Ep.241 Find Your Peace With Weslea O'Connor

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Texas. Damn, son. Where'd you find this? Go on, make it happen. And now here's Steve and Michelle.

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Welcome to Mallet and Michelle. I'm Michelle and this is Steve. And school is starting. Parents are celebrating, and teachers are already thinking of Thanksgiving. Back to school's Christmas break. Back to school zones are enforced right now, so watch out.

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Forthcoming. Hey, uh, wanted to remind everybody that we are starting a new thing. We're releasing our episodes early on you to on our YouTube channel, Malad and Michelle Podcast. And if you want a sneak peek at uh the guests we've had on this week, that episode will be out Monday, and then we'll release on all the other platforms, Spotify and Apple Podcast, on Tuesdays.

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That is true. Well, today our guest today. Our guest today is Wesley O'Connor, a writer, speaker, and stage three lymphoma survivor who turned one of the hardest chapters in her life into the Survivor's Edit, a space for honest conversations about cancer, grief, resilience, and what happens when everyone else thinks the hard part is over. She's thoughtful, funny, refreshingly real, and we're so glad to have her with us today.

SPEAKER_03 3:06

Welcome to the show, Wesley. Thank you so much for having me here today.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

We I met you uh when you were in real estate a few years ago. Yeah, a few years back. You you broke the mold. You got out of that.

SPEAKER_03 3:17

I know you know, I have this thing where every few years I'm like, you know what, time for a career change.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Yeah. I have that I have that thought sometimes too. But of course, I don't have that. I'm being held hostage. Take me with you. Blink twice if you need help. Well, you just right before we started recording, you announced that uh that you just came out of two and a half years of cancer treatment. So completely. Yeah, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_03 3:43

About two weeks ago Friday, two, yeah, two weeks ago Friday was my final treatment. So I am free and I'm gonna knock on wood. Knock on wood is done forever.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

So wow, good for you. So it uh it was I can't remember what kind of cancer. Lymphoma, stage three lymphoma.

SPEAKER_03 3:59

And it was an interesting way that I found out because it didn't show up in my blood tests, which I think people always think you're gonna go get these tests, and that's gonna be the first indicator. It showed up in my lymph nodes, and I had swollen lymph nodes in my neck for several years. The doctor wasn't concerned. And finally, after a few years, I brought it up to my gynecologist, and she's like, you know what, let's let's do some imaging. And it was the imaging, the ultrasound that came back that kind of clued them in, and eventually a biopsy is what told me. But my blood work never showed it.

SPEAKER_06 4:27

Aaron Powell That's interesting. That is interesting. So um the type of lymphoma that you have, would would it ever eventually show up in in a blood test?

SPEAKER_03 4:38

Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. Eventually, possibly. I don't know enough about that, but it can morph into a more aggressive mine is uh they call it indolent, is I think the world's word, so it's very slow growing. They think I may have had it for like a decade or more and just it lay was laying low. And by the time I finally got the lymph nodes in my neck showing up, it I'd had it for quite a while.

SPEAKER_06 4:56

Aaron Ross Powell Okay. Excuse my ignorance though. So what is lymphoma?

SPEAKER_03 5:01

It is evidently and this is very layman's terms because I I know that I had it, but I don't know a lot about it. It's uh blood cancer, it's in that family. So it takes over all your lymph nodes. So unlike like breast cancer or colon cancer, it can go all throughout your body. And yes, that's not good, but as long before it since it didn't get into my bone marrow, it didn't get into my uh bones, I had an easier time recovering. And thankfully I was very uh the treatment worked very well on me. I I it had the side effects, but it worked well.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

What are the treatments what is the treatment?

SPEAKER_03 5:34

I did six months of chemo and two and a half years of immunotherapy. And chemo is kind of like the guy that goes in there, he's like, everybody out, I'm gonna kill it all. And uh immunotherapy is more targeted. So I still had side effects, I still got sick from immunotherapy, but I was very f I never lost my hair on my type of chemo. I I stayed looking healthy, which is a blessing and a curse, because then you tell people you have cancer and they're like, Do you? You look pretty healthy. But that was the weird thing. All throughout, I just you don't know who's battling what because some people look very healthy even if they're not.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Yeah, that's a big lesson in life, isn't it? Because you look at somebody and you judge them. Maybe they're walking funny or they're, you know, doing a five-pound weight at the gym and you don't know what's going through. Yeah. You have no idea until you talk to them.

SPEAKER_06 6:18

The type of cancer that you have, it I saw in one of your essays that it's a type of cancer that can be treated but not cured. Not cured. Okay. So how do you fully live with that kind of knowledge knowing that it could just kind of come back?

SPEAKER_03 6:30

It's it's weird. Every doctor's appointment becomes a little bit anxiety-inducing now. I've been really trying, you know, it's one of those things I never thought I'd be like a big meditator and a big like, you gotta just stay positive person, but I've become that. And you have to realize that all we have is right now. Um, if it comes back, I I know what to expect now. I've been through that. Um, I've also watched people pass away. I lost a friend from this exact type of cancer. And it's interesting because he went through all the same treatments that I did and his body just reacted differently. I think what it has given me is the ability to know that this moment is the most important one. So if I have something I want to do, I don't want to put it off. I want to live right now.

SPEAKER_05 7:13

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

So that's probably a blessing that came out of this terrible thing that happened to you is to to really appreciate the data that you've been given every day.

SPEAKER_03 7:21

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: 100%. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

People don't get to that point. I want to talk about the the uh process of you kind of discovering you had this issue and then finally somebody calling you or sitting you down in the office and saying, Wesley, you have cancer. What was that like?

SPEAKER_03 7:36

It's uh well, it was really weird. I f it started around the holidays that I went in for my annual and my gyne started doing all the work to get there. So it went from a ultrasound to an MRI to a biopsy, and all of that took about six weeks.

SPEAKER_05 7:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 7:51

And it's a long six weeks because you're spending a lot of time waiting. Um after the biopsy, the biopsy was December 8th, 2023. It's weird you remember these dates because they're just mile markers. And then December 15th, I was in Dallas for work. Patrick had been up there, we were moving some stuff from the Dallas office back down to Austin, and he left early because my doctor's office has told me you're not gonna hear anything until next week. I about an hour after he left, we got the call. And I was sitting in the bathroom, I'm on the toilet, I'm peeing. And the phone rings, and it's one of those calls, you're like, dang it, this is so inner it's not a good time, but I gotta take it. And they tell you you have cancer on the phone, which I don't know. I kind of thought to be called into the office. They just Yeah, she said it's lymphoma. I'm like, okay. And you're in shock. I'm like, okay, lymphoma.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Was this your doctor or was this?

SPEAKER_03 8:39

It's my gynecologist. She was great. She was very communicative. She picked up the phone, she called us after hours, weekends. She was wonderful. And so I'm trying to process everything. And I worked at a physician's office at the time, and the doctor I worked with came into the restroom, which we never ended up timing her bathroom breaks up perfectly. But I just kind of put it on speaker and let her listen. And then I'm like, what what does that mean? And uh I think I was in shock for the better part of a few weeks. I'm like, oh sh they're wrong. They're gonna they'll call me back and realize that they got something messed up. I was in an oncologist's office that following Monday getting treatment options, and then shortly after I did a self-referral to MD Anderson for a second opinion.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Did you did you uh so somebody recommend you get a second opinion or did you decide that you really wanted to make sure two doctors had told you the same thing?

SPEAKER_03 9:30

I wanted to make sure and I wanted to make sure that the treatment was in line with each other because chemo sounded-I mean, obviously it's aggressive, and if I didn't have to do that, I wanted to find out. But my cancer is very it's a common one, which is good because it's well researched. So the treatment protocol that MD Anderson gave me was exactly the same as Texas oncology, which gave me peace of mind.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Aaron Powell And did you go w uh with treatment with Texas Oncology or did you stay at MD Anderson?

SPEAKER_03 9:57

I at the time uh I stayed here because I didn't want to make the trek to Houston for chemo all the time. Okay. Wow.

SPEAKER_06 10:03

So then so you're you're working at a physician's office right now, so you have an advocate, you're advocating for yourself, but you also have a a physician that's an advocate and a friend for you to kind of kind of help walk you through.

SPEAKER_03 10:15

Yes, but she was plastic surgeon.

SPEAKER_06 10:16

Yes, very different. Yeah. And so now you are at a point in your life where you've created the survivor's edit. Yes. And through all of that, which is which is your website and it's kind of your new branding of of who you are, and you've kind of digested everything that you've gone through. And you're kind of you're creating this roadmap for people who don't have to go through the same thing that you did. And one of them I which I was really interested in, I want you to expand on, was this 30-day roadmap. But first, before we talk about that, why did you choose the name Survivors Edit? What's the story behind that?

SPEAKER_03 10:54

Because your life gets edited when you survive something. There's sort of a pause point. There everyone thinks that you get through something and there's this moment of applause and you end, but you're not. Everything's different than who you were before, whether it's a death in the family. You're not the same person after that death as you were before, whether it's cancer. So there's this moment of redefinition after everything we survive. Divorce, any I mean, you name it, we're all surviving something.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Yeah. How do you feel when you talk to somebody that's younger that thinks they have their whole life all planned out and figured out and they know where they're going to be 20 years from now? Now that you've gone through all these things, how do you feel when you hear somebody talking about their life like that?

SPEAKER_03 11:34

Aaron Powell I finally understand why they say youth is wasted on the young.

unknown 11:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

You know when I was just reading an article the other day, and they were saying that 20, 20 and early 30-year-olds are they're so strong in their belief that they are in control of their life. And then as you get older, they think we're all stupid because we're like, hey, that's not how life goes. Yeah. But they are they're almost idiots in how much they believe in that they are in control of everything that happens, and you discovered that's not true on any level.

SPEAKER_03 12:03

Yeah. I mean, I've discovered it several times over, and I think every time I learn it, I remember how humbling it is. But I mean, how wonderful to live in a world where you haven't yet experienced that. So soak it up while you can, and and we all get there at some point.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Yeah, it's true. It's true. I guess uh uh that's the that's the way to look at it is it's sort of ignorance is bliss, and when you're young and you know, you get the whole world to look forward to.

SPEAKER_06 12:30

So maybe, maybe. So what you're doing is you are writing a series of essays. It's almost like a a diary of sort, but you're writing it up to the to the entire world. Yeah. Is there a topic that's really I guess harder for you to write about or be not not necessarily be honest about, but just be really open and vulnerable about? Because I've I've read several of them, probably, probably a lot of them, because I've known you for several years. And there was one story that really touched my life or my my life, my my heart was a story that you talked about being sexually harassed at at work.

