The Dr. John Delony Show - Off the Record With Steven Rinella

Episode Date: March 28, 2026

🔥 Microhabits for a better marriage. Download the Together app. 📷 Follow Steven Rinella on Instagram 🥩 Watch MeatEater 🦌 More information on MeatEater   On today’s episode, John talks with MeatEater founder Steven Rinella about life, love and hunting.   Next Steps: ❤️ Get away with your spouse today! 📞 Ask John a question! Call 844-693-3291 or send us a message. 📚 Building a Non-Anxious Life 📝 Anxiety Test 📚 Own Your Past, Change Your Future ❓ Questions for Humans Conversation Cards 💭 John's Free Guided Meditation 🤘🏼 The Dr. John Delony Show Merch   Connect With Our Sponsors: Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp. Get up to 20% off with code DELONY at Cozy Earth.   Get 20% off when you join DeleteMe.  Visit Hallow for a 90-day free trial. Visit Helix Sleep for special offers!  Working knives for working people—Go to Montana Knife Company to see what’s available now! Explore Poncho Outdoors! Head to Shady Rays and use code DELONY for 40% off two or more polarized sunglasses.  Get 25% off your order at Thorne.   Visit Zander Insurance or call 1-800-356-4282 for your free instant quote today.   Explore More From Ramsey Network: 🎙️ The Ramsey Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights   🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 💰 George Kamel 🪑 Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman 📈 EntreLeadership   Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Early on, I was very interested in engaging with that outside audience. I felt this compulsion to be like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, here, let me show you. There's a real effort to sanitize because it was of a fear of offending people. I was focused there, and then over time I just realized I was more like focused on being like, isn't this a beautiful world? Yeah. We inhabit.

How do you decide what other people get to see about your life? Hey, what's up? This is John Deloney. And this is a special episode of Off the Record. This is kind of a new episode that we're dropping once every few weeks on Saturday mornings. These are interviews. These are conversations I'm having with some of my friends, people I admire, and in today's case, a hero of mine. When I put together a list of I would love to get these particular men and women on this show, this guest today was at the very top of the list.

I'm talking about the great and awesome Steve Ronella. Steve Rinella is the founder of Meat Eater, which is a hunting and cooking show, but he's also an amazing writer. He's written a number of bestselling books. He's a historian. He's just a mastermind. And the show has very little to do with hunting today. We're both big hunters, but it has very little to do with that. We're talking about marriage.

We're talking about kids. We're talking about balancing the chaos that's our life. We talk about what scares us to death about the future for our kids and what we're excited about for our kids. And we also talk about how do you manage things that you're really passionate about in a marriage when your spouse is not passionate about those things. This is one of my favorite conversations. Off camera and on, Steve is an amazing guy, just a great, kind human being and a wealth of

knowledge. Buckle up, put your headphones in, turn it up a little bit, and enjoy my conversation with the great and wonderful Steve Ronella. The most important thing we have talked about is this. So you were on my friend, Sean Ryan's show. He lives right here. Yeah, he lives right here, yeah, yeah. So I take Sean out hunting, and he shoots his first buck,

and I said, Sean, you can't take a picture of that buck and put it on the internet. And so he tells you the story, and I'm watching it, and I was like, oh, that's me. It's me. And then you go, man, I don't want to disparage your friend with that guy. I don't know, idiot. I was like, oh. Okay, so here's my question. It was awesome, by the way.

Here's my question. How do you decide what other people get to see about your life? Like, how do you post? How do you, because I'm navigating that. And all the parents I talk to, like, who do I put this? And it feels, you do it at such a public skill and it's such a third real issue. Yeah, we, we, there's a, that's a dramatic pause, but it's not to meant, it's more, I'm faking, it's not dramatic pause. It's just a thinking pause. And the reason is because it's been a little bit, our paths are toward, when I say we, like our path toward what I share, we share, is a we path because it's something that my wife and I navigated together. Um, early on, we had, we have three kids. When we had our first kid, remember, he, he wound up, our first kid, James. one of being in some media projects

I did like as a baby okay okay and then we just landed where we didn't like the way that felt and we found that we had to make we found that we just had to make a rule

and to an outside perspective it might seem arbitrary but we just need to like make a thing just y'all too we just yeah we just were like what is the rule yeah and we hit on this rule um

that we don't show our kids face is publicly. Okay. The reason it seems arbitrary is because I might put, I would maybe on social media, I would show a picture of my kids look in the other direction or if they're holding the fish up, the fish might be in front of their face. But it just like made, it made a thing that we don't do. And then it ruled out certain things. Yeah. Right. I mean, there's no way our kids are going to be sort of like talking on video projects or like coming on TV shows, right? They can't because we don't show their face. And it worked really well because it just gave us like, a line not to cross.

And it won't be, you don't have to debate, we didn't need to, like, to debate everything, the pros and cons of every possibility. Or she sees something you posted and she gets upset, it doesn't say anything.

Yeah, because, like, is their face or not their face? That's right. And so it just was, it was, it just, it worked remarkably well. Um, and we never had to revisit it.

What we ran into now is, is now I have a, my youngest boy is now 15. And so we let him, he's very interested in photography. I don't know that he'll pursue. as a career, but he's like very interesting in photography, very interesting wildlife photography. And we let him get a social media page. And the deal at first was that he couldn't post anything

without a cocaine with me, you know, because we were explaining him like, man, you could, you could screw up and be haunted. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, when it's out there, like, you do a, you do a dumb thing, and it's just, it's out there. The other day, he posted something or another. I was like, I never looked at it. And he pointed out, there's a guy I worked with a photographer who I worked very closely with and have for a long tan named Seth Morris. We traveled together. And I said, you never checked that with me. He's like, well, I checked it with Seth. I'm like, okay, that's not what we said, but it's a good guy to check with. Well played. It's a good guy to check with. But now we said, so we're doing that now. He's into it. So that handles the kid aspect of it. The other aspects of it,

I don't really know. I don't do things quick. You know, I don't do things impulsively. And I found, too, that maybe this is a function of getting older. I just turned 52 there a day. I'm just less and less. I'm less and less interested in social media. Like, I just don't get excited about it anymore. Yes. Yes, across the board.

It feels like a different landscape. I love video. I like doing stuff. I mean, we distribute video in all manner ways. Some people would regard YouTube as social media. I don't. I don't either. You know, I love making things like pieces that I know are just going to live on YouTube.

Love doing it. love books, love podcasts, less and less interest in social media. I can see a future where I'm just not, I'm out. I'll just taper off. I slowly tapered off alcohol and I don't drink any alcohol. I'm like quit.

I just quit. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, it wasn't a big event. No, I just one day was like, wow, I don't drink anymore. Yeah. I could picture someday being like, wow, I don't use social media anymore. That, I'm hearing that.

Like, not even from people who produce videos and things, but just, the average people like it's burned out like it hasn't it hasn't solved the problem in my life it said it was going to solve in fact it's made it worse and so what if i just how do i talk to a person in real life now i don't know how to do that yeah i i struggle with that balance of because we made the same rule with our kids oh you did yeah and mine was less thoughtful than yours mine was more anxiety ridden like one day those computers right oh and that was 15 years ago i just i didn't i didn't want my son and and now my daughter to have to answer for their face being on something

that they didn't have any input in, right? Like, he'll have to, my son's 15, the day's coming when he will be responsible for what the world sees that he's put out, but I don't want it to be on me. I already feel bad, telling stories about him from stage a lot. I had this debate,

I had this debate with a friend of mine whose kids have always been part of his stuff, and he's like, hey man, if I'm a dairy farmer, my kids, they're going to get up in the morning and milk cows. He's like, this media, that's a family business. Yeah. I get it, but man. That's his take, not my take, but it's his take.

