Dr. Brad Miller on the Laughbox Podcast

You have arrived at Laugh Box, the podcast for the Association of Applied and Therapeutic Humor. We are so excited you're here.

Welcome to LaughBox, the official podcast of the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor. I'm Jim Bob Williams.

And I'm Katie Bee.

And our special guest today is Dr. Brad Miller. And Brad's going to be talking about Comedy and Cancer. Those are two words that you generally don't say in the same sentence.

That is true. And first of all, Hey. It’s a thrill and honor to be on Laughbox with the famous Jim Bob and Katy Bee. I'm stunned and amazed. So thank you for having me.

Super honored to have you here with us, too, so yay for everybody.

Awesome, awesome. All right, so our general outline is something like past, present, and future. So about your journey in therapeutic humor so far.

My journey in therapeutic humor goes back in one sense a long way. It's a long story with an amplified shorter version. I have always been, I'm a retired pastor, was in ministry for 43 years.

And throughout my whole history as a pastor, I just always like to employ humor in my messages and in my Interactions with people. I was known as the dumb dad joke guy and that kind of thing. And it would usually kind of frame my sermons and things like that with a joke at the beginning of the end or both and humor stories out of my life.

And so I found that would be an effective form of communication, not only in that, but also when I would interact with people within the hospital and different situations, even in funerals and things of this nature, I just found that the people I was around, Katy and Jim Bob, in my ministry and in my life.

And when I took the attitude, the Bible says a cheerful heart is good medicine. And when I came with that approach and listened to the humor in their lives, even in bad times, things were better. Things were lifted up a little bit. And because we live in such a depressing, messed up world in many ways.

When I saw that happening, that's what I clung to. And so when I did various things in ministry, I would do some, I was a church planner for a while. So we had drama and we'd often infuse humor in the drama. We'd create videos and this type of thing. We often would have kind of a humorous slant on those things, but mainly in this personal interaction with people, hospital settings, funerals, things like this, when people were able to tell a funny story or tell a story that brought a smile to the face, wasn't always a hot story, but it was a story about that.

So that's a long story that goes back my entire life, really, because I'm a preacher's kid and my dad had that attitude as well. But so about a couple of years ago, my story took a bit of a turn when I was getting ready to retire in the summer of 2022. And my wife and I were looking forward to me retiring and moving on to travels and other things we wanted to do.

Grandkids and all that good stuff you do in retirement. And then literally a month after I did retire, I got flagged for cancer. Turned out to be a rather aggressive form of prostate cancer. And then all the rigmarole of testing and so on by my and eventually surgery, but my first reaction was to laugh to keep from crying because it was so daggone devastating to me, even though I'd gone through all this training and all this stuff and all these experiences with other people, my own family, my own dad died of cancer, things of that nature, but it hit me hard. And so I went and I just had a laugh and chuckle.

I had to hand the phone off to my wife and there's some tears and that kind of stuff. But I saw that dichotomy between grief and it kind of the grief and the anger and all that kind of stuff and kind of the nervous laughter and that kind of thing, which happened. And I immediately went off into, went into a funk.

I was, I called it, I called my queen of denial stage. Cause I was like Cleopatra that way. And just, but it went out of that. I finally decided, okay, I'm not the type of person that just, I can have my, getting to a funk moments, have my depressed moments, my grief moments, my shock moments, but I don't want to stay there.

That's not my style. That's not what I'm about. That's not what I taught my ministry all those years, and not what I wanted to be here now. And certainly not one delightful one to live with my wife and my three adult children and my two granddaughters didn't want to have that there. So I just said, Okay, what are you gonna do about this bread?

So I said, Okay. I did an evaluation of my resources. This is what I teach now.

Okay. Let's assess where you're at. You go through the shock situation. You go through that, then what are you going to do?

You assess what your assets, what do you got going for you? So I had my 43 years of ministry experience, and I had also, I've worked, my doctoral degree is in transformational leadership.

Transforming organization, churches and other organizations. And I said, okay, what can I do to apply my doctoral studies and all this work I've done and transforming lives and organizations. How can I transform my own life and be helpful to others? And then, so what else I like? I said, I like comedy stuff.

I like to laugh. I like not only tell dumb dad jokes myself, but I like comedy shows. I was a little bit over the years, influenced by late night comedians, David Letterman, big fan of him, that kind of stuff, wry humor, that kind of thing. And then some of the things that were particularly emphasis on people with disease and other things like that, years, years ago, they had the comic relief, which had to do with hunger and so on.

And then other things of that nature. I think, okay, comedy can be leveraged then towards doing some good here and taking action, which is my bias if you're going to get out of your funk, you just can't stay stuck there. You've got to take some action. And that led me eventually to get really involved, getting more.

And I've always been involved somewhat in the research of therapeutic humor. Years ago, I read Cousin's book about the anatomy of an illness. Elton Trueblood is a guy who you may or may not be familiar with, but I got to meet him. He has a book that came up many years ago, 50 years ago, about the humor of Christ.

