Ben Sasse on How to Live While Dying
4/9/20261 hr 8 min
How would you live if you knew when you were going to die? I sat down with the former Republican senator Ben Sasse to hear how he is facing his own mortality after receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis. For Sasse, cancer brings pain, but also clarity, sharpening his focus on the state of our politics, his wife and three children, and the God he expects to shortly meet.
- 0:00 - Intro
- 01:51 - Ben Sasse’s terminal diagnosis
- 07:14 - Oncology navigation and clinical trials
- 16:10 - Sasse’s career in the Senate and reflections on politics
- 32:55 - What could a civic-minded Senator achieve?
- 38:15 - Reforming academia and liberal arts
- 54:49 - Facing mortality: The “final enemy”
- 59:27 - Advice for the living
- 1:01:10 - The “prayer of pancreatic cancer”
(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)
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Ross Douthat· Host0:26
[upbeat music] From New York Times Opinion, I'm Ross Douthat, and this is Interesting Times. How would you live if you knew when you were going to die? When Ben Sasse announced his diagnosis of stage four pancreatic cancer last December, he called it a death sentence, but he noted that he'd had one before the cancer, too. We all do. Sasse served the state of Nebraska in the US Senate for eight years as a high-minded, and by his own account, sometimes ineffectual conservative. Then he quit politics to become president of the University of Florida, pursuing a different model of civic reform. Now he's facing mortality.