 I try to be the most careful and the most sensitive always when you're talking to patients or victims. It's so great to have you with us today, Laura. Congratulations on the two fantastic podcasts. It's very exciting. Thank you. I know Johnny and I had a chance to enjoy both our fascinating stories, somewhat terrifying stories about modern medicine here in the U.S. And we would love to know, obviously being a medical journalist for over 20 years, what got you into podcasting and how did you decide to make that jump? Well, that's an easy question to answer. I didn't actually go to podcasting. Podcasting came to me. I was a long-time print journalist. I started out my career in newspapers. I worked a long time for the Dallas Morning News, but then about 10 years or so I've been a print journalist and I was perfectly happy being a print journalist. And then Wondery called me one day and asked if I would be interested in telling the story of Christopher Dunge. And I hadn't heard of Wondery. I had heard of Christopher Dunge living here in Dallas. It's easy, but I had not heard of Wondery. So I was a little skeptical at first that I'm a print journalist. Are you sure you want me to tell the story? Had you been listening to many podcasts before that? Were you familiar with the platform? No, I had not. I hadn't listened to hardly any. I hadn't listened to any of them. Once I took the job to do Dr. Death, I started listening to them, but I actually had not. So my audio experience was just as a public radio listener. In terms of assembling that story, Dr. Death, obviously in the news, widely publicized story, but the podcast goes a couple levels deeper. How did you start that journey putting together such a crazy story? Yeah, there had been a lot of good coverage here locally. There had been the Dallas Morning News, a local paper had covered it. D-Magazine had done a big cover story on it, which is where the Dr. Death name comes from. So I knew there had been really good reporting on it, and of course, the TV cameras covered the trial. But the reason I decided to do the story is because I felt like there were people who were complicit in the events that had not been held accountable and that it really wasn't a story about Christopher Denture, it was a story about our healthcare system. And so that's the story I thought had not been told. So I wanted to spend more time, first of all, talking about who he was, but then if you'll notice the podcast is really in two parts, like the first part, the first parts are really about him and about the individual. But then the last part of it, as you get more and more into the story, it really becomes more of a story of the systemic failures that allowed him to keep operating. Yeah, that was certainly a part I found really fascinating was just how many people knew this was going on, but did not even try to stop it. In your podcast journey, what was the underlying undertone of why so many great people in medicine, we think of people in medicine as trying to help us, would let something like that go on? You know, I can't answer that completely because I think there were a lot of different factors that allowed it to go on. I think that in some ways, some people, it was hard to tell, like it was hard to connect all the dots. That's why there were people like Randy Kirby who worked across different hospitals and he knew the pattern that he was really terrible. But I also think, I'd like to think that maybe the hospital administrators didn't realize how bad he was that they would have just let him go, but clearly there were failures and there were failures all around. He should have been stopped at the first place he started operating. He should have been stopped in residency. He should never have left Memphis as a neurosurgeon. So there were failures at every single level. That's why in the end, I kind of compare it to a plane crash. I mean, so many things have to go wrong at the same time. And that's how we got to Dutch. And obviously, that's a terrifying story. And here we are with the second podcast, Bad Batch, which is also a pretty terrifying story about medicine, especially stem cell research and its push into the mainstream and how people are now starting to buy into this idea of stem cell therapies, which as you explained so well in the podcast, is uncharted territory. And there's a lot of false promises and a lot of wreckage that goes along with it. I wanted to, after Dr. Depp, I started thinking about, well, what's the next, what's another story I want to tell? And I have to say my inbox was pretty overwhelmed with lots of other really bad doctors. It was kind of depressing. Like, oh, have you heard about this person? And but I didn't want to tell that story again, just Dr. Depp part two. I mean, like, here's another bad doctor. I felt like the point had been made with Dr. Depp that bad doctors get passed around. And it was gratifying to me. I think it did make a difference. I heard from a lot of medical school administrators, hospital administrators, other doctors, nurses, you know, people in and out of operating rooms who said, this really has made me rethink, you know, speaking up. And that that was, I was really happy about that. And maybe it made a difference because nobody wants to be complicit in the next Dr. Depp and that this could this could happen. So I didn't want to tell that story again. And the stem cell story had been one that I've long, long, long had an interest in. And especially Texas has very lax stem cell laws that allow clinics to proliferate. So I even before Dr. Depp, this had been a story that I've been watching and wanting to tell. And then this incident happened in our state