SPEAKER_03 13:07

Yes. And it was it was closer to sexual assault. But yes, that was the hardest one to write because it was a thing I'd never really talked openly about. And it was one of the reasons I left the music industry. And I didn't have any support. It was before me too. So putting it out there, I almost felt like shaky. And you wrote about this. I did write about it. And I I mean I mean, I maintain everybody's privacy. I don't I didn't uh move forward with anything, so I'm not gonna do so now. But I didn't really have support from my bosses at work and the person who was doing it, um, he told me, well, this is a perfect situation because I I make a lot of money for these people. So who are they gonna believe? Me or you. And that's a terrible situation to be put in.

SPEAKER_06 13:50

I I 100% believe that because working in the in the industry as well, that was what made me leave the industry. And now I'm I'm older, I'm wiser, and I don't put up with anybody's shit. Same. And if you want to come at me and you wanna if I if I try it, I've had my own voice now. Right. And so I'm like, okay, go go right ahead.

SPEAKER_03 14:10

I think that's one of my favorite things about getting older is you find your voice and you find your non-negotiables and you stand in your truth a lot easier than you did when you were young. That's the thing I worry about for the younger generation. You don't have some of the younger people don't have that way to say, back up.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:28

Get away from me. This is wrong.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Yeah. And well, and that's been proven over and over because most of the time that somebody that's taken advantage of in a workplace environment, they're younger. It's very rarely somebody that's taken.

SPEAKER_06 14:39

Well, yeah, because it it's it's also a position of power. Somebody has a and and you're, you know, a 20-something year old and you're trying to find your way, and you're like, oh, am I not supposed to make waves? I've experienced this secondhand through my daughter. You know, she's in the aesthetics industry and she works with all these high-dollar med spas and plastic surgeons all over the world. And when she goes to conferences, I've gone to conferences with her, and it's like they they act like fools. They do. Kendall goes to bed at 10 o'clock. She's like, I'm not dealing with that. I'm not gonna go to bed. I've got a family, I've got, you know, I've got a little girl, I've got a husband. I'm not dealing with that.

SPEAKER_03 15:14

I'm not here to to party anymore. I just want to go to bed. I and I think that's the thing. Uh, you know, you don't realize what kind of situations you're putting yourself in. But this particular situation, it it happened broad daylight, middle of the day, before before the show that this person had that day. And so it was it's weird. I and I also think there's just this ego thing where sometimes if you don't get told no enough in life, it it affects you negatively.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

That's freaking scary, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 15:41

It is scary.

SPEAKER_06 15:42

It is, I think also in you know, in that in that story, it's gotta be hard. I have two boys also, and it the experiences that I went through helped me shape how I raised my boys. I bet they did. And it was like, you've gotta be so careful about respectful, but how how you are when you're around women and how you are and how that perception is. And I think both of my boys had done a really good job of that.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

But you know what? Uh uh, as a man, uh like when we go to DSE things, uh, you know, we're a lot of it's uh dripping springs. Everybody's real huggy, you know. We see each other, it's huggy. And uh I do a lot of side hugs. I don't blame I don't want anybody to say, hey, you know, they came in a little hard on that hug. I you know, it's uh you have to be cautious also. I want to be respectful of the relationship, but you also have to be cautious. I agree.

SPEAKER_03 16:40

It's good that you think about that because I can't tell you, and I'm sure you've experienced this too, how many men don't even think about it and they just come and stick their hand right in the small of your back. And that's a very intimate gesture, and not everyone should be allowed to do that. Like that's that's where my husband touches me, not some random agreed.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Yeah. When we're doing our pictures, I always have my hand on the because you know we're we have our arms around each other, I always put my fist on the back because I don't know. Yeah, that makes sense. I feel like that is a more intimate thing. I don't want to be accused of anything wrong.

SPEAKER_06 17:08

You know, what's funny is even when we have our guest and we take our our photographs with our guests, we always say, Is it okay if we're friendly? And I love that.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

So we have the guest in front of in in the middle, and Steve and I think that was something I discovered early on because we had a guest on, and I went to go put my arm around her, and I instantly felt that she wasn't comfortable with that. And so I thought, oh, I need to start out. That was like episode 15 or something. And you never know people's history. No, I agreed. Yeah, you know, I I want to respect everybody's how how comfortable they are with that. I don't want to get within a place where somebody feels uncomfortable around us.

SPEAKER_06 17:42

Well, a lot of times Steve and I will have our arms on each other in the back. Okay, so going down that kind of little rabbit hole, and so tell me about this 30-day roadmap that you've kind of created and and what you've learned.

SPEAKER_03 17:56

I'm getting ready to uh drop it. I'm gonna do a whole course, and I think it'll be a years-long evolution to get everything together. But this 30-day roadmap, I think that's the most confusing time for a person who's recently been diagnosed with cancer. Your world is rocked, you're still in shock to some extent. I didn't also have children, but many of the women that I know that have gone through cancer are trying to navigate their family as well, and that doesn't go on hold just because your life has been rocked. That's right. So like I didn't know that you could self-refer to MD Anderson. You can call MD Anderson and make a referral yourself.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

So many people don't know that. You don't have to have your primary care send a referral. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 18:36

And often it depends on insurance, but often your insurance will cover a second opinion because they also want you to have that peace of mind. So I think there's just things that you're also too overwhelmed to look into. And it won't be long. This 30-day roadmap will just be maybe 10 pages of things for like questions to ask your doctor. Write down your supplements on this piece of paper, take it with you, because some of those supplements are blood thinners. You don't want to be on a blood thinner before you're going to get your port inserted. You don't want to be on a blood thinner when you're in chemo. You know, there's there's things that you don't think about because they've just been a part of your life that you need to think about once that health scare happens.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

If somebody's listening right now and they're going, they've just started this journey. What's the one thing you would tell them if they were standing here in the room right now?

SPEAKER_03 19:20

Be kind to yourself. It's so easy to be like, what could I have done differently? Did I bring this on myself? Oh my gosh, I've got to stop, stop, and just like take moments for yourself. I was so thankful. I had a great support system. And I I know not everybody does, but my husband picked up the grocery shopping immediately. Like, if your immune system is compromised, lean on your friends. Don't be scared to ask questions. You're not an inconvenience because this happened to you. And I was terrible at asking for help before this. And thankfully, the friends that I have were like, I'm not, I'm not asking if you want help. I'm telling you, I'm giving you help.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Yeah, that's a good friend. It is. Yeah, I I've struggled with that too. People will say, Yeah, yeah, you know, if you need anything, let me know. But the ones that show up and mow your lawn or bring you groceries or bring you a meal without telling you they're gonna do it, those are the true friends.

SPEAKER_03 20:07

Yeah, you just for the support systems, just make a meal and take it over. Don't ask what they want. Like you, you know your friends. Yeah. If you've seen them at sushi, just pick up sushi and take it over. Um, you know, I think just showing up is huge because some people retreat because they don't know what to say. You don't have to know what to say, just show up.

SPEAKER_06 20:28

I want to talk about Patrick's role in all of this. Um, this is your manly man, burly man, retired police officer. He was military too, right? He was not military, just police officer. Police officer. I mean, he is he is a if you look up man in the dictionary, Patrick is right next to that. And he ended up being your caretaker. Yeah. And as a caretaker myself, I know there's a lot of stress and a lot of um, I guess, uncertainty and a lot of things that you feel that are kind of out of your control. So, along with this 30-day roadmap for just somebody who is being newly diagnosed, would you consider doing something the same for a caretaker and saying, okay, because Patrick, he I'm wondering what his experience was when you told him you have this very vivid memory of you sitting on the toilet and you know, Sarah coming in and kind of working with you and hear this burly man.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

He's probably got the same story. Driving and did you just call him right away?

SPEAKER_03 21:29

I didn't. I was scared because it was pouring rain that day and he was driving a U-Haul. And so I didn't want to and I knew he was driving, so I didn't want to give him this devastating news. Well, he's driving in unsafe conditions between Dallas and Austin. You know that stretch is so sketchy. So I called my mom and dad, and my dad was uh suffering with dementia, so that was a really hard phone call. He cried, he just he he bawled like a child, and so that was really tough. And then I called Patrick's best friend and I asked him, like, Do you think I should wait? And he's Like, are you out of your mind? No. Call him. So I think when I called Patrick New, and oddly, of all the conversations, I don't remember telling him, but I do remember I also had to drive back from Dallas that night. And so that was a crazy drive. I just remember Laney Wilson kept coming on the radio that night. But when I got home, it was love like a truck. Is that what it is? It just kept coming on. Um so I pull in the driveway and he meets me in the driveway. And it was one of those moments that's like out of a movie, like the world stops, and he just wrapped me up and I just broke. And but how lucky am I that I have a person that will allow me to break and be there for me and then help me get through it? He was at all those initial doctor point doctors' appointments, and he went with me to my first chemo, and he he just, you know, he when I needed a pep talk, he was there to give it. And Patrick is a really unique person because he's not the guy that's gonna go see Tony Robbins speak, but he's just naturally knows how to give that kind of advice. And it's it's it was a good person to have in my corner.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

I think for men, the hardest thing is knowing when to give advice and knowing when to just hug and just support and listen. Yeah. Because we're all fixers. Yes. You know, like okay, I'm gonna fix this. And and uh sometimes that's not what you all need. You need just a hug. You just need something.

SPEAKER_05 23:19

You just need to shut up sometimes. No, it's hard. You ask any man.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

I I love my wife like nothing else on earth. And I if when she's in pain, I want to fix that. That's that's why I tried to do that. Sometimes that's not what she needs. She needs somebody just to listen and hold her and just be quiet.

SPEAKER_03 23:36

How long have y'all been married? Just six years. But does she has she gotten to a point where she can say, I need you to just be there? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

I'm getting pretty good at figuring that out. Uh but she will. Yeah. You don't need fixes. Just listen.

SPEAKER_06 23:48

He has an office bully that helps him. I love his office bully.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

I you know, I know when women I it always amazes me when women talk to other women, you can see that the that both of them pick up on what the other one needs. Men aren't like that.

SPEAKER_03 24:05

We don't pick up on what's ingrained in us. We learn from a young age.

SPEAKER_06 24:09

Well, so who did Patrick have to lean on?

SPEAKER_03 24:12

You know, I think his friends, our friends were just really good to us during that time. And Patrick's the guy that it's so weird to me. He's so self-sufficient in a lot of ways. But I know when he did he he has a great support system. He works out all the time. I you oh yeah, you can probably tell.