And I got the, I got to meet him towards the end of his life. And so that kind of aspect, but I got to start reading a little bit, but basically I decided, okay, what else do I like to do? I've been in podcasting for about 12 years and radio before that. Okay. I've been doing a podcast to doing some other podcasting endeavors I've been doing, but maybe I can turn this around.

So that led me to create about a year or so ago, a little more than a year ago The Cancer and Comedy Podcast. And I have a co-host, Deb Krier, and she and I got together. She's a breast cancer survivor and I'm a prostate cancer survivor, and we both like to have fun. And we've come together and we've created this podcast.

We've published episode 57 just today, and we have a lot of fun with it. When we, among the things that we do, Katy and Jim Bob is, and we research and talk about some of these therapeutic issues. We break them down ourselves cause our own research. We also bring in guests we have to speak to them as well.

And these include guests who are on the more, little more of the serious side, but also actual comedians who have been dealt with their own trials and tribulations health-wise and otherwise. We talk to those people, have a lot of fun with it. And then we seek to help. Our whole focus here is to help cancer impacted people to heal with hope and humor. So that's what we're all about. We contracted to turn the grim of cancer into grins. We taught to turn the grim to grins. So that's a short story. There's more to it there, and there's some other twists and turns there, but that's got me involved in it. And now I'm just, now I'm hooked on it.

So I've been doing that. So does that help a little bit? Give you a little framework.

Oh, that helps a lot. And I think, yeah, I think we've been living in parallel universes.

Okay. You're a prostrate survivor too, is that right, Jim?

That's right. Back in 2020, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. During prostate cancer awareness month, right? What a way to be aware of it.

September. Yeah. That gets you, it gets your attention, doesn't it? I'll say that much. You get, it says, okay, here we go. Got to deal with this. Yeah.

First time I did it, I said, okay, how can I find the humor in this because what's funny about cancer?

Nothing at all. It's that grim. It's the, we call our podcast Cancer and Comedy because cancer is a metaphor, not only for the disease of cancer, but bad stuff that happens. The cancer is basically the multiplication of bad cells that happen in your body. Bad things can happen with this other diseases or mental health or violence, any number of things that bad, anything's going to happen.

And then we use the comedy kinds of metaphor, not only for high belly laugh stuff, but having more of a, an outlook of cheerfulness and approach to what can you do about something rather than be dissolved into the depression.

The whole process of being diagnosed and then going through treatments and when that's where the you can find the humor and that's where you can reach out and connect with other people and turn that grim into grin.

That's what we like to do here on our podcast. And I love what you do with yours and just similar focus of seeing the humor and things and leveraging that for healing. Love that about what you do.

All right. So how did you find out about AATH?

I'm a kind of a researcher type guy once I get involved with something. And so I, I just started digging around. I also been very involved with the podcasting world. So I go to these, I've been fortunate enough to get involved with some of the bigger podcasting conferences. I've spoke a couple of times at one called PodFest, one of the bigger conferences.

And then I sponsor my own podcast conference here locally. I'm based in suburban Indianapolis. I have my own podcast. So I've gotten involved with that world. And I heard about you know, just, I was on the comedy track in some of these conferences. And then somewhere along the line, someone had mentioned about AATH.

So I looked you up and found you there, you know, year and a half, almost two years ago now I found you folks about that and heard about you and then what I heard and it was resonated with what my interests are. And yeah. So I like what you do. I know you've got your podcast seems to be doing great.

And you two have a great rapport with one another, with your guests. Love it. And I'm here to serve your audience best I can.

So can you tell us about some of the current projects you're in and some of the things you've got going on? I know you've got the podcast. Are you doing any local speaking? Are you doing a stand up tour? Any fundraisers?

Yeah, I got a little bit of all that going on. I have a little talk that I give and I'm going to be speaking at a local healthcare facility pretty soon about the cheerful heart is a good medicine, that type of thing. But I really, this, so I've been working with developing my own kind of TED talk sort of thing that I'm working on as in these various things.

I did a presentation about the launching of the podcast here a while back. Indicated how we were able to get on local TV and get our message out and how we're able to that local TV went into a nationwide network of independent television stations from Sacramento, California to Tampa, Florida. We were across the board there. So we shared our message cause we did a, we sponsored a local comedy show as a part of the launch of our podcast last year, about this time, and so we brought in Rick Roberts, a comedian. Touring comedian who has also a prostate cancer survivor. And he has a great show. He was in some of these movies about Andy Griffith's show.

He does a Don Knotts, a Barney five character, which is really cool killer, but he has a great show. And so we brought him in to do a local comedy show fundraiser, which we then Put out there into the world otherwise as well. So we raised some money for cancer. We got great local awareness for this, which got us some impact.

This got me some more opportunities, including, you know, what we're doing right here to share what I'm working on. And then he's, we're going to bring him back in January and we're gonna have another cancer fundraiser there with that. It's also led me then to have insight and inroads into our local community because I'm involved with podcasting networks and television networks here locally, which has also got me connected with one of our major research hospitals here, which may lead me to doing some training and so on with their staff and possibly some interaction with other people, maybe patients and that type of thing.