where this bad batch of cells almost killed people. So I thought, well, there's an air, you know, I needed a narrative vehicle to be able to for people to understand and to to hang the story off of. Certainly they're not the only questionable, questionable actors out there. But but I thought this would give me a good vehicle to tell the story. So once that happened, I thought, well, I'll look at what this particular incident says about the entire industry. And can you talk a bit about your process behind creating bad batch, especially because I feel like there's so much promise in stem cells and the medical community is not necessarily open to telling these stories of failure. And when things are not working and having disastrous results, how are you able to to build trust and get people to open up about the story? Bad batch was a lot more complicated story to tell than than Dr. Depp. It's more complicated story to tell. It's more complicated story to take in. It would be a lot easier if I could say, oh, it stem cells are just you know, really not they're really terrible all the time. But there's a lot of complexity to it because there is a lot of promise to it. It'd be easy if it was all just a big scam, but it's not. And that made it that made it a lot, a lot more difficult to tell. I just wanted to kind of tease out the promise from the people who are being taken advantage of. So so that was that was really hard to do. And there were a lot of different moving parts and with the company. And so I can tell you that we did it and redid it and rewrote it and rearranged it and there was a lot more re-recorded going into it to try to to try to make it easy to follow. Because if you've listened to it, you know, I wanted to ease into the story because I also didn't want to be disrespectful to all the people out there who have tried stem cells and who may have been helped by stem cells who believed they were helped either through the placebo effect or because there might have been something in the shot that we don't understand yet. So I didn't want to be disrespectful to them either. And so I was really juggling a lot of different parts to try to to follow through with the narrative. So I I'm proud of what we created and the story that we told. And even though it was so far different from Dr. Death. Yeah, I think and I had a previous life. I was working on a cancer biology PhD. So I know a little bit more than the average Joe about research and about how quickly some of these results lead to clinical trials and how we're trying to advance medicine. And sometimes, you know, people do get harmed. A lot of these trials don't end up working out. So I found that to be fascinating. And I also know from being on the inside that we're not as willing as scientists, researchers to share the negative results and share the things that aren't working because exactly that. We don't want to reign on the stem cell parade because there are areas where it is impacting people. But of course, there are these downsides and the marketing that goes along with it and bringing people in. And the false promises, that's what I that's what bothers me the most. If if if somebody is thinking about stem cells and they listen to the entire podcast and they still want to try stem cells, that's fine. I mean, that's their prerogative to do. It is your prerogative to spend your money in the way you want and try something you want. Why I wanted to tell the story is I think right now, most of the information about stem cells in the retail market is coming from the people who want to sell it to them. And so I wanted more a more informed discussion about stem cells. But if you listen to the podcast and you still want to try stem cells, you know, and you understand the unknowns and you understand that the science or the lack of science, that is that is something that you absolutely can can obviously do. And I'm not trying to discourage that. I'm just trying to discourage an informed discussion. Yeah, you know, I think with media in general, the narrative has been that stem cells are a silver bullet. We hear about athletes all the time getting these treatments and therapies and bouncing back. And it's pretty easy when you're in a situation medically that seems like there's no hope in sight to latch on to something as fantastic as stem cells and the hopes that it'll work. I think what was also really fascinating for me was, you know, Dr. Death, there's a clear villain. You clearly understand that, you know, he had a motive and it was horrifying, but Bad Batch, you know, the founder of the company, I don't know that you can necessarily label him as your classical villain. I think, you know, he had a lot of hope and promise in mind with everything that he was doing as well. And obviously, just very negative results for the people who went ahead with the therapy. He was one. I just I wanted people, you know, to make up their own minds about him. That's why he's so much in the podcast, you know, you can I you can hear what he says and you can make up your own mind about him and about the situation. So, you know, and it was different too. And in Dr. Death, the main character of the story was absent. I couldn't talk to him. I've never talked to Christopher Dent. In this case, the main character for much of the story, I have hours and hours of tape with him. So that was different as well. I mean, that was different. And you know, how are we gonna tell this story? And there was a lot about his past, you know, that we needed to tell as well. I'll tell you the thing that I think the podcast from what I've heard that was really most shocking to people. I mean, the lack of science behind it, but