SPEAKER_06 24:28

Yeah, the mayor, the mayor of the gym. Right.

SPEAKER_03 24:30

Yeah, so he uh he has a good support system there and he kept that, and he's really I think that his physical health helps his mental health. So he kept that through the whole thing.

SPEAKER_06 24:39

Well, and that's probably him working, working through it. That's what my husband currently is doing. So he's like, today is my workout than prosper.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

I want to uh pre-Patrick, I wanna you had mentioned in your bio you had a starter marriage. I did. And so many people call that a starter marriage. We I I feel like that's uh we need to sort of start parking that and not using that term anymore because I know a lot of people they got married very early on, kind of discovered what they want in a partner, and then you know, got divorced and all the trouble that goes with that, but then met the second person, including myself. And I've never been happy. And I think that happens a lot.

SPEAKER_03 25:20

I think so too. I guess starter marriage is the wrong word. I think it was more of an exploratory word. Yeah. I learned a lot about my non-negotiables. And I also learned, I think a lot of people do it, but young people just as me as a young person, I thought if I followed this path, this is what I'm supposed to do. You graduate college, you get a job, you get married. And I realized that the get married part, I did it too fast and with the wrong person. And so it he's not a bad guy. He taught me a lot. He's happily married, he has kids. Good. Um, but Patrick was the person I was supposed to marry. Thankfully, though, the path I took brought me to him. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 25:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

Well, and I think that happens with a lot of people.

SPEAKER_06 26:00

Yeah. Mine is the starter and the intermarriage because I love that. Do you know how much training has gone involved involved in that man? I have invested so much training into him. It I poor poor Todd.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

I, you know, kudos to you. You've made something that a lot of people really have a hard time dealing with. You made it last and it's good.

SPEAKER_05 26:20

How many years? Uh 36. I love that. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Isn't it funny? It used to be a thing, like till death do us part kind of thing. You know, you get married. But the problem with that was you'd meet so many people later in life and they were freaking miserable. Yes. And they talked bad about their spouse behind their back. See, that's one thing I do not tolerate. I will not tolerate the minute.

SPEAKER_06 26:42

No, I won't. I just won't even hang around people that talk bad about their spouse. I agree.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

I lose a lot of respect when somebody comes to me and starts complaining about their spouse. I agree.

SPEAKER_03 26:51

A friend of mine says we you keep your dirty laundry in-house. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So you and there might be like one girlfriend who knows Patrick, who if I'm having a bad day, I'll be like, hey, there's the one girlfriend. But it's not like I'm gonna go out in the world and be like, ugh.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

You're not trashing this character. So it's like maybe some little thing happened, and you know you're just bouncing it off somebody else, but you're not trashing the other person.

SPEAKER_06 27:13

Well, because I feel like what you're saying out of your mouth becomes what you actually believe. You're manifesting.

SPEAKER_03 27:21

But it is uh what you focus on expands. And if all you're focusing on is the negative, your marriage can't survive that.

SPEAKER_06 27:27

And so you guys have been through in such a, you know, a you've been married, what, 10 years? 10 years in October, yeah. You've been through a lot infertility, cancer, job changes, and now apparently you're a health nut. And you're you're doing crazy things. I I I wanted to talk about this saffron and this cardamom tea that you're drinking.

SPEAKER_03 27:50

I go down these rabbit holes. I'll be like, okay, what can I do? Like, I've got a little bit of anxiety heading into this or coming out of treatment has been like I'm like, okay, I'm not going back in, so I want to make sure my health is and it's oddly being done with that has increased anxiety, which I wouldn't have thought. But saffron, since before recorded history probably, has been used to help with anxiety, with sleep, with like positive moods. And so I literally went on Amazon and bought saffron threads. They're little red, dry flowers. They're yeah, uh luckily you only need six of those little threads. Okay. And you I use two spoons and I muddle it up and I make a tea with uh fresh cardamom that I also kind of muddle up and then I add some black tea and some milk in there and some honey. Does it taste good? It does. It tastes delicious. They put cardamom in cookies and what does cardamom taste like?

SPEAKER_06 28:36

I don't know if I need to. Is it a little like liquor?

SPEAKER_03 28:38

If you no, not at all. No, if you smelled it, you'd know it. And I can't it's neat, it's kind of like vanilla bean adjacent, but not completely. But you if you smelled it, you'd be like, oh, I've had I've had cookies that have this in it.

SPEAKER_01 28:51

And when you started that, did you notice a difference pretty quickly?

SPEAKER_03 28:54

I do notice a difference pretty quickly. I don't know if it's just that I've read that it's what it is and it's this placebo effect, but uh whatever, I'll take it.

SPEAKER_01 29:02

As long as it's it doesn't matter if it works, it works.

SPEAKER_03 29:04

No, but Patrick will walk into the kitchen and he's like, what are you doing? I've got like a pot brewing. Are you kidding me? Yes, exactly. I think he thinks I've gone off the deep ass.

SPEAKER_06 29:17

He's like, it's like well, you you had another story about something about benadryl brownies or benadryl-no, that's my term, benadryl brownies. What is it? That's what I used to tell my kids. Here, Steve, it was no Benadryl and Oreos. That's what it was.

SPEAKER_03 29:32

Oh, so it when you go into treatment, they give you mainline, like into the vein, benadryl. And it's a high dose, so that you, if you have an allergic reaction, you need to get ahead of it. Now, what benadryl does when it's injected into your veins is it makes you essentially hallucinate. And it is the weirdest thing. Because for me, I was like, I'm really high. I don't like this. Like it didn't feel good. I felt like I could hear people whispering all the way across the room and it was creeping me out. So um I also started Benadryl shopping in the beginning of my chemo. So I like remembered, I didn't remember until these plants showed up, and I had ordered all these plants while I was in my Benadryl hangings. But um, the infusion room is a really cool place because you you've got people of all different walks of life, all different ages going through and stages and different diagnoses. And you make friends through that. And there was this one little old lady that would always bring Oreos and try to give them to everybody at the infusion center. And not everybody wanted her Oreos. I mean, she's got them in her hand. She's trying to hand them to people. But it was so sweet. I mean, it's so sweet because you're all going through something. Take the damn Oreo guy with the Oreo. Thank you. Yeah, exactly. I'm gonna say this one right here.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

I want to circle back a little bit. We were talking about young people and the things that they believe in. Uh uh Do you think that young people today are not prepared for the inevitable curveballs and things that come their way that change their life? And then secondary to that, you think social media is making that worse? Well, I was gonna go straight to social media.

SPEAKER_03 31:08

Yes. I feel but because it reduces this. We're sitting in a room together talking.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

That's why we do it this way.

SPEAKER_03 31:14

And I love that. There's a sense of community that we're missing that we used to have. And I didn't grow up with social media. I didn't have a cell phone until I was in college, and that was a good thing. Yeah. I didn't if you were getting bullied at school, you had home as an escape. So many people don't have that escape now because you've got these little devices that are with you all the time. So, yes, I think there is a sense of we don't the young people today aren't as well equipped as young people from a long time ago. But I'm starting to see the tides turn. Because I was just reading this thing that young, young, the new generation don't know what that is. They want flip phones, they don't want to be constantly connected.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

I've heard that too. Yeah, they think that's a bad thing. And I think they're right. Yeah, I think because it's a lot of it is, and I'm f I I feel this all the time, it's just noise. And it's just you can't you can't turn it off. You try and turn it off, and it just bombards you.

SPEAKER_06 32:06

I feel even there are adults too that feel the same way. I, you know, I was at this concert on Friday and and totally enjoying myself, just totally involved in what was going on and hanging out with my friends. And I had another friend that's just sitting there on their phone the entire time, and it's like, why did you pay to come to this concert? Like you're it's an addiction. Engage, totally. And I think I do think it's a way to not engage. I think it's a way for an introverted, extroverted person to just kind of go into their show.

SPEAKER_01 32:39

You know what's funny is like if you go to the doctor's office and there's a waiting room and there's six people in there. Well, 30 years ago, you probably would have had a conversation with the person next to you. Like, hey, you know, how you doing? How's your day going? Now you sit down and you flip out your phone, and everybody in that room is staring at that little black box. It's a shame.

SPEAKER_03 32:56

It doesn't matter the age. It used to be that it was the younger folks doing it, and now it's across ages.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

80-year-old people sitting in the doctor's office flipping on their phone. We were at a restaurant when we were uh traveling in um in Oregon, and uh there was an older couple, probably in their 70s, sitting having dinner next to us, both of them, and they weren't doing anything important. Both of them were scrolling through their phone. I thought, what a shame. That makes me sad. It does, it made me sad.

SPEAKER_06 33:21

Like that's your connection. Exactly. Well, speaking of your younger people, is there a part of your current life right now that younger Wes would be like, oh, that's pretty cool, or you'd never imagine you being involved in something like that.

SPEAKER_03 33:36

I think younger Wesley would be like, How the heck did we get there? Like there's been so many turns and changes through the years. But I think younger Wesley would be really happy that I've started writing because I've always loved writing. I've just never I'd talked about starting a blog for probably the last 20 years, and I finally did it right after Christmas. Where'd you grow up? Albuquerque, New Mexico. Oh, how'd you end up in Austin? By way of Rochester and then Nashville. Oh, wow. So radio. I was in radio. Oh, yeah. So I graduated college in Albuquerque and I moved up to Rochester, New York. Okay. I lived there for about four years, moved back to Albuquerque for a few years, got a job in the record industry, moved to Nashville, and then one of my artists married an Austin police officer. And at her wedding, I met Patrick. Oh, look at this. So then after some long distance dating, I moved here.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

That's cool. And then you s you started the survivorsedit.com. And so the is this when you started writing or have you been writing the whole time?

SPEAKER_03 34:34

I have been writing a lot, but I've been writing for myself. Like I have journal I keep journals everywhere. I I always write. But the in it was the day after Christmas, which felt significant because that had been the first day of my PET scan in 2023. I was like, it's n enough is enough. It just it's time. And so I just started publishing the things that I'd been writing. And um now I've been weekly, every Wednesday I drop a new blog. And if there's something that's particularly personal, I might do two and do a Friday edit. Um but I just also the things I write about, I've noticed like this is a topic that many cancer survivors don't talk about. But when you're going through cancer, every cell in your body is affected. And so your intimacy is affected. And that's something that people don't want to talk about. And it took me two years to get all of that figured out so that I could be in a relationship with my husband the way I'd always been. And yes, it's awkward. Yes, people don't want to hear about it, but it's something that if you don't talk about, the people who are struggling feel alone. They think it's only them.

