How did the latchkey kid generations grow up to become helicopter parents?

On a recent drive home on a busy four-lane road during Friday evening rush hour, in a momentary break in the traffic, I saw a group of middle-school aged kids crossing the road on their bikes and it got me to thinking about the last time I had seen something that was such a routine part of our childhoods.

The societal shift in how and where kids gather and play, especially in many areas across the U.S., has happened in just half a generation...and it's our generation of 40-year olds whose collective decisions have disappeared some of the most formative aspects of our childhoods from the childhoods of our children. 

So how did we become these kinds of parents? And whether you have children or not, in what ways are our generation's ideas of protection and safety having side effects on the experiences of our youth?

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At this stage in my life, I find it difficult to connect with anyone who hasn't dealt with deep disappointment, sobering setbacks, or recurring regrets, in some area of life.

In many ways, this podcast - and the upcoming book that accompanies it - is designed for people who are arriving at 40 with a life that has some scrapes, stains, and smudges...which is most of us.

Many of us have at least one aspect of our life where we are low on hope. Whether it's an intractable issue in our bodies, an ongoing saga with our loved ones, or a recurring drama with someone, or something, in our lives; we can find ourselves in a place where we've run out of the mental, emotional, psychological, and spiritual fuel to manufacture hope for certain areas of life.

And once hope runs out, so does everything else that good and life-affirming. Including the will, ability, and strength to try. So this is a moment to check on your hope tank, and identify what's filling or draining it.

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After a lifetime of positive experiences at the dentist, a throwaway comment about the structure of my teeth during a recent visit for a routine cleaning threatened to end my four-decade long run of good dentist visit vibes.

Which led me to think about the structure of our lives, the roots we have, the roots we are missing, and the roots we needed to be stable, secure, safe, and successful in this chapter of life.

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One of the things that prompted me to create this podcast was the sense that there are going to be a lot of people in our generation who are not going to feel ready, even at 40? 

A recent TikTok poking fun at people who are hitting their late 30s and still aren't sure what they want in the romantic lives got me to thinking about all the other areas of life where we get asked questions like "You're not ready, yet?!" and "What are you waiting for?!"

At this point in your life, what do you consider cornerstones, things that must be in place for a quality life to be built?

And what are capstones, things that are nice to have, life goals, but come after you've got the cornerstone parts of your life in place?

My heart for this episode is really for everyone arriving at 40 with nothing solid enough to call a cornerstone, and too many immediate concerns to have much time for dreaming and planning for achieving capstones. This one is for anyone who looks around at your life and sees mostly rolling stones.


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To the icebreaker question "If you could have any superpower, which would it be?" my superpower of choice would be the ability to speak any language, dialect, or tongue.

The ability to understand, and to be understood, in all contexts & in all places is - for someone like me - the same as the ability to fly or walk through walls. Curiousity about myself & others is one of the reasons this podcast exists.

At this stage of your life, do you see yourself as someone who is curious, indifferent, or hostile to the languages and lives of other people? At 40, do you live in an environment where curiousity about others is valued?

Did you grow in a context where curiousity was not an option? Where you had to be aware of the ways of being and speaking of those around you, for your well-being, advancement, or survival?

Or did you enter adulthood in an environment where curiousity was an option?  Where you were part of the default setting, and most of the people you encountered spoke, thought, dressed, and acted in similar ways to you?


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Twice this week, I had a movie studio quality, REM sleep dream sequence abruptly cut short by my phone alarm. An alarm that I set thinking that I had given myself enough time to rest and to dream. The reality of the alarm was that my time for those dream sessions was over sooner than I expected.

For some of us, turning 40 feels like an alarm that has interupted the dream of young adulthood. For others, approaching 40 is more like a notification bell that is reminding you that it is time to get back to your dreams.

What is the state of your dreams at this stage of your life? Do you still dream? How have your dreams changed? Do your thoughts and past experiences amplify your dreams, or weigh you down so much you don't have any energy left for dreaming?

What are the alarms in your life that are interrupting your dreams?


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We live in a world that rewards the bold individual, the spicy hot take, most strongest worded opinions, and a never-back-down approach to advocating and arguing for what we believe in.

