Off the Record With Michael Easter

📖 Read The Comfort Crisis. 📖 Read Scarcity Brain. 📱 Follow Michael Easter on Instagram. 🎙️ Two Percent With Michael Easter 🔥 Microhabits for a Better Marriage. Download the Together app. On today’s episode, John sits down with author Michael Easter to talk about loneliness, connection and why discomfort should be the goal. 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. Go to Capstone Wellness to learn more. 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! Go to Joi + Blokes and get 50% off labs and 20% off products. Working knives for working people—go to Montana Knife Company to see what’s available now! Explore Poncho Outdoors! 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 💰 George Kamel 📈 EntreLeadership Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Dr. John Delony?

  Most of us are gonna do the thing that's just the easiest.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  The stories we tell each other are never, "Yeah, I sat in this really comfortable chair and watched this show." It's always the sort of things that had hardship attached to them.

• 0:18Dr. John Delony?

  Discomfort is actually life. That's actually the good stuff.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  The discomfort and the hardship is often a signal that this really actually matters.

• 0:26Dr. John Delony?

  What life in the rearview mirror do I want to say I lived and not the most insulated comfort, but the most adventure-filled, the most fun?

• 0:38Dr. John Delony?

  Yo, welcome to Off the Record with John here on the Dr. John Deloney Show. Dude, I'm so psyched for y'all to hear this conversation today. I'm talking with one of the greatest people on the planet. Listen, in this weird little ecosystem I live in, right, where there's experts and scientists and YouTubers and podcasters, behind closed doors, it's a small, tight-knit group of people. Like, you're usually one or two people away from just about everybody, right? Somebody's got a number to somebody who's got a number to somebody. And whether it's rumor, whether it's fact, people's reputations get around.

• 1:21Dr. John Delony?

  This guest today, this person I'm having on, is one of only a handful of people that I've never heard one person say something negative about because he's simply extraordinary. He's a great human. He's a great husband. Oh, I can't believe I'm saying this. He's a dog dad, but he is a great pet owner, right? And he's a brilliant thinker and distiller of information. He wrote a masterpiece that you've heard me talk about a million times on this show called The Comfort Crisis. I'm talking about the great Michael Easter. He is the founding, the founder of the 2% group, right?

• 2:00Dr. John Delony?

  And he has a Substack. It's one of the few Substacks that I pay money for that comes out a couple of times a week. It's a newsletter that comes out where he takes really complex science and really complex nutrition, really complex workout information, really complex mental health stuff and distills it down so even a guy like you and me can understand it. He's a delightful person. On this, on this episode, we talk about comfort in relationships, discomfort in relationships. We talk a lot about marriage. We talk about loneliness. We talk about how our whole culture has been set up for us to all be comfortable. And unfortunately, that's killing us all. And most importantly, he tells us what we can do about it.

• 2:44Dr. John Delony?

  So relax, buckle up, share this episode with everybody. It's a keeper. This is my conversation with a great human being, one of my great friends, the wonderful Michael Easter.

• 2:57Dr. John Delony?

  So a long time no see, dude.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Long time.

• 3:00Dr. John Delony?

  A long time no see.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Too long.

• 3:02Dr. John Delony?

  I feel like we had our, uh, most of this interview over breakfast. So I guess we can just talk about our favorite movies.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Well, I do want to highlight from breakfast, the biscuit. I live on the West Coast. That is not biscuit country.

• 3:15Dr. John Delony?

  It's not.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  And so I came here and the waiter said, "You could add a biscuit." And you really said, "You know, you're in the South. You're here."

• 3:26Dr. John Delony?

  We like to add type 2 diabetes to every meal. It's like a thing we do.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can, I could feel my blood sugar just, it was going north.

• 3:35Dr. John Delony?

  Your CGM was just beeping.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  It was so worth it. It was so worth it, though. It was so worth it. When in the South, get diabetes.

• 3:43Dr. John Delony?

  And then you'll go back to Vegas and sweat it off. It'll be fantastic.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  It'll be good.

• 3:47Dr. John Delony?

  All right, so I was thinking about this. So I have a core life philosophy, which is have a guy, right? Um, and obviously that's not gendered. I've got many women that I reach out to also, but have a person for any number of things. And so I've got one of my oldest friends in the world works in HVAC. And I've had two air conditioners go out the last decade in different houses. I've never even occurred to me to Google something. I just call him. I'm like, "Hey, which one should I get?" And he says, "Where do you live?" And he says, "Buy this one." And that's the one I get. And so I was thinking of all the things where you're my, the guy.

• 4:26Dr. John Delony?

  And I was thinking of all the times I've texted in or called you, or we've had a meal and I'm like, "Hey, before we get going." And I rattle off. And so you've become my guy for

• 4:41Dr. John Delony?

  mental health questions, for supplement questions, for workout questions, and now even for marriage questions. And so for everyone watching, this is my, the guy on your, your influence over my life has expanded. So if I make it to 70 or 80.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  I think you'll.

• 4:58Dr. John Delony?

  I got some mileage on this body from when I was younger, but if I do,

• 5:04Dr. John Delony?

  I'll write you an email or I might just telepathically whatever by that point.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'll have chips in our brains.

• 5:09Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, yeah. But, um, thanks for the work that you do. Like, uh, we'll, we'll talk about this at the end, but you have the best Substack that exists. Your podcast is awesome. Your writing is awesome. So thanks for the influence.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Well, I feel the same way about you, man. Mental health questions.

• 5:25Dr. John Delony?

  Well, I'll tell you this, universally, no matter who I talk to, out in the, out in our little weird world that we live in, 100%, and that's rare. Cause you know what I mean? Like, everyone has a thing with somebody, right? "Oh, that guy's a lot," or "That guy's annoying," or "That guy didn't tell the truth." 100%, people are like, "Oh, Michael Easter's the best." So thanks for being a good human. That's awesome.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  I feel the same way about you. And I feel like we connect. I mean, for God's sakes, look at us.

• 5:51Dr. John Delony?

  You did roll in here in a grateful dead shirt.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  I had to. I would never wear this publicly beyond a dead show. But I'm like, "You know what? You're always in your rock band shirts. I need to bring some hippie element. I need to sprinkle some hippie dust in here."

• 6:06Dr. John Delony?

  I've tried. I've tried. I've tried.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  What I like about your work in particular is you're very intellectual. But we also connect at a, dare I say, bro level.

• 6:18Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  I could go hunting with you. I could, I could drag you to a dead show. You could drag me to a punk show. We'd have an awesome time, but then in the meantime, we'd be like, "Yes, but Carl Jung once said..."

• 6:30Dr. John Delony?

  Right. There's only a few people you can do that with. Yeah, yeah. Fantastic, man. All right. So I got like a whole list of stuff I want to talk about. And you tell me, "Ah, let's go a different direction." Um, and I'll ask you this. You've recently submitted a manuscript for a book that will come out next year. How much of that do you want to talk about or not?

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, we can talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. My publisher will slap my hand later. What do I care? It won't hurt now.

• 6:55Dr. John Delony?

  There you go. That's right. That's a problem for future, Michael. Very good. Okay. So I want to, you recent, let's, let's start here. I've been talking about, if, if I were to take all the mental health issues we have as a culture, and you and I talked this morning over breakfast, like,

• 7:13Dr. John Delony?

  you can map the rise of the stock market in the U.S. and almost directly on top of it, map the rise of mental health diagnostics right on top of it.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:22Dr. John Delony?

  And so in this weird way, we've solved for every problem that has plagued humanity forever. And if we just, just look at data, it seems that we're going more insane. The more we solve for these problems, the crazier we're going as a culture. Um, we're more anxious, more, more, more, more. And I think we could pull that apart and say diagnostics have expanded and, and that's nerd speak for like, more and more people have more access to clinicians that then give more labels that go into data sets. All that, all that's fine.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. And just, you know, what we would consider trauma, say 50 years ago, meant you had to be physically assaulted to get trauma.

• 8:03Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Now you could have seen a physical assault, um, or say 20 years ago, you could have seen a physical assault. And then today you could, someone could have called you something rude that offended you and that could be considered trauma.

• 8:15Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  So it's like this sort of, it's a widening and also the, just that changing definitions.

• 8:21Dr. John Delony?

  Changing definitions, yeah. There's a great George Carlin bit where he talks about

• 8:27Dr. John Delony?

  World War I, they came back, it was called shell shocked. And then after World War II,

• 8:34Dr. John Delony?

