OZY Daily Dose

The year was 1979. I was 16. I say that like it might protect me from what I know is coming, but the reality is no amount of this kind of stupid can be excused by age or epoch. But I’m getting ahead of things. That summer I had a job as a lifeguard at a camp in Beacon, New York. It was 60 miles north of the city I called home and I was hired thanks to a stepfather who “knew some people.

It was the tail end of 2014 and I had recently gotten back together with my ex-girlfriend. We had been broken up for about a year at that point, and many things had changed in our lives. I had just been accepted into East Carolina University, and she had just lost custody of her three children and moved into a subsidized apartment. A true match made in heaven. Things were going well, so we decided to give it another go.

Joe Sanberg started Blue Apron and is the CEO of Aspiration, a financial services company. As barbecue kits and ties are unwrapped by dads in households nationwide today, it’s important to remember that a lot of kids don’t have a father they can celebrate. I should know — I was one of those kids. But I also know there are a lot of single moms and surrogate father figures — friends, teachers, relatives, godparents — working hard to fill the void.

I often wonder if God knows how much a young soul can withstand. And just how broken one can get before he or she has no way back. Growing up in Dallas with my mother, father, brother and two sisters, the worst place for me to be was … home. Because home was always cold, no matter the temperature outside. My father could make the pictures on the walls shiver, and even now, at 56, I can hear him saying, “Anthony, bring your ass here. You ain’t got a bit of sense. You’re stupid.

Some five months into the Trump administration, I find myself looking back on the day before he was inaugurated as the country’s 45th president. I was in Washington, D.C., and I felt awful. It was 7 a.m., and I hadn’t had any coffee — something I needed before I could contemplate America’s imminent downfall.

EUGENE, SIR: My wife has been dying to lose weight in the eight years since she gave birth to our first and only child, and finally, she has. I am talking, she went from 190 pounds to about 130, which makes her very happy. We’re both 40 and have been married 10 years, and we dated for five years before that, so I’ve always known her to be big. One night, we were going somewhere and she asked me if she looked hot.

Off the Record: Real talk with a fresh wave of musical influencers who will be making moves onto your new playlist. Watch the rest of this OZY original series here.Ryan Hurd is a good old-fashioned American, even if he is wearing what's referred to as a "Canadian tuxedo" - jeans and a jean jacket - when we meet. He loves cruising around on his boat and just bought his first house. Before he speaks, with a Southern twang, he parts his shaggy, overgrown brown hair.

I went to my first teenage wedding my senior year of high school. A few weeks shy of homecoming. It felt like playing dress-up when I picked out a waffle iron from a Target gift registry, signing the gift from myself and my high school sweetheart. We drove in his parents' truck, make-believing we were grownups before heading back to our respective homes to finish our homework for AP government.

"Are you looking for Tymon? He's inside waiting for you."She wore pajamas and sunglasses. The afternoon was fading, and we were standing in the middle of the street in a quiet suburb of Gdansk, Poland, in front of a three-story red brick home surrounded by a black iron fence. A blue tricycle was turned over in the drive.I introduced myself and my cousin. The woman laughed.

EUGENE, SIR: I found some photos of naked women on my husband’s phone. We’ve been together six years and we’re both in our 30s. He says he doesn’t know these women. I ask him why he has the photos. He says, in the same way that we have porno DVDs. I say, we used to watch those together. He says, masturbation is not always something we do together. So I ask him if he’s looking at these pictures to masturbate to and he asks me why else would he have them.