Hello, I'm Peter King. Welcome to the MMQB podcast with Peter King, where I take you inside the minds of the biggest influencers in the NFL.

This week, an extended interview. in the NFL.

This week, an extended interview with Chris Mortenson of E-SPN.

As many of you know, Chris Mortenson has battled stage four throat cancer for much of the last two years. I can report some

success and I'll also report some of the sobering news in his life over the last couple of years.

It's an extraordinary conversation and I think you'll really enjoy what you have to hear

from Chris Mortenson.

But first, a little bit about how this story came about. I know we're in just

finish week seven of the NFL season. Sometimes in my podcast I'm going to do different topics and not necessarily who just won or who's got the hot quarterback or whatever.

And the reason I wanted to do this story is that I think

sometimes we get so caught up in our lives and we get so caught up in what we feel is really, really important.

And you know, life is important, obviously your job is important, your day-to-day existence, you know, I totally get it. We all have to work and we all have to do things that basically just move our lives on but sometimes you hear a story and you hear about something and it just makes you stop

and it makes you say wow wow you

you know I've had the experience in the last seven years both of my brothers

died both who were slightly older than I was, but they both died, both of them very unexpectedly.

And it's at times like that

where you really start to think about yourself about what you're doing about how you live

your contribution to the planet things like that and so when I heard in January of 2016, I guess about 21 months ago, that Chris Martinson was battling stage four lung cancer, I just, I kind of got very emotional about it and I got

emotional because I've known Chris since the early 80s when I was a very young backup beat writer on the Cincinnati Reds and he worked

for a paper in LA covering the Dodgers and he would come to Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati

and he was the life of the party he was a cut-up he was fun

He was a nightclub comic he was just a cool guy and I thought man what a life this guy must have living in LA

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