Phil Gramm is an economist who served 24 years in Congress, including three terms as a United States senator from Texas and as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. He later spent years in investment banking and now serves as a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He’s also the co-author of the book The Triumph of Economic Freedom: Debunking the Seven Great Myths of American Capitalism, which seems particularly well-timed for our current moment.

I was thrilled to talk to Senator Gramm about his career, the misunderstood causes of the Great Depression and the 2008 Financial Crisis, and how alleged rates of inequality and poverty plummet when you factor in taxes on the affluent and the trillions in entitlements received by low-income households.

Senator Gramm entered Congress in 1979 during the Carter administration and served in the Senate through 2002, under President George W. Bush. Since he was a primary co-author of the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act, I was most interested to hear his take on the federal government’s $40 trillion in debt. Spoiler alert: it won’t end well!

I hope you enjoy this chat — I sure did.

In that time, I’ve interviewed some pretty incredible people, from a superstar like LL COOL J to Peter Singer, the world’s most influential living philosopher, to dozens of amazing authors, academics, and winners of the Nobel Prize, Heisman Trophy, PGA Championship, and Olympic gold medals.

Upcoming episodes include conversations with former Texas Senator Phil Gramm and MLB Hall of Famer Dave Winfield.

Thank you for your support, interest, and for sharing this with all your friends and family!

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This week, I’m talking to , the guy behind the mega-popular Substack Young Money and author of a great new book called Young Money: A Field Guide to Wealth and Purpose in Your Twenties.

After graduating from college and landing a finance job at UPS, Jack turned $6,000 in retirement funds into $400,000 by trading SPACs in his spare time. Then, by continuing to trade SPACS, he turned that $400k into $200k! This experience was expensive but vital.

Jack started publishing his thoughts about careers and finances on Young Money, and has built a following of over 60,000 “anxious but ambitious” readers. Morgan Housel, author of The Psychology of Money, called him “one of the best money writers around.”

Perhaps that’s why he got a call from Penguin Random House and an eventual book deal. Like Jack himself, it’s a book of unbridled enthusiasm and optimism. It’s a trip to read about money through the eyes of a 29-year-old who’s had just enough interesting life experience but has lost zero of his youthful energy.

If you have a young adult in your life who has found her way or one who is trying to figure himself out, Young Money might be the perfect read for them. In the meantime, check out my conversation with Jack, aka, the pride of Tifton, GA.

We talk about working at UPS, billboards along I-75 (“Repent or die!”), the Allman Brothers Band, playing Call of Duty in his pajamas during COVID, Wall Street Bets, and the Wall Street Journal’s .

Stay gold!

Follow Paul on Instagram here and Twitter here.

Get Jack’s book here.

teaches economics at the University of Southern California, and is the creator and host of Econ Nerds, a project devoted to finding the economics hiding in everyday life. It’s like Freakonomics for the YouTube and Substack age.

Matt has the rare ability to take economic ideas that normally require a textbook, a slide rule, and three hits of Adderall to get your head around and turns them into entertaining stories about things like Ozempic, the lottery, OnlyFans, gentrification, and why it took humanity so damn long to put wheels on suitcases.

In other words, he can help you learn about economics without making you feel like you’re studying economics!

More importantly, Matt uses story-telling techniques to shed light on important issues where the data and the prevailing public rhetoric diverge. Examples include the true nature of inequality, what’s really happening with climate change, and the actual number of alleged police violence incidents. (HINT: it’s much lower than you might think.)

He’s using his great mind, a sense of humor and the power of economics to help spread understanding.

Follow Paul on Instagram here and Twitter here.

SUBSCRIBE TO ECON NERDS:

The Econ Nerds

The home for all Econ Nerds content.

By Matt Hill

“People do not decide their futures: they decide their habits and their habits decide their future.”

– F.M. Alexander

If you want to improve, be kind to yourself. That’s the message from this week’s guest, Dr. Beth Cabrera, a positive psychologist, professor, and author of the new book Being Well: A Positive Path to a Healthier, Happier You. Beth is also an old college friend who's now the first lady of Georgia Tech.

In her new book, Beth argues that willpower and guilt are the wrong tools for lasting change (sorry, Catholic and Jewish moms). Because our brains are wired to survive, not thrive, and default to scanning for threats instead of good things, feeling good is actually the more effective fuel for building habits that stick.

We cover the chicken-and-egg question of whether happiness causes success or success causes happiness, why optimistic salespeople at MetLife outsold others by 88%, how much of optimism is genetic versus learned, the brain's negativity bias and why social rejection registers like a broken arm. (So, please don’t reject me. Please!)

Beth and I talk gratitude, hedonic adaptation, the basics of diet, sleep, exercise, and meditation, what it's actually like being the first lady of a major American university. And how the way to cheat death is to have a Purpose (capitalized intentionally).

