The Barn Philosopher

In this episode of The Barn Philosopher, Rita and I are nearing the end of our trip through Germany, sitting under the trees at a lively biergarten in Freiburg im Breisgau.

It's one of our last recordings from the trip, and we spend some time taking in everything we've experienced—from cuckoo clock towns and waterfalls to the strange and wonderful experience of spending days in places where we don't speak the language and somehow manage to get through the day anyway.

We talk about the bakeries that seem to be everywhere, our ongoing search for a simple, watered-down American-style coffee, and all the little things that make traveling somewhere completely different from home so much fun.

This trip has given us a lot of great memories, and sitting there in Freiburg, we were pretty happy with how the whole adventure turned out.

If you've enjoyed traveling through Germany with us, give the show a rating, follow The Barn Philosopher, and share this episode with someone you'd happily get lost in another country with. And if you've got something to say, we'd love to hear from you at [email protected]. No translation app required.

In this episode of The Barn Philosopher, Ridge and I ask a couple of questions that aren't really about us at all.

If someone found a time capsule from your life 100 or 200 years from now, what would you want them to know about you? Not just your job, your accomplishments, or the things that ended up on paper—but the things that actually mattered to you.

Because eventually, everyone who knew us personally will be gone. What remains may be photographs, documents, newspaper articles, and now the endless amount of information stored on the internet. Future generations may know the facts about our lives and whatever accolades we managed to collect, but they won't know the stories unless somebody leaves them behind.

Then we lighten things up with a bucket-list question: What's one thing you absolutely want to do before you die?

Shelby's current answer—at least for the last two days—is to travel to every continent. Ridge wants to own a house in another country, possibly Japan or South Korea. He's not entirely sure why. It's just really far away.

The bigger question is one you can answer for yourself: What would you want the future to know about you, and what's one thing you still want to experience while you're here?

Rate the show, follow The Barn Philosopher, and share this episode with someone who has a story worth remembering.

In this episode of The Barn Philosopher, Ridge and I take on something neither of us particularly enjoys: advertisements.

Shelby has reached the point where seeing an ad can actually make him want to boycott the product. It started with paying for premium subscriptions to get rid of ads, only to watch those same services slowly bring ads back and eventually ask for even more money to remove them again.

Ridge has a slightly different complaint: if we're going to be bombarded with ads, at least make them relevant. Why advertise pickup trucks to someone who has absolutely no interest in buying one? Why spend advertising dollars showing us products we already buy?

We talk about the strange economics of advertising, targeted ads, paying to go ad-free, and whether companies actually understand who they're talking to.

Basically, if you're going to interrupt us, at least make it interesting.

Rate the show, follow The Barn Philosopher, and share it with someone who has rage-quit a service because of too many ads.

In this episode of The Barn Philosopher, Ridge and I just catch up on life.

I give an update on the old truck I'm restoring, Ridge talks about getting closer to welcoming a new baby into the world, and we check in on his ongoing sinus problems—which, thankfully, finally seem to be heading in the right direction.

Nothing too complicated or profound this time around. Just two guys sitting in the barn, talking about what we've been working on, what's coming up, and what's been going on in our lives.

If you've been wondering what Ridge and I have been up to lately, this one's for you.

Rate the show, follow The Barn Philosopher, and share it with someone who enjoys hanging out in the barn with us.

In this episode of The Barn Philosopher, Ridge and Shelby introduce a recording Rita and Shelby made while traveling through Germany. We were sitting in a biergarten when Rita decided she had the courage to do something I probably would have talked myself out of—walk up to a couple of complete strangers and ask if we could sit down and talk with them.

Thankfully, they said yes.

We met a young couple in their early 20s. She was originally from Romania and spoke English very well, while her German boyfriend spoke very little English. What followed was a surprisingly easy and interesting conversation about where they came from, how they met, their experiences so far, and what life looks like for them.

It wasn't a planned interview or a conversation with experts. It was simply two Americans meeting two young Europeans over a beer and getting a small glimpse into their lives.

Sometimes the best part of traveling is getting past the tourist attractions and actually meeting the people who live there.

Rate the show, follow The Barn Philosopher, and share this episode with someone who believes the best travel stories usually aren't the ones you planned.

In this episode of The Barn Philosopher, Ridge and I set out to do something simple: tell dad jokes.

That plan lasted about five minutes.

We start by talking about the difference between explicit language and adult content. There’s no explicit language in this episode, but that doesn’t mean everything that comes out of our mouths is exactly appropriate for all ages. We spiraled, things got out of hand, and somewhere along the way we realized we probably needed to cut about half the episode.

So this is the edited, mom-approved version. Your mom could probably listen to it without being too offended… although she might still have a few questions afterward.

It’s dad jokes, bad decisions, questionable conversation, and two guys who really should know better.

Rate the show, follow The Barn Philosopher, and share it with someone whose sense of humor needs a little work. Feel free to send us your favorite dad jokes: [email protected]

TJ is back in the barn, and this conversation takes a long, strange road from monk-made beer to some of the internet's more questionable guilty pleasures.

Shelby brings special beers back from Germany, brewed by monks at Ettal Abbey, giving the guys something worthy of a proper tasting while TJ explains his unexplainably large corn cob pipe, before the conversation takes a sharp turn. Ridge, TJ, and Shelby talk about the things they watch that they probably wouldn't put on the family television: infected hooves, fights, infected toenails, sandy cheeks, and all the other strange corners of the internet that somehow become fascinating.

