Whimsy World

Epizode

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  Why Success Triggers Envy (And How to Handle It) 08.06.2026 1min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thehoganshow.substack.comOur massage therapist focused heavily on Cam's head and face during the session. Afterward she told him one word had kept coming through the whole time, over and over. Envy. "I don't believe it's yours. It's someone towards you." Cam's answer was: story of my life.We recorded this the next day, on purpose, while it was still alive. Most people describe this period years later, once it's safely behind them. We're in it right now, in the gap between the plane building speed on the runway and the plane actually leaving the ground.That gap is what this episode is about. What happens to you when you become increasingly visible and increasingly less accessible at the same time, and the strange, sticky things that start happening around you because of it.Three of the things we get into:- The 1 a.m. text I got about a month after meeting Cam, from a man who had surveyed "seven out of seven people" on the walk- The one sentence men say to Cam's face more than any other, which I have watched happen in front of my own eyeballs more times than I can count- What happened this week when we found out someone in Austin started a walk identical to oursWe don't tie any of it up. This is the two of us in the middle of the thing, saying the parts most people wait until it's safe to say.For the ongoing version of these conversations, explore The Board: https://www.theboardwalks.com/the-board
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  Coming Out of the Spiritual Closet 18.05.2026 1min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thehoganshow.substack.comThere's a version of this episode where we say "okay, we're spiritual" and move on with the day. This is not that one.Cam almost didn't go to Phoenix. He didn't want to travel, we were in the busiest season of our lives, and the whole thing was a hard no, right up until it became a very clear yes. So he rented a Corvette (a dramatic departure from our decade-old dented Kia Soul, who has never once failed us) and flew out to a workshop with eleven strangers, most of them Phoenix real estate people twenty years older than him.What happened in that room is the story he tells here. He cries telling it. He almost never does that.We get into:- Muscle testing: what it is, how his chiropractor father used it on him as a kid with a bag of cheese, and how a room of high performers used it to locate the exact event underneath a lifelong block- Why a release can take two minutes instead of two years, and what has to be true for that to actually work- Why we have never said the words out loud, even though our entire life is the practiceAnd then the part I've been chewing on for months: what it costs you to keep the most alive part of yourself in the shadows, and who never finds you while you're busy doing it.Consider this our lovingly passed-along call-out.For the ongoing version of these conversations, explore The Board: https://www.theboardwalks.com/the-board
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  What Is Self-Love? (Hint: Boundaries) 30.03.2026 1min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thehoganshow.substack.comSomeone on the walk was asked what self-love means to him. His answer: volunteering. Helping the church, helping the homeless, getting out of his own head. Beautiful things, all of them. But is that self-love, or is it the most socially acceptable way to never sit with yourself?That question opens the whole episode.We came back from a two-week hiatus mid-upgrade, shedding skins, and this is the conversation that wanted to happen. Not the bubble-bath version of self-love. The version where you notice you cannot pour from a cup that's empty, and that what festers in the depletion isn't generosity. It's resentment, martyrdom, and a very tired face you can spot in a Best Buy.Some of what we get into:- The two kinds of selfishness, and why the light one buys back your entire calendar- Why we've attended roughly ten events in four years, and why no one who walks with us owes us anything- The relaxation crisis: how doing nothing became a skill you have to build tolerance forWe talk about the obligations so quiet you'd never flag them, the ones decided in microseconds. We talk about your head as an old MacBook with the fan going like a lawnmower, and what we'd do for the laptop that we won't do for ourselves. Elle shares a practice she learned in Sedona in 2021 involving tapping, gratitude, and moving energy out of the head and back into the belly.We end in one minute of silence. Actual silence. Bring your shoulders down for it.For the ongoing version of these conversations, explore The Board: https://www.theboardwalks.com/the-board
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  Ready For My Wife: The Miracle Story of How We Met 09.03.2026 51min

  Two years ago to the hour, Cam was mile eight into a half marathon he had not trained a single day for, standing at a literal fork in the road where he could have quietly stepped off the course and gone home. He had moved to Austin from Bali six weeks earlier knowing nothing about the city except barbecue, football, and Joe Rogan. He was sleeping on a mattress on the floor. He had eaten two Domino's pizzas on Super Bowl Sunday and taken a photo of himself doing it, which he still has.What happened between mile eight and the finish line is the part he had never told publicly. What happened later that night, in a bathtub too small for him, is the part he almost left out of this recording entirely (I had to remind him).Then, less than twenty four hours later, a voice told him to close his laptop and walk ten minutes down the street. Right now. He listened.We recorded this on our two year anniversary, on the exact date and at nearly the exact time.In this one:- The twenty seconds at the fork in the road, and what he said to himself to keep going- The four words he repeated for five straight miles, and the pace they bought him- Why walking slowly may get you to the same place as running 13.1 miles untrained, and how I found that out this weekIt's a love story, but the love story is almost the smaller half of it.For the ongoing version of these conversations, explore The Board: https://www.theboardwalks.com/the-board This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thehoganshow.substack.com/subscribe
