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In 2020, Mike Dickinson was sitting in a doctor's office in Asheville, North Carolina, when they told him to go to the hospital immediately — his blood sugar was dangerously high. He weighed around 420 pounds. He had diabetes, blood pressure medication, heart medication. A year or two earlier, his nieces and nephews wanted to walk a few blocks and he asked if they could call an Uber.

So he picked a target most people would call ridiculous: Atlanta Braves Fantasy Camp. He needed a picture on the bulletin board, something to run toward. Twenty minutes of cardio became thirty. Thirty became a habit. Weights came two years in. No workout partner, no trainer — just Netflix, music, and the voice in his head that refused to quit on him.

This past January, at roughly 170 pounds, Mike Dickinson walked onto a field in a Braves uniform, played for a team captained by Brian Penn, and made a diving, game-saving catch against the Yankees that his team celebrated like a championship. He didn't want to take the uniform off. He also reversed his diabetes and came off every medication.

Oh, and his day job? He runs fifteen-plus strip clubs across the country, from small-town Tennessee to Chicago to Oklahoma — and the thing he loves most about it is finding the person everybody else overlooked and turning them into a star.

In this episode:

• The hospital visit that started everything
• Why 20 minutes every day beats two hours for two weeks
• Trading the boss's chair for the rookie's locker at fantasy camp
• Meeting Andruw Jones in a batting cage — and Brian's very awkward run-in with Leo Mazzone
• Growing up in Richmond watching the entire 90s Braves dynasty come through Triple-A
• Why "Instagram lifestyle" is the biggest lie in modern life

"It's better to do 20 minutes a day for a month than two hours a day for two weeks." — Mike Dickinson

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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

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The roles flip. This time Brian Penn holds the mic, and co-founder James Gass tells the story behind the easy laugh.

It starts light: a nervous softball guy getting talked into a wood-bat baseball tournament by their mutual friend Chuck, climbing out of the passenger seat, taking one look at Brian and thinking, "I can't win these guys over with my playing — I'll win them over with my kindness." Forty years of guitar. "Prince over everybody" . Dave Winfield, the Blue Jays, and coaching both his daughters from the bottom of the lineup to leading off in center field.

Then Brian asks about the darkest moment, and James goes to a place he says he rarely talks about. The grandfather who practically raised him, gone. His parents divorced. Siblings out of the house. A two-story home traded for a drug-infested apartment complex, a three-to-four-mile walk to school because a bike wasn't in the budget, an eviction, an extension cord run from a neighbor's apartment for power, and stretches with no food. A father with a good job and a phone he didn't pick up. And, at 13, a night in a bathroom that could have ended the story — and the moment right after, when something snapped, and he walked out, picked up his guitar, and started playing like nothing had happened.

"To say music saved my life is no doubt."

What he built from there — work at 13, a sister and two cousins who took him in, a father who's now more friend than parent, brothers he talks to across an ocean — is the reason this podcast exists. His advice for the world isn't complicated: acceptance. We have far more in common than the 20% we blow up into a mountain.

In this episode:

• How Chuck's four-year recruiting campaign accidentally started a podcast
• Guitar vs. baseball, 40 years later, still undecided
• Coaching his daughters Madison and Ava — his favorite sports memory, period
• The lowest of the low, told plainly
• Why forgiveness is a gift you hand yourself
• Vulnerability isn't weakness

Everybody has a dark cloud. There's a solution to everything, and there are people out there who will pick you up.