(Did you know that box jellyfish are class cubozoa because they’re actually sort of cube-shaped? And that these venomous cubes can actually see with eyes that work like a human’s and swim about twice as fast as the average person? It’s facts like these that make parenting seem overrated.)

The four of us felt really fortunate to be together for Uncle Derek’s wedding, since we’ll all be far apart for Thanksgiving. And the next day, of course, is Black Friday, when a bunch of grasping, DEI-abandoning, trumpsucking retailers look to load their coffers by taking advantage of cash-strapped consumers. Since the only language these companies understand is their bottom line, we hope the proposed Black Friday Blackout gives the people’s pushback a little teeth. If we spend any money a week from today, it’ll be with local businesses and artists who sell handmade stuff.

After the year we’ve had, it’s no wonder that the inaugural NAMI Walks fundraiser to support mental health raised over $64,000 (Doug worked the bike valet, below), and so many people have gravitated to Candletime, Magda’s secular, non-commercial, self-directed holiday dedicated to personal peace.

Magda is picking up on so much anxiety and feelings of being trapped from the zeitgeist that she has opened up Flash Consults for people with a work problem, family issues, weirdness with their parents and/or kids, relationship questions, career or business questions, or any kind of mishmash or hybrid of any of that. She’ll solve any process-related problem in under 24 hours. Doug can affirm that Magda was absolutely born to diagnose things.

Embers in the News

Here are some of the links that peeked through the noisy news cycle:

• Do-nothing retirement We’ve been told that the secret to retirement is to keep busy, but here’s a compelling argument to do the opposite.

• The clothes make the traveler Ahead of the year’s biggest travel weekend, the Transportation Dept. thinks the experience will improve if people dress better.

• Even Carl Sagan was OK with this During the Cold War, American scientists thought a great way to show force would be to nuke the moon.

• Ready, set, STEAM! Are you as big a junkie for the World Sauna Championships as we are? As promised, it’s even weirder than you think.

Currently reading

Magda just reread Jessica B. Harris’s 2017 memoir, My Soul Looks Back, about living in NYC and hanging out with James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, and their group in the ‘70s and ‘80s. So well-written and atmospheric. She’s now listening to Jacinda Ardern’s memoir, A Different Kind of Power and is having some issues understanding the thick Kiwi accent, but she’s fascinated by how New Zealand’s political system works.

While doing his usual grief cleaning after our son left the country, Doug found his kindle! And he felt ambivalent, because he is enjoying divesting as much as he can from Amazon. Anyway, he’s reading The Secret Lives of Codebreakers by Sinclair McKay because he loves reading about those who work hard to unfuck things.

Currently watching

Doug is bingeing The American Revolution from Ken Burns, et al, which is being criticized for being “too woke.” If that means its provides overdue perspectives from women, indigenous Americans, Blacks, and Loyalists and chronicles when George Washington screwed up and got his ass beat, this series is guilty as charged.

Magda thinks both seasons of Nobody Wants This are really well done. Her favorite character is Esther, who isn’t who she thought she’d love based on the first few episodes. She also enjoyed the finale of GBBO, and she liked all the contestants this season so much that she really didn’t care who won!

Currently cooking

Magda was eating yogurt with berries and cashews for breakfast every day, but then somehow just switched to eating toasted protein bread with strawberry jam and gjeitost, a Norwegian brown goat cheese.

Doug is all about rich, satisfying, veggie-based soups. This creamy butternut squash and coconut noodle soup is an absolute banger, especially if you roast the squash with a little garlic and be sure to add those few dribs of chili oil right before serving. Even our son with the restrictive (but expanding!) palate thought it was pure gas.

Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful, small Thanksgiving.

Magda and Doug

We know what you’re thinking: Why did Derek get all the hair? This is one of life’s tragic mysteries of unknowable origin or purpose. So we move on.

When we heard this Halloween event was happening, we jumped onto travel sites to see how close we could organize flights from Detroit, Boston, Philadelphia, and Seattle. And despite the shutdown shenanigans and bad weather that delayed Thomas’s arrival until 1:30am, we all made it to the house we shared, full of kitschy Western art and an IP address called “No More Mister WiFi.”

The best part of the whole set-up was the plentiful together time, especially with all of Derek’s new in-laws. It was a truly communal wedding and reception, both held at a neighbor’s home, and almost all the guests arrived on Thursday to set everything up, partied on Friday, and spent Saturday tearing it all down.

Seeing his younger brother launch his first marriage at age 54, and listening to Derek’s tween stepkids call him “Daddio,” dislodged a lot of emotion during Doug’s blubbery Best Man speech. The French brothers are, at their core, family men. And now, Derek gets to pour his big heart into his new brood — which, unfortunately, is across the damn country.

We should be used to this, since everyone in Doug’s family lives at least seven hours apart by car. But watching a new family come together makes you wish your own parents and siblings and children weren’t so far apart. This will definitely be front of mind for a while, since Doug’s parents are too old to travel very far without a hotel stop.

Magda reveled in the whole joyful experience, and not just because she escaped the Northeast for a few days of dry, cloudless weather. The long weekend was the perfect opportunity to get to know Taylor and her family, spend some time with our son’s girlfriend, and watch our adult kids discuss their adult lives with the other adults in a very adulty crowd.

And if you’re ever in Prescott, get the fish and chips at Bill’s Grill and a Benedict Duo (an underrated name for a Bond villain) at Salt & Pepper — with an order of maple sriracha bacon for the table.

Embers in the News

Here are some of the links that peeked through the noisy news cycle:

• The indecent docent Tours by the “grumpy guide” in Düsseldorf, who tries to make museumgoers feel “as ignorant as possible,” are sold out for months.

• N’oubliez pas de vivre Winners of a new Paris cemetery lottery will get to be buried near Jim Morrison, Jean-Paul Sartre, or Edgar Degas.

• When your phone gets literally bricked A six-pound, solid steel phone case has been designed to be heavy and inconvenient enough to discourage phone use.

• Yo-del-ay-heeee-what? The Swiss government wants UNESCO to recognize yodeling as part of Switzerland’s “intangible cultural heritage.”

• No thanks, Nabisco Avert your eyes. Do not click on this link about some new, unholy Oreos flavored like Thanksgiving dinner.

Currently reading

Magda found her re-read of What You Are Looking For Is In The Library by Michiko Aoyama just as comforting the second time. She just started The Bellweather Rhapsody by Kate Racculia and is waiting to get hooked by the mystery. Also! If you’d like to join a book group that isn’t on F***book, join Magda’s free group on Skool! We’re starting with a Holiday Reading Challenge: You choose how many books you’ll read and what you’ll give yourself when you hit your goal.

Somehow, The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta never made it atop Doug’s To-Read pile. But the plot hits different now, since much of our post-COVID anxiety and paranoia mirrors the town of Mapleton after 2% of the world’s population abruptly disappears. It makes you contemplate your fragility and impermanence, if that’s your thing.

Currently watching

Doug really liked Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost. Little Benji Stiller recounts family life among entertainers in this amazingly personal memoir of sandwich parenting in the public eye. Next is Vince Gilligan’s PLUR1BUS, an “ambiguous apocalypse” about a virus that makes everyone but Rhea Seehorn blissfully happy.

Magda is (of course) catching up on DOOL (IYKYK) after a week away and is looking forward to the last two episodes of GBBO tomorrow (so no spoilers, please!). She caught 15 minutes of the new Naked Gun movie over someone’s shoulder on a plane, and she laughed enough that she’ll probably watch the entire thing this weekend.

Currently cooking

Has Magda mentioned that she’s out of insulin resistance? Like, completely beneath the threshold? It’s because of bagged salads from Aldi. So she’ll continue on with that.

With our son home in Michigan for another week, Doug amped up the standard comfort combo with roasted butternut squash and carrot soup and grilled cheeses made with caramelized onion chutney. Next. Level. Yum.

Thanks for reading, and here’s a bonus shot of Sly Stallone looking a little derpy:

Magda and Doug

For example: Magda has been watching “Wear Whatever The F You Want,” a clever sort-of-reboot of “What Not To Wear” that we used to watch together 20 years ago. Those old clothes aged about as well as our marriage (how many sweaters with little peplums to hide a tummy can people wear??), but the bigger deal is that Clinton and Stacy are using this series to disavow the old one, regretting the snarky body shaming that entrenched them as cogs in the wheel of that whole crappy zeitgeist.

This time, a client begins each show with an idea of how they want to dress without the confidence or knowledge to pull it off. Stacy and Clinton suggest outfits from that aesthetic, and the client picks one and wears it to an event for a test drive. The next day, the hosts assess the look with the client, as well as a close friend or family member, to determine how the strategy might need tweaking. Then the client takes home a whole new wardrobe and models it for friends and family.

Because there’s no judgment or proscriptive anything from Stacy and Clinton, the new show projects a joy the old one never had. “She deserves to be seen the way she wants to be seen,” Clinton says about one of the clients. And Stacy and Clinton get to be guides, not enforcers. They’re also more relaxed and loopy fun than ever before—obviously because they’ve reached their mid-50s and are completely out of F’s.

Magda is feeling the same kind of joy as she preps her newest side project: a workbook that tracks every U.S. and Canadian holiday (government, cultural, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and on and on) for the whole year. For years, she’s been conducting an after-action review of every holiday celebration and making notes for the next year about what to do or not do, make or not make. (She has a note in her calendar to make kheer for Diwali on Monday because a friend suggested it.) So keep an eye out for Your Holiday Playbook in November!

Doug has no interest in learning what a peplum is. But hey, watch whatever the F you want.

Embers in the News

Here are some of the links that peeked through the noisy news cycle:

• I am Ironwoman After she learned to swim at age 59, Natalie Grabow (now 80) became the oldest woman to finish the Ironman World Championship.