And I was like, okay, you know, you thought about it. You thought about it. Yeah, but the cows see you, not every computer and eyeballs. Cows keep a secret. Yeah, dude, cows look at you and they're like, we see, we know, man. So how do you decide, how have you navigated? And you started talking about hunting. You started showing what this looks like when it was, it's way more accepted now.

you think so I think so maybe I'm I guess maybe the maybe the I haven't heard of people like Dowson cans of paint on people in fur coats

recently right like like correct like you're still gonna have I got a good story about that actually oh do you but okay I think that

but you came in this when it was like no one had ever seen yeah we were showing we were you know 12 years ago whatever we were showing

hunting we were showing aspects of hunting that hadn't been shown to a large audience people knew grandpa went hunting they didn't know what that meant yeah yeah we were we were like kind of capturing a very detailed portrait

yeah a very you know for lack of a better I mean there are better words I don't mean for lack of a better word I'm too lazy to find a better word we were showing a very graphic treatment of hunting at a time when that just wasn't out there even to the point where you know

we would we would distribute licensed shows to um uh sportsman channel at the time and we never and they always encouraged what we did but but they even had policies in place and other outdoor channels

outdoor like hunting and fishing programs uh networks yeah had policies in place to block portrayal of like blood raw like even raw meat you know what I mean like there's a real effort to sanitize.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it was of a fear of offending people. They didn't want to be kind of the opposite became true, where it was like, people were wondering what am I not seeing? Yeah. And all of a sudden it was, I don't know, cathartic or whatever. It was just to see it get turned into food, it wound up not being a detriment, but it wound up being additive to the experience and made a whole new generation of people kind of

understand what was all about. But it was, but that was regarded as a risky move at the time, as odd as it seems now. Well, and that's what I'm fascinated by is what's your North Star in that. And what I mean by that question is I struggle with who gets a vote in my life. Like, and we were just talking earlier, 35% of the calls that come into my show are people who have cut off their in-laws or cut off their parents or parents who cut off their kids. Because of that perceived, I'm tired of them telling me I need to drive a camera instead of a whatever. or they don't like the way I parent my kid, but I go all the way to,

you did that in a media ecosystem. Like, I think this is the right thing to do, and there's going to be this many people who not only don't like it, but who tell me I'm a terrible person and I'm evil, I'm wrong with the world, and yada yada. But there's a North Star, it said, no, no, no, this is right.

You know what I mean? Yeah, I understand. I wrestle with who gets a vote. Yeah. And I look at you, I look at some of the, what I'd call the pioneer hunting guys who took us along with you to say at some point y'all said i don't care i think this is

right does that make sense no i understand i get i'll approach that in a couple ways a thing i left off when talking about our decision about our kids um years ago i had gotten a threat from an animal rights person and they referenced my family and so that was that was a factor that played into it they wound up um it was funny because when it was enough where uh we the fbi i like went to this person's work went through his garbage oh he ordered a pepperoni pizza they told i mean i'm not kidding they came and they told you everything they show up like you know like dressed how they're supposed be dressed the fbi you know it's a guy and a girl a guy's got super short hair and they got trench coats on that kid you they're like they like scared the hell out of this guy yeah that that influenced

our decision so you're right there was a thing where there was a a a sort of threatening verbal opposition to what I do. Yeah. The thing that shocks me, one of the things that shocks me, most about kind of where I've spent, the ideas that I've spent exploring, in exploring, sorry, the ideas I've explored through my career,

is it, I don't really get, that's not a big part of my life is engaging with people who are, like, vehemently opposed to what I do. I feel like they look at, I'm like a lost cause. Okay. You know, because they can pressure,

like, you can, let's say you're, like, there's a lot of closeted, There's a lot of celebrities that are like closeted about their hunting because there's a thing you can take. There's a thing you can take away from them. Right. You don't get to be in like my movie or whatever. You don't get to play in Hollywood. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So they. Closeted hunter. There's like, yeah, there's like a thing. Dude. Yeah. I could, yeah, I could tell you. I could tell you great stories about closet. That's the headline.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Because there's something that can be taken away from them. Yeah. There's like, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a thing you can pressure, you know, certain kind of advertisers. There's a thing you can pressure that's threatening to them. We recently had a high, we had a high profile individual who was going to come on our podcast and pulled out, just recently, pulled out at the last minute for fear of getting punished by advertisers, right? For being on your show? Yeah, but it's like, this isn't the thing that I'm, I'm not even, like, I don't live this at all. Okay. Yeah. And I think I don't live it at all because

I'm a lost cause. Like, you know, what are you going to take away from me? You know? So in that way, I guess that people that are opposed to the ideas I talk about or the lifestyle I have, like, they have no vote. You know? Yeah. To look at the question a different way, I used to imagine, like, I imagine there's two audiences for a person like me. There's two potential audiences. There's like the audience that sits on the outside of what I do, sits on the outside. of the outdoors sits on the outside of hunting and fishing right sits on the outside of like any

kind of extraction it's like you're a zoo animal yeah yeah they're like on the outside and they're looking in and they're curious about the world they're threatened by it they hate it yeah whatever and then there's the audience that's on the inside and i imagine that being like the people i grew up around the people i hang out with early on i was very interested in engaging with that outside audience I was like, I don't know why. I felt this compulsion to be like, no, no, no, no. Like, here, let me show you.

Like, you got it all wrong. You know, like, let me explain all this to you. I was focused there. And then over time, I just realized I was more like focused on, on people from the inside being like, isn't this a beautiful world? Yeah. We inhabit.

Yeah. Let's explore this and go deeper in this world. like kind of push on its boundaries and think about it together and find a way to perpetuate it and save the good parts. And that's sort of where I imagine spending my time now. Like I shifted. I was here talking to the outside and now more and more, I'm like, I'm very interested in on the inside.

Is that because you felt this is futile or has this crew become more unhinged? No, no, that would become more unhinged. That's just who I am. That's who I've always hung out. See, the way you bifurcated that, I would have said that has been your superpower. Is the only guy that will run an entire episode that, and obviously you're a great writer in order.

Like, I didn't get anything. I missed. Right? I wounded an animal. Now I'm not going to sleep for five nights. Like, you're the only guy that's explored failure in that way, which is awesome. But it has, like my daughter.

like again born in Texas two Texas parents we probably eat venison five nights a week and that's what we have and she

she's 10 and she refuses she thinks hunting is awful and terrible but she watches your show oh really but when it comes

to the she's on the inside actual dead animals she'll do this right she don't want to see it and she's like oh you're watching meter okay

she'll pop down the couch and so but it always felt there's a humanity to it does that make sense Yeah. And you've done it in a way that's not pornographic, right?

It's not just ha-ha. But there's a human element to it. Yeah. In all fairness, there is, like, at all times, it's always been to both. I guess that I just pictured the emphasis. Yeah. Or, you know, like, when... I remember a piece of writing advice I got...

There was a writer name... Is a writer named Ian Frazier, who's very influential to me when I was in writing school. I don't think this is his advice to all writers but he was like try to get like in your back like when you're writing try to get in that your best self right

that like at the time he liked to drink I like drink he'd like you've had like you're like in the bar you're with your best friends you've had like a drink maybe two and you're telling of like telling your best version of like the best way you're going to nail a story.

It's great advice. You know, and it's like, who is that? Yeah. Right? Not your preachy self or your annoying self. Yeah, it's like, who is that? And so when I'm doing my stuff, I guess if I imagine that that's

the me I'm bringing, you know, I bring it better when I'm kind of talking to people where I'm like, you know what I mean, right? Yeah. You know, maybe you never thought about it. Maybe you don't have the luxury of thinking about this all the time professionally.

but when I tell you this, I know it's going to resonate with you. Yeah, right? So that's kind of what I'm getting at, man. It's a little bit, what I'm saying is a little, I recognize it's probably a little confusing, but it's just a way I've come to think about it. So how do you, how have you established comfort with, I mean, burning an episode, and I say that intentionally,

like burning an episode to show we missed. That takes a lot of courage. Oh. You see what I'm saying? When you say, you mean like using it. Yeah, yeah. And you don't burn anything. I think those are some of those powerful episodes, right?

