Be a Verb (ft. Dr. Chris Stout)

Thanks for tuning to Digital Voices podcast, where we chat digital transformation, challenges, and opportunities across healthcare and life sciences. And now, your host, Ed Marx.

Ed Marx here. Welcome, Digital Voices. Super stoked to share with you just an amazing guest and the insights that I know that you're going to learn as well as myself during the next 30 minutes with Dr. Chris Stout. He is a clinical psychologist. I'm going to read the highlights, but then I want to jump in a little bit into more a full version of his bio because I think you'll be really impressed. And, we'll definitely in the show notes put some links where you can get even more information. But, he's a bestselling author, psychologist, adventurer, startup whisperer. I want to get into all these different things. Accidental human humanitarian, and the list goes on. But Dr. Stout's career includes business, government, and nonprofits, as well as the UN and academia. He's traveled the world, published 38 books, won a wide range of accolades including 4 additional doctorates. He is licensed clinical psychologist and founding director of the Center for Global Initiatives, a top-rated healthcare nonprofit. His entrepreneurial experience is demonstrated in multiple startups He's been on the faculty at the University of Illinois College of Medicine and Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine. He was appointed to the World Economic Forum's 100 Global Leaders of Tomorrow and was an invited faculty at their annual meeting. Dr. Stout is a fellow in the APA, past president of the IPA, and is a member of the National Academies of Practice. He is a bestselling author whose works have been translated into 8 languages. He is a popular LinkedIn influencer with almost half a million followers and is the host of the popular Living a Life in Full podcast, a top 5% show with an audience reach of over 3 million. He has traveled to over 100 countries and founded a kindergarten in Tanzania. He is listed in founder Richard Saul Wurman's Who's Really Who 1000. Purdue has named a scholarship in his honor. Dr. Scout was educated at Purdue, the University of Chicago, and Forest Institute. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School. The APA named him Psychology's International Rock Star in recognition of his global work. He's been interviewed by everyone, including CNBC, CNN, NBC, PBS, NPR, Oprah, Time, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, and others. His archive of professional work is part of Smithsonian's Museum for the History of Psychology. He balances all his academic humanitarian efforts with his family and ultra running, motorcycle builds, adventure sports, and climbing, having summited 3 of the world's 7 Summits. I mean, he's just an incredible individual. That's why I wanted to have him on as our guest. Just full of good stuff. And the best part of all of that is he's just a good person, which you'll come to know. And so that's how we first sort of met. Chris, is your own podcast, and someone introduced us, and then I became a follower like millions of others and gleaned so much out of all the content that you produce so freely for others. And you're just such a giving, amazing person. And so thank you for being on our podcast.

Thank you, Ed.

Yeah.

And hey, man, it takes one to know one, right? Right back at you.

So tell us your personal personal mission or mantra? What sort of drives you?

Probably early on, I did a lot of reading, rather bookish little boy, and I read a bunch of stuff by Buckminster Fuller. And he always kind of talked about being a verb. And that really kind of resonated with me. And again, being the nerd that I am, as you know, I even had that as a license plate on a car for a period of time of be a verb. And that's kind of, I guess, you know, to kind of just kind of spin it down to its essence, that's really to take action, you know, not sit back on your laurels, to, you know, see what needs getting done and roll up your sleeves and try and do as best you can to make it better.

Let's talk about your passion around digital because you, as I described in your introduction, I mean, you do so many things, but you also are very digital literate. And as we get there, what inspired you first to get your doctorate?