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  Going “No Contact” with People You Love (Here's Why) 02.03.2026 1min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thehoganshow.substack.comCam went on YouTube one afternoon and every thumbnail he saw was a version of the same video: why I went no contact with my family. That observation sat between us for two weeks before we sat back down on the couches to actually pull it apart.What we found underneath it was not drama. It was obligation. The Sunday Zoom call somebody set up out of love that quietly curdled into dread. The parent who cries "why are you trying to leave me" and means it. The crab pulled back down into the bucket by people who genuinely think they are helping.We also went somewhere I did not expect: that this whole wave is only possible because a generation finally got what their parents said they wanted for them. You raise a child to stand on their own two feet, and then they may use those feet to walk away. Nobody planned for that part.In this one:- Why cutting someone off is almost always easier than telling them the truth, and what the one honest sentence actually sounds like- The flashlight analogy, and why consequences are a form of teaching rather than punishment- The friend I finally told the truth to four years ago, what I said, and the response I never gotWe land somewhere neither of us expected, on whose job it actually is to ask the question when someone starts drifting. My answer changed while I was saying it out loud.For the ongoing version of these conversations, explore The Board: https://www.theboardwalks.com/the-board
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  You Are Enough: A Reminder For High Achievers 23.02.2026 1min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thehoganshow.substack.comCam finished a genuinely huge day and told me he hadn't done enough. Not as a joke. He meant it, the way he has meant it since he was a kid.So we sat down and pulled the thread while it was still raw, because he is right in the middle of the shift and I wanted to capture it before it smoothed over into a lesson.He narrates the voice as it sounded when he was a teenager, and you can hear his breath change while he does it. He talks about living in Bali with some of the best sunsets in the world and never letting himself fully see one, because sunsets did not count as productive. He talks about what changed when he started lying down in the middle of the afternoon and building no story around it.Then the conversation turned toward me, and toward a version of myself I do not usually bring up.In this one:- The difference between his wound (impatience: let's not waste time) and mine (urgency: one typo and the world is ending)- Why the "let me try a new morning routine" hamster wheel is a symptom, not a fix, and what he replaced it with- A friend in college who slow faded from me, what she said before she went, and the four years it took me to understand itThe last twenty minutes got emotional in a way neither of us planned. I said things about who I used to be that I have not said out loud before.For the ongoing version of these conversations, explore The Board: https://www.theboardwalks.com/the-board
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  What Living in Your Purpose Actually Looks Like 16.02.2026 1h 16min

  A month into dating, Cam gave me an envelope of twenty dollar bills with instructions to give them away. I had a great salary at Meta and money invested every month, and the idea of handing one to a stranger physically tightened my chest. That gap between what my bank account said and what my body believed is where this whole conversation starts.We recorded this in big shirts with no plan. We meditated for a few minutes first, and Cam came out of it saying he wanted to talk about purpose. What came out was less philosophy than receipts: the specific decisions that put us on these couches instead of somewhere else.He tells the dinner in Las Vegas where a room of very wealthy men promised him he could be them in twenty years, and what he saw on their faces that made him quit the next morning. I tell the seven years at Meta, the coup I quietly staged to change roles, and the fifty percent of my energy that came back overnight.In this one:- The moment his heart physically sank in a financial aid office, and the two week notice he refused to give- Why the word "should" is the tell, and the call I almost took out of politeness- Eight people at the first walk, and the four weeks where quitting would have made complete senseWe also make the case that purpose is a verb, not a sentence, and that you cannot think your way to it. You can only give something a season.For the ongoing version of these conversations, explore The Board: https://www.theboardwalks.com/the-board This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thehoganshow.substack.com/subscribe
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  We Cranked for 30 Days Straight (Most Productive Month Ever) 09.02.2026 1h 12min

  My mom texted me after the last batch of episodes asking if I was okay. I had cried on camera, mid sentence, more than once, including one recording where the audio was rough and I insisted we publish it anyway.Then I went quiet for a month and had the most productive stretch of my life. This one is the report back.Cam has a theory that I emote more in front of the microphone than I do the other ninety seven percent of our week, which neither of us has fully cracked. He also names the trap he keeps catching himself in: get one plate spinning, and the mind immediately says do ten, which is how you end up dropping the one. He did it with a weekly newsletter. He did it again with a workout plan that went from zero to five days a week overnight.I talk about the four days I put my phone down, and what I saw on the other side of that.In this one:- The word "cranking," what it means in this house, and why the whole month ran on it- His half-ass insurance policy, and the reason he says presence is the only metric he keeps now- What a text from my own mother made me want to say out loud about crying in publicSomewhere in here is a newsletter thousands of people subscribed to for two and a half years that did not exist. I finally made it. That story is small and it is also the whole thing.For the ongoing version of these conversations, explore The Board: https://www.theboardwalks.com/the-board This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thehoganshow.substack.com/subscribe
