Off the Record With Steven Rinella

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 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, we inhabit.

“How do you decide what other people get to see about your life?”

[MUSIC] Hey, what's up? This is John Deloni, 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 the show. This guest today was at the very top of the list. I'm talking about the great and awesome Steve Renella. Steve Renella is the founder of Meet 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's 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 Renella.

The most important thing we have to talk about is this.

So you were on my friend Sean Ryan Show, and he lives right here, 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. So he tells you the story, and I'm watching it, and I was like, "Oh, that's me! That's me!"

And then you go, "Man, I don't want to disparage your friend with that guy, I don't know. Idiot, that guy's going, 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, 'cause I'm navigating that. And all the parents I talked to, I put this, and it feels, you do it at such a public skill, and it's such a third real issue, right? There's a dramatic pause, it was not the meant, it is more, I'm fake, it's not dramatic pause.

It's just a thinking pause. And the reason, 'cause it's been a little bit, our paths are toward, when I say we, like, our paths are what I share, we share, is a we path to something that my wife and I navigate it together. Early on, we had our, we have three kids, and we had our first kid, remember, he, he

went up our first kid James, one up 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 needed to like make a thing. Just y'all too. We just, yeah, we just, what is the rule? Yeah. We hit on this rule, that we don't show our kids' faces publicly.

Okay. The reason it seems arbitrary is, 'cause I might put, I would maybe on social media, I would show a picture of my kids looking the other direction, if they're holding a 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. 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, 'cause we don't show their face. And they're worked really well, because it just gave us like a line not to cross.

And a lot of being that you don't debate, we didn't need to like debate everything. The pros and cons of every position. Or she sees something you posted and she gets upset, doesn't say anything. Yeah, because they're not the face, they're not the face.

And so it just, it worked remarkably well, and we never had to revisit it.

What we ran into now is now I have a, my youngest boy is now 15.

I don't know if he'll pursue it as a career, but he's like very interested in photography,

“very interested in wildlife photography, and we let him get a social media page.”

And the deal at first was that he couldn't pull a standing without a can with me, you know, because we were explaining him like, man, you could, you could screw up and for after being haunted. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, like when it's out there, like you do a dumb thing, and it's just, it's out there.

There a day, he posted something or another, and I was like, I never looked at it.

He pointed out, there's a guy who worked with a photographer who I worked very closely with and have for a long time named Seth Morris. We traveled together and I said, you never checked that with me and he's like, well, I checked it with Seth. I'm like, 'cause now what we said, but it's a good, well, play, it's a good, well, play.

It's a good, well, play. It's a good, well, play. But now we said, so we're doing that now, he's into it. All right, 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 two that maybe this is a function of getting older, I just turned 52 the other day. I'm just less and less, I'm less, less interested in social media. I got to still get it, I don't get excited about it anymore.

Yes. Yes across the board. It feels like a different landscape, I love video, I love, like, I like doing stuff. I mean, we distribute video on all mannerways. Some people would regards 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, I can see a future where I'm just not, I'm out. I'll just taper off, I got, I slowly tapered off alcohol, I don't drink any alcohol. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, yeah, it was on a big event, yeah, I just one day was like,

"Wow, I don't drink anymore." Yeah. I could picture something to be like, "Wow, I don't, he's slow some video." I'm here in that, not even from people who produce videos and things, but just the average people like, it's burned out, like, 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 real life?”

No, I don't know how to do that. 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 this

computer's. All right. And that was 15 years ago, I just, I didn't, I didn't want my son, and now my daughter have to answer for their face beyond 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. Yeah. 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 who's 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 go in the morning and milk cows. He's like, this media, that's a family business. Yeah.

I get it, man. And just take that by take when he says, take it. I was like, okay, you know, you thought about it? You thought about it. Yeah.

But the cows see you. Every computer and cows keep a secret that they did.

“God's look at you and they're like, we see, we know, man, 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. Mm. Do you think so? I think so.

Maybe I'm, I guess maybe the, maybe the. I haven't heard of people like Dawson cans of paint on people in fur coats. Oh, right. All right. Right.

Like you're still going to have a story about that actually. I'll do it. But uh. Okay. I, I think that, but you came in this when it was like, no one had ever seen it.

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 in New Grand Paul in hunting, they didn't know what they meant. Yeah. We were, we were like, kind of capturing a very detailed portrait of 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. Come 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. This is the point where, um, you know, even we would, we would distribute license 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

You know what I mean?

Like, there's a real effort to sanitize, yeah, yeah, because it was of a fear of offending

people. They don't want to be in kind of the opposite became true, where I was like, people were wondering, what am I not seeing? Yeah. And also, it was, um, cathartic or whatever, it was just to see it get turned into food,

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 your North Star and 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, 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 pair 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 almost wrong with the world, and yada, yada. But there's a North Star, it's in no-no.

This is right. You know what I mean? And I wrestle with who gets a vote, and I look at you, I look at some of the, what I call the pioneer hunting guys who took us along with you to say at some point yall said, I don't care, I think this is right.

Does that make sense? I understand.

“I'll approach that in a couple of ways, I think I left off when talking about our decision”

about our kids, years ago I had gotten a threat from an analyzed person, and they referenced

my family. And so that was a factor that played into it. They wound up, it was funny, because when it was enough where the FBI went to this person's work, went to his garbage, he ordered a pepperoni pizza, I mean I'm not kidding, they came and they told you everything.

They show up like, you know, like dress, how they're supposed to be dressed, the FBI, you know? You're a guy in the girl. You guys got super short hair, you got a trench go on that kid, you know, they're like scared to hell out of this guy.