Get Beth’s book here. See her website here.

Follow Me (Paul Ollinger) on Instagram here or on X (fka, Twitter) here.

We got pinged because our home is owned by our trusts, which are not New York entities. The good news is that, since we are legit full-time residents, we will get out of this. Still, it’s pretty scary to get this kind of unexpected invoice.

Suffice to say, it’s a wild time in New York city real estate. In addition to this new second—or third or fourth—home tax, there are a ton of policy changes in the works, including but not limited to:

• The mayor and the Rent Guidelines Board just implemented a two-to-three year rent freeze for all the city’s rent stabilized units, comprising 41% of the supply of rental housing in the city.

• Pending in the City Council is the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA) that, when it passes, will impose major restrictions on a multi-family unit owners’ freedom to sell their building.

• Potential “Mansion” Tax reform could lower the threshold from $1 million to $500,000 transactions, increase rates by 40%, and switch the liability from the buyer to the seller.

In short, there’s a massive amount of uncertainty about the future, but all trends point to an increasingly hostile and expensive environment for property owners.

To try to make sense of how it works, I interviewed this week Paula Pant, founder and host of the Afford Anything podcast, a former newspaper reporter, and Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University.

Paula is a NYC-based landlord who has developed an expertise on the city’s rent stabilization system, where it came from, and how it works.

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Most people assume that rent stabilization exists to help poor people, but that’s not the priority. It operates more like a lottery system where random, lucky “winners” lock in below-market prices regardless of how much money they make. In fact, a recent Wall Street Journal analysis indicated that more than 86,000 rent stabilized households earn over $200,000 a year!

The system and its adjacent policies protect bad tenants, disincentivize capital investment and construction, and have led to 57,000 vacant apartments because it’s less expensive to leave them empty than to participate in the city’s rigged game.

The whole thing is wacky and totally non-obvious. I learned a ton talking to Paula and I know you will too. Check it out.

Follow Paula on Instagram here, or X (aka, Twitter) here. Get your free download: 7 Expensive Rental Property Mistakes to Avoid

Follow Me (Paul) on Instagram here, or X (aka, Twitter) here.

Get tickets to see me live in Sarasota 8/13-16 here.

Timestamps

00:00:00 Trailer
00:00:59 Intro
00:03:03 Hyper frugal in her twenties, for all the wrong reasons
00:05:31 A $27,000 down payment on an Atlanta triplex
00:08:21 Never be a landlord in New York City
00:08:33 The price to rent ratio, and how to run it on any apartment
00:14:10 Nobody has a right to 12% returns, and what a 9.9% cap would actually do
00:16:24 Rent control versus rent stabilization: 16,000 units against a million
00:20:16 If it were designed to help poor people, there would be means testing
00:23:36 True working class people are subsidizing the rich
00:24:23 How the units actually get handed out, and the friend earning over $300,000
00:30:32 The Rent Guidelines Board, the 7 to 1 freeze, and the resignation in protest
00:37:07 Check credit or verify income, but not both
00:41:21 The 2019 law and the $100,000 turnover no bank will finance
00:49:25 57,000 vacant units and the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act
00:54:22 Austin as the model, and where Paula puts her own capital
00:57:13 Analyst, not advocate. Data over dogma
00:58:36 Outro

• Why it's easier to buy heroin than hire a hitman,

• Iran's legal kidney market versus America's black market,

• Winners and losers of rent control in New York,

• Why I can’t get a horse meat hamburger in California, and

• What a real accounting of scarcity and trade-offs actually looks like.

  Want more great podcast episodes about prostitution and horse meat? Subscribe now ↓↓↓

Get tickets to see Paul in Sarasota, Florida here.

Follow Paul on Instagram here and on X (i.e. Twitter) here.

Rate and Review Reasonably Happy here.

Timestamps:

• 00:00:00 Trailer

• 00:01:07 Intro

• 00:03:48 What market design actually means

• 00:06:57 Markets are better at producing efficiency than equality

• 00:10:08 What makes a transaction “repugnant”

• 00:11:45 Same-sex marriage as the textbook repugnant transaction

• 00:15:45 Why it’s easy to buy drugs but nearly impossible to hire a hitman

• 00:17:32 Iran’s legal kidney market and America’s black-market problem

• 00:22:10 The case against price-gouging bans, from Sydney to snow shovels

• 00:27:07 The real winners and losers of rent control

• 00:28:12 California’s ban on horsemeat, and the loophole New York doesn’t have

• 00:35:59 How a PhD in operations research became a career in game theory

• 00:37:02 The 3 a.m. phone call that announced his Nobel Prize

• 00:40:40 The kidney transplant shortage and what it will take to fix it

• 00:41:51 Outro

In his new book, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind—a New York Times #1 bestseller—Gad argues that empathy, while one of humanity’s greatest virtues, can become destructive when it’s untethered from reason and directed in ways that undermine the very people and institutions it’s meant to protect.

