Two friends pour a drink and make a pact: 2026 won’t be another year we watch from the sidelines. We set a no‑regrets tone and mean it, digging into the everyday choices that create momentum—returning the call, sending the honest text, booking the trip, and shaping work so it serves our lives instead of swallowing them.

We get real about family: bridging gaps with cousins we only see at weddings and funerals, planning an Edinburgh graduation around complicated calendars, and scheduling monthly time in Hilton Head to show up on purpose. The thread is connection without burnout—how small, consistent gestures build deep ties. On the work front, we unpack a practice owner’s associate-hiring detour and the long slide toward a managing role that scales, plus a six-month hospital renovation sprint aiming for Center of Excellence status. It’s leadership, operations, and exit strategy with both feet on the ground.

Parenting lands with the heaviest punch. We talk about the fleeting window before kids leave home, the shift to adult-to-adult conversations, and how to prepare for the empty nest without rushing it. Along the way, we wrestle with tipping fatigue and the cost of dining out, rediscover the joy of cooking, and laugh about local growth—new restaurants, airports expanding, endless roadwork. We even peek at midterms to come and the sci‑fi feeling of living past the years we once saw on movie posters.

If you’re ready to trade vague resolutions for tangible moves, this one’s for you. Press play, then tell us the one bold step you’ll take this week. And if our brand of honest, funny, and practical hits home, follow the show, share this episode with a friend who needs a nudge, and leave a five-star review to help others find us.

What if the year didn’t just fly by—you did too? We pressed pause long enough to take stock of a season that felt like a sprint: ambitious resolutions, a surprise running breakthrough, and the harder lesson that being present is a daily practice, not a bullet point. Between a career year that started with budget fights and ended with vendor chaos, and a holiday stretch spent juggling parents moving to Seattle and kids boomeranging home, we found clarity in smaller choices: watch the movie, make the call, take the walk, protect the time.

We go candid on the sports rollercoaster—title highs, gut-punch losses, and the gnawing friction of NIL and transfer timing that makes loyalty feel optional. Then we widen the lens to the news cycle, where everything is urgent and nothing sticks. The result is a stubborn skepticism and a shared exhaustion with vetting every headline. That sets the stage for our biggest worry and weirdest fascination: AI. We’ve seen it clean photos and spit out working code, and it’s impressive enough to ask new questions about what work endures. We argue for skills rooted in trust and touch—craft, care, and presence—while admitting the future is arriving faster than any of us planned.

Threaded through all of this are the relationships that held. We talk about mending old rifts, checking on friends with intention, and refusing tables that don’t truly invite us. We also laugh at the chaos we can still control: shipping detours, gift lists gone sideways, and the shopper’s patience we wish we had. The takeaway isn’t a glossy reset. It’s a practical edit list for 2026: less scatter, more signal; fewer obligations, deeper commitments; a calmer body and a clearer calendar. If time won’t slow down, we can choose what we notice. Press play, then tell us what you’re cutting, keeping, and finally doing next year. And if this resonated, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review to help more people find the show.

Be decent to each other, friends. Happy New Year!

What do you still watch with your mouth open? We start with a rave for Netflix’s Frankenstein—lush, gothic, and confidently made—and follow it to a focused look at Springsteen’s Nebraska, where raw demos beat studio polish. That sparks a bigger question: what makes something worth the theater trip, the subscription, or the rewatch loop? From splitting holiday drops to Broadway-bound prequels, Stranger Things shows how to turn streaming into an event, while Fargo reminds us that star power can’t always save a sagging arc—though John Hamm and Juno Temple make a strong case to keep going.

Acting gets its own spotlight. We celebrate the quiet force of Philip Seymour Hoffman, the electricity of De Niro and Pacino in Heat, and the eerie continuity of IT’s young and adult cast. Dexter Resurrection lands a stacked lineup—Uma Thurman, Neil Patrick Harris, Krysten Ritter, Peter Dinklage—while Vince Gilligan’s new series earns blind faith on name alone. On the galaxy far, far away side, Obi-Wan Kenobi reframes Hayden Christensen with weight and grace, stitching emotional logic between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope without leaning on empty nostalgia.

Then the music talk turns personal and loud. Nevermind as the generational reset. Led Zeppelin as the benchmark—Kashmir as a line in the sand. Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here as twin pillars. Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, AC/DC’s Back in Black, Clapton’s Nothing But The Blues—albums that smell like a year and feel like a room. We connect those memories to the MTV era of true “mega albums,” where a single performance could tilt the world. The tech and business of streaming changed, but the hunger for capital-M Moments hasn’t.

If you love sharp takes, deep cuts, and a few belly laughs about cable bills and “brestaurants,” you’re home. Hit play, share your all-time start-to-finish album, and tell a friend who still argues for their GOAT. Subscribe, rate, and drop a review so more people can join the debate.