Tom Watson is a thoracic surgeon of excellence and works at Corewell Health in Michigan.
A Midwestern boy by background he became part of the USC esophageal gang under the mentorship of Tom DeMeester.
He then spent 20 years at the University of Rochester where he rose through the ranks to become Professor of Surgery and then in 2016 moved to become a system chair at MedStar in Washington DC.
That wasn't an entirely happy experience and he talks about unhealthy organizational cultures being the trap that awaits the unwary.
He is now happily based near Detroit and once again a highly successful clinical academic surgeon. He talks about his newfound faith in the concept of stoicism, as well as his musical background in college where he played in abandon to make beer and food money.
Anyone planning to rise up through the ranks of Surgical leadership should listen to this interview and understand some of the real world challenges.
If you prefer to watch, then don't forget this is available on @Youtube @surgeonslives
https://www.ctsnet.org/home/thwatson
https://doctors.beaumont.org/provider/thomas-j-watson/1922627
[Music] Hello and welcome to another episode of Search and Slives. I'm your host John Monson. My guest today is an old friend and colleague Dr. Tom Watson. Tom currently serves as the system chief for thoracic surgery at Corwell Health near Detroit in Michigan. Tom is a Midwestern boy born near Chicago where he grew up. He went to a did his undergraduate degree in Stanford in California and became a part of the USC esophageal gang, if you like. His big mentor in those days was Dr. Tom Demestre and he did his residency and fellowship in California before moving to Rochester and Upstate New York in the late 90s. There he ultimately teamed up with another of the USC gang, Dr. Jeff Peters. In 2016, Tom moved to become chief of surgery and system chief in MedStar, Georgetown University Hospital, and moved to his current position in 2021. I've known Tom for many years because we were in Rochester together and in this conversation today he discusses a lot of interesting aspects of a surgical career. A fascinating part of that discussion is the transition from a full-time clinical surgeon to one involved in a lot of administration and strategy. This is something that he found quite difficult and I think listening to his challenges would be worthwhile for anyone considering such a move. He also describes how in later years he's developed a great interest in the concept of stoicism as a way of governing your life. So I hope you like the discussion with Tom today and if you do please don't forget to like and subscribe to the channel and send us some comments if you're watching on YouTube. If you're listening on the podcast then do something similar please. It's very helpful to know what you like. So without further ado let's go over and talk to Tom. I'm John Monson and this is Surgeon's Lives. So thank you so much for joining this very modest little platform which I call Surgeon's Lives but what I also call it is stuff that matters. We do spend a little time talking about life and career but I also like to spend a little time discussing what really matters to Surgeon's beyond the stuff that appears in your CV. So maybe you'd start and the way I ask everyone to start which is just a little brief life history starting with the words I was born in. Okay well thanks John yeah I was born outside of Chicago in suburban Chicago and spent my childhood and high school years there consider myself a Midwestern boy. From there I moved out to California for 16 years. I did college at Stanford and I did my medical training at the University of Southern California. So four years of medical school and then I decided I really liked California so I opted to stay on there for my general surgery residency. And during general surgery an interesting thing happened in the middle of my residency we got a new chairman there during my fourth year guy named Tom Demester who's well known to anybody who works on the esophagus. He became our chairman and became my mentor and because of that relationship I opted to stay on after that to do a year of esophage. He'll serve me fellowship with him and he's the guy who convinced me if I wanted to work on the esophagus I really should be board certified both above and below the diaphragm so I stayed on there to do my cardiothoracic fellowship for a couple more years. So all of a sudden then I was eight years at USC I'm sorry I got 12 years at USC four years of school and eight years of training. I finished that in 1996 and so then I was a young guy looking for a practice doing esophageal surgery and the right opportunity for me at that moment was in Rochester New York University of Rochester so I moved myself from sunny LA to snowy Rochester New York and in the fall of 1996 my partner who brought me on sent me a letter during the interview process saying how they'd gotten like 26 inches of snow there that day and I knew I'd be looking forward to that when I got out there. But Rochester turned out to be just a gem and you know the best move of my life and even though people told me I was crazy to do that it was really was just a wonderful place to be a great place to have a young family and great place professionally speaking and and so I was there for 20 years and yeah I was there from 1996 to 2016 and kind of did my academic thing there rose through the ranks from system professor to associate the full professor and eventually became the chief of thoracic surgery there and then an interesting opportunity kind of a sidestep in my career arose when I got I got interviewed for a position in Washington DC for an organization MedStar helped to be their system chief of surgery and that seemed like a new challenge and an interesting thing so I moved to DC in 2016 and I did that for just about four or five years and that turned out to have some issues with it that I'm happy to elaborate on but you know it turned out not to be the best career move