• Feet pics are extra Canadian scientists are soliciting toenails for a study to determine how a nonsmoker can contract lung cancer.

• Sewage treatment can be fun(gi) The MycoToilet uses mushrooms to compost our waste, absorb odor, and create over 2,000 liters of fertilizer and soil per year.

• Nobody wanted this Nobody wants this. This has no reason to be. Stop, already.

Currently reading

Magda is loving the fourth Evander Mills 1950s noir detective novel, Mirage City by Lev AC Rosen. This time, Andy goes back to his hometown of L.A. on a missing persons case and has to avoid his mother, whom he assumes would be destroyed if she found out he’s gay.

Fresh off his accreditation as a cycling advocate with the League of American Bicyclists, Doug is enjoying his delusions of grandeur inspired by How Cycling Can Save the World by Peter Walker. It’s an inspiring manifesto of incremental, northern-Europe-type changes we can effect despite the U.S.’s inveterate car worship.

Currently watching

Wednesdays are a big TV day for Doug, because that’s the day new episodes of The Lowdown and Slow Horses are released. Each has its specific sense of humor in the face of pitch-dark cynicism, but Doug is always a sucker for a picaresque story about a principled, slovenly ne’er-do-well who knows more than you think he does.

Magda _rankly _eels _ar better watching _ashion a__icionados become _un con_idants. (See above.)

Currently cooking

Magda made these pumpkin chocolate chip cookies twice: the first time as written, and the second by roasting the pumpkin at 350° for about 15 minutes to intensify the flavor, cooling it down, doubling the oil, and using more chocolate chips. The second batch received several compliments, including one from a 14-year-old boy.

With the overdue arrival of autumn, Doug loaded his slow-cooker with these charro beans and filled his house with the comforting aromas of bacon, chorizo, cumin, and joy.

Thanks for reading, and see you out there tomorrow!

Magda and Doug

But the real reason to resume is to reveal a major milestone in our lives. Longtime readers will recall that the main reason we started this Substack is to acknowledge the unexpectedly surreal experience of being in your 50s. From now on, however, Doug’s 60th birthday last week means he’ll have to observe those 50s in the rear-view.

This must gave been exactly how Ricky Martin felt when he aged out of Menudo.

Doug is here to report, however, that although much of his body strives to make him feel otherwise, 60 feels great. Case in point: Now that Doug has more control over his time, he often helps out his friends, a working couple with three boys under 11. They were over all day on Monday, and after several hours of gaming and recarpeting the living room with LEGOs, they took a walk to the park.

After the four of them managed some Frisbeeing and a game of touch football, they befriended a young mom with three girls under 6, who, when the boys’ dad came to pick them up, told Doug, “I just assumed you were the grandpa.”

And Doug’s first thought was Yes! Finally, my looks have grown into my energy!

The horizon for this next decade is truly bright, he thought, as he got home and shopped for a bulk order of butterscotch candy.

Embers in the News

Here are some of the links that peeked through the noisy news cycle:

• And it’s harder to misspell your name Run by deaf and hard-of-hearing staff, the Dialogue Express Café teaches people to order their coffee in sign language.

• In case you’re a 50-year-old Virgin The Rocky Horror Picture Show premiered in the U.S. 50 years ago last Friday, at the UA Westwood in Los Angeles.

• Homo erectus goes home The Netherlands will return 28,000 fossils, including a piece of skull regarded as the first evidence of Homo erectus, to Indonesia.

• Plus, it was easier to eat pasta Two women taught Europe to eat with a fork when the culture found it “more masculine and honest” to use a knife and fingers.

Currently reading

Magda just finished The Dance of Anger by Harriet Lerner, which is a rightful classic. We know it was written for women however many decades ago, but everyone (especially college-aged people) would benefit from reading it while the world falls apart so you can at least work to make yourself more aligned and happy. She is also really loving Tuesday Mooney Talks To Ghosts by Kate Racculia, which someone correctly described as The Westing Game for adults.

Doug is continually appalled by Careless People, which he admits he is reading with a ton of confirmation bias. The way Zuck and Sherry are described is just too plausibly weird and/or reprehensible, since Meta offers no ownership of the misinformation and data-harvesting that helped put us where we are. Also: Fork Amazon.

Currently watching

Now didn’t seem the right time for Doug to watch A Private War, a vivid reminder of all the horrid shit, physical and mental, that humans inflict upon each other. But Rosamund Pike is terrific (despite her wayward r’s), and however much the story was edited dramatically, it still rightly applauds journalists who sacrifice everything to give important stories the attention they deserve.

Magda rocketed through The Paper, which is earnest and sweet where The Office was snarky. The weird characters are less abrasive, so it feels more like WKRP in Cincinnati. Now she’s watching Season 5 of Only Murders in the Building, which has thankfully recaptured its vibe from the first two seasons (although they’re dressing Mabel horribly). She also likes the bakers (and the effect Allison and Noel are having on each other) in this season of Great British Bake-Off.

Currently cooking

Magda is eating very simply these days to try to recover from insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome, so there are no new cooking tales to tell. But she will tell you that she’s finished her first crocheted sweater ever. It’s a hexi cardigan done in Coastal Grandma colors. A fun project, and she’ll probably make more of them:

You would think that the creamy richness of homemade mac and cheese would match perfectly with the crunchy heat of kimchi. And you’d be right! Doug found it the ideal hybrid meal for this weird meta-autumn that begins with crisp mornings but still spikes into the mid-80s by midday.

Thanks for reading, and it’s just a party, Janet.

Magda and Doug

We opened the dashboard and found a bunch of new subscribers, so welcome! You’re just in time to read what we’ve been up to. Doug just got back from 10 days of sandwich fam-tending, and Magda has just begun her three weeks caring for her dad, who has early-mid-stage Alzheimer's, while her mom and uncle visit family in Norway.

This morning, she helped fill out her mom’s advanced healthcare directive, both for this trip and for when she returns. Magda and her brother are the first two designated agents, and they’re putting her mom's sister, who lives in Norway full-time, as the third, just in case her aunt has to navigate anything serious on her mom’s behalf while they’re all together among the fjords.

Magda hopes she’s as intrepid about travel in 30 years as her mother is now. Getting to her parents’ small town was a 13-hour odyssey comprising a flight, two shuttles, three hours of bewilderment over a shuttle schedule from Minneapolis, and a car trip with a stranger who turned out to be the mother of Magda’s grandmother's financial planner. (Minnesota is a lot smaller than it looks.)

Overall, it felt weirdly normal, and the only stressful part was her complete ignorance of how that shuttle operates. It turns out that people get on the wrong bus all the time, yet they somehow find their way to their desired destination. Will this feel more precarious as she gets older? Or will she luck out and feel more connected as the process becomes more familiar?

In the meantime, she’d like you to know that she typed all this on her phone while her laptop charges in the downstairs bathroom. Since the bathrooms are the only places in her parents’ house where you can find a three-pronged outlet, she’s wondering which will eventually become her office.

Embers in the News

Here are some of the links that peeked through the noisy news cycle:

• .walk a for go Let’s You might be able to relieve back and knee pain, slow arthritis, and improve your memory by walking backwards.

• Thanks, Barney! The great dinosaur extinction of 66 million years ago might be why the planet has fruit.

• How to save 600,000 lives a year Since insecticides don’t work, scientists have discovered how to genetically block mosquitoes from transmitting malaria.

• Theodore Twombly lives! More than 70% of teens have used AI companions, and half (half?) use them regularly for emotional support.

Currently reading

Mostly, Magda is reading the list she wrote that details her dad's daily schedule and meds regimen. She’s also in the middle of Julie Chan Is Dead by Liann Zhang and finding it sharp and clever.

Doug is on a Weinersmith Jaunt, having scored both A City on Mars and Soonish at the planet’s best library. The first debunks the dubious techbro fantasy, and he can read the second, which outlined “ten emerging technologies that'll improve and/or ruin everything” back in 2017, with great respect for their prescience.

Currently watching

As Doug watches Light & Magic, he is 1) marveling at the seat-of-the-pants ingenuity that created Star Wars’ unprecedented special effects in 1977, and 2) lamenting that technology is rendering most of those ragtag problem-solving skills obsolete.

Magda is watching PBS. A lot of PBS. This is a huge upgrade from what she thought she’d be watching, now that her dad has somehow broken his addiction to nonstop CNN at top volume.

Currently cooking

Magda made saltine brittle (no nuts, obvs) and these lemon pistachio bars to take to a family thing last week. The saltine brittle all got eaten, and she thinks she could have improved the lemon bars by baking the lemon goop for 15 minutes before sprinkling the pistachios on top and baking for five more minutes.

Doug scarfed these phenomenal gochujang chicken burgers with kimchi bacon jam, which he made with thighs. He’s normally not opposed to using ground beef or turkey, but for some reason the idea of ground chicken completely skeeves him out.

Thanks for reading, and MEGAFLASH!

Magda and Doug

We’ve each grown up with a specific idea of what it means to be American. Magda’s grandfather fought Nazis face-to-face during World War II, and Doug’s oldest American ancestor came ashore in 1635. And despite all the glaring lapses of wisdom and character in American history, belonging to that specific group of Earthlings that carry an American passport has always informed our sense of identity. But this feels different.

Belonging to something is important. Magda is a pathological groupmaker, especially online. If she can’t find a group about a certain topic—such as parenting, college search, books, gardening, knitting, watching the Oscars, perimenopause, eating, kakothēres, Christmas, bullet journaling, New Year’s Day rituals, divorce support, career support, or “Elizabeths and Warrens for Elizabeth Warren”—she’ll create one. And they fill up quickly, because Finding Your People is a great feeling.

