If you asked me a year ago how many podcasts I’d host in 2026 I would have hemmed and hawed, “Probably 10, or maybe about one a month”.
And that is the answer I had given for nearly a decade since everyone told me I should have a podcast.
Well, this week we crossed over into rare territory, having just done our 25th episode.
Link HERE if you’d like to WATCH on YouTube, or link HERE if you prefer to listen as a podcast.
Why celebrate 25?
Lots of reasons – that’s more than I have ever personally hosted cumulatively in my career, and we have kept at it weekly with few exceptions!
My wife and I celebrated 25 years of marriage this year, and that’s a big milestone, so 25 fits in this context.
Also, we are celebrating 250 years of America, and as July wraps up, it has been a wonderful month of looking back at our incredible, divine, and important history as a country.
So, 25 episodes in, I’m talking about a movie I saw recently, by Angel Studios, titled “Young Washington”.
Don’t wait to see it later on TV. Go to the theaters. It’s a theater movie, intense, and you can feel everyone’s energy around you watching the character of young George Washington, and equally, the United States of America, taking shape.
In my broadcast and podcast this week, it’s worth a listen, but better to watch, as it is a very visual episode with many photos and videos you don’t want to miss, as well as the portrait my wife found for me at a thrift store of the great first president.
We also highlight the World Cup, and how the world sees us differently after visiting. Different in the best way possible.
Instead of fearing they’d be shot upon landing on American soil, which was the visiting world’s collective and illegitimate concern, they found the greatest country ever established, most beautiful and majestic sights, and wonderful people.
Well done, America! It’s like welcoming visitors to your home who can’t believe how good you’ve got it after you’ve been lamenting about how much your home and life stinks.
Speaking of visiting special places – our family just got back from visiting our oldest child, Ella, now 20 (an adult!) in Juneau, Alaska!
It was fascinating to give her the control of our trip, as she is much more familiar with the sites we should see than we could determine online. She led us around the island and to many wonderful places.
If you log into my podcast on YouTube (at this link) I share all about the trip around minute 27:30, including photos and videos that are pretty entertaining, such as when we first greeted Ella at her work and the kind things her boss said, hiking to the most unique mountain summit we’ve ever visited, and a bear digging into a trash can by our rental home.
I’m celebrating the fact that, even upon landing back at home after a fun vacation and doing a quick turnaround for a business trip immediately after, we still went live on Thursday at 3 PM and recorded the podcast. To me, that’s significant, as in the past I would have just deferred it to another week due to being too busy.
But this has become fun for me. And oftentimes promises become fun to keep, after they’ve been hard at first.
Frankly, I hated doing the first few months worth of episodes. It was taxing, concerning, I was out of my element.
I’m still not where I want to be, but the show is taking shape into something I’m very proud of. Work at something long enough, with care and purpose, and you may end up enjoying the work.
Granted, there are very few who tune in to the broadcast. I understand that. It will take a long while of great content and delivery to build an audience. But those who show up (especially my main man, Randy McNeeley) have made it extra fun to point out his comments and the random other friends who pop in to say hi.
I love doing this show, and feel it’s an extra major challenge to do it as a monologue style before I welcome any guests on. In the future there will be guests, but that’s a minute away still, maybe not even this year.
In reality, this is a big Promise to Me this year. Especially doing shows and public facing work that has few viewers, it had better mean something more than just worrying about how many are watching.
The truth is, someday my family will be grateful I did these, as permanent recordings of our lives, and for those who aren’t family that tune in, they come away inspired by the positive efforts of the mission, which is to spread joy and uplift, as opposed to what’s out there in the world these days.
Thank you for tuning in!