  I forgot the one he had after that, but now it is post-traumatic stress disorder. And we get further and further away from what the thing actually is and it expands, right? We talk about that. For me, if I distilled it all the way down, the one neon sign that's been flashing for me as I've read all the nerd stuff has been, we are super, super lonely as a culture. And I found myself accidentally, I don't say blaming, but pointing fingers at people saying, "Y'all need to go. I need to. We gotta go make friends." Like, we have, kind of like, we used to have to work the farms. We don't do that anymore. So now we have to go to the gym. We gotta move our bodies.

• 9:14Dr. John Delony?

  Similarly, we used to be surrounded by family, friends and neighbors, and that was our little tribe. We don't have that. So now you've gotta go make friends. You recently published a, man, it's so good. I'll be citing you at the next big talk I give.

• 9:31Dr. John Delony?

  Expanding the issues with loneliness in a way that I had missed. It's way worse than I thought it was. And, and panning all the way back at how our culture has shifted. And so, talk to me about that article that you wrote and just the way you laid it out was, it was overwhelming how much it has shifted, right? It's not a matter of us just not having friends anymore or having a quote unquote tribe. It's way bigger than that.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I believe I titled the article 1,000 Ways to Get Disconnected.

• 10:00Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  And it really just looks at how society has changed in such a way that you no longer have to interact with people as much. So, I had a bunch of examples, but to take one, people now wear ear pods everywhere they go. Well, you're not going to talk to people when you have earbuds in your ears. We were talking about how, the other day on the show, how when you went to order fast food, you did so through a screen and the food just sort of appears. You no longer even had to have that minute-long conversation with the checkout clerk, which sometimes that's just, hey, I'll have the number two, and he goes, okay, that'll be $5. But sometimes it goes, hey, how's your day going? Oh, yeah? And then he tells you a funny story. You tell him a funny story. And those tiny interactions are really important.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  And this goes, I mean, this goes all the way down. Like, if you just start to pick apart how life has shifted over the last 100 years, we have far more interactions, I would argue, one with the people that are closest to us for a variety of reasons, but also just people in our community that we would have used to talk to for maybe, say, two or three minutes, and that might seem like a throwaway. Oh, yeah, no big deal, who cares? No, those are actually really important when you look at the data.

• 11:11Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Like, those tiny interactions. I mean, think, you check out at the grocery store. Self-checkout now.

• 11:16Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  Right? You don't even talk to the clerk. Um, what else, what else did I have?

• 11:21Dr. John Delony?

  There was, um...

• 11:22Speaker 01

  People go to bars less, which I'm not advocating, hey, people go out and drink your face off. I'm not saying that at all. But, bars used to be really important community gathering places where people would find common ground. They would go back and forth on political issues, but it was in kind of a safe space. And now, how do people talk about politics? On Facebook, screaming at each other, right? Because you don't have, you don't see the humanity in the other person as you have that little conversation.

• 11:49Dr. John Delony?

  Or you might see a button on a, on a teller that said, I voted a certain way. And they would smile at you and say, how's your day going? There was a humanization too, right? Or somebody might stand in front of you with a shirt of a band that you thought was evil, but they're a real nice person, right? Or whatever. But all that has been, I was thinking even of, um, Daniel Tosh has a hilarious bit about this, but, like, when I was a kid, you'd pull up and park at the airport, and you'd walk all the way through, and you'd wait, I'd wait for my mom with my dad for my mom to get off the plane. And that, you just all stood around and waited. But you're standing around with a whole bunch of other people. And it was not a good quote unquote optimization of our time.

• 12:32Dr. John Delony?

  And we missed potential clients or whatever nonsense we've piled into that. But there was a whole bunch of people standing around. And I got to watch all these different hugs and cheering and signs, all that stuff. And now you pull up to the, to the, if you don't Uber, right? Now, if somebody asked me to, uh, right, to like, hey, can you get me ready to the airport? My first thought is like, why don't you just Uber like an adult, right?

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:58Dr. John Delony?

  But, somebody hops in the car and y'all are off. And there's no human, right?

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:03Dr. John Delony?

  And then I get this message that says, these humans are trying to kill you. They hate you. They want you dead. And then I've got an ancient nervous system that's just, like, you, you wrote about like the ATM machines? Uh, like, everything has been optimized to become frictionless, right?

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of transactions that used to occur in person, like, you'd have to go to the bank, right? And then you talk to the teller. And well, now that's just all digital. And you can, you can apply that to so many different parts of our lives. And when I looked at the data, I think it said that people interact with random others about 70% less than they used to. And so, this is a cutting out of about, I believe it was 20 hours a month of time that we would just be interacting with random people. Like, that's a lot of time.

• 13:50Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  And it turns out that time was actually really important.

• 13:53Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Not just beyond the, hey, you and I had a fun conversation, and it lifted my spirits, and you told me a funny story, and we connected. But also, to go back to, you see the humanity in all these other people that live around you. Um, work from home has rose. Super convenient that I don't have to commute. At the same time, when you're in an office, you're having to talk to people. Like, you have all these little side conversations, right? It's not just, oh, you have the meeting and then you're done. There's a meeting after the meeting, which is like, hey, let's noodle on this idea a little more. And oh, by the way, how are your kids doing? Did they get into that school you wanted? Oh, they did? Fantastic!

• 14:31Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  Right?

• 14:32Dr. John Delony?

  Or they didn't, oh, I'll share that with you too.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  And you can, yeah, and you can empathize.

• 14:36Dr. John Delony?

  And there's even, there's even minor, and they're, they're this big, they're teeny tiny. I'm going to get a cup of coffee at the coffee machine. And right when I get there, somebody gets, comes, she gets there right in front of me. And so, I have to wait. And that's just a normal social interaction. I'm going to wait. But when I live in my headphones, and then I work from home, and then my food gets delivered, and my toilet paper gets delivered, then I go to the restaurant, and what, you have to ask twice for napkins? And it's like, a major crisis.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:10Dr. John Delony?

  This place is awful, right? Um, because I've lost that ability to just interact like a person.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Here's where, here's where this started to land with me, I think, is when I was, uh, so for this book that I just submitted, um, the through line is this 850-mile hike I did through southern Utah. Super hard hike. You, there's no trail, so you're navigating, uh, but you got to resupply, right? So, you got to get to a town at least like every week to resupply. So, I'm with my friend, uh, Matt Sherman, wonderful, amazing human being. We'd pop out on these highways, like 40 miles from a town. Just go, well, how are we going to get to the town? Well, I guess we got to stick our thumbs out and pray to God that someone will pull over.

• 15:56Dr. John Delony?

  Wow.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  And the first times you're doing that, you're going, who's going to pull over? No one's going to pull over. People don't do that. And if they do, they're probably going to murder us, right? But we would get in these cars with these people, and we'd be in there for, you know, half an hour, 45 minutes.

• 16:14Dr. John Delony?

  And you don't smell great.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  We don't smell great. We didn't shave.

• 16:18Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Didn't cut our hair. We would have the most amazing conversations with people. And you would just connect at this extremely human level, because we enter the car going, is this a serial killer?

• 16:30Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  And as we're getting in the car, they're thinking to themselves, are these two serial killers, right?

• 16:36Dr. John Delony?

  Those bodies in their backpack.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. But you, we would find that, and we got in the, we got in cars with people who were from all different walks of life. I'm talking deadheads like me, out in the desert doing heck knows what, to ranchers, super right-wings, they've got their, you know, their rifles in their cars, to just sort of like vagabonds, to tourists from other countries. And we would connect on this really human level that I was like, this just doesn't happen anymore. Because there has been sort of this grand siloing off of ourselves through various means that we did all this stuff to make life easier, right? Self-checkout is easier. I don't have to think of what to say to the clerk. They don't have to pay a clerk. Uh, I can mobile order my coffee.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  I don't have to wait in line. That seems convenient. And it is convenient in the short term, but we lose something in the long term that I think is really important. And so, I think my takeaway from those experiences, and there was one that was particularly awesome. This was at the height of the US-China trade stuff. And that morning, like, this breaking news had dropped that was, you know, China's restricting this element, whatever, you know, news is saying we're on the brink of war. This couple pulls over. And like, where are you from? Like, oh, we're from Beijing. And we're like, oh, guess what we didn't talk about?

• 18:00Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  That.

• 18:02Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Guess what we did? Talked about, oh, you have kids? Where are you guys going? Talked about being outdoors, our interests, our, and it was like, you go, we hear all this stuff in the news, but when you sit down with people, whether that's from the other political aisle, whether that's from a quote unquote, you know, hostile country, you find we're all just humans on this big spinning rock, just trying to figure it out.

• 18:25Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  We just want to have some friends. We don't want to be alone, and we want to be loved. That's what it all comes down to. And it's easy to miss that if you just kind of go through the motions and do the easy thing that allows you to avoid others.