for me and an opportunity arose in outside of Detroit where I currently am situated in an organization that was called Beaumont Health we were brought out and consolidated with another healthcare system in western Michigan a couple years back and we're now called Corewell Health I've got my paraphernalia on here so it's a we have eight hospitals in the Detroit area and a bunch of hospitals out in western and southern Michigan so I've been here now for three years and as the system chief of thoracic surgery so that's my brief kind of CV and also Corewell I think is in Illinois as well because I have a former faculty from Florida who's in uh it was in uh in Illinois in Corewell Health as well okay yeah I think that's a little bit different John because we I think Corewell's just it was a it was a merger of two Michigan healthcare systems called home on and we now it's Corewell yeah so um now you know disclaimer um and I've known you for a long time since when I went to Rochester in 2008 and we share some experiences and um I think you know that it was me that um put the MedStar people onto you yes that is true good and bad good and bad but I'll go back a bit um we both served under the uh whatever you want to refer to the tutelage and mentorship of Jeff Peters who of course was a mentee of Tom Demester yeah I've been one of my faculty members during my residency in fellowships yes exactly and Tom Demester of course was uh it just shows how the world is small was um you know linked to um the esophageal story in Chicago uh you know which was um David Skinner's David Skinner and uh from Ireland Gerry O'Sullivan of course it was there for a while one thing or another and you know I remember having uh uh you know I should ask you know would you consider uh Tom Demester to be your surgical idol or or yes or did you have one? No he definitely was I mean if I had to there's no question if I had to pick one person who was the biggest influence on my professional career as Tom Demester there's just absolutely no doubt about that and uh you know he he put me in a in a path not only in terms of subject matter being an esophageal surgeon but on a path of an academic surgical career prior to my engagement with him if you'd ask me what I was going to do I was would have said I'm going to be a community general surgeon in southern California that was kind of the path I was leading toward and then he took me in a completely different direction and I'm so fortunate that he did because I because I benefited from that so the reason I ask you that was because you know I think each in their own way all of those individuals were you know remarkably high achievers of course they did it in a way over the generations that you know perhaps wouldn't fly today you know I mean yeah it was it was a different culture back of that yeah and you know and that's true of course across the country Tom Demester is a product of the Hopkins general surgery as is Jeff Peters and and that was a certain culture and that culture I think permeated a lot of organizations and you know a lot of a lot was expected of us a lot of our time a lot all of our intensity and effort uh and and Tom Demester was no exception to that to that rule but you know he he but he also gave back and he was there for me when I needed him professionally and personally uh and and and so he had my back and so it was where much is expected much is is given or whatever the saying is it's something along those lines and and and and and those those guys were all of that ilk I would say yeah it's interesting and I you know Jeff will probably never watch this but even if he did I'm sure he wouldn't object to me saying this that you know I remember him saying to the faculty in Rochester one day you know this is what my boss told me to do and uh you know I always told me to do this and you know it was something that didn't really go down very well with the faculty at the time as sometimes happened with Jeff if you recall and we're saying to him afterwards you know I used to act as his sounding board sometimes and I remember saying to him you know you really shouldn't advocate somebody as the example of wonderfulness who people you know would consider maybe a bit of an ass um you know whatever who was trained by one who was trained by one you know yeah and really you know that was my naivety to some extent recognizing that or not recognizing that you know these were men and not women of course they were men of their time I guess and you know what went on in the 70s you know didn't doesn't go on now 90 percent of the time nor would it be permitted do you do you mourn at all for the loss of just some of that oh god no no I that's all for the better and and I think back I've just you know I'm going to be honest I've got emotional scars from the experience even though I benefited a lot from and as I said I was sincere in saying that I my whole career benefited from it but you pay a price for it yeah emotionally and and that's all for the better that people aren't having to pay that price now like we used to so just to go back all the way was there a medicine and surgery or in your family or not or where no I'm first one my dad still alive but he was he's a retired attorney don't we don't do two things don't do the law and don't do medicine he thought lawyers and doctors were all messed up I only I only have listened to him yeah send up in medicine for no particular reason no no particular family or friend influence do you have a reason why you did medicine or at least one that I thought about that for that game and I still don't have an answer you know I find it meaningful I I say that in just you know for me it's it's the ultimate challenge mentally intellectually emotionally personality wise what we do is certain is I don't I there's no no career that I can think of that where you match of 360 degree demands on us and it never gets old you never are a master of it you never feel like you completely know your specialty and and so