Today’s show was a full ninety minutes, an emotional marathon that swung from personal transformation to political courage, from quitting cigarettes to fighting hunger.
We started with frustration. Another morning, another Democratic cave-in to Trump’s hostage politics.
and I vented (loudly) about the collapse of strategy into surrender — how our party keeps defending procedure while the other side burns down the process. “This isn’t chess,” I said. “It’s a hostage negotiation.”Enter
, writer of The Exile Files and absurdist friend of TDWS, who joined us to talk about the anatomy of habit — specifically, how he’s trying to quit smoking after decades of using it to manage emotion, boredom, and fear. It wasn’t about nicotine, he said. It was about awareness. “I thought I was quitting cigarettes,” Murphy told us. “Turns out I was quitting autopilot.”His honesty cracked something open. We talked about how attention itself has become an addiction — the way doomscrolling, caffeine, and constant distraction have replaced cigarettes as our numbing agent of choice. It was funny, a little sad, and unexpectedly hopeful.
But the real shift came in hour two, when Connecticut State Senator Saud Anwar joined us. He’s a Pulmonologist, a Democrat, and walking embodiment of compassion in action. Saud and his wife have been living on a food budget $6.20 a day, the equivalent of the SNAP food allowance, documenting each meal on social media to show what life really looks like under America’s safety net, which is how he crossed my path. I was thrilled when I reached out and he agreed to come on our show. And he exceeded our expectations with his wise, compassionate views on leadership.
He didn’t talk about policy as a talking point — he talked about people. About the families he’s met as a physician, the hunger he’s witnessed, and the quiet shame that too often keeps suffering invisible. “You can’t understand policy,” he said, “if you don’t understand hunger.”
In a week when Washington felt morally bankrupt, Saud reminded us what leadership should sound like: steady, kind, and relentlessly human. Listening to him was like being reintroduced to empathy, the kind that nourishes rather than performs.
We ended lighter, but not easy — and maybe that’s the point. Awareness, whether it’s about a craving or a country, is where all healing begins.
Thank you
, , , , , and many others for tuning in! We love you all, mean it!Join us tomorrow when Lawrence and I are gonna nerd out about the story I just published and talk about Big Dick Energy vs Between Date Behavior—and why BDB is the better indicator of a good partner.
Forget About BDE. Focus on BDB: Between-Date Behavior
I knew I was halfway in love with Mason* when he washed my sugar bowl.