• 18:39Dr. John Delony?

  Hmm. Um, I was speaking at an event a few years ago that Malcolm Gladwell was speaking at, and he said something I'd never considered. And he said, I just want to recommend, before you debate something, quickly pull out a piece of paper, and y'all write down all the things you agree on. Just start there. And he's like, I promise you, that list will be a thousand things. Healthy kids, air conditioner that works, like, no skin cancer, like, the list will be long.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:07Dr. John Delony?

  And then, let's talk about the things we disagree with. It'll be six, or four, or two, right? And if you start there, and, and, man, that's a powerful story. I fall victim to they, like, they hate us. And it's like, well, Dan doesn't, and I know Dan. Dan just, our kids go to school together, right? And so...

• 19:31Dr. John Delony?

  I can't figure out a way through that other than, and you've coined this, which I just love. The 2%, like I see that everywhere now. Talk about 2% and I'll try to thread them together and you tell me if I'm right or wrong.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  So the 2% comes from a statistic that found only 2% of people take the stairs when there's also an escalator available. Now, 100% of those people know that taking the stairs is going to be better for them long term.

• 19:57Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  But 98% of people choose to do the easier, more effortless thing that could actually harm them in the long run. Now, to me, this isn't a thing where you go, oh, those 98% of people are idiots. No, it's more like it suggests that we're wired to do the easy effortless thing. That is good in the short term, but we don't think of the long-term consequences. And so it's not really about the stairs. It's sort of a metaphor for all these decisions we make every single day.

• 20:25Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  It's like every day in life, we have to make choices where you got to get to that metaphorical second floor. And you can either take those stairs, which are going to be a little bit harder now, but it's going to move the ball farther downfield for you in the way that you want your ultimate big goals in life, or you can kind of do this easy effortless thing. It's not going to help, right? The metaphorical escalator. And so I think when you widen that lens, you, you really can see it everywhere.

• 20:51Dr. John Delony?

  Everywhere.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  Everywhere. Even as something as simple as I think I highlighted in that article, like if you need to ask a question of a friend. Most people just text, right? I mean, we text, I do it all the time. I'm just going to text.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  The phone call is a little more of a pain. But what happens after you ask the question? How are you doing? What's new? The conversation spins in an interesting way and you connect as humans. You each get, I mean, it's like a minor therapy session.

• 21:23Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Right?

• 21:24Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  And that's important.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  Yes, a little harder in the short term, but the long-term gains are there.

• 21:31Dr. John Delony?

  I think it's not even important. I think now it's, when you look at the data on loneliness, right? With everything from Alzheimer's to heart disease to cancer to, I mean, everything. I've come to believe it's a matter of life and death and maybe not in this immediate moment, but over the long haul.

• 21:51Dr. John Delony?

  So two months ago, I had this big, and again, it's, I've got big existential drama. I'm, Michael will tell you, I'm a lot.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  We all do, we all do.

• 22:02Dr. John Delony?

  About like AI and who's going to know what and all that. And so I just said, this month I'm going to not, I'm a, I disconnected my phone from my car.

• 22:13Dr. John Delony?

  I took off every tracking thing I have and I went and got cash out of the bank. I'm going to, oh, and I turned off Amazon Prime. Like, I'm just going to navigate it this way. A couple of things happened. One was I found myself more and more calm throughout the day. And I found myself not quote unquote, needing as much stuff as I thought I did, just stuff, right? And it was a big pain. Like it was a pain when I could just click something and know it would show up tomorrow.

• 22:50Dr. John Delony?

  To be like, ah, one of kids getting in the car, we got to go over to this thing and get one picture frame for a thing, right? And it was inconvenient. But if I pan all the way back out, going to the bank, and you should have seen the teller was a real young guy, there's only like two people in the bank now. And I was just telling him, this month I'm doing this. And he was like, man, I was like, I like coming into the bank. We ended up talking for 30 minutes, young kid. He's like, what am I going to do with, like, I'm thinking about doing this. Ended up just being a, like, now I'm the old man and he's the young kid, right?

• 23:20Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 23:20Dr. John Delony?

  But it was a great interaction and I walked out with a smile on my face. And it cost me a quote unquote, hour of my day, right? Like it wasn't, it didn't optimize my day. And that's forced me to ask deeper questions about what do I think is optimization? What do I think about?

• 23:40Dr. John Delony?

  How like I have tried to automate everything in my life. It just has walked me through what it's cost me and I keep coming back to the 2%. Most of us are going to do the thing, myself included, that's just the easiest. And I don't think that's the right thing. And the gap there means I'm going to be uncomfortable a lot more than I thought I was going to be. Right? And that discomfort is actually life. That's actually the good stuff.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the good stuff. And I would also argue that once you go through that initial, oh, this is a huge pain. You start to understand the payoffs.

• 24:14Dr. John Delony?

  Yes.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  And then you go, no, I actually, now that I'm done with this month-long experiment, I think I'm going to pop into the bank more.

• 24:22Dr. John Delony?

  Yes.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  I think I'm going to get behind the wheel and go someplace to get this item that I could just get. Cause you start to realize, oh, there's these intangibles behind that, right? Like, so. The time savings is very easy to measure. That's clear. I saved 30 minutes doing that. We can put a number on it. What's much harder to measure is all this, these other things that happen. How do you measure how much happier you felt after that?

• 24:51Dr. John Delony?

  Or how much more peaceful.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  How much more peaceful? These little things you learn, all these other things. Now, because this is easy to measure, I think we can go, oh, that is clearly the optimal choice. And because these things are not easy to measure, they're a little more, you know, complex, can't put a number on them. We often devalue those.

• 25:09Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  But life is not measurable. Like living a good life is not measurable. It's usually the things that are these thorny, big existential questions. Those are what are worth living for, really.

• 25:20Dr. John Delony?

  But that's a, that is a bold rejection of the bill of sale we've been, we've been given, right?

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 25:27Dr. John Delony?

  If you can't measure it, it doesn't matter, which is the mantra of the last 20 years in our world. If you, anything worth anything is measurable. That's business talk, that is personal talk, that is. And I'm finding more and more. Yeah, the short term, there's a lot of data on when you hand cash over to a teller, you actually spend less. And it's easier when you're putting down this, a piece of plastic to just be like, yeah, yeah, you supersize it? Yeah, go ahead. Because it's not real. It's not a real transaction. When I'm handing you cash, it's like, yeah.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  It costs something.

• 25:59Dr. John Delony?

  It costs something.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Costs something real.

• 26:04Dr. John Delony?

  But I'm, I gotta say, man, like, I recently saw some literature on what bodies opposite genders find attractive, right? And it ended up, I walked away being like, oh, women are trying to create a picture that they think other women think is attractive and men are trying to create a picture that they think other men think is attractive.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:31Dr. John Delony?

  But the, the big neon sign for me was, here is this picture of this ripped dude that I would, I'll write you a check if I could get a body like that. But, and I ran it by my wife and she's like 1,000%. And it was the first time I believed her.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  I did the same thing.

• 26:48Dr. John Delony?

  Oh, did you?

• 26:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:49Dr. John Delony?

  Cause she said, that body comes at a cost. I know that if you had that body, I would have to live with a guy who.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:59Dr. John Delony?

  Was always bickering with the waiter about what he cooked the food in and we couldn't have ice cream and we couldn't, and we couldn't, and we'd miss a date because you got to get your workout in. I don't want that life.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 27:11Dr. John Delony?

  And it goes opposite way too. Like when she was like, what about this? I'm like, objectively, it's a beautiful person. I know what that life would entail for me and I don't want to be married to that person.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  It becomes a marker of personality.

• 27:24Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, yeah. And, and it was like, oh, I've missed the whole boat. I don't need to optimize, optimize. I want to be healthy. And I think looking at these things once a year, once every two couple is important because it gives me a direction. But man, I'm watching folks and I would say, I don't know a way to say it, but in health and wellness spaces, reducing, I noticed you don't like, I don't need like, reducing the number of trackers and the number of, because it's played itself out. Like I know, I kind of know ish what my HRV is. I kind of know ish these things. And unless I'm trying to hit a, I'm trying to do a cut for an event or something, I want to have a pretty good life. And that means sometimes looking at my wife, being like, you want ice cream for dinner? Not all the time. Or sometimes that's.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:10Dr. John Delony?

  They, let's just go for a long, long hike and let's just go hang out, right?

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Well, like if we want to pull back and get all heady and theoretical as you and I sometimes do.

• 28:19Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  There's this idea called value capture.