That influenced our decision. So you're right, there was a thing where there was a sort of threatening verbal opposition to what I do. The thing that shocks me, one of the things that shocks me most about what kind of where I've spent, the ideas that I've spent exploring in exploring, I'm 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 them like a lost cause, because they can pressure, like let's say you're like there's a lot of closeted, there's a lot of celebrities 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?

Right, you don't get to be in like, you don't get to be in Hollywood, yeah, yeah. So they, there's like, yeah, there's like a thing, dude, I could, yeah, I could tell you great stuff about that. I could tell you great stories about closeted hunters, because there's something that can be taken away from them, yeah, there's like, 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 the last minute for fear of punishment getting punished by advertisers, right?

For me on your show? Yeah, but it's like, this isn't the thing that 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, I know what do you

take away from me, you know, so, so in that way, I guess that people that are opposed to the idea is I talk about the lifestyle I have, like, they have no vote, you know. Yeah, to look at the question a different way, I use to imagine, like, I imagine there's two audiences for a person like me, there's two potential audiences, there's the audience that sits on the outside of what I do, sits on the outside of outdoors, sits on the outside

of hunting and fishing, right? Sit on the outside of like any kind of extraction, secure a zoo animal, 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, whatever, and then there's the audience that's on the inside, and I imagine happening, 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.

Here, let me show you, like you got it all wrong, you know, like, let me explain all this to you, um, I was focused there, and then over time I just realized I was more like focused on, um, people found the inside, being like, isn't this a beautiful world, yeah, we inhabit, yeah, let's, let's explore this and go deeper in this world and like kind of push on, it's boundaries and think about it together and find a way to perpetuate it and save

the good times, yeah, 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 on the inside. Is that because you felt this is futile or has this crew become more, more unhinged?

No, because I'm not even more unhinged, that's just who I am, that's who I am, I'm always

wondering. Like, the way you bifurcate 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 and order, like, I didn't get anything. I missed. Yeah, right.

I wound the 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, again, born in Texas, two Texas parents, we probably

“even as in five nights a week, and that's what we have.”

And she's 10, and she refuses, she thinks hunting is awful and terrible, but she watches your show. All right. But when I point her in this point, it comes to the, she's on the intellectual, the animal, she'll do this.

You 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, but there's a human element to it. Yeah, I, in all fairness, there is, like, at all times, it's always been to both.

I guess that I, I just picture the emphasis. Yeah. You know, like, when, I remember a piece of writing advice I got, there was a writer named is a writer named Ian Frazier, who's very influential to me when I was in writing school. Um, and, and I don't think this is his advice to all writers, because he was like, try to

get, like, in your, like, when you're writing, try to get in that your best self, right? Like, at the time, he, he like, the drink, I like, drink, he, 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 your best version of myself, you're, like, telling your best, 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. Yeah. It's like, who is that? When I'm doing my stuff, I guess if I imagine that that's the, the, the me I'm bringing, you know, I bring it better when I'm kind of talking to people, 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. You're great. Yeah. Right.

I'm just like, it's, so that's kind of what I'm getting at, man. It's a little bit, what I'm saying is that I recognize the pride of looking for using, but it's just a way I 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, I think it's a lot

of courage. Oh. You see what I'm saying? You mean, like, like, using it? Yeah.

Yeah. You don't, you don't burn anything.

“I think those are some of those powerful episodes, right?”

They're the phone and they're beautiful and they're whatever, but, but being able to say, I, because you have an opportunity to paint yourself as a hero, right? The same as every, oh, I was talking to a dad the other day who's had some bad stuff, and he has a, like, 12-13-year-old son. I said, the greatest gift you can give that kid right now, so let him see you, be sad.

And then he'll know his dad's a person, and then he'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 of, 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 me, you know, the show with, we became known for kind of showing these different aspects of failure in times. And it's great, and I like it, but it also, it was motivated and apart by how we worked early on, where he had a whole crew, and that's the what you got.

The first time we ever went out to make episodes, we, we laughed and we knew we were going

to, we, we're, we're going to make 16 of them in a year, right, which is a ton. Yeah. Way more than we make now. We're making 16 a year, and we'd go out, and we're going to, let's say we're going to go up wherever, and go mess around Alaska, we're going to go do four, and we have 20

days. So we're going to do this, this, this, this, this. You couldn't, it's like, for, for 100 reasons, you couldn't come back, 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, to make it be a story, and the guys, I've told us so many times that people, like, when I started making meat eater, I wasn't making it with guys at hunt.

Like, so I was, I was, I had a joint venture, like me either was a joint venture between me and a production company called zero point zero production. They most famously did all the board-ains shows. Okay. Okay.

Cooking channel. Yeah. So they did like a cook's tour. I think it was called. And then it went to, um, no reservations and parts unknown.

Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, they, like, all the board-ains stuff, they filmed what they loved about these trips, as they had this, like, very clear objective, right? You're going to, we're going to try to get this thing, and they're excited about it.

And they, they, 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.”

In their mind, it'd be like, who cares if we didn't get it? It's like the story is trying to get it. And there's this, there's this explanation story that got us most fundamental level. The story is, you know, there's this definition of it. It's like, someone or something wants something.

Okay. And then, but there are obstacles in their way. Yep. So, it's like, joke, it's a little, it's like a snail, like a little snail. He wants to, like, get a lettuce leaf, but, you know, he's got to, but across the highway.

Whatever to help, 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. And there was obstacles in your way.

They were insurmountable. What's there to, like, it's cool. So I got comfortable with it being cool, you know, because we're like, yeah, what if we just, I don't know, told the truth about what happened, you know, I mean, it's a crazy thing.

