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Nathan Marr came on as family. He's dating James Gass' daughter Madison — and James was there for the first date, watching her come home with a smile he says told him everything.

It starts easy. Nathan's a bar back in Santa Clarita at a place whose old fashioned has won best cocktail two years running. He works out every single day, does jiu-jitsu two or three times a week, and has never played a sport in his life — unless you count a freshman golf tryout where he didn't know the lingo, hit a window, and got the "we have too many players this year" talk. He'll argue Charles Oliveira is the best fighter on the planet and tell you it's not an opinion, it's fact.

Then the darkest moment...the room changes.

Last year, four months into a Border Patrol hiring process that was moving fast, Nathan's mom was diagnosed with a glioblastoma. He went to the academy anyway, because she would have wanted him to. A month and a half in, the call came: you need to come home. He quit — no leave, no timeline, nothing to come back to. On October 4th, she passed away.

What he says next is the part most people never say out loud. The months after, he drank more than he ever had. He started arguments. He and Madison fought more in that stretch than in their five years together, and he'll tell you most of them — no, all of them — were on him. The turn came in a parking lot after a dinner where he was the only one drinking and felt entirely out of place: she would be disappointed right now.

He's applying to LAX PD now. And his advice to anyone carrying the same weight isn't "be strong." It's this: mourn, take the time, but stop asking what you want and start asking what they would have wanted for you.

In this episode:

• How dating the co-host's daughter turned into a podcast appearance
• Why he never regrets going to the gym, only not going
• Disneyland, fake snow, and a memory he was almost too young to keep
• A mother who was endlessly kind and still nobody to walk over
• Hiding behind good news from a doctor
• The parking lot moment that stopped the spiral

"Thank you guys for listening. If this touches one person, then this is a success." — Nathan Marr