• 28:21Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  And it's by this philosopher from the University of Utah. His name's Thi Nguyen. So it's T H I N G U Y E N. His parents are Vietnamese. He's going to be on my podcast next week. And we often start a process, we'll take weight loss as an example. So why do you, why does a person generally want to lose weight?

• 28:42Dr. John Delony?

  They want to look better.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  They want to feel better. They want to look a little better. They want to feel healthier, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  How do we measure weight loss? Pounds.

• 28:52Dr. John Delony?

  One number.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  One number, right? So oftentimes people will get to a certain number on the scale and they go, oh, I want that lower.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  So then you go, we got to keep getting that number lower. But as that number gets lower, you start to do things that don't actually help this overall larger goal you were after. Feeling better, being happier, actually being healthier, being more energized. And so the number is like this crisp target, but it's really just a stand-in for all these bigger goals we want in life. And so sometimes those two things track, but oftentimes we can get so focused on the number that we lose sight of the overall goal. Another example, grades, right? So why were grades even created in the first place? It's to make the lives of administrators easier. All right? And when I was a professor, I'm sure you experienced this yourself.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Our goal is to get students prepared for the future. Okay, so what do you need to do that? They need to learn all these things. They need to learn to function as a human being. They need to sort of learn the material in a way that they can apply it to their life and leave the university and be an effective human being in the world. But when we start to put in grades, what do the students care about?

• 30:08Dr. John Delony?

  How do I get that great?

• 30:09Speaker 01

  How do I get that great? They lose sight of this overall goal. We get so obsessed with the GPA, the GPA or the specific grade that it captures that value. Because all of a sudden, this is this thing. This is the target. This is now the target. That's what they ultimately care about. Not, am I ready to go out in the world and like be a good human being who has a fulfilling career and can make an income and do all these other things? And you see that it really any big sort of institutional measurement, that tends to happen. Salary is another one, right?

• 30:41Dr. John Delony?

  And for professors, and I've seen this data, we got judged on one thing. Besides research and whatever, we got judged on classy vows.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:53Dr. John Delony?

  And so then there became that implicit. I'll give you guys A's, B's, y'all give me good E vows, we'll high five. And together, whether it's explicitly, I've had professors just say, hey, I'll take care of y'all, you take care of me. But more implicitly, you get further and further away from the goal, which is, dude, I had a very real lived experience after PhD one for me, when there was a student who was suicidal, like really struggling, and a guy came in and sat and talked with him. And I remember walking away thinking this, and this is embarrassing to say out loud, oh, he knew what to say.

• 31:29Dr. John Delony?

  I need to learn that, right? And that's what sent me to like, my next degree was like, I need to learn this skill set because now I'm in the real world and there's real consequences to me knowing or not knowing that, forget the grades. And by the way, grades took care of themselves. When I was that invested in the material, learning this stuff, grades are an afterthought, right? They're just a marker on the way to a race I'm running, right? To how can I help somebody? But it changed the whole dynamic. My son's 16 and he's like, chemistry, blah. And I actually get that, like, no one has ever pulled me over and put a gun to my head and say, hey, you know, what's a mole, right? And also, there's bigger things here that like, anyway, but you get these,

• 32:13Dr. John Delony?

  almost you get what you measure, and that means you better be really careful what you're measuring.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 32:18Dr. John Delony?

  Because it could take you on a weird trip away from where you wanted to go.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the takeaway for people to pull back from the philosophy and just be like, how do you actually use this is, those measurements can be useful, but you need to ask,

• 32:33Speaker 01

  what are we trying to, what's the larger goal I'm trying to accomplish, you know, with, with a salary, right? People just want, I just need to make more money, make more money, make more money. Why do you want to make more money? Well, because I think it'll make me be happier. I'll have less stress in my life. Okay, well, what do you need to do to get that higher salary? I need to work a ton and get super stressed at work and be miserable. It's like, well, it sounds like maybe that's backfiring. Maybe you would be better just sort of settling. And so asking those questions like, what's my ultimate goal here, becomes really important. And it is this, it takes a minute, right? It's not as easy. Because if I just say, if you just go, 150K a year is better than 130K. That's much easier to just intuitively, oh, better.

• 33:15Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  And these thornier questions are harder to grapple with. It goes back to that 2% concept. But if you can kind of make that analysis, that becomes much more rewarding for you in the long term and useful.

• 33:27Dr. John Delony?

  I, I think we've done ourselves culturally a disservice by answering the question, hey, what are you worth with a number?

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 33:35Dr. John Delony?

  And because that gives me an objective finish line, I am worth this much dollars versus, I think the answer to the question, what are you worth is, who do you love and who loves you?

• 33:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:44Dr. John Delony?

  And that's, that's a much more squishy thing to measure, right? Switching gears to marriage, but really along the same line. When my wife and I were sitting across the table saying, are we done, right? We're being adults here. Are we going to call this thing? And it was a hard, hard conversation.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  What was that?

• 34:00Dr. John Delony?

  This was years ago. But it was like, we'd reached the end of the marriage as we knew it. And the question was, are we going to build a new one or is this it, right? One of the things, and that was, that was nuclear conversation number one, right? And then obviously, there's a bunch of the laughter shot conversations like, in my, I think it was my wife, I'll give her credit, one of us asked, I'm pretty sure it was her, she usually asks the wiser questions. It was out of exasperation, but she asked a very similar question, what do you want this house to feel like when you walk in? And I remember for the first time in my whole life vomiting up, like, I want you to be happy I'm here. I want my daughter to come running at me and give me a hug. And I want my son to be making fart noises over there because he lives

• 34:45Dr. John Delony?

  in a house where that's hilarious, right? And as I just threw up, like, here's what I want this place to feel like. That was the first time she was like, okay, we can get there. And it's gonna take a lot of work to get there because you can't bring your last meeting home. And if you skip working out for three days, you're tough to be around, right? And, and, and for her, like, I've got to change this. And like, seeing you walk in and be happy that you're here has to be more important than a perfect kitchen, right? But it's that one thing, what do you want this thing to actually look like? And let's reverse engineer that, not, let's get a couple of quasi arbitrary metrics and try to say that's our, that's our, our goal, right?

• 35:27Dr. John Delony?

  When I was, um, I also just hit send on a thing, it's got sent back to me with lots of edits, so.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  That's a good thing.

• 35:35Dr. John Delony?

  Such as the part of writing books.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  It's a good thing.

• 35:37Dr. John Delony?

  Um, I called you and I, and as I was asking people, like, why did you just get married? You had by far the most romantic love story about why you chose to get married. Would you be willing to share it?

• 35:50Speaker 01

  When we actually decided to get married or what I said about it?

• 35:53Dr. John Delony?

  I'm being really sarcastic.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was.

• 35:56Dr. John Delony?

  It was by far the best. I didn't put it in the, end up putting it in the manuscript.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  The sun was setting across a remote beach in the Bahamas. No, no, no. Setting is Las Vegas, Nevada. Clearly, the, you know, the most lovely city on earth.

• 36:12Dr. John Delony?

  Romance happens.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  It's where romance happens very quickly. And often, oftentimes at a cost.

• 36:17Dr. John Delony?

  Very short.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we're in the parking lot of Barnes and Noble. We had just moved to Las Vegas, me and my now wife Leah, then girlfriend. We moved to Las Vegas. Leah had just gotten out of law school. I had just started a job at the university as a professor. Her health insurance ends while mine is kicking in. She's stressing about health insurance and how she doesn't have it. You know, we're sitting in the car, literally just about ready to go in, but we got to finish our conversation. She's stressed out. And I was like,

• 36:52Speaker 01

  well, you know, what could we do about it? And she goes, well, we could get a civil union, right? And I go, why don't we just get married? She goes, hold on a minute. She pulls out her cell phone.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Says here, the marriage is only five bucks more than a civil union.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  And I think it has more tax benefits, Michael.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  So yes.

• 37:16Dr. John Delony?

  Thus the romance is born.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Thus the romance.

• 37:18Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  And then came the, to bring it back into Ramsey financial world. He goes, well, what are we going to do for the wedding? And she's like, oh, man, my parents are going to have 100 people at this wedding. And where are we going to have it? Because my family's in Utah, hers is in like New Jersey area. So I go, why don't we just go get married? We'll go get a marriage license. We show up to get it. We think that's the thing. They're like, no, you actually have to have a witness in a thing. Now, in Las Vegas, because it's a place where people get married on a whim, there are literally homeless people who hang out outside of the courthouse and will be your witness for 20 bucks. Now, that was just too much.

• 38:00Dr. John Delony?

  You're a romantic.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  No, no, you know, the guy with track marks in his arm, and did you need a witness?

• 38:05Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Now we're good.

