After a couple weeks away, I’m back behind the mic wondering what exactly makes us who we are. Survival, success, ego, authenticity, asking for help & a little Alan Watts along the way.

Y R U, U?

11 was my number long before it was my episode number...

This one starts at the Lexington Truck & Tractor Pull with a few questions from an old friend I hadn’t seen in a while:

What’s the plan? What do you enjoy? What do you actually want to do?

For maybe the first time in my life, I just said, “I don’t know.”

And I meant it. So this episode is me sitting in that answer.

Professional limbo. Financial insecurity. Bankruptcy. Walking away from a job that was about to pay me more than I’d ever made. Watching childhood friends build businesses and families while I’m still trying to figure out what I’m building. Being a caretaker who has always found it easier to take care of everybody else than himself.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that: Interstellar, Stutz, eight hours with my mom, the cost of work, the value of time, and the uncomfortable realization that the more I learn, the less certain I seem to become.

No answers on this one. Just a lot of questions.

Thanks for letting me come thru your speakers again!

Podscraps is the show inside the show... A collection of things I find that make me stop, think, feel, or look at something a little differently.

Fresh off finishing Project Hail Mary, this one became a collection of thoughts about the strange little experience of being human.

James McCrae’s Instructions Before Visiting Earth. Duncan Trussell and his mother talking about people appearing and disappearing. Alan Watts on letting people leave. Joaquin Phoenix reading Star Child. Timothée Chalamet reading Charles Bukowski.

Different scraps circling the same things: arriving, connecting, loving, losing, letting go, wondering, and figuring out what to do with whatever time we get in the middle.

We get a turn.

This is about while we’re here.

Question. Feel. Reach.

A kid from Lexington went to Huntsville looking for opportunity. Ten years later, he left looking for peace.

In this solo episode, I trace the jobs, relationships, mistakes, ambition and insecurity that kept pulling me back to Huntsville. I also wrestle with the city itself: its growth, its manufactured sense of community, its relationship with status and security, and the complicated history beneath the Rocket City story.

This is not a definitive account of Huntsville. It is my account of what the city gave me, what it rewarded in me and why I finally realized the life I had spent years building was no longer the life I wanted.

There is a sun. There is a moon. Two things can be true at once.

Welcome back to the show within the show.

This episode began with a pastor talking about Shia LaBeouf and somehow led me through Rick & Morty, James Sexton, Dan Harmon, Theo Von, and one of the most beautiful reflections on grief I've ever heard.

On the surface, they're completely different conversations.

Underneath, they're all asking the same question:

Is caring still worth the risk, even though grief is inevitable?

We explore grace, redemption, vulnerability, meaning, and what it really means to let another person matter.

If something in this episode resonates with you, I encourage you to spend time with the original creators. Their work is linked below.

Thanks for letting me come through your speakers again.

**Sources Mentioned**

Pastor on Shia LaBeouf https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXsYuS7AMi1/

Shia LaBeouf https://youtube.com/shorts/UXfnlsbwB90

Rick & Morty – Fear Hole https://youtu.be/F9kSF6BrOCs

James Sexton https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZ-GeTCTlWT/

Dan Harmon on Meaning https://youtu.be/de2grEPn7rg

Theo Von reading the grief passage https://www.instagram.com/reel/DY2XogkMtYq/

Note: Theo attributes the final passage to Jim Carrey. From everything I could find, the original authorship is unverified and likely not Jim Carrey. If you know the original author, I'd love to update the credits.

Listen in to Episode 7 as we catch up with my old friend CJ Newton (Newton Creative). CJ is based out of Knoxville and is well-known in the content game as one of the top producers in the region. Check out his work at his IG @newtoncrtv

Podscraps is the show inside the show. Pieces of things I’ve heard and pieces of my own life, put together to see what they have to say to each other.

This was supposed to be an episode about Dauphin Island, recorded on Dauphin Island. The wind and an approaching storm wouldn’t allow it. Then I planned to record that night at the Kate Shepard House, but turning that beautiful old place into a makeshift studio didn’t feel right either.

So the first Podscraps became something I never planned.

Pieces of Mobile and Dauphin Island. Ram Dass and Be Here Now. The Odyssey. Peter Kreeft looking back on 63 years of marriage. Duncan Trussell on the stories that crack open through heartbreak. Theo Von and Andrew Huberman allowing themselves to wonder about prayer and the limits of human perception.

Maybe making this microphone mine also means knowing when not to turn it on.

Maybe life isn’t interrupting the thing I’m trying to make.

Maybe life is the thing.

Be here now.

Clips featured:

Peter Kreeft on marriage

Duncan Trussell on heartbreak

Theo Von and Andrew Huberman on prayer and perception

Listen to and support the full conversations.

Episode 5 took two attempts and two states before I finally got it out.

This is my first real solo riff. No guest. No full script. Just something that happened this week that sent me into a much bigger conversation about love, dating, marriage, social media, sex, family, and the things we expect another person to fix in us.

I come from a family where divorce has been much closer to the rule than the exception. Somehow, I still grew up wanting forever.

I talk through the three serious relationships that helped build my philosophy, including a broken engagement, while trying very hard not to tell anyone’s story but my own. I question the institution of marriage and the timelines we inherit in rural Alabama, but I also question myself, my selfishness, my need to be chosen, and whether I have always understood the difference between loving somebody and needing what they gave me.

I still believe in love.

I am just trying to figure out how often I have actually practiced it.