that's what keeps us going it's never boring and yeah I think that's really happy I mean it is very true and you know and despite what people bimon and complain about it pays pretty well you know for what you do it's hard work and there's a lot of responsibility and stress but it's there are worse things to do in life that's for sure yeah so you said in you in the early days you I thought that maybe you would just be a community general surgeon and then Tom Demester or pull the veil is away from your eyes or open your eyes to a different career when you left USC to go to Rochester can you remember what your ambition was at that time what did you want to be what did you see right yeah I wanted to be an academic esophageal surgeon that's really what my focus was and so I was looking for jobs but where it was a good fit where they were looking for that person and that just happened to be Rochester New York my thoracic surgical colleagues in Rochester were looking for just that and interestingly they hadn't really advertised that but without saying that they want to see kind of what surfaced and I happened to surface and it was a good fit but yeah that's what I was looking for so now 20 years later what is your ambition now yeah you know it's funny because I had three different positions in my time after training and sometimes your your your job fits the needs of the position and not all positions are of course the same is you're always trying to fit a square peg into a round hole I told our trainees and so the job requirements here and outside of Detroit are a little bit different than my job requirements in both DC and in and Rochester so for me I'm still trying to master thoracic surgery in all of its components I find that's still the ultimate challenge and it's never changing right since you and I were in training and we were doing most things open we lived through a minimally invasive year of laparoscopy and thoracoscopy and now it's robotics and it's an endoscopic things and it's just constantly evolving and I think that's still an ultimate challenge to really feel like you you know all of that stuff and I've become more of a lung surgeon interestingly I hear it in in Detroit because that was the practice I walked into they had a big lung practice they didn't have such a developed esophageal one and so I'm finding myself doing more lung surgery now than forgot surgery and that may change over time but that's the situation I inherited adapt or die yeah yeah absolutely so you know I sometimes ask people what's been the big change you know 20 years ago plus you know and my original mentor was sadly no longer with us a remarkable man called Tom Hennessy and Dublin who was a big esophageal guy and I remember because I lived through that with him as a medical student as an intern and a junior resident etc if the patients survived the surgery they still died of the cancer I mean the outcome was bad it wasn't good of course it's it's still not a great cancer to get but it's a scramble to not stop but it's still not a good one yeah but it's it's very different do you see that do you see you know it becoming a manageable disease with early detection and and immunotherapy and yes exactly there's these incremental improvements and of course early detection/prevention there's always going to be key but that's still frustratingly rare and so now we're talking about better multimodality therapies not just esophagectomy and when I was coming through training with Tom Demeser there really wasn't effective adjuvant new adjuvant therapy at all so as to cut his to cure and doing bigger and more radical operations was therefore better but yeah nowadays we do a little bit less aggressive surgery but we have better adjuvant chemotherapy radiation and immunotherapy and I think that's going to continue to lead the lead the way it's not going to be changes in surgical technique I mean you know if you ask we can do things better slightly better with minimally invasive operative techniques but at the end of the day that's not going to necessarily change the cure rate for the cancer yeah it's a biology is king of course as always yeah so you and I have spoken about this before and we both share a degree of this life experience of success and what I'll refer to harshly is failure but at least an experience wasn't as expected et cetera et cetera you know for the for the education of of folks out there talk to me a little bit about you know there you were in Rochester riding high well-known big-time esophageal practice and you know a practice that was highly respected around the country now is your move and of course so you made the move to if you like the next step up and it it wasn't a great experience for you to some extent can you share a little bit of you know the frustrations or what you found about that yeah oh yeah it really was a a change in in trajectory going into a much more administrative role and leading a large multi-hospital department of surgery and and there you know and and you you find it's not always what you would expect it to be and it's got its own challenges uh and you know one of the things I and I would say this for people who are looking to do that sort of thing you you step into a very political arena that you're more sheltered from as a busy clinician you know as a surgeon in that in the trenches so to speak you you learn you've you've spent your whole career training to do that and you get good at it and you know what your metrics of success are you know if you're good at it right you know how many cases you're doing you know your outcomes yada yada yada you know how to play you know how to live within a hospital you know how to get along with people you know the game and you know what the metrics are the game you know how you're being evaluated in the day and then you go into a leadership position and the rules totally change the skill set is totally different the metrics for how that skill set is assessed are nebulous not well-defined and very