Peter and Aubrey share everything they wanted to be when they grew up — from Aubrey's childhood spy fantasies and mermaid aspirations to Peter's astronaut dreams (crushed by a second-grade principal). Peter recounts his journey from orthopaedic surgery to urology, and Aubrey traces her path from pediatric cardiothoracic surgery to astrophysics.

Show Notes

• Plex FM: Peter built a custom music radio app using Claude/Fable that turns his Plex library into live FM-style stations by decade, genre, and mood — complete with dial hiss. Plex
• Coax: The inspiration — an app that creates pseudo-live TV channels from your Plex/Jellyfin library. Coax on App Store
• The Rest is History Festival: Peter attended the inaugural festival at Hampton Court Palace with Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. The Rest is History Festival
• Wildfire smoke in Wisconsin: Aubrey describes unsafe air quality conditions at summer camp, with a purple-level AQI from Canadian wildfires.
• Aubrey's spy phase: Mission Impossible fueled a childhood obsession with becoming a CIA agent — until she reconsidered working for the US government. Mission Impossible (IMDb)
• Peter's astronaut dream: Watching shuttle launches in school (including the Challenger disaster live) inspired it — then a principal told 7-year-old Peter he'd never make it because he got sick on the playground merry-go-round. Challenger disaster
• Peter's astronomer phase: He started a Young Astronomers Club in elementary school and hand-copied encyclopedia entries for a newsletter.
• Aubrey's mermaid era: She wanted to be Ariel, and still tells her camp kids her legs turn into a mermaid tail in the pool that they keep missing.
• Aubrey's legal/political detour: A mock Congress in 8th grade (2016–2017) made her consider law or politics — she was good at arguing but decided against both.
• Peter's engineering research paper: An 8th-grade report on electrical engineering convinced him in real-time that he wanted nothing to do with it.
• Aubrey's healthcare trajectory: She bounced from pediatric cardiothoracic surgery → NP → neurosurgery interest (killed by getting to know neurosurgeons in person).
• Peter's orthopedic surgery pivot: A two-week rotation confirmed the toxic stereotype — he chose urology after hearing a lecture on the Da Vinci robot. Robotic surgery in urology
• Why urology: Peter explains the prostate's difficult-to-access anatomy drove early robotic adoption, and he values the specialty's blend of medicine, surgery, long-term patient relationships, and better-quality call. Da Vinci prostatectomy
• Vascular surgery story: A med school mentor (Dr. McCann) defied a "students only observe" mandate and let Peter close a two-foot leg incision solo — the nurse fed him suture sizes.
• Aubrey's astrophysics pivot: She realized if she was smart enough to be a surgeon, she was smart enough for astrophysics — now first author on a published paper.

Peter and Aubrey each share their five all-time favorite TV shows — and discover an accidental through line. Three of Peter's five were created by Mike Schur, and nearly every pick on both lists is about people helping each other become better. They talk about why "prestige TV" doesn't appeal to them (too stressful), why comedy doesn't have to be mindless to be meaningful, and how these shows reflect a belief that community — not individualism — is what makes us human.

Show Notes

• Aubrey's #1 — Friends: Classic background show; jokes that didn't age well somehow got funnier for it. Peter's counterpoint: "Why are you all such dill holes to each other?" Friends on Max
• Peter's #1 — Avatar: The Last Airbender: The show that started his thematic through line — a group helping Aang defeat the Fire Lord without killing him, centered on Zuko's redemption. "If you won't watch it because it's a cartoon, get over yourself." ATLA on Netflix
• The Good Place (both ranked it #2): Aubrey lost her mind at the season 1 twist. Peter notes the real thesis — not just that people can improve, but that people help each other improve — and that Mike Schur consulted T.M. Scanlon's What We Owe to Each Other and real ethicists to build the premise. The Good Place on Netflix
• Aubrey's #3 — New Girl: Quotable Schmidt, secondhand embarrassment from the awkward humor. Peter couldn't get into it — "I don't have ADHD, but watching it I feel like I have ADHD." New Girl on Hulu
• Peter's #3 — Ted Lasso: Season 1 is the comfort-food classic, but Peter defends seasons 2-3 as necessary for the arcs — Ted, Roy, Jamie, Rebecca — to land. The scene where Rebecca confesses why she hired Ted gets called one of the most powerful moments in television. Ted Lasso on Apple TV+
• Aubrey's #4 — WandaVision: Rewatched during night shifts as a nurse. Loves the hidden details that pop on rewatch (Vision noting no children in Westview, children everywhere next episode). Still the strongest Marvel Disney+ series in her book. WandaVision on Disney+
• Peter's #4 — Brooklyn 99: Captain Raymond Holt (the late André Braugher) is the greatest TV character ever created. Peter defends the controversial final season — "I respect it more because it had the nerve to go there" — and cites the Terry Jeffords racial profiling episode as something the show had to address. Brooklyn 99 on Peacock
• Aubrey's #5 — Game of Thrones: Love-hate. Loves fantasy and high stakes, hates that it's "bummer after bummer." The Red Wedding broke her. She has exactly one character she still considers morally good. GoT on Max
• Peter's #5 — A Man on the Inside: The third Mike Schur pick. Ted Danson plays a retired professor who goes undercover in a retirement community and reconnects with his daughter and with life after his wife's death. Season 2 deepens the same theme: connection is the antidote to isolation. A Man on the Inside on Netflix
• Why No "Prestige TV": Peter avoids Breaking Bad, The Wire, Sopranos — "bad people being bad" is too stressful when your day job already is. Aubrey agrees and distinguishes high-stakes fantasy from realistic misery.
• Community Over Individualism: Aubrey rants about transactional culture (friends expecting Venmo for airport pickups). Peter counters with a real story — his work team showed up by the dozens to pack up a nurse's house during a crisis, no questions asked, no expectations. That's the world these shows are pointing at.

Peter checks in while recovering from a cold and deep into the newly released Forza Horizon 6 (set in Japan); Aubrey is heading into summer break and excited about her personal training certification. The episode's central metaphor — "motivation is weather, systems are climate" — frames a rich conversation about why motivation fades and what it looks like to build sustainable personal systems instead. Peter catalogs a long history of task management apps before landing on a daily-note-plus-Todoist system, automated through Claude Cowork, that finally fits how his brain works. Aubrey shares her own collection of small systems — a scripted 5:30 a.m. gym routine with Hayden, a fixed pre-gym snack, strict grocery lists across three stores — all designed to eliminate meaningless decision fatigue. They close with the bigger picture: behavior change requires identity change first, and as Scott Barry Kaufman puts it, "the system hand keeps the lights on, but the soul hand decides whether the lights are pointing at anything worth looking at."

• Motivation is variable and unreliable — systems create consistency
• Reducing meaningless friction and decision fatigue
• Identity alignment is essential for lasting behavior change
• Small systems compound into automatic routines
• Systems should serve flourishing, not just optimization