Busy, or full? Rick and Clancy started using that second word on purpose this episode, and it changes how the whole conversation flows. Rick names a trap he's been stuck in for years: believing that once you get through the next big thing, life will finally calm down. It never does. He's not convinced he'll fix that either, because he knows who he is. Clancy comes up with a different word for the whole thing. Full still has room in it, she says. In this episode, Rick and Clancy talk abo...

Move-in day never quite goes the way you expect, even after doing it more than once. Rick and Clancy walk through what actually shifts each time, from how much to help unpacking a dorm room to when to step in on a rough roommate situation. "Help them, but only as much as they want to be helped" comes up early, and it holds up through the rest of the conversation. Budgeting gets its own segment, including the ten days of DoorDash during a COVID quarantine that no spreadsheet prepared them f...

How is the nest empty if you're still living in it? That question from Hanna Bankier is why we brought her on this week. Hanna runs Birdie Launcher, helping parents navigate launching their kids, and themselves, into whatever comes next. Her focus isn't the packing list. It's the relationship that has to get rebuilt once the packing's done. Hanna's website is a great place to start if any of this sounds familiar: https://www.birdylauncher.com/ Follow her on Instagram at birdylauncher. ...

We went into a marriage conference this weekend thinking we didn't really need it. Decades of marriage will do that to you. That assumption got proven wrong fast, especially in a breakout session on parenting adult children. Then we capped the weekend off with something completely impulsive that had nothing to do with marriage advice and everything to do with a nineteen dollar ticket. If you want to look into your own love languages, and how they change over time, that's the book we keep comi...

We set an alarm for five forty this week. After a night out. Nobody made us do that. We keep saying we have more freedom than ever, so why does this summer feel busier than any before it. Turns out the empty nest doesn't erase old habits, it just removes the excuse for them. We're still keeping a schedule neither of us actually needs anymore. "We have this productivity addiction that we just can't turn off even when we can." By the end of this one, we're rethinking what a schedule is ev...

Rick and Clancy are both mid-recovery and mid-appointment season, and this one gets into what that's actually like in our fifties.Between the two of them, this year alone brought a procedure Clancy had been putting off for years, a colonoscopy, and more skin checks than either of them expected to need yet. Some of it was elective. Some of it wasn't.Neither of them feels their age, but their test schedules keep suggesting otherwise. That gap between how they feel and what the doctors are asking o...

Communication breaks down in the same few places for almost every couple. This episode is about finding those places before they turn into a fight. Rebecca Mullen joins Rick and Clancy to talk about the three roles inside a marriage, partner, lover, and friend, and how easily one of them gets neglected once kids leave the house. The conversation moves into why couples assume their partner can read their mind, why apologies so often fall flat, and how something as small as the way you say hell...

The stadium they've seen a hundred times looks completely different through a stranger's eyes. Rick and Clancy talk World Cup fever in Dallas, from Rick's first match in 1994 to watching tourists fall for ranch dressing and a screen they stopped noticing years ago. The conversation moves through ticket prices, FIFA's reputation, and how different the sport felt before the US started hosting. It lands on something simpler: hosting gave them a reason to look at their own city again. 📖 ...

Three years into running a podcast together, Rick and Clancy are together constantly. That didn't stop them from arguing about cottage cheese, a dinner reservation in Spain, and a birthday gift for their son.None of those arguments were actually about the thing they were about.In this episode, Rick and Clancy walk through three real arguments unrehearsed, raw, on mic, in real time. What comes out underneath all three is the same: they hadn't been feeling heard by each other. And the deeper they ...

Rick and Clancy just got back from ten days in Spain with both kids. This episode is about what family travel actually looks like when the kids are adults. The shared memories are still the point. They always have been. But the logistics are different now. The scheduling is a negotiation. The kids have opinions about destinations. And somewhere between the Sagrada Familia and the Picasso Museum, you realize their personalities have calcified into something very distinct and permanent. Rick...