They're fun and they're beautiful and they're whatever. But being able to say, because you have an opportunity to paint yourself as a hero, right? The same as every. I was talking to a dad the other day who's had some bad stuff and he has like a 12, 13 year old son. I said the greatest gift you can give that kid right now is to let him see you be sad. And then he'll know his dad's a person. And then you'll see what you do next, right? But all of us want to put up the best versions of ourselves.

And that takes a lot. I've never seen anyone else do what you do in that way. Yeah. You know, we became known, you know, when I say we, like the folks that have always worked on the meat eat of the show with, we became known for kind of showing these different aspects of failure at times. And it's great, and I like it. But it also, it was motivated in part by. how we worked early on where you have a whole crew and that's what you got yeah i mean we would so

when we started making the show i remember we we we left one time the first time we ever went out to make episodes we we left and we knew we're gonna we were gonna we we're gonna make 16 of them in a year right which is a ton yeah way more than we make now we were making 16 a year and we'd go out and we're gonna let's say we're gonna go up wherever we're gonna go mess around alaska we're gonna go do four and we have 20 days so we're going to do this, this, this, and this. You couldn't, it's just like, for a hundred reasons, you couldn't come back and be like,

but we're not going to use some of it. Yeah, yeah. It was just like it was, there was no way. Yeah. And so we just found the way to, just to make it be a story. And the guys, I've told us so many times of people, like, when I started making meat eater,

I wasn't making it with guys that hunt. Like, so I was, I had a joint venture. Like, me eater was a joint venture between me and a production company called 0.0 production. They most famously did all the Bordane shows. Okay. Okay. The cooking channel.

Yeah. So they did, well, they did like a cook's tour. I think it was called. And then it went to no reservations and parts unknown. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, they, like, all the Bordane stuff, they filmed. What they loved about these trips is they had this, like, very clear objective.

right you're gonna we're gonna try to get this thing and they're excited about it and they're they want to know if we're going to get it too and then you don't you don't get it they're like well that's what happened like we didn't get it to in their mind to be like who cares if you didn't get it it's like the story is trying to get it and there's this there's this explanation of story like at this most fundamental level story is you know there's this definition of it's like someone or something wants something. Okay. And then,

but there are obstacles in their way. Yep. So, it's like Joe, Joe Campbell 101. Yeah, it's like a snail,

like a little snail. He wants to like get a lettuce leaf. Yeah. But he's got to cross the highway. Whatever to hell. It's like, story is like, you know,

it's sort of like, you wanted this bear. That's cool. You didn't get it. There was obstacles in your way. They were insurmountable. What's there to like, it's cool?

And so I got comfortable with it being cool, you know? But what a radical idea? What if we just, I don't know. told the truth about what happened you know what a crazy thing no they got a kick out of they loved it we had we had a lot of fun in those in those days and uh and there's we have this in our crew we have this robust debate like is it better is it is it better to go get a hunter is it easier

to get a hunter and teach him how to hold a camera or is he it easier go get a guy that knows how to hold a camera and teach him how to be out on a hunt it's got to be that one well there's a real split this is a contentious Really? That's a contentious issue. I've thought it would be really easy to hold the camera, and those dudes are amazing. In the end, in the end, and I like to tease our guys, the guys that work with the thought. But in the end, yeah, I think it's easier to learn to be sneaky.

Yeah, just be quiet. It is to learn how to have a really good eye. Yeah. And get like the, yeah, the desert rose while you walk off. Man. I can't remember what the hell you asked me. No, it's a, well. I'm struck by that.

There's a humanity that runs through it. And I have a, I don't it's called a bad habit. I just have a habit of taking any big issue, global issues, politics issues, like big things. And distilling them down to, how does this work at my kitchen table? Right? And just what you said. Give me an example, what you mean. What you, like, I'll use what you just said.

Like, okay, so we have this, we have this budget. We have this time. Yeah. And we have to come back with four episodes. because that's what we promised the studio. All right, well, we only were successful, quote, unquote, in our hunts twice. And so, how are we going to tell the story?

Yeah. We could gloss it up. We could go do something else and pretend it was part of this story, right? Or we can just tell the truth. And if I'm sitting with my wife trying to come up with a reason why I was late again, right? I could, I can be like, well, you know, or I could just say. So here's a great example. last night I got home and I was like to my wife her name's Sheila I was like hey this has been

weighing on me and I need you to come up I've got a room where I write and do all my stuff and I said I need you to come up here I have a deep secret that I'm keeping from you and I'm ashamed of it and I just got to let it out are you going to tell me I'll tell you yeah I think this comes out so come out yeah yeah and she she was like well okay let's let's let's let's here we go and long story short is I had a I'm trying to come up with a my son's gonna turn 16 and i tried to come up with something that was gonna be like just awesome right and so i had a guy who makes custom rifles and he made this amazing thing and engraved some stuff from me to my son on it and all that but the thing that i was upset about that it just

it was a light bulb for me was here's this cool passing of the torch gift to my son who's been with me i didn't get a hunt until late so he's been with me at every opening day right since he was little little bitty i didn't include my wife in it right And so I've been thinking of like, how do I like navigate this story? And here I am with like a parenting and a marriage show. And I'm like, well, how do I spend this? And it was like, I'm going to bring it up in my writing room and say like, I left you out of this thing. And after I finished it, she was like, in this bullet, that's from your mom.

Exactly. She signed it this little eternity, so it's special. But when we got done, she started laughing. She's like, that's really what we're doing here. And I was like, well, I just want you to know. She's like, okay. And she's like, have we done now? And she walked out.

She's laughing. Because she might be instinctively more collaborative than you. Well, I'm usually the overly collaborative one, but it was just I got so absorbed with the same. But going back to, if you just told the truth, like this is what happened. Yeah. And then suddenly that becomes like a people, I trust that guy. That's the thing that the thing that I get from you most is I trust that guy. You know, in all fairness, there is a thing to consider is there's a, there's a built-in artifice to

TV production because we have a thing called like the shoot the shoot ratio meaning if you're shooting shooting weapons or shooting

film film okay picture that you're picture that you're shooting 20 minutes of film for every minute used but it's usually it's a bigger ratio okay so you go out let's say you go on you do something

for five days and you're up before dark and you're still kind of doing stuff at dusk and all day you're just rolling rolling rolling rolling the minute you go and and pick your 22 minutes which a 30 minute show is 22 minutes of material um the minute you go and pick the 22 like something's happened yeah do you follow me oh yeah totally where long long periods of what whatever get cut and and little side trips don't pan out yeah do i mean so there so there so there is baked into it a it's not all there.

Yes. A bunch of stuff happened that's not there and it's condensed and the thing can wind up seeing perhaps more exciting than it was. Boredom can seem poetic. Yeah. Rather than boring. Yeah. Do you know I mean? Yeah, totally. Right? Like, boredom

Our three of glassing is not fun. Yeah, boredom is conveyed with some beautiful time lapses of sunsets. And a great, like poetic over, like voice over. Yeah, yeah. If you're really going to capture the feeling it'd be that we're just going to have the video stop now and you the audience will sit there for hours wondering when it's going to start back up again so there is a you know you're making a piece of entertainment and part of doing that is you're making decisions about what goes but i think

that like striving to um striving to maintain a level of like purity a level of responsibility that's a good aspiration to have and I just have never found where that sits at odds with making something that's entertaining. Agreed. You know what I mean?

They kind of work hand in hand. But that is not a consensus view. No, I don't think so. I think the consensus view is I have to look as good as possible. And I deal with the married couples who are like, yeah, but they have it all together

or they're working on a grade or I want it to be like, I don't know, I have to be like this woman on this movie or whatever and it's like, that's not... I should have brought my wife down here, man. Yeah, what would have done.