It's one of our big teaching university hospitals here, which has given me that, at least that opportunity we're having these conversations. You guys probably appreciate that these conversations are a little bit, when you deal with some of the medical folks, they're a little bit dicey in the sense that they don't quite get it.

No, not everybody quite gets it. So we're having those conversations, but we're at where our foot is in the door in those places. And our foot is definitely a door with healthcare facilities, because they're looking for programming for people to come in and help right the day of retired folks, basically.

That's what I do, but so that helps a little bit, but I'm looking forward to leaning into that. I'm developing this Ted style talk that I'm looking to do. So I'm working with kind of a coach to do a Ted talk here about this and to the talk that I'm working on. It's really leaning into my own experience about my prostrate cancer.

And it's trying to, I'm trying to be sensitive about it, but also to be pertinent and direct about it. I call it, my working title is impotence and continence and insolence, the fun and facts about coping with prostrate cancer with hope and humor, because I just found that when I had prostate cancer. Okay. What happens to you then? And it's a little bit sensitive, but Hey, I'm going to go there with you. We can go there here with it here. But it's just that what happens then this is a cancer journey. I think for everybody in one degree, but I'm just focused on my own experience. You go through the insane period.

What in the heck is happening to me here? You, it's dizzy. It just throws you off. It just puts you, it knocks you on your heels. And I call that the insane part of things. You're just nuts. You can't focus on anything. And that's when you got to try to cope. And then the next part of this is what I, the incontinence part is when you literally, and prostate cancer, they say, Hey, in my case, it was a very aggressive form of cancer.

And the doc said, Hey, if you don't do something about this, you're going to be very sick in a year or two, and you're not going to be here in three or four years and God, okay, get your attention. You're going to be, if you don't do something about this, you're going to be dead in three years.

And then also here, oh, by the way, you're going to be incontinent, which has no control over your bladder and other things. So that's a lack of control, which I don't like. And I don't think many people like being out of control. So that's, And then the impetus part is, Oh, by the way, not only are you going to die in a couple of years, and now they're going to lose control of your bladder, your sex life is going to be completely messed up.

So that doesn't make me happy either. I don't think it makes a whole lot of people very happy. It's going to be, it's going to mess. And that's a matter of power. Impotence means potent. So just that takes away your power. So what does cancer then take away? Or what does these bad things take away? It drives you insane.

It takes away your control. It takes away your power. And then the last pie in my little deal there is it makes you insulin. It makes you mad.

That's the selfish part. And when I was turning into do, Katy and Jim Bob, I wasn't a very good husband. I wasn't a very good dad. I wasn't a very good friend and all that stuff. I was just upset about things. And so I've worked on this talk here. Here's these things you got. And what do you do about it?

And I have a whole process in, and I have a gift for your audience too, that will give them a little bit of a taste of this that I call the Acts plan, A C T S is how do you deal with this, but how do you take control? And I'll just break it down for you briefly here, and then we can talk about more if you want to.

The Acts plan which is what I teach. I've taught some form of this through my whole ministry. The A is to take action and that's dealing with the crisis at hand. That's crisis management at hand and doing something about it rather than just letting the cancer or whatever it is, you know, take over. Which you can do, and a lot of people do that. And part of what the, and really the tendency is to say the heck with it and give up, and so that's the tendency. But the action place is to, what are you going to take action to do about it? And that goes to the medical stuff, that goes to your mental health.

It goes, what do you need to do Crisis management. The C in the word ACTS is to connect with something greater than self. In my case, I like to take it in a spiritual realm, connect with a higher power, but it can be connect with friends or family and emotional state, connecting with something beyond self, not seeing yourself in that selfish mode and to go to that place where that, and that can deal, I believe when you get that, but the action piece is the crisis management of that insane part. And then the connect part is dealing with that discomfort because if you go to a place of some comfort spiritually, People, otherwise it can give you some comfort to deal with the, what is it is uncomfortable. It's just not comfortable. So that's gives you some comfort there.

And then the T in the word ACTS is to think strategically. That's your plan. How are you going to apply all this kind of stuff? How are you going to be your day to day kind of thing that you're going to do? And so that, that has to do with impotence. That's a response to the impotence, which is taking control which you can control. Control and then apply that accordingly, whatever that means.

It may mean you change your healthcare habits. It may mean that you spend more time journaling or something like this, whatever it is, but it means thinking strategically and applying, that's your daily plan and that's your daily habits and things of that nature, how you live your life. And then, so that's taking control of the taking power back where you had that.

And then the last, the last part I believe is to deal with the selfishness and the meanness of the insolence is to have a something to create. This is where you give back something else. This is where you give back and that's the S, in the other word ACTS is to serve others with love. That's the emotional aspect of this. And so I've got my own plan of how I do that. But I also like to teach others how to do that. So in my case, my action was to, to was to get off my rear end and to take action to create a podcast. The C was like a little deeper in my spiritual life. I got, you know, Involved with a church and I got some connections there.