SPEAKER_01 35:32

Yeah, I think that's super important. Uh because you drift apart if you don't talk about it. You have to under both partners have to understand what's going on. And one, the man your your husband's not going through it. So unless you tell him what's going on, he's not gonna, he's not gonna identify with that. So the readers, are most of your readers women?

SPEAKER_03 35:51

You know, it's uh a lot of my readers up until like the last month and a half have been friends and family. And then now it's finally starting to be it's kind of spreading out. But yes, a lot of my readers are women, but a lot as as I've expanded on the topics that I've been talking about, I have had more men kind of surface in there. We are I think the thing that is relatable is that a bad day is a bad day. You know, and whether it is like we've talked about going through a divorce, everybody goes through that. Losing a loved one, everybody goes through that. It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman. Some of the things are very inherently woman on there. I I talk about um infertility issues and going through miscarriage, and I think women handle that differently.

SPEAKER_01 36:39

Or be there for his wife. Yeah, that's what I mean. You know, to help somebody that either their wife or their daughter, daughter, daughter, sister, or going through that.

SPEAKER_03 36:47

And that's my hope. I think for all of this, this is just like an attempt to use the parts of being online that I don't like to create a community, to bring people back together. Because there's nothing that I like more than sitting with people and just being with them and talking to them and learning about them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:03

That's why we do it this way.

SPEAKER_06 37:04

Aaron Powell Which reinvention of your life was the hardest one to go to go from?

SPEAKER_03 37:10

I think the hardest my divorce was really hard. I think I just I had just turned 30 and I felt like I was old. So old. And I was having to start over at 30, and I had wasted my life, and I had no I had no concept of that this was just the beginning. So I really felt like I this the ship had sailed. Yeah. But once I got now, I'm like, there are always people that are um not happy by their next birthday. They're like, oh, I'm another year older. And that has totally shifted for me. And where at 30, I was like, I'm old. At 45, I'm like, I'm still pretty young. I've still got a lot of life left to live. And God willing, I'm gonna do it to the best every day.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

Well, that was one of my questions. You know, you mentioned uh I think in your bio, letting go go of the old version of ourselves. And I I'm wondering, is is this more about embracing who you are right now, today?

SPEAKER_03 38:04

Aaron Ross Powell, I think we have new versions of ourselves every day. We just don't look at it that way. So um, if your thought processes evolve, you've got a new version. And I think letting go of this construct of who you are and just moving fluidly into whatever the future brings is huge. Like you don't have to have an identity. There's Wesley as she sits here today, but five years from now, it may be a completely different person. I guarantee you it will be. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

It will be. I think it's about embracing who you are in the moment. Yes. Because I think a lot of people, they look back at what what who they were, like you said, five years ago, and they they're still kind of stuck there. And that you have to be in the moment that you are right now. You started off the show by talking about it.

SPEAKER_06 38:45

Yeah, do you feel like your life has gotten by by stepping away from the nine-to-five job that you did and now doing your survivor's edit? Do you feel like you're living a quieter life or a bigger life with more intention?

SPEAKER_03 39:00

Aaron Powell It's a bigger life, I think, because I was telling Patrick, I think I even wrote about it in the last few weeks. I have felt for so long, especially coming from real estate, that it's like rush off to the next thing. It's my life has always been about rushing off to the next thing, the next showing, the next appointment, the next meeting, the next one-on-one with an employee. And now I found myself the first week or two that I was not working a nine to five, being like, okay, well I've got to rush off to why? Why am I rushing? I don't have an appointment. I kind of my day can be built the way I want it.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

It's habitual. Yeah. You uh one of the other things you wrote about is living life to its fullest. What do you think that means now?

SPEAKER_03 39:38

I think it changes day to day. Some days you may the fullest you can give is to take a nap and really work it and focus on your health.

SPEAKER_02 39:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:46

And some days that means you're gonna go hiking and climb a mountain or you know, go diving or something like that. So I think it's honoring where you are in any moment and and listening to your body. We've gotten so disconnected because of these phones that we don't listen to where we're at.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

I know. Yeah, you uh like you're on Instagram or something and it talks, I'll I'll see these things and it'll be if you're 60 years old and you can't do these five exercises, and I instantly feel all this pressure to be able to shame. It is, I know, yeah. And then I think it's so ridiculous. It is either this this has no basis in my reality. And so yeah, I I think we need a term. Quiet the noise. Yeah. Jeez, isn't that the truth? Quiet the noise.

SPEAKER_06 40:24

Do you think that the woman that you are now that you feel and the things that you were you write about, your essays, the sexual assault, the infertility, um, the marriage and the cancer diagnosis. What are you no longer afraid to be or to do?

SPEAKER_03 40:44

I'm not afraid anymore. I think obviously, like I go into a scan, I am a little worried that something's gonna come back. I have, I think, and this is this is so cheesy. I'm sorry in advance, but we survive 100% of the days that we're here. And I have survived all of those things. And has it always been easy? No. But have I gotten through? Absolutely. And so knowing that I've gotten through what I can, what I've already gotten through, leads me to believe that there's a 100% chance that I'm gonna get through the rest of it too. And I think just knowing that I've got a good support system helps too. I think that's where I'm really happy that my all my friends aren't just on Instagram. They're in real life. I get to see them. I know there are people that will call me if they need something and vice versa.

SPEAKER_06 41:26

Well, Wesley, you're you're I'm sorry. You're doing all of this at the same time while you're grieving your father too. And so your father just passed away a couple months ago. And so you're still going through all the first without your dad. You know, you're gonna come up on the holidays, and then, you know, I mean, I've lost both of my parents, and I'm I know how you know, those are so significant, but yet at the same time, you're still recovering from your your treatments and everything. I mean, you just you're two weeks fresh.

SPEAKER_03 41:55

I know. I and that was hard too, because I think it was one of those moments it's so weird leaving the center after your last infusion. It's like this is a big day for you, but there's still people who are in the thick of their treatment, and the nurses are still charting, there's all this stuff going on. And I get in the car and you know, I want it, I want to tell dad, and dad's no longer here.

SPEAKER_01 42:13

Like confetti poppers, like, but it's not like that.

SPEAKER_03 42:16

I went to Trader Joe's and bought myself flowers, and it was just there. Congratulations, Wes. But um, I still talk to my dad all the time. I don't know if you talk to your parents.

SPEAKER_06 42:25

Oh, I do. I talk to my mom all the time, especially now that I have a granddaughter. Um my brother asked me a question last night that I thought was really interesting because my daughter and son-in-law and granddaughter have moved in with us temporarily while they're trying to sell their house in Dallas. And my brother said, gosh, you do so much for Kindle. Did mom do this for you? And I said, You know, she did. Not to the extent that I do, but yeah, she did. He goes, Did you but did she make dinner for for the kids? And did she watch the kids? And I said, Yeah. You know, and he goes, he goes, I really like watching you do that. And I was like, Oh, that was really nice. It was a nice observation. It was like, okay, my brother saw my mom and me. And I was like, okay, that was.

SPEAKER_01 43:09

You know what part of that is? Chris is going through some challenges right now. I think he's starting to reflect on life and notice things in life that when we're all so busy, we don't notice. Maybe. So he's getting, I think he's getting a lot out of that, that time to sort of self-reflect and notice the great things going on around him.

SPEAKER_03 43:27

Well, and I think that those tough times are the ones that make us reflect, right? It makes you look at if because it's so easy in the society that we live in, it's so easy to focus on ourselves and to be very ego-driven and to just what I have going on is the most important thing. And when you have a moment to stop and say, gosh, look how cool my sister's life is. Look what she's getting to do. Yeah. That it it broadens our horizons. And that's why, you know, I I'd been leaving my phone at home. Patrick and I try to go on a walk every evening that it's not as hot as the surface of the sun outside. But I've been leaving my phone behind, and it's so nice to not to just be walking with a person I love. And being outside. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 44:01

And sometimes you can talk and sometimes you be quiet and just enjoy that. Exactly.

SPEAKER_06 44:05

I think my poor husband right now is so overstimulated because you know, we're used to our just little quiet little life, and my brother's with us, and then my granddaughter's with us, and my daughter's with us. And, you know, it's just like all this noise, we're out of the routine, and he's like, I'm working out. He's probably gonna look like your husband before long because he's gonna work out so much. But I I'm I've always been about with my family and with my kids, about making memories. And it was especially because I lost my mom when I was 35 years old. And so I've I have said this in the past, but I feel like I'm living two lives now. So I'm living the life that my mom didn't get to live, and I'm also living mine. Right. And but now as I just said that, I just realized that I put her first. And so I probably should live my life first and then live the life that she lives. But it is, you realize how short time is. My mom was 60 years old when she passed away. Oh my goodness, it's so young. And she didn't get to see these precious, you know, great granddaughter that she has. She didn't get to see my my children grow up. And so you're right, it's like life is in the small shit. There's small things.

SPEAKER_03 45:12

It's totally those, it's those little moments that are the biggest when you look back. Because I it's not like we're gonna look back on our deathbeds and watching my dad's disease progress. I I and we're not gonna be like, God, my office was so freaking cool. I loved that office.

SPEAKER_01 45:27

Nobody's doing it. I really loved that client. I wish I could do one more real estate deal.

SPEAKER_03 45:33

God I wish I could have one more day in the office. No, that's not what we're thinking about. We're reflecting on those moments, like the peaceful moments that you're surrounded by family, the not peaceful moments that you're surrounded by family, that Thanksgiving table, those things are just more momentous than we could ever imagine. And and yet when we're in them, we're like, oh, it's so stressful. I gotta get the turkey out.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

And like you know, I feel like people have so many interactions every day, but they're still lonely.

SPEAKER_06 45:59

They are.

SPEAKER_01 46:00

How do we change that? How do we change that?

SPEAKER_06 46:02

Well, I think I think this. I think you sit there and you break bread with people and you invite, don't just say, you know what I was thinking about you the other day? You don't just pick up the phone. Pick up the phone, or hey, um, you are you free Friday at five o'clock? Would you like to go have dinner?

SPEAKER_03 46:17

Or hey, I know it's last minute, but I've got an hour. You want to go grab coffee? Yeah. Like those are the things I I've started in the last two and a half years when I'm thinking about someone, I pick up the phone and I either call or text them. And just to let them know, just to interrupt their day and be like, hey, you're special, you're important. And or Patrick, like every time I think about it, he probably gets a million I love you texts a day. But I it's important to me for him to know.