We could have solved some stuff. Solve some stuff, man. She'd be like, can I button? Yeah, exactly. One second, please. Yeah, we were talking to Karim about that. That would be a great, just bringing an episode of the wives

of people who are on TV and people who hunt and fish. Like, that'd be a dark episode, man. All right, so let's talk about that. I want to talk about, you mind talking about being married? Oh, no, man. I love being married. All right. See, you have this great quote here.

I love it. Oh, really? I'm writing a book about marriage right now. And I found an article, it's an old school one. I didn't find it. One of the people on my team did. Said, you describe your marriage one time as a mismatch made in heaven. What does that mean?

My wife is not the outdoorsman that I am. sort of coincidentally, we grew up not too far apart. Okay. We met in New York. We met like the first time I ever stepped foot in New York City. I mean, the first time ever is I had sold my first book to Miramax. My wife worked for Miramax at that time. Miramax publishing, or are you going to get it made into a film?

No, the film house had a publishing arm. Oh, wow. Yeah. So my wife used to work for Bob and Harvey Weinstein. Yeah. At Miramax, they bought my first book. First time I ever stepped foot in New York. was to meet the publishing team.

Yeah. That's how I met my wife. Wow. Turns out that she grew up a couple hours away from me. And tried to get as far away from there as possible. Yeah. And so, like, I went to, I was at the time I was living in Alaska, like, all over the place. No, that's not.

Where was I living at the time? I remember where I was living at the time. Montana, I think. I was living in Montana at the time when we met. And, but we wound up, like, we knew the same rock stations, you know? Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, we both listened to KLQ, whatever. Like, we do all the same.

Like all the kind of same stuff. Yeah. We just knew about it. But we met far away and she was like very committed to urban life. Like she wanted to work in book publishing and book publishing at that time. So that was where you went to work in book publishing. So that's what we met. And then some years went by before we were in a relationship.

By the time we were in a relationship, I was living temporary. I tried, I moved to Alaska, but it didn't stick. and because she was living there. And so we just, we kind of bonded over shared experience. I mean, we're very, I think emotionally we're very similar. Yeah. But just our, what we choose to do with our time is very different. Then in time, we bond very much over kids.

And she has a relationship with the stuff we do. And now our kids are obsessed with it. They love hunting. They love fishing. You know, they like sports too, but they like, stuff I like to do. And she is a, she observes it. She loves that they do it.

Loves that they do it. Loves that we do it. What else is good about it? This is advice to dads out there. If I take all three kids to go do something, you can do no wrong. That's right. It's like, there is no wrong. There is no wrong.

If I'm like, hey, I'm taking all the kids and we're going fishing, it's like, you guys have a good times. That's right. There's no greater gift. And so it just, it works really well, but, but there's just that

that lingering difference, you know, and it's only becoming, like, we have a 15 year old now, and it's becoming where we do, we do talk about this. And she wonders about it.

And it's good to wonder about it. She's like, but what happens later? Yeah. Do you I mean, like someday the kids are going to be, like all you, like all your,

all your, all your, all your little, All your little hunting and fishing buddies leave. Oh, no. Dude, I'm dying. Right. They leave.

And they go and, like, they have their own families and stuff. And then, like, you know, and I've proposed to her arrangements. I'm like, I got a deal for you. We spend half the time doing what I want and half the time doing what you want. And she's, like, reluctant to take the deal. Anytime a husband says, I got a deal for you. I'm like, no, like, half the days we do what I want. Like, when we're retired, you know.

Half the days I pick. Half the days you pick, but they come in blocks. She's reluctant. Sweet. She's like, why would you not take that deal? We're going to go from your deer hunting to downtown Denver. Yeah, like we start hunting turkeys in late March. We finish hunting turkeys in late May.

And then you get a couple months. Do you want to do whatever you want to do. My, uh, my, I had an event I was doing and it fell on opening day this year. And it was my 15 year old. He's like, man, I hope this is important, dad. And I was like, why? And he goes, you only got three more left with me. And then I'm gone.

I was like, bro, that hurts, man. That was low, dude. But he was right. We've developed a lot of those. They kind of add up. We have a lot of traditions now, like little hunting and fish and traditions. They eat up the calendar. They do.

Like little family outdoor traditions, you know. I'm already pre-greaving that. So in my former life, I worked in universities forever. and the number of dads who I would hug on move in morning who were just sobbing and I'd just roll my eyes through the back of my head like good god dude shut up now I'm like already pre like I don't know what it's going to be like to walk out there in September or my kids away at college and I'm by myself like I don't know if I'm ready for that day I'm depressed about it I don't think it was like that like I don't think with I wonder if our

dads thought that they just didn't know how to say it I was just going to get at it I don't think it was like that we just kind of like i i grew up with you know siblings and and um we were brought up to hunt and fish and trap you know and um and just eventually as in high school we just really stayed all the way into it but just moved kind of away yeah and i never even thought to wonder what the experience was like for the old man yeah you know and now it's like the most now it's like the most depressing thought in the world dude you know yeah it's so funny think about like that they would they also need to wake up and they're like all out like they all went fishing but didn't tell you you're like well yeah but not having like our dad's like not having

the skill set to be like hey hey i want to come right like i don't know how to dad's especially our dads didn't know how to do that and so they just probably went back to the newspaper no you wouldn't it was like i'm telling you man till still sitting here right now like i've never in my life contemplated until this second. I've never my life contemplated how my dad had that experience. What a terrible son, man. As much as I think about it all time now. Well, but here's the other side of it.

So a couple years ago, I put together this big, it was my fantasy. I put together down in South Texas a hunt. It was going to be a three-generation hunt. My dad, me, and my son. My dad and I've been hunting never. When he was a homicide detective in Houston grown up And for a side hustle He would have somebody who did taxidermy stuff

So he would take me snake hunting We'd catch snakes and we'd turn him over to this guy This taxidermist And so that was the hunting we did And we fished all the time But we never had hunted together And so I put this whole thing together And of course old man

My dad, he's in his 70s He's still a laser of a shot From all those years He shoots the biggest deer Of course, it was cool And then when it was over He was literally I'll never forget this He goes, all right

well I'll see you guys and I was like no no no no you have to hug me we have to have a whole thing it's like okay but it was very much like all right well I did this so you all have to get so it was it it I had all this expectation on it but yeah I don't know I don't know what it would be like you should call your is he still alive oh no no he's been dead a long time yeah but dead a long time he had me he's old yeah yeah dang I bet he cried I'm gonna do a lot of that go back to I cut my thumb not too long ago

had to get stitched up and last night I was driving my daughter home from her volleyball and she was like when you caught your hand how can you do cry I'm like

it's just like people just quit crying you'll see it just stops that's right how old is she held your little she's 12

I was like to be honest I was like to be honest it was I'm saying she's 13 there's so many them they change their ages so much

I always get confused but I was just trying to explain her like i know that your instinct would be to cry but that'll go away in a person you won't cry at all my daughter cries a lot that day will be awesome when it comes yeah what did uh what would you go back and tell your younger self about being married if you could run some things back i don't know i feel like i'm better at it well i don't know if i'm better at it now than i thought it would be

I don't know You know what wound up being I think the thing that like That's a good question I don't think I would have had anything I think I got a laundry list of stuff I'd go tell myself man Well yeah but if we had if we had

If we had thrown in the towel And if we'd thrown in the towel and got divorced Then I'd probably have all these things I was gonna tell myself That's probably true But we wound up doing like We wound up doing Um

I don't know I guess we did a We're like doing a fairly good job of being married. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Do you follow me? Totally.

I mean, it's hard. I think that that's, that strikes some people so weird and talking about that it's hard. But it's like, we just,

we're kind of hard, we're hard workers, you know, and we're like, we have a loyalty. And, um, we shield ourselves

from impulsive actions. Mm-hmm. What does that look like? Well, I remember, like, when you're in the dating phase okay

this is gonna sound like terribly immature but when you're the dating phase I'm known for my maturity so you have there's this idea this is an observation that I made to my wife actually got married there's like you carry this idea in the back of your head

where if you're wronged right you're wronged you'd be like well I'll show you you know yeah you know what I mean like that goes yeah you try to call me like I'm not okay you know yeah I'll show you what's up, right?