Some things there spiritually, I got a little more involved with journaling and things of that nature. The T is I began a process here, which is writing out what I'm talking to you about now, my own process of here, breaking it down, writing it out and the S is to serve others with love, which is where I actually then produce the podcast and give it to others and teach this process, which is the gift I'm going to give to your audience here today is this whole process here. And so that's what I do. I now teach this stuff and I try to help people to heal with hope and humor and my co-host Deb and I do that. We've created a community on our Facebook page and so on and other things at cancerandcomedy.com to help that and the ideas to bring people together who have this same mindset that a, I'm not done yet. Cancer, whatever it is not going to beat me down and not done yet. And here's the results of it. I want to tell you how it manifests itself and the results, because what I then created, and the goal for people that I shoot for with them is to create a cancer coping credo, which is an actual statement that I read on a daily basis for myself. And then I help people to create their own credo, the kind of their statement of faith or statement that cancer is not going to beat them and that kind of thing. And so that's what I did for myself. And it's a practical, I like to think in practical terms.

Will you allow me to read my own credo? Can I do that?

Yes.

So this is what I created for myself. And this is what I help people create through that ACTS process. And the ACTS process. And just, I wrote this out about a year ago. I keep it posted right here in my office. So I'm at my home office every day. I see it every day. I read it every day and just simply. I, Brad Miller, will not let cancer define me. I will leverage cancer to refine my life to the better in my relationships and to drive me forward in my remaining days, to fulfill the mission of sharing a message of healing through hope and humor and teaching the biblical message that a cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.

So that's, and that's a direct quote from Proverbs 20, Proverbs 17, but that's what I do. And that's what I try to teach people to do. Now I've talked a lot here and I apologize, but

One thing that came to me when you're talking, you talk about the insanity and continence, impotence and insolence. Like the song goes, if you're happy and you know it, then you haven't been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

I love that. Yeah, that is a true statement my friend and just, and you hear horror stories. You talk to people and you go to Dr. Google, dangerous thing to do. And as Jim Bob, particularly, I know you do too, Katy. Prostate cancer particular impacts I don't know the exact statistic, but it's the majority of men, particularly I'm over 60, particularly over 60, the majority it impacts us, and it's also, I believe, and see what you think, Jim Bob, particularly an underserved area, and that even though it's prevalent, there's not a lot of people who are responding to it in terms of what are the actual kind of psychosocial, sexual, and marital family dynamics. All kinds of stuff that go on here, not just in the physical ramifications, all the other stuff too. And I want to dive in a little deeper in that kind of stuff.

I found the big, that to be the case. I don't know whether it's because it's involving a, your private parts or whatnot that people don't like to talk about it or whatnot, but there, there really was, when I went to look for support, I really didn't see a lot out there.

There's a fair amount about the medical part of it and some of the details and all those stuff that you can do to respond to it, but the mental, spiritual and the emotional side and their interpersonal side of it is underserved I believe. And so I believe that stuff like therapeutic humor can be approached to something that's a little bit sensitive, a little bit whatever you want to say, crude, I don't want you to say it, that's not the exact word I want to use. It's a little bit awkward for some folks to deal with. Let's just call

It's a little bit deep.

Yeah, a little bit deep. That's true. And grief is deep, And yes, it's part of a grief thing. And so I don't, what do you think, Katy, I've talked on it here, am I on target at all with what I'm talking about?

No, we like that you talk a lot. Well, that's good. That's, this show is about you today. I will share that my uncle is retired now, but he was a urological oncologist, famous with the University of Michigan, famous around the world for exactly what you guys are talking about and he wasn't interested in nutrition. He wasn't interested in humor, he's still alive, but like when I was trying to approach with nutrition and lightheartedness, that wasn't exactly his way. It was very serious. And my mom's a dual breast cancer survivor. And I will say that one of our favorite moments together was when she thought she had a spot on her liver and that was it. And I brought up the idea of getting spiritual by experimenting with psilocybin mushrooms. And we laughed like more than we had laughed in a very long time in the lobby of the hospital, just about becoming incontinent because we were laughing so hard. And that actually is a memory that both of us go back to and think, Oh, what a funny moment. She really thought it was over. If she had a spot on her liver, she had a limited amount of time.

Luckily, the scan was incorrect. And so she's still with us. And I want to say, she struggles with the she's very religious, but she struggles with the humor side and the appreciation of still being alive side. And that's I try and bring therapeutic humor to her discussions and family memories and things like that that lighten her up. And so I love what you're talking about.

I just even, just to take an aside bar there where you mentioned in what you mentioned with your aunt, I believe it was who was, or your mom, and with the religious aspects and so on that this gets a little awkward, a little strange for some people and that kind of stuff. But the Bible has a lot of stuff about humor in it. It has triplet talks. There are 30 plus passages that had one I mentioned here from Proverbs, just one of them. That's just one aspect. And certainly that whole severe aspect of some religious upbringing generally doesn't help. It just doesn't help as much as you would.