No, they got a kick out of it. We had a lot of fun in those, in those days, and there's, we have this, in our crew, we have this robust debate, like, is it better, 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, or is he easier to go get

“the 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 the contention. It's a contention. It's a contention.

It's you.

I thought it would be really easier to hold a camera, and those dudes are amazing.

In the end, in the end, and I'd like to tease, I'd like to tease our guys, the guys that work with the thought, but then 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 and get like the, yeah, the desert road.

You won't go off. Man. I can't remember to tell you, asking me, it's, well, I'm struck by that, there's a humanity that runs through it, and I have a, I don't know, 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? Just what you gave me an example of what you mean, what you, like, what you, I'll use what you just said, like, okay, so we have this, we have this budget, we have this time, and we have to come back to four episodes, because that's where we promised the studio. All right, well, we only were successful, quote unquote, in our hunt twice, and so how

we can tell the story? Yeah. We could gloss it up, we could go do something else and pretend it was part of the 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 laid again, right, I could, I can, 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 and I was like, hey, this has been way in on me, and I need you to come up, I've got a rumor right, and do all my stuff,

and I said, and you 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.

“Tell me, I'll tell you, yeah, I think this comes out, so come on, yeah, and she, she”

was like, well, okay, let's, there we go, and long story short is I had a, I'm trying to come up with a, my son's going to dream 16, and I tried to come up with something that was going to be like, just awesome, all right.

And so I had a guy who makes custom rifles, and he made this amazing thing and engraved

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 to late, so he's been with me every opening day, right, since he was little, little pity. I didn't include my wife in it, right? And so I've been thinking of like, how do I navigate this story, and here I am with

like a parenting in a marriage show, and I'm like, well, how do I spend this, and I was like, I'm going to bring her up in my right 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 life. Exactly.

“She, she signed it, this little authority, so it's special, right?”

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, yeah, we done now, and she walked out, she's laughing. But like, because she might be instinctively more collaborative than you. Well, it was, I'm usually the overly collaborative one, but it was just, I got so absorbed

with the thing, but I'm going back to, if you just told the truth, like, this is what happened. No. 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, the, in all fairness, there's a thing to consider, is there's a, there's a built-in

artifice to TV production, because we have a thing called the shoot, the, the shoot ratio, meaning if you're shooting, one of these are shooting, I'm sorry, 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 out and 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, rolling. The minute you go and, and pick your 22 minutes, which a 30 minute show is 22 minutes of material,

“the minute you go and pick the 22, like something's happened, yeah, did you follow me?”

Oh, yeah, totally. There are long, long periods of whatever get caught in little side trips, don't pan out. Yeah. Do you mean, so there, so there is baked into it, a, it's not all there. Yes, a bunch of stuff happened, it's not there, and it's condensed, and the thing can

wind up seeing, perhaps more exciting than it was, boredom can seem poetic, rather than boring. Yeah. Totally, right, like boredom is not fun. Yeah, boredom is conveyed with some beautiful time laps, and a great, like, like, 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 striving to maintain a level of, like, purity, level of responsibility, that's good aspiration to have,

and I just have never found where that sits at odds with making something that's entertaining.

A great tool. They kind of work 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, as, as possible, and I, I deal with”

the, the married couples who are like, yeah, but they have it all together, are they're working on a grade, or I wanted to be like, oh, no, I have to be like, oh, I have to be like this woman on this movie or whatever, and it's like, that's not, I should probably wipe down here. Yeah, we could do it.

Salt some stuff, salt some stuff, man. It should be like, I put it in. Exactly. One second, please. Yeah.

We're talking a crew 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, there'd be a dark episode, and, all right, so let's talk about that. I want to talk about, you know, I'm talking about me married.

Oh, no, man. I love, I love me married. No, I'm not talking. You have this great quote here. I love it.

Well, I'm writing a book about marriage right now, and I found an article, it's an old school. I didn't find it. One of the people on my team did said, you describe your marriage one time as a mismatch maiden 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.

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 Miriamax, my wife worked for Miriamax at that time.

No, the film house had a publishing arm. Oh, why?

Yeah, so my wife used to work for Bob and Harvey Weinstein at Miriamax, 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. So, that she grew up a couple hours away from me to try to get us far away from in

their response. Yeah. So like, I was at the time I was living in Alaska, like, all over the place. No, that's not it. Or was I living at the time?

I don't remember where I was living at the time. Montana, I think. I was living in Montana when we met.

“But we went up like, we knew the same rock stations, you know?”

Oh, yeah. Like, we both listened to KLQ, whatever, like we knew all the same stuff. Yeah. We just knew about it. And we met far away and she was, like, very committed to urban life, like she wanted

to work in book publishing at that time. So that was where you went to work in book publishing. So that's how we met.

And then some years went by before we were in a relationship.

By time we were in a relationship, I was living, I tried to move to Alaska, but it didn't stick. And because she was living there. So we just, we kind of bonded over shared experience. I mean, we're very, I think emotionally we're very similar.

But just our, 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 in our kid, my, our kids are obsessed with that they love hunting, they love fishing, you know, they like sports too, but they like the 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 her dad's out there. If I take all three kids to go do something, you can do no wrong.

That's right. That's right. It's like 100%. There is no wrong. That's 100%.

There is no wrong.

“If I'm like, hey, I'm taking all the kids and we're on fishing.”

That's like, you guys have a good time. That's right. So there's no greater gift. And so it just, it works really well, but, but there's just that, let 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. She wonders about it. And it's good to wonder about it. She's like, but what happens later?