very different and and that can be frustrating was I found that very frustrating who's who's assessing me and what are the metrics and who am I there to please know my answering I'm up for answering down I'm in I'm in the middle who do you who you ultimately trying to answer to and and and and that depends your success and your happiness in that depends largely on the culture so was that was that was that at least in part because you didn't ask at the beginning in terms of you know what are the expectations what are the rules what are the ground rules etc you know was that an example of just mismatched expectations or or or I would say that it was largely it was a bit of mismatched expectations not clearly delineated expectations and and lack of feedback as you go along as to where you're supposed to be yeah and yeah now correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think you're MBA'd is that correct correct I'm not no so and I'm not suggesting this would have you know was it is a not a fiscal thing it wasn't an MBA kind of so but looking back if you were to be starting about to in three months time about to takes a similar job in three months time would you do something different I would spend as much time and energy as I could understanding the culture of the organization and whether it's a healthy culture or an unhealthy culture I've witnessed both yeah you can't change an unhealthy culture and it's really hard to be happy if the culture's not happy those would be my words yeah yeah yeah exactly and do you are you a believer that culture comes from the top absolutely yeah yeah yeah it has to the culture has to be driven from the top because you can have well-intended people not at the top and they're going to get squashed by the top yes yeah I'm guessing you would probably agree that that's the same within a department of surgery it's anywhere and that's been a learning lesson you know for me John is that culture dry things I remember when you and when you and I were in Rochester gave her we're together you handed out a book to a bunch of people called the no asshole rule yeah and I remember reading that book and I think that book it stands out in my in my mind you know as a as a part is some truth there yeah I still do by the way I have a I keep ordering them and I keep giving them to fellows and faculty and some people read them I suspect some people don't yeah yeah I mean I I always say to people that you know I I was the reason I'm such a fan of that book is because when I first read it myself I realized I didn't score very well you know to some extent Bob Sutton was talking about me and you know sometimes that's that that just comes with time so so now you've gone back to if you like your safety or culture or your comfort zone and all is going well so would you say that if I was a young surgeon starting off tomorrow you would be optimistic for me or would you be worried for me I mean just in terms of how the profession of surgery Oh I gosh I think there's still lots of reason for optimism you know I think about this a lot because of you hear about in the news AI and all the rapid developments in that I think some specialties are at real risk for AI kind of you're really changing their job or getting rid of their job I think about certain things like radiology or maybe dermatology that could be definitely challenged by AI but I don't see AI coming in and taking away surgery anytime soon I think that's not going to happen at least in my professional lifetime and I think that's that's many many iterations off so I think there's always going to be a role for surgeon and even if these magic bullets come down the pike one of these days that cure cancer I think there's always going to be a role for surgeons in both the cancer arena and in the non-cancer arenas in which we all live so I think it's a great time to be a surgeon and the technology keeps getting better and the robotics and everything I think it's really fascinating and I again I find it challenging still so you are uh uh will be generous and say that you're uh at the peak of your career that's very generous um what's been the biggest difference from the day you walked into USC to now in terms of surgery oh gosh it's just the minimally invasive surgery back then when I started I started my internship in 1988 and yeah you know the first lap collie was done one in the world it's in late 80s I think and then the first lap mission was done I think 1991 in uh in Belgium and then in the United States around 1992 and so you know it's just been this minimally invasive surgical explosion and uh but I feel fortunate that I came through being trained in the open days and now in the minimally invasive day that I do worry that the surgeons nowadays don't know how to do an open operation and that's going to be a challenge when they need to do it and that's been I mean I think many people would agree that that's been the biggest sort of plus for the patients and across the board would you have a an obvious negative uh you know that you look back in the last 20 years or 20 plus or 20 30 years and say that's bad what's happened I mean in terms of how the field has changed you choose your dealers I don't I don't see a lot of bad I like like we talked about earlier I think the cultural changes within surgery are are a positive uh you know heck so many more women are in surgery now and that's a good thing they're they're changing the they've changed the requirements during residency to allow people to have families and have time off for you know for the childbirth and whatnot and that's all good um so no I don't I don't see any real negatives you know it's just getting it's it's it's gotten so hard you know to get to be really well-trained it's something you've really got to decide where your focus is going to be I do worry in a five-year general surgery residency that that's just fairly enough time to yeah kind of scratch the surface and if you want to be really good at something you need some