• 38:06Dr. John Delony?

  We're good.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  So we got married at a casino by a three times divorced officiant, whose name was Earl.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  And it was awesome.

• 38:16Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  But what was interesting is that, and I think this is the reason you called me, because you were like, why would you get, why would you get married? You guys were fine. And I will say, something internally changed. And I think the thing I told you that, it's like, now you're doing the crossword in ink. The decisions now matter. And now I have to factor this other person and this larger thing into all these decisions I make. I can't be as selfish anymore. Now, that is a giant pain in my butt.

• 38:50Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  I would love to just live on Michael Island and.

• 38:54Dr. John Delony?

  It's a big 2% staircase to walk up every day.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  It's a big staircase.

• 38:57Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  But it's the most rewarding relationship I have. And it became more rewarding once we started writing it in ink, despite the struggles.

• 39:09Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  And if you pull back, people value things that are harder to get and maintain. There's very good reasons for that. I think it goes back to raising kids, keeping the tribe alive. You know, raising kids, I don't have kids, but everyone I've talked to who does, they say, that is a giant pain in my butt. Oh, my God, this kid is so much work. But if you ask people, what's the most important thing in your life? Where have you gotten the most meaning? It goes back to kids. But that's just kind of like this big metaphor for all these other decisions we make in life. And so kind of as you said it, the discomfort and the hardship is often a signal that this really actually matters. You get something for free for no work at all?

• 39:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it seems great. But really, it's not as rewarding. Good example, lottery winners. Someone cuts you, the government cuts you a check for 200 million because you won the Powerball, seems awesome for about a week. And then you find they get totally miserable because there was no struggle in that. Had they had to earn that $200 million, things would probably be very different for them.

• 40:18Dr. John Delony?

  So how do we, I think the, she's a writer, her name is Freya India, and.

• 40:25Dr. John Delony?

  She was writing about this idea of commitment. And I was raised in an ethos where if I didn't have another line in the water for work, right, the, the, the picture I grew up with is I'm fishing. And if I get married and I got kids, I would be insane to have a job, one line in the water that my boss could take away from me at any moment. That would be dumb. I should have other lines in the water at all times. I should be always quote unquote networking. There's a network events. I should always have a plan B and C and D. And then that leaks over into relationships like, man, if you go all in on this one,

• 41:10Dr. John Delony?

  all in, both feet in the boat, everybody's in this thing. And you can get really burned bad on this, right? And what she writes is, we've been told the only commitment that you can make is a commitment to yourself. And I, I, I called you a second time, I think, and maybe it was a longer version of that first conversation. But I think the only thing that matters, and tell me if I'm crazy here. If I look back all the data, they all, we were made or we've been, we've been, we've evolved to this thing where the only way I'm going to achieve this thing called peace is if I put myself in a position

• 41:50Dr. John Delony?

  where I'm as healthy as possible, so that I can give my entire self away. And in a marriage, if that person does the same thing, we'll ride or die forever. Right? Um, one, one writer says, everyone in a marriage should, the best marriage is that each person should be secretly thinking they got the better end of the deal. Right?

• 42:12Dr. John Delony?

  How do you back all the way out of a culture that it says, the only person you can count on is you? And the best way to do that is to simplify your life. I mean, to ease your life as much as possible, to be as comfortable as possible. When really the opposite is true, the more challenging commitments I anchor into. Or as a psychology mentor, mine once said, what if you lived your life as though you could never move? Like what things would you do differently there? It feels so counterintuitive, countercultural to say, because there's, there's reason, the, one of the reasons we're still married for several times is it was going to be too much of a pain to unwind it. Right? We put, we got, had a government thing. We have a joint checking account, all of our, all of our wills. It would be such a pain to unwind it.

• 42:57Dr. John Delony?

  And I don't want to see my kids only three days a week. I'll see you tomorrow and we'll start over again. Right? And culture would tell us, oh, that means this is over instead of, no, it's hard today. But show up again tomorrow. Right? How do you push back on a culture that has just said, the whole reason for living is, we talked about this morning, like, the hedonic treadmill, get on it and then find suck as much pleasure out of this thing as possible. Extract as much pleasure as possible so that you can live this little bubble gum life.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Well, I like your boat metaphor when it comes to marriage. Who are you getting in the boat with? That's an important decision.

• 43:38Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Right? If you think you're a pretty good sailor or rower.

• 43:43Dr. John Delony?

  Sailing.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  You still want a crew member who's like, I can row too.

• 43:50Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  I'm a good sailor too. Who are you going to go through the storm with? Right? You want to make sure you're making the, the good call on someone that you'll have good teamwork with in navigating those storms, because they will come. And so for me, it's, I think, being willing to, one, you got to work on yourself too.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  But also finding someone who has that quality in them as well. And I do think that, um, to sort of pull back to your larger question. Yes, society does say, do the next easiest, most comfortable thing. Despite, despite all the podcasts where people say, do hard things is like, and I'm one of those people.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  You still look at what people do day to day and the way society's set up. It's things of, are designed to be as easy as possible.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  But I think it's finding in yourself and others, the quality to be willing to work through things when it gets hard and keep on pushing. The boat takes water. Are you like, oh, we're going to die and drown. We got to shoot up the flare.

• 45:01Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 45:02Speaker 01

  No, you want someone who goes, all right, we got to start bailing.

• 45:04Dr. John Delony?

  We're starting to bail right now.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  And is willing to do that work. I mean, I think if I, if I think of my own marriage, it's like, well, why did I marry Leah?

• 45:13Speaker 01

  A lot of it is sense of humor. Funny, there's like three people on earth who can make me laugh. She's one of them, like laugh out loud. And we had, um, so we actually met at work where at a big media company, kind of like this. Never really saw each other or talked for a year. And then this was at a, is that a big magazine? And so the internet was sort of eating magazines and there was this crazy round of layoffs. And this is sort of a contextual joke, but, um, the company was owned by this family that was really hippies. And in this new HQ, which they poured a ton of money in, they created an energy vortex kiva in the middle. It was the stupidest thing. I totally messed up the design of the building. You had to walk around it.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  But the whole idea is like, energy circulates in the kiva and it'll make us all more creative, you know?

• 46:03Dr. John Delony?

  That's what Kelly's always doing. She brings her crystals in here and her, yeah.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Stuff like that. And we're in the mailroom after this. I'd never really talked to her. Our coworkers are scurrying around the office in a panic and she just looks at me and goes,

• 46:17Speaker 01

  not even the kiva can save the energy in this place right now. And I just lost it. It was one of the funniest things I, just like dry, deadpan sense of humor. And I was like, I immediately like this person.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  And then I was like, oh, you want to hang out later? You know, like fingers crossed? Sure. Um, and then we just hit it off. And so I think it's like finding similar personality traits. And we both don't take ourselves too seriously. Humor is how we deal with the world for better or worse. But it was kind of aligning on that. And I found that like, we've definitely gone through some hard things in our lives.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  But we know we can count on each other. We'll be there for each other, whether it's with a joke, a hug. For me, it's usually me trying to hug her and just be, and her excited, sort of, nah, get off of me.

• 47:06Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  And saying a joke, you know? But it's like, it's, it's just finding that sort of strange alignment, like leaning into your personality quirks, I think, and using those as a superpower when things get hard.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  I don't know if that answers the question.

• 47:20Dr. John Delony?

  What would she say about you?

• 47:23Speaker 01

  She would say that, um, I probably have the same quality in that I just try and find humor in things. I mean, big picture to me is that there is never a better time to be born right, than right now.

• 47:39Dr. John Delony?

  In ever in human history?

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Ever in human history.

• 47:42Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  And if you want me to rattle off some stats, I can, and I might as well.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Your kids are literally more than a hundred times less likely to die before reaching the age of five than they were even a couple hundred years ago. Like the infant mortality rate was more than 30% on average. All right. People, the average age used to be 35 because everyone was dying off at before age five. And most people didn't even hit 35 because you'd get murdered, you'd fall off a cliff, you would get a nick and it would get infected.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Not to mention you're walking around looking for food all day. You're starving. You could rarely find enough food. You're exposed to the elements on and on and on. Like it has never been a better time to be alive. So for me personally, that's where humor comes in because it's like, it could always be worse.

• 48:31Dr. John Delony?

  That's right.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  It could always be worse. So we have a bill that sucks and it's going to be stressful to not cover. It's like, this is a ridiculous problem in the grand scheme of time and space.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  A thousand years, the problem was, well, we pissed off that tribe in that other canyon. And now they're coming to chop our heads off. That's a real.