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  My Core Wound: I Can't Stop Doing 12.01.2026 1min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thehoganshow.substack.comThe microphones were already running. Cam looked at me and instead of opening the episode, he asked what was wrong. I had gotten dressed, gotten ready, and did not want to record, and I couldn't tell him why.We published that conversation instead of the one we planned.What we found: I wanted to record to keep a streak that did not exist. I invented it. And underneath that was something much older, a compulsion I've had since childhood to get up and help the second I see someone I love working. I could not sit still in a house where Cam was in his office being productive. So I would go into mine and invent tasks. Small ones. Ones that anybody could have done.Cam's response is the part I keep replaying. He tells me my actual job right now is to be, not to do, and I spend most of the hour quietly arguing with him about it.In this one:- The Japanese office rule I was unconsciously following in my own house- Why he says the days I lie down are the days he gets the most done, and the pattern that made him believe it- Something about cherry blossoms, and how long they actually bloomIt is not a polished episode. It is a real one, and I cried in it, and we ended it by watching Avatar with popcorn.For the ongoing version of these conversations, explore The Board: https://www.theboardwalks.com/the-board
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  What We Let Go in 2025 (And A Surprise Coaching Session) 05.01.2026 1min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thehoganshow.substack.comThere's a moment about halfway through where I start crying about the X composer, that small text box you type a tweet into. I built my whole way of writing inside it. Brain to post button, no editing, nothing in between. Since we came off the platforms, everything I write goes into a Google Doc instead, and it has felt like a small death I did not expect to grieve.Before that we lay out what 2025 actually cost us. We ended three communities in one email. I stepped down from hosting the walks on their third birthday, right when I loved them most, and handed them to Julia, who was quietly dropping hints that she was pregnant. We locked the laptops in a closet for two weeks and came out knowing exactly what had to go.Then the episode turns into something we did not plan, which is the two of us coaching each other in real time.In this one:- The two week screen detox, and how to approximate it if you have a job and cannot go dark- Cam names his real block, and it isn't fear of being seen- The image of a wave pouring into a red solo cup, and why that is the actual painWe start in a pumpkin dress joking about a benefit concert and end somewhere neither of us expected, with a solution that took ninety minutes and one cry to find.For the ongoing version of these conversations, explore The Board: https://www.theboardwalks.com/the-board
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  We Gained 30 Pounds on Purpose 29.12.2025 47min

  It took me a full hour to say a number out loud to the man I live with. Not an hour of hesitating. An hour of me starting the sentence "okay, I'm going to tell you how much I weigh" and then not finishing it, on a loop, while Cam sat there being infinitely patient about it.That's near the end. Before that we walk you through the year we gained the weight on purpose: the pizza, the ice cream nearly every day, the bowl of ground beef with barbecue sauce that Cam made me in the early days that I still call one of the reasons I fell in love with him.Cam gained thirty pounds. I crossed a number I had spent my adult life certain would end me, and nothing ended. We were happier than we'd ever been.In this one:- Why the phrase "she let herself go" is backwards, and what we were actually doing- The one thing I ate every single day for years, and the math I used to keep myself in line- A scan that told me a number I had spent a decade demonizing is the number my body is happiest atWe're heading in the other direction now, on purpose, and running a six month experiment built entirely around the question: what if it could be easy? No classes. No rushing. Nothing that spikes my cortisol on the drive over.We have no idea if we're right.For the ongoing version of these conversations, explore The Board: https://www.theboardwalks.com/the-board This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thehoganshow.substack.com/subscribe
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  Why Men Miss Problems: Understanding the Space Gap in Relationships 22.12.2025 1min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thehoganshow.substack.comA woman wrote about her marriage ending like a house fire. She told her husband there was smoke. Nothing. A room is burning. Nothing. Half the house. Nothing. Only when she said this is the last room left did he finally move, and by then there was no house.That story sits at the center of this one, and it explains something Cam said that I could not stop turning over: men process their whole lives on light switches. On or off. Fit or fat. Rich or broke. Fine, fine, fine, she wants a divorce. The check engine light being yellow does not count. It has to go red.We came in planning to talk about weight and this took over instead.In this one:- Why "I asked you to take the trash out" is almost never actually about the trash, and what the real sentence underneath it sounds like- The idea of space: who has it in a relationship, why it is rarely equal, and why "he should just know" is only obvious to the person who has it- A couple from this season of Love is Blind who acted this out on camera, and what almost nobody watching correctly namedThere's also a moment where I tell Cam about a man who spent ninety minutes listing what was wrong with me, and what he was actually trying to say underneath it.For the ongoing version of these conversations, explore The Board: https://www.theboardwalks.com/the-board
