“No one’s looked at you and your problems and thought, I could make a show out of this. I thought I could make a show because I am a problem.”

That is how Kylen opens, and then he tells the whole thing. Number-one rated amateur volleyball player in the US. Took the government money during COVID, souped up the back of a Toyota, lived in it — they called it the fart tube — and woke at 6am to compete with other homeless people for bathroom rights before going out to compete for real.

It cost him the relationship. He says he would make the same decision again, every time.

Kenda’s counter-thread runs underneath the whole episode. She brings in the old man from Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act — the one who hauls his water up by hand and turns down the pulley, because part of the reason it tastes so good is the work he put into it. Kylen gets it instantly. Which leaves the thing he still cannot do: sit still for thirty seconds while someone says something kind about him.

Chapters

• 0:00 — "I am a problem" - why there's a show at all
• 2:20 — The credit Kenda keeps giving him
• 3:37 — "Be kind" - and what struggling actually looked like
• 5:02 — 6am, and competing for bathroom rights
• 5:36 — Half the struggle is your reaction to it
• 7:00 — Rick Rubin's old man, and why he refused the pulley
• 10:06 — "You gotta be crazier than you look"
• 11:50 — What it cost - losing the relationship
• 13:06 — "I'd make the same decision over and over again"
• 18:03 — Confidence from the simple fact that you survived
• 19:26 — Kenda: "think about your words right now"
• 21:10 — Why he cannot accept a compliment

The Kylen and Kenda Show.