This is always in the back of your head. Like the scorekeeping, yeah. Yeah, like, you're going to stick it to them, you know, or like they're going to wish they had never said that, you know. Or the other side of it, like, I got flowers. That's a five for me, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Just whatever. You're doing this thing that there's like these actions you're going to take that are going to set records straight, you know. And I just remember getting married and just being like, you know, saying to myself, like, let's be honest. You ain't going to do nothing. You're not a good Any kind of revenge

No It's just You know It's not gonna No one's gonna come to you And like beg For your forgiveness You know

Whatever I do live events I always talk about The imaginary conversations We have in our heads That and that's one of a few things The audience is like Oh It's like

I will have full And I always win And I always have These mic drop moments And because of this Right And she's like Oh you're right

A, I'll never have that conversation. It doesn't work that way. I wish I had had that wisdom at 24 when I got married. Jeez, wheeze, man. I discovered that like three years ago. I remember another buddy mind talking about the peace of mind. I already mentioned Morgan Fallon, who I've worked with all year's bunch. He had this observation to me about getting married where he said that he got married

and he said it would have this feeling like, you know, like an old movie, someone like the, the, you go out, you got the coat rack, you know, in your hat, you know, and like you're heading off to work. and they put their hat on, you know, like their briefcase. Yeah. He said like he got married, he loved it because it sort of gave him, he'd get up and it was like he's putting his hat on and grabbing his briefcase. Like he had a purpose. Yeah, he had like a thing you were supposed to be doing. Yeah.

And he had always been, and for parts of his life, he realized he wasn't, you know, you'd wake up and you weren't quite clear on what you were supposed to be doing. Okay, okay, yes. So the question that has haunted me for the last two years is, why did Jeff Bezos get remarried? Like, why? Like, why would you do that? Like, there's something, and I've talked to nerds, I've talked to scientists and anthropologists,

like, you know, we can talk all about the nerds stuff. I guess, like, fear of, like, there's like a fear of death, there's like a show-offiness. But the thing that keeps coming back to is this wired for purpose or this wired for service, like this thing of, I'm aimless. And at this, I don't, does that make sense? Like, in a strange, I don't know, you're the historian here, but like a strange weird cultural uncoupling.

It feels like every string that tethers us together has just been cut overnight. Yeah. But the idea is, the most sacred thing is to be unconnected, uncommitted, right, to always have a line in the water somewhere doing a thing, right? Professionally, personally, whatever. And there's something of, that's a beautiful way to put that. the alternative is I could wake up every day saying like, dude, I got, I've got a thing I can contribute to. I remember being in graduate school and we would,

I would work, I'd work in the mornings doing tree work, like I was a tree climber. And I'd work in mornings doing that. Which, hold on, I'm going to talk directly to the camera. For the men in here, I mean, for the women watching this, that was a huge flex he just did. Huge. I was a tree.

I was a climber. So if I stood on this table, I'm so scared of heights. Oh, really? Okay. I tip my hat to you. We had, this guy I worked with, we would have these contracts where we would do, we would get a contract to do these boulevard trees. And he would bid out.

We'd have a bid to do like 400 boulevard trees in a winter. But we sort of had a pace to it, you know. But anyways, we would off and get done. He was a writer too. I was an aspiring writer, learning to write. And we would get done at noon. Yeah. You know, we'd usually wrap up.

Like, we'd work from seven to 11 or 12. And sometimes I'd wander down. I'd be with friends of mine and be like, like, well, I'm going to, you know, probably write later in the day, but let's go down to Charlie's. And we'll get a pole boy and, you know, maybe a cocktail. And then, you know, and then all of a sudden it's one in the morning and they're, I mean, It's one in the morning and they're playing closing time. Yeah.

I'm like, man, do you mean to tell me we just like shot pool for 12 hours? For 12 hours? Yeah. I was going to write. Yeah. And I let a lot. It was like we laughed. It was fun.

I kind of learned a lot in some weird way. And if inefficiently, I learned a lot. I needed like I needed to get serious. Yeah. I don't know that I would have gotten serious. I don't think I would have found it myself to get serious if I hadn't gotten into, if I hadn't become a husband and become a parent, because it's really easy to not get serious.

But you and I both run with people. I don't know if we run with people. We both know people who got married and continued. Oh, yeah. Where's that model come from? Man, well, I mean. Or maybe it wasn't model. Yeah, like, dude, it would be like, it would be like, you know, it's hard to tell what you pick up as influences.

Because it would have been like, for me as a kid, we ate, we had dinner time. Do you know what I mean? And there was exceptions, but generally it was like there was dinner time. There's no way in the world. There's no way in the world. My dad would have been out in the bars without my mom knowing where he was. It's just like that there was a lot of things that, you know, there's a lot of things. There's a lot of things you look and you're kind of like, what was going on there about growing up?

But there was no sense of insecurity. I mean, you knew what the house was going to be like. You knew what the mood was going to be like. You knew when you got home there was food. You knew when you got home, there was people wondering where you'd been. There was expectations of you. Expectations that you had of home were met. Right?

Yeah. And I absorb some amount of that. My wife didn't grow up that way young. When we got together and started having kids and I was very insistent on family dinner, it was a little bit of not, it wasn't her program as a kid doing that. For a long time, she just lived in a single family household. And she's kind of surprised by it and was a little bit surprised by how adamant I was about it. But if I'm out of town now, they sit down for family dinner. It's just like we have family.

We sit at a table. like this, right? Our little boy, for whatever reason, he's always at the head of the table. Like, I sit here, my wife sits there, my daughter, you know what I mean? And,

and maybe it's boring. I don't know. It's just, it's just like, there's a rigidity to things. But you know, that's one of the highest, that's one of the highest predictors

of childhood outcomes. Is that right? It's family dinner time. Really? Yeah, it really is. It's, it's, my wife and I were both nerds, and that was one of our,

when we started having kids. It was like, this is, this is, everything stops for this. And that's it now, though, that my kids, my wife had this idea, like when she found out, she was pregnant, and she found out we were having a boy, she was like, hey, we got to talk about this. Like, there's, we have one job with this kid. And I was like, oh, here we go. It's going to. And I thought it was going to be some big poetic.

And she said, we have to raise a kid that we like, that we like being around. And now I've got two hilarious, funny, like. smart kids. I don't like... Let me put it this way. I had a buddy named John, and I've told this before on the show. Like, I've had a buddy named John.

He had a kid. He was the first one of our little gang to have kids. He disappeared. Like, we hung out every Monday night, kind of like you said, just blowing the night away. And I, his wife is a long, 20-year friend of mine.

But I was like, man, she's the worst, dude. Like, he has a one kid to get hang out anymore. It wasn't until I had my son that him and I were having dinner one night, and I was like, you didn't tell me that it wasn't, that you didn't want to hang out with us. You'd rather be doing that.

And he was like, you wouldn't have understood, man. I couldn't have explained it to you. But now I don't, there's not very many places I want to be other than that silly, goofy, too loud,

too messy, too funny, to whatever table. Yeah. I just think it's, yeah, it's an anchor point for me. Yeah,

I get a guilty. I get a real guilty conscience. And people, I don't know, there's probably a school of thought to things that, like, living under a guilt,

not like it's like a cloud of guilt maybe guilt's not the right word I have a strong sense of obligation obligation yeah yeah do you mean like like and let's be straight man I miss a lot like I travel um and but my promise

my sort of promise to our family is like when I'm home I'm home yeah do you know I mean when I'm home they're part of the plan um you know like I like engaged get my kids to do stuff we make them do stuff with us still, you know, that those days will end.

But, and I think that that's somewhat motivated by that feeling of an awareness of what I miss. And I do wonder if I, like, worked for, I don't know what kind of job you have when you. Bob's tree trimming. Okay. I was still, yeah. I was still working for a tree service. And we just worked around town. And every night I came home, I wonder, like, would I have gotten complacent then?