In most areas of our lives, especially online, our society does not have much patience for taking time to reflect on what has been done, to examine what has been said, to be self-aware about the stories we tell about who we like to think we are.  

We're not very good at admitting when we are wrong. We struggle to understand how our perspective could be incomplete. Many of us have a very hard time dealing with life circumstances where we were right, and things still went wrong. 

At this stage of your life, how are you making decisions about the right thing to do?

And when you thought you were right, and the perspective you had could be trusted, and things wound up turning out differently that you anticipated...what do you do next?

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A recent TikTok poking fun at those of us who use the elite, world-renowned "Bunny Ears" method of shoelace tying hit close to home, and made me think about how we respond when presented with a new way of doing something we've done a particular way our whole lives.

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Depending on your lifestyle and the part of the country you live in, it can be easy to think that the postal mail system is not a big deal, aside from receiving packages from online shopping. However, recent natural disasters in the U.S., and the seemingly endless list of conflict and war related disasters around the world, have presented the world with images of people who once had hometowns, and homes, and mailboxes.

This has led me to think a lot about the phrase "return to sender", and how we handle situations when we discover that the things we planned on receiving, and the lives we expected to be living, are not going to arrive. 

By 40, most of us have experienced some significant life shift that reoriented the plans that we made, and redirected the life paths we were on. Learning to process the loss of that which has been marked "return to sender" in our lives is critical to making the most of this new version of life we now find ourselves in.

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As a transition from tears and prayers of the 1st half of Jamie Foxx's Netflix special, "What Had Happened Was", to the laughs and vibes of the 2nd half, Jamie does a bit based on the refrain, "If I can stay funny, I can stay alive."

This phrase becomes more powerful as he shares multiple stories about how his sense of humor carried him through the toughest parts of the recovery process from a serious medical issue he suffered last year.

At 40, each word in Jamie's refrain take on new meaning. How would you fill in the blank for this stage in your life? If I can stay _______, I can stay ______.

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 A beautiful holiday week moment in my current city and a terrible holiday week moment in my previous city reintroduced some important research about how our psychology is impacted by our social contexts, and got me to thinking about fire fighters, who becomes a fire fighter, and whether we have enough of them.

For the purposes of this episode, I'm using the phrase fire fighters to refer broadly to the kind of people who choose to remain attentive, attuned, and aware to the smoke signals in our families, schools, neighborhoods, workplaces, and societies. People who choose to respond to tragedy by getting up, getting involved, and working to try to reduce suffering and provide aid & assistance.

Who are the fire fighters in your life? Are you a fire fighter?

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The human body is incredible. And what happens to it over time is both fascinating and frightening.

Have you ever had a sudden "health humble"? A time when you found yourself receiving medical information about your body that you weren't prepared to hear and did not see coming?

How did you handle it? Complete denial? Intense research? Drastic lifestyle changes?

Entering your 40s often means dealing with some kind of health humble. Some are small, and you can learn to live with and/or laugh at them. Some are big, and require you to fundamentally change parts of your life you may have taken for granted. Some are serious, and don't come with good answers or happy endings.

How do you process these moments?


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One of the cultural trends that have shaped our generation of 40 year olds has been the resurgent popularity of all kinds of personality assessments.

From the use of zodiac signs to screen romantic partners, to the use of tools like the StrengthsFinder and DISC assessements to evaluate employees, to the experimentation with tests like the Enneagram within spirtual communities to help individuals identify their purpose, the various personality categories, labels, and descriptions have seeped into our societal subconscious and have become a widely-used shorthand for describing ourselves, and others.

The godparent of these personality tests is the Myers Briggs Personality Test. I recently took the Myers Briggs test, nearly 20 after the first time I took the assessment, in my 20s. And it got me to thinking about how these assessments, the labels that come with them, the conclusions we draw from them, and the way we award and avoid others based on the meanings we assign to different personality traits.

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Between The Olympics and the 60+ national elections being held around the world, we're in a fascinating moment to observe endless case studies in human behavior when people are in crowds.

Since I was young, I've been interested in this aspect of life. What is the difference between the kind of people who start chorus of cheers or lead a crowd in a protest chant, and the kind of people who are the last to finish clapping at the end of standing ovation or the last person to throw a punch in a street brawl.