Well, they probably kind of go hand in hand. I actually started off as an undergrad math major, and that was because it was back in the era when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and that was how you got into computer science. There wasn't even a computer science degree for me. in 1977. So, when I started, it was learning Fortran, doing punch cards, batching them overnight, and hoping the next day that when you went in, you know, that everything would work, working on a DEC-10 with no monitor, and, you know, just really kind of the fundamental early days of things. And just really, you know, I kind of saw the power of what technology could start to do. I mean, we just wrote, you know, really goofy Fortran programs, but the good and the bad of it was that I saw the power, but I just couldn't see myself writing code 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week. So I just coincidentally took a psychology course. I'd never taken a psychology course in high school. So did that, fell in love with it, took another one, took another one, took another one, and wound up changing majors. The math department and the psychology department were both in the School of Science, so that was nice. I had a lot of overlap with credits and whatnot. And I wound up taking almost every single psychology course there was. I graduated with a double major in psychology. I think I had like 50-some-odd credits just in psychology. So really liked that. And kind of as the joke goes, although there's certainly a strong grain of truth to it, what do you do with an undergrad degree in psychology is you go to graduate school. So I did that. And I kind of bounced around in the sense of what do I want to do in between, like, because I graduated with a BS rather than a BA in psychology, because again, I kind of leaning into the science part of things and thought I would wind up, you know, being a researcher, which I have done, but I really got involved in a clinical program, a doctoral clinical clinical psychology program, which was much more obviously patient-focused. So that got me into that area and then got my doctorate and then did my pre-doc and did 2 post-docs and then got my license and then did a combination of things, as you kind of noted in my bio, of, you know, doing clinical work and doing academic work and doing research and wound up with a career that really kind of blended both of working with patients, working in clinical settings that way, but then also administrative stuff and writing.

So Chris, that makes a lot of sense then when you were describing your undergrad and your background in math and those sort of things, because you've intentionally have, it appears intentionally, have included sort of technology or digital in your practice. And I know that you're big into analytics, you know, which is part of digital. So was that intentional or did it, you just happened to come together that way?

My career is also probably, you know, a lot like Mr. Magoo, you know, I kind of just go from one thing and then get, you know, curious in something else. And fall into something else, and that tends to turn out okay. But I guess in some sense, to be very honest, full disclosure, full transparency, when I after I graduated, even you know having a doctorate, having all the the trainings and whatnots that I had done, I was still very very very nervous about misdiagnosing somebody. My dissertation was on diagnosis, so I was really maybe overly focused in that area. But I went back to my programming roots, and I wrote a program on what's called differential diagnostics. in this case, differential psychodiagnostics. And I wanted to make sure that when I saw a patient that presented with certain kinds of psychiatric symptoms, that I wasn't inappropriately treating them psychologically when indeed they had an endocrine disorder or they had something else going on with them that I would need to, you know, make a referral to a specialist or something. So I took, gosh, what was it, dBASE III Plus by Ashton Tate, and I forget what all else, but I just kind of created this sorting program and loaded it with data on psychiatric disorders and symptoms, and then overlaid that with medical disorders that had similar symptom presentations. And it gave me sort of this probabilistic output as to, you know, is, you know, what's the likelihood that this is just totally psychological versus something that might be more biologically based? So that was really the start of that. And again, being, you know, kind of a nerd in this area, I wrote articles about that. I found that writing these kinds of programs wasn't that difficult. So then I wrote and published an article on about how to, you know, put these kinds of things together. And parallel to that, back then, these in the early days in Northwestern in the 1980s, in psychology, and you would probably know this from your background in medicine in general, there really wasn't a whole lot of outcome studies being done in psychology. Basically, if you were trained as a cognitive behavioral therapist, that's what you did. If you're trained as an analyst, that's what you did. If you're trained as a whatever, Gestalt, you name it, then that's kind of what you did. But there wasn't a whole lot of evaluation. And then there was a bit of a stigma and a bias in a negative way that You know, if the patient didn't get better, it was the patient's fault. It wasn't the therapist's shortcomings, or it wasn't the therapeutic approach wasn't a good match or a good fit for that patient or their circumstance or their diagnosis. So we started doing outcome studies. I did this stuff with Ken Howard and Michael O'Mahony and John Lyons back at Northwestern. And we started publishing in that area with Wiley a lot on looking at outcomes. How do you measure them? And I talk about this in the sense of, like, psychiatric and psychological outcomes are very squishy because there's a lot of variables. variables that can play into that and play out very differently with a person's demographics and all sorts of things, which kind of went back to what my dissertation looked at. So to fast forward then, and again, this is really kind of more in your domain, but electronic medical records came along and all of a sudden we had these data collection devices for us that were systematic, that were accessible, that were searchable, and that was fantastic. So taking So from doing outcome studies that took forever to do to doing— getting electronic medical records and collecting data that way with appropriate HIPAA and data sharing things all in place and security all in place. Then that— so that's '80s, '90s, then the 2000s, I shifted into— and this is now at the College of Medicine at University of Illinois— into evidence-based practice. So now if you've got a large enough database that's somewhat generalizable to at least certain populations, you can start to create treatment guidelines and you can start to then take a look at what was called or what is called evidence-based medicine, evidence-based practice, to be able to say, if we have this kind of a patient in this kind of a background, in this kind of a circumstance with these kinds of symptoms and diagnoses, then this is— here's where we should start off with in our clinical toolkit to start to treat them. So that then all of that stuff mashed together now in the 2010s and to today are the big data, the data analytics, and then the greater sophistication of being able to look at things of prescriptive, uh, precision medicine and being able to be much more prescriptive with greater, uh, specificity. And then we've got the other, you know, components of this, of artificial intelligence and things to help with our treatment planning and decision-making.

You are really doing, you know, as I, as I listen, I'm not at all surprised, but you are doing what we refer to now, you know, especially in healthcare, digital transformation since the beginning of your career. You've been a pioneer in many ways and even in your practice. With the incorporation— well, writing your own code, writing your own systems, the incorporation of analytics for evidence-based outcomes, and of course, then naturally, the electronic health record and so forth. But you've been really part of the leading edge of this whole digital transformation that has been going on for some time. So major kudos to you. And again, it's not surprising to me at all.

Thanks, brother.

I want to jump into life, and we'll try to incorporate some leadership. Because I know everyone, when they listen, when they look you up, if they haven't heard of you before or listened to the bio in the beginning, it's amazing what you fit into life. And, I love the whole thing about life is a verb. Living is action-oriented. And, how do you fit it all in? So, you climb mountains. So, we have a lot, so much in common as we know because we've chatted before.

Yeah.

But, climbing mountains or rebuilding motorcycles or all the different things that you do and your Your practice and your career. How do you fit it all in?

Usually very poorly. So, you know, here's the secret sauce. You just don't do it all at once, you know. And I've been at this for, you know, 35-plus years now. So it just all kind of adds up after time. So that's part of it. That's why it sounds like such a, you know, humongous set of things, just because it's, you know, you live long enough and you do stuff. It just, it all adds up. But practically speaking, I mean, there's something I kind of call— I don't think I coined this, but it's a nice fit. It's like stacking Or content stacking, or two birds with one stone, or the processional effect. I think also tip of the hat to Buckminster Fuller, who talked about that sort of a thing. And what I mean by that, I wrote a piece for LinkedIn a while back that people can look up called The Portfolio Career. And in that piece, part of it is that if you start to do one kind of thing and move in a certain kind of area, there might be other kinds of things simultaneous to that that can be additive to it and to be helpful. So, for example, You mentioned my climbing, you mentioned my travel, and you mentioned talks and stuff. Well, one of the things to go not literally or just have a miserable time, kill yourself of climbing, is that you have to stay fit. So, in the process of staying fit, then I'd go for runs like you. I remember your photos and stuff of images from an early morning run and things, which I just love. And, in that context, I would be thinking about an upcoming talk or I'd be problem-solving some kind of circumstance at work or something like that. And just because it's, as you know, running and whatnot is a very meditative kind of thing. And I'd carry a little recorder with me because I'd get ideas and I didn't want to lose them or focus on one idea, fearful to forget it and to miss out on the next ones. So that was helpful. Then taking that running gave me a certain base of fitness. And then when I would try to coordinate climbs, like if I got invited to give a talk internationally, then I would I would try and coordinate that usually after the talk to say, well, I'm already over here. I might as well then go do whatever. So I got invited to do a talk in Auckland years ago, gave that talk, prepped for it. And after the talk, I was that close to Australia. So then I flew to Australia and then climbed the highest mountain in Australia, which is just really kind of a hike. It's a non-technical, not big deal. But it was just kind of like that sort of a thing. So it's sort of like When there's a certain kind of push or drive for whatever it is, something professional, something with your family, something with a personal goal or whatever it is, to try and then add in all the other kinds of things as best you can with them. When I would give a talk at APA, those are all in North America. So once our kids were old enough, then we'd all go to that. So I would go give my talk or whatever and go to listen to other people's talks. And my wife would take the kids and they would go sightseeing, or there'd oftentimes be other things, activities for family members. So, for me, the secret sauce is just to say it is good to be focused on that one thing. But while you're focused on that one thing that is maybe the primary goal, there may be opportunities, not every time, but there may be opportunities to be able to add on or to content stack or to activity stack or adventure stack these other kinds of things along with it. I, I just had Michael Clinton on my show, and he calls it layering. He has a concept in his book Roar about each 10 years, he like takes on a kind of a general new challenge. And then every activity during that decade, then he adds these different layers to it. And again, as you know, with fitness and travel and anything else, these kinds of things all kind of tee you up to be able to do maybe spontaneous things or things you hadn't planned, but just all add to that whole overall life resume.

Those are super practical. And another easy practical one is listening to A Life in Full while I run, while I take a jog.

All right, man. Good.

You're out there running anyways, so why not listen instead of just music, which is fine too. Music's good, but maybe it's a podcast and you can learn, or a book that you run to. So I love that concept of stacking. And like you said, you do it enough, Over time, it brings you a lot of life experience for sure. And then that probably gives you a lot of ideas and insights for further development and to write 38 books, which is pretty impressive. You know, I hadn't planned to ask you this question, Chris, but let me throw a curveball at you anyways. 38 books, that's a lot. I've written a few and I know the effort that it takes. What's one or two that you're most proud of or top-of-mind proud of that when you think about, wow, all the books, this one is really my favorite or something like that?

Thanks. I am probably very partial to— and I'll tell you one of the little secrets or tips around getting to a number of 38 too. But my favorite was probably called The New Humanitarians. It is a 3-volume set published by Prager. And One of the things— here's one of the secrets. When I was writing with Prager in the heyday of it, when I was doing a lot more writing back in the day, they love series books. So I did a 3-volume set, The New Humanitarians. They all have different ISBNs. They're all different books. They're volumes 1, 2, and 3. They're not editions 1, 2, and 3. So all the content is different and chapters and everything are totally different. They're 3 standalone books, but that's 3 books under one book contract with Prager. So that's one way to do it. And then likewise, I did one on terrorism with them. That was 4 books. We did a follow-up. That was a 5th book. But it was all under the same kind of rubric. But back to The New Humanitarians, why is it my favorite? Again, back to content stacking. That book came out around a certain Venn diagram point in my life where I was doing some stuff with the World Economic Forum, which was heady stuff. And I felt like I was misinvited, like, what am I doing here kind of a thing, and met these really cool people that had been doing cool things in startups and cool things in nonprofits and cool things in healthcare and just a very diverse group of high-performance folks. And I got to see what they were doing and it was really cool and I wanted to do that too. And I got started. I was getting ready to— my nonprofit had not become a 501 yet. I was just kind of doing it in my spare time, so to speak. I have a mentor, have and had a mentor back then. He said, you know, you gotta, you gotta make this a 501. You gotta make this, you know, for real, not just some, you know, kind of do it when you can because you're writing all the checks yourself, you're doing everything by yourself, you need a team, blah, blah, blah. And he's absolutely right. So he, he was an attorney, his wife's an attorney, and they helped us. They did pro bono to get our 501 established. But at the same time, it's like, okay, well, they're helping out with the mechanics of that and the legalities and registrations and all. But how do you create Doctors Without Borders? How do you create Amnesty International? How do you create these, like, in me, the top of the top-tier kinds of places, as well as some of the folks that I was meeting and working with at World Economic Forum? So I decided to write a book about it. So I wanted to interview these people. This is pre-podcast, so it gives you this opportunity to talk to people and interview people. And so each chapter in The New Humanitarians is a standalone. There's a chapter on Doctors Without Borders. There's a chapter on Amnesty International. There's a chapter on Southern Poverty Law Center, all the ones that I either knew people at or wanted to know people at. And we put that together. Simultaneous to that, I thought, well, I can't interview all these people. And it really grew from one book organically into these 3 volumes. So I contacted one of the graduate programs I had a relationship with. I said, hey, if you have some graduate students I can use to train how to do these interviews, then they can do these interviews. They can author the chapters, co-author the chapters, what have you, and get a publication out of it. And that, you know, high tides raise all ships. They get a publication. The books get to grow. I get to not have to interview 45 different people for 3 books, et cetera, et cetera. And the books came out. So it's just sort of like I look back on that as this kind of cool project that I got to learn mercenarily, like, how these programs develop themselves. I got to get publicity to all those programs because some were the top ones that people already knew about, household names. Others were very new and people didn't know about them at the time. Graduate students got this opportunity to meet with some really cool people and get role-modeled that way. They got a publication before they even graduated with their doctoral program. So again, it's kind of that same kind of mantra, practicing what I'm preaching about the content. stacking of— the goal was to develop my own 501 and to learn from others how they did theirs. The ancillary processional effects of that was being able to get books, being able to help out graduate students, being able to publicize really amazing programs that people knew about and others that people didn't know about at the time.

I think when you're doing really unique things and you're helping others, that it draws other people to you, right? And they want to be, wow, look what I love what Chris is doing and what's being done through his life, and I want to be part of that. I want to experience that. And then, you draw people to yourself that then can help you and it helps them at the same time. There's so many different directions, Chris, that we could go and I could spend— I wish we were neighbors because I'd probably be bugging you all the time.

That'd be great.

I talk a lot about empathy and we talk a lot about empathy in healthcare. You clearly have this fullness of empathy, your human service orientation, for which you've won awards for. I know you didn't do it for the awards. Those just came as a result of you doing these things, having a kindergarten in Tanzania. And how did you— have you ever thought about how did this empathy or this service orientation, how did it manifest itself in your life? Is it something that's replicable, that for those who aspire to that, are there things that they can do? I think people wonder, are you born with it, or is it something that you That's a very pithy question.

I guess my background was— we were talking off mic before, you know, I was born and grew up in Dallas. And I don't know how public this is, but my folks got divorced before I was 1 year old. So I was raised by a single mom. And in spite of, you know, her having a 40-hour workweek and all that sort of a thing, she was very active, involved, very active and involved in doing things for others. And because I was an only child, she couldn't afford a babysitter. babysitter, I got carted along to all these different kinds of activities, which was great. You know, which was— I didn't feel so great at the time. It was like, oh my gosh, now what? But, you know, we went to a nurse— my mom had just a very great musical ability of singing and of playing a variety of different instruments, which must have been a recessive gene because I can play the radio and that's about it. But she would go to nursing homes and as a volunteer, she would do a variety of different kinds of things and sing and play music. There was always some kind of something that would fill up You know, maybe one evening a week or at least one of the days of the weekend where we would be out, you know, going someplace else and doing something, you know, for the church or doing something for nearby, you know, nursing home or some something. And, you know, I guess that, you know, in terms of exposure, you know, nature-nurture, whatever, that was, you know, that was an ethic that I got to see demonstrated by her behavior. You know, I guess I felt that, you know, part of it too, I mean, that was a wonderful part of things, but it was also, it was kind of tough. You know, I was very obedient. I'm obese and named Stout. I'm not obese anymore, but I'm still named Stout. And, as a little boy, that was kind of not a great thing. I had a ton of orthopedic issues. I couldn't run. I had these bizarre kind of clodhopper shoes and stuff as a boy and just never was active or anything and lived in a very kind of gritty urban area of Dallas. And, it was just sort of there's no outdoors or just none of those kinds of things. And, I just— Once I kind of got to these points where I could start to do other kinds of things and got older and got independent, there was still this part of me that felt like, you know, you know, and maybe this is also part of the psychology part of, you know, trying to give back and trying to be of help to others, that there's such a different kind of joy and satisfaction that I think I've certainly experienced periodically with these kinds of things. But I just, I really, that's my dopamine. You know, drip. That's the kind of thing that I get a very physiological, emotional, and therefore mercenary motivation to seek that out when I do help others. Or someone, you know, does. You know, I love getting it. You know, compliments. This is. I'm on cloud nine for the rest of the week. Thanks to you, Ed. You know, for the kind words that you said. Because when when you put yourself out there to be helpful as a you know as a psychologist in a therapy session or whether it's writing a book or even just writing a blog for LinkedIn, people are more than willing these days to full-throatedly give their critique or tell you where you're wrong or whatever. And it always feels a little nerve-wracking. And peer review for a journal article, that used to be a very bloody process. And reviewers and editors, before a book manuscript winds up on a bookshelf, is kind of a traumatic event oftentimes, at least for me. Other writers, I'm sure like you, are much better and don't have to go through that. But, but for me, you know, it's just like, oh my gosh, you know, I'm an idiot. I can't, you know, write right. I don't know what I'm trying to say. And, and going through those kinds of things. So when you do feel like you have resonated with someone or you have made some kind of modest addition or modest benefit to something, to me, that's like I said, that's, that's my dopamine hit.

You did offer— there's practical advice in there where you can create that and you can also help create it within your own family or with colleagues by the examples that you shared, you know, how your mother took you along. So sometimes I always say things are caught, not taught. That would be a great example of—

Yeah, hear, hear.

Your mom did for you.

I probably didn't, you know, give you a super, you know, tip-filled kind of answer to that. I think part of it is just, I think there's maybe some intrinsic aspects to people. So maybe this leans in more to the nurture aspect of, you know, I can tell you for sure, because I worked in forensic settings also with— when I was with the state of Illinois. And there are some people that have zero empathy, some people that are sociopathic, you know, and there's a wide spectrum of everything in between, you know, from your Albert Schweitzers on one end to, you know, your whoever's on the opposite end. And we're not always feeling that way all the time at the same level either. You know, we evolve, we change, we become parents, or we have these certain traumatic or growthful experiences. We're very complex folks in complex circumstances. But if there are people that do have that wonderful experience of feeling what it's like to be of help to someone and that that help mercenarily makes you feel better, like just being grateful for things and those kinds of things, I think are— I would like to think are somewhat universal. But realistically, Realistically, I'm sure they're probably not. But for those that do, there's certainly lots of ways out there to be able to benefit from that while helping others at the same time.

Chris, you've done so many things as we've already chatted about. What's the one, if you could name one, and I know that's, I'm sure, a difficult thing to do, but what's one thing that you're most proud of in terms of all the different things that you've accomplished thus far? Because I know you're only a third of the way through.

Oh, golly. Molly, honestly, I guess family, you know, again, growing up without a dad. I mean, I had a dad, but I didn't see him very often. And feeling terrified, like when my wife and I got married, it was a second marriage for me. The first one lasted about 10 minutes, but nevertheless, and we waited 10 years to have our first child, partially because of my concerns. Like, I didn't know, you know, I didn't have a good role model. I'm going to suck as a father, you know, just sheer terror of feeling like, you know, what's going to happen. And then likewise, you know, in relationships, like, oh my gosh, you know, my folks couldn't keep it together. I couldn't keep it together, you know. And, you know, my wife and I will be— have been married 37 years in a couple of months. You know, it's been ups and downs. Our kids are now in their 20s. We have 2, and they're, you know, doing well. I think generally doing kind of what it is that they want to do and feeling pretty actualized about that. It's been a bumpy road for all of us. You know, everything's not just a hockey stick without hiccups and things. But, you know, in spite of all those kinds of things, you know, I'd say that's probably the key thing of feeling like, you know, at the end of the day, have I done the kinds of things I wanted to do? Are there still things I want to do in the context of my family? You know, do they know that I have their back? Do I know that they have my back? And feeling that kind of kinship, which I know you feel with your family as well too, is probably like the number one thing. It doesn't matter the books or the, you know, even the clinical work as much as, you know, again, back to being mercenary, of things would be awful if, if I did not have my family.

A beautiful answer, and, and I'm not surprised. We're winding down. I have one more question for you, but just as a Heads up, I'm going to let you finish and double down on anything that we talked about or may have missed. But you have— and I hope people who don't follow you already after this podcast follow you. It's just fascinating the amount of excellent content that you put out. And you have these amazing guests on your podcast. I love listening to it. And you learn, as I do, from every guest that you have. What are maybe one or two things that are top of mind? Because it's probably hard to remember everything that you've learned and what's the one or two best things. But what are the one or two best things that you can think of right now that you've learned from some of your guests that might be interesting for our audience?

From the practical side, it seems like, again, kind of the Venn diagram, because for people that may not be familiar with the show, it's very magazine-y. I mean, we don't have a particular— it's not just on tech, it's not just on humanitarian work, It's not just on medicine or whatever, it's on everything. And, kind of a common thread amongst all the diversity of guests has been that people have— I don't want to call it a regimen, but practices. They have certain approaches to how it is that they do whatever it is they do. If it's their specific work, like how they manage their lab, if it's their family life, if it's their writing process for— I've interviewed a lot of journalists and a lot of book authors. Those kinds, no matter kind of what your specialty is or what it is that you do and that you enjoy, people have a practice around that. And I find there's a great benefit to having practices around whatever it is. And there's— I can't say what those practices should be. Those people should develop and experiment and rinse and repeat what works and let go of what doesn't. And I guess maybe if I can sneak in another one that's a little less technique-y is then Almost, I can't think of anybody. I mean, we're in our 5th season now, so I'm not fully remembering everybody immediately. But it seems like everybody that I have had a conversation with, you included, have this wonderful, sincere, authentic humility to who they are and humbleness. I mean, again, you know, Ed, you've been on the show. I've had astronauts, I've had ambassadors, I've had— well, for example, Phil. Phil and Linda later, you know, started the Renaissance Weekends, you know, former ambassador to the UK, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And in that conversation, again, very publicly make me feel like I'm the guest and they're like complimenting me. It's sort of like, well, what are you talking about, man? Look at you. And so, but it's sincere. It's not baloney or anything. They're not blowing smoke or anything. I mean, it's like, and again, just randomly sample. I can't think of anybody that was like, Like a jerk or anything in the sense of, like, you know, I'm the cat's meow kind of thing. It's like everybody that I've spoken with, you know, I mean, they're like, you know, they got like MD-PhDs, they're JD-PhDs, they've been, you know, bestsellers, and they've, you know, whatever, whatever you see as a highlight kind of a thing. I've got an upcoming one with actually a Nobel laureate. And it's sort of like all of these folks to a tee, really, when you're having a conversation, care about you. And they talk about you and they ask you, you know, they flip the table and they're asking me questions. And it's sort of like that, I think, speaks again to people's humanity. So the best thing is, you know, develop a practice that works for whatever it is that you need to be creative and do your art or your athletics or your whatevers. And then, you know, care about the other person and be sincere and authentic about that.