SPEAKER_06 46:39

My mother or my mother, my daughter is now, she is, she is. I've passed the baton over to her, the guilt, the guilt baton. So my middle son's in in med school, and he doesn't call as often as we the entire family would like. But he's just he's so busy with school, and he's, you know, he he everything is analytical to him. I'm 90% school and 10% personal. When he's 10%, you know, he's got to focus on his his own life and his wife and he gets to 10%. He's like, I'm done. I'm done. Well, my daughter said, I named my freaking baby after you. Do you don't think that she's gonna know? She may not know now, but she will know. She told me yesterday.

SPEAKER_03 47:23

Do we like that's a good example of we get caught up in ourselves? But there are moments when it's really important too, because medical school's no joke. All your effort has to go to that mentally. So I'm sure at the end of the day, he's exhausted. And he has a wife.

SPEAKER_06 47:35

But it takes 10 minutes to call your mama and say, hi, mom. And you know, when he does, I'm all I'm all ears. I'm listening and I want to hear about, and I'm sure he's tired of talking about his life. But but it is, it's it's offering space to somebody and giving somebody the opportunity to talk about themselves. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:53

Guys are terrible at that. Guys are terrible at that. Uh my buddy.

SPEAKER_05 47:56

Can you do something about that? We're trying. We we know we know uh Chris and you as the leader of I had an epiphany just last week.

SPEAKER_01 48:05

Uh, I had been, we'd be my wife and I had been traveling, and my buddy Chuck, he called me and uh I picked up the phone and go, hey Chuck, man, what's going on? And uh he, you know, hey, I'm just calling uh check on you. And I was like, it kind of caught me off guard because you know, we're all we're transactional, you know. Like, what do you need? Give give it to me and I'll answer it and we'll off we'll go. And he just wanted to catch up and see how my trip was and check on. Yeah, and I was like, and then I had to kind of like step back for a second and go, oh, okay.

SPEAKER_06 48:33

Well, do you remember a couple of years ago, Steve had a friend that called him in the middle of the day? Yeah. I love this story about Steve. So he had a friend that called him in the middle of the day, and he goes, Why is he calling me? He just wants to go to lunch with me. Why what do you think he wants? How weird. I'm like, I'm too busy for that. I was like, because he's your friend? You jerk? And he goes, Oh, you didn't even think of it.

SPEAKER_02 48:57

Let people know.

SPEAKER_01 48:59

We don't get it. We we have a really hard time with that. Guys are just, we're we're like checklists in our head all the time. And okay, are you gonna put something on my checklist? Let me just tell me what it is and I'll get it done.

SPEAKER_03 49:10

It's one thing I love about Patrick and his friends, and maybe because they were cops together and there were moments where they were like, this we're in the thick of it together. But they will always say, I love you, man, or I love you, brother, before they get off the phone. And I I I love that they aren't scared to say that. That's important.

SPEAKER_06 49:23

We're a big, we're a big I love you family. We're very, we're very I love you. And my son, Tate, the med school guy, his military buddies that he was in, you know, com or not combat, but he was calls them their battle buddies, their brothers. They're they are they're brothers. They've seen, they've seen stuff together. And like, I get jealous sometimes of that. And I think my son does, my older son does too. It's like, oh man, I want I want that kind of camaraderie. But I'm like, but dude, it's shared trauma. Yeah, they trauma bonded.

SPEAKER_01 49:57

I think that's what it is. You go through something really difficult like that together, then you're a lot more open with each other. Yeah, just casual friendships, it's hard to do that.

SPEAKER_05 50:06

A couple of uh real estate transitions.

SPEAKER_01 50:07

I was gonna say you can trauma bond in real estate. Yeah, we only need to go have a deep end vodka after this one. Wesley, I feel like people go through life feeling like they have all the time in the world. Like, you know, they plan for 10 years, 50 years, whatever. Oh, I'm gonna retire when I'm 65. What's your what is what's the message you want to tell somebody about that?

SPEAKER_03 50:30

Aaron Powell Tomorrow isn't promised. And really, I and again, I know it sounds so cheesy, but all we have is the moment we're in. I could leave here and it something could happen. Trevor Burrus, Jr. That's true. That's true. Trevor Burrus, Jr. So I think saying the things that are on your heart, doing the things that you've always wanted to do, don't put that off. If and and that goes for like, you know, I'm not saying be irresponsible, but if you've got a vacation you want to take or you haven't taken time off of work, or you're worried to take time off of work, like that stuff doesn't matter as much as we think it does. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 51:00

That's true. If you're on your deathbed, you're all you're thinking about all the things you planned to do in your life. That you didn't do it.

SPEAKER_03 51:05

Or the people you didn't get to say goodbye to, the people you didn't get to tell you love. Those are the things that matter more than anything.

SPEAKER_01 51:10

I th I you know, you hear about a story about somebody that's what we just did a story last week of 15-year-old kid that died of heat stroke on football field. He's he's thinking he's got his whole life, and unfortunately, in that situation, he didn't. So you do, you have to embrace every single moment. And aren't we so lucky that we're still here? Yes, every minute of every day. Yeah, it's true.

SPEAKER_06 51:31

Well, Wesley, I want to ask you one last question, and I want you to finish this sentence. Cancer interrupted my life, but it didn't get to the heart of me.

SPEAKER_03 51:42

I I think it actually highlighted who I really am and it allowed me an environment to become more authentic to who I am, and that's a huge thing. Like it deepened my deep relationships and it it cut out a lot of the noise that didn't need to be in my life, and that's such that's that's huge. Like I I have a filter that I put things through now that I never would have before. Like, is is it worth it? You know?

SPEAKER_01 52:09

Yeah, that was one of my questions for you is do you have a filter now and you say, you know what, this thing that's been lumped onto me, it's not important. I'm gonna focus on something else.

SPEAKER_03 52:18

Yeah, or just walk away. Like, is it do is is this gonna serve what I want to do or what me and my husband's goals are? No, okay, bye.

SPEAKER_01 52:27

Yeah, I had somebody text me yesterday. There there's a whole bunch of drama going on in this thing that I'm involved in, and I'm like, I'm not doing that. I'm not gonna be a part of it.

SPEAKER_03 52:36

Let them it's also just what made up. Drama's made up.

SPEAKER_01 52:41

Yeah, you get around and you just blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and then everybody moves on to something. Well, you know what stops drama? Stop talking. Well, that's true. Yeah, yeah, because uh as soon as they something big happens in their life, that drama goes. Oh, yeah, it's gone. It's not important on any level at all.

SPEAKER_06 52:57

I totally agree. I just I have I have uh really protected my peace in that sense. That's huge. And it's like, okay, you have the friends. I I've said this before. You have friends that will bring you soup and take care of you, and then you will have friends that will come over and eat your soup. And I am tired of people that are going to eat my soup all the time. Sometimes I just need somebody to come sit with me. You know, just be with you.

SPEAKER_01 53:26

Some people come over, eat your soup, and then come back later and say, You don't have any soup. Where's my soup? Exactly. They're just taking, taking, taking, taking. Stop eating my soup. Yeah. Yeah. Wesley, where can people find out more about what you're doing online with your blog now?

SPEAKER_03 53:40

Well, you can go to thesurvivorsedit.com. Um, I'm on Substack, the Survivors Edit, and uh everything you need to know is on my website, thesurvivorsedit.com.

SPEAKER_01 53:49

And are you you're finally getting some traction?

SPEAKER_03 53:52

I am, yeah. It's I mean it's a slow build, but that's what I want. I don't need I don't need to be You don't need to be a rock spot. No, I all I care about is making a difference. And so this 30-day course I'm working on for people, the roadmap for cancer patients. If I can help one person, whether I know it or not, that's all that matters to me. I just helping somebody's life not be as difficult in those hard moments.

SPEAKER_01 54:13

That is huge. If you just focus, you know, because so many people focus on I'm gonna reach a million people. I don't care. Yeah, you you affect one person's life, it can change the world.

SPEAKER_03 54:22

And I know that like I I've had people who are like, I sent this to my mom. So please, if you know somebody going through something, they can contact me through the website. If there's somebody who's recently diagnosed, I'm happy to speak to them. I I think that the cancer community is one that no one asks to be in, but it is such a loving community, and I can't tell you how many people were there for me when I first got diagnosed, and I would be happy to pay that forward. Oh, that's great.

SPEAKER_01 54:44

Well, Wesley, I've enjoyed having you here. We talked about some difficult things, but it's important, and I think hopefully somebody that's listening gets something out of this. Hopefully so. They'll reach out to you and you can help them through something that's difficult like you went through.

SPEAKER_06 54:57

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This show is brought to you in part by the Mallet Integrity Team, serving Dripping Springs, Austin, and the surrounding areas of Central Texas since 2004. When you need the best real estate advice and service, give them a call at 512-829-2062. Or email them at malletintegrity team.com. And now here's Steve and Michelle.

SPEAKER_01 57:10

And we're back. Wesley O'Connor. Boy, she was great. I really enjoyed finger on. Squirrel Lady is in the studio today. Well, you look absolutely insane.

SPEAKER_06 57:24

It fits who I am right now. It fits what I what I feel like right now. Um, if you guys would like to see what Steve is seeing right now, you could go on YouTube and look at this episode.

SPEAKER_01 57:37

That's right. I forgot about that. We have audio listeners only. She is wearing these crazy glasses that she bought on Team U for, I don't know.

SPEAKER_06 57:45

They're googly eyeglasses. Yeah, they're googly eyeglasses.

SPEAKER_01 57:50

Hey, I had a story real quick. Wesley came on and we were talking a lot about uh her journey through cancer and uh her new blog and all that. But I saw this story this morning and I wanted to touch on it real quick because I think it really speaks to what Wesley was talking about, how people are interacting with people all day, but they're still feeling lonely. This kid, uh Finn Colleton, uh, spent the early days of the pandemic like many alone in an empty house, isolated uh from anyone for months to a stretch. He made a sign one day and went down to a park uh it where he lived in Philadelphia and it said, How's your day going? And he just sat in a lawn chair and people came up to him and started having conversations. Oh and it's it this was so this was six years ago. It has started a trend, and there's actually little groups popping up all over the US now where these little casual conversation groups, they get a little corner of a park and they bring it's usually small groups, like three or four people at a time. They don't want to have 20 people because that gets kind of crazy. And they have a topic of the day, and people show up and they just share their thoughts and feelings. And I thought, ah, we need a little bit more of that. And actually, when I read this, I thought, I wonder if we could start something like that in dripping springs.

SPEAKER_06 59:03

That's really cool. I don't know if I want to know sometimes of how other people.