We’ve also both identified strongly with our alumni/ae groups, but that’s changing, too. Doug agonized over his decision to attend UVa, and realizing it was the right one played a big part in his development as a young adult. But to see Jim Ryan bullied out of the president’s office while an acquiescent board sat on its wealthy thumbs makes him wonder what all that UVa merch he wears will stand for.

Belonging is a big deal, especially when isolation and loneliness are surging and sending more people (especially angry, rudderless dudes) into the arms of Cult 45. We take our belonging seriously, even if it’s just to a small, blended family of “Weird Al” fans who saw him perform at Pine Knob this week. It’s a great membership to have, even if we couldn’t have dreamed it up when we met back in the 1900s.

Currently reading

Magda is reading That Summer by Jennifer Weiner for a book club and is finding it a very classic summer novel so far, complete with flashbacks and middle-aged mom problems.

Desperate for historical perspective, Doug is reading Greater Gotham, about New York City’s tortuous decades between its consolidation in 1898 and the end of World War I. Humanity might be destined to fight itself forever, but at least NYC no longer has to cope with 2.5 million pounds of horse manure every day. This feels like progress.

Currently watching

Doug is watching Andor, the prequel series to Rogue One, which challenges the cartoonish moral clarity of the Star Wars movies. When you consider that George Lucas intended the original and prequel trilogies as allegories against authoritarianism, re-engaging with the story in this moment hits a lot different.

Other than the Weird Al concert, Magda isn’t watching much. She caught a few episodes of the late 80s reboot of Columbo, including “Sex and the Married Detective,” when a sex therapist murders her lover when she catches him cheating with her assistant. The reboots are nowhere near as good as the 1971 originals.

Currently cooking

Magda has been living on a salad of grilled chicken, chopped cabbage, red and yellow bell peppers, cucumber, ranch dressing, and pumpkin seeds. Easy and cool and filling.

Doug is all about salads, too. This lentil salad (with spinach substituted for the kale) is the shit. He’s also experimenting with cold sesame noodle recipes and building on this banana ketchup recipe in search of the perfect condiment.

Thanks for reading, and we do vector calculus just for fun.

Magda and Doug

The extent of our shark smartness is 1) avoid sharks. End of list. If someone says, “Hey, there’s a shark,” we go the movies. And! A quick shout-out to the first shark movie / summer tentpole / establisher of classic panic-inducing music that was Jaws, which came out 50 years ago today! Remember when you saw it and thought, “How could the mayor be that big of a horse’s ass?” Ah, to be young and dumb in the 70s again.

Now that jackasses have overrun the executive branch, processing news relies heavily on distinguishing the dumb stuff from the scary stuff. New mega-maga-flagpoles? Paving the Rose Garden? Dumb. (Also tragic and potentially dangerous.)

Dude proposes to his A.I. chatbot and can’t say he’d break it off if his real-life, in-the-flesh partner and mother of his child asked him to? Scary-ish. But also a bit comforting to see these emotional eccentrics selected out of the dating pool.

Meticulously planned political murders, followed by untrammeled lies and hypocrisy among GOP thugheads who love the J6 pardons? Scary as fuck.

Then there’s the infuriating and depressing Supreme Court decision that allows states to make healthcare decisions for children and limits the parents’ influence on their kids’ physical and mental health. No wonder the U.S. birth rate is plummeting; why would anyone have a child in a country whose highest court thinks the state’s ignorance holds more value than a parent’s compassion?

The best way we’ve found to offset fretting on the federal front is to work as tangibly as possible at home. So Mike attended the “No Kings but Yaaas Queen!” parade with a sign that got him interviewed by the Boston Globe:

And Doug spent the last Father’s Day of his 50s 1) biking 43 miles to help raise some seed money, and 2) lying mostly still after that. The money will help open an Ann Arbor chapter of Cycling Without Age, a worldwide movement that helps people with limited mobility get back on their bicycles:

You know that expression, “a society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit”? This is kind of like that, except he’s an old man planting seats he might ultimately sit in, possibly in a cozy fleece bag.

And at first glance, the URL looks like “Cycling With Outrage,” which also feels apt.

Embers in the News

Here are some of the links that peeked through the noisy news cycle:

• Are these things on? If you’ve been diagnosed with hearing loss, here’s how to find the best hearing aids and how to use them properly.

• But there was only one Moonwalker Ever wonder how many people are in space right now? Now you know.

• Halitosis is probably relevant Every individual breathing pattern is as unique as a fingerprint and can help interpret brain activity and diagnose diseases.

• Sit and talk and rest a spell We’re always happy to read about groups that meet regularly to reduce the loneliness epidemic.

Currently reading

Magda is reading I Regret Almost Everything—restauranteur Keith McNally's memoir of restaurants, relationships, and the aftermath of having a stroke—and is way more entertained than she thought she would be.

Fresh off the re-read of A Confederacy of Dunces, Doug found a copy of Butterfly in the Typewriter, Cory MacLauchlin’s biography of John Kennedy Toole, which somehow creates more questions than it answers. He’s also finally reading The Sound and the Fury and has put Rowan Oak atop his list of things to see in Oxford, Mississippi.

Currently watching

Doug thinks anyone who panned Mickey 17 was probably too deep into a Parasite hangover. Bong Joon Ho’s sci-fi premise is vivid enough for the characters to act plausibly (except for Mark Ruffalo, miscast in an impossible role). Ultimately, wacky premises like this must be supported before superheroes take over everything.

Magda and Mike loved Tetris, the movie about the development and licensing of the game. (It's extremely harrowing!)

Currently cooking

Magda perfected her palak paneer and is moving on to malai kofta, although she's really only into the malai sauce and doesn't care so much about the kofta. Her first attempt was too gritty and was missing something, so if you have a favorite malai sauce recipe, please send it over. (Full disclosure: During this brutally hot week, she'll be eating nothing but salads with ranch dressing.)

Doug is addicted to shawarma bowls. He makes them in massive amounts and nibbles at them all week, and they somehow get better with extra time to intermingle in the fridge. This will also be a heat dome staple while uses is oven only for storage.

Thanks for reading, and may all our kids’ partners be human.

Magda and Doug

We tried to put aside our worst predictions about the second time around, but sure enough. As always, he’s following the first rule of marketing: Create a problem, and then sell yourself as the only solution. Like whoever it is selling those mini lacrosse sticks for cleaning your tongue. Obvious bullshit that somehow hoodwinks just enough people to be worth it.

Everything is a TV show with this guy. That speech at Fort Bragg, for example? The applause was fierce and disturbing … and staged. Everything is always meticulously programmed to build his bully persona and shield his loveless insecurity. “Weird” bothered him. “Tiny dick” references bothered him. “TACO” bothers him. Unflattering portraits bother him.

Massive protests really bother him. That’s where Saturday comes in.

Another thing that really bothers him is being associated with that guy who totally wasn’t murdered in prison. So he’s deflecting our attention by stirring up chaos in Los Angeles. The stakes are higher, because he’s panicking. Serious people are lining up to stick it to him. Yesterday, five times the usual number of DC Bar members voted 10:1 to crush Pam Bondi's brother's leadership bid.

He's said horrible things about our military, but he’s charging us $179 million to 1) order the National Guard and Marines to attack regular citizens and 2) parade humvees on his birthday. His shameless brain won’t comprehend that “semper fi” doesn't mean "unless a draft dodger has a hissy fit and orders us to shoot our mom's friends."

So we’re going to show up and show out at our local “No Kings” protests on Saturday. It's also Worldwide Knit In Public Day, so Magda will pre-game by pulling her best Madame Defarge act with dozens of her nice lady crafting friends (before they walk across the street to roast the guy whose hairdo looks like a very unnatural fiber).

Boston is also offering up the No Kings but Yaaas Queens! rally, which is hilarious and important. The bullies want us meek and somber. Protesting with a joyful thumb to our nose hurts their narrative and their feelings. So we’re spending Flag Day decked out in our best red, white, and blue and/or rainbow.

It’s all-hands-on-deck time. The more people out in the streets, the more focus we’ll steal from his tank-speckled ego-massage (which most of his craven supplicants will avoid like a town hall meeting).

Magda can't be the only one who has been feeling a strange sense of freedom and love in celebrating fighting magats. Music sounds better, food tastes more delicious, and jokes are funnier, all since we know they resent us for having more fun than they are. So we’re also spending this weekend pushing into all the things we love doing. Stay up late to finish that chapter. Walk another half mile. Grow more flowers. Listen to classic Americana like Sly and the Family Stone and the Beach Boys.

Could we have imagined our 50s would feature a wretch like him doing the things he’s doing? Hell no. But here we are. Defiantly. Let's exult with like-minded people face-to-face. Let’s be free.

In typical fashion, Doug found this fascinating. He delved further behind the scenes and learned that 1) John Hughes wrote the script in about a week; 2a) Mia Sara is acting again, and 2b) her two fathers-in-law have been James Bond and Kermit; and 3) Sam and Victor’s Day Off is a sequel in development about the two parking attendants who took the Ferrari for a joyride.

Magda, also typically, spent most of this conversation waiting for it to be over.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, she believes, is one of those few movies from that time period and genre that still holds up. High schoolers still want to skip school, parents are still a drag, school administrators are still adversaries, parades are still fun, and heading to the ballpark is still a great thing to do with an afternoon. It probably helps that we can all enjoy Matthew Broderick, Mia Sara, and Alan Ruck as they were, since none of them has turned into a huge you-know-what.

The timing of this movie is also relevant, because we were born more than seven years apart. Magda saw this movie in eighth grade and admires Jeannie for kicking the shit out of the only cast member who later was arrested for possession of child pornography. Doug, on the other hand, saw it near the end of college, and it was a little jarring to realize his young-adult memories are middle-aged.