Some guilty pleasures are harmless. Others are things you might not want your wife to know you spend your free time watching.

It's a long road to hoe, but somehow we get from corn cobs to German monks to infected feet and hooves all the way to spearing dinner—and we're not entirely sure how we got there.

If you enjoy the strange conversations, unexpected rabbit holes, and questionable interests of the Barn Philosopher crew, rate the show, follow The Barn Philosopher, and share it with a friend who probably has a guilty pleasure they're not telling anybody about.

This is a good topic because there's something very relatable about realizing you don't have to finish a vacation just because you paid for it. I'd lean into the "cut your losses" idea, with a little humor around the vacation slowly becoming less fun.

When Vacation Stops Being a Vacation: Knowing When to Go Home

Cutting Your Losses: When It's Time to End the Vacation

Good Money After Bad: Knowing When to Go Home

The Vacation Quit: When Home Sounds Better

We Paid for Seven Days, But We're Going Home

Vacation or Punishment?: Knowing When to Call It

The Art of Going Home Early

When the Dunes Aren't Worth It: Cutting a Vacation Short

Face Cuts & High Dunes: When Vacation Goes Sideways

Sometimes Home Is the Better Vacation

Quit While You're Ahead: The Vacation Edition

The Point of No Vacation: When It's Time to Leave

Throwing Good Money After Bad: The Vacation Trap

Three Days Left, Nothing Left to Prove

The Hotel Is Paid For: But Do We Have to Stay?

We Could Stay... But Why?

This Vacation Has Jumped the Shark

Vacation: 0, Going Home: 1

At This Point, We Might as Well Go Home

The Vacation Was Fine Until It Wasn't

Face Cuts, Sand Dunes & Bad Decisions

We Paid for the Vacation. We Didn't Pay to Suffer.

When Vacation Stops Being a Vacation: Knowing When to Go Home

Good Money After Bad: Knowing When to Go Home

We Could Stay... But Why?

We Paid for Seven Days, But We're Going Home

Sometimes Home Is the Better Vacation

Sometimes a vacation doesn't end because the vacation is over. Sometimes you just decide you've had enough.

In this episode of The Barn Philosopher, Ridge, Joan, Rita, and Shelby talk about Ridge and Joan's recent vacation that they decided to cut short. There wasn't one big disaster that ruined the trip. It was a collection of little things—some face cuts, some surprisingly high Michigan dunes, and the slow realization that sometimes you reach a point where you'd rather just be home.

That raises the bigger question: When is it time to stop throwing good money after bad?

You've already paid for the hotel. You've taken the time off work. You've planned the trip. But does that mean you have to stay just because you've paid for it? Or is there a point where the best decision is to cut your losses, give up the remaining vacation days, and go home?

We talk about knowing when to call it, whether leaving early means you've failed at vacationing, and why sometimes your own bed sounds better than whatever adventure you originally planned.

Because a vacation is supposed to be a break—and if getting home is what finally gives you that break, maybe it's time to go.

If you enjoy the conversation, rate the show, follow The Barn Philosopher, and share the episode with someone who's ever decided, "You know what? Let's just go home."

Rita and Shelby decided to test their knowledge against a little trivia—and quickly discovered that confidence and correctness are two very different things.

It all started when Shelby came across some surprising statistics about tourism around the world, including how many people travel and how much money tourists spend. That sent the conversation down the road to a full-blown trivia game.

The questions cover a little bit of everything: travel in Europe, home repair, food, history, and plenty of miscellaneous facts that seemed like they should be easier than they actually were.

The good news? Rita and Shelby worked together on almost every question. The bad news? They were terrible.

So grab someone you know, play along with the questions, and see if you can beat them. We're hoping the listeners do considerably better than we did.

And really, that's what marriage is about, right? Working together, making decisions, and being confidently wrong as a team.

If you played along, let us know how you did. [email protected]  Rate the show, follow The Barn Philosopher, and share it with someone who thinks they're smarter than Shelby and Rita.

Rita and Shelby start with a simple question: Why do we keep buying the next cool water bottle?

From the crazes of the 1990s to today's Owala cups and whatever comes next, they talk about the endless cycle of buying the thing everyone suddenly needs—until the next thing replaces it. But the conversation quickly grows into something much bigger: consumerism and our ability to buy things we may not actually be able to afford.

Shelby and Rita coin a new phrase: "obtainable consumerism." It started as affordable consumerism, but the guys—or in this case, Shelby and Rita—realize that isn't quite right. In today's world, something can be "obtainable" simply because a bank will let you finance it.

That leads to conversations about seven-year car loans, housing prices, buying things on credit, and what we learned—or didn't learn—from the financial crash of 2008. If you can make the monthly payment, does that mean you can actually afford it?

From trendy water bottles to houses that cost more than we ever imagined, this episode is about the strange relationship we have with wanting things, being able to obtain things, and actually being able to afford them.

What starts with water bottles ends up questioning the entire American consumer cycle.

If you enjoy the conversation, rate the show, follow The Barn Philosopher, and share this episode with someone who has ever said, "I can afford the payment."