UNRATIONED

David Callahan, co-CEO of Ultra Sign Up, joins Evan and Danny to talk about how he and his partner Jay stumbled into acquiring the platform in 2020, closing the deal at separate picnic tables with masks on while the entire industry was shut down. He breaks down why vibe-coded competitors can build the facade of a registration platform but can't replicate twelve million annual visitors, and why the marketplace dynamic makes distribution the only moat that actually matters. The conversation gets into customer loyalty versus what David calls sustained gratitude, and why he thinks loyalty should flow from businesses toward customers, not the other way around. It closes with the story of the Hornet Hustle, a six-week school running challenge where his kids have racked up over 300 miles in a season, and what happened to the school culture when other kids started watching them show up before sunrise every day.

Joshua kicks off the episode fresh off his first Brazilian jiu-jitsu class, and what started as a conversation about grappling quickly opens into a wide-ranging exploration of fighting across every domain of life. The guys wrestle with why the word "fight" carries a different weight than "struggle" or "suffering," and whether that difference points to something real about zero-sum versus positive-sum conflict. The conversation moves through physical fights, online arguments, spiritual traditions, marriage, parenting, and the predator-prey dynamics that show up in all of them. Nobody walks away with clean answers, and they're honest about that, landing somewhere around the idea that being prepared to fight and actually wanting to fight are two very different orientations.

Paul Watkins, author and keynote speaker behind the Tao of Hard Things, joins Evan and Tony to dig into why chosen hard things matter and what separates the ones that build you from the ones that break you. Paul walks through his own recent years of racing, from winning the 6633 Arctic Ultra to a brutal DNF in the Namibian desert at 53-degree heat, and what each experience taught him about ego, purpose, and the difference between performing and exploring. The conversation gets honest about what's actually at stake for men who avoid hard things entirely, why physical challenge is the best gateway drug to every other kind of growth, and how those same lessons show up in marriage and fatherhood. Paul closes with the idea behind his next book: building an inner citadel, a stable philosophy of self, that lets you go out into the chaos without being consumed by it.

Evan, Danny, and Joshua open with wild moments from the week, then dig into Boyd Vardy's book Lion Tracker's Guide to Life and what it means to follow first tracks in your own life. The conversation centers on consequence, risk, and how a life stripped of real danger dulls the senses, drawing connections between tracking lions on the Serengeti and finding the wild in everyday existence. The guys push back and forth on whether you need access to literal wilderness to touch that primal aliveness, landing on the idea that nature isn't a place you go but a thing you already are. It closes with a grounded reflection on order versus chaos, fatherhood, service, and what it actually looks like to open your eyes to the next track right in front of you.

Shaun Bemis grew up in suburban Indianapolis, left college after September 11th to serve twenty years in the Navy, and spent the back half of his career running intelligence operations with the SEAL teams. After retiring, he discovered ultra running and has since competed in races across the globe, including a 75km race on Mount Kilimanjaro where he trained for altitude by sweating through Miami summer runs in a winter jacket. Today Shaun works as a strategic execution coach, helping individuals set goals without sacrificing what matters most at home, using a military planning framework he calls "plan of action and milestones" to work backwards from the end goal. He's also a co-organizer at Relentless, a running-events and apparel brand working to fund youth programming through the Relentless Foundation. In the episode, Shaun and Evan dig into how to make a life-changing decision when the moment hits, why "anti-goals" are just as important as the goals themselves, and what it looks like to build a life that feels like winning all the way through.

Tony is running a Backyard Ultramarathon this weekend. Same 4.15-mile loop, every hour, until one person is left standing. Evan, Joshua, Pat, and Danny gather to talk through the preparation, the strategy, and the psychology of not quitting when your mind starts negotiating. And somewhere in that conversation, the lessons from endurance and the lessons from being a husband and father turn out to be the same ones.

Episode 37 — What's Your Rice?

In Jiro Dreams of Sushi, apprentices spend years learning one thing: how to cook rice. This episode is about finding your rice — the one skill worth doing exceptionally well, every day, for years — and why that matters more than chasing the next shiny thing.

Danny and Josh get into what consistency actually looks like at work, at home, and at play, what they've learned from parents and grandparents about playing the long game, and why the people who work the land tend to see the world differently than the rest of us staring at screens.

In this episode:

• Why "what got you here won't get you there" — and how to pick the one skill to double down on
• Josh on consistency and presence; Danny on playing long-term games with long-term people
• A grandfather's lesson on marriage: "if something's important to her, it immediately becomes important to me"
• Training (and nerves) ahead of the Ouray 100, one of the hardest 100-milers in the US

Learn more at unrationed.com and find us on LinkedIn.

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Evan, Joshua, and newest team member Danny Kirk reflect on a recent rim-to-rim-to-rim traverse of the Grand Canyon — and the conversations that came out of it. They dig into why we seek out hard, uncomfortable experiences, what happens to a person when there's no easy way out, and how shared suffering has a way of cutting through everything that usually divides us. Danny shares his unconventional path — trumpet prodigy, high school dropout, decade-long agency founder — and what brought him to Unrationed. The group also wrestles with a question worth sitting with: if you're building something meant to outlast you, what do you actually focus on? Stories, traditions, sacred spaces, community — and the courage to run toward the thing calling you instead of protecting what you already have.

In this episode Evan , Joshua, and Tony pick up where they left off — exploring the spiritual dimension of growth and what it means to acknowledge that something beyond us shapes our work, relationships, and lives.

They share personal stories of faith, doubt, and discovery, from sobriety and psychedelics to raising kids and revisiting childhood traditions, and wrestle with questions of control, belief, and trust. The conversation moves through paradox: how to both orient toward what’s above and navigate what’s right in front of us.

Drawing on influences like Joseph Campbell, Richard Rohr, and Alan Watts, the hosts reflect on systems, containers, and the importance of spiritual frameworks in raising grounded families and becoming whole men.

A thoughtful dialogue on belief without certainty, tradition without rigidity, and finding your footing in the space between faith and freedom.

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• Mentioned in this episode: The Telepathy Tapes, Joseph Campbell, Richard Rohr, Alan Watts.

In this episode of The Unrationed Podcast, Evan, Joshua, and Tony explore why crossing thresholds at home often feels harder than running a race or tackling a physical challenge. They unpack the complexity of growth in relationships, parenting, and personal habits — where progress isn’t marked by a finish line but by showing up, day after day.

From preparing for life’s “unknown thresholds” to building training habits at home, the trio reflects on how we practice courage, patience, and endurance in the spaces that matter most.

Themes: Complexity, preparation, known vs. unknown thresholds, and what it means to train for transformation at home.

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