Yeah. Would I've been like, I'm here all the time. Yeah. I'll listen to go to the bar. Or I'm here all the time. I'll just spend the time sharing my phone. Yeah. And I wasn't trying to be like super dad when I'm home.

Yeah. That's not fair. I'm not like super. Intentional dad. Yeah. But it's guilt motivated in some way. It's maybe not the perfect word, but I do feel a like I know. Yeah, I feel like a, like a, I don't know, man, like an obligation.

to hold up an end of the deal. Yeah. Philosophically, I remember having a feeling, and it had to do with quitting drinking too. I remember having this thing that like about kids. Like, and thinking about my kids.

They didn't like, they didn't ask to be born and come live here. I dragged you into this. You know what I'm saying? It wasn't like where I'm like, please let us in, you know? I'm like, against my better judgment. Right.

I'll let you in for a day. Yeah. It was like, we like, dragged them into this situation. So, like, we asked them, right? We, like, asked them. We invited them. Yeah.

Into this existence that we created. There's some level of, of, you know, there's this Greek principle, like, Xenia, like, a guest host bond. It'd be like the bond between a, I think it's like something to do with, like, the flower and a pollinator or something like that. But, yeah, there is, like, a guest host bond a little bit, you know, we still, like, constantly bust our kids' ball. But there is a little bit of like, they didn't ask. Yeah. We did this. So there's a certain obligation now.

I've never thought through that, but like on its face, I love that. I love that. They had to do with, you know what it had to do with, what the reason I brought it up? It had to do with the feeling of being hung over in the morning. And resenting them. Because you know when they're real little, they get up real early. resenting them for being up at five. Like, why are you up at five?

Yeah. And just that feeling of like, man, I got a headache. Now you're up. Yeah. You're not going back to bed. Yeah. And you're going to pull some, you know, furniture around yourself. And if I'm not out there watching you, you know, then you kind of like get up.

Yeah. And I remember just thinking, like, how could you have the, how could you be so arrogant as to, like, resent them for being awake in the morning. Like that's, that's bad zeno. And even worse, happy to see you. Right. First stop. How dare you want to come see? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I chose to stay until

2 a.m. and be stupid. Yeah. And they're sitting there thinking, the minute I get up, I'm going in that guy's room and I'm waking him up. And then he's bummed. Okay. I'll go, yeah, that's a, dude,

that's a great point. And I mean, I think I could extrapolate that out to be married too like no i chose you i said yes i said i do forever till one of us dies yeah i mean i could choose for today to not be great or i could choose to just pick up the towels and get on with the day right how do y'all navigate travel fame differing like you've got a tension that pulls you here yeah that she says no no no you're mine yeah i've often explained that the central

conflict in our marriage the central conflict was a travel 100% it wasn't like it wasn't like lack of faith lack of trust

it wasn't finite it was it's never been money it was like the central conflict was travel what was underneath that like another central conflict no just like the core conflict be like I'm

you or you care about that more than me. Or I wish I was there. And unspoken, I miss you. Okay. And it would be, it would, it would play out a couple ways. Like picture from, picture from my wife's perspective. I hadn't, early on I didn't build good limits for myself. So we would have little babies and I'd be like, I remember at a point saying like,

I'm not going to go away for more than two weeks because we would go away for three weeks or whatever. When I had little kids, I had three kids one year when I was gone over half of the nights of a year. Yeah, that's a lot. Yeah, it was a lot. So here you have a person, and my wife always worked,

she worked through half. I mean, she'd take materially, but she always worked. It was very challenging. So picture that like, here they have this whole program, right? And it's like, everybody's getting done what they need to get done.

You know, they're, like, the kids are getting where they need to go. They're doing all the stuff. She's doing her work. And then you come in and you want to, when I say you and me, like, like, you come in, I come in and there's this like terrible desire to like, to piss on a post. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right.

I'm home. There's like, it's like, well, I would have done it. Yeah. Yeah. And that. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

That stuff's tough, man. there was this thing early on too that we had it would be I remember my wife saying she's like if it's not going to be a big deal when you leave it's not going to be a big deal

when you come home what that meant was what that meant was it's not as brutal as it seems what it meant was you want to be able to you want to be able to be like oh shoot we got to take off for a week and go do something and you want to

You know, you want to be like everybody's, right? In the program, you take off, you know. But then when you come home, it's not like balloons and stuff. Like you got to, you got to like kind of merge back. Yeah, the river's brought in. You got to merge back into the lane, you know what I mean? Like you're on a controlled access highway and you're exiting smoothly, you know, not a lot of horn honking and like, right?

And then when you merge back into the family. And so learning that, learning that, looking into my house right now, dude. Learning that stuff was different. And I would come in and it's like terrible. Like I have a, there's certain areas where I have very,

I don't know, I like things exceptionally organized in my home space. I like open surfaces. Like, picture like counters. Yeah. I don't like things on the counters. Do you know what I mean?

So anyways, I would come home. And I'd look and let's say I look in someone has taken one of my like a knife of mine and cut something on a plate. And I look at like, right? Or they've like scrubbed a cast iron pan with like a soapy brillo pad. I would like I would come in. I'm so excited and happy to see everybody. But in the next day, I'm a little bit like, what?

What happened here? Yeah. I've got my inspector gadget glasses on. Dude, that caused like enormous tension, man. Yeah. So now, and I still'm not perfect on it, but now I would look and be like, looks like the,

I would just think to myself. Looks like that cast iron pants kind of ruined, dude. But we'll just deal with that quietly later. I'm trivializing it by coming up with goofy examples. But, but, but, and then bigger ones. You know what I don't mean to like, it's not like pans and knives, but those are, my path is,

those are examples. I have not a picture of what it's going to be when I get home. I have a sensation that I'm seeking. I think it's going to feel a certain way. And I walk in the door and my wife's in the middle of a project she's working on. I got my daughter's doing this. My son's trying to get his chemistry homework done, but he forgot to do this and they got a cross-country thing. And it doesn't feel like I thought it was going to feel.

And so I immediately goes to why isn't this feeling like I wanted to, oh, there's this thing and there's this thing. or the other, I try to manufacture it, so he's in there, my son's working and I'm like, hey, you want to go? He's like, Dad, I'm doing homework. And it took, it's taking a season for my wife and I'd be like, hey, there is a flow to this house. And when you exit out, we're glad that you're doing that, right?

It's providing all this. But, like, I like that term of like, you have to exit back in. You can't just ramrod through and be like, all right, everybody. Because she's like, you got to check your lane. It is. Because there's like, that homework assignment It still has to get done.

And the meal that's halfway done, we can't just throw it away and just go out to dinner because you're home. It's like there's a rhythm to this thing and learning that rhythm and checking my own guts as I walk in the door. Like this rhythm doesn't owe me something, right? It doesn't need to perform for me. That's an interesting point, man. I never had the point you make about that you're expecting it to feel and it didn't feel the way it did. That's a good way of put it.

First hunters, first job, the first time I make a big sale. Like, I remember distinctly. It was such a powerful thing. Like, I'm driving in a suburban to a book signing at a Barnes & Noble kind of thing. And Dave calls my, the phone of the publisher who hands it back to me like this. And I get it and he's screaming, you're number one. And I was like, oh, we did it, man. And we do a book signing thing.

And I went back to hotel. And then I called my wife and I was like, hi, good night. And then it's just, oh, I don't know what I thought this was going to feel like, but it just feels like yesterday, except I got this thing now, right? And nothing changed. And I remember telling a buddy the next couple of days, I get now why people do drugs. Because it's like, or people drink too much when they're on the road. Like, I get it now because it doesn't feel like you think it's going to.