SPEAKER_01 59:08

You do, you do, actually. And and uh it's kind of funny because I read through this and I thought, well, these got to be turned into shouting matches all the time, but it's actually not like that. Even people with very opposing views come together and they're they're encouraged by the moderator, whoever's there, to have a civil conversation. Sometimes it gets out of control. But I get an idea.

SPEAKER_06 59:28

But what let's do it on Tuesdays when we sit at Pig Pen and we'll put a side thought about that. That's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 59:35

Well, you and I were there yesterday, and we just started a conversation with a guy, real nice guy. And you know, learned where he moved from, where he's moving to, what he did for a living.

SPEAKER_06 59:43

Talked about his license plate. Steve says I'll talk to anybody, which is absolutely true.

SPEAKER_01 59:47

She just walked right up to him and said, Is that your car out there? But uh the I was reading this that uh the U.S. Surgeon General has likened loneliness to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It's as bad for your health to be lonely.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:01

My name is Dairy.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:03

Yes. I smoked. You know, this is if you're spending time on social media and you're like, hey, I got 5,000 friends on social media, you don't. You don't have any friends. You have friends. But none of those people are friends. No, they're acquaintances. Take that back. Some of those people are friends. The vast majority of them are acquaintances. They're not people that will enrich your life. This is a way to meet some friends, some real friends.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:28

The older I have gotten, the smaller my circle and more authentic my circle has gotten. But I have noticed my daughter, who's 26, you know, she's been married. She as a matter of fact, tomorrow's their fourth year anniversary.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:42

Congratulations.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:44

And she's got my most favorite human being ever. She gave birth to my most favorite human being. But she said it's really hard for her to make friends because of social media, because people are so engaged on social media, and she wants to be able to sit down. I took her to Happy Hour last night, and she had a great time. She's like this is great. Yes. I I made her made a friend. I had a I had a grown-up play date. I just realized that.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:10

You know what? You know, you have a conversation with somebody, say you get in an elevator, and and the conversation you go, hey, how's your day going? Yeah, it's going good. Oh, and the weather's nice, and then you get off, and you know, that's a real just surface level conversation. That's what's happening on social media. Nobody's having real conversations. You sit down with somebody across the table like we do here in the studio, that's when you have real conversations. Yeah. I'm encouraging people, go out and have some real conversations. That's what needs to happen right now.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:37

I think you should, you know, uh that your story that that you just said reminded me of Sunday. We were at church, and Kendall and Jacob was were with us, and Jacob got into a conversation with this sweet little 86-year-old woman that was sitting right next to him in the pew. And uh, when it came for the prayer time, uh, she reached over and grabbed Jacob's hand. Because, you know, we you know, we hold hands when we pray, but she reached over and grabbed Jacob's hand, and Jacob looked up over at me. And after at lunch, we went to Pig Pen after church, and I was like, You made a friend, Jacob, your first friend in Dripping Springs. Her name was Miss Sue, and just the sweetest little thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:16

Just keep in mind when you have those interactions, because sometimes we're thinking about how that interaction affects us. You think about how that interaction affects her. She might be lonely, she might just needed somebody to say something nice to her. Jacob did that, man. Good for you. That's that's we need to see a little bit more of that. We need to see a lot more in the world now than we have.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:39

We do need to speak see a lot more of that. And speaking of Pig Pen, I wanted to give a little, a little, you know, shout out, a Steve word shout out to Pig Pen. Every good phrase. A good phrase, every other Wednesday now in the evenings, they're gonna have steak, steak night, which or at steak, or I think this Wednesday tonight, they're having salmon. So by the time this comes out, they're not gonna have it that week. But just check, check their website, check their social media. But also on every Wednesday, they're gonna have live music right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:12

So you go out there and you enjoy the weather, which is underneath the trees on the west side of Pig Pen outside. They have a playground out there for the kids.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:22

You can go in there, they have a full bar now. You can go in there and grab a drink. You need a break.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:29

What is it, Wednesdays? You need a break in the middle of the week. That's where you need to go.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:33

Go out there on hump day. And then also, um, I just got noticed. So, Lisa Sullivan, she's one of our favorite guests that we've had on. She has the happiness element. She also works for uh the city of Dripping Springs. She's an amazing person, and she has a group called the Happiness Element or The Women of Worth. Uh wow. And she's gonna have this award show where um 86 nominations for women all around Dripping Springs in the Hill Country area, they were these women were nominated. And the some of the some of the titles were or the awards are Community Impact, Connector Award, Girl Boss, Energy Award, Heart of Dripping Springs Award, Leadership, Rising Star, Trailblazer, and Adorable Badass, which I thought was really cool. Well, we've had some past guests. Yeah, quite the Connector Award, Susan Kimball and Dana Mahalley. I love her. I love both of those women for sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:35

Great, great, great.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:36

Um, also, Michelle Went was nominated for Leadership Legacy Award. She was um early on in one of our town. She has. And then you may know this person for the Trailblazer Award, Michelle Lewis of Mallet and Michelle Podcast and Mallet Integrity Team. Good for you. Well, thank you so much. We are also sponsors of this event, um, which we're excited to. We love to support Lisa and we love to support women in our community. Um, but thank you so much. I just an honor to be nominated in For adorable badass? Oh no, no, not adorable badass. Apparently, I'm a stinky smelly ass. Uh Trailblazer Award. It was the Trailblazer Award. I don't know what I don't know what trailbla I don't know what I'm trailblazing, but I'm trailblazing.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:22

Yeah. I don't know. I yeah. The the awards are uh some of them are a little bit, I'm not sure what they mean, but congratulations. I think that's pretty cool. You have definitely earned that. You've you've uh made an impact on this city and a lot of the people here. Well you deserve it.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:37

It wouldn't thank you so much, Steve. It wouldn't happen without you. And so when I when I get up, if I get a chance to say an acceptance speech to my adoring fans, I will make sure and say I wouldn't be I wouldn't be the woman I am today if it wasn't for Steve Mellon.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:53

And there will be a lot across the crowd. I will wear my googie eyes up there. Well, congratulations.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:00

Well, thank you so much. And Lisa, you are doing a great job.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:04

I really I think this concept she came up with is really great because I think there's a lot of really powerful women in this community doing really great things, and they sometimes fly under the radar. They derve they deserve some accolades.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:16

That's right. Well, and then Steven, Steve's gonna have a uh uh adorable badass man award.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:22

I was actually thinking when I this came out, I was like, okay, what kind of what would we do with men awards? I think it would be it would be idiotic. I don't I don't think it would be.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:31

Every day is mandate.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:32

Every day is man day. Yeah, it's a man day every day.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:36

Well, did you know that school is back in session across Texas?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:42

Oh, I mean, yesterday we were driving somewhere and I said, Hey, in a week and a half, you know what happens. I she said, What? I go, the traffic will be back.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:50

The traffic will be back for sure. And that also means that school zones are active, buses are making frequent stops, some drivers need a little refresher before they become the subject of somebody's angry neighborhood Facebook post. And you know who you are out there. First, when a school bus stops with its red lights flashing or it's stopped, uh, the stop sign extended, you must stop.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:13

Even on 290.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:15

Traffic traveling in both directions must stop unless the bus is on the opposite side of a roadway separated by a physical median barrier or open space. 290 does not fit that qualification.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:28

So if you are on 290, yes. I see a lot of people they're not sure or they creep past the bus. No, you you need to stop.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:36

Yes, so a painted center turn lane does not count as a divided highway. You stay stopped until the red light turns off and the stop sign goes in and the bus begins moving again, or the bus driver signals you to proceed. Passing a stopped school bus can cost you up to twelve hundred and fifty dollars for the first offense, repeat violations, and offenders will be hung in the triangle by their toenails. That's right. And you cannot skip this ticket by taking defensive driving.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:08

You have to take now let's be everybody should know the rules on this. It's a it's so important. I mean, kids get killed every year by drivers, you know, driving by school buses. Both ways. Sometimes they pull out around a school bus while someone's gonna be able to do it.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:21

I've seen it, I've seen it in my school zones. When those lights are flashing, slow down to the posted school zone speed. Sawyer ranch, you got to pay attention. Put down your phone, watch the crosswalks, and expect children to do exactly what children do, which is what dart out in front of you all the time, or cross diagonally, whatever. And also continuing using your cell phone, a handheld device in an active Texas school zone is illegal. And honestly, that text message, you can wait. You just cannot hold your phone. And you know, every for the most part, people have car play in their in their cars now. You can talk that, but you need to watch for crossing guards, children walking between parked vehicles, especially little ones. Yeah, kindergartners, preschoolers, they're still learning the lay of the land. I have to tell you, it was something really cute yesterday. I was at the league with my granddaughter, had to go out to the car, and I'm trying to teach her now. She's only 18 months, so I'm trying to teach her. We look right, we look left, then we look right again, and then we stop, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:21

Can't start too early.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:22

And so we're we had to go back out, and there were cars, and you know, I know my daughter would probably just like, oh, just grab her and walk across the street. And I said, Nope, Navy. What do we do? And she looked right, looked left, looked right, and the person in the car that was stopped, she like clapped her hands and I was like, So you just gotta pay attention. But you also gotta watch out for bicycles, parents making okay, these drop-off locations.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:47

The electric motorcycles.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:49

Yeah. So um, yeah, there's and there's some fines. Okay, what we said passing a stop school bus, the first offense carries uh $500 to up to twelve hundred and fifty dollars. The second offense, you're gonna be hung, yeah, up to two thousand dollars. Um, speeding in an active school zone, there's no single statewide dollar amount. I guess they just say whatever they're gonna feel like, but um should be a thousand dollars per mile per hour as far as I'm concerned. Texas says speeding fines double in an active school zone. So uh I guess it's kind of like a construction zone. But um, yeah, I just say pay attention, watch what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:26

Yeah, especially the first couple weeks of school. Everybody's a little bit out of sorts, you know, mom and dad dropping kids off, they're not quite sure where to go. They might make a turn real quick, you know, the kids aren't sure where to go. They might panic and run across in front of traffic. So just be super careful out there. And when you're in the back the bumper to bumper traffic on 290 for 15 minutes, just have a little patience. Let somebody in when they're trying to get out into traffic, give them a little wave, it'll all be okay.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:55

Just wait till after Labor Day. Things will slow down. But also, I have to tell you this there's gonna be going to the high school, there's gonna be some new drivers, new high school drivers. That's true. So if you're a parent, this is the way I was a parent as a parent. If you're a parent, don't don't be a Karen, okay? But look out for other people's kids and say, hey, I saw little Johnny like swerving in and out on 70 miles an hour going down 290.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:19

Um, but just Do you think uh if you see that and you're and the the new driver pulls like into gas station to get gas, you should go up and say something to him and in a respectful and polite but firm way? Gosh, you know, because that's for me. I know when I was younger, that would have taken it. I would have that would have had more impact on me if somebody would have pulled up to me and said, Hey, uh, I know you're kind of a young new driver. I just want to let you know when you made that turn right there that was completely illegal and you didn't notice there was another car that was a very dangerous situation. Hey, you know, you have a good day, but I just wanted you to be more aware. For me, that would have made more of an impact.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:59

In a perfect world, I would say yes. And um, I just don't know how how respectful some of these kids are gonna be back.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:08

Just give them the benefit of the doubt.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:09

Okay, I'm gonna give the benefit of the doubt. Because otherwise I would be like, listen, you little shit. Hey.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:13

No, that's my that was my first thought is hey, you stupid MFR, you just almost hit that person right there. I guarantee that's not gonna go well.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:22

Yeah, so so I don't know. Maybe uh maybe they'll show a little kindness both ways.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:27

Hey, have you ever heard, I know you have, the blue zone. Do you know what the blue zone is?