the huge profits that are being made. I don't think that was really, that's really understood by people who are buying it. I know that the people who were hurt by the stem cells, they didn't know until way afterward that it's very cheap to make, that this is very cheap to manufacture. They thought you have to pay $5,000 a shot because it's so cutting edge and so expensive. And the profit margins, I think, were not really clear until this podcast. They were not really laid out. The money that doctors are making, the money that the companies are making and yet how really cheap it is. And in assembling a story like this in the podcast format and getting people to agree to give you the information and open up, how has that been different than doing the print journalism that you've done previously? At a basic level, it's not that different. You know, journalism is journalism and interviews. I have to say audio interviews are different to do. It's something I'm still learning how to do in print. Most of the time, not universally, but a lot of the time, if you need another detail from someone or follow up, you can, if it's a source that's cooperating with you, you can go back to them, you can talk to them again, you can call them, you can text them, you can follow up and get, you know, if you remember, oh, well, what kind of car were you driving? You know, you can get these details that maybe in the moment you don't realize that you need. You can't do that in audio. You know, most of the time you just have one shot because it's harder to do. I can't follow up on the phone and, you know, easily. And so that, so you have to really make each interview count. And that's been something that's taken getting used to. Sometimes it means asking the same question over and over again in a different way. You know, prodding people along. Well, you know, what did this, tell me again, what this particular incident felt like? What did you see? What did it smell like? Like really those sensory details to try to draw people out. And in audio, that's so much more important because people are telling stories in their own voice. And I can't say I'm an expert at it. I'm still learning, I'm still learning about it. But hopefully I'm better at it now than I was when I started Dr. Da. I certainly think so. And I would assume that when it comes to recording and being on the record, so to speak, where they know that their voice and the interview is going to be used in the podcast is a little different than a piece that you write that's in your voice that pulls some quotes. Do you have any techniques or tactics to get people to warm up to you and open up on the show so that they can divulge the information you're looking for to create that story? It depends who I'm interviewing. I try to be the most careful and the most sensitive always when you're talking to patients or victims. Because one of the things that we as journalists have to do on a regular basis is ask people about the worst thing that has ever happened to them. There is, I mean, even in medical reporting, there's no worse question to ask someone than how did your baby die? I mean, it's just, there are terrible things that we're asking people to relive and you have to be mindful of the fact that they are only doing it as a favor to you. You need to be grateful that they're doing as a favor to you. They're doing it to give their story meaning. They're doing it because they want other people to maybe not experience what they did. And you always have to be particularly sensitive. So whenever I'm talking to someone who's been through something terrible, I try to let them guide the interview. I try to let them go to the extent that they are comfortable. And if I have to push them for a detail or I have to push them for something, I try to do it very gently. And I always try to say, if there's a question you don't want to answer, don't feel obligated to answer. Those are the hardest interviews. And even after the fact, you still have to be very careful with the quotes you use and the tape you use not to take advantage of someone, not to be exploitive of them. I always in every story, even a print story, I only try to include as many details as are necessary to tell the story and no further. Like I don't want to tell extra details just because of the salacious nature of them. And that's why if you listen to Dr. Death like that first episode, and it's true and bad batch as well, if you listen to the first episode, it's really hard to listen to. Like those are, there were some really pretty heavy details of the surgeries in that first episode. But the reason was I felt like you had to understand to understand the story, you had to understand how bad he was. I mean that he wasn't just making mistakes that could be normal malpractice mistakes that could have been just carelessness, a one-time carelessness, that he was doing things that surgeons never do and he was doing them over and over again. And in order to understand that, you really had to understand how he botched those surgeries. But as you listen to the series later, as it goes on and on, you'll notice that the details get less and less as you go along. By the time you're in the later episodes, I only include like the really, really horrible, atrocious things like, oh yeah, and he cut someone's vocal cords and left a sponge in their throat. I mean, you know, but I didn't need to go into the gruesome details of every surgery because I really, you wanna be respectful of people and you wanna be respectful of the details you use because these aren't just props in your story, they are human beings and they're human beings who've been through terrible things. And that's