Whether he’s discussing evolutionary psychology, free speech, or consumer behavior, Gad has a talent for blending rigorous research with sharp wit, and for challenging conventional wisdom.

Those challenges have made him a controversial figure. Not coincidentally, the long-time professor of marketing at Montreal’s Concordia University is now a scholar at the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi. (Hotty Toddy!)

Today we’ll talk about the evolutionary roots of human behavior, the cultural forces re-shaping the modern West, and what it takes to think independently in an age of ideological conformity.

Follow Gad on X here.

Get tickets to Paul’s upcoming shows in San Francisco, Southhampton, and Sarasota here.

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Also Me: You mean the people who started Johnson & Johnson, makers of BAND-AID, hip replacements, and a thousand prescription drugs?

Me: No.

Also Me: Oh, you must mean the family behind SC Johnson, the Wisconsin-based consumer products like Ziploc and Windex?

Me: No.

Also Me: You mean like Howard Johnsons?

Me: God no, you big dummy. What are you, stuck in 1966?

Also Me: Sorry, I’m not smart. Who are you talking about and why are there so many rich families named ‘Johnson’?

Me: Well, ‘Johnson’ is one of America’s most common surnames, so it would follow that there’s a few that have crushed it. The specific family I’m referring to are the founders of financial services firm, Fidelity.

Also Me: Fidelity - they’re kind of a big deal, right? And why are you asking?

Me: I’m asking because my podcast guest this week is Justin Baer, award-winning journalist at the Wall Street Journal and author of the new book House of Fidelity: The Rise of the Johnson Dynasty and the Company that Changed American Investing. It’s going to blow you away how big they are.

Also Me: Okay, how big are they?

Me: Fidelity is one of the largest private companies in America and they administer over $18 trillion in assets—that’s greater than the GDPs of Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and France combined. (Or, it’s18 Elon Musks.) Last year, they earned almost $13 billion in profit, half of which goes to the family.

Also Me: You like italics a lot.

Me: I do. Anyway, in this conversation, Justin and I discuss:

• How this financial family dynasty was built

• Succession planning for a complex and massive family business

• The rise of Abigail “Abby” Johnson, Fidelity’s Chairman CEO and founder’s granddaughter, with estimated net worth of $35 billion (check out her LinkedIn profile below).

Also Me: Sounds great. I’m going to listen and check out Justin’s book here.

See Paul (aka, Me) Tell Jokes Live Near You!

• Los Angeles: The Venice West, 7/21

• New York: QED Astoria, 7/31

• San Francisco: Cobbs Comedy Club, 7/23

• Southampton, NY: Sticks and Stones Comedy Club, 8/1

In this honest, fun, and sometimes stark conversation, Francis and I discuss:

• Why teaching is a terrible job.

• How the United Kingdom is “fucked”

• The side benefits of making TRIGGERnometry

• His love for Buc-ees* (which are closer to 50,000 square feet than the 8,000 I mentioned)

• Why the Stone Roses won’t help incoming PM, Andy Burnham

Get his book, and watch the Francis Foster Show on YouTube.

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Some of my favorite clips

What’s going on in the U.K.? (00:10:23)

Francis: “We are totally and utterly fucked.”

Why traditional media should be scared (00:24:12)

Francis: I think the mainstream media realizes that the game is up. Their viewing numbers are going down. Their engagement is going down. Their advertising revenue is going down. Their relevance is going down. They can no longer shape the narrative. They can’t do it any more. They have not only a business model that is obsolete, but they have been exposed time and time again for lying to the audience. And you can’t do that. Because your audience will go ‘I don’t trust you, and if I don’t trust you, why am I going to get the news from you.’ And they leave.

How teaching and comedy are similar (00:05:28)

Francis: Actually, teaching and comedy are very similar

See Paul Live in July:

• Philadelphia: Next In Line Comedy, 7/3

• Los Angeles: The Venice West, 7/21

• New York: QED Astoria, 7/31

• San Francisco: Cobbs Comedy Club, 7/23

• Southampton, NY: Sticks and Stones Comedy Club, 8/1

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He is best known as the creator and host of CNN’s United Shades of America on which he spent seven seasons traveling the country exploring communities, subcultures, and perspectives that often go overlooked. The show demonstrated his unique skill of helping people conduct difficult conversations without losing their sense of humor.

Not that he’s afraid to mix things up. Kamau’s 2022 HBO docu-series, We Need to Talk About Cosby dove deep into numerous allegations of sexual assault against legendary comedian and television icon, Bill Cosby, a comedian whose work Kamau deeply admired.