Almost sixty percent of Michelle Puccinelli's virtual assistant students are empty nesters. She didn't design it that way. They just kept showing up.Michelle runs Virtual Work Studio, a marketing agency with a training program that prepares women to work as specialized virtual assistants. When she built the program, she was thinking career changers and moms returning to the workforce. What she found was a wave of empty nesters who wanted flexible work, on their own terms, without the grind they'...

10 Travel Tips...This is a Greatest Hits episode. It originally aired as Episode 87 in May 2025 and we're bringing it back because the tips hold up.Ten travel tips from our trip to Germany. Not a general list. Specific things we did, tools we used, and habits that made the trip work. A lot of it applies well beyond Germany.The thread running through all of it is flexibility. The empty nest changed what's possible when you travel. This episode is about making the most of it.Resources From This Ep...

Every summer, the kid who comes home is not the kid who left. And the house they're coming back to isn't the one they remember either. Rick and Clancy have navigated this seven times across two kids. This episode is what they've learned.They recorded this one mid-drive to Tucson, on their way to help Teagan move out of her apartment for the summer. Transition season in real time.The adjustments around time, roles, friends, and expectations don't sort themselves out. They have to be talked throug...

This episode is a flip. Rick and Clancy are in the guest seat, interviewed by Paul Basden, their pastor of nearly 20 years. He knows their kids. He knows their story. A question Clancy asked Rick in the car sits at the center of everything. So does the sadness both of them felt, the identity shift Clancy navigated, the dad connections Rick had to relearn from a distance, and how their faith guides them through all of it. Paul also digs into how they chose to approach the empty nest differe...

Lisa Guzman didn't come to the empty nest the usual way. She came through foster care, homelessness at 17, building a life from scratch, 25 years as a wife and mother, and then losing her husband and her last kid leaving home within a year of each other. When the roles are gone, who are you? Lisa had to find out. This is that conversation. Rick and Clancy talk with Lisa about what it actually feels like to redefine yourself after decades of being everyone else's. They get into trust, datin...

Graduation week has a way of swallowing you whole if you let it. Rick and Clancy have been through it and they're headed into it again. The logistics are real. Multiple ceremonies, ticket limits, restaurant reservations, parking, accessibility for grandparents. Get that handled early and you can actually be there when your kid walks across the stage. Because what can get lost in the chaos... your graduate is saying goodbye to four years of their life. They need space for that, even when yo...

Rick and Clancy listen to a lot of podcasts. In this episode they run through their current favorites, from Bravo recaps to business professors to flight attendants spilling what they actually think about passengers. And they get into why people listen to podcasts in the first place. Convenience. Escapism. The strange intimacy of a voice in your ear for hundreds of hours. And maybe something specific to this stage of life, when the music taste is largely set and the discovery itch needs so...

Some Mondays just arrive with a layer of meh. No obvious reason. This is what Rick and Clancy did about it. They get into why stuck feels different in the empty nest, why wallowing feels strangely satisfying even when it doesn't feel good, and why the empty nest version of a low day can feel louder than it should. They also walk through what actually moved them out of it... recognizing self-imposed pressure, saying the real thing to your person, finding something specific to be grateful fo...

Teagan's 21st birthday trip to Tucson turned into something neither of us expected. A wheelchair basketball national championship. Online friends who flew in from California. A signed book. It was a weekend that kept handing us things we didn't know to look for. That's the thread running through this episode. Not just Teagan. Tanner too. The music he's pulled back into our orbit, the video game symphonies, the EDM nights. Our kids keep opening doors we would have walked right past. We also...

Not every empty nest looks the same. In this guest episode, Shara and Aaron Goswick share their story of building a marriage that began right after high school, raising their family young, and navigating a version of empty nest life that still includes supporting an adult son at home. They also share why weekly date night has remained a non-negotiable part of their marriage, how they approach family boundaries as grandparents, and how Shara’s Life Stories Podcast grew from a simple idea in...

A blown tire turns into a bigger question… what do you actually owe your kids once they’re out of the house but still in school? Rick and Clancy find themselves on opposite sides of the same situation. One sees it as part of growing up… “that’s what savings is for.” The other sees it as simple… he’s still a student… you help. What follows isn’t a debate about money. It’s a look at the assumptions underneath the decision. They work through where their lines actually are… how tho...