Do you know what else happened in 1986? Weird Al Yankovic came out with Polka Party! And this is also relevant, because yesterday Magda invited Doug to a Weird Al concert next month with our son and her new husband. Which is something 21-year-old Doug and 13-year-old Magda would never, ever, ever, never, ever have seen coming.

But that’s the ride, right? We don’t know when it’s going to end, but it’s good to have lived long enough to recognize this as the best part so far.

And now that New Orleans is in the rearview and the kid is back east, Doug can focus on all the drudgery he spent the last month putting off until now. He tells his neighbors that he’s participating in No Mow May, for example, but he’s really just procrastinating until he buys a new (used) mower. The fun of watching the cat Free Willying in the backyard is a basic breakeven for all the tick checks.

During Magda’s latest Michigan visit, we did get the chance to hang out a bit and talk about the summer schedule. We haven’t podcasted since Episode 71 back in early April, and the truth is, we miss it. And until we manage to sit down and begin a new season, it’s good to know that people are still discovering/exploring our back catalog and suggesting future guests about fiftyhood.

We’ve even crossed the desks of a few publicists whose clients have books or classes or somesuch to sell, and that’s posing other challenges. Do we really want to vet these people and platform their shillery? So far, we feel very comfortable knowing that each guest knows at least one of us, and that’s kind of how we want to keep it. Chats are more fun than Interviews.

The other consideration is that each of us has a long-term, out-of-pocket caregiving stint planned over the summer. Which is right smack in the sweet spot of Sandwich Parenting, and when you think about it, it’s actually great to be needed and trusted by the people you love and who are still a big part of your life.

Anyway, that’s all we’ve got this week. If you’re reading this while you’re waiting to get shook all night long, we salute you.

Doug is still coming down from a delightful trip to New Orleans that he and our son had been planning for 10 years, since they saw the father and son bonding over beignets in Chef. In contrast, Magda is recuperating from the back-to-back whammy of a shingles shot and root canal surgery and feeling like a gorilla’s suitcase.

Just about every trip hits some kind of snag, but this one was remarkably problem-free. The tone was set early when the French Men went to brunch on their first morning in the French Quarter and sat next to a very extroverted tourism director on her lunch hour. She helped them plan meals, live music, and all kinds of touristy and non-touristy things to see and do. Crawfish season was peaking. NOMA had a stunning exhibit of West African masquerade rituals. A bartender celebrated our son’s birthday with a free round of Sazeracs.

Meanwhile, Magda is on her couch with throbbing gums and fluey aches radiating throughout her body.

Life is not fair. And there have been plenty of times when Magda has traipsed gaily, pressing flowers in life’s garden while Doug’s psyche lay flat in the trash. The point is, relationships get stronger when one partner knows exactly what can help the other out of a deep, miserable hole.

Or, if you’re divorced, you can just avoid each other entirely until one of you can chew solid food again.

Embers in the News

Here are some of the links that peeked through the noisy news cycle:

• “You gave me life twice” A mom gave her daughter a kidney in Louisiana’s first robotic kidney transplant. Two years later, they graduated nursing school together.

• Moonstruck Caltech researchers believe two huge blobs near the Earth’s center are remnants of an ancient planet that collided with Earth and created our Moon.

• Band-Aids for your organs A research team has developed an electronic, paper-thin patch that attaches to an organ to create a highway for drug delivery.

• Our destiny is robot butlers MIT engineers have built the Elderly Bodily Assistance Robot (E-BAR) that physically support elderly people in their homes.

Currently reading

Magda is reading Uncommon Measure by Natalie Hodges, "an exploration of music and its relation to the science of time," as part of the Big Library Read and isn't sure if she likes it yet. She's also listening to Leslie Jones's delightful memoir Leslie F*cking Jones, read delightfully by the delightful author.

Doug bought another paperback copy of A Confederacy of Dunces at Crescent City Books, where the cashier happened to be thumbing through a rare hardcover copy priced at $480. For the fully immersive experience, he re-re-read it while in the French Quarter eating beignets.

Currently watching

Doug introduced our son to the first few episodes of Treme, which is streaming on whatever HBO’s app is currently called. They enjoyed recognizing places they had just visited and rehearsing how to pronounce “Tchoupitoulas.”

Magda is not enjoying "Yes, Chef!", the new cooking game show hosted by Martha Stewart and José Andrés. Too many of the contestants are so mean-spirited that you wish they'd all just go home.

Currently cooking

Magda hasn't been cooking lately but is ready to try out her close personal friend Barbra Streisand's recipe for no-churn coffee ice cream once this post-vaccine haze has finally lifted.

After several days of rich NOLA food, Doug should commit to vegetarianism for at least a week. But that’s not keeping him from trying out new recipes for red beans and rice (delicious, mostly because he found some good andouille) and olive salad (with extra pepperoncini) for homemade muffulettas.

Thanks for reading, and it’s time to call our Senators again.

Magda and Doug

I’ve got bikes on the brain because yesterday the Bicycle Alliance of Washtenaw was invited to Lansing to meet with legislators about road safety and to accept the Advocacy Organization of the Year Award. Here we are, planning to start our dad band and wondering how much longer until I turn into the 😎 emoji:

I promise I’m headed closer to our usual fiftypedia vibe, because I’m leading into a handful of recent quintessentially mid-lifey experiences.

• In Lansing, one of the big discussion topics was the number of cycling volunteers that fall right in my age demographic. Many of us revealed that our doctors had (very benignly) urged us to take up biking as a way to build muscle, drop weight, exercise the lungs, and encourage our knees not to collapse into dust. So we get to have fun and stave off death!

• While we’re talking of bikes, the latest installment of the “Long Way” motorcycle series with Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman has arrived, and it’s the most middle-aged thing ever. These guys began with Long Way Round in 2004, when they scrapped and scuffled their way on a relative shoestring through swamps and deserts. Now, they’re taking a leisurely spin among posh digs in Scandinavia, and every other comment is about how nice and lovely everything is. I’m still enjoying it, of course, and I guess I should be happy that the show’s tone is aging concomitantly with my taste.

• Since Long Way Round, McGregor has divorced and remarried and is now chasing around a four-year-old son. And in the past month I’ve offered up some form of counsel/pep talk to five (!) men who are in the weeds of an ending marriage. The only thing they all have in common is that they know divorce is the right thing, even though it’s painful as hell. The first thing I always ask is, “Do you have any dudes?” Every divorcing man needs dudes to talk comfortably with, to confess how vulnerable and alone they can feel. I was very lucky to have my dudes when the tide was high, and I’m always grateful for the chance to dude it forward.

• 20 years of offering up my personal life online is coming to roost, and every Instagram ad insists I take up chair yoga. Just stop. What are you trying to do, make me buy new clothes??

• I told a kid that I’m turning 60 this year, and her doughnut literally fell out of her mouth.

I’ll be happy when the family gets here tonight, because advocating for bike safety makes you too aware of collisions and fatalities and the fact that our Secretary of Transportation is a dangerously block-headed hypocrite.

So I’m going tomorrow.

Which is fine, because now I have more time to clear all of my yarn and books and coffee mugs out of my office before it turns back into my son’s bedroom. And to figure out the incomplete meal plan for the rest of the week. And to do all the work I was going to do tomorrow anyway, after my body recovered.

One of the most binary choices a parent has is whether to indulge a child’s last-minute asks. I’m always surprised by parents who impose rigidity on their kids. “Make a plan and stick with it,” they say, “because changing things at the last minute tells people you don’t value their time.”

I guess I can appreciate that to a point, but I’ve always felt fine fulfilling these last-minute asks for my kids when I can (which, thankfully, is pretty often). And for a long time, it seemed like it didn’t matter much. But then came this text, when I realized that my kid knows I like farmers markets and wants to show me something he knows I'd like, and he isn't afraid to ask to change plans because it was always OK to ask. So being open to possibility has given me kids who are also open to possibility.

We’re going to have a lot to talk about on this trip tomorrow, including how our alma maters are handling federal harassment. So far, our son’s college president has held firm (like that badass governor of Maine, Janet Mills), but I’m not unhappy to see Michigan’s president leave for Gainesville. It will take UMich decades to recover from his rolling over while Harvard chose to stand and fight. It's still great to be a Michigan Wolverine, and I hope the door hits him right in the ass on his way south.

As you’ll see below, Doug is about to lead a book club discussion about “Falling Upward” by Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest who writes about a specific demarcation that separates each life into two halves. And Magda is teaching a class about interpreting the gospel, which Rohr believes has been misread enough to lead us away from its central message: you cannot rise without falling.

In the “first half” of our lives, we’re told there are specific beliefs we need to embrace about the systems around us. Choosing whether to accept these beliefs can be a high-stakes decision, because stepping out of them can be construed as counterculture. And most young people don't have the courage (or even the inciting incident) to become counterculture, even if they feel a strong misalignment between what they're expected to accept and what they know to be true of their own experience and observations.

But then comes a “falling”—a big, humbling life event like a death or divorce—that forces us to consider that misalignment with greater priority. We start considering these systems with enough depth and context to let ourselves defend the truths we know and let them supersede the stories we've been told. The “second half” of life, then, includes a new courage to claim your views, even when they contrast with the predominant narrative.

(Incidentally, one of the best ways to figure out what we actually believe about our place in the world is to figure out what to teach our own kids. If our primary motive is to help our kids find their way through a hostile world, one of the best ways to achieve that is to teach them to know and accept themselves, lead with open-minded empathy, and think critically rather than memorize.)

The problem, of course, is that too many people need to feel resolute and safe, rather than acknowledge that the longer we live, the less we know. The nonstop stress of our lives makes rigidity feel necessary and doubt seem like a luxury. The best way to avoid pain is to make enough money and do all the things we’re supposed to. Which is crazy.

More to come as these studies progress.