the thing I always try to guide when I'm talking to them and when I'm using the material from the interviews. And certainly, I mean, there's gonna be some apprehension about themselves of being duped or feeling like they had been taken advantage of. So they're mad at themselves and which is always gonna be bad. And for AJ and I, we've done so many interviews and things like that from doing the show and our careers at the other time. And every time that I had went back and would read something of an interview that I had done without the context of being in that room, reading it objectively and like, well, that wasn't nearly as funny as I thought it was when I was in that room. So even for these folks who are not used to this, to go back maybe to listen to the show or to read an interview that you had done, if it's misconstrued in any sort of way, I mean, the repercussions of that can be just awful. Right, and sometimes there are things that people say and you know, even though they're saying it on the record, even though they know that you're talking, they're talking to a reporter, there's nothing like that underhanded about it. But I quite often have people say things that I know they would not want me to publish. And I know that they would not want me to use. And I just, I don't do it even though maybe it might be fair game, journalistically, I just, I couldn't do it because I know that people, they don't understand maybe some how they, how things could be misconstrued or you put this detail in there and somebody's gonna take that wrong or this quote, somebody's gonna take it wrong like what do you mean? And I know what they mean, but I realize that people might not understand some things. And even after the fact, I'm always super careful with patient interviews. And that's quite refreshing. I think in the world that we're living in now with all the technology and all these different platforms, what we tend to see a lot of are the people going for these gotcha moments or the soundbite that is going to make everyone lose it. And everyone is just so focused on those things that we're losing the human elements, we're losing the touching story. And even, you know, it's funny, even listeners though will do that. Like one of the things that I understand, I didn't quite appreciate it, how much people would really zoom in on this. But if you've listened to Bad Batch, you know in the first episode, one of the victims finds the other victims. And this is a seminal moment in this story because if that had not happened, if one of the people who was affected had not found the others and connected the dots and put together, there was something really terrible, a larger thing going on, these infections would have continued. You know, they would have kept on because they had occurred before this. And people didn't know because they were scattered and not connected. And they would have gone on for who knows how long and people might have died. And so the fact that she found these other people was really a pivotal moment that probably saved lives. And yet there were people who said rightly, well, her getting information about other patients, that's a HIPAA violation. Right. And yes, it is a HIPAA violation and HIPAA is something we should take very seriously. And those laws are there for a reason and patient privacy. And I completely believe in patient privacy. But, you know, the fact that she found these other people was an actual major good event. And if it involved a HIPAA violation, I understand why you would get upset about it, but I can't believe that what she did was wrong, you know? And so my point is I was surprised, I understood, I was surprised the way people zeroed in on this. And it doesn't mean we shouldn't take HIPAA laws seriously. It just means, you know, saying that, oh, yes, Mr. So-and-So is in the hospital. Sometimes, you know, it's okay. Right. So, you know, at least in this case, it was okay. And the patients themselves thought it was okay, so. You know, and with the value that you're giving out with these cases and exposing the stuff and getting people to understand what was going on, you know, there's always the person who's sitting there listening so they can find any story or any quip that they can point to. I mean, I can't believe what this story that you guys have put out and exposing all this and showing people what's going on. And yet, hey, there it is, the HIPAA violation. Like, oh, that whole show, and that's what you got out of it? Yes. Yeah, sometimes we get caught on the wrong details. And obviously being a medical journalist and investigative journalist, what degree of skepticism around, you know, the modern healthcare system is appropriate for those who are not journalists, who are listening to these podcasts in horror, hearing these stories of, you know, things gone, terribly awry and people in the medical community sort of, you know, turning the other way and letting it go on. I hear people who tell me, oh, after I listen to any of your stories, I'm afraid to go to the doctor, which is not the takeaway to have. You know, I believe I'm around a lot of doctors in my job. I can tell you that the vast majority of doctors by a long shot are good people who wanna take care of their patients. So you should not be afraid to go to the doctor and not think that your doctor doesn't have your best interest in mind. I happen to like and fire doctors. So that's not the takeaway. I do think if there's one kind of theme of these two stories, it is about being informed as to the extent that you can. I mean, one of the issues that the question of Christopher Dunch raised is that the patients thought they were doing their homework. They