Kamau has a new podcast called Who’s With Me? on which he has already talked to Ted Danson, Delroy Lindo, Daveed Diggs, and Kristen Kish.

He spoke to me from his home in Oakland, CA where he lives with his wife and their three daughters. In this occasionally-serious, but most enjoyable conversation, we discuss:

• The difference between craft and character

• His love of podcasting

• Comedy nerd-ship

• The best part about Father’s Day

• And—most importantly—

See clips and leave comments below. In the mean time, subscribe to Kamau’s ‘Who’s With Me?’ Substack here and to Paul’s ‘Reasonably Happy’ Substack here.

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Some of my favorite clips

On podcasting (00:02:31)

Paul: Let’s talk about that podcast. I listened to Ted Danson and Delroy Lindo—great conversations with two very interesting guys. What do you enjoy most about podcasting?

Kamau: It’s a way to have conversations with people I want to have that I probably wouldn’t have if I didn’t have a work-related reason to reach out.

Paul: Would you do it for free?

Kamau: I would. In fact, I’m currently losing money on it, so the answer is clearly yes. The podcast gives you a dedicated reason to have those conversations, and it makes it less weird that I’m asking very focused questions. Because if I went out to dinner with you and said, “Tell me about that time you did blackface, Ted Danson,” that’s going to be a pretty strange way to start a conversation.

On being an “only” child (00:07:23)

Kamau: Only children don’t just want to be alone sometimes—they need to be alone. It’s a requirement. It’s no different from needing to eat or sleep. Only children need to be left the hell alone once in a while, and it’s not weird; it’s simply how we grew up. If we don’t get that time to ourselves, we get depleted.

I think this ties into the idea of a “social battery.” Everyone has a different-sized social battery, meaning a different capacity for being around other people. Some people actually get energized by social interaction—their battery charges up when they’re with others. Only children, on the other hand, tend to get drained pretty quickly by being around too many people for too long. Our social battery runs down.

Mine is definitely like that, although I’ve trained myself to function with a low social battery because I’m in show business. My middle child is the same way, and it’s helpful to give kids language for it. Sometimes she’ll be out and say, “My social battery is low.” What she means is, “I’ve been around a lot of people today. I need to relax. I need to be home.”

On Bill Cosby (00:16:56)

Paul: When you called out Cosby—on We Need to Talk About Cosby…

Kamau: Man—I didn’t expect this conversation to go from Scooby-Doo to Bill Cosby, but here we are.

Paul: Did you ever feel like the guy at the end of a Scooby-Doo episode exposing the crook who’d been hiding in plain sight? Like, “It’s Dr. Huxtable!”

Kamau: I definitely felt that way to some extent. So much of the Cosby story was known behind closed doors. People talked about it privately, but it hadn’t really been discussed publicly. When he went to jail, I thought, “Okay, now we can finally talk about this openly.” I had no idea he would get out of jail in the middle of our production. At that point, I thought, “Huh, I may never be able to leave my house again,” because I knew this wasn’t going to be popular with a lot of people.

There was definitely a period afterward where I took a lot of heat. It’s probably the best work I’ve ever done, but it also caused me the most personal stress. Every time I started feeling overwhelmed by that, though, I thought about the women who had spoken out. If they could come forward and endure what they endured, I could certainly take a few hits.

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into the live video w/Kamau!

In this upbeat and friendly conversation, Bruce and I discuss:

• What came first, ritual or religion?

• Why SEC football tailgating fits the definition of ritual

• How Balinese tooth-filing ritual has much in common with modern Western dental customs

• Why so many New Yorkers are jumping on the Knicks bandwagon (including someone’s wife who shall remain nameless)

See clips and leave comments below. In the mean time, subscribe to Bruce’s ‘The Nonlinear Life’ Substack here and to Paul’s ‘Reasonably Happy’ Substack here.

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Some of my favorite clips

Paul asks Bruce about the sacred nature of college football tailgating (00:12:33)

“A ritual is a shared, unnecessary act, that makes us feel at home.”

Bruce on why New York has gone crazy for the Knicks (00:17:09)

“Ritual is essential and it can save us. Because, whatever the problem is—if it’s loneliness, ritual is the answer. If it’s polarization, ritual is the answer. If it’s de-civilization, ritual is the answer.”

The performative nature of life—both online and IRL (00:22:01)

“There is going to be a human response to the tech…but also, the internet can be a source of connection.”

LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK IN THE COMMENTS BELOW↓↓↓

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Even if you belong to Andy’s army of loyal readers, you might not know that he is also the co-creator of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and wrote on classic 80’s TV shows, The Facts of Life and Square Pegs, which helped to launch Sarah Jessica Parker’s career.