• 48:55Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? So I think we align on the humor thing. I think she would say about me, I probably, this can be a good thing and a bad thing.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  But I'm able to remain like, it'll be fine.

• 49:14Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  Even, you know, even when things do get bad.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Whereas she's like, she sees a problem about 10 steps away and starts to solve for it, which can be good in the event of a real problem. It offsets my own like, nah, it'll be fine. But also if it's not a big problem, she can get sort of like neurotic.

• 49:34Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  She's a lawyer. So we also, we, we complement each other's faults is what I'm trying to say. You know, we meet like, we're able to complement each other on our good things, but we're able to sort of offset each other's personality traits that sometimes backfire, I think. And so it's just like that weird mesh.

• 49:52Dr. John Delony?

  How do you keep from taking those personality traits that are different personally?

• 49:58Dr. John Delony?

  I struggled for years. I, my wife would do a thing. And often what I found is spouses do a thing.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:07Dr. John Delony?

  That they would want done in that, in a situation. Like we get, there's some conflict. I want to watch this. You want to watch that. You never want to, and it immediately goes to never and always, right? You never want to watch what I want to watch. Always. And let's say she steps away because in that moment, she would want me to step away. All right. Well, for me, that sets off every alarm I got. Like you're not lovable and you're always going to get abandoned. And then I'm like, no. Right?

• 50:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:33Dr. John Delony?

  And how have you learned to not take stuff like that personally? The things that might be innate responses in her that are different than how you would, like your automated system would respond to it.

• 50:48Dr. John Delony?

  Maybe you're just more mature than me.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  You mentioned, um, how your wife likes the kitchen perfect. Mine, Leah's the same.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  She likes our house to look like a museum.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  If we're up to her, I would, I, my profession would be cleaning the house.

• 51:08Dr. John Delony?

  Correct.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  I'm opposite.

• 51:09Dr. John Delony?

  Yes.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  I'm a clean person in the sense that like, it's not, things aren't dirty, but like I'm a writer. There's, there's stuff everywhere. There's like studies and whatever. And, and so that raised some conflict. Because all the crap out stresses her out. Or for me, it's just like, this is just part of the tornado that ultimately ends up helping us add money to the bank account. Like this is, this is my process.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  And ultimately I had to ask myself, I learned this from another person who was wise. So do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? How hard is it for you to organize the studies at the end of the day and put them in a cupboard, Michael?

• 51:53Dr. John Delony?

  All right.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Good question. The answer is just really not that hard.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  And so now when things come up, I'm just like,

• 52:06Speaker 01

  just put the freaking cup away that you left out for a day. Like, just put it away. Now I don't always remember that. But I try and keep that in the back of my mind. How hard is that? Like ultimately I want her to be happy. That's my goal.

• 52:19Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  And if the path to getting there is just stacking some books orderly at the end of the day. Like that's a, that's a pretty low cost to entry, you know?

• 52:30Dr. John Delony?

  And on the other side, my wife has been like, he's not leaving books out, me. Because he's trying to make a point because he hates me. Like, I could just shut this door and go on about my life because he's a pretty good guy. Right? And so it works. Yeah.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  Totally. She's definitely, she's definitely given some grace, right? If I had given entirely, the house would look like a museum. It looks much closer to a museum than it did, but I'm actually, you know, that's one of those things where like,

• 52:58Speaker 01

  you know, if you were to pick one or the other, I would say her path is probably right. So let, let's like,

• 53:04Dr. John Delony?

  Exactly.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Give me some grace, but um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna lean that way. I'm trying to, I'm not always perfect. I'm not, she's probably listening to this being like, dude, you still leave so much stuff.

• 53:14Dr. John Delony?

  There's a, there's a, my big light bulb was, there was some Gottman's research and obviously they're the big marriage researchers, but essentially distilled down beyond beneath religion, sex, money, all these things that we, proxy wars that we fight over and write thousands of books have been written on. It was really good marriages are, are y'all, are y'all great friends? And I have a buddy named John. He go, I go by Hyper John. He goes by Fat John, right? So I've known him for 30 years. But there was always a joke like, that guy leaves stuff out everywhere. And when we're at his house, or at my house, wherever we happen to be, it's just stuffs out.

• 53:49Dr. John Delony?

  And not one time in 30 years have I driven home from hanging out with a guy that has stood between me and literally getting my teeth knocked out of my head. Right? A guy who has shown up for me in wild ways. Right? Have I ever driven home and thought, what is he trying to say about our friendship? Not one time ever. Cause that's just him.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:11Dr. John Delony?

  And yet I'll drive up to my house, walk in the door and there'll be a laundry basket with towels in it. And my first thought is, really? It's about my wife. You couldn't like, what are you trying to say? Instead of my default setting be, what must have her day been like? I'm gonna fold these real quick and I'm gonna go see if anything else in the dryer. That takes me a net three and a half minutes.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 54:32Dr. John Delony?

  Three and a half minutes.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 54:34Dr. John Delony?

  And it reduces my strokes. It reduces my, my blood pressure, right? But it's like, oh, she's my friend. And so what else needs to be put up around here, right? And it's just that I would do that at any of my friends' house, right?

• 54:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:51Dr. John Delony?

  But for some reason, for 15 of the 25 years, I'd walk in the door and be like, what about instead of, oh, it's my friend. She must've had a crazy day.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. I had a friend, um, to your point about being sensitive, I'm the same way. And I had a friend I was talking to and I was kind of laying, you know, I was airing my grievances. I was laying out my case like it was in court. Well, I was right. Here's the evidence and calling a witness. Here's the case. Clearly I'm in the right. And he just looks at me and he goes, did it ever occur to you that you might be too sensitive?

• 55:27Dr. John Delony?

  But you're not allowed to ask that on, on Instagram, right?

• 55:30Speaker 01

  No, it did not occur to me, but you may have some good counter evidence in this hearing.

• 55:35Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Um, and I try and think about that too. Like I just, you know, if she says something that maybe hurts my feelings, I go, you know, there's a lot of different ways to interpret that. And I don't know why she's saying, I can, I, I know that she loves me. I know we're best friends. So I'm going to guess probably my interpretation that was completely negative is probably wrong in at least some ways.

• 56:00Dr. John Delony?

  I think, I think Becky Kennedy called, told me it was called the, ah, she said it so beautifully as she does, most generous interpretation. Maybe that's it. Like you just, someone just said a thing. I get to choose what story I make up about what they just said. And I can make up one where they're coming after me and I'm going to come back, or I can make up one that was like, I said that kind of dumb, but I know what they meant. Right?

• 56:24Speaker 01

  The stories.

• 56:24Dr. John Delony?

  I get to make up that story.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. The, the story you tell yourself about your life events determines everything. That's, I mean, you hear all these things online in fitness spaces about like mental toughness and this and that and that. It's like, no, it's really just what story are you going to tell yourself? About an event and that a hundred percent shapes your outcomes. And there's so many different, of course, there are very extreme events where it's going to be hard to get a good story.

• 56:49Dr. John Delony?

  There's not, yeah. When your house burns down, there's not a good story.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:51Dr. John Delony?

  It isn't it.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  But I would say in the trenches of daily life, the narrative you place behind an event and where it's going to lead. So there's these two different types of, um, stories. I'm going to forget their exact, uh, name because I wrote about this six months ago and things just sort of fly into the ether afterwards. There's called, one is contamination stories and one, I forget the exact wording, but we'll say strengthening stories. Okay. So same event happens. Contamination story is this thing happened. It is going to mess me up. All these bad outcomes are going to happen and I'm never going to be good again. Strengthening stories are this bad thing happened, but what did I learn from it? How am I going to go grow from it? Could there be

• 57:37Speaker 01

  a way in which this actually makes me a stronger, better person?

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Same exact thing happens. Someone who tells themselves the contamination story is going to have a worse life course, worse health outcomes, worse mental health.

• 57:49Dr. John Delony?

  Your body starts solving for that story.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. Whereas with the strengthening story, you have better outcomes and you actually become better off from those events because you learn from them. People don't learn from when times are easy. People learn from when things are hard. This is why you and I have talked at length about Joseph Campbell and his work.

• 58:06Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  But, um, that's what the hero's journey is.

• 58:10Dr. John Delony?

  Right. But that's, that's post-traumatic growth and post, uh, you know, post-traumatic stress disorder, like just a small percentage. Most people have a really awful thing and given the right tribe,

• 58:24Dr. John Delony?

  you be, you, you, you become stronger, right? Um, or maybe not even stronger, but you become a different version of yourself.

• 58:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:31Dr. John Delony?

  And.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Great example I love. Um, there's a study on cancer survivors. Most of them retrospectively said that cancer was one of the best things that ever happened to them.