thought they were doing their homework and yet they still ended up going to Dunch, you know, because it's we're limited in the amount of information that we can get. Even the very final patient, Jeff Glidewell, he looked all the internet. He looked up the health grades. He looked up the reviews. Yeah, I was like, okay, you know, looks fine. And so, you know, patients thought to call the medical board. I mean, they did everything that they could reasonably do to reassure themselves. So, and yet they were still not informed with the stem cell issue with bad batch. It's also a theme of patient, it's also a theme of patients being needing to educate themselves about what they're doing. And you know, you can't expect patients to go and read the scientific literature about stem cells and understand what it is or what's not there. You mentioned a lot of stuff is the negative results are not there. And you can't expect patients to do that. That's why I wanted to tell the story. I wanted to tell the story to help people, to help inform people. And maybe they're not gonna go dig through PubMed, but they might listen to a podcast that would raise some cautions about this. So that's why to me it was an important story to tell. It was also, it's a more important story in some ways than Dr. Death because your chances of really coming across a really horrible neurosurgeon that's going to kill you is pretty small, you know, thankfully. But your chance of you or someone you love with the way the industry is expanding, being, you know, spending your life savings on stem cells that are not going to help you, that's a lot greater. And so in some ways that is the more important story for people to hear than Dr. Death, even though the story itself might not be the, you know, grab you by the throat suspenseful story. It's a lot slower unfolding as you know from listening to both of them. Right, so asking questions, being skeptical of the stem cell science that's out there and making sure that the decisions you're making you're well informed on is an important way to protect yourself in these situations. Right, and probably another kind of common theme to both of them is they're both in some ways about how money corrupts the medical system in a way. I mean, Dr. Dunge, why did hospitals keep hiring him? They kept hiring him because he was very lucrative to a hospital to have a neurosurgeon on your staff. Why are people selling stem cells? You know, why is the business exploding? Because there's a lot of money to be made. So, you know, there's a lot of money in our healthcare system. It's the way that we've chosen to set up our healthcare system, but sometimes that money can, you know, could really make a difference as to whether you're going to offer something questionable. Yeah, I think, especially with Bad Batch, looking at the profitability that goes on in these situations that a lot of us are blind to, it's very opaque, has allowed at least the listeners, hopefully, to see that, hey, you know, just because the treatment is expensive doesn't mean that it truly was very costly for them to produce and doesn't mean that it's going to get you results. And I think that's the unfortunate side of it, especially when we're talking about treatments that aren't covered by our insurance, we tend to think, oh, well, it's a really expensive high-tech solution, so it's got to be something that'll work for me. Yeah, one of the things that I'm happy that I was able to do in the podcast is because the retail stem cell industry is a cash-based system, and it's, you know, private companies, private individuals. So it's been really hard to really get a sense of the money that's changing hands. And that's why I wanted to lay it all out, because it is hard to know. It's not like it's a public company. It's not like there are insurance claims that you can look at or any kind of actual data, because it's all cash. So that's one of the other motivations for me to do. The story is to really take a look at the money involved. Now, we got a question here from one of our listeners, Sarah, and I think it's fantastic that we have you joining us because I'm sure you can help us with this question. She loved the tips on storytelling, and she's wondering if you have any advice on how to make people tell better stories. Obviously, in your situation, when it comes to digging deeper to get the story that built both of those podcasts, I'm sure you've encountered some people that you've interviewed who just stick to the facts and maybe are a little uneasy about sharing. So do you have any tips for allowing the people that you're interviewing to tell better stories to advance the podcast and journalism you do? Is the question more like if they have a story but they don't know how to tell it, or is it whether they're reluctant to tell their stories? Which do you think the question, because they're too different? Yeah, she says, for example, just today, I was asking a co-worker how our vacation was, and I just got the facts treatment, the hotel she stayed in, the weather, and the trip she took. And now that I know to look out for this, it seems it's just everywhere. In such a case, I wonder if you have any conversational tips that I can use to hear more about the experience, more of the emotion. Thanks. That's a good question. I think you have to figure out what you wanna find out. Like, do I wanna, okay, so let's use the vacation example. You know, somebody, and actually, I do have some experience with getting people to try to talk to me because I have a 16-year-old son. And if you've been the parent of a 16-year-old son, every day the question is, how was school fine? What did you do? Nothing. I