Embers in the News

Here are some of the links that peeked through the noisy news cycle:

• The Lorax would love this A new satellite will help scientists “weigh” the planet’s 1.5 trillion trees to determine how much carbon they store.

• “Dying to serve” A 55yo man with terminal cancer launched his “dying to serve tour,” during which he wants to perform community service in all 50 states.

• Stand and sit and stand again The 30-second “sit-to-stand test” can assess your risk of falls, cardiovascular issues, or even a higher risk of dying.

• Next up: electric trees Scientists have developed an “artificial leaf” that uses sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into photovoltaic cells and liquid fuel.

Currently reading

Magda just finished listening to Accidentally on Purpose, the charming memoir from Kristen Kish (who is probably the most beautiful woman in the world—or at least on American television). Kish reads her own story, both of becoming a chef and coming into her own truth and life, and you root for her the whole way through. Magda has now started Connie Chung's memoir and Enemy Feminisms by Sophie Lewis.

Doug never saw himself leading the discussion in a church book club. Yet here he is, reading Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward, which says that early teachings are fine, but your true spirituality emerges later in life, after those teachings have been challenged. He writes well about turning pain into progress without falling into cloying positivity.

Currently watching

Doug watched The Four Seasons reboot, which hews pretty closely to the original plot until Winter, when it becomes its own thing in search of a second season. Most updates are welcome, especially the added time with Jack’s ex-wife, Anne. But the many collaborators made the overall tone feel inconsistent and too sitcommy for the gravitas it wants to command.

Magda has been watching classic episodes of Tattletales and Supermarket Sweep on whatever free game show channel she gets on her antenna. Elle ne regrette rien.

Currently cooking

Magda made Faygo Redpop sherbet, which is delicious (and plentiful, because she’s the only one at Mike's house willing to eat it). The generic recipe is 3-4 cups of [insert pop flavor here], a 14-oz can of sweetened, condensed milk, and one cup of whole milk. Mix and chill, then turn it in the ice cream machine. Up next: Dr. Pepper!

Doug’s first thought when he encountered this raspberry-spinach salad with avocado and walnuts was: “There’s no way this works.” But he’s happy with the Mediteranean direction that his diet has taken, and that salad is a banger. It’s even better on Day 2!

Thanks for reading, and Colman Domingo’s charisma cannot be understated.

Magda and Doug

The antagonist of our story is the tree growing in a narrow patch of no-man’s-land behind Magda’s backyard in Detroit. In heavy storms, this tree drops huge branches that have broken through the garage roof and deformed the door frame so thoroughly that she can't open the door by herself anymore. The electricity provider has been out to look at it twice, and both times they’ve said they can't do anything because no one can figure out who owns the property the tree is growing on.

In September 2023, the city opened up a waitlist for an inspector to evaluate decaying trees for removal. When Magda signed up, she was told she was No. 3,259 on the list, and every first of the month since she has received an email saying she had moved up around 150 spots. So she bided her time, hoping the problem could be resolved before her garage was completely pulverized.

Then came the moment last week when the tree inspector called and asked, in his smooth-jazz bass, if he could schedule a visit. That visit was this morning, and when he first laid eyes on the situation he blurted out, "That's fucked up!"

After he regained his composure and apologized for the outburst, he took a bunch of photos, pulled out some permission forms (including one to use Magda’s neighbor’s yard for easier access), and scheduled a crew to take the tree down next month. (And for his part, the neighbor was stunned, because he was sure the city would never get the job done. Maybe now he has a little more respect for Magda’s tenacity and level of ire that carried her through the past 19 months.)

Of course, this is just one big step in the process, and it’s never wise to count your trees before they’re felled. But today, Magda’s excitement feels like Christmas. It also conjures a convincing metaphor for what the U.S. is going through. The dangers of Tea Party wingnuts, ravenous billionaires, and Citizens United have loomed above us for decades, and now the destruction has begun raining down in earnest. But perhaps, with conviction, patience, and incremental progress, this great nation will once again serve as a sturdy, protective structure with parallel clapboards and a door that actually works.

The Fireside executes its standard tavern menu very well (I had a grilled chicken sandwich on focaccia and some surprisingly excellent fries). But the star of the night was the taxidermed bobcat who watched me eat from his casual perch above the mantelpiece:

When another table asked about him, the host offered up a brief, uninteresting story and admitted the bobcat didn’t even have a name. This was disappointing. Why would you foist this on your clientele without being able to say, "Oh, that's Frank"? And then follow up with a rollicking backstory that changes every night?

And why all of a sudden am I so interested in being spontaneous? That day trip to Providence was a last-minute strategy to avoid the celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. (I have nothing against those battles as battles go, but I'm also very not into military-themed commemorations.) Providence is delightful, and now that we've been, we'll go again for sure—especially if we don't have to do any planning beforehand.

Another story: Last night, while we were home alone, we decided to make some cardamom frozen custard. Mike cooked the base and cooled it overnight in the refrigerator, and this morning we churned it in the ice cream maker we received as a wedding gift. It felt like a very "we’re in our 50s with no kids around, so let’s have ice cream for breakfast” sort of moment.

We might be jumping the gun a bit here, since we still have a teenager with us every other week. But this new, 50-percent spontaneity feels like a real luxury. It’s a little disorienting in a culture that constantly reminds you that there’s always something important you should be doing. Right. Now. But during this time, when it feels like we’re trapped in a bad improv sketch and reacting to nonstop nonsense, we might as well counter with a little “Yes, and …”

Maybe this weekend we'll get really wild and go to a protest in a different municipality! Maybe the College of Cardinals will get really wild and elect its first Black pope since the fifth century (maybe)! Or maybe they’ll choose Pierbattista Pizzaballa, which would be an excellent name for a bobcat who lives in a pub.

Earlier this week, Pete and Todd invited me out for a bike ride. And I knew this ride would be momentous because Pete and Todd are enthusiasts. They collect bikes and ride them all year long. I do all but two of those things.

In fact, the pattern of my life dictates that, after a winter of inertia, every April I am in the worse shape of the year. And since I bask in the inertia more each winter, every April achieves an incrementally new low in what this busted chassis can do.

Tl;dr, I’m in the worst shape of my life.

I’ll get better as I bike more often in warmer weather, but now is waaay too early in the cycle for me to attempt an extended bike trek. I spent all week convinced I’d dip out early and stagger home looking like one of those near-dead cowboys who rides into town slumped over his horse.

But readers, I survived all 29.06 miles, complete with the “biggest climb Lifetime,” the “2nd fastest 40K,” and the “most urgent longing for the sweet release of death”:

Pete and Todd are a couple years younger than I am. Pete rode a vintage bike with just two gears and likes to pedal standing up. Todd rode his e-bike because he ganked his back playing in a soccer league. So as we rode through the woods on the B2B Trail, it was clear which of us was the gimpy wildebeest in the herd that the lions would eventually take down. But Bike Season is on, baby! (At least until this latest Fake Spring dissipates and I have to turn the heat back on.)

When we settled into a coffee bar for Après-Bike, we bumped into three members of the Michigan women’s lacrosse team, who were all looking pretty knackered. They had just gotten off the bus from Northwestern and were pounding caffeine before practice, because they play Rutgers tomorrow and then fly to Maryland on Monday for the Big Ten Tournament. When I reflected on the day and realized I was older than all three of them combined, I felt pretty good.

Embers in the News

Here are some of the links that peeked through the noisy news cycle:

• Look to the flamingoes One of the best ways to determine how well your body and brain are aging is to stand on one leg.

• Can we be sleep-trained as well, please? Learning how to get to sleep is a skill that every age group needs to learn.

• Where to retire (as if that’s a thing) If you’re one of the 11.2 million Americans aged 65 and up who are still working, here are the best states to work in.

• A womb of one’s own After the UK's only successful transplant, Grace Davidson gave birth to a 4½-pound baby girl from her sister’s donated uterus.

Currently reading

Hoo-boy. Magda stayed up way past her bedtime to finish Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a memoir of her time working for Facebook from 2011 to 2018. Turns out, the horrors Magda thought she knew about Zuckerberg and Sandberg were just the tip of the iceberg. It really makes you realize how readily people get away with degenerate, violent things simply by doing them without asking permission.

When Doug spied Miranda July’s All Fours on his library’s express book shelf, he pounced. He’d read a lot of glowing reviews (which it deserves), and he knows a lot of his friends relate directly to the story of an artist who learns how to lose her fear of aging and accept the “descending arc” of her life.

Currently watching

Hoo-boy, part 2: Doug thinks season 3 of The White Lotus was … not great. Same characters, same formula, but with glacial pacing and silly, unearned endings. Doug is, however, enjoying the fearlessly weird comedy of ”Evry Bdys Live” with John Mulaney (or “as it will be known at [his] conservatorship hearing, Exhibit B.”)

Magda and Mike might actually go to an actual movie theater this weekend to see Bowen Yang in The Wedding Banquet, a remake of Ang Lee’s classic comedy from 1993. This will be their first movie theater experience since they got together during the pandemic.

Currently cooking

It has been a banner culinary week at Chez Zarin, with three new recipes that were all winners. They started with this olive and onion quick bread, moved on to this kung pao chicken (the air-fried tofu they substituted was chewy and perfect), and finished up with Ina Garten’s lemon chicken.

The way that Instagram/TikTok chefs condense a long, convoluted cooking process into 90 seconds is infuriating. But Doug likes the way this guy cooks, and his butternut squash gnocchi with creamy squash sauce is very much worth the effort. And he’s right: rolling your own gnocchi is very therapeutic.

Thanks for reading and veri-TAS, motherfucker.

Magda and Doug

Every situation is different, of course. If you’re really lucky, your child can manage this on their own. But maybe your kid’s college doesn’t allow freshmen to have a car. Maybe you’re divorced and live 800 miles apart, and the campus is at least 300 miles from each of you. Maybe communication hasn’t been as efficient as it could be, because the three of you have exclusively been talking two at a time.