So I try to come from a different angle on that. And I believe it is valid. It is valid to have joy. It's joy is what we're talking about here is some people equate humor with aha belly laughs or something that's inappropriate. That's not what I'm talking about here. You need to have appropriate humor.

It may be a little weird to talk about incontinence and that kind of stuff that can be a little gross and weird stuff. Can talk about whatever. In my case, I was, my, one of my granddaughters was like a year and a half or two years old. We're going through this and my family, we talk about grandpa and the granddaughter having diaper issues together or whatever it was.

Oh and here we are kiddo, just you and me, we're going through it together.

But that Proverbs 17 is something I could send to my mom today to remind her how important it is to stay cheerful, and because she still struggles. She's 85 and so life is a bit hard. She's in a wheelchair and stuff and she struggles. It's a kind of a constant movement toward, Hey mom, gratitude, humor, let's talk Proverbs and help her understand the value of trying herself to empower herself to be happier.

The other part of that Proverb is I can't see it there. I want to take it. Yeah, there it is. Mary Hart does. Yeah, there you go.

That's on my business card.

There you go. Awesome. But just to reflect with Katy for a second there, the other part of that verse, I hate to be preacher guy here for a minute, but I will. The other part of that verse is it says that cheerful heart is good medicine, but it also says that in the same verse that a crushed spirit dries up the bones. And so that's the other side of it. So many people, as you don't have to be, you don't have to have cancer, be 85 to have a crushed spirit. We know that depression and loneliness is a crushed spirit in our world right now. But what am I saying that's a response to a crushed spirit because a crushed spirit is so incredibly prevalent.

And my mother is 85 as well and she's having heart surgery next week. So we're dealing with some of this stuff right now. But you got to have both sides there. You have both sides of it here, but you got to have both sides.

Right. And we're dealing with a loneliness epidemic all over the country.

Oh my gosh. It is. It is ridiculous. It's been a sense, the more we have connectivity electronically with any number of ways that we're doing it. You two are in different parts of the country. I'm in Indianapolis and you're in West Virginia, California, and we're connected that way. That's all cool. That's great. But also, we also know there's still isolation in people all over the place and we got to do something about that. We got to be responsible. And I think therapeutic humor is one way to do that. But you also got to get out there interpersonally, not just electronically to do that. And so that's one of the reasons I'm a big believer getting out there because every day and try to put maybe even a little bit, even maybe a little, put it on your happy face a little bit, even if you had a bad day, but to try to brighten up somebody else's day.

That's one of the reasons I, one of the things I say almost every day when I go wherever I'm at, I migrating to people, whether it's somebody serving me coffee or, you know, Whatever is, hey, young man or hey, young woman, it could be, they could be four years old or 94 years old, but it seems most of the time it's brightens their day if you just say that young, and more many times, no one's called me young in a long time. And so that's one of the things I do.

Let me share briefly that I have a nonprofit. I'm just going to do a quick plug. Joy First Foundation is all about that interpersonal connection. So wherever I go, I have cards like this that say, Thanks for being on earth today. And then I give a standing ovation to whatever stranger is in front of me, and I tell them that they matter. And I tell them, I say, thanks for being on earth. Thanks for all you do. Thanks for all you've survived. And I send them with a little 3d printed joy.

Oh, that's cool.

Quick and easy and makes a big difference. People cry. They tell me their stories and everybody here at AATH knows all about it. So we don't have to go on too much about it. But I just wanted to plug that because that is exactly what you're talking about.

I just, it's Copacetic, if that's a word. I'm not sure if it's a word or not, but I like to use it, that we, you think that way, because one of the things I do is I carry these little cards around with me, are joke cards, and they're just this, I buy these called word teasers, and anyhow, and just, they're just one liner dad jokes. Here's one I just pulled out, what do you call two birds stuck together? Velcros. So I just, I would just, I just give that to, if I'm running around, give it to people as a gift. Oh yeah. You want a joke, you want a joke today? Sometimes I tell them a joke if it's appropriate like that, but a lot of times I was giving this, Hey, thank you for that kind of thing, a tangible thing.

My dad, I learned that from my dad years ago. He would carry around a pocket full of little tiny crosses and he just get everywhere I go, give it somebody across and there's still people I meet today. He's been dead for eight years, still be, but I met some of the other day. Hey, I remember your dad gave me a cross 20 years ago.

That's my version of sort of something like that to brighten somebody's day. Just like what you're doing, Katy. How awesome is that? Now, I just want to know what Jim Bob's doing. What are you doing, man? What are you doing to help people out?

I write jokes. That's what I do. Very big of the dad joke you were there. And I'm thinking we have to have some other conversations because I'm seeing that we have a number of Venn diagrams that are overlapping here. Like I, so, but let me start all over again. One is, which authors did you find to be most helpful? I'll share mine first. The first book I ever read about prostate cancer was by Jerry Parisho. May he rest in peace, called I Barf, Therefore I Am.