Humans are social, tribal beings. So we are still being influenced by others, and influencing others, far beyond our youth. Peer pressure doesn't end when we leave school.

At this point in your life, in what areas are you the "first clapper", leading the group; the "last clapper", joining at the last minute or with the last word; or the "middle clapper", not in a hurry to join the masses, but ready to engage when the timing feels right.


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I've been thinking about the cliche phrase "Get Off My Lawn" a lot recently. It's one of the timeless anthems of middle and old age. The point when people feel like they've lived long enough and paid enough dues in a society to claim some ownership of its "lawn" - the social norms, values, and standards of the society, which we begin to take responsibility for around 40.

One of the true gifts of youth is the privilege to dissent, to debate, and sometimes, to disobey the very people and institutions you depend on for your survival and development. Part of the work of child development and human maturity is not just to identify the literal and metaphorical lawns of the society around them and "touch grass", but to pull up the blades, dig random holes in the dirt, run all over the lawn, and daydream on the lawn.

And part of the work of adulting is balancing the questioning and exploring of the youth with guidance and perspective.

But with life being as hectic as it can be, and with our individual status on the lawn of society being as precarious as it can be, it's easy to fall into the habits of past generations of 40-year olds in responding to teens and 20-somethings whenever they start asking too many questions and making too many calls for change.

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The first time I heard about the concept of 3rd places was when I was in college. Over the years, I've enjoyed a variety of 3rd places, including coffee shops, gyms, houses of worship, and live music venues.

But my two favorite 3rd places - by far - are laundromats and car washes. They are no-judgement, family-friendly, budget-friendly, class-collapsing spaces.

Last weekend, I happened to make a stop at my local car wash and laundromats, and it got me to thinking about what decisions our generation will make about the 3rd spaces in our country.


We live very different lives,in very different regions, in very different life situations. The forces of our economy, our politics, and our technology push and pull us into very different kinds of community and very different kinds of 3rd spaces.

And yet, the research is clear: humans need social interaction and connection, with a varity of people, in a variety of places.

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In many ways, this podcast is about timing. Turning 40 years is primarily a conversation about timing.

The timing of the events in our lives. The timing of the seasons and stages of our lives.

Bad timing. Good timing. Unbelievably fortunate timing. Unbelievably tragic timing.

How many of us are approaching 40 in a season of life where we cannot afford for anything to go wrong because we have too many people, and things, to care for?

There's a difference between caring about someone or something and caring for that person or thing.

What are you caring for at this stage of your life?
Who are you caring for as you approach 40?
What do you when what you cared for is gone?
How do you handle the sudden shifts in life that cause endings you didn't have time to prepare for?


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My hair-related fears and concerns about aging never included worrying about seeing my hair turning gray. My two biggest concerns had always been about developing a receding hairline and balding.

During a routine trip to the office bathroom at work, following a recent visit to my barber for my monthly haircut, I was stunned to discover two new strands of bright gray hair sticking out of my beard.

Seeing my hair turn gray is one of the few life milestones I have experienced alone, and it got me to thinking about the kind of life milestones that define the first part of our lives, and the kind of milestones that will define this stage of life.


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A few days ago, I had the unfortunate experience of being stuck in an elevator at my job for an hour. On the 13th Floor. On a Friday afternoon.

While this highly irritating, slightly traumatizing ordeal was taking place, I decided to do what most writers do. I took this unexpected prompt, opened my notes app, and started writing.

This experience was a good metaphor for life moments that happen to many people around 40. Moments when we get stopped, moments where we find ourselves stuck.

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At this stage of your life, do you still dream? What are your dreams about? What are your dreams no longer about? Who are your dreams for?

40 is a great time to ask: What have your dreams cost you? What has cost you your dreams?

Athletes have an offseason, many actors and entertainers have an offseason. Politicians get an offseason. And there are all sorts of occupations and lifestyles that have cycles that at least include slow periods where people can take short breaks.

I wish more adults could experience an offseason, especially those of us about to enter mid-life. I believe that we all need time to sleep, time to rest, time to reflect, time to reset. We need time to dream.

We need an offseason.

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