SPEAKER_06 1:12:31

Yes, I watched that documentary, which was super cool, but I hasn't some of it been debunked.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:36

It's a complete myth. Yeah, it's there's been new research that's been done, and uh the blue zones are places on earth where people supposedly reach old ages, especially uh uh often beyond a hundred years old. And uh a group went out and um and well then there actually there's been this whole industry that's come out of that. You know, there's there's foods you can buy, microwaveable foods, there's resorts, there's tools.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:02

Wait a minute. There's microwaveable blue zone foods that's kind of counterintuitive.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:06

I I completely agree, but there are companies that are taking advantage of this. Um the blue zone certified communities where you can live in a community that's blue zone. And then you mentioned it, net Netflix did a uh a documentary. Uh the problem with all this is no one's ever really fact-checked any of the places that are claiming to be blue zones that there is actually any difference in the in the age of the population compared to the rest of the world. And finding the data is actually really hard because you know, if you're if you're a hundred years old, records a hundred years ago were a lot different than they are now. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:42

But one of the things that I consistently remember out of all of these blue zones, the one thing, it wasn't so much the food that I my big my big takeaway, it wasn't the food, it wasn't the area, it was the social aspect. It was about being social, and that is going to you have people checking on you. Like your like your father who wasn't Toby, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:03

No doubt in some of these zones, these people did live well into old age. The the claim, though, is that you can live to be excessively old. Who the hell wants to do that? Yeah, I know. Uh so the the fact is that the data that they've used to determine these blue zones is absolutely terrible. And I wanted to tell you the story that I came across. Um this was uh in 2010, the Japanese government went looking for the oldest man in Tokyo who was supposedly 111. They wanted to throw him a big party. So the government officials traveled to his house where his granddaughter lived. The granddaughter told them that the man was out visiting uh a place 250 miles away.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:46

Wait, and is his granddaughter like 90 years old?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:48

Yeah, so yeah, well, probably uh in the 70s or 80s here. Okay. Uh so he's a 111-year-old guy just out for a jaunt, uh obviously. But the governor returned later, and this time the granddaughter, the grandfather was apparently at his girlfriend's house a few towns away. They tried again and still he was out busy. Busy. Is this weekend at Bernie's? Yes. Well, it's funny. Eventually the family gave up. They called the police to report that grandma had grandpa had barricaded himself in his room and was fighting off relatives. When police opened the door, the guy was there, but he'd been dead for 30 years. So this is the there there's nobody that was confirming this data about the blue zone. And uh and so I the the I started doing a little more research, and there's a couple other things that I've found that uh have been actually completely made up and have no basis in reality.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:44

Oh, like uh like um I plead the fifth uh for crowns 111 times.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:49

Yeah, I plead the fifth uh yeah, 111 times. You don't need 10,000 steps a day. That was a marketing plan. Yeah. That was a marketing plan that came up with uh a Japanese clock and instrument company that came up with a wearable pedometer back in the 60s. And they claimed that you if you did 10,000 steps a day that you'd be healthier. And actually, research has shown if you do 4,000 steps or more a day, you will be healthier than somebody that's very sedentary. But there's very little difference between 4,000 and 10,000.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:20

Well, there you go. So who's in our office? It was Gary. Gary Steele in our office. He just walks around the building because he's trying to try to get his 10 pounds. Can you go share that with us?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:30

Yeah, I will. Here's another one. Fact of fiction. You must drink eight glasses of water a day.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:36

I drink eight glasses of water a year.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:38

Yeah, yeah, your water always is brown for like iced tea. Uh it says that uh after extensive research, they've found that most people drink enough if they just drink when they are thirsty. Because what what science has been telling us is no, if you don't drink till you're thirsty, then you're gonna be dehydrated. It turns out that's actually not true. The whole eight eight uh glasses a day thing is complete crap.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:04

Mallet, you drink more water than anybody I have ever known my entire life.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:10

But I I do I work out a lot, and so I I Yeah, I know. I do I drink a lot. I probably drink like a gallon and a half.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:19

Do you think that you bought into the eight glasses of water?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:22

No, because I do. I actually drink when I'm thirsty. Is it now a habit? It's probably a habit.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:27

It's like your water is your water is like your cigarette. It's like a fridge cigarette. They call Diet Coke. That's what it You know what? We didn't hear you swallow though.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:37

That was like Oh, dang it. Yeah. Here's a couple more. Fifty years ago, sugar industry quietly paid scientists to blame point uh to point blame at fat as being the the leading cause of being overweight. So the whole thing about fat being the cause for of why you're carrying around a couple pound extra pounds is completely false. And that was a that was a uh an idea put out by the sugar industry.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:02

Well, they now tell you you need fat for your brain health or you're gonna get dementia.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:06

If you have a low-fat diet, you can have some health consequences. The number one thing that they said that's causing people to be obese is drinking their cal their sugar calories. Soda, uh-huh, sweet tea. Shut up. You know, when you get your coffee at uh Dutch Dutch Brothers over there. Have you looked at some how much how much sugar is in some of those drinks? 120 grams of sugar. That's a cup of coffee with five the equivalent of five Cokes worth of sugar.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:35

I don't I don't really I'm not allowed to drink coffee that often. But you know what the other one? You didn't. No, you are not allowed. You know what the other one is? Because I just heard of seed oils.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:45

They were talking about the seed oils are uh seed oils.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:49

There are some that are still like, you know, kind of you need to stay away from but the I I I didn't do any research on it, but we were just talking about.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:59

Because I try and avoid seed oils. Here's my last one. Uh and you may not I'll have to remind you about this one. Do you remember the marshmallow test?

SPEAKER_06 1:19:06

This was from the Like the chubby bunny you stick woolvenge of marshmallows in your mouth?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:09

No. It was the one where um they put toddlers in a room and they put a marshmallow in front of them and they said, Okay, if you don't eat this one marshmallow, we're gonna we're gonna come back in ten minutes and we'll give you two marshmallows. And and the kids, they were saying a lot of them would that you know the the adult would leave and the kid would eat the marshmallow. And the the original findings were that the kids that could not put off the have the delayed gratification didn't do as well in life as kids that that could say, I'll I'll wait until you come back. That's BS and complete crap. It has nothing to do with if they c if they can have that delayed gratification, if they eat it right then or if they wait. It it was when they did more research, it was where they were brought up, socioeconomic, uh, you know, the neighborhoods, the if they had uh uh mother and a father at home, if they had support, those are the things that had it had uh the the biggest effect. So this the marshmallow thing was just well that was my point of all this. Everything we've ever been told, you need to have a critical eye with the thing.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:17

But how do you how do you research on your own when they're telling you really hard, really hard searching I I don't know. You know what? I know it's do the whatever the hell you want. Live however the hell you want, the people whoever the hell you want.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:39

If that's the diet they should have. They're just living their lives and enjoying themselves.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:43

If grandpa is stuck in a back bedroom for 30 years, you know, that that to me says there's probably some financial fraud going on.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:52

They were probably getting the little You're probably right. You're probably right. So think about that. How many of these cases where somebody, oh well, my dad is uh 97 years old. Yeah, you may be right. Who's gonna know? Nobody really looked into it.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:07

No, who's gonna know? If you and you know what? If you never watch our YouTube, Steve could die tomorrow and I could just pull this off and just AI his voice. Weekend at Bernie's just poke him with a stick every like every day, just like the rig of mortis sets it and just move his. You know, I could put the googie eyes on him.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:26

You could tie strings to my arms and put it through the ceiling and just I'd just be like this.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:32

Just write myself checks.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:34

For those of you that are listening on audio, I'm waving my hands in the air like I'm a mu I'm a Muppet, not a Muppet, a puppet.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:41

Well, you know what? I could probably give you a gummy, but I used to be able to give you a gummy, but now you can't.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:47

Because as of it's illegal.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:49

As of August 1st, Texas has officially cracked down on Delta 8. And we have done many stories about this. It that it was legal, and then it was illegal, and then it was legal, and then it went to the court, and then it was illegal, and it's just like who the heck knows? So it's one of those stories where the punishment it may actually really surprise you. Um, so Delta Eight, Delta 10, THCP, and several other intoxicating THC variants are now classified as control substances in Texas, which means a product that you bought legally at a vape shop, a CBD store, or even a gas station last week could now potentially land you with a felony possession charge. I think that's boo shiitake mushrooms. I I think it's crap. I I think it's totally crap. So here's the part where people are kind of doing this double take. Possessing more than one gram of like a gummy can be charged as a state jail felony, carrying up to two years behind bars and fines up to $10,000. Meanwhile, typically a first offense DWI in Texas is generally considered a Class B misdemeanor punishable by up to 180 days in jail and a fine up to $2,000. So, yes, you could potentially face a more serious criminal charge for having a Delta 8 gummy in your purse than for driving drunk for the first time. Let that sink in. Bullshit. This does not mean that every hemp product that is out there is is just suddenly illegal. Certain Delta 9 products containing no more than 0.3% Delta 9 THC by dry weight can still qualify as illegal hemp. And so my understanding is the Delta 8, once it's burned, once it the once it's burned, then it goes to the level of the illegal level of THC. I don't really understand the mechanic, the mechanics on it, but I would like to get Haley Hunt back in here. We need to have her because she's a proponent of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:48