don't have the benefit of having a 16-year-old son. However, I was a 16-year-old boy. Yeah. And I certainly know those questions and those answers. All right, so is the idea, the first question is, is it because they just don't feel like telling you their story? Is it because they don't feel like their story's interesting? Is it because they have something else they would rather do than talk to their mom? I mean, so the first thing to do is, like if you have a coworker who doesn't really wanna tell you about their vacation, is it just because they just wanna do something else? Or is it because they just don't know how to do? So then you can, if we assume that they wanna talk to you and they wanna tell their vacation, then you can get people to zero in on a detail that matters. Like, okay, I went, whatever, like, what was the most bizarre thing you ate on your trip? I mean, you could, depending on where they went, and then you can get a story or who was the most interesting person you met on the trip. That would be a little more than just like, where did you go? So I think if you can zero in on particular details that might bring up a story, maybe that would help. I think for Sarah also, I mean, even though she got the facts treatment right, here's what we do know. The hotel, the weather, and the trip she talked. Well, there are emotional bids with all three of those facts, certainly what it's like to go on a vacation. You've experienced it, so you could say for to give what you would imagine that trip to be like, and then when you finished it, how you felt, ask her, was it anything like that for you? You know what the weather was going to be like if she gave it to you? You know what the hotel was? We've all had those opportunities and experiences. So for Sarah to get more out, to give her imagining of what it felt would feel like for her and to lay that onto her coworker, then her coworker was gonna feel obligated to then share a bit more. Yeah, I think just a few more leading questions as you were saying, focusing on smaller details instead of just generalities. I feel like when most of us ask how was your trip, that's a lot different question than what was the most bizarre thing you ate or what was the most exciting moment on that trip? Those are filled with emotion that's gonna allow the person to open up and stay away from the dreaded facts, facts, facts, boring storytelling that we talked about in the toolbox. And obviously when you're interviewing patients who've suffered trauma, there's gonna be negative emotions tied to it. And how do you deal with listening empathetically in those moments? Obviously you haven't experienced such trauma, but these patients have been through the ringer. Again, you have to let them guide you. You have to let them control the narrative. And if they're getting to places that are too hard for them, I just don't. It's not worth it for me. I think when you're asking particular questions that are really, really hard, I just let them take it slow. And if people don't feel rushed and I don't feel pressured, I think that helps that I'm not expecting anything. I just want your story. I'm not expecting any particular details. I'm not expecting. I just, I think the less pressure that people can feel and the less uncomfortable that they can feel, I think the better. And so I try to do whatever I can to put them at ease. One thing that's been hard for me in audio is when you're in print and someone's having a difficult time, you can stop. You can say, I'm really sorry about that. You can hand them a tissue. You can try to help comfort them, which I think we should. You're with another human being who's experiencing a terrible event. But in audio, you can't do that because you'll talk over your tape. So that's been really hard for me when someone is emotionally breaking down and I can't stop and say, oh, I'm really sorry. Because I can't walk over their tape and their moment. And that's been very difficult for me to just kind of allow people to allow people to cry or to pause or to not be able to talk and not interfere. That's been hard for me because you just, you want to do what you can to make people feel better. Yeah. And I could see how wanting to immediately comfort them doesn't play well on the podcast when we need to hear the full story. Yes. Our next question comes from Mark. He said, you really enjoyed the toolbox episode this month. Started to use techniques and conversations and you can already see a difference in the way he is perceived. But what's even more striking is that I actually enjoy sharing things a lot more now because instead of just throwing some facts out, I actually get to relive the experience myself a bit each time. Now I'm wondering how far I can take this and I'd value your input. I manage a small marketing team and as you can probably imagine how our weekly meetings look like, fax, fax, fax. These meetings feel like a necessary evil to discuss numbers and deadlines, but it's also my job to present these. And of course, it's not a personal story that I can flesh out. But I still think that there must be a way to bring these storytelling skills into those dreaded meanings. Any tips are appreciated. Thank you, Mark. Now, of course, meetings necessarily aren't the best place to tell stories, but those data and those facts do have stories tied behind them. What are your thoughts, Laura? Yeah, that's hard because I've never been in that situation where I've tried to make a meeting more lively. I work, you know, I, you know, I was the low person on the totem pole. We used to joke about the mandatory staff meetings, but we didn't have them. And now I work by myself. You know, the only