Jerry was a writer for The Tonight Show. Diagnosed with prostate cancer, and he survived it for many years after that. But it was his training as a comedy writer that helped him navigate the hard stuff. Yeah, it's excellent there.

There's also a gentleman named Harold Walensky. He's with the ASPI, which is a group trying to promote awareness of active surveillance as a means of managing the lower risk of prostate cancers. He and I actually sponsored a contest last year for prostate related humor, and I'm thinking it's time to reload that and perhaps take it to the next level.

Prostrate-related humor. Wow, I can see the website now. Prostraterelatedhumor.com.

It seems that people, you know, you see like Joe Torrey, manager of the Yankees. When you say celebrity who disappears for a couple of days for a procedure and comes back and doesn't say anything about it, it's probably prostate cancer. They probably just had the radical

Yeah. You hear about, hear about it once a month. Different people handle it differently. I know there's, I'm an old rock and roll DJ from back in the days, and so I, there's been a couple of old rockers. I can't think of the names now who've passed away from prostate cancer because they didn't do anything about it. That kind of stuff. Yeah. And that kind of thing. They ask what I read and that kind of stuff. I haven't read those particular books about prostate cancer. To be honest with you, my prostate cancer research has been mostly online, that kind of stuff. I've been reading other stuff. I've been reading the Kleinberg's book and breaking that down.

Power of Humor by Ellen Klein. Available in fine bookstores everywhere.

Yeah, Ellen Klein, Healing Power, Humor, some of his other stuff. I've read other things as well. I went back and I believe in the sense of having a purpose in life. So I reread Warren's book of the Purpose Driven Life, things of that nature. I got a whole big bunch of books back there. And I've got a whole bunch of books right behind me. The Laughing Cure by a name, by a good guy named King, is one I read recently, which I found helpful. He's a

Yeah, I think I found a long-lost brother here.

For those that who can't see, they're bragging about their libraries.

I read this one recently. Brian King, who's a doctor and a stand up comedian. The Laughing Cure. I've been reading that kind of stuff, more of a therapeutic humor. But thank you for pointing me towards some of the prostate specific things, because

I need to share reading lists here, because I think we could come up with an essential library. Have you, okay, have you heard of the website prostatecancer.net?

Yes, and I've been there and looked at that, and there's a couple other prostate related cancer sites as well. I've looked at probably all the, not all of them, I'm sure, but a bunch of them. And so, yeah, I'm familiar with that, and I just think there's good stuff there. But there's room for more growth, don't you think Jim Bob?

Oh, definitely. It's terrible. There's so little of promotion of prostate cancer awareness. When they sent me the blue awareness band, I wasn't sure where to wear it. That's about as risky as we get here on LaughBox there.

That's a little, that's a little low and that's as close as I'm going to go on that. So, oh my gosh.

I was the poster child for prostate cancer awareness last year. When you're in your sixties, all you can do is get on the lawn and yell at the make a wish kids. That's where my mind takes me.

I'm right there with you. It just said, I'm going a little further out than you. I'm going to let it be, but yeah, but it's, I can lead you that way. And you can go to just to talk about comedians in this whole area. For instance, I've had a few guests on my show who've deal with some pretty severe. I had a comedian, a guy named Frank King on my show. Suicide awareness. He was a guest on my show and he was a writer for Jay Leno's tonight's show. And he has a great take on suicide awareness. So we deal with not only cancer and prostate cancer and all kinds of stuff like that. I had another fellow on I had a woman just on my show, just the episode just went live today. Older woman in her sixties or seventies. I'm not sure how she is. I shouldn't say, but she dealt with breast cancer, a very Yeah, that's a form of breast cancer. And she leveraged that to become a stand up comic. And now she even has her own in her own community at Tampa, Florida. So I've been praying about her that regard. She hosts shows and does open mic nights, particularly for these this type of things. So she's done that. I had another guy on our show. Guy named Edward Minsky, who was a, at 26 years old was in a, was a performer at a Broadway style show, a traveling Broadway style show, ended up with terrible chronic illness.

He, and his book is called Cancer, a Musical Theater and Other Chronic Illnesses, and he has some great stories to tell about Musical theater. He relates it to musical theater and then they've got those kind of things. Then I had a local guy, the local, one of the local news guys here, whose daughter had at age three or four, had bad leukemia, real bad. But he relates how his daughter saved him by his daughter laughing through the cancer that she had. So he has that kind of story. So we talked not only about the actual victims, but I call it cancer impacted people because it's the whole family, it's the whole community. It's everybody and who's involved. In fact, we've had several shows. Deb and I have Deb Krier, my cohost about caregivers and how they are so much impacted by all this kind of thing. And that's a whole nother track there, but

They’re definitely underserved.

Absolutely. I want to tell you, if I can, I want to make sure that you, your audience knows that I have a gift for them if they would like to take advantage of it.