Yeah. Do you know what I mean? The kids are going to be like, all you, like all your family, you're a little on-and-fishing bodies. Yeah.

I don't know. I'm dead. 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 spent half the time doing what I want, half time doing what you want. And she's like reluctant to take the deal.

Anytime the husband says, I got a deal for you.

“I'm like, no, like half the days we do what I want.”

We're more retired. Yeah. Yeah. Half the days I pick. Half the days you pick.

But they come in blocks. She's reluctant to eat. She's like, why would you not take that deal? We're going to go from you deer hunting to downtown Denver. Yeah.

Like, we start hunting turkeys. Like, you start hunting turkeys and late March. We finish hunting turkeys and late May. And then you're going to call months do whatever you want to. My, my, I had an event I was doing and it fell on opening day this year.

It was my 15 year old. He's like, man. I hope this is important. Dad. And I was like, why are you?

He only got three more left with me. And then I'm gone. I was like, bro. That hurts man. That was loaded.

But he's right. We've developed a lot of those. They kind of add up. We have a lot of traditions now. Like little hunt and fish from traditions.

They eat up the calendar. They did like little family. Yeah. I'm all ready. Pre-grieving that.

Like 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 just rolled my eyes through the back of my head. Like, good. God, do you 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. My kids win college. And I'm by myself. Like, I don't know if I'm ready for that day.

I'm depressed about it. Yeah. I don't think it was like that. I don't think. I wonder if our dads thought that.

I 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 grew up with, you know, siblings. And we were brought up to hunt and fish and trap, you know.

And just eventually, that's 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 whole man.

Yeah. That's a friend that I was like the most.

Yeah. It's so funny to think about it. Like, did they, they also need to wake up and they're like all out. Like, they all went fishing but didn't tell you. Did you tell me, you're like, well, yeah.

But not having like our dads, like not having the skill set to be like, hey, I want to come. All right. Like, I don't want to dance, especially our dads didn't know how to do that. So they just probably went back to the newspaper. I know, you wouldn't know. I 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. As much as I think about it all the time now. Well, I, but here's the other side of it. So a couple of years ago, I put together this big, it was my fantasy. I put together down in cell Texas, a hunt.

It was going to be a three generation hunt. My dad, me, my son. My dad and I've been hunting never. When he was a, he was a homicide detective and he's been growing up in an old for a side hustle. He would, uh, had somebody who did taxidermy stuff.

So he would take me snake hunting. We'd catch snakes and we'd turn it over to this guy. This taxidermist. And so that was the hunt we did. And we fished all the time, but we never hunted together.

It's all put this whole thing together. And of course, oh, man, my dad, he's in the 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's 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'll have to get. So it, it, I had all this expectation on it. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know what it'll be like. You should call her as he's still alive.

Oh, no, no, no, he's been still alive. No, he's been still alive. No, no, no, no, no, no. But that a lot of times. Yeah, I'm using his old day.

I bet he cried. I'm playing with him. He didn't do a lot of that. So go back to you. But I cut my thumb.

That 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 cut your hand, how can we hit cry?”

I'm like, just like, people just quit crying. You'll see. Just stops. That's right. How old are you?

I was like, I was like to be honest with you. It was, I want to say it's 13. There's so many of them. They changed their ages so much. I was confused.

But I was trying to explain or like, I know that your instinct would be to cry. But that'll go away. And in prison, you won't cry at all. That'll go away. My daughter cries a lot.

That day will be awesome when it comes. 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.

I don't know if I'm better at it now than I thought it would be. I mean, I don't know what you know about 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 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 going to tell myself. That's right. So we want to do in like, we want to do in.

I guess we did a we're like doing a fairly good job of being married. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, totally. It's hard.

“I think that that's that strikes some people.”

So we're going to talk about that it's hard. But it's like, we just. We're we're kind of hard. We're hard workers, you know, and we're like. We have a loyalty.

And. We shield ourselves from impulsive actions. Mm. What does that look like? Well, I remember like.

It when you're in the dating phase. Okay. This this isn't sound like terribly immature, but. Well, like when you're the dating phase. I'm going for my maturity.

So you have there's this idea. This is this is an observation that I made my wife after we got married. There's like, you carry this idea in the back of your head. Where if you're wrong, right? You're wrong.

You're like, well, I'll show you. Yeah, you know, I mean, like, that goes. Yeah, I'll show you what's up. Right.

This is always in the back of your head.

The thing we're keeping. Yeah, like you're going to, you know, stick to two of them. You know, or like, they're going to wish they had never said that. You know, on the other side of it, like, I got flowers. That's fine for me, right?

Exactly. Yeah. Just whatever you're doing this thing. There's like these, there's these actions. You're going to take that are going to set record straight.

You know, and I just remember getting married and just being like, you know, saying to myself,

You ain't going to do nothing. You're like, you're like a getting kind of revenge. No. It's just, you know, it's not kind of, no one's going to come to you and like beg for your forgiveness. 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, the audiences like, oh, it's like, I will have full and I always win. And I always have these mic drop moments. It goes with this, right? And she's like, oh, you're right. I'll never have that conversation.

She doesn't want to go away. I wish I had had that wisdom at 24 when I got married and cheese. So he's man. I discovered that like three years ago.

“I remember another body my talk about the piece of mine.”

I already mentioned Morgan Fowl and who I've worked with for years. He was a bunch. He had this observation to me about getting married. He said that he got married and he said it. It had this feeling like, you know, like an old movie.