I wanted to tell you one thing about that this reminded me of something. A really good friend of mine uh that I was talking to recently, he apparently you can go and do an online medical appointment and get a prescription for medical marijuana, and it's completely legal in Texas.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:06

Yeah, I do.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:06

And it took it took him an hour. Took him an hour, he said I did I did a med visit.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:11

Be right back.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:11

Yeah, yeah. But so if you know, if you're if it's been helping you through life situations and relaxing and sleeping or whatever, I don't uh you know, I I don't do it, so I don't know the bet all the benefits, but you can still get a prescription. But you if you if you don't have the prescription and you're driving around with it, you get caught. Sounds like it's pretty damn stupid.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:30

You're going to jail. Well, here's the biggest, the biggest thing that I that I agree with. Critics say that Texas allowed an entire industry to grow, let consumers believe the products were legal, and then practically overnight turn those same customers into potential felons. So whether these products that that you're using or not, check what's sitting in your kitchen drawer, your purse, your nightstand, whatever. Um, so here's the thing. Under one gram, and I so I have a graphic up here just for you and I. What does one gram look like? Okay. I think I have it right here. So like think of a plastic bottle cap.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:08

Right? I think where did it go? Plastic bottle cap, a thumb thumb tack, a single raisin. Okay, think of a raisin.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:16

A raisin.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:16

So up to up to no under one gram, 180 days in jail, two years, or and up to two years in jail. Wait, sorry. 180 days to two years in jail. Up to four grams, a third degree felony. So if you have like a packet of gummies, third degree felony, up to 10 years in prison, and up to a $10,000 fine. Up to 40, 400 grams, up to 20 years in jail and $10,000 fine. More than 400 grams. Now I guess.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:50

I think you're probably a dealer at that point.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:52

You're probably or you have a plethora of gummies, but up to 400 grams, you could get up to life in prison and up to $500,000. So things that were legal on Thursday and then that Friday, August 1st, hit. Now you're gonna go to jail. So I I think, okay, one of the biggest things that I have a real big problem with this because I'm a big supporter of the veterans in our community. I love fireside chats. I love what they do out there. And I know a lot of these veterans with PTSD, with severe injuries. They would rather go this route than shove opioids. And I can tell you firsthand because I've been dealing with it.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:31

Or become an alcoholic, which is the way which is where a lot of the people have ended up that kid that don't have access to these things. They end up drinking too much.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:39

So look, I'm I'm conservative by nature. Shame on you, Dan Patrick. Shame on you, Governor Abbott. You need to figure out how to get this. Get you had this legal. Stop brow beating and bible beating, by Bible belting these people.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:00

I know that they fought it, but they they ended up losing. And uh, you know, it's funny, uh we've had people on here that are all for big government being involved in in their daily lives and you know, confiscating tax money to impact how we live our lives. This is a good example of because you know I are you and I believe in very limited. The government, this is government gone wild.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:22

This is very overreach. And you know, they could drive into Oklahoma, they could go into New Mexico, they could get it.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:27

This is crazy. And you mentioned it, you can go down and buy alcohol on any street corner. I mean, any shopping mall, there's you know, at a grocery store, you can buy as much alcohol as you want. This particular drug now, you've waging a war against it.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:42

Well, good news. There is some good news out there. So Willie Nelson, one of our dripping springs favorite sons. Willie Nelson has a drink out there. It's 10 milligrams of THC. It's a it's a drink. It's called Willie's. It is it will probably still be legal in Texas. I guess they haven't found the Loophole for this yet, but it's called Willie's Rem Remedy. Um, just a dabble do you, it has zero alcohol in it, and it just it has, I guess, enough of that THC, which is in liquid form. Yeah, here you go. Here you go. I've been microdosing you. I've been microdosing you for a long time. But as of right now, the the drinks they say are still legal. So there's some little loophole until Patrick. I don't know. You know, it's gonna be interesting to see closer to November what starts happening because they they will what's the word? Cow cow tell cow cowtow. Kowtow to to the voters instead of what's actually good for the community, the the our veterans and people with chronic.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:55

It's hilarious.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:56

Yeah, I know. I just I I'm I'm passionate about this because I feel like the population that you're hurting the most, yeah, it's not gonna be the street corner, it's not gonna be the kids that are that are in high school.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:08

There are people that are benefiting from these things and they don't have access to it now. And not only do they not have access to it, it's illegal. It's illegal and you could be fined and thrown in jail.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:18

But yesterday on a phone call with the VA, I listened to a physician try to push opioids. It for not for pain, for something else. And it's like, are you kidding me? And I'm thinking I was thinking about the story that I was doing. I was like, this is ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:33

It's you know, you and I have talked about this. That's the uh the pharmacy companies make money off that. The the uh the alcohol industry, which is a multi-multi-billion dollar industry, they have money to impact these things, and they do. You know, it's so and I don't think the uh the THC industry the um has they don't have the money that the these uh other organizations have.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:58

I'm sure the pharmaceutical company has like a has a huge thing to do behind.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:02

Yeah. Before we move on to my next story, I want to remind remind everybody we need more followers on our Instagram, so go follow us on Instagram right now. Malada Michelle. Yep. And we have a YouTube channel. And if please go and it's Malada Michelle um on YouTube and f subscribe and like some of our videos. It really helps us with the video.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:22

Well, you know, it's I I uh because I follow our analytics on our social media, and um we have thousands of people that watch our videos, that like our videos, but I think this is just the nature of the beast. A lot of times people don't like the um page that they're looking at, but it helps us because now we can get the word.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:46

We get better sponsors and we can have better equipment and all those good things. So um I'm gonna do this story real quick because I know we're going long here, but uh I found this and it was actually fascinating. AI companies are buying up rare books and destroying them so that they can scan them and and put them into their uh their AI platform.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:07

What? Yes, they've been like like what's that store that we like, Pals Bookstore, and they've got that whole rare book.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:13

So uh uh the story I read, Anthropic and Meta have been apparently the worst ones. They're buying literally hundreds of thousands of printed books, and they have a machine that pulls the pages out one at a time and scans them and puts them into the AI platform so that that the AI has that. Uh once the books are destroyed, they're recycling them, but still there are some books that are pretty rare and they're being destroyed. Oh, that's a shame. I uh I and they're forever lost. An original book that's a hundred years old, uh, you can reprint it, but it's not the same thing that was from a hundred years ago.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:53

I've got I've got a really old book from the late 1800s and it's How to Rear Your Children. And apparently it's from my great grandmother, great-great grandmother, and apparently there's whiskey involved for everything. That's the cure for everything.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:05

You know what? When I was a kid, if uh mom was having a hard time getting you to sleep, she'd put she'd give you a little thimble full of whiskey. Yeah, yeah, it was over. Yeah, now you go uh child protective services. Uh so the one of the other parts of this story was booksellers. So, you know, these AI platforms they have these brokers reaching out. They're not telling them what they are, but obviously, because that broker says, We need these 4,000 books. Can you source these for us? And they this booksellers who make their living selling real books know that those books will be taken out of inventory and never sold.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:40

God, what a what a conundrum you're in, because you're making a sale, right? You're doing what you're supposed to be doing, but then eventually, if everybody does it, there aren't going to be any more books for you to go procure and buy.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:51

Aaron Powell Well, what's worse than this is the AI companies have have kind of worked through all of the, you know, the Stephen King books and the um, you know, the popular. Yeah. The more popular Harry Potter. Yeah. Now they're starting to say, you know, we need uh a copy of this book that was written, whatever, 80 years ago, and there's only a hundred of those in print. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:12

Like a Gestapo, a book Gestapo.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:15

I don't know. I I should have given some examples, but uh they're getting, they're looking for harder and more rare, har harder to find and more rare books. And uh, I think that's a shame. And Anthropic actually got sued by a lot of the people the authors because they're taking the the author's content, putting it into a platform that they monetize it. And the author didn't get paid anything except for the whatever, 25 books for the uh bucks for the book.

SPEAKER_06 1:33:41

So do you remember going to college?

SPEAKER_01 1:33:42

A billion and a half dollars they paid up.

SPEAKER_06 1:33:44

You'd have to go pay an arm and a leg for those for those books.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:49

Yeah. Oh, I know. Textbooks, yeah, you'd be like sixty-three dollars for a yeah, for my textbook.

SPEAKER_06 1:33:55

Okay, well, if you're a college textbook, stick it all in the AI all you want. But if your Dick and Jane loves pug or whatever it is, you know?

SPEAKER_01 1:34:03

Yeah, I you know, this whole AI thing, it it's amazing to me because two years ago you and I might have said AI, but you know, we it was just in conversation. We didn't really know, understand it. It's such a big part of all of our lives now. It's like constantly around us all the time. You know, you see videos online. I just read a thing the this morning that um it's almost impossible now to tell uh social media posts for the really good social media posts that are AI generated from real content.

SPEAKER_06 1:34:35

You and I yesterday, it was just because I was having a meltdown. And we didn't understatement.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:41

It is a meltdown.

SPEAKER_06 1:34:43

And uh um we were AIing our names and we went deep dive. Just Google and how scary it is just from the AI that it knew personal details of yours and my life.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:55

I was very unsettled by that. It uh it it knows way more about us and people we know and people that are in our family than we ever would have.

SPEAKER_06 1:35:07

You know what though? It's probably also a little bit because I think think about we have this platform, right? We have we have a website, we're on Apple, Spotify, you know, wherever you get your podcast, but you can also get it. And so I'm wondering, there's probably some component of AI that is taking everything we've said over these five years.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:24

Because we have our transcripts. And so it's sifting through our transcripts, taking, you know, you've said your granddaughter's name, you said your husband's name, I've said my wife's name, I've said your social security number.

unknown 1:35:37

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:40

But it's all out there. It is it's actually freaking scary. It's made me more cautious about what I say, uh, especially, you know, on the podcast where thousands of people will tune in and listen. It's uh not only is AI, you know, people I actually am more comfortable with the people listening than AI listening.

SPEAKER_06 1:35:59

Unfortunately, I haven't gotten to that level yet because I'm still unhinged and I'm even surprised by the things that come out of my mind.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:05

But guaranteed, none of this content is AI generated. It is a hundred percent us, good or bad. This is who we are.

SPEAKER_06 1:36:13

Yeah, there's no weekend at Bernie's here yet.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:15

Yes, yeah. Well, thank you everybody for joining us. This is the highlight of our week, and we're glad that you've in you've uh been here to experience it with us.

SPEAKER_06 1:36:24

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SPEAKER_00 1:37:27

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SPEAKER_06 1:38:27

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SPEAKER_01 1:38:29

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SPEAKER_06 1:38:32

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