In this fast-paced conversation, Andy and I discuss:

• His career in and out of Hollywood

• How to write succinctly

• His grammatical pet peeve(s)

• Whether AI will ever be able to write comedy

• The best advice he got from Susie Essman (aka, the secret to a happy life)

Subscribe to The Borowitz Report here ↓↓↓↓

The Borowitz Report

Home of Truth

By Andy Borowitz

Some of my favorite quotes

Will Smith and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (00:05:12)

Andy: I realized pretty soon after Fresh Prince went on the air that it was really lightning in a bottle. It was a very fluky success. It was this kid, Will Smith, who had never acted before. Although now it’s very much in the mainstream of TV and it’s like the most wholesome, all-American show in the world, at the time it was really going against the grain because the networks and the media—the corporate media in general—were terrified by hip-hop. Hip-hop was, to them, gangster rap. It was, I would say, the inherent racism of corporate media really showing its true colors—no pun intended. They were very terrified by what they knew that Will Smith had. At NBC, they knew that he had a lot of charisma, but they were terrified by what he might have. So they were always trying to get me to take the edges off—not that I could ever find any discernible edges in Will Smith.

Chat GPT Knock-knock joke (00:16:47):

Paul: I went to ChatGPT and said, write a knock knock joke about Andy Borowitz. And here’s what ChatGPT came back with. Knock knock.

Andy: Who’s there?

Paul: Andy.

Andy: Andy who?

Paul: Andy Borowitz,I just published a story saying 83% of Americans think this joke is funnier than the Constitution.

Andy: That is absolutely horrible.

Andy on Life Choices (00:29:13):

Andy: I say this to my kids—I have three kids and this is maybe my only advice—I say “I do not have a big strong opinion about the choices you make other than I hope that when you make choices they will contribute to your being happy and healthy.” And when you make a choice if it’s going to make you happy for the moment like oh that drug looks kind of fun but it’s going to make you unhealthy, you should probably cross that off your list and just try to think about the choices you make are you going to be happy and healthy as a result of this choice. And even at my age I sort of feel like that’s kind of a good exercise.

See Paul tell jokes near you:

• June 19 and 20 - The Comedy Catch, Chattanooga

• June 25 - ❤️ Happy Couples Show, West Side Comedy Club, NYC ❤️

• July 21 - The Venice West, Los Angeles

• July 23 - Cobbs Comedy Club, San Francisco

• Aug 1 - Sticks and Stones Comedy Club, Southampton, NY

• Aug 8 - Atlanta Country Club (private show)

• Aug 13-16 - McCurdy’s Comedy Theatre, Sarasota, FL

That is all - have a wonderful day!

Subscribe now

In her new autobiography, Fully Baked: A Messy Memoir, Rosebud shares the story of being the grand-daughter of James Baker, the former Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury who also served as White House Chief of Staff for Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

She also relates unfiltered observations on her parents’ divorce, her addiction to drugs and alcohol, her multiple miscarriages, and the death of her younger sister, Graeme.

Her latest Netflix special is called The Mother Lode. She filmed half of it while eight months pregnant and the other half after giving birth. It was named one of the best comedy specials of 2025.

See Rosebud’s upcoming dates and get the book here.

Some of my favorite quotes

On her tenacious grandfather (

Rosebud: My granddad was just a powerful guy -

Paul: He’s still alive right?

Rosebud: Yeah, he is. He will never die. He won’t die. This man has fallen down the stairs twice in the last year. He’s like 96 or 98 and he’s fallen down the stairs and he won’t take the elevator in his home — like honestly believes it could turn him gay.

Paul: Like Luna bars!

Rosebud: Yeah. He’s like, I will take the stairs every god damn day rather than getting in that gay machine. And I’m like they installed it for you cause you fell down the stairs and broke your spine. But he won’t do it. He’s just that kind of guy. And so there’s a stubbornness and a just a refusal to listen to anyone that sort of is in my blood.

On growing up in an affluent home (00:23:34)

Paul: Do you have guilt for being raised in an affluent environment?

Rosebud: No. Not at all. It was awesome. I look at my life growing up and I’m like holy shit, she didn’t have any idea how good she had it. But I don’t have guilt about it because I wouldn’t have known. That was part of being raised like that— you don’t know anything about anything. So you just get to imagine yourself as whoever you want.

See Paul tell jokes near you:

• June 19 and 20 - The Comedy Catch, Chattanooga

• June 25 - Happy Couples Show, West Side Comedy Club, NYC

• July 21 - The Venice West, Los Angeles (on sale soon)

• July 23 - Cobbs Comedy Club, San Francisco

• Aug 1 - Sticks and Stones Comedy Club, Southampton, NY

• Aug 8 - Atlanta Country Club

• Aug 13-16 - McCurdy’s Comedy Theatre, Sarasota, FL

Over the past two decades, A.J. has built a remarkable career by asking questions most of us would never think to ask—and then answering them by turning himself into the experiment.

