Kent Ehrhardt has spent more than four decades on television. But this conversation isn’t really about television. It’s about being a dad.

Kent joins Pondoff’s Anonymous for an incredibly open conversation about the life and loss of his son, Alec, who died after years of struggling with substance use, mental health and isolation.

Kent talks about the parts of Alec he wants people to remember—the football player, motocross rider and music lover who followed String Cheese Incident around the country and handed out tiny rubber ducks at shows just to meet people. He also opens up about the parts that are much harder to revisit: finding out how badly Alec had been struggling near the end of his life, the questions he still asks himself as a father, and the guilt that can come with wondering whether there was something else you could have done.

There are also moments Kent still can’t completely explain. Cardinals appearing at exactly the right time. A song dedicated to Alec at a String Cheese Incident show. And standing outside the building where his son was being prepared for his funeral and feeling one message more clearly than anything else:

“I’m okay, Dad. Finally I’m okay.”

Kent also shares how Alec’s death connected him with Addiction Is Real and turned his grief into advocacy aimed at helping other families recognize the warning signs of addiction before it’s too late.

We also get Kent’s accidental start in television, a helicopter crash, getting screamed at for interrupting Survivor with a tornado warning, his time as a Cardinals bat boy, David Gilmour, Leroy Jenkins, the world’s most well-traveled dog, and more than a few stories from 40+ years in broadcasting.

This is Kent Ehrhardt beyond the television screen: a father remembering his son, living with grief, and trying to make something meaningful out of an unimaginable loss.

Donnie Millas has lived enough lives for several episodes of Pondoff’s Anonymous.

A lifelong friend of Eric’s and someone Chris has known since he was a kid, Donnie sits down to tell a story that goes from being a three-sport athlete and walking onto a semi-pro basketball team in Alaska to addiction, devastating loss, homelessness, jail and eventually finding his way into recovery.

Donnie talks openly about the years he spent living on the streets, why jail sometimes felt like a “vacation” from homelessness, the strange sense of structure he found while incarcerated, and what it takes to survive when the people around you are struggling just as badly as you are. He also gets into gambling addiction, relapse, and the difference between simply being sober and actually working a recovery program.

But some of the most powerful moments come when Donnie talks about the people he’s lost and the series of events that completely changed his relationship with faith.

It’s an episode about addiction and relapse, but even more than that, it’s about grief, friendship, second chances, faith, and what can happen when somebody refuses to give up on you.

For nearly 30 years, Dawn Stanley worked inside Missouri’s probation and parole system, helping people navigate addiction, mental health struggles, incarceration and re-entry. Eventually, she thought she was ready to walk away from helping people altogether.

Turns out, that wasn’t really the problem.

On this episode of Pondoff’s Anonymous, Dawn joins Chris, Kurt, and Zoë to talk about a career spent trying to help people inside systems that don’t always make helping people easy and how that experience ultimately led her to the work she does today with TMAC.

Dawn talks about her introduction to the recovery world, what families taught her about addiction, the importance of meeting people where they are, and why there is no single treatment center or recovery path that works for everyone. Sometimes the most important part of helping someone is knowing the right questions to ask and knowing how to navigate a system that can be incredibly difficult to understand from the outside.

We also get into the realities of insurance and treatment, supporting the families affected by addiction, and what it actually looks like when someone calls asking for help and has nowhere else to turn.

Dawn describes herself as relentless. After this conversation, it’s pretty easy to understand why.