And so I got to either take away the way I feel now or I got to try to prop something up. I had a friend that she had some I don't want to get off on this but I had a friend that had addiction issues and I remember her explaining that was someone I knew in school her explaining like the first time of doing like

first time doing hard drugs and after where she's like oh man you mean I'm supposed to just like I can just feel that way all the time exactly yeah yeah why would I like why would I not do that like this rational thing you know of course

decision about it. But we talk to people in recovery, like that's the inner secret of the inner core of recovery is, no, that works. It's incredible. It'll kill you and take everything from you. Recognized. It served a role.

Like, it works. A thing I, in thinking about this thing about being gone and these complications of marriage, what I feel compelled now that I have to bring up is I have, I have a number of friends who got, and, you know, rolled up in the war on terror. Mm-hmm. When I say that, I mean, service members.

Got deployed, yeah, yeah, you know. And, like, then, man, all this is, like, child's play. Oh, yeah, of course. Do you follow me? Oh, 100%. Like, we're talking about. I was gone two weeks. Yeah, yeah.

And then you realize you get into, like, a lot of guys, man, they weren't gone two weeks. I got a friend. I think he was telling me that in the first. the first three years after 9-11, in a three-year period, in which he had kids, a three-year period, he was home for 200 days.

He says, in those 200 days, you're not really home. No, you're not. Yeah. Right. Wow. And then I'm like, yeah, man, it's just, like,

I just want to, like, I feel obligated to acknowledge that, having a number of friends went through that, because, like, to sit and talk about being gone, and, like, you're kind of, like, out hunting and fishing. You're being well compensated. Do you know what I mean? Or I'm on a stage day.

Yeah. Yeah, people come. They're like, dude, I love your stuff. And you're going, and just to think of some guy sitting at home being like, you pompous. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you know what I mean? Totally, totally, totally. Like, I have to acknowledge it because just how.

I remember being down, I told the story a bunch of times, but I got invited down to talk to a special forces group at Fort Bragg one time. And I remember sitting there. People said it was enough years ago where there was still a phone book around. I'm sitting there talking to this. He's a green break captain. I remember he's, he's, um, happens to have a phone book with like the yellow pages. Mm-hmm. And I remember him grabbing this big chunk of pages, like in the yellow pages, like a big chunk, like a finger-thick section.

Him saying to me, that's divorce attorneys. Wow. Yeah. Right? And for Bragg, you know? And I was kind of like, oh, yeah, I get that. You know, I get that. These guys are just gone, man.

They're gone. They're gone. And they come back a different person they loved. And their kids are two or three years older. Yeah, exactly. And they're different human beings. Their spouse is different. Yeah.

So it's like I just, anytime now when, you know, anytime now when discussing this issue, I just, I feel obligated to acknowledge it. It's like, some people might be sitting there being like, must be tough. Yeah. Yeah. Ooh, you were hunting with a film crew. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, my wife, I remember another important thing that my wife said. She's like, man, you got to be very, very careful who you complain to.

Yeah. Well, and, but, but again, the other side. side of that is a thing that plagues everybody but I think it plagues men especially these days is just profound loneliness right not having somebody

that I can complain to or it would be like I just need to say this sucks right yeah I know of examples like I don't want to name names but I know of examples like that in my life where I do look and I do look and I'm like man I wonder if

what their experience in life might have been like had they taken on that reason to put your hat on and grab a briefcase. Yeah. Yeah. You know? Well, it's as much as they would,

they would tell you about the freedom they have. I'm like, I don't know, man. It might have been better if you had to grab the briefcase. Or, I mean, it's easy to say, look how sore I'm not,

because I'm not lifting weights. And the other side of it's like, yeah, but look how strong I got. year after year getting under that squad rack and going again right and so you can say that great but i'll take this temporary discomfort this constant obligation for the what comes on the back end of that thing man okay so i you're a historian it's the last thing i'll i'll ask you i could talk to you all day man and by the way for folks listening like you talked earlier about it's 22 minutes of an episode

There's always some tag that you've written or some tag where you've thought through something. Yep. And you're knowledgeable about where you are, the history of where you are. You remind me of, I remember being so disappointed. I followed, like, the metal band Pantera around when I was a kid.

Oh, like, I was obsessed, obsessed. And I remember being so disillusioned. Like Pantera. Oh, man. Pathologically so. I remember being so disillusioned. Is that a lot different than being a big Metallica guy? Because I'm older than you, I'm assuming.

I'm quite a bit older than you. We're close. I'm 48. Oh, I'm 4 years old. Yeah, so you're... Yeah, my sister was in Metallica. Yeah, probably. They were like Metallica's younger brother.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because older brother got all the attention. Yeah. But I remember when they're guitarist who had big red beard, the whole thing, he came out with a column in Guitar World magazine. Hmm. talking about like different scales and keys and how to play and i remember thinking like oh i thought you just like jammed man you know what i mean it was like bro like like like oh it was a level of

professionalism yeah like oh you like know what you're doing right like you all have song structure and you play in time and so but like you can only be philosophical and poetic when you put the time in. Right? And so I think like the most, like the, one of my favorite things about watching your work from afar and reading your work is what a historian you are. And this is a question I love to ask. I grew up working in the university, so I love sitting with historians.

And I look at them almost as like oracles, like future tellers. So if you look backwards and you've gone through, man, your history knowledge, and we'll link to all that stuff, but your history knowledge of, the United States, political movements, land movements, like economic movements. If you look forward, what's pretty exciting for you and what scares you to death for the world that our kids are about to have? Oh, man. First off, you know, like, you know the difference of cooking a chef? Okay.

There's a difference between a writer and a historian. That's true. I appreciate it. Yeah. But, yeah. I'm a writer. I know historians. That's fair.

I'm a writer. That's fair. Who's very interesting history. That's fair. I'm a cook, not a chef. I'm a writer, not historian. That's fair. A thing I'm very concerned about is polarization.

Political polarization in the country. Horrified. Yeah. Horrified. I can... It's horrific. I can make myself feel better by looking and saying, well, there was the Civil War. Yeah.

There was the late 60s in Vietnam, which cut a, you know, rift through the country. In the 50s, you could hang a man semi-publicly from a tree and face no legal recourse if you lived in the right zip code. Yeah. Right. That's pretty divisive. Yeah. So maybe it's not so bad. It just is really scary to me.

Yeah. except when I stop and look at it, though, what is scary to me is what I understand to be true from the reading I do online. By and large, though, I don't see it reflected in my lived experience, meaning, and this is the thing I like to bring up. I live on a, you know, I live on like a, there's like a, it's a road, it's a public road,

but I live like a, like a circular, drive. I'm not kidding you when I tell you this. I could look around my area and I don't know how any of those people vote. I don't want to know how they vote. Yeah. I know that they would do anything to defend my family, to defend my home. If there was a problem, any of them is going to run over. Likewise, I would run to any of them. Yeah. In any reason. If something happened and their kids needed to come, they would be brought into our house. Like they would be take care of. You're right.

Taking care of. I would without question without even thinking like if something all of a sudden happened and we had to run off somewhere. My wife and I had to go to deal with some emergency and our neighbors like, we'll take care of it again. I wouldn't even think about it. Yeah. I don't know how they vote.

Yeah. So there's that, right? We still hold that. But I'm just getting really concerned about terrible polarization. And then also a, and I really don't want to cite a, examples at all because it's just going to lead it in a different direction but like a um a denial of of of objective reality one million percent yeah like i still believe that there there are areas where i feel like there there are objective realities yes yes and and i get uncomfortable and

toying with those objective realities. And I see cases where my kids will come from school and they will, and they don't even know, they don't even believe it, but they're throwing out.

I heard that, yes, I heard that, and it's things that are just like objectively false. Nonsensical, yeah, yeah. Well, and that's the definition of, of, not the definition,

but that's the definition of mental illness is a divorce from reality. Yeah, right? And that's the whole ecosystem. It could be a thing about 9-11. It's madhouse, right? It's madhouse. Yeah.