If those maybes apply to you, you might be us! We recommend starting a Substack together and writing about the planning process. It really keeps those communication lines open.

Our plan, such as it is, is coming together. Pickup is pretty straightforward: Magda will drive to campus when we finally learn when the best day to do that will be. Our son hasn’t been a font of information about that, since he’s focused on his finals and registering for next semester’s classes. And that’s probably fine, because it means he trusts us enough to know we’ll all figure this out eventually.

There are some important considerations, though. When we arrived last fall, for example, we were greeted by an army of seniors who helped haul our son’s bundles up four flights of stairs. Since the seniors will be gone, Magda will be depending on the kindness of hallmates (and wondering how much stuff would survive a four-story drop out the window). It's more labor than she thought she’d be expending on a kid out of high school, but at least she’s not receiving disingenuous emails every Friday evening from the derelict school superintendent anymore.

Returning in the fall will be trickier, because when the time comes Magda, Doug, our son, and his stuff will be in four very far-flung locales. We’ll need a meticulous, well-synced plan to make dropoff happen, and at this rate of communication, we might have just enough time to draw it up if we start now.

In the meantime, we’re also thinking about Saturday. We thought it was going to be another big protest, but in many locations it looks like it'll be more of a Day of Service. Regular Americans are into serving others anyway, so this feels like it should be fun. Magda is wondering if it's been warm enough yet for her form of service to be pulling invasive plants from alongside the rail trail near Mike’s house. (She can't tell which plants are which until they start to pop up and bud.)

And Doug is looking forward to the chaos when protesting crowds merge with tens of thousands of football fans leaving America’s largest stadium. What could go wrong?

Another surrealistic parenting moment is the first time your adult child comes to you for financial advice. How do you preach faith in American investments when your kid’s monetary touchpoints are The Great Recession and The Tyrannical Tariff Toddler? We’ve got a bit longer perspective, but we also know that “past performance is no guarantee of future results.” So while we’re both hunting around in the dark, at least our flashlight burns a little bit brighter.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a true WTFGU chat without a couple “disgusted huffs” to lighten the mood. You can learn a lot about Magda’s lens on life from her interpretation of that George Bailey movie they show every Christmas. And though Doug might be a fan of The Four Seasons, after four months of mostly relentless cold he’d settle for two.

Other links:

• Tina Fey’s 2025 reboot of The Four Seasons arrives May 1 …

• … and don’t confuse the movie with Same Time, Next Year

• The late, lamented Bike & Build program

• Reversing Alzheimer’s by Heather Sandison

• Our discussion about gut health with Maya Gangadharan:

Edited Transcript

Magda Pecsenye Zarin: Why don't you lead with that?

Doug: I mean, it's just the computer didn't cooperate and the cat is just conscientiously avoiding the linoleum whenever he barfs and I have an allergy attack. And it's the cold, too. I got to say, I've had enough. I've had enough of 38 degrees. You know, it's been four months. Do you remember I used to take the kids to the cold room at Fairway?

Magda: Yeah.

Doug: You know, you walk in and you can put on these skanky jackets that tons of other people have worn.

Magda: Yeah.

Doug: And the kids love them because they look like 1920s strong men and they would flex in them because they were 80 sizes too big. And that's fun for 15 minutes, but not for four goddamn months.

Magda: Ah, boy.

Doug: So, yeah. We had our fake spring. We had three days of 70-degree weather. And now we're back in this unstable polar vortex. And so I'm like, all right. Let's just make lemonade out of lemons. Or at least curd. Lemon curd out of lemons. How about that?

Magda: Lemon curd out of lemons. That's delightful.

<music plays>

Doug: Glad to be podcasting with you again.

Magda: I know, it's been a long time.

Doug: Like a month, maybe? I don't know.

Magda: I think it's been a month.

Doug: I had to look up what number we're on. We're on episode 71.

Magda: Wow!

Doug: It's been a minute, but at least I've been busy in the interim, so that's something. But I'm glad to be back with you.

Magda: Right. It's true. Well, you've been doing a whole lot of podcasts without me, your bicycle podcasts.

Doug: I've been, yeah, I've been getting some podcast business. I'm really enjoying that. And all right, no fair. You're getting me into a better mood. This is not good for content.

Magda: I know. I think it is good for content, though, because everybody really doesn't want to listen to like old man shaking fist at cloud for like 40 minutes or however long this is going to be.

Doug: Well, and for what it's worth, it is a cloudless day. So there's another step in the right direction.

Magda: Well, suddenly the sun is out here. And I said to you right before you hit record, “and suddenly it's snowing.” So I don't really understand.

Doug: Yeah, it snowed yesterday here. And on the same day, I got my first new glasses in six years. That was a revelation. I'm not doing the Schumer thing with my glasses anymore.

Magda: Did you get the progressives?

Doug: Oh, yeah. I have progressives. I have transitions. Whenever I order them, once every six years, I do get the full package.

Magda: I've had mine for like three months now, and I'm finally over getting the vertigo when I look from the top to the bottom of the progressives. Getting old, man.

Doug: I was roundly chastised for waiting six years. But I had to wait until the glasses were almost completely occluded by scratches and crap that would not come off no matter how much you try to clean them. Even the professionals in the store are like, are these barnacles? What are these things? The glasses had cataracts.

Magda: The glasses had cataracts.

Doug: Right. So it is nice to have a nice view of everything for a change.

Magda: Yeah.

Doug: For the first time since before COVID.

Magda: That's excellent. So what are we talking about today?

Doug: You know, the other thing is in the interim, I have had ideas for more podcast topics.

Magda: Okay.

Doug: So I thought I'd float a few by you. One of which came about, I had this really great weekend. I got a text out of nowhere saying a classmate of mine was coming to New York to clean out her parents' house out on Long Island.

Magda: Okay.

Doug: And they were going to build a dinner party around that. She's going to be in town in Brooklyn. Let's have a dinner party. And we got 12 people together and had an amazing night, which I flew in for.

Magda: That's delightful.

Doug: It was delightful, which means I think I've reached the age now where I think we should have some semblance of a college reunion like once a quarter and talk about our parents. Once a quarter? Oh, yeah, for sure. Why the hell not?

Magda: That's good.

Doug: I mean, so many amazing discussion topics around that table. Even my friend's kids who happened to be home were sitting through it and were like, God damn, is this what's ahead? But they were very sweet. But one topic people were talking about was a lot of us are now kind of planning out what the next phase of our lives is going to be now that the kids are kind of out. And now it's about intracouple negotiations about retirement locations.

Magda: Retirement locations.

Doug: Right. Or just philosophies. I mean, because like if he wants to be near the golf course and she wants to be near the ocean and wants nothing to do with the golf course. Whether you want to be near family and whose family do you want to be near? Do you need to be near? That's a thing. Like every couple that's still together and has been together for 30, 40 years is now kind of daintily approaching these negotiations about if they sell out where they are, where are they going to go? And how will they find a happy medium if there is a happy medium to find?

Magda: I think that's a good topic, but I think we need to find somebody else to talk about it with us because, you know, Mike and I have a very different negotiation about that because we weren't married and had our kids together, you know? So from the very beginning, when we were dating, we were already talking about that. And you don't have to negotiate with anybody at this point. Like, you know, which is not to say that you couldn't meet somebody next week and end up having to negotiate with them. But at this point you get to be the one who decides by yourself.

Doug: Which I really am not hating, I have to say. But yeah, everybody there is still in their first marriage, and it's a whole different dynamic when you're negotiating with someone you've known for 30 years versus someone you've known for, you know, five or 10. And the other news we talked about was, you remember that movie, The Four Seasons with Alan Alda?

Magda: Maybe? Is that the one? No, I'm thinking about Same Time Next Year. That's not the one you're talking about.

Doug: Right. That's the one where he has an affair with this woman.

Magda: Every year.

Doug: One day a year. Yeah. Which is also a great movie. But Alan Alda wrote and directed this in 1981. It's about three couples who are all best friends and they go on vacations together. Kind of more often than couples would. But Alan Alda's married to Carol Burnett. And Jack Weston is married to Rita Moreno. And Len Carreau is married to Sandy Dennis. Many of these actors, you're going to have to look up. Ask your parents about who these people are.

Magda: Okay, you have to cut all this out just so you know. Because describing a movie that came out when the majority of the listeners were like eight is not...

Doug: Listen, people should know, right? Like I told you, Thomas and I had a Gene Hackman marathon after he passed. Because people need to know Gene Hackman.

Magda: Right, and it's fine, but I mean, you're talking about this movie as like a touchpoint. Absolutely not a touchpoint for people.

Doug: Well, it's not a touchpoint like The Big Chill, but it came out at around the same time, and it's about these three middle-aged couples, and then one of them breaks up. One of them gets divorced, and Len Carreau, who marries a much younger woman, played by Bess Armstrong, who is the kid in this movie. She's now like, you know, 70. but she's like 28 in the movie. And so it's about this dynamic of these three couples and what happens when one of them breaks up and the guy meets a much younger woman and the fraught relationship with the ex-wife now, and they need to kind of balance because they don't get along as well as you and I do. It's really awkward between the two of them and the kids are adversely affected.

Magda: Most divorced people don't get along as well as you and I do.

Doug: Right. It's a bad situation. And It's in the news just because Tina Fey is kind of rebooting it as a Netflix series starting in May 1st.

Magda: Oh, God, that's weird. Okay.

Doug: But it's an interesting dynamic. I think a lot of the reactions are genuine, I thought.

Magda: I mean, I just... How did you even see it? It came out when you were 16. Why would that be a movie that was even remotely on your radar?