additional training you know I I talk to people in this podcast from or different countries in the world and one of the unifying characteristics is that you know most people would say that the negatives that they see is the administrative load and the impact of electronic medical records and it it distills down into when people retire or give up or whatever they they distill it down into the statement I've had enough yeah um do you does that resonate with you yeah I you know I think things like the electronic medical record are a two-edged sword because we want them to of course help us and we can't forget that they do help us in ways that are really profound but yeah they do add burden as well and gosh I remember when I was back in Rochester we had a meeting with the with the chief of the medical group and I was just saying you know I feel like a monkey in clinic having to punch so many buttons to sign off on this and sign off on that and you do that over and over and over and over again and it really wears on you now that can be mitigated and it has been mitigated and I think we'll continue to improve but so yeah there's a downside but we can't forget the the good side either I mean we can pick up a dragon software now and dictate a note like like nothing and we usually have to either type or use a transcription service there you know for every negative I can think of a positive so in balance yeah there's there's some more administrative burden but I it doesn't that hasn't really been the thing that that doesn't bring me down honestly too much so uh and we're not at the end but we're gonna shift a little in terms of the non-surgery side of things but um do you have any regrets in life at this point yeah no no I'm sure lots of regrets you know and and I you know I wish I had some of those years back when I was younger you know just working like a dog all the time and you give up really back in our generation you know John we gave up our later 20s and early 30s for for residency and and you just were trying to survive and hold on and for many years in my early time as an attending I felt the same way just trying to hold on try trying to get the work done and trying to raise a young family I got a bunch of kids and you know you're just trying to get through that time and I feel like it's taken me to lend to my 50s I'm in my early 60s now you know to I can really kind of enjoy life a bit it took way too long and that would be my my main thing so you know I'm uh uh all of that applies to me um and and more um but I see people who are not the so-called Gen Z people you know they're our age who were just better at life than I was and maybe to an extent you were so I mean is that just because we weren't good at it and it took until we were 50 or 60 to realize what was important stuff that mattered because you know none of the self-adgeal stuff or co-directal stuff for being chairman of this or president of that none of that matter is really yeah I know and I think a lot about that maybe a psychoanalyst would be the best one to kind of my where were my streets and weaknesses are I do think we I I'm a I'm a fault of this and and I think a lot of people are we get to where we got or have gotten by saying yes and and uh you you sometimes I was I think I was too afraid to say no and I've become better at saying no and knows a very powerful word and I think we when I was younger I was so afraid that unless I said yes it was going to be a slippery slope to not get where I want it to be and and and that was my that's that's the mistake I made was not being forceful enough at saying no and and and picking the things that really were meaningful to me and not burning myself with the things that were less meaningful to me and I'm still learning that I think we all continue to fight we um we're both victims of what nowadays people call FOMO yeah yeah uh you know I I I see that a lot and you know people complain and bimon about the attitudes of Gen Z the Gen Z generation or the internet generation but you know they have a lot of stuff that they have right you know I'm sure and um I also you know it's always struck me that surgeons because of the nature of the business are pretty uni skilled individuals a lot of the time and therefore the only way they know how to succeed is just by a volume and effort yeah you know they're not very good at diversifying into different things so they just do I'll do more and more and more of that I and not my observation of surgeons is that that's their source of pride and identity and and if that's if your source of pride is the number of hours you put in at work in a week then you're not going to try to decrease the number of hours you put in at work in a week and and so yeah it's a slippery that's a that's a tough trap to get sucked into so it's uh it's a so you read the script um so now I can pivot and ask you all right so here you are in your early sixties and um what have you done about that in term of uh how is your life different from let's say the Tom Watson uh you know I met uh you know almost 20 years ago sure you know luckily I was when I was a kid I was exposed to a lot of different fun stuff I was did a lot of sports uh and I did a lot of music and uh those were the big parts of my childhood and teen years were and even into college uh music and sports and then those things all got kind of shoved aside for a good 20 years I mean from the time I was probably in college to or late in college then in medical school or then until when I was into my attending years and luckily I've I resurrected some of those passions from my younger days so for me the sports are tennis and golf more than anything else some others but those are the main ones and and then music I'm a I'm a piano player and I'm a bass player and I so I spent time now regularly pursuing more than one of those things pretty much on a daily basis and then of course just having time spending more time with my family and enjoying my kids as they've gotten older and