He’s read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, lived according to the Bible as literally as possible, pursued bodily perfection, traced his family tree to millions of relatives, thanked every person involved in making his morning cup of coffee, explored the world of puzzles, and most recently spent a year trying to live according to the original meaning of the U.S. Constitution.

See Paul’s comedy shows live in NYC, Chattanooga, LA (on sale soon) or San Francisco.

The result has been a string of New York Times bestsellers, including The Know-It-All, The Year of Living Biblically, Drop Dead Healthy, Thanks a Thousand, The Puzzler, and The Year of Living Constitutionally. Along the way, he’s become one of America’s most entertaining guides to the intersection of happiness, curiosity, gratitude, self-improvement, and human connection.

What I love about A.J.’s work is that beneath all the humor and outrageous experiments is a serious question: How should we live? And instead of lecturing, he goes out and tests ideas on himself—often with hilarious consequences.

Today we talk about:

• The USA’s 250th Birthday

• Geeking out on compound anniversary words like “semiquincentennial”

• Summer blockbuster movies

• What I should keep in mind while I help my kids search for colleges

Some of my favorite quotes

What Darwin taught A.J about romance (09:14):

A.J.: One of my romantic heroes is Charles Darwin who, before he got married, made a pros/cons list of whether he should get married to his wife. And so, that’s some good thinking.

PAUL: Do you ever break that out and discuss it with Julie (A.J.’s wife)?

A.J.: She does not like that…because on Valentine’s Day I write a card that says “the benefits of being married to you outweigh the costs.” And she does not appreciate that humor So then I’ve stopped doing that joke So yeah, people don’t like pro-con thinking when it comes to love.

What do you think about A.J.’s romantic moves?

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Reminder to be grateful (11:03):

PAUL: What about America are you grateful for?

A.J.: I am grateful for quite a bit, I have to say. Well, I talked about this in my book. I’m grateful for, first of all, for democracy, for balance of powers. But I’m also grateful for progress — things like elastic in my socks. Because during this constitutional year, I tried to dress the part, because I was trying to get into the mindset of the founders and I wore these socks, and they didn’t have elastic in them. They had these woolen, knitted socks and they would just fall down and puddle around the ankles. All those little things that we take for granted—there’s a lot of horrible stuff going in the world, but let’s be grateful for elastic socks and elastic underwear!

Subscribe to A.J.’s Substack, ↓↓↓↓

I understand that sometimes you don’t have time to read everything I send you. You’re busy and on the move—working out, running through an airport, or re-arranging your sock drawer. And that’s okay.

So for this week’s podcast—as I do occasionally—I’m sharing an audio recording of me reading a few recent Substack essays right into your ears. And now you don’t have any excuses to not enjoy my wonderful writing.

You’re right - it’s quite generous of me, but you’re worth it! See links to the articles below.

Have a great day.

Which one is your favorite?

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Dave’s column was syndicated to hundreds of newspapers around the globe for several decades. He has published dozens of books on myriad topics that sold millions of copies—of books, not topics—in 22 languages. The New York Times called him “the funniest man in America.” (And when has the NYT ever been wrong?)

In other words, he’s accomplished an incredible amount in the funny game, and I was thrilled to talk to him. In this fast-moving 30-min chat, we talk about:

• What he’s looking for in a nursing home.

• Advice for shepherding my kids through the college search process (even though it doesn’t matter where they end up)

• The rock band he plays in with Stephen King, Amy Tan, Roy Blount, Jr., Scott Turow, and many other best-selling authors

• Which other writers make him laugh

• What Baby Boomers could learn from Gen Z (and vice versa)

Thank you all, including , , and many others for tuning into the live stream! See my favorite clips below.

Oh, and here’s the photo I shared at the top of the show…

Some of my favorite quotes

What Dave wants in a nursing home (00:14:49):

Paul: What are the top three amenities you are looking for in a nursing home?

Dave: Okay, number one would be there can be no other residents of this nursing home…I’m basing this on the last time I went to a class reunion, Westonville High School class of 1965. And the last thing you want to see when you’re my age is people who are your age. They’re all the walking dead and it’s very depressing to think, oh my god, that’s her. She was hot in high school.

Paul: And now she’s pulling an oxygen tank.

Dave: Yeah. So I don’t want to have any other residents in my nursing home. And there should be somebody who can make a decent vodka gimlet there. Really important to me Not the kind where they just pour a mix I mean the kind they shake it with a shaker I want to see the shaker when I go to the nursing home That’s the first thing I want to see Where’s the shaker? So no residents, and good vodka gimlet.