Someone like the, the, you go or do you got the co-rack, you know, on your hat, you know, and like you're heading off to work. And they put their hat on, you know, on 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. Something he was supposed to be doing. Yeah. And he'd always been.

And for parts of his life, you're as he wasn't, you know, you'd wake up and you weren't quite clear on what your supposed to be doing. Okay. Okay. Yes.

So the question that is haunted me for the last two years is why did Jeff Bezos get remarried? Like why? No. 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, and mean talk all about the nerds. Yeah.

I guess like fear, like there's like a fear of death. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

But the thing that keeps coming back to is this wired for purpose or this wired for service. Like this thing of, I'm ameless. And it's like, I don't all. Does that make sense? Like in a strange, I don't know.

You're the historian here. But like a strange weird cultural and coupling. It feels like every string that teathers 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 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've never been in graduate school.

We would, I would work at work in the mornings doing tree work. Like, I was a tree climber. I'd work in mornings doing that. Which hole 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 ground crew. I was a climber. So I, if I stood on this table, I, I come so scared of heights. Oh, really?

Okay. Tim, I had to. We had to, this guy 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, like 400 boulevard trees in a winter. But we sort of had a pace to it. But anyways, we would often get done. He was a writer too. And 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 7 to 11 or 12. And sometimes I'd wander down, I'd be with friends in my head. And we'd 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, we'll get a poll boy. And you know, maybe a cocktail. And you know, and then. Also, and it's one in the morning. And they're.

I mean, it's one in the morning. And they're playing closing time. Yeah. Yeah.

“But man, you mean to tell me we just like shot bull for 12 hours?”

For 12 hours? Yeah. I was going to write. Yeah. And, and a lot, it was, it was like, we laughed.

It was fun. I kind of learned a lot in some weird way. And if any efficiently, I learned a lot. Um. I needed, like, I needed to get serious.

Yeah. I don't know that I would have gotten serious. I had, I don't think I would have found it myself. No. To get serious.

If I hadn't gotten into, if I hadn't become a husband. Yeah. And become a parent. Um, 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'll have no people who got married and continued. Oh, yeah. Where's that model come from? Man.

Wow. I mean, or maybe it wasn't model. Yeah. It would be like, it'd be like, I don't, you know, it's hard to tell what you pick up as influences.

Yeah.

We ate, we had dinner time.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Never as exceptions. But generally it was like, there was dinner time. There's no way in the world.

My dad would have been out in the bars. What all my mom, no one where he was. But it just like that. There was a lot of things that, you know,

“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. Yeah. You knew when you got home. There was people wondering where you'd been. You had there was expectations of you.

Expectations that you had of home were met.

Right. Yeah. And I, you know, I absorbed 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 a, it wasn't her program as a kid doing that. Yeah. For a long time, she just lived in a single family household. Yeah.

And she's kind of surprised by it was a little bit surprised about how adamant I was about it. But if I'm out of town now, they sit down 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 either at the head of the table.

“Like like I sit here, my wife sits there, my dog, you know what I mean?”

And maybe it's boring. I don't know. It's just like there's a rigidity to things. But you know that's one of the highest predictors of childhood outcomes. Is that right?

It's family dinner time. Really? Yeah. It's, it's my wife and our both nerds. And that was one of our, we started on 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's pregnant and she found out we're having a boy. She was like, hey, we got to talk about this. Like there's, we have one job at 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. 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 on Marvel gang to have kids.

He disappeared. Like we only got 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.

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 goof heel. Too loud, too messy, too funny, too whatever table. I just think it's, yeah. It's an anchor point for me.

Yeah, I get a guilty, I get a real guilty conscience. People, I don't know. There's probably a school thought of things that like living under a guilt. Not like it's like a cloud of guilt. Maybe a guilt's not the right word.

I have a strong sense of obligation. Obligation, yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like, unless you straight man, I miss a lot. I travel.

But my promise, my sort of promise to my family, is like, when I'm home, I'm home. They're part of the plan. 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,”

of an awareness of what I miss. And I do wonder, if I'd like to work for, I don't know, what kind of job you have. When the ops tree trimming. I was still working for a tree service.

And we just worked around town. And every night I came home. I wonder, like, what I've gotten complacent then. Yeah. What I've been like, I'm here all the time.

Yeah. I'll say, go to the bar. Well, I'm here all the time. I'll just spend a time chatting with her. Yeah.

And that wasn't trying to be like super dad when I'm home. Yeah. You know, that's not here. 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, I don't know. I'm like, oh. Like a obligation to hold up and end of the deal. Yeah. Philosophically, I remember having a feeling.

And I had to do a quick and drink into. I remember having, like, this thing that, like, about kids.

Like, they didn't, like, they didn't ask to be born. Yeah. And come live here. I dragged you into this. Yeah.

It wasn't like wrong. That, like, please let us in. You know? I'm like, guess my better judgment. Right.

That you're in for a day. Yeah. It was like, we like drag them into this situation. So like, we ask them. Right.

We like ask them. We invite them. Yeah. Into this existence that we created. There's some level of, you know, there's this Greek principle, like,

Xenia, like a guesthouse 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, um, yeah, there's, like, a guesthouse bond, a little bit. You know, we still, like, constantly bust our kids balls. But there is a little bit of like, they didn't ask. Yeah.

We did this. So there's this sort of obligation now.

I've never thought through that.

But I like, on its face, I love that. I love that. They had to do with, you know what I had to do with, what are we going to do? Is that brought up? I had to do with the feeling of being hung over in the morning.

Mmm. And, and, and, and, and, um, resenting them. Mmm. Because you know, when they're real little, they get real early, resenting them for being up at five.

