What, what kind of thing? I mean, I'm not asking about any, you know, personal conversations, but what kind of thing goes on with you before a race that, that means that sometimes- You need to be in there before you're right

Yeah, no, I, I remember that moment very, very well.

Um, I was sitting right outside of, you know, kind of where we would come in to, to the track for Navy Pier.

Um, a- and yeah, I was in, like my head was just, it was kinda fucked, to be honest with you, for, for just a minute.

Um, 'cause I had been in the warmup area, and I was doing stuff.

And dude, in the warmup area, like the sleds weren't moving at all.

Um, I felt my heart rate was getting really high, and like I'd had that happen before, and I'd already had a race within that season where, like, things just felt a little bit off.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah

... yes, but it didn't take long for me to move up.

Um, it, it didn't take long for me to move up.

I, I was, you know, i- in a group of eight guys, pretty small team.

So to get into the, you five score in cross country, um, or at least they did back then.

I think scoring might have moved around some.

Um, but either way, five score, you have seven that race 'cause you have two, you have a tiebreaker, and then you have a alternate.

Yeah.

... 'cause we know you're a latecomer, but you made it with, like, like, three wall balls to go, basically.

Yeah, no, no, no, no.

I came out of the sled push and I was like, "Oh, boy.

I'm in trouble." And I was like, well, I mean, whether I'm in trouble or not, I, I said that my, I said that my race plan was go out, execute, and let, let whatever happens happen.

And I was really calm with letting whatever happen happen.

And I went out, and I faded back, and I slowly came back.

And I hit the burpees and I was like, "I'm feeling okay.

How about last night?

How much do we push ourselves before World Champs today?

Um, so I mean, like, today was to go out and give a good effort.

Um, didn't back off training too much, so, like, I came in as maybe a tiny overcooked.

Um, a- and it really was just go out there and try to execute a good race.

Um, I, I had some adversity, which was good.

Like, I felt like I, I got out, I got behind on the sleds.

I had to make my way back up, and then I had to just find, like, a comfort level-

... ahead of everybody.

Yeah

... that, like, you know, it's not an airborne virus.

Masking is not really necessary.

And then in the months that followed, public health authorities totally reversed course, and that bred a lot of distrust in these public health authorities that they have been spending the past six years trying to regain.

But I do think what's encouraging about even just the past week is we have seen public health authorities start to adapt, and, like, WHO has been a little more guarded in their comments about how hantavirus spreads.

CDC has in- substantially ramped up their personnel who are dedicated to this outbreak.

And as some of that criticism rained down on them of like, "How can you sound c- so confident when there are important unknowns about the hantavirus?" I am encouraged that they have kinda shifted gears so quickly and seem responsive to that criticism and are trying to adjust and craft their response accordingly.

Are we safe, and can we trust that we're being told the truth? And I guess the last question I have for you is if we don't address the second question, how can we possibly answer the first?

Okay.

You know? That's-- I'm very proud of that one, 'cause I wrote it strictly about my wife, and I didn't think anybody would wanna listen to it, and here we are.

It got everything jump-started.

But there's some along the way.

I mean, Good Times Go By Too Fast and This Town's Been Too Good To Us is probably one of my favorites.

It's just an ode to the town where I grew up and those people and, you know, just those guys who helped carve who I am as a person.

Um, but I mean, honestly probably, probably one of my favorite songs I've ever written is a song, it's, uh, it's not a hit.

Hmm.

So what would you like to say for those that are in the Dillon winning the world champs camp? Like, how are we gonna catch that guy? What would you like to say about that?

Yeah.

I, I think I'll say that, like, there is a path to beating him.

Like, he's not un- he's not unbeatable.

Nobody's unbeatable.

Nobody's been unbeatable.

And also, again, like, on the day, things can always swing in a certain direction.

I thought it was lane two you didn't want.

Oof.

It was easily the most interesting thing that I learned in reporting out this story.

I mean, if you think about human beings and our immune system, like, those are things that develop over these really long timelines, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years.

And when you think back to, you know, hundreds of thousands of years ago when modern humans were, were developing and their immune systems were evolving, we didn't live very long.

And so, like, any kind of problem of, like, you know, well, your inflammation is starting to slowly increase over time, like, had a pretty finite endpoint.

If you're not living past 40, it's not really gonna become that much of a concern.

And at the same time, we were living in a world where there are all kind of pathogens out there.

Whoa.

Dylan, how have you seen this play out in health research?

Yeah, so there's a couple of different ways.

So first of all, there's just sort of what data is being collected.

So, you know, with some of these surveys, it remains to be seen, because some of these run on, like, an annual, biannual basis or maybe only coming up here in twenty twenty-six on the first time that they'll be performed under this new Trump administration.

But, like, one obvious area of concern is that the administration just won't collect data related to LGBTQ+ people.

We're gonna have a much fuzzier picture into what's happening with those folks and their health.

But then, in addition to that, we have seen layoffs at some of the teams that are responsible for collecting this information, like with the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which has been sort of our benchmark data point on things like opioid overdose deaths.

[laughing]

And at the end of this trial, you would be able to measure what the health effects of alcohol actually were, and that is the, the gold standard that we use for approving pharmaceutical drugs, for example.

I can see why it, it would be pretty impossible to get, like, a, a, a thousand people or whatever into a randomized control trial and basically be like, "You have to drink two bottles of IPA every day for the rest of time," and, you know, "You can't drink any alcohol, uh, but you have to drink two bottles of orange juice," or something.

Like, that's not, that's not realistic in the world we live in.

They should know what they're getting into, and beyond that, we each gotta make our own choices.

Dylan has a lot more reporting on alcohol and health.

He has especially been digging into the influence that industry has on what we think about moderate drinking and its health effects, uh, so we will link to his recent piece on that in the transcript, uh, and you can hear him on Today Explained tomorrow talking about the alcohol research that RFK Jr.'s health department has buried.

In the meantime, this episode was produced by me, Bird Pinkerton.

It was edited by Julia Longoria.

What does that kind of mixed messaging have on the public perception of how people should protect themselves from measles, or if they need to at all?

It's been sort of a strange experience to follow this, because usually the CDC as sort of, like, just a- a- a- an entity with nobody's name attached to it, continues to say the right things.

Like you say, they still say vaccination, the best way to protect your- themselves, you know.

They were sending out that guidance to summer camps, like, urging them to collect vaccination records and isolate people.

Um, RFK Jr. himself even wrote an op-ed, and who know if he wrote it or a staffer wrote it, who knows, it's not for me to say, but i- the headline on Fox News was like, "Measles vaccination is important." So in a lot of official statements, they're saying all the right things, but then RFK Jr., if he's just more speaking off the cuff or, like, at a sit down interview with a journalist, he does continue to sow doubts about both the seriousness of measles as a, as a disease, but also about the safety of the vaccine.

So, you know, he, he's talked about how, like, "Well back in my day, everybody used to get the measles and we just kinda dealt with it." Um, and you know, he's continued to make offhand comments about, like, "You know, we may not fully understand the dangers of these things," and, like, "It's possible that the vaccines have hurt more people than they've ultimately helped." And you know, he's, he's talked about alternative treatment options like vitamin A, uh, or cod liver oil, stuff like that, which to your point, I think just creates this...

It does create the risk that people will just be confused about, like, "What am I supposed to do?" You know, we do have evidence that getting vaccinated after you've been exposed to measles can help, like, with the progression of the illness.

Is there anything that you can do to protect them?