Can I share that with you? I mentioned to you that I have my plan here that I put out called the ACTS plan, A C T S, and I put that into a form of a short audio course. Five lessons, 10 minutes or so a piece. And if I just make it available to anybody who wants to have it, they just simply go to cancerandcomedy.com/free

cancerandcomedy.com/free and boom, they'll get it. It's just five lessons. It's basically more or less what I outlined earlier, the ACTS plan, but it helps people get a handle on this and then they can always go deeper if they want to. But I want to offer that as a gift to the Laugh Box audience from me, Dr. Brad Miller. I'm not a medical doctor, but I'm a doctor of ministry and I like to feel like I can offer something. We like to call it a healing with hope and humor. That's what we like to say.

Where else where can we find your podcast? Where can we, your website is Cancerandcomedy.com.

The best thing to do is we're on all the channels, on audio and on YouTube. Best thing to go is simply go to cancerandcomedy.com/follow and you'll get everything there. I try to make it as simple as possible. So just two things. Cancer and comedy, just like it sounds, dot com slash follow. And you can follow all the links to every place you want to go. And if you want the free course, it's just cancerandcomedy.com/free. And I will say if people didn't reach out through the website to me, I respond personally every single time. And then we also are always looking for those little tidbits, those little stories of lifting. We like to call our fans, our followers and their growing number. We call them lifters. We call them because it's short for lifter uppers, because that's the approach we want to take with the people who will follow us because so much is a downer, right? So much of the world is a downer. So we want to be the opposite of that. We want to provide a means to be a lifter-upper. So we call them lifters. So I have a voice. We have a voice message section as well on our website. You can leave us a voice message. You can leave us a written message on the Tech and the comment section of the website.

We love to hear from you people. And, oh, by the way, we've got a couple of our guests on our podcast just that way. So we're wide open to this. We're building community. That is so important to us. And I just want to say this here. I believe the solution to all this kind of stuff is I like to use alliterations.

You heard the thing earlier about the eyes and all that kind of stuff. I also like to think about how people, the healing part of this has to do with the four C's. So that is, you got to cope, you got to cope with the thing at first, then you got to connect with others. We've talked about that and to end up, to have connection part. And then the conversion kind of thing, but then also the community. That's what I mentioned to you here. It's so important to have community. That's what you guys are doing such a great job with AATH, building community, not only through your podcast, with your website and through your conference and all the things you're working on building community, that is the key.

Connection leads to community because the crisis and then you deal with this stuff, but you connect with other people, interpersonally or online, then you build community, which is the caring where you share caring. That might be sharing a note. It might be sharing a Facebook post. It might be a physical thing.

It might be buying somebody coffee, whatever it is, building community. We're doing it on our Facebook page and other places, but mainly on our website. If they want to connect with me personally, I will respond to you personally. I promise that. If you go to our website at cancerandcomedy.com/follow. Look me up. I'll be there.

Awesome. I have a question for both of you. So, what kind of thing can you say, I don't know how to put it differently, to the people that are currently being watched? Because a lot of times the PSA goes up and guys are being watched before any surgery happens or anything like that. And that can be, from my perspective, a woman, maybe that could be a scary place for guys to be. So, what would you say, funny, not, advice, whatever you want it to be, each of you, What would you say to the guys in waiting or observation?

I can address that because part of the, I've been in active surveillance now. Used to be called watchful waiting, but active surveillance, you develop a plan, you take regular blood tests, you look at other, to try to decide when you're going to have surgery or radiation or chemo or whatnot. Active surveillance, it is strange and you're stalking yourself, but I would say the thing to do that is to find a community. As Brad was saying that, of guys who are going through it, there's, I can recommend some good websites that are on that, but know that you're not going through it alone. And that, and Jerry Perisho, who wrote this book I mentioned. Okay, when I got my first elevated PSA, I know Jerry through a mutual friend, a comedian, and a comedy writer, Neil Berliner in Florida, who said, Hey, you're worried about prostate cancer, you need to talk to Jerry.

And he said, gave me a lot of excellent advice. And one of the things he mentioned was having a second opinion, because if your numbers go up, there's more than one reason why a number can go up. It can be an infection that can, for example, and I went to one time when it went up, went on antibiotics, it went back down. We're fine. The other thing I would say to look at is it's important to know whether you're at a high risk or low risk, and that involves looking at your family history. There are some biomarker genetic tests that can be done. They're imperfect. That's another tool you can use. And of course, then maybe you just want the peace of mind and say, let's remove it. I'll manage the incontinence and the other issues with it, but I just don't want that weight on my shoulders.

And here's the one, here's the main thing. Whatever you think, decide is right for you. That's fine. There's no, there's no one way.

I would just affirm and basically second everything Jim Bob is saying and add my own twist to it or angle to what, or to add to it in this regard, I have always experienced and felt that waiting is one of the most hard, is one of the hardest things people do in any kind of a medical situation. And believe me, I've spent a lot of time in waiting rooms in hospitals and doctor's office, not only for my own deal, but in my ministry. I'm talking sometimes overnight and things like this.