Look, why are you up at five? Yeah. And just that feeling of like, man, I got a headache. And I got a headache. Now, you're up.

Yeah. Yeah. And I got a headache. Yeah. And you're going to pull some, you know, furniture around yourself.

And if I'm not out there watching you, you know, and you're going to get up. Yeah.

And I've never just thinking, like, how could you have the, um, how could you be so arrogant

“as, like, resent them for being awake in the morning?”

Like, that's, that's bad, Senior. Well, and even worse, happy to see you. Yeah. Yeah. First stop.

How dare you want to come see you. Yeah. First stop. I chose to stay up till 2 am if he's stupid. Yeah.

And there's another thing in the minute I get up. I'm going to nag guys room and I'm waking him up. Yeah. And then he's bombed. Yeah.

Okay. Oh, 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.

I was dies. Yeah. I mean, I could choose for today. That'd 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 attention that pulls you here. Yeah. I've, she says, no, no, you're mine. Yeah.

I've often explained that the, the central conflict. In our marriage, the central conflict was a travel, 100%. It wasn't like, um, it wasn't like lack of faith, like a trust. It wasn't funny.

It was, it was, it was, it's never been money.

It was like the, the central conflict was travel. And what was underneath that? Like another central conflict? No, just like the core conflict would be like, I miss you. Or you care about that more than me.

I wish I was there and unspoken, I miss you. Okay. And it would be, uh, it would, it would play out a couple ways. Like, like, picture from, picture from my wife's perspective. I hadn't, early on, it didn't build good limits for myself.

So we would have little babies, and I'd be like, I remember, I remember at a point saying, I'm not going to go away for more than two weeks because we would go away for three weeks, or whatever. Um, when I had, 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 all right. Yeah, it was a lot. So here, you, here you have a person, and my wife always worked through her.

I mean, she'd take materially, but she always worked. Very challenging. So, 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.

“They're like, the kids are getting more than you need to go. They're doing all the stuff.”

She's doing her work. And then you come in, and you want, when I say you, me, like, like, you come in, I come in, and there's just like terrible desire to like, to piss on a post. Yeah. Yeah. Right home.

There's like, it's like, what? I would have done it. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's those tough, man. There was this thing early on too that we had.

Um, if you, I remember why I sang. 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, is not as brutal as it seems.

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. Yeah, that river you got to merge back into the lane, you know? I mean, like, you're on a control to access highway and you're exiting smoothly.

There's a lot of horn honking and light, right? And then when you merge back into the family. And so learning that, learning that, looking into my house right now, 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'm, like, I like things exceptionally organized in my home space. I like open surfaces, like, like picture like counters. Yeah.

I don't like things on the counters. Do you know what I mean?

So I always, I would come home and I'd look and let's say I look and,

someone has taken one of my, like, like a, like, a knife of mine and cut something out of plate. And I look, I'm like, right? Or they, like, scrubbed the cast iron pan, like a soapy, brilopath. 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 do I have in here? Yeah. I've got my Inspector Gadget glasses on. Do that cause like, like, enormous tension, man.

Yeah. So now, and I still have that perfect on it, but now I would look and be like, looks like the, I would think to myself. Yeah. Looks like that cast iron pan is kind of ruined dude.

But we'll just deal with that quietly. There they are. I'm, I'm trivializing it by coming up with goofy examples. No. But, but, and then bigger ones, you know, I don't mean to like,

it's not like pans and knives, but, those are, my past. Those are examples. Those are examples. I have it.

I have not a picture of what it's going to be when I get home. I have a sensation that I'm seeing.

“I think it's going to feel a certain way.”

Mm-hmm. And I walk in the door and my wife's in the middle of a project that she's working on. I got my daughters 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. So I immediately goes to, to why isn't this feeling like I wanted to. Oh, there's this thing and there's this thing.

Or the other, I, I try to manufacture it. So he's in there. My son's working and I'm like, yeah, you want to go? Yeah.

Is it that? I'm doing homework. And it took, it's taking this season for my wife and I be like, hey, there is a flow to this house. Yeah.

And when you exit out, we're glad that you're doing that, right? It's providing all this. Yeah. But like, I like that.

Turned like, you have to exit back in. You can't just ramrod through and be like, all right, everybody. Because he's like, check your legs. Because there's like, that homework is so nice to get done.

Yeah. And the meal that's halfway done. We can't 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 be formed for me. That's the 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. You know, that's like the most common. First hunters, first job. The first time they could be sale. Like, I remember distinctly.

It was such a powerful thing. Like, I'm driving in a suburban to a book signing. It burns a noble kind of thing. And Dave calls him off 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 a 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. Yeah, 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. So I got to either take the way the way I feel now or I got to try to pop 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, someone I knew in school, her explaining,

like the first time doing like, first time doing hard drugs.

And at where she's like, helmet, you mean I suppose to just like, I can just feel that way all the time. Yeah, yeah, why would I, why would I not do that?

You know, this rational decision about it.

But we talk people in recovery. 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 you recognize. Yeah. It served a role. It like it works.

“I think I, and thinking about this thing about being gone and these complications of the marriage.”

What, what, what I, what I, what I feel compelled now that I have to bring up. I have, I have a number of friends who got and, you know, rolled up in the war on terror. Um, when I say that, I mean, service members. I deployed. Yeah, you know.

And that, like a then man. Um, all this is like child's play. Oh, yeah, of course. Do you follow them? Oh, 100.

Like we're talking about. I was gone two weeks. Yeah. And then, 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, in the first, in the first three years after 9/11 and in the three year period, wouldn't what she had kids.

