This week on All the Feelings: Adulting, Pete and Tommy explore the emotional rollercoaster of civic duty—that grown-up responsibility that makes you feel both powerful and powerless, often at the same time. Pete recounts his surprisingly moving journey from accidentally running for office (yes, really) to wielding his democratic paddle in precinct committee meetings that felt like Parks and Rec meets Newhart, with just a dash of intergalactic colonization thrown in for fun.

We kick things off with a signature All the Feelings guided meditation, designed to soothe your soul and slowly reveal your complicity in the collapse of public institutions. Then Tommy takes us on a whirlwind tour of his lifelong, unfulfilled dream of serving on a jury—a civic fantasy frequently interrupted by mistrials, celebrity impersonators, and the birth of Occupy Wall Street.

It’s an episode about participation, paperwork, powerlessness, and the strangely intoxicating scent of a freshly unsealed ballot. And in the end, it’s a reminder that real change often starts not in Washington, but in a library basement that smells like Folgers.

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