• 58:43Dr. John Delony?

  No wild.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  Cause why, well, why, why would that be? Cause it reset how they saw their life. They go, oh, it sort of put like a firm, like it made me realize that, yeah, this ride is going to end. And that changed how I rode the ride, you know? They start to go, oh, okay. I'm going to drop all this stuff that's not really going to matter in the end. I'm going to spend more time with friends, with family. I'm going to do things I really like. And so that's like, cancer is extreme and the vast majority of people find they grow from it. And I, I read that study and I'm like, well, let's see if this is BS. So I called up my mom. She's been cancer free for 10 years. So I read this study. What do you think about this? And she goes, oh yeah.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  She's like, I feel like it shaped my decisions, lowered my stress because I see things differently. I'm like, it's not as bad as cancer. This, you know, this thing that happened in my life. She spent more time with me. She said it even made her nicer. My mom has the tendency to like, don't piss her off.

• 59:45Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  She like made me much nicer around people. Um, so I do think that's sort of like a metaphor for sometimes these things can actually turn out to be good things.

• 59:54Dr. John Delony?

  So I just got a picture in my mind that I've never had before.

• 59:59Dr. John Delony?

  So if we all view our life as though we're on a roller coaster, and there comes a day when it runs out of track, it will. It's 100% guaranteed. This, this roller coaster runs out of track. And it might run out of track over a cliff. It might run out of track up against a brick wall, but it runs out of track. I can spend all of my time on that roller coaster gripping this thing as hard as I can. Or I can throw my hands up and enjoy that ride.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:00:25Dr. John Delony?

  That's a wild, like, that to me just changed. That's a good frame for me.

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  And here's another thing. How fun is a roller coaster? That's perfectly flat with no turns and no corkscrews and no upside downs and no bubble, all this crazy stuff.

• 1:00:40Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  It's boring. No, you need, you need the crazy stuff to make that ride thrilling.

• 1:00:46Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  I would also argue that, um, today it's never been easier to avoid the thrilling stuff.

• 1:00:53Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  BS pops up in your life, you can avoid it. You got a problem with a relationship, you can ice them out. You can just, uh, you don't like your boss. I quit. I'm gonna go find another job.

• 1:01:06Dr. John Delony?

  Or your spouse. I'm just gonna swipe right, man.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:08Dr. John Delony?

  Like, I don't wanna deal with this conflict. I'm out.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  Totally. And so,

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  those sorts of things are what make life interesting.

• 1:01:17Dr. John Delony?

  It's funny you say that because I was riding on a kiddie roller coaster with my daughter when she was really young and, and it was,

• 1:01:24Dr. John Delony?

  but it wasn't high. And I said, here comes the big one. And it went, mm. And she said, Dad, I wasn't, you know what I mean?

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:31Dr. John Delony?

  But I tried to manufacture some. It was a really small little hill, but I tried to, here it comes. She's like, that's not that big a deal, right? Man, okay. You wrote about this a long time ago, maybe been a couple of years ago. And it has stuck with me.

• 1:01:49Dr. John Delony?

  And in fact, it reoriented how I think about mental health because I've been trying to wrestle with it for years as I was a grad student and then out in the real world.

• 1:01:58Dr. John Delony?

  We've told ourselves a story about mental health, which is if you get all the thoughts in the right order, you will somehow be mentally well. We need to keep talking about it and talking about it and talking about it. And one, if you talk about it enough, you'll order this thing in the right way. And your body will go, ah, we're well. You told the story, and I'd love for you to tell it here, about the magazine where you were, um, one of the associate editors and it was clearly not gonna make it. And you had a run, and I don't even know if you know what story I'm telling, but you were talking to, maybe it was the editor in chief, somebody. And you said, what are we gonna do? That follow-up line that he gave you has shifted everything for me. And I would love to hear that.

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  Everything for me too. There's a reason 10 years later I'm writing about it. Yeah. So context, at a big magazine, internet is like killing print. Not to mention at this magazine, we'd had a bunch of layoffs. We didn't have an editor in chief. We'd lost like half our staff. We gotta get a magazine out in the next week. Like magazines are a lot of work.

• 1:02:57Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  And we gotta figure out like new stories to do with half the staff. All this. I mean, the walls are crumbling, right? And leading up to that, I had had all these ideas for stories. But I needed to get them just perfect. They needed to be absolutely perfect before I sent them in. Everything had to be dialed, blah, blah, blah, perfect. And, um, so I'm stressing out about all this, everything. And I walk out in the hall and, um, guy's name is Bill Stump.

• 1:03:27Dr. John Delony?

  What a great name.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  Bill Stump, yeah. Raised by a pastor, I believe. Awesome guy. I said, Bill, what are we gonna do? And he just looked at me and goes, do something. That was it.

• 1:03:42Dr. John Delony?

  Those two words have changed my life, Michael.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  Do something.

• 1:03:44Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  It's like, oh, okay. So I go back into my office and I'm like, do something. We need story ideas. You've been sitting here in your head trying to get everything perfect for some imaginary jury that you think is gonna read a line and be like, this guy's so dumb. Let's fire him.

• 1:04:02Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  I send in imperfect ideas. One of them hit.

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  I wrote the stories. My first big feature in the magazine. That literally launched my career. Do something.

• 1:04:13Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  So I think the lesson is when things come up in your life, whether it be a mental health problem or relationship problem or work problem, whatever it is.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  If you're anything like me, you're probably pretty good at sitting around and over analyzing every possible angle. The reality is, is unless you're a really good fortune teller, you have no idea where there's, where those are gonna lead.

• 1:04:35Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  So take the evidence you have, pick the best path, do something. Because the more shots you take at the basket, the more likely something's gonna go in.

• 1:04:43Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  And I do think we, societally, like the rise of mental health conversations and therapy, good thing overall, at the same time, we can sit around and just talk and talk and talk. This and that. We gotta unpeel every layer of, you know, when I was a child, this thing happened and this thing happened. It's like, just do something.

• 1:05:08Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  Right? Like you can't change that. I'm not saying that's bad, but I'm saying all talk, no action, that's probably bad.

• 1:05:16Dr. John Delony?

  I think that leads it, I think it pours gasoline on a fire.

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  Totally. The more you talk about a mental health problem, the more symptoms set in. That's been shown in the data all the time. In fact, it's odd because we are told to sit down and like really analyze our thoughts deeply.

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  But in general, for most people, most of the time with the problems of general living, just brushing it off and be like, man.

• 1:05:39Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah. Or go do a thing, right?

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:41Dr. John Delony?

  And what's so strange about the way, when you wrote about that, it locked in. I looked back over the course of my professional life and whether I'm sitting in a house helping police officers move bodies, right? Or I am sitting with a parent whose child is dead in that next room right there, or I'm sitting with a kid who just got beat up is when I was working at universities because they were the wrong color in the wrong place or they loved the wrong way, whatever the thing was. No matter what we were going through, it always distilled down to a question, which was, what are you gonna do now?

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:14Dr. John Delony?

  Right? And here's some options for you. Here's some resources for you. Here's how I'll walk with you, but what are you gonna do now?

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:21Dr. John Delony?

  And I can't believe that I hadn't crystallized that in my own life on not the big things, right? If my house blows over, I know what I'm gonna do next. If it, I've been in a, on a campus where there's an active shooter, like I know what to do in those things.

• 1:06:39Dr. John Delony?

  But at the granular level, when me and my wife are just being pissy, what are you gonna do now? Are you gonna turn on the TV? Or are you gonna go find one thing to do for her? Right? Like do a thing. When me and my 10-year-old daughter get, I still try to take on a 10-year-old, which is so stupid. Like it, I remember calling a buddy a few years ago and I was like, hey, I was arguing with my 14-year-old about, and he's just, I'm gonna stop you right there. Why are you arguing with a 14-year-old? And this guy like is the CEO of a landscape company, no mental health. And he's like, why are you arguing with a 14-year-old? And I was like, all right, that's all I needed. That's it. But it's like, when I find myself in those moments, what's a thing I can do to lean towards that relationship that I'm with forever, right?

• 1:07:25Dr. John Delony?

  What's a thing, my boss doesn't appreciate, what's one value add I could give to my company right now?

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:07:31Dr. John Delony?

  What's one thing in my financial situation? What's one more hour I could work somewhere to get some more money in my house? Or what's one thing I could not buy this month, right? But it's like, it's weird that I have a podcast and I write and I, whatever, and I'm telling people, maybe listen to a few less podcasts and go start doing some of that stuff. Or I'm surrounded by religious people who go from Bible study to church service to personal journaling time. Go feed a homeless person, right? Go find some addicts that are struggling and sit with them and just bring water, man. You know what I mean? Like, start going to do something. And I find for me, that's the most exposing thing is not what are you thinking about and what are you talking about?