Waiting is so hard. And in my, and if it's you who's doing the waiting, it's exacerbated. In this particular case, that is one of, for my case, I think many people's cases, that's one of three approaches to prostate cancer is basically, you know, the watch and the wait and the observing and the blood test and so on and so forth. And the others are surgery and then, you know, radiation or chemo or something like that. In my case, those were three options that were before me. And I had my doc said, you have a rather aggressive form here. And whatever you do, if you decide to do the waiting thing, you just need to know that these are the ramifications of it.

So that's one aspect. That conversation with your doctor. And if you need to get second opinion, and I sought some of that kind of stuff out as well. I've had a great deal of trust in my doc, but still it was hard. And that kind of thing. But the other things I would say, it'd be very intentional about reaching out to people who can inform you good, bad, or otherwise. In my case, the doc is one of them. I'm going to give you three groups of people, the doc, then medical people is one of them. The second was some friends of mine. I'd be in a guy in my 60s. Some of my friends, some of my buds been dealing with this. So I said, man, I called up one, I called one of my buddies on January on New Year's day and said, we need to talk. And we had a great conversation and I talked to two or three other people who dealt with this, or they had relatives dealt with this. Those were helpful. It gave me different perspectives because basically almost everybody's dealing with those three choices and they're dealing with their own deal. Just like you're saying Jim Bob.

And then the other one that I just need to share that is really important here is your significant other, your spouse. You get with my wife and I, we had to go deep on this. Cause she, I was one who wanted to wait a long time and I'm going to, I wanted to wait it out because I was not, I'll just be frank about it. I, the whole impotence thing was not a throw up, was not a thrill for me. It was not, it was just not. And we had some talks and we've had some deal with that in some other ways, resolution that in that regard. But the whole thought of incontinent impotence, you know, the whole being without control and without power for the rest of my life, I was just thinking, okay, then why do I really want to live? That's a part of my thinking. And she didn't like to hear that kind of stuff. We had to go some kind of deep, a little bit dark places on that, but that was the conversations, those conversations had to be had. And ultimately, I'll say we made the decision as a surgery and it's a good thing. And I feel pretty good. And even some of the other issues and continents and epithets have been resolved. But that is was not a sure thing at all in the beginning of this whole deal. But I would just say those things, you got to have those conversations with your doc, with your friends and with your significant other. And you get to go to those kind of uncomfortable places.

And I could see us doing this forever. You guys are just, this is an amazing conversation. We have a limited amount of time. Go ahead, Jim Bob.

I know! I know! There are some other, you'll be getting an email from me, Brad, don't worry.

Yeah, maybe we'll do a follow up in the beginning of the year, because this is so interesting.

I need to ask Brad the question. Okay. When somebody is going through cancer diagnosis or treatment or not, what do you want them to remember on Thursday?

In my case, it's what I shared earlier about me is good morning. Good morning, young man. Good morning, young woman. That kind of, that word young to me means vitality and it means live your life to the fullest to the end. And so that's what it means for me. And so that's, I'd like yeah, that's what I do. That's what I do. I try to do that every day, but even on a Thursday.

And so that's what I try to do. Let me lay on you my one little funny story that about my whole deal and then you can close it up whatever you need to do here. But this is, I got several, we didn't get to, I told a couple dumb jokes here, but this is one of my one kind of really funny and certainly a prostrate related Funny story. But anyhow, and people who have prostrate surgery and other kinds of surgeries, you often go home with a catheter, you know, that's part of the fun. You go home with the catheter. And so I was in the hospital a couple of days, went over the catheter for 10 days and got home and just spent a lot of time in bed.

But I finally got out of bed and we had a, at that time, a 17 year old dog. And I went out in the hallway just to get out and to the living room to watch TV and something. My dog who has no energy and it's incontinent herself at 17 years old, comes down the hallway. She's excited to see me. She starts to jump on me, but she gets tangled up in my catheter hose and then she gets, and I yell at her because I'm not happy that she starts down the hallway and so we took a little walk.

That was Tender General's happiest walk I've had in a long time. And oh boy, and that was a sight to behold because you had an incontinent dog and a guy being taken a walk by his catheter hose. He's just getting out of bed after the first time. So that's my one of the stories I tell in my little talk that I do, so.

She waited 17 years, but she finally got to be the one on the right.

Oh my goodness. Oh, and she, she, yeah, it was, it was the most tenderest walk I've ever taken.

Brad, this has been a massive pleasure. I think we have to bring you back at some point. Thanks for your velvety voice and your lovely story. And your activities and all that you do for the world. Thank you.

My pleasure. It's a pleasure to be on LaughBox. On the AATH group, Katy and Jim Bob, you are awesome. Love to be with you. And I'd love to serve your audience. So remember cancerandcomedy.com/free, get connected with me.

This has been Laugh Box, the official podcast of the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor.

With a very massive, humongous thank you to Dr. Brad Miller. Just love talking to you. And this is, I hope this is the first of many long conversations.

LaughBox is a production of the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor. Visit us online at www.aath.org. Follow us on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn.