No. 067 What Being a Showrunner Can Teach Us About Parenting (and Vice Versa)

Jerod Morris and Jon Nastor on July 13, 2016

Jerod is set to become a parent for the first time later this month. Jonny has been a parent now for 11 years, and podcasting has featured prominently in the development of his relationship with his daughter. Needless to say, Jerod has some questions … and Jonny does his best to provide some answers.

How do you balance parenting and podcasting? We discuss that in this week’s new episode. It definitely goes into some places we didn’t expect.

Among the specific topics we get into:

  • How Jonny tries to “lead by example” for his daughter
  • What it was like when his daughter decided to get into podcasting herself
  • How the Nastors have found a work-life balance that works for them (even though Jonny would bristle at it being called a “work-life balance”)
  • The only one-size-fits-all answer for creating a positive balance in every house

And more. We do leave one bullet undiscussed that we had planned to cover, however, we decided to save it for next week and dedicate an entire episode to it. Stay tuned for that.

This week’s podcast recommendations:

Listen, learn, enjoy …

The Show Notes

What Being a Showrunner Can Teach Us About Parenting (and Vice Versa)

Jerod Morris: This is Rainmaker FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free, 14-day trial at RainmakerPlatform.com. Welcome to The Showrunner, where have one goal: teach you how to develop, launch, and run a remarkable show. Ready?

Welcome back to The Showrunner. This is episode number 67 of The Showrunner. I’m your host Jerod Morris, VP of marketing for Rainmaker Digital. I’m joined, as always, by my co-host Jonny Nastor. Connoisseur of coffee, lover of sandwiches and hunter of podcasts, in addition to his many other roles like host of Hack The Entrepreneur, Amazon bestselling author, digital entrepreneur. He does a lot. We’re so fortunate that he joins us once a week here on The Showrunner to lend his advice. Jonny, how are you?

Jon Nastor: I’m doing great, man. Thanks for having me.

Jerod Morris: It’s always a pleasure to have you. I’m especially excited about having you for this episode. It’s kind of funny, you and I were talking earlier today about what we wanted to talk about for this episode and we both came to the conclusion that we are a little bit stumped. It’s one of those weird things. It’s not that we don’t have ideas — we have a whole Trello board full of ideas. Sometimes you’re a little bit more excited about going and mining the Trello board for ideas than other times. For some reason today we weren’t that excited about it.

But there was a topic that I was really excited about talking about and I proposed it to you and I was very glad that you were excited about chatting about it too. As I’ve mentioned on the show before, I am preparing to be a parent for the first time. My wife and I are expecting our daughter sometime later this month, in July. The due day is July 29th. But as I’m learning, once you get to full term she can come whenever she decides she’s ready.

We’ve been spending the last few weeks getting the house ready, getting the nursery ready, all of that. I started thinking, “I’ve got to start getting my professional life ready.” Obviously I’m anticipating many sleepless nights, not a lot of free time, and all of that from all the books I’ve read and the wonderful advice I’ve gotten from many people. But work and life still are going to have to go on to a certain extent. You are someone who has balanced work and parenting and you’re currently balancing podcasting and parenting. I thought that I would mine your experience and your wisdom to hopefully teach me some important lessons and get me ready for the life change that is ahead of me.

Jon Nastor: Cool, sounds like fun. You are right about the Trello board, because as soon as you emailed me, “What’s the topic we should cover today?” Instantly on my phone I had the Trello app opened up. I looked at them all, and usually I get like a spark like, “Yeah, totally.” Instantly ideas are going through my head and I’m like, “That’s the one.” None of them did it. Then you emailed me, “What about this?” And then instantly I was like, “Yes,” because all these ideas start going through my head and you just know it’s the right one.

Jerod Morris: We could have taken any of those Trello board topics and done it, but it’s also good to have a general or a genuine enthusiasm at that moment for the topic that you’re going to be discussing. It’s okay to put stuff off a little bit if you’re not that enthusiastic about it. We are enthusiastic about this one. Let’s indulge in that and talk about it. Are you ready?

Jon Nastor: Yeah, let’s do it.

Jerod Morris: Real quick, we should remind everybody to go to Showrunner.FM if you aren’t yet on our email list yet. If you haven’t declared yourself a showrunner, this is the way to declare yourself a showrunner — to submit your email address in that form that you will see when you go to Showrunner.FM. That way you get our weekly newsletter. That way you will also get the immediate autoresponder series, The Four Essential Elements of a Remarkable Podcast, so that you understand what those elements are and so that you understand what the pillars of our teaching and our podcasting philosophy are. We’re going to have a lot of stuff coming down the pike too that you will want to get a hold of, and being on the email list is the way to do it. Go to Showrunner.FM. Hop on the email list.

Jonny, let’s talk about parenting advice for podcasters. Clearly I cannot give much parenting advice for podcasters because currently I’m just a podcaster, I’m not yet a parent. I’ve definitely been thinking about this topic a lot and trying to get myself mentally prepared, trying to get myself physically prepared, and just trying to get prepared in every way that I can for the life changes that are to come. I know that a lot of our listeners deal with this. Maybe they have older kids, maybe they have new kids. It can be a real challenge. Certainly the obvious challenges like how do you find a quiet spot in the house with family and kids running around? Then also, how do you find the time to focus and how do you make sure that you are prioritizing correctly?

There’s a lot of different questions that can come up for podcasters, for Showrunners who are parents or who are thinking about becoming parents. I’m glad that you’re here to lend some advice. What are your general thoughts when I mentioned this and when I emailed this to you this morning? What were the first things that popped into your head in terms of advice, maybe a story, what was it? What hit you immediately?

How Jonny Tries to “Lead By Example” for His Daughter

Jon Nastor: Probably that you are going to have a better understanding of this right now. I’m living it. I’m not studying it. I’m not thinking about being a parent and a podcaster, but you are. You’re thinking about it because you are heading into it. Basically you’re doing just-in-time learning. I don’t read parenting books. It’s just what I live at this point and it’s how I do it. It’ll be interesting, because you’re probably actually going to be able to teach me some things to make me think about it differently, which I haven’t done. To me, showrunning is just creating. It’s creation of something out of nothing. It can be artistic, it can be entrepreneurial, it can be from that vein.

To me, that’s something that I really like being a part of my life. I like music, I like art — I like creation. I think as a parent it pushes me to do more of that myself, because I don’t believe in just telling a kid what to do. I don’t believe in just telling anybody what to do. I love to lead by example. If I want and think that my child’s life will be more fulfilling or more well-rounded or more worldly — whatever that is that I would I like see in her by the time she was 10 or by the time she was 20 now. Which she’s not, she’s 11. I’m working on the next 10. It pushes me to do more of the things that I would like her to see me doing and enjoying and getting satisfaction and growth personally out of.

Then the rest just falls into place. I’m not trying to force her to be into music. I’m not trying to force her to be into podcasting. I’m not trying to force her into anything. I’m making a big, giant wake behind me like I’m a giant boat going through the water, and it’s easier for her to follow those paths if she wants because she doesn’t have to really break new ground.

Jerod Morris: Just to try them. See you doing something, see if it’s interesting, and she can see if she likes it.

Jon Nastor: Exactly, rather than me just sitting there and being like, “You should make videos for YouTube. You should start a …” Because I know parents that do that and they know nothing about it, yet they try and like, “You should … ” You’re trying to push. It’s really hard to push somebody into a direction. I think it’s way easier to be ahead of them and like, “Here, take my hand and follow along. It’s easier if you want. This is how to do it. You can see me make mistakes.”

That’s also a big part of it, trying things and seeing them not work and see me not get devastated by them. See me be like, “Oh, I just learn from it and do the next thing.” I think it really teaches kids the life lesson of embracing failure as a learning experience not as something telling you that you’re no good at something.

Jerod Morris: So that they’re not afraid to try new things, which they will inevitably fail at early on.

Jon Nastor: Right. That’s a really hard thing. It’s a really hard thing to watch your kid fail. It’s really had. It hurts. But you know that as humans we learn better through our own mistakes than we do by somebody just telling us, “No, don’t do that. Don’t touch that because you are going to burn yourself.” It doesn’t matter how many times you tell it, they touch it and they burn themselves. They never do it again. We learn that way, it’s how we do it. But it’s hard. I love being a parent because it pushes me to be a better version of myself because I want to show that example. I don’t want to just sit on the couch watching TV all night, every day.

Jerod Morris: No, because then that’s what your daughter might think is the normal thing to do. It’s interesting, that same philosophy is good for any showrunner to think about when it comes to your relationship with your audience too, in terms of leading by example. Hosting the show makes me want to become a better podcaster because I know that people are watching us and listening to our advice and we have an audience.

It’s interesting, the parallels there. Not that you’re parenting your audience, but that same idea of leading by example. Not always just telling people, “You need to do this and you have to do this.” There’s going to be some of that with podcasting, but you also have to be out there walking the walk not just talking the talk, or you won’t have any genuine authority for people to pay attention to you.

One of the questions I asked you is, “How do you raise a child who is enthusiastic about podcasting?” Because your daughter — you’ve told the story before that she actually kind of did her own podcast. She has done some podcasting of her own. It seems to me like the best way if you want to create enthusiasm in a child for podcasting — you mentioned lead by example — just being enthusiastic about it yourself and showing her that this is an option. Maybe giving her some of the tools if she wants to try it, but not necessarily saying, “You will be a podcaster. You will try this.” Is that kind of how she got into it? And what was her experience like when she decided to get into podcasting?

What It Was like When Jonny’s Daughter Decided to Get into Podcasting Herself

Jon Nastor: She was spoiled by Pat Flynn. He bought her all of the gear. It kind of pushed her into it in that way, but she had seen me doing it at that point. She’d already known that — like when she was downloading the next Good Job Brain podcast or something like that, when she listened to it she says funny things about how it was produced or something, which I love. She’s consuming it but she’s also thinking of it from a producer perspective. It’s not just something that’s made by other people, and it never was.

When she watches YouTube videos she thinks that way now. When she listens to music she thinks about that. That’s just how it is and I really like that about her. When she got into it — she had the gear given to her so that was kind of an incentive to do it. Then she just rolled with it and it wasn’t a giant hurdle like she didn’t know how to do any of it. Even though she didn’t know necessarily how to publish on Libsyn. She just learned it as she went, it wasn’t some grand unknown.

It wasn’t something that hadn’t ever been done before, because it had literally been done at the same exact desk for her and just instead of me being in here she was in here. She learned. I did all of it with her. For her first 15 episodes I did the editing with her, I did the recording with her, just sitting here with her. Worked her through ways she could make it better and how she could not be so nervous in front of the microphone and she got really good at it. It was a really cool bonding experience and just an awesome way to hang out, which helped our relationship a lot. I don’t know. I think the fact that she did that …

I don’t know if I’ve told you. She came home from her first bike ride of the summer a couple of months ago and I was at home, I was just upstairs in the kitchen working and my wife and daughter came in. Sadie was like, “My helmet’s too small, Dad. I need a new helmet.” I’m like, “Okay, cool.” She goes on to the internet, of course, and starts looking for Helmets. She finds this helmet. That, to me, was ridiculously, hilariously expensive. I was like, “Are you serious? You come home from your first bike ride, now all of the sudden your helmet’s no good.” I’m like, “That’s cool, but we could just go to the store and buy one. But no, you want this one that’s probably three times as much as one I can just buy at the store.”

Then I was like, “You know what? You’re going to find a way to earn the money to do this.” She sat there and looked at me, and then we sat down and wrote out some ideas. All of a sudden we stumbled across Fiverr just as an idea. “What can I do on Fiverr?” She went on Fiverr and she found out that voice acting by kids was an untapped market. She spent literally three hours from that point — she created a little PowerPoint, a thirty-second video. She came down here and recorded it, she edited it herself on her laptop.

Jerod Morris: Holy crap. That’s great.

Jon Nastor: She showed it to me. She posted it and it took her four weeks or three weeks and she made like $140 and paid for the helmet. Then she shut it just down. She paused her account right before we went to Europe because she wouldn’t have her gear and stuff and she hasn’t started it back up again. But every day she was getting a request. She recorded radio ad spots for a company in Dubai, a company down in Georgia. It was crazy.

Jerod Morris: That’s amazing. What a great story.

Jon Nastor: It’s an extension. All of that is just an extension. As she was doing that I was like, “Wow, I’ve just ruined for you in high school when everybody gets a job at the fast food restaurant like I did. There is no way you’re going to be able to do that.” We’d be heading out to grandma’s house for dinner and she’d get a job post sent to her. She’d have 24 hours but she’s like, “I can do it. Can I have like 15 minutes? I’ll get this done and then I’ll send it off.” We’d show up 15 minutes later for dinner and she’d tell her grandma, “I just made $40.” Her grandma would be like, “That’s cool you’re late then.”

Jerod Morris: What a great story.

Jon Nastor: That was from podcasting. She gained the confidence to be able to do that. Then PowerPoint and video editing — I don’t know where that came from. I think probably from working with Garage Band and the confidence of creation, I think is what that came from. To me, showrunning — even for ourselves and for our kids — that’s not the end goal. I don’t podcast for podcast’s sake.

I don’t podcast so I can say I’m a podcaster. I podcast to try and understand my ideas more. I get to talk them out and work them out with smart people. Then also to make a connection and help a growing audience. If I was literally recording this stuff, putting it to tape, and putting that into a sock drawer and never releasing it to the world, I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t spend this much time podcasting. I don’t just do it for that sake. I do it for where it takes me, where it puts me around, what I get out of it personally and then externally.

That, to me, is what it did for my child as well. And I think we should all think of it that way. This isn’t the end all be all. Your show can grow and do huge things, but it’s almost like where it takes you personally, where it forces you to grow — to do uncomfortable things. Interviewing people we’ve admired for a long time. Doing our first interviews. Doing our first monologues. All those things are really tough for a lot of us, but it forces us to grow and I don’t know if we can do that in many other ways. This pushes us to grow in those ways, which makes us better people. To me those are the reasons to podcast. Those are the reasons why I’m so thankful that Sadie got into it, because it’s really pushed her in a lot of those ways.

Jerod Morris: We also need to be careful because we may get demoted and they may turn the show over to her if we’re not careful.

Jon Nastor: Also true.

Jerod Morris: This is great. This episode is going in such a different direction than I thought it would, but I love it.

Jon Nastor: I can’t even remember what that first question you asked that I started to talk about.

How the Nastors Have Found a Work-life Balance That Works for Them

Jerod Morris: It doesn’t matter, your answers are great. Let me ask you this then — those stories are great. Again, you’re providing insight that I’d never even imagined. Let me ask you this, switching gears a little bit, because I think one of the big questions that parents have when it comes to podcasting is how do you balance it? How do you balance the time? How do you set up your work life and your home life, especially if you work from home?

You’ve talked about these awesome experiences you and Sadie have had together working on her podcast and doing all of this stuff and how much you love creating and showing her, leading by example. But you also need time just to yourself to work and to do this and just to have the doors closed, have the mic on and be recording. How do you make sure that you’re able to draw some of those lines and you’re able to get some separation between your family life and your work life and what you’re doing so that you can really buckle down and get your creative work done?

Jon Nastor: Good question. I don’t really believe in work-life balance. We’ve set our life up, and my businesses up, and my podcasts up to be — even Sadie’s education — everything kind of is. Throughout the day. Throughout the week. If it’s Sunday or if it’s Tuesday, evening or afternoon — it doesn’t really matter. The idea of when one of us needs to create something or do something, if there is time that and there is space that needs to be allotted to that, then it’s given.

Literally as you were saying this I could hear my family above me leaving quietly out the door because they know I’m recording. They’re doing it. They’re going to play mini-golf with their friends. It’s just such a part of our life that they are not separate in that way. When I just sit down on a Sunday afternoon and write a newsletter, Sadie might join me to the coffee shop and she might must read or she might be sitting down to do some school work because she just wants to because on Friday afternoon she didn’t want to do it because her friends were going to play at the park and she wanted to do that instead so she just deferred it to a different time.

We’re different than most families in that way. In a lot of ways, probably, but we’ve consciously set up our lives the way we want them to be. I guess there’s a lot of things we probably miss out on or don’t get to do through success or business or whatever you want to talk about — maybe education — that we miss out on maybe because we really want what we want and we’re willing to give up other things for that. It’s just something we do and we don’t … I used to try and worry about separation. It was really hard, especially because I was working from home. Making that clear distinction, to me, it was just a bunch of added stress and I never fully got to be in either one.

Now it’s just one and the same. I don’t even — I don’t work a ton. Things kind of flow, it’s weird. That’s what we do. When we’re in a different city and we are in a small condo and I need to record — my wife has had access to my calendar for the last two years so she can see, and if she is setting stuff up for her friends to come over or things to happen at the house then she just looks at my calendar. “Jon’s doing a webinar that day. Obviously I’m not going to bring five kids over at that same time.”

It’s just really easy. She doesn’t even have to ask me about it. If she needs me to do something or Sadie is doing something and I should be there for it, literally she puts it onto my calendar and it doesn’t get cross-scheduled. It’s weird. I just contradicted myself, because it doesn’t really flow in the sense that we just take it as it comes. It’s scheduled, lots of it. But it’s not, “Monday afternoon has to be work.” You know what I mean? It can be Sunday or it can be Saturday, and none of us really get rigid about it. None of us work under that sort of calendar. None of us do that sort of thing.

Jerod Morris: Which I suppose is simpler to do when neither you or your wife have a traditional job or a nine-to-five, Monday through Friday-type job. Sadie’s not going to school on a regular schedule. In those cases it might need to be a little bit more regimented would you think? Do you think you it might be not able to flow quite as well as it does right now? Do you think that would change anything?

Jon Nastor: I think it would be easier. If my wife went to work 40 hours a week … Monday morning I get up and I start work basically at 8:00 a.m. It’s just what I do. I basically work throughout that schedule. Most of my appointments are between eight and five, Monday to Friday. If I’m working on another project or things on Saturdays and Sundays, it doesn’t matter — the evenings is what I mean. If my wife went to work 40 hours and if my daughter went to school, it would be obviously a lot easier even. It would just be like, “Wow, I have eight hours a day to myself.” Obviously I can get in a lot of podcasting if I want to. I don’t think that I’ve set it up this way necessarily to make it easier. I’ve set it up because it’s better for us. It just fits us.

To me, I don’t like the separation of work and play, and life and education. To me it’s all one. It’s all just life to me. It’s just all something that we can all push ourselves to be a little better each day in whatever aspects of our life we want to work on right now. We’ve consciously set it up. Obviously we could make a lot more money if my wife still worked in banking and stuff like she did. If she did, then my daughter wouldn’t have decided to stay home from school because both me and my wife weren’t at home. There are concessions we’ve made, but it’s how we want it to be. I think it would be easier, man, if everybody just went to work and school and I was just here.

The Only One-size-fits-all Answer for Creating a Positive Balance in Every House

Jerod Morris: Maybe the real takeaway though, is there is not going to be a perfect answer. It’s not like you can just in this conversation tell me the three secrets to figuring out this perfect balance in all this stuff. We can’t offer those to the audience. I think in your answer –embedded in there is the only answer that really makes a difference, which is to be intentional about it and to choose what works best for you and your family. And that’s going to be totally different. My wife is going to be going back to work once we get done with the first few months with our daughter. Our daughter will eventually go to daycare. I probably will have that block of time during the day. That’s just what will end up working for us.

That’s really the most important thing, I think, is to really sit down and look at everybody’s schedules, everybody’s intentions, everything that’s going on, and be intentional about how you’re setting everything up. Otherwise you’ll just drift here and there and you may not be optimizing it for you and your family. But if you’re really intentional like it sounds like you guys have been, maybe it can’t be perfect next week, but over time — maybe over the course of a year or a couple of years — you can get it into this real sweet spot that allows everybody to be able to maximize what they are doing. I think that’s the most important thing.

Jon Nastor: Right, and the next thing is that it’s fluid. What is perfect for us this year will be different next year. Actually, I guess I haven’t even told you, but we’re moving in less than two months now. We’re moving to Toronto. It’s going to completely change. We’re going to be not living in a full house anymore. We’re going to be living in a condo. It’s going to change the way I work. I don’t even know how that’s going to be yet. I’m already looking at co-working spaces and renting a room permanently in a place that I can work at, which I think is going to be really cool and fun. But it’s going to be different, because if we’re in a small spot and I’m doing webinars and stuff I can’t be like, “Everybody’s got to leave.” They’re like “Well, it’s winter.” You know what I mean?

We could do that for short bursts when we’re in the city for a month or so. It’s kind of like, “Yeah, it’s no big deal,” because they want to check out stuff. But it’s like, “We’ve been here for two years, I don’t want to keep leaving all the time.” I have to make concessions and I don’t know where that’s going to end up. I don’t know how my work when I have to be in a quiet sort of spot is going to be at that time. Tuesdays is my big recording day. Tuesday’s, obviously, my family can leave and I can record at home. To be like webinars where you need a good background and stuff, then I’ll just have to go to a co-working space, which is going to be fun and cool. But it’s going to change the way we live.

I’m not going to try and kid myself to know how that’s going to look in October or November. I just don’t. I’m just going to flow with it. It’s like anything to me, I just have to go see how it is and try things and find out which one works best for us. When I was in your position and I was just getting ready for Sadie to be born, I didn’t have any of this set up. In five years I didn’t have any of that set up. Sadie went to daycare. We both worked. Things were different.

I’ve been really intentional after that to force things to be how I want them to be. I’m really stubborn in that way. I’m really intentional and I know what I want — at least now and with everything I have available to me. It’s like, “This is how I’m going to make my life” and my for my family. I really push a lot of things just to make it for the three of us as good as I can make it.

Jerod Morris: I like it. We have another bullet point on here. I’m thinking let’s save that for another episode. What do you think?

Jon Nastor: Yeah.

Jerod Morris: I think so. I think this has been — like I said, this episode went in some different directions, but I like it. I would like to invite all of our listeners — because I know a lot of our listeners have kids, have dealt with it, and probably found ways that worked for you. Whether it’s specific or whether it’s general, I’d love to know any advice that you have. Tweet me at @jerodmorris J-E-R-O-D-M-O-R-R-I-S and copy Jon on the tweet too, J-O-N-N-A-S-T-O-R, because he likes to see him. Or shoot me an email, jerod@copyblogger.com.

I would love to know whatever advice you all have, any pearls of wisdom — even if it’s not just about balancing work and podcasting with parenting or any of that stuff. If it’s just general advice, anything. I’m definitely knee-deep in just-in-time learning. I know there is only so much you can learn, but I figure it’s better to be as prepared as possible and to have done some mental reps on things so that as stuff happens — there may not be the perfect answers out there for certain situations, but I like to have at least thought some things through instead of something happening and it being totally foreign to me. Any stories, any words of wisdom, anything like that — I would appreciate them. That’d be great.

Jon Nastor: It’s cool. It’s going to be good. This could be your last episode for a while.

Jerod Morris: It’s possible, we don’t know.

Jon Nastor: It is, we don’t know anything.

Jerod Morris: This one comes out on July 13th. Again, the due date isn’t until the 29th. It could be a couple more episodes. Once she’s here then I’ll probably take a little time off. We’ll see. I guess when you don’t hear me you’ll know.

Jon Nastor: Sadie was born one day after her due date.

Jerod Morris: Was she?

Jon Nastor: Joanna went into labor one day before her due date. There is that part too. It was shocking to me how close and accurate they were from like a year in advance or like 11, 10 months, whatever it is. I was like, “Oh my goodness. How are you a day off?” Really, with the labor the way it was, it should have actually been bang on. I was like, “Wow, that’s impressive.”

Jerod Morris: It is pretty amazing.

Jon Nastor: Those doctors are smart.

Jerod Morris: They are smart. They sure are. You want to go with a podcast recommendation?

Jon Nastor: Yeah, let’s do it man.

Jerod Morris: I guess I should ask you first, do you have a podcast recommendation for this episode?

Jon Nastor: I do. I ended up listening to a podcast yesterday on a walk quickly because I had to interview who Tim Ferriss calls “the world’s most interesting man.” He’s been on Tim Ferriss’ show three times now. I was kind of stressed like, “Oh my God, now I have to interview this guy?”

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Jon Nastor: He’s really smart. I listened to one that came out just a couple of weeks ago with Tim Ferriss where they just down at Tim’s house as friends and just off-the-cuff chatted. It was cool. It was interesting. His name is Kevin Kelly. You know 1000 True Fans?

Jerod Morris: Yeah, getting his new book is on my list.

Jon Nastor: Mine too, now. I hadn’t read his book. He ended up on my show through some weird way.

Jerod Morris: That’s a big get for a interview.

Jon Nastor: It was cool man. It was a super. I was almost going to say it was a really good interview. But no, it was a really good conversation. I really enjoyed it and we went to some cool places. It was fun. Just as a side, I stuck to my first questions because I was like “I got to.” And then I stuck to my last question. Then throughout there we actually didn’t actually touch any of it because I was really focusing on that whole just taking the listener through this process with it, and it was cool. I think it worked really well.

I believe Kevin Kelly has been three times on Tim’s show now, but it was the most recent one. I’ll find that link. It’s called something about a conversation with friends or something. It was two really smart people, one a fair bit older — Kevin’s like 64 years old I believe now. He’s been literally writing on the internet since ’81 he told me. It was interesting to see him and Tim talking as friends. It scattered, like it went so many different places, but it was a cool conversation.

Jerod Morris: They talk about so much there. They talk about AI, different technologies. I’ve listened to that interview, it’s fantastic.

Jon Nastor: That’s very cool. That’s my recommendation.

Jerod Morris: In fact, I’ll make that my recommendation too. If you’re going to go there I’m going there. The other one I was going to recommend is a recent episode of Invisibilia — which is back now — called The Problem With the Solution. I found it really interesting. I actually listened to this episode twice. I didn’t think it was going to be that interesting. It’s one of those I got through the first 10-15 minutes and then found that it just kept getting more and more interesting. It starts out talking about how mental illness is dealt with in other countries and a city a in Belgium, actually, that has this really unique way of dealing with mental illness and whether or not this would ever work in The United States and some people that have actually tried this.

It’s really fascinating. I’ll leave it at that. But it’s the latest Invisibilia, The Problem With the Solution. Many of you probably listen to it already, but if you don’t that’s a great show in general. You should check out that episode.

Jon Nastor: I will. I’m going to check out that episode. I haven’t listened to Invisibilia in a long time so I need to get back.

Jerod Morris: It’s good. That concludes another episode of The Showrunner. Jonny, thank you for all of your advice and for being so open, sharing stories of you and your family. It’s always much appreciated.

Jon Nastor: It was fun.

Jerod Morris: It was fun.

Jon Nastor: I hope you are back here next week.

Jerod Morris: I hope I am too. I’m hoping I still have a couple of more episodes. I want her to stay in there as long as possible. I know my wife’s ready for her to be out, but stay in there as long as possible little one.

Anyway, go to Showrunner.FM as we told you about in the beginning, get our weekly newsletter, make sure that you’re notified when we are going to have our public Showrunner Huddles which are always fun, and Q&As because we love taking your questions and hearing what’s going on in your showrunning lives so that we can help out and add some insight if possible. You can go to Showrunner.FM, add your email address and that is the best way that you can declare yourself a showrunner. Go do that today and we will talk to you next week on another brand new episode of The Showrunner.

Jon Nastor: Take care.