Doug: Well, it's one of those things you see it when you're 20 and you're like, oh...

Magda: Yeah, but how would you have seen it when you were...

Doug: Because it's Alan Alda. He was in MASH. He was a big deal. He wrote and directed this.

Magda: Yeah, but God, this is a movie about old people. Who would watch that at 20?

Doug: You're looking at him.

Magda: Oh, boy. You are so sentimental. You are so sentimental, Doug French.

Doug: Say more. I mean, I agree, but say more.

Magda: You have always had this very strong emotional connection to movies that are full of the kind of sentiment that a lot of people are just like “too much!” somebody else's feelings.

Doug: So you're talking about I lean into emotions where others avoid them.

Magda: Yeah, but like a specific type of...

Doug: And you're saying that like it's a bad thing. I mean, I'm proud of that.

Magda: You love The Big Chill.

Doug: I love The Big Chill.

Magda: And you love... Oh, God, why can I never... I always forget the name of this movie. The one where they're dancing and they fall in a swimming pool. Where she should have been a librarian, but she marries him instead.

Doug: It's A Wonderful Life?

Magda: Yes, It's A Wonderful Life.

Doug: Well, first of all, the thought that you could even forget what that movie's called says a lot about your movie taste.

Magda: I never remember what that movie is called.

Doug: You know, there's like this document that Jefferson wrote on July 4th. It's like the Decla- something.

Magda: And also the fact that what I take out of the movie is they're dancing and they fall into a swimming pool, and she should have been a librarian instead of marrying him.

Doug: It is an interesting takeaway. There's a bit more going on there. You know. He lost all the money. When's the last time you saw that movie?

Magda: Oh, it's been a long time. I don't enjoy that movie, so I sort of actively avoid that movie.

Doug: Are you kidding me? You don't even enjoy it?

Magda: Every time I see that they're showing it at the Redford movie theater, the old-timey movie theater, I always feel like I should tell you to go see it.

Doug: It's on every Christmas. I mean, there's no need to go sit among a bunch of people.

Magda: I am never tempted to say, hey, you and I should go see it, as I am with other movies, right? Like when Roadhouse came out, I was like, oh, let's go see Roadhouse, right?

Doug: Right.

Magda: But I just lean into a different kind of emotion.

Doug: Tell me you're not moved when he says “to my big brother George, the richest man in town.” Nothing?

Magda: No, I think it's a portrait of a narcissist.

Doug: My sentimental self is tearing up just thinking about it. Portrait of a narcissist. That's also interesting. All right. Wow.

Magda: Yes. All right. So I want to talk about what I want to talk about today. And what I want to talk about today is that I have gone on to the Alzheimer's diet for the last, I don't know, week and a half maybe. And the background to this is that many people know that I have this family history of Alzheimer's.

Doug: This is your thing. Yeah. This is something you think a lot about.

Magda: Yeah. Paternal grandmother died of Alzheimer's. My dad is actively in the middle of Alzheimer's right now. And I just came across this research by this guy named Dr. Dale Bredesen. And he thinks that what is diagnosed as Alzheimer's is actually possibly five different things. And one of them is strong inflammation of the brain caused by the foods that people eat and the substances that they ingest. One is a lack of substances that people ingest. One is exposure.

Doug: That seems like the yin and yang of the medical community, right? It's like too much of this is bad. Not enough of this is bad.

Magda: Exactly. And one is exposure to toxic things like heavy metals or mold or fungus or stuff like that. So he has developed this protocol that involves testing the crap out of somebody who has Alzheimer's to try to identify what it is that's causing their specific symptoms, and then just going on a program to fix what they're eating, give supplements if they need supplements, have them stop taking supplements if they're taking the wrong supplements, you know, if they're in a situation where they're around mold, like mitigating that all that kind of stuff, right. And so he has this book that's written about it. And then he has a book that is called The End of Alzheimer's Program. And so you get the book and you think, “oh, this is going to be the program that tells me how to operationalize this for my parent who has Alzheimer's. Oh, and by the way.

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I'm going to go on the diet too, just to see if I can prevent it.” Right. But then you open his program and it's not actually laid out so anybody can use it. It's really literally just the scientific studies that he referenced. So it's kind of like a grad school science textbook. So I read it in a disgusted huff and then looked at all the reviews of it on Amazon and everybody else was like, “I bought this thinking that it was going to tell me how to do his program and oh no, it was like, way thicker than anything I've ever read.”

Doug: So another idea for your epitaph, a disgusted huff.

Magda: There's a little bit of a complication. I mean, essentially the basic diet that he's recommending for people who have not been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, have not been noticing any symptoms of any memory loss, but are concerned about it because they have a family background in it. It's essentially a ketogenic diet because his theory is that If you can go into ketosis, that's going to stop these amylase proteins or whatever it is that develops in your brain. And that if you are actively in Alzheimer's, you need to be in ketosis for longer. But if you're just trying to prevent it, you need to be in ketosis for three to six months. And then after that, you need to spend about 25% of your time in ketosis, which means like you just spend a week in ketosis every month and then the rest of the time you eat sensibly. So it's not like you spend a week in ketosis and then the rest of the time you're eating like Nerds Clusters, which are my drug of choice at this point.

Doug: It sounds like there's some overlap with intermittent fasting, right? Same kind of ketosis gospel.

Magda: In that it can be an on and off thing. Yeah. And I mean, he does recommend eating in a time bound kind of way, right? Like you're not supposed to have like a midnight snack. You're supposed to give your body a rest from digesting stuff for part of the day. But it's not like the 16-8 thing of intermittent fasting or anything like that. It's just like you eat in the morning and then you finish eating dinner and then you're done eating for the day.

Doug: So how does digestion affect the onset of Alzheimer's or nutrition, I guess I should say?

Magda: Well, he doesn't really talk about that in a super expanded way. I mean, basically, remember when we talked to Maya Gangadharan, she was talking about how the digestion and all of those signals coming from the stomach. And that's essentially what he's saying. So what he's saying is that one type of Alzheimer's is probably caused by inflammation from the stuff that you're eating and that your stomach can't completely process. So everything that Maya said about leaky gut, about all that kind of stuff was the stuff that he reiterated. So I have to say, like, I kind of skimmed through that because I've heard that from plenty of people, including–

Doug: And that tracks. That makes sense. Because, yeah, your fundamental existence relies upon how well you process whatever you eat.

Magda: Right. So it's essentially a ketogenic diet because you're trying to put yourself into ketosis. Right. But it's a little bit about switching the way the times you eat things. And he also wants you to eat no grains whatsoever, which is a keto thing. But he also doesn't want you to eat dairy, which is different from a lot of the ketogenic stuff because it's like dairies, you know, they're like, hey, just eat cheese until the cows come home because it's fat. And he's like, well, you can eat as much fat as you want on this diet, but you're not supposed to eat dairy unless it's fermented, right?

Doug: So the cows would come home to say, stop eating our cheese.

Magda: Yes, exactly.

Doug: Thank you. I'll be here for the rest of the afternoon.

Magda: So the other thing is, you know, people who did keto back in the ‘80s or ‘90s or whatever, were eating bacon all the time. And he's like, hey, not so fast. Processed foods are the worst. So like if you want to eat a fatty pork chop, OK, but you cannot eat bacon because it's just too processed and it's going to kill you, not to mention the salt is horrible for you. So anyway, I then stumbled on this book called... Reversing Alzheimer's, that is by Dr. Heather Sanderson. Dr. Heather Sanderson runs an outpatient clinic and also a residential living center for people with Alzheimer's. And she took Dale Bredesen's research and basically operationalized it. So the subtitle of the book is “The new toolkit to improve cognition and protect brain health.” She has seen great success in instituting all of the protocols that Dale Bredesen discovered, but she has also written a book breaking out how they do it at this residential center. So this is the book that I thought Dale Bredesen's program was going to be because it essentially tells you, here's how to do the diet. And if you haven't been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, but you're just worried about it, here's how it works. And here's how you should operationalize it, right? Because the idea that I, at the age of 52, would be in ketosis for the rest of my life for fear of Alzheimer's is just absolutely not workable. So she says again, ketosis for three to six months, which, OK, that's fine. Three months is a lot more likely than six. And then a week every month. OK, that's fine. I can do it if it gives me my wits about me. So anyway, her version of it is she allows more dairy than Bredesen does on his. So I've gone with hers. And I have to say, I've been on it for a week and a half, and I feel measurably more alert, like not necessarily smarter.

Doug: Well, I was going to ask that. So you're still putting dairy in your coffee?

Magda: No, I actually, part of the coffee thing is that I've been trying to use my morning coffee to help put me into ketosis. And so I'm making bulletproof coffee with coconut oil, but I am eating dairy at other times. I'm not necessarily every day. And I feel measurably more alert.

Doug: See, I wonder about that. I mean, I'm happy to hear that, but how much of that do you think is the power of suggestion? Yeah.

Magda: I think very little of it is the power of suggestion. And I think a whole lot of it is the fact that I was just eating too many carbs and too much sugar and sugar makes you cloudy and weird.

Doug: Yeah.

Magda: Like, I mean, we know sugar doesn't do good things for people's bodies, but it also just makes people kind of, you know, it makes everything feel like that week after Christmas when you're doing nothing but eating like cake and pie and cookies and drinking coffee and no water at all. And you just sort of by the end of the week, you don't even know where you are.

Doug: See, I can relate to that specifically just because it still feels like the week after Christmas in April because it's still 25 goddamn degrees out. And I have been gobbling down Girl Scout cookies.

Magda: Yeah, well.

Doug: Six bucks a box, by the way.

Magda: I remember when they were like $1.80 a box.