Advice on parenting college kids (00:24:19):

While your child is in college, move to a different house and do not tell your child where that house is. And that way, when it’s time for them to make their way into the world, they will have to.

What Boomers could learn from Gen Z (00:12:07):

Dave: What am I going to learn from Gen Z? Well, I think one thing, I will say this, and it’s often used as a criticism of them, but there’s some truth to it, I think. They’re not, like, killing themselves. You know what I mean?

Paul: From a work perspective?

Dave: Yes, From a work perspective. And I don’t mean to generalize all of them or anything like that. But I mean, when I was in my mid-20s, I think most of us were kind of intense about whatever career we were pursuing. I was at newspapers and I had friends who were like various other things. But they seem a little more chill about that. And it could be because the boomers have so screwed up the world that they realize there’s absolutely no point in trying to succeed so maybe it’s just they’re reacting to us but they do seem to have a little bit more like you know what we’re gonna enjoy ourselves.

Come see me tell jokes (or give a talk), in person:

• June 4 - Atlanta Athletic Club

• June 5 and 6 - Laughing Skull Lounge, Atlanta

• June 12 - Wade Hampton Country Club, Cashiers, NC (Talk)

• June 19 and 20 - The Comedy Catch, Chattanooga

• June 25 - Happy Couples Show, West Side Comedy Club, NYC

• July 21 - The Venice West, Los Angeles (on sale soon)

• July 23 - Cobbs Comedy Club, San Francisco

• Aug 1 - Sticks and Stones Comedy Club, Southampton, NY

• Aug 8 - Atlanta Country Club

• Aug 13-16 - McCurdy’s Comedy Theatre, Sarasota, FL

“Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times.” -Aeschylus

Whenever I go back and re-listen to one of my podcast interviews, I always discover elements of the conversation I didn’t recall.

Upon revisiting this 2025 conversation with best-selling author , I of course remembered that she is a warrior for happiness and the practices that help her huge readership attain it.

But listening again, I was struck by how cool Gretchen is. Not “cool” in a biker-jacket / beat poetry / clove cigarette way, but in the “I know who I am, what I’m committed to, and how I can add value to the world” way.

I don’t claim to know Gretchen, but it seems logical to me that this self-awareness is a by-product of the kind of work she evangelizes.

And it is work. As Aeschylus advised in the quote above, happiness is always there if we choose it, but only if—in the hard times—we are willing to get off the couch or smile through the pain.

In times like these, Gretchen’s writing can help us find a path through the noise and, as she describes it, “identify ways we can take happiness from the transcendent to the concrete.”

A great way to start that process is to listen (or re-listen) to this episode and take her happiness quiz here. You can also find many more applicable insights on Gretchen’s Substack, Secrets of Adulthood.

Remember, happiness is growth—keep growing!

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Some of my favorite quotes (and a couple of clips)

On Process v. Outcomes (07:50)

One of my 12 my personal commandments of happiness is to enjoy the process. Because, the fact is, if you enjoy the process, you don’t care as much about the outcome. Still you might really want to have a positive outcome, but if you enjoy the process, if it doesn’t work out the way you want, it’s not as bitter.

Do actions follow feelings or vice versa? (37:20)

We think that actions follow feelings, but to a great degree feelings follow actions. And so if you want to change your emotional state, it’s often by changing your conscious thoughts and actions—that’s often a good way to get into your emotional state. So if you’re feeling tired, if you act with energy you’re gonna start to feel more energetic. Or if you’re feeling shy, if you act you push yourself to act friendly, you’ll feel more friendly. Yeah, that’s fake until you feel it. That’s not “be inauthentic and present a totally imposter false sense to the world and then that somehow will become your truth.” That’s more about when people want to change their own emotional state, when they’re like, “I don’t want to feel this way.” It’s “okay, I have to stand up in front of an audience and I don’t feel like doing it.” It’s like, okay, well, stand up straighter, act with more energy. Command the room.

On money and happiness (41:20)

Money may not buy happiness, but it buys many things that contribute mightily to happiness. It’s like health where if you have it, you never think about it. But if you don’t have it, it’s really going to pull you down. So the lack of it will pull you down very much. But having it is very easy to take it for granted.

— Gretchen Rubin

How to think about happiness (45:30)

If you’re thinking about how to make your life happier, you should think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right in an atmosphere of growth.

The importance of growth (47:25)

You want to feel like you’re growing. We want to feel like we’re making progress, like we’re fixing things, we’re learning things, we’re gaining skills, we’re putting something into the world.