• 1:08:15Dr. John Delony?

  Like I've gotten to a point where I honestly don't care a lot. People say, I just wanna know what, what are you doing? Like, what are you doing in the world?

• 1:08:24Dr. John Delony?

  When it comes to health stuff, mental health stuff, um, and scarcity brain is, is one of my favorite things you've written. Talking about just kind of peeling back the layers of addiction.

• 1:08:37Dr. John Delony?

  I think the first thing I asked you yesterday was, I may or may not have a nicotine pouch problem, but, um, I've got a hyper addictive personality.

• 1:08:47Dr. John Delony?

  What are some things that the exhausted mom with three kids listening to the show or the dad who's working two jobs? Like what are some things we can do that are low level that you've seen across all your books, all your research that like, here are some value adds to your day when your time's strapped, when you're, like, here's some things you can go do that's gonna make a positive impact on your life.

• 1:09:10Dr. John Delony?

  That's a broad question.

• 1:09:11Speaker 01

  It's a broad question. There's a lot. It's, it's case by case, but if I looked at most people, most of the time, what helps? Movement helps. Call it exercise if you want to. And if you're busy with kids, get them involved.

• 1:09:23Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  You know, you can sit on the couch and watch Netflix. That's fun. It's a distraction, but you could also like go for a walk with your kids. Take them to the park, run around. You're gonna get movement. You're gonna spend time outside. That's really good for mental health. You're gonna connect at a more human level because you were talking to each other rather both, rather than both watching the screen.

• 1:09:42Dr. John Delony?

  You might see another parent and you'll, all y'all do is this. Just the eyebrow raised and you realize, oh, we're all in this, right? Right? Little thing. Yeah. Okay.

• 1:09:51Speaker 01

  Work with other people, help other people. That's like consistently linked if you can. If you don't have time for that, I get it. There's different seasons for life. You might have to wait till your kids are, say, eight or 10. You know, after writing The Comfort Crisis, for example, I had a lot of parents reach out to me. And they said, okay, should I take my kid on this, you know, two-week crazy backpacking trip or should I move? I even had one friend who was like, should I move into like the worst part of town? Would that make him more resilient? It's like, no, don't do that. Like the reason you work is so you can have a good life. But you could take them to volunteer at a homeless shelter. Like you're gonna, your kids are gonna be exposed to other ways of living and maybe realize they have, they have it pretty good in the grand scheme of time and space.

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  And by helping people, that's gonna help everyone's mental health. Like when you're helping other people, yes, outwardly you're helping them, but you're also helping yourself.

• 1:10:44Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  Significantly.

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  That, yeah, I mean, I think like for me, a lot of it is just like, what do humans do for most of the time?

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  We worked outdoors, we moved our bodies, we were with other people. We ate food that wasn't filled with fifty million ingredients.

• 1:11:03Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  Like, that stuff still really works at a fundamental level. And I think we overcomplicate things.

• 1:11:11Dr. John Delony?

  I remember, this is probably ten or twelve years ago, and this is when the the word biohacking was first getting thrown around, right? With some of the OGs. And I remember a colleague of mine, he since passed away, but he came, we were talking over dinner one night, and I was like, what did you learn at the conference? And he's, and I'll never forget this, he said, oh, that all goes away. And I was like, what do you mean? And he goes, because if you just already look, all the biohacking stuff is gonna say, move your body, hang out with good people. We're a pair bonded species, so marry one person, do really well, and have lots of good sex and raise good, healthy kids. He's like, it's just gonna end up there.

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:53Dr. John Delony?

  Right? And so all this stuff will be cool and great and whatever, but a lot of it will be theater. Just do those basic things. And for me, the, one of the big do somethings is, and this may not be fair, but I've kind of distilled my life into, I'm doing an action for me, or I'm doing action against me. And there are some moments when they, right? Like this morning, I skipped my big, long workout, right? I'm at the end of school season with my kids, I'm at the end of a long project, I'm tired.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you had to eat biscuits with me.

• 1:12:24Dr. John Delony?

  I did have to have biscuits. But I traded, I did, I slept in an extra forty-five minutes. And that meant I got a fifteen minute walk, I threw on a rucksack, thanks to you. And I took off, and I told my son, I'm gonna get you to school, but I'm gonna go do this real quick. And but it was something, right? And it was a little bit of a thing. And it wasn't my big grandiose plans and whatever, and I made this trade for this trade. And tomorrow I might trade forty-five minutes of sleep for a longer time. But it's not even gonna be the same thing all the time, but it's, what am I trying to solve for today? I'm trying to solve for peace in my house, I'm trying to solve for a relationship with my kid, I'm trying to solve for being on time, and I need to do human stuff, man. And my goodness, what a different way to live.

• 1:13:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I would say, think, try to be creative with the two percent idea we talked about.

• 1:13:15Dr. John Delony?

  That, I finished Comfort Crisis and handed it to my, he was twelve at the time. And I said, everything stops, you read that. And he read it in like two or three days. And he's like, it's good, Dad. But even him, at five in the morning, when we're walking into somebody's ranch that they're letting us hunt on, and I'll be like, I'll just drive us up. And he goes, no, Dad, Comfort Crisis, we're gonna walk. I'm like, I'm like, dude, okay.

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  He's keeping you honest.

• 1:13:40Dr. John Delony?

  And I'm climbing up a tree and I could barely breathe, but it's that those stories he'll tell at my funeral about the time Dad and I hiked through at 5:00 AM, not, we drove up with the heater on until the last possible, you know what I mean? It's, it's what life in the rearview mirror do I want to say I lived? And not the most insulated comfort, but the most adventure filled, the most fun, the most best relationships. It's, it's awesome.

• 1:14:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, no one, the stories we tell each other are never, yeah, I sat in this really comfortable chair and watched this show. It's

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  it's always the sort of things that had hardship attached to them.

• 1:14:14Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  Right, like, go out and live a life where you get a lot of stories you can tell at a party. There you go.

• 1:14:19Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, and the, the eulogy versus resume thing has stuck with me. Like, I want stories with my kids. Did I keep my suit perfectly clean? Or do I want my daughter wiping away tears at my funeral saying, one time Dad was in his suit, and he, I bumped him and he went flying into the mud puddle, and then he dragged me down, like, that's the story he'll tell, right?

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  Totally, when I think about like my, when I'm reporting books and I travel all over for these, if everything goes right, the book is not gonna be as good. When I had to go to Iraq, that trip went off the rails.

• 1:14:55Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  But the whole time in the back of my head, I'm thinking, this is a pain, this is mildly dangerous. But guess what? This is gonna be awesome.

• 1:15:02Dr. John Delony?

  Mildly dangerous, it was pretty dangerous.

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  But it's gonna be awesome in the book. So, one of the takeaways for me was no problem, no story. If you don't have a problem, probably not gonna get a story out of it. Now, for me, that's really important as a writer, but I would argue for us as humans that communicate with each other and want to live an interesting life, that's also a pretty good rule.

• 1:15:22Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, and, and to pan back, everybody's scared about their work, everybody's scared about AI, everybody's scared about the economy, everybody's scared about war. You've been a good model for me in, you know what I wanna do? I wanna go be a journalist. Right? And I wanna be a journalist and write at a major magazine. Oh, here comes the internet, right? So I'm gonna pivot and become a professor. Oh, higher ed's turning into a cesspool, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm going to, and you have been a great job, have been a great example for me from afar of saying, every one of us is gonna go through those things. And so, we could, I could, you could, you could still be trying to be one of those bitter, burned out journalists who smokes four packs a day, and trying to find a smaller and smaller magazine to write at, because I'm a magazine writer.

• 1:16:07Dr. John Delony?

  Um, or you could still be the, we both have friends who are just hating their life as college professors right now. Um, or, I'm gonna do something, alright? I'm gonna go find the next thing.

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  Exactly what you did.

• 1:16:18Dr. John Delony?

  Well, yeah, same thing, right?

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:19Dr. John Delony?

  But it's like, okay, I'm seeing this thing play out in front of me. I can sit here and be bitter about it, or I can grieve it and be sad. I would be awesome to still be writing for magazines, I still love getting magazines, right? Be awesome, the idea of being a college professor is still the greatest job on the planet. Interact with college students, it's amazing. And what I have in my head doesn't exist anymore.

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:38Dr. John Delony?

  And so, I can choose that reality and then go do something. It's awesome. Dude, thanks for being my friend, man.

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  Likewise, too, this is fun as always.