Doug: But I get it. I'll own up to it. I've been having a bit of sugar and I'm not feeling great about it. So I do think. Once my full cycling schedule returns, when the temperature gets above 50 again, maybe this weekend, then that'll help metabolize all the sugar I'm having because I am eating too much of it. All right. Well, I mean, that's good. Now, I wonder, based upon what you've said about this book, what did you think about that article that was in Friday Flames last week about the blood test that tells you if you have Alzheimer's? Did you read that?

Magda: I don't know because Bredesen talks a lot and so does Sanderson about getting the APOE4 test, which tells you if you have the marker for Alzheimer's. And the question is, do you want to know or do you not want to know? And Bredesen very strongly believes that you want to know because he thinks you can stop it. And, you know, not that there isn't always going to be that underlying thing there, but if you don't want to lose function, you can act in a way that's going to help you not lose function. And the sooner you start, the better off you'll be. And I absolutely get that. I mean, you know, like my whole thing has always been, I will do tests if I can act on the knowledge I get from a test. to prevent something bad from happening. But if it's just a test that they're like, hey, you've got this coming and there's nothing you can do about it, I don't know. Do I want to know? Maybe I want to know. That's the conundrum.

Doug: Yeah, you've got to have real faith in the treatment.

Magda: Right. And so that article didn't tell me what was the difference between the tests that they were suggesting and the APOE4 test. So I would have to do the research to figure out which one makes more sense to take.

Doug: So what other aspects of the diet are the most prevalent?

Magda: I'm just not eating carbs like I used to. I'm just not eating–

Doug: I'm just intermittent fasting all day.

Magda: You know, we're having salmon for dinner tonight, salmon and Brussels sprouts, and Mike's having potatoes and I'm having spaghetti squash. So it's just like choosing the non-carb thing. And we went to the protest on Saturday and he brought granola bars along with him and I just brought a bag of cashews.

Doug: Interesting, because people avoid cashews like the plague.

Magda: Why?

Doug: Because of how fatty they are.

Magda: You're supposed to have fat on the ketogenic diet.

Doug: There you go. But not bacon.

Magda: Well, yeah, because bacon's processed and too salty.

Doug: Yeah. So you did protest in Boston.

Magda: Yes, we did.

Doug: One of the other things I learned at this cocktail party was that many of my friends have their kids nearby. Some are working in the city and some are living at home still. which is, you know, right there nearby. Because it just laid out our situation in bolder relief since the four of us are splayed out all over the place.

Magda: Well, but I mean, you know, we've got a kid who's off at college, right? Like, I don't think that, that's not like he lives away from us.

Doug: And speaking of our kids, I think another topic that our older kid wanted to talk about was investments. He's been watching the stock market crater. He's been watching the volatility and the uncertainty. about investments in general and wondering like, where's the best place to put his money now? Because he's starting to amass a little bit of something and he wants to put it to work. So we had a long discussion about whether or not to have faith in the long-term merits of the stock market.

Magda: Right. I don't think there's any way to really predict because I think the priorities of the people in charge are so radically different than at any point in history that you cannot rely on common sense or the history of things to predict what's going to happen.

Doug: I think that was the point we came to, just the idea that whether or not American assets remain the quintessential gold standard of investments to have nationwide or worldwide, whether or not the dollar is strong. I mean, investments in the dollar have survived big swings like this in the past. And savvy people recognize, including, I'm sure, people who knew these tariffs were coming and saw an opportunity to sell short. You know, someone's making money off this market. Anybody who knows anything about markets can make money in any market. But I really like the fact that he's already thinking like an investor at 23. But it's an interesting discussion as well when you have adult children who look to you for financial advice.

Magda: Financial advice in the most unprecedented situation. with psychopaths in charge of the stock market at this point. Like what the hell?

Doug: Well, let's be fair. Psychopaths have always been in charge of the stock market. Psychopaths. Well, yeah, but I mean, all they want is money. They don't care about emotion.

Magda: But this isn't like 2008. This isn't like any previous time. This is the people in charge of this country are deliberately trying to tank things. And I don't know what to say to my kids in the middle of that because I don't know what to say to myself in the middle of this.

Doug: Well, I had a sandwich parent moment because I talked to my parents about it. Clearly, you know, when you look at my parents and me and our children, we have three very different investment windows. You know, when you're 80, whatever investments you have, to make a cataclysmic change in your portfolio now is probably a terrible idea because the capital gains tax is going to be crippling. So... all they're kind of doing is just crossing their fingers and hoping that the people who manage their money know what to do with it, unfortunately.

Magda: Right.

Doug: So that's going to trickle down to me as well, just because our generation is thinking, okay, they're coming for Medicare and they're coming for my 401k. So what kind of expenses am I going to have? And what do I need to diversify and guard against this kind of thing. I've been actually listening to my broker's analyst calls. For what it's worth, they're pretty phlegmatic about the whole thing. They're just like, look, we've seen this before. We've seen big changes in things. There's too much powerful infrastructure that wants to guard shareholder value And let's face it, this administration is doomed. It's just a question of how long in advance that doom comes. And we've got a weird window because in theory, I should be retiring in two years. Ah, retiring.

Magda: Okay, come on. Why would you... Here's another topic for another show. When do you want to retire and why? And I can't imagine you ever completely retiring. I mean, you know, you don't work a full-time job right now, but I can imagine you not working full-time at a regular job.

Doug: Oh, I never will work at a full-time job ever again. No, I'm not working for anybody.

Magda: I can't imagine you ever not trying to create stuff, whether you got paid for it or not. I just cannot imagine a future for you that is entirely leisure. Like creating things is such an encoded part of your personality. I just can't imagine you ever retiring. You're going to be like 90 years old and you're going to be like, “Hey, I was reading about this thing. So I decided to start a new podcast on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Like, okay. Right.

Doug: Well, I've been thinking, you know, one of my podcast guests told me a lot about Bike and Build, which was this itinerant subset of Habitat for Humanity where you just bike off. You do a long distance bike trip and you arrive and then you build houses for people. And then you hang out and then you get back on your bike and you bike another thousand miles. It's itinerant biking and building stuff.

Magda: That sounds 100% like you.

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Doug: And I would have loved to have done it had it not folded a couple of years ago, but it's an awesome idea. I know there's an RV version of this that still exists. There are people who just roam around the world in RVs and there's a bulletin board of like projects happening,” show up in Tempe, Arizona. We're building, you know, low income housing there” and people just drive their RVs there. That's a great thing. I mean, I was actually messaging with a friend of mine. I'd be happy just working at Trader Joe's, helping short people reach the tallest shelf. You know, I just, there's something so wonderful and immediate about that.

Magda: Yeah. I can kind of see you doing that. You're a Trader Joe's kind of person.

Doug: I am. And as you know, my twin brother works there.

Magda: Yes, exactly. The one who's your doppelganger.

Doug: David, if you're listening out there, we're talking about you and it's been great being your fake twin. But yeah, whenever I walk in, if he's working and we see each other, it's always a conversation. And there's another guy there who pretends he's our dad. So shout out to you, Big Ron. If I can find ways to keep engaging people talking about themselves a bit or having a discussion about their lives or like, that will carry me to my grave for sure.

Magda: Yeah.

Doug: But that's an interesting topic. That's a good idea too. The idea of like what retirement even is. You know? Yeah.

Magda: Yeah. Well, okay. Let's, I mean, do you feel like we need to go any further?

Doug: Well, I think if we're looking for a theme of today's show, it's kind of like what we want to talk to going forward. That's part of a whole new dynamic in someone's relationship. It's like, Hey, the kids are gone. Now it's just you and me. We got to rediscover our couplehood and have this big decision to make together. That's, that's gotta be heady.

Magda: Yeah, I agree.

Doug: And it's headier when you've been together for a bunch of time. That's apart from, you know, you two giddy honeymooners. Just nothing but joy.

Magda: I would hope that if you'd been together for a long time, you'd have been talking about it for a long time.

Doug: Well, but not a lot of people have. In fact, one discussion was we know we need to go somewhere. We just don't know where.

Magda: Right.

Doug: Because as you look around, if it's political or otherwise, there are places that you may have been considering 10 years ago that are off the table now. I mean, I know a handful of people who had Florida on their mind until three years ago.

Magda: Why would you ever go to Florida?

Doug: Because that's God's waiting room. That's where people go to die.

Magda: Yeah, but even 10 years ago, the politics in Florida were untenable.

Doug: Well, some people are willing to make that sacrifice. They're more tenable to some people than others. I mean, it's more of an issue of could you even afford to live there? I mean, it seems like everything is so uninsurable now.

Magda: Right.

Doug: That's a shifting issue, I think. Yeah, and these are just kind of some of the topics that I was thinking about. And so I hope we get to talk about them because I think they are important and they're more prevalent than I'm experiencing firsthand. I mean, that's the goal of this podcast. The bottom line was we needed to podcast again. We needed to get back in the booth. I needed to see your face. It's been a month.

Magda: It's been a month.

Doug: You look exactly the same as a month ago.

Magda: Except now I'm wearing an Aldi sweatshirt that I bought while you and I weren't podcasting.

Doug: And I'm wearing glasses that don't make me feel like I'm walking through a hailstorm. And thank you for listening to episode 71 of the When the Flames Go Up podcast with Magda Pecsenye Zarin and me, Doug French. Our guest has been all the stuff we hope to talk about in the next few months. When the Flames Go Up is a production of Halfway Noodles LLC and is available on all the usual platforms and at whentheflamesgoup.substack.com. Please subscribe for... something every Wednesday, usually a podcast, but it's been, you know, we've been writing a lot these past four weeks. I've enjoyed that by the way, we've gotten some great feedback on just the writing. So, um, there will be something every Wednesday, but they, there will be more podcasting in the near future. And we also have our Friday Flames newsletter every other Friday. Thanks again for listening.I hope you guys have been okay this past month and we will see you next time. Bye-bye.