And I almost find it being like a thing that makes it hard to keep my cool. Yeah. And so I worry about, I have, you know, other concerns. Like, you know, you wonder with AI, like what the hell they're going to do for living. But they'll figure it out. They'll figure it out. But that, but the country, the country going through something like what we went through in the late 60s. something like we went through in the 1860s,

that scares the hell out of me. Yeah. I'm with you on that. Yeah, I'm with you on that. The, not inability, but the unwillingness to say, I changed my mind, or I was wrong,

or I actually thought this, but this is what happened. Or I voted for this, but this is what's actually happening. Then inability, a refusal to say, all right, I'm gonna get off that boat then.

that's the part that I can't wrap my head around. Exactly. You know what I mean? Because all of us, if we're trying to go to, you know, Arby's down in the corner and we go the wrong way, we'll turn around and go the other way, right? But for some reason, I can't put my finger on. It doesn't make sense to me. We just keep hitting the gas and going the wrong way. Yeah.

You're like, hey, but Arby's is right here. And we're like, we're going that way, dude. And, yeah, I don't have a, I get scared because I don't have a psychology for it. I don't know if that's a right way to say that. I don't have a mental model for that. You know what I mean? It's just like, dude, what are you talking about? Right?

And I think there's also a, it seems to be a growing tendency. Maybe I'm wrong. Seems to be a growing tendency that you would condemn that every human, every person has a suite of beliefs. And those beliefs are full of contradictions. Of course. But. And they changed. They're evolving all the time.

But this thing we're saying. someone would look and go, within your suite of beliefs is a belief that I see and I will condemn you for having. And it wipes out all the, yeah, every, I condemn every aspect of you. Yeah. Because within your suite of beliefs is one that I've decided I condemn. Now, that belief could be something horrific that deserves to be condemned. But I think that it could also be, they grew up in a different place. They have a different set of experiences. Their family's different. Their finances are different. Yeah. Different people talk to them.

Like, I don't know how they arrived at that. Yeah. But I'm not going to condemn the guy over it. Yeah. There's something powerful about being curious. Mm-hmm. Like, tell me more about that as opposed to saying, oh, now I've got you figured out. I can either put you in this category or this one.

Yeah. And the reverse is true. All of these other things I'm not okay with. But you got that one? All right. All over look. All of this. Because we're aligned on that one.

It's like, that's madness. There's a flip. It's madness, right? Yeah, there is that. Madness. There is that. Yeah, I've wrestled with how to explain to my kids the importance of objective reality when the picture they're getting that success is just deny reality to the end, right? Right it off into the sunset.

Yeah. And you can kind of shape it however you want. And it'll catch you at some point. They're like, I don't think it will. It's been with having kids, it's been fun. It's been fun to see that they'll have opinions that you don't share. That's my favorite thing. And how, and like, the me sitting there, like, and, you know, you want almost like a tag?

Yeah. And you're like, easy. Yeah, yeah. Because this is the future. That's right. That's right. Well, and, in that, like, these kids are going to have spouses. Yeah.

And those spouses are going to have families. Yeah. Like, you're going to be hearing some opinions that you don't agree with. Yeah. And you better learn how. to be like, that's interesting. Yeah. Well, and why not look in the mirror and be like,

what is it about a 10-year-old's thought on whatever that sets me as a grown man off? If my beliefs are that fragile and my self-worth is that dependent on this 10-year-old who probably still believes in dragons or whatever. If it's that fragile, I probably need to go talk to somebody. I need to go do some work, right?

Yeah. There are some things that they've floated. that we have said, not in this household. Yeah, that's, that's true. And that's true. Like,

not here it's not. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, getting into like, whatever, like, you know, their perspective on what,

you know, how our country should be handling itself in the Middle East or whatever. I'm like, I'm, I'm open for some, I'm hoping for some level

of individual interpretation. Yeah. To a limit. To a limit. What excites you about the future for them? Oh. man um i like to think about uh i really like to think about this is very granular i like to think about

the the sort of outdoor adventures yeah you know that they'll go on to half um i only am just now starting to think about the second act yeah which would be you know like this my boy will be 15 my oldest will be 15 it's like it's not it's closer than it is what I'm trying to say? Like, they're going to have families. Yeah. Do I mean,

he's 16, man. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. This is, this is closer than it is far away or whatever. I can't. Yeah,

I don't know I'm trying to say. It's not on the door. He's been with us for 16 years. Yeah. When that amount of time has passed again, there's a high likelihood. He's got a family. He's got his own ecosystem.

Yeah. That is, you know. And so we're already starting to think about, like, what does that look like? I got a friend who's a little farther ahead of me where his kids are in college and out of college. And what I think that he's done very well, and he's proud of it, is he's still a big part of his kid's life. Right? And they, like, call him about buying a house. They call him about buying a car.

They call him about relationship issues. And he's got four. They're all out of the house. and he says, you know, I talk to all of them multiple times a week and I'm like, he's like a conciliers.

Yeah. Do you know, I'm following you follow me? But that means he was a, and I say this not in an eye-roly way, that means he's been a safe place of wisdom and he can hold their attention, their whole childhood. And so he's a,

not like, that's a trustworthy guy. You know what I mean? Oh, not over, no, not a lick of overbearing. Which is incredible. Yeah. So I now,

I know you ask you what excites me for them. I'm talking about what excites me. me for me, but forget them. It would be cool. I'm starting to think about that. It would be very cool to have, right, to earn that respect. I want to where they don't just split. I just kind of split.

When I split, I split. Yes. Same. I want when my son thinks, I'm going to take my son out fishing. I want him to think, oh, we got to call dad. Not we got to call dad. We have to. Right?

And that guy tells us all about how he used to catch him. Yeah, exactly. Well, and I want him to tell him a son, Dad's going to tell all kind of crazy stories. That's what he does. I like that part of it, but there's something about my wife, several years ago, man, he came, he was in seventh grade. He would always come down and his hair would be crazy.

And I would ask like, dude, turn your shirt around, fix this, fix this. And every day was the same. And I remember my wife, she came in one day and I was just picking him apart. And she said, you would not hang out with somebody who every interaction was 18 things you need to fix about yourself. And I was like, I'm wholly unlikable. I'm unlikable. You know what I mean? And I can wrap it up in

why he needs to be ready for the... So we sat down, we used to go to breakfast every week, went to Waffle House, dude. It was our diabetes trip every week. And at one of our breakfast, I told him, I said, hey, I'm out on, like, the middle school wolves are going to take care of your wardrobe and your hygiene and whatever.

And I want you to know, I love you, and you can always come home, but I'm turning you loose. I'm going to stop mentioning, you want to grow your hair, grow your hair. You want to not brush your teeth, now, but, like, whatever. And I remember at the end of his eighth grade, we had, had, like, his old friends came, we all had to get together. And I was like, y'all failed me because they were like, we accept everyone. I was like, man, you need some old bullies like we had, right?

They're just mean, but, and not really, we don't. But, but, like, I focused on what hills don't need to die on. And, like, hey, hey, hey, in this house, we don't talk to each other. like that right and we got that on the old tacked that on the wall but i wouldn't listen to that but what do you like about it right or i'll get tickets to that show but you're gonna have to show me why this is a good show and vice versa i took him to a punk rock show recently and i was like hey he's in a 90s country he loves it i failed him at some level but he's into it but i was like i need you to go to this smosh bidding show you know where you live nearby right oh i know i know it's in the air

literally it's in the air i had an old weather radio when he was out in the woods by himself he would turn it real and he was hunting and it would only catch the one 90s country station and he's dad you know who carth brooks is i was like i was like hey you need to come to this show with your old man this is he's like all right dad i'll do it so i like i yeah that that sounds awesome like i want to man and i hate to say it this but i don't hate to say this that's one of the big reasons i exercise as much as i do i remember my first like major climbing up mountains El Cunning trip several years ago

and I was like oh if I don't do something different with my health I've got about seven more years of this and this was too awesome and there's too many memories and too much fun and too much like I need to take care of myself on a regular basis so I can do this for another 20 years

and seven or seven and I like that I'm able to go fishing with my kids thanks for coming to hang out brother appreciate you man