Is happiness a choice? (52:03)

It always confuses me when people say that happiness is a choice. I just don’t understand what they mean by that. Clearly for people, it’s very meaningful because people say that to me, it just sort of doesn’t make sense, but this idea that it requires effort—that you would do things deliberately, thinking this is gonna make me … I’m gonna tackle ‘Feeling Good / Feeling Bad / Feeling Right in An Atmosphere of Growth by doing things with my conscious thoughts and actions — I completely agree. It does take effort.

Reasonably Happy is a podcast hosted by me, comedian Paul Ollinger, featuring conversations that explore the connection between success and happiness. From academics to athletes and from pastors to porn stars, I talk to some pretty amazing people.

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Come see me tell jokes (or give a talk), in person:

• June 4 - Atlanta Athletic Club

• June 5 and 6 - Laughing Skull Lounge, Atlanta

• June 12 - Wade Hampton Country Club, Cashiers, NC (Talk)

• June 19 and 20 - The Comedy Catch, Chattanooga

• June 25 - Happy Couples Show, West Side Comedy Club, NYC

• July 21 - The Venice West, Los Angeles (on sale soon)

• July 23 - Cobbs Comedy Club, San Francisco

• Aug 1 - Sticks and Stones Comedy Club, Southampton, NY

• Aug 8 - Atlanta Country Club

• Aug 13-16 - McCurdy’s Comedy Theatre, Sarasota, FL

You know him from The Daily Show and from his acclaimed stand-up specials, where he proves that smart comedy can still hit hard.

A native of Birmingham, AL, Roy has that rare ability to make you laugh while also making you think—whether he’s talking about race, class, media, relationships, or the strange little hypocrisies we all live with.

In addition to The Daily Show, Roy has performed on The Tonight Show, The Late Show with David Letterman, BET’s Comic View, Conan, and many other top TV programs. He is now the host of the CNN current events-comedy show, Have I Got News for You.

His 2025 memoir, The Man of Many Fathers explores—among other things—Roy’s complicated relationship with his father, Roy Wood, Sr., a civil rights journalist and African American radio pioneer.

Today, Roy and I talk about money, family, fatherhood, and we go deep on the craft of comedy.

Speaking of comedy, see my upcoming shows below. Save the date / buy your tickets!

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COMEDY NEAR YOU - GET YOUR TICKETS!

• May 16: QED, Astoria Queens, 9:30

• May 20: Dunwoody Country Club (members only)

• May 21: Atlanta Punchline - ON SALE

• May 22-23: DC Comedy Loft ON SALE

• June 4: Atlanta Athletic Club (members only)

• June 19-20: Comedy Catch, Chattanooga ON SALE

• June 25: Couples Therapy Comedy at West Side Comedy Club, NYC

• July 21: The Venice West, Los Angeles - On Sale soon

• July 23: Cobbs Comedy Club, San Francisco - ON SALE

• Aug 1: Sticks and Stones Comedy Club, Southampton, NY -

• Aug 8: Atlanta Country Club (members only)

• Aug 13-16: Headlining McCurdy’s in Sarasota, FL - ON SALE

• October 15: Capital City Country Club (members only)

“Nobody gets ahead anymore,” says the mainstream press.

And 60% of young people believe that the American Dream is dead!

But my guest today calls this hogwash, baloney, and complete malarkey. is a historian, entrepreneur, investor, and the author of a new book called How to Get Rich In American History: 300 Years of Financial Advice that Worked (And didn’t) in which he explores how ambition, risk, and reinvention have shaped America from the very beginning.

He also reveals the money myths, sacred cows, side hustles, and NAYsayers that have always been a part of our society.

What if so-called timeless beliefs about money like “invest for the long run,” “compound interest builds wealth,” and “real estate always goes up” weren’t always true…and play out less often than you think they do?

Joseph’s book is part history, part playbook, and part reality check. He brings lessons to life with rigor that is deeper than an oil well and a wit that is dryer than the Texas plains. And in so doing he demystifies the past in order to clarify the present for anyone thinking about money, success, and what it really means to “make it” in America.

Follow Joseph here.

My guest today is Dr. Paul Hokemeyer, a psychotherapist who works almost exclusively with ultra-high-net-worth individuals—the kind of people most of us assume have life completely figured out.

Spoiler alert: they don’t.

Dr. Hokemeyer is the author of Fragile Power, a fascinating look at the emotional and psychological challenges that come with extreme wealth, fame, status, and success. In his work, he’s seen firsthand how money can insulate people from consequences, distort relationships, and quietly fuel addiction, anxiety, and isolation.

In other words, he has a front-row seat to the uncomfortable truth behind the fantasy.

Today, we talk about why power is more fragile than it looks, how wealth can complicate identity and purpose, and what it actually takes—whether you’re worth $10,000 or $10 billion—to build a life that feels meaningful.