let alone sit and just troll you on a Facebook thread. Like, holy, if you're if you're that bored, go get another job. That's

Scott Benner 1:15:47
the other thing. Guess what? A lot of people need employees. Oh, Mark, that's the other thing.

Speaker 1 1:15:53
It's quarter or 12 at night, and I'm like, I just want to go to bed like I don't I, but I can't let this fester overnight, because I can tell her crazy doesn't sleep. So I'm like, she's going to be up all night picking at these people. And I can't wake up in the morning to a bloodbath of people who, by the way, just want to know how to pre bolus their goddamn insulin, aren't looking to have some existential conversation with her. And whatever it is she learned on whatever news organization she listens to, or person at work that she listens to, or whatever she got her ideas from. Like, I can't let that turn into that. And by the way, this is a very infrequent I'm being genuine. Like, this happens very infrequently on my Facebook group, because mostly people know I'm not up for these stuff, you know?

Scott Benner 1:16:36
I mean, like, I'm not okay with this. But it's fascinating how many times people have told me you don't have to, you know, blah blah blah, just because you disagree with me and I want to respond back and go, No, you idiot, I do agree with you. You're just an asshole that I can't do that. So I just go, you know, I tell my down the story, down the middle, like I'm doing this to protect everybody. Everybody has an opinion. Blah blah blah, you know, people need to feel safe while they're talking, etc. People come here for community not to be told that they're wrong. You know, you were very unkind in the end. You just, you broke rule number one of the group. You just, you weren't kind when you did this. It

Mark 1:17:13
takes minimal effort to just say, you know, at the end of the day, I'm gonna walk away from this conversation and know that I treated that person the way they expected it or deserve to be treated. Yeah, not important enough to make somebody else feel belittled or like shit. It's fascinating

Scott Benner 1:17:31
when people feel like they're saving the world three posters at a time. I'm like, you know, if you put this much effort into something that could actually help your idea, you might actually get somewhere, but you're trying to talk Marcy, me and three other people into it. I made up that name, you know what? I mean? Like, what? Then again. And have you ever ranted at someone online and had them go, Oh, my God, thank you. You've changed my mind.

Mark 1:17:56
I feel enlightened. Yeah. Oh, wow. Oh, thank

Scott Benner 1:17:59
you so much. Yeah, before I thought this, but now I see that you're right. I don't know. I don't know why everybody's so dumb sometimes. No,

Mark 1:18:06
I gotta make sure I join that group, because it sounds like there's some great things happening, as well as some good entertainment. My Facebook group is fantastic. It's got 50,000 people in it. Okay? I might already be a part of it. If I'm not, I'll definitely make sure I join Well,

Scott Benner 1:18:21
listen, I'm glad we ran out of time here. I would tell you about the Etsy seller who couldn't figure out how to send the thing to me now and now suddenly isn't responding anymore to my notes.

Mark 1:18:31
We'll save that for next time. Oh, yeah, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:18:32
don't worry. She's gonna I, you know, oh, it's on its way. It's blah, blah, blah. Then, you know, the the UPS the post office is like, I don't know where this package is. Like, it's somewhere, but it's going, Yeah, we don't say it. And, you know, like, I reach out to her, and I'm like, all of a sudden, she don't know how the messaging function works anymore in Etsy. She forgot how to message me back, but

Mark 1:18:54
she can, but she can accept your payment. I

Scott Benner 1:18:58
do think she's going to take my $100 and do do whatever she wants with it. Yeah, unbelievable. And she has something I really want, which she it's not her fault that it's not coming. But like, as soon as it turned into a thing, like, she suddenly, like, became non responsive about it, oh, off the face of the earth. Yeah. Everybody sucks, except for you and me. Mark, we're terrific. Okay, we're cool. All right, I'm still calling this one five large firemen, or whatever you said,

Mark 1:19:24
Five, five giant, five giant firemen, five giant firemen. And in the moment they seemed like like giants. I

Scott Benner 1:19:31
might say five giant firemen in my bed, but that seems very long. That's

Mark 1:19:35
it's more it's more descriptive, though it really is. All right, I'll

Scott Benner 1:19:38
figure it out. Mark, thanks. Hold on one second for me, a huge thank you to one of today's sponsors, GVO glucagon. Find out more about G vo hypo pen at gvoke glucagon.com, forward slash juice box. You spell that, G, V, O, k, e, g, l, u. C, A, G, o, n.com, forward slash juicebox, I want to thank the Eversense CGM for sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast. Learn more about its implantable sensor, smart transmitter and terrific mobile application at Eversense cgm.com/juicebox. Get the only implantable sensor for long term wear. Get ever sense the conversation you just enjoyed was brought to you by us. Med, us. Med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, get started today and get your supplies from us. Med, okay, well, here we are at the end of the episode, you're still with me. Thank you. I really do appreciate that. What else could you do for me? Uh, why don't you tell a friend about the show or leave a five star review? Maybe you could make sure you're following or subscribed in your podcast app, go to YouTube and follow me, or Instagram. Tiktok. Oh gosh, here's one. Make sure you're following the podcast in the private Facebook group as well as the public Facebook page you don't want to miss. Please do not know about the private group. You have to join the private group as of this recording, it has 51,000 members in it. They're active, talking about diabetes, whatever you need to know there's a conversation happening in there right now, and I'm there all the time. Tag me. I'll say, hi, 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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