Every year, Jacky Grossman talks on social media about her family--and how so many lost their lives in the Holocaust.

In this episode, Jacky talks about the stories of how her parents and grandmother survived--and the special emphasis that she places on making sure those stories live on.

"...As we were headed towards the airport, a large convoy of military personnel in armored vehicles were entering the city. I looked out the side window to my left, looked out to my right, where my wife was sitting, and I said, 'this doesn't look good.'"

Dustin Watson and his wife escaped Myanmar on February 20, 2021, the same day that security forces opened fire on innocent people protesting the month-old military coup. His story kicks off a new season for the Surviving podcast.

The trauma is forgotten, but a single act of warmth and kindness provided a lifetime of giving back. That's how Tomi Holmes lives her life after passing through the foster care system when she was little. She is an inspiration for how to live a life full of love, perhaps her biggest gift of all.

Tomi is a volunteer for CASA, Court Assisted Special Advocates of Prince George's County--I served two terms on the organization's board of directors, which is how our paths initially crossed. For more information about CASA or to become a volunteer, please visit www.pgcasa.org
  

Multiple Sclerosis has sent Saurabh Chowdhry on several career detours, but he views each experience as a triumph. From medical student to science teacher to scientific writer to inspirational author, he keeps pressing onward and refusing to let MS bend his will.

Saurabh has two motivational books--the second one, Step by Step, just came out this month--and you can learn more about his journey through his author's page.

It took Uvi Naidoo, a South African pediatrician, three long years to get through extensively drug resistant tuberculosis. Now, he's working through long-haul COVID symptoms, after contracting the infection twice. But even though he still needs oxygen when he gets around every day, he won't stop talking about TB.

Uvi and I met several years ago (through email and phone calls, not zoom) as I edited an essay that he wrote about TB. We kept in touch afterwards, and supported each other last year as we both went through our own health crises.

That TB essay can be found here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/19/opinion/eliminate-the-tb-scourge.html

Baseball season this year starts on April Fools Day, which is a perfect metaphor for Mets fans. Seeing as how this episode is launching the same week, my good friend Woo Jin Ho joins me to take a look at what it's like to survive as a fan of the franchise. 

Woo Jin grew up in Queens, rooting for the Yankees--but then switched allegiances because of a Mets-Padres doubleheader of all things.

In this conversation, we touch on how being a Mets fan fits into my own cancer journey, talk through the importance of winning the offseason, ponder our prospects for actually winning this year, and joyfully take a few cheap shots at Yankee fans. 

Bonus trivia question that is part of the discussion:

• When Dave Kingman played for the Mets, he became one of two players in MLB history to have more home runs than RBIs. Who was the other? 

In November of 2019, Connie White bought a pair of maternity tights by accident--she wasn't actually pregnant. In trying them on though, she fell down the rabbit hole of tests, cancer diagnosis and treatment. What's worse, most of her journey with ovarian, uterine, and falopian cancer took place in the midst of the COVID 19 pandemic.

To get through this journey emotionally intact, she drew three lines in the sand:

• She was not going to get nauseous during treatment--that was just not going to happen.
• She was not going to listen to statistics--she was going to beat this.
• For those who reached out, she asked whether they're here to be nice, or want a deeper relationship--both approaches were welcomed, but the knowledge helped protect her in vulnerable moments.

How she came to these lines, and how she follows them still--and how she gets to wear dinosaur tape (!)--make for quite a compelling journey.

The last time the world freaked out about a global pandemic, it was 2014. The Ebola virus devastated Liberia and two other West African countries, but only about a dozen people were treated in Europe and North America. 

Ashoka Mukpo was an American journalist who had spent two previous years in Liberia, and returned to Monrovia to cover the pandemic. He lasted a month before getting sick.

Seven years later, he's fully recovered and still working as a journalist. And the perspectives he learned from being the focus of a media storm inform how he works with the people he covers today.  

Samples of his work can be found at https://www.ashokamukpo.net/

* This episode is marked for explicit material due to cursing.