Yeah, those are profound. They sound simple, but they're profound words of wisdom. That we can all benefit from. And, and thank you for sharing that. I love the humility thing. That is, as you were answering that question, I was thinking back through our guests too, and some of the commonalities of, of what makes people truly, you know, sort of authentic and genuine. And it's having this some sort of level of humility, and it's really critical. And it's another one of those things, we don't have time to unpack it, Chris, but, you know, another one of those things like empathy, like how do you develop if you don't have humility? How can you develop it? Be coached into it? You know, are you born with it? You know, that sort of thing. That'd be interesting topic to run down someday. But yeah, I can't remember the product that they sell, but you know, the most interesting man in the world type thing. I think, I think, yeah, Dos Equis or something. You're definitely that person. Just such a great person. And talking about humility, you are the embodiment of humility. So how would you like to end this, Chris? I want to leave it with you. Is there something that we want to double down on that we touched on or something maybe we didn't touch on that our audience of digital leaders in healthcare across providers and payers— I want to leave the last word for you because you're just so full of wisdom.

Maybe 2 things. One is, again, I can't just wrap up without tossing it right back to you, my friend. I mean, you are a great role model. I mean, since I've I've known you and did the history on you to get to know you better and have you and have a conversation on our show. And then just knowing kind of your trajectory of the kinds of things that you've done athletically and your family and your career and your work and your innovation and everything is just, you know, a tip of the hat. I mean, it's a— you're a great role model yourself. People need to, you know, if they don't already, aren't familiar with you, Google you and look up all the amazing things that you've done.

Thank you.

In terms of doubling down, I guess one of the things I'm experimenting with, I've kind of— where I'm at in my life now is really focusing back on my nonprofit. We've revamped our website. I'm much happier with it than what it had been pre-revamp. And for folks that have an interest in it, we tend to focus in global health. If you have a humanitarian interest, that's kind of what we do. I call it open-sourcing humanitarian intervention, which should resonate with some of the tech folks, because everything there is always free all the time. It's a resource-filled place. We've got lectures, we've got podcasts, we've got links, we've got downloadable spreadsheets. I mean, everything, just, you know, if this is an area that you have an interest in, if you want to start a nonprofit, if you want to just be helpful to some something, you know, then to do that. And kind of my experiment, and this is the first time, so here's your scoop marks here. I'm going to be experimenting with An upcoming episode on my show is on effective altruism. And I've written a long-form piece that'll probably publish in August or September on the concept of effective altruism. And to kind of put my money literally where my mouth is and have skin in the game, I have publicly committed that I'm donating 100% of my salary to nonprofits. And I did that for all of calendar year 2021. And so far I've done it for all all of 2022. And I hope to be able to do that for as long as I can. So we'll see. So I take that as hopefully an inspirational, motivational kind of thing. And people are like, how the heck can you do that? And again, it'll be kind of splashing more when my show comes out on August 1st on effective altruism and Charlie Bresler, who is the guest and kind of the— I tip my hat to him with the work that he's done Peter Singer with a book called The Life You Can Save and their whole foundation. So that was really kind of being touched and impacted by a guest, man. Oh my gosh, that was the Charlie Bresler episode that's coming up. So that's kind of my big double down. That's what I'm really kind of focused on, of how can I be a little bit more contributory to the stuff that I'm doing already? How can I amplify that? And you've given me another opportunity to be able to do that. With your kindness of being able to be on your show and the fun for me of being able to reconnect with you publicly like this, which is always a trip.

That's awesome. We'll definitely need to figure out a way when we're in the same geography. Maybe we'll climb the fourth— your fourth, my fourth, and your fourth summit together someday.

But you're—

Excellent.

You're—

Yeah.

Let's scoop here first on effective altruism. That's very, very cool. I have so many takeaways. My notes are full of I'll just end by saying, be a verb. It'll make all the difference in your life. You heard it from Chris. Dr. Stout, been a great guest. Thank you so much for your time.

Awesome. Thanks, Ed. Good to catch up, man.

That wraps up another episode of Digital Voices. Thank you, DJ and producer Megan Aylesworth.

Thank you for listening to Digital Voices podcast with Ed Marx. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe on your preferred streaming service and leave a rating and review. And most importantly, thanks again for listening.

Thank you.