A three year period. He was home for 200 days. He says, and those 200 days, you're not really home. No, you're not. Yeah.

Right. And then I'm like, yeah, man. It's just like, I just want to like, I feel like I'll get into acknowledge that. I have a number of friends went through that because like to sit and talk about being gone. And you're like, you're kind of like out hunting and fishing.

Yeah. You're being well compensated. You know what I mean? I'm on a stage. Yeah.

Yeah. People come. They're like, do you love yourself? Yeah. And you're going, and just to think of some guys sitting at home being like, you pump this.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Totally.

“Like, I have to acknowledge it because it's just 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 Braeg one time. And I remember sitting there. People said, there was not a few years ago. There was still a phone book around.

I'm sitting there talking to this. He's a greenbrake app. And I remember he's, he's, he happens to have a phone book with like the yellow pages. I remember him grabbing his big chunk of pages. Like in the yellow pages.

Like a big chunk. Like a finger-fix section. And him saying to me, that's divorce attorneys. Wow. Yeah.

Right in Fort Braeg, you know. And that's kind of like, oh yeah, I get that. You know, I get that. These guys are just gone. They're gone.

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

They're spouses different. Yeah. So it's like, I just, 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. Oh, you were hunting with a film crew. Yeah. Yeah.

“And another important thing to my wife said, uh, she's like, man, you got to be very, very careful.”

You can plan to. Yeah. Well, and, but, but again, the other side of that is a thing that plagues, everybody, but I think it plagues. And then especially these days is just profound loneliness.

Mm. Right. Not having somebody that I can complain to. Yeah. Yeah.

I just need to say the sucks. Right. Yeah. Like, I don't want to name names, but I know of examples like that in my life. Where I do look, and, um, I do look and I'm like, man, I wonder if, uh, what their experience

in life might have been like had they taken on that reason to put your hat on a grab briefcase. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know?

Well, it's as much as they'd love what they would tell you about the freedom they have. I'm like, I don't know, man. Yeah. I'm the 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. Get under that squire. I can go in again, right? Yeah. And so you say that great, but I'll, I'll take this.

Temporary discomfort, this constant obligation for the, what, what comes on the back end of the day. No. Man. Okay.

You're a historian, it's the last thing I'll ask you. I could talk to you all day, man. And by the way, for folks, listen, like, you talked earlier about it. It's 22 minutes of an episode.

And 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, 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.

Like, I was obsessed, obsessed. And I remember being so disillusioned. Oh, man. Pathologically so.

Is it a lot different than being a big Metallica guy?

I'm older, new. I'm assuming quite a bit older. Yeah, we're close. How old are you? I'm 48.

Oh, I'm 48 years old. Yeah, so year. Yeah, my sister was in Metallica. Yeah, probably. They were like, Metallica's anger younger brother.

Yeah, exactly. Because older brother got out of the attention. Yeah. But I remember when they're guitarists who had big red beard, the whole thing. He came out with a, uh, column and 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 gotta be, it was like, bro.

Like, like, oh, it was a level of professionals.

Yeah. Like, oh, you know what you're doing, right? Like, y'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 the most, like, the, one of my favorite things about watching your work from a far”

and reading your work is what a story you are. Hmm. And this is a question I'd love to ask. I grew up working in the university. So I love sing with historians.

And I look at them almost as, like, oracles, like, future tellers. Hmm. 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. Hmm. Oh, man.

First off, you know, like, you know, the difference in a cook in a chef.

Hmm. Okay. There's a difference in 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 interested in history. That's fair. I'm a cook in 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 caught a, you know, in the 50s.

You could hang a man semi publicly from a tree and face no legal recourse. Yeah. If you live them right. Is it code? Yeah.

Right. That's pretty divisive. Yeah. So maybe it's not so bad. It just is really scary to me.

Yeah. 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. I live like a, like a circular drive. I'm not, I'm not kidding 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.

Yeah. If there was a problem, any of them is going to run over. Likewise, I would run to any of them. And any reason, if that's something happened and their kids needed to come, they would be brought into our house.

Like, they would be taken care of, you're right. Take care of. I would without question, without even thinking, like, if something all of a sudden happened, and we had to run off somewhere in my wife and I had to go to deal with some emergency in our neighbors, like, we'll take care of the kids.

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, um, terrible polarization. And then also, a, and I really don't want to cite 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 there are, uh, there are areas where I feel like there are objective realities. Yes. And, and I get uncomfortable in toying with those objective realities.

And I see cases where my kids will come from school.

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.”

Not sensical. Yeah. Yeah. Well, in, in that's the definition of of, not the definition, but that's the definition of mental illness is a divorce from reality.

No. Right. And that's the whole ecosystem. It could be a thing about 9/11. It's, it's, it's, it's Madhouse.

Right. It's Madhouse. Yeah. And, and it's, I almost find it being like a thing like, because it's hard to keep my cool.

Yeah. Um, and so I, you know, other concerns like, you know, you wander with AI, like what the hell they're going to do for living. Yeah.

But they'll figure it out.

They'll figure it out. But, but the country. The country going through something like what we went through in the late 60s. Um, something like we went through in the 1860s. Yeah.

That scares that lot of me. Yeah. I'm with you on that. Yeah. I'm with you on that.

The, 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. Hmm. Then in a bit, a refusal to say, all right, I'm, I'm going to get off that boat then.

That's the part that I can't write my head around. Yeah. I mean, you know, because all of us, if we're trying to go, you know, Arby's down on 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, I can't put my finger on it. It doesn't make sense to me. We just keep hitting the gas going the wrong way. You know, like, hey, but Arby's is right here and we're going that way. Yeah. And I don't have, I don't have a, I get scared because I don't have a psychology for it.