meeting I have is, you know, my only co-worker is my dog who's here every day. She's pretty quiet. I don't know that can help that much with making meetings more lively. The meetings I go to even just now, I think people mostly want to accomplish what they're there to accomplish and move on. So I wish I could help with that. But I, that's one, that's one I don't know if I can, if I have any expertise on that. So what I was noticing here, it seems that it's Mark's company. He's leading the team. And for him to come into that meeting room and lay out a story that's on the lighter side that maybe will downplay him a bit and loosen up the room so that everyone can be excited and enjoy the meeting. I mean, if he's saying here that a lot of these meetings are just about the numbers. And, you know, when it comes to people who are just interested in the numbers, they tend to be very stiff and unapproachable because they're uninterested in really anything else, which makes everyone else in that room uncomfortable and uptight and afraid of expressing themselves. And here, Mark has an opportunity to lighten it up for everybody so that everyone's skills and personality are going to be able to shine. And with that, the team members making better connections to be more productive. Well, I certainly feel like everyone has a story outside of the facts and the numbers at work. In fact, everyone has lives outside of work. So, simply what we do in our meetings, starting off with small victories or things that excited you over the weekend, provide the other team members a chance to share a quick story about what they did over their weekend and what was really enjoyable about it, could open the door for then Mark to also practice his storytelling a little bit before you just jump right into the facts, numbers, et cetera. I also feel in situations like this, it's not something that we need to force on everybody either. Meetings have a place, stories have a place and being open to giving other people an opportunity to share stories, I think is more important than just running out and telling your story in every meeting Mark. And the next question we got here is, how do you keep a conversation interesting and lively for hours with a person with whom you have nothing in common? I.e. at a dinner party where you do not leave the table for a long time without sounding fake or like you're trying too hard. And obviously getting to stories and getting the information that you need to write your articles, there are gonna be moments where you may not have much in common with the person that you're interviewing. Do you have any tips in that department, Laura? Well, in my conversations to get, for what I do, I'm always asking questions. So, I, yeah, it's not exactly a dinner party situation because I have information I'm trying to get, I'm trying to get stories out of people. And so I'm always the one asking questions. And I let people talk and then I ask more questions. So, I don't know, but you know what I find in social situations is everybody has a story, even if they might not know it, everybody's got a story. And you can go beyond the, what do you do? You can ask something else, like what's the most interesting place you've ever been? Or something beyond like what's your job? Cause we all get, and that's kind of all the ice breakers. What's the weather and what's your job? But I think if you ask people a more interesting question, like where's the most interesting place you've been? Or what's the, oddest situation you've ever found yourself in? Or something like that. I think maybe to draw out the stories that people don't know they have in them. Yeah, I completely agree. I think everyone has experiences and stories to tell. Oftentimes when we find ourselves in a conversation that's dying where we have nothing in common, we're not using the right questions to open up that conversation. And certainly we don't have to talk about stuff that we don't know anything about. I think that's a fallacy that a lot of us, especially around strangers fall into that we feel like conversation has to be very linear and we have to stick to the topic at hand. When you think about the fun conversations that you have with family and friends and people you're really close with, well they actually jump around quite a bit from thread to thread and they're not necessarily linear. So don't feel like you have to be forced to have a long, boring conversation about something you don't know anything about. Instead, exactly that. Ask some questions that are about people's experiences, things that excite them, things that they have as great memories, childhood experiences as well as a great opportunity to get liven up the conversation even if you don't have something in common. Yeah, stories have great power. As we know from your podcast and they can be very compelling hopefully to change what's going on in the medical community. Laura, thank you so much for joining us today. It was my pleasure. I'm going to answer some of our listeners' questions and where can our listeners find your two fantastic podcasts? Anywhere that there's podcasts. Anywhere you can listen to a podcast. Any podcast app, iTunes is the most popular. If you have an iPhone, there's an app for podcasts. You can listen on your computer. You can listen on Stitcher. You can listen on Castbox. Any podcast app will play Bad Batch and Dr. Ness. And what's next for you? Do you have a third podcast? I don't know. I don't know. Nothing yet. I'm looking around for ideas. All right. I haven't settled on anything yet. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Enjoy your time with your daughter. We appreciate it. Oh, it's my pleasure.