Not Dead Yet

Singer, songwriter, musician, actor, and record producer Clint Black joins underachievers Ben and Chris. The gang talks about country music, writing, parenting, career choices, and gratitude. How much does art depend on lived-experience and pain, or can performers serve their audiences without working through their own trials?

Astronaut and Nebraskan Clayton Anderson joins the guys to talk about all things space. The human desire to explore, the vocation of spacewalking hundreds of miles above the earth, the rigors of NASA’s selection process, and the challenges of getting to Mars. Ben and Clayton agree Nebraska is better than West Virginia — it’s science.

Renaissance man Walter Russell Mead joins the guys to talk about history and global affairs. This episode has everything: Hamiltonians, Jeffersonians, Jacksonians, Wilsonians, Israel, Iran, tech companies, and the kitchen sink.

Ben and Chris talk a bit about their first jobs and how child labor laws are ruining the country. Then things get super nerdy when Nicholas Eberstadt joins the guys to talk about demographic decline, labor force participation, why men need work.

Drew and Ellie join the guys to talk about family, art, and soul. Ben has no rhythm, but the musicians talk about art as ache, embodied prayer, and yearning for home. Also, make your kids listen to the Beatles.

Jonah joins the boys for their first in-person podcast. Friendship, morphine (higher than average morphine-brain for Ben), note cards, institutions, and journalism. Ben and Chris talk about the why behind the podcast. Wonks have fun too.

The guys talk about hard work and hustle, the choices parents make, the ups, downs, and idols of success, and real vs Ned Flanders Christianity. The dude from Avengers, Jurassic Park, and Super Mario Bros. talks about how he wants his kids to understand what it means to be a man.

Justice Barrett joins Ben and Chris. Ben shares his status as the founding member of the ACB for SCOTUS club. The three talk about how she writes her opinions, how parenting slows down the train, the importance of civics, and what horse-race political journalism gets wrong about the Supreme Court.

Is the Dirty Jobs guy secretly America’s most popular philosopher? Mike Rowe joins the guys. This episode has everything: vomit, Stoics, turkey insemination, philosopher welders, wonder, and the problems with institutionalized childhood.

Caitlin runs circles around the guys. They talk about deadlines (for writing and living), living with cancer, raising families, how truth has the last word, and a little bit about California.