and become young adults and and that's been fun and if I recall correctly you're you have a daughter who's a bit of a sports star as well yeah so my oldest is 28 and she went to Stanford and she played a field hockey there and that was a big part of her upbringing and and that was a big part of her life and it was a good thing yeah and then I've I've got six kids I got I got three other daughters all who play lacrosse uh or have been playing lacrosse and my sons run and play other sports but uh yeah sports have always been a big part so other than uh being a uh a bass player um and you know bass players are always considered slightly strange of course yeah just to step away from the drummer you know now musicians in the band is there is there something that we don't know about you that you could tell us that that's implied by being a bass player that's apart from being a bass player apart from being a bass player is there something that we don't know about you that people would say I never knew that about Tom Watson not really no I think I'm pretty I think I'm pretty much you see what you get what you see or see what you got yeah all right well we're going to ask you uh some slightly left field questions that are are profoundly unrelated to um esophageal surgery yeah um I'm just uh there's no right or wrong answer of course which is uh one of the joys of this so let's start with asking you what happens when we die what happens when we die yeah I think we I think we we get reincarnated as somebody else I mean there's somebody's got to be the souls of all those other people in the in the universe so why not why wouldn't it be me or you and if you were coming back uh who or what would you like to come back as jeez these are tough questions yeah they are yeah you know I and I feel fortunate either to be uh doing what I do in the United States of America and and you know that small percentage of people that lives the quality of life that we all lead I wouldn't mind coming back doing the same thing all over again I don't I don't feel like I made a mistake along the way and would rather be doing something else otherwise I'd be doing that something else so I for me to say I want to come back as such and such would really be kind of silly because I'd be going to do in that right now so I'd be happy to come back right I'm doing so that uh prompts me to ask you if you weren't a surgeon what would you be yeah it's good question you know but my fork in the road was back when I was in college trying to decide if I want to do medicine because I didn't have any medical people in my family and I and it was I was trying to figure out what I wanted uh in fact my roommate's father who was a dentist accused me and my roommate who both went to medicine the only reason we went into medicine because we didn't want to go out and get a job and uh there was probably some truth at the time but I was actually an economics major and a biology major and I was trying to decide whether I want to go to business school so I've always thought that I'd make the right choice going into medicine or did I should have gone into business school and I think my personality my skill sets better suited for medicine but I still think about that a lot there's so much interesting business aspects of medicine and so many things ways you can impact society on a on a grander scale within the the business of medicine that I that would that's something that's still I think about a lot how can I get into that arena as as I get older and it's going to be physically harder to stand all day doing surgeries and all you know if there's something business part that it would it would be be meaningful so I that's very much on my mind yeah I've talked to a couple of surgeons who in you know the later years of their life went into politics and by what I mean by politics is mainstream politics yeah government-level politics and you know they both will tell you that you know what we do makes a difference to thousands of lives over a career what they do potentially makes a difference to millions of lives absolutely no and you know that's that's the attraction absolutely and I you know I can I can I can see that for sure so um favorite food favorite food I'm gonna say the Walker Brothers apple pancake from my childhood favorite restaurant in suburban Chicago well that's an interesting answer because I have precisely zero idea what that is I'll send you a picture it's a thing about the size of a plate and about this thick that's gooey with apples and pastry and and uh and uh and uh cinnamon on it and it's got about 10 000 calories I kind of say that's I don't know how much sugar is in there but you mediate type two diabetes within the one sitting if you're not a diabetic before you walk into the restaurant you're probably wanting to walk it out now you know with with these uh when you know this this uh podcast goes out on an audio version of course but also goes out on YouTube and I never know who or who's watching watching or listening nor do I know are they watching or listening in the morning or at the night so I'm gonna have to take a chance and say that I'm hoping people recognize that we are recording this in the early evening so it's legitimate for me to have a glass of wine how good for you so here is I'm in my office at work so it's not legitimate for me to be in a glass of wine just being you and me it's fine but um the question is beer or wine wine I'm a wine guy yeah now so you're having a glass of wine at your Friday evening dinner gathering at home and you have two spare seats in your dinner party you can have any two people from history alive or dead to fill the two vacancy to would they be you know it's interesting when I when I moved to DC I found this interest in American history that I didn't have before and so it because it's it's all around you there yes and I've really taken up a study of American history and the American president so I think about those people first and some of the people