I don't, I don't know if that's a, I don't know if that's it. No, I'm going to say that. I don't have a, I don't have a mental model for that. Yeah. You gotta mean.

And it's like, dude, what do we, do we talk 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, every human, every person has a sweet of beliefs. And those beliefs are full of contradictions. Of course.

But, and, and they changed or evolving all the time. But this thing where someone would look and go within your sweet of beliefs is a belief that I see and I will condemn you for having. Yeah. And it wiped out all the, yeah.

Every, I condemn, every aspect of you. Yeah. Because within your sweet of beliefs is that one, 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. Yeah. They have a different set of experiences. Their families, 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.

I'm powerful about being curious.

Mm-hmm. Like, doing more about that as opposed to saying, oh, no, I've got you figured out. Yeah. I can either put you in this category or this one. Yeah.

And when the reverse is true, all of these other things, I'm not okay with. But you got that one. All right. Yeah. All over look.

Yeah. All of this. Because we're aligned on that one. Yeah. Yeah.

That's, that's right. Yeah. 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 successes, just an eye reality to the end. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Right. Right. Right. And you can kind of shape it however you want.

Yeah. I don't think it will. It's been with having kids. It's been fun. Um.

It's been fun to see that they'll have opinions. Yeah. That you don't share. That's my favorite thing. Yeah.

And like the me saying there, like in, you know, you want to almost like attack. Yeah. And you're like easy. Yeah. Yeah.

Because this is the future. Right. Right. Well, in doing 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.

“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 I'm, if my beliefs are that fragile and my self-worth is that dependent on this 10-year-old, who probably still plays in dragons or whatever. Yeah. If it's that fragile, I probably need to go talk to somebody.

I got you to go do some work, right? No. There are some things that they've floated that we have said. Not in this house. Yeah.

That's true. That's true.

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 open for some. I'm open for some level of individual interpretation. Yeah. To a limit.

To a limit. What excites you about the future for them? Well, man. I like to think about, uh, I really like to think about this is very granular. I like to think about the sort of outdoor adventures, you know, that they're going to have.

I only am just now started to think about the second act, which would be, you know, like,

my boy, we 15, my oldest would be 15, it's like, it's not. It's closer than it is. What am I trying to say? Like, there's, they're going to have families. Yeah.

Yeah. 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, um, yeah. I don't know what I'm trying to say. He's been with us for 16 years when that amount of time has passed again. There's a high likelihood.

He's got a family's got a little ecosystem. Yeah.

“That is, you know, and, 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 not a college. And, um, and what I think that he's done very well and he's proud of it is, um, 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 further all out of the house. And he says, you know, I talked to all of them multiple times a week. And I'm like, he's like a conciliate. Yeah.

Do you know what I mean? But that means he was a, and I say this not in the, in an eye roll away. That means he's been a safe place of wisdom and he had hold their attention in their whole childhood. And so he's a, not like, that's, that's a trustworthy guy. You know what I mean?

Oh, not over it.

No, not a liqueur overbearing, which is incredible.

Yeah. So I know, I know you ask you what excites me for them. I'm talking about what excites me for me, but forget them. They would be cool. I'm starting to think about that.

It would be very cool to have, right, to earn that respect. I, I want to, where they don't just split. I just kind of split when I split. I split. Yes.

I want, when my son thinks, I'm going to take my son out fishing. I wanted to think, oh, we got to call dad. Not. We got to call dad. Yeah.

We have to, right? Yeah. And I got to tell him, it's all about how he used to catch him. Yeah, exactly. Well, and I wanted to tell him something.

That'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 was, he would always come down and his hair would be crazy.

And I would ask, like, do you turn your shirt around and fix this? Fix this? And every day was the same. And I remember my wife. She came in one day.

And I was picking my part. And she said, you would not hang out with somebody who every interaction was.

“18 things you need to fix about yourself.”

Yeah. And I was like, I'm wholly unlikable. I'm unlikable. You know what I mean? And I can wrap it up.

And why he needs to be ready for that. So we set that. We went to we used to go to breakfast every single, every week went to Waffle House, dude. I was our diabetes trip every week. And at one of our breakfasts, 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. Like, and I don't want you to know, I love you and you always come home. But I'm turning your loose. I'm going to stop mentioned. You don't go your hair, go your hair.

You want to not brush teeth, like whatever. And I remember at the end of his eighth grade, we 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. Like, I was like, man, you need some old bullies. Like we had, right? They're just mean. But, um, and that really we don't.

But, like, uh, I focused on what hills do I need to die on. And like, like, hey, in this house, we don't talk to you like that, right? And we got 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 have to show me why.

This is a good show. Yeah. And vice versa. I took him to a punk rock show recently. And I was like, hey, he's in the 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 the smash video show. You know, where you live nearby, right?

Oh, I'm not. I'm not in the air. Literally. It's in the air. I hate an old weather radio.

When he was out in the woods by himself. He returned to a low and he was hunting. And, uh, it would only catch a one. 90s country station. And he's dead.

You got the Brookses. This is like, I guessed it.

This is for me.

He's like, I know I'll do it.

“So, I like, oh, yeah, 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.”

I'll come and trip several years ago.

And I was like, oh, if I don't do something different.

I don't do something different with my health.

“I've got about seven more years of this.”

Yeah. And this is, 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 about 20 years.

It's about zero seven. And I like that. Like, don't be able to go fishing with my kids. Thanks for coming. Hang out, bro.

Appreciate you, man.