like Abe Lincoln and FDR Roosevelt I think they were extremely important leaders in our country at critical times in our country's history so those they're the first two names that come to mind I suppose JFK would be a third yeah so you're going with the politicians yeah I uh I interviewed somebody who said he would like Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela and we we wondered whether the two great pacifists of the 20th century might have ended up in a fight cheering yeah best book ever best book ever yeah so again I'm gonna go back to my American history think was this is what I've been reading a lot of lately the people it's called the people's history I'm blanking on the author's name is this really thick book but it talks about the history United States from the perspective of the people who didn't win you know history is always told by the winners so so the people's history is all up told from the perspective of how about say the Native Americans who who got killed off by the invading Europeans well what's what's their kind of take on things and it goes through the whole perspective of that I found that really fascinating gives you much more um empathy for the societies that lost by yeah westernization of United States in addition to history being written by the winners um I was taught by a mentor many years ago that the minutes are always written by the winners as well that's the same same idea yeah and I really that book really made me think a lot about how we got to where we are as a country and it's not always what the kids are told in school right no very different it is and to a degree it's like that aphorism that says you know people who like sausages in the law should not see either made you know yes sometimes it's pretty ugly so if you're not reading uh your favorite book then what would your favorite movie be Shawshank Redemption I've watched that movie probably 20 times I think it's just been one lead night who is the character with whom you identify oh the main the main guy you know Andy you know yeah for sure he's the guy he's trained yeah uh you're not the Morgan Freeman character following on no no I'm Andy to frame not as tall as him but they they downplay that in the movie so what would you like to have played at your funeral music wise yeah the kind of music that my band played when I was in college so my whole so in college I that's what I did and that's kind of how I paid for my spending money in college was in bands and that was a lot of fun and that was kind of the best times of my life so I was in I was in jazz bands and I was in rock bands and the rock bands at that time in the early 80s were things you know there you go you too and some of the British invasion stuff from that time and and so I'd probably pick something from that generation uh decide which one you know people don't know me uh for years know that I my kids know that my family know that apart from the usual traditional stuff at a funeral that they have to play the Beatles Rocky Raccoon at my funeral now why why that I just the lyrics are uh are extraordinary um um you know there's a you know there's a touch of genius about which Paul Simon has and Paul McCartney has there's a line in it that says her name was McGill she called herself a little but everyone knew her as Nancy the random where does that come from sure it's funny what would you like written on your epitaph as an epitaph on your gravestone he tried his best that's fair enough that's fair enough I'm always trying my best I'm always succeeding but I'm always trying my best we're back to managing expectations so the last question I want to ask you is um how would you look for the rest of your life in five words and you can't say I will try my best yeah I'm going to say um with peace and sincerity I just the just that my that my actions in my vision align and that that's what brings peace at the end of the day and that's what I'm shooting for now yeah it's it's interesting you know I I've interviewed people of different ages and uh levels of you know where they are retired or before retirement etc etc but I'm sure this is statistical analysis that that would show that people as they you know reach their more mature years you know they stop wanting to be president of this and they stop wanting to invent that and they just want to be remembered and recognized and achieve as a decent human being um it said I recently discovered stoicism and with a fervor that I didn't necessarily embrace it before but you know I I really believe in the whole concept of just self-improvement and tuning out tuning out everything else tuning out whatever whenever else is thinking about you what everybody else is all the things you worry about from day to day and I just just work on self-improvement is it is it legitimate to be fervently stoic yeah I do yes it is yeah in the term of stoicism I that word stoic can be used in different ways but I think the kind of stoicism is that you just work on self-improvement and and and forget about all this other nonsense and there's lots of wisdom there and I think it brings one piece and yeah I said that that's kind of that piece in sincerity I've often said to people over the years particularly on a you know in our administrative lives that you know nothing that you do today really matters right you know number one number two there's a for sure a truism and health care in terms of health care administration you know you can go away for two weeks and when you come back in two weeks nothing will have happened so you know just don't worry about it you know yeah etc so well Tom I want to thank you very much for taking time out of your day let you go home to your family thank you John and it's been great to catch up with you and I hope it'll be a little shorter since we before we meet again thank you John is this great that you're doing this and I appreciate the chance to be a participant so thank you and best to you always and well things are going well for you you