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  Taking Our Power Back from Toxic Beauty Standards 15.12.2025 1min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thehoganshow.substack.comI have hundreds of videos of myself walking around my bedroom. Not for fun. I filmed them on an iPad in high school to check how my back looked in my uniform, door locked. I also practiced sitting in backless chairs so nothing would press when I sat down at school. I was still running versions of that ritual three years ago.The story I'm most embarrassed by: I overslept on a walk morning, people were already gathered and texting me, and I stopped to put on a full face of makeup before I left. Thirty minutes late to my own event, because being seen without it was not an option my body would allow.Cam has a phrase for what happens in front of the mirror every morning: a 128 point inspection. Men, he says, get one question. Women get a hundred, and failing any one of them can take the whole day.In this one:- The moment in high school where the whole thing started, and what I gave the credit to- What I could feel in a woman's face on a Zoom call, and why it made me feel close to her instead of judgmental- A man at the McDonald's drive thru named Matthew who kept saying something I could not computeI'm recording this with almost nothing on my face, which was months of very small, very uncomfortable steps. Cam is not making me do any of it, though I make it sound that way roughly every episode.For the ongoing version of these conversations, explore The Board: https://www.theboardwalks.com/the-board
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  You're Allowed To Disappear (The New Rules Of Friendship) 31.10.2025 1min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thehoganshow.substack.comA woman who has not posted anything online since 2011 messaged me wanting to hang out. My whole body went tight, and it took me the length of this conversation to understand why.It isn't her. It's that she has no way to know what the other side of that message looks like, and I have no way to explain it without sounding awful.Which sent us into the thing we actually needed to talk about: what the word friend is supposed to mean now. Cam thinks the definition we inherited is dead. The one where friendship is proved by frequency, by showing up on Thursdays, by attending the birthday, by texting back within a reasonable window or else it means something.In this one:- Our friend Danny, who texts every single time he's in town and gets ignored sometimes, and why Cam says that is the definition of safety- Walking through Times Square and being able to read almost everyone's emotional state from their shoulders and their feet- The exact test we use for who gets in a room with us, which has nothing to do with credentialsThere's also a hard turn near the end about the difference between wanting people to rise with you and needing them to, and why the second one is not love, however it dresses itself up.I get emotional about the word friend in here. I did not expect that.For the ongoing version of these conversations, explore The Board: https://www.theboardwalks.com/the-board
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  Why Conversations Drain You (And How To Find Your People) 29.10.2025 1min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thehoganshow.substack.comI have never in my life agreed to go out on a boat. Not once. It reads as a great day to most people and to me it is a specific nightmare: hours with no exit, where I am quietly expected to be the fun one the entire time.This one started as excitement about something we're building and turned into me getting emotional about something much older, which is what happens when you're the spark in a room. People love the fire, then they want the fire to stay lit, and they want it in a particular mood. Nobody signed up for the whole wave.Then Cam laid out a mechanic I had never heard put into words, and it reorganized how I understand almost every draining conversation I've ever had.In this one:- Why you feel gutted after a "great" conversation, and the direction energy actually moves between two people- A man at an event who talked with Cam for thirty minutes, walked away thrilled, and never learned his name- What actually makes a room feel safe, and why a monastery and a prison can look identical from the outsideI also tell the truth about being a kid who felt held hostage in other people's living rooms, and what I now understand I was doing to myself in those rooms.I cry partway through, and then I skyrocket, and then I notice I don't feel ashamed about it. That noticing is its own kind of progress.For the ongoing version of these conversations, explore The Board: https://www.theboardwalks.com/the-board
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  The Final 5%: When Your Higher Self Becomes the Authority Figure 24.10.2025 1min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thehoganshow.substack.comAkaash has started noticing his own hands. Fingers crossed, toes crossed, shoulders climbing toward his ears, in normal conversations with people who have done nothing threatening. It happens around anyone he reads as an authority figure, which for most of his life has been almost everyone.He traces it back honestly: a mother who picked his classes, a father whose career came first, and a childhood where nobody came to his basketball games. He says he did not realize he was allowed to make his own decisions until he was in his late twenties. He also says he loved who he became after a drink, for about ten years, because it let him stop shrinking.That is the first half. The second half is where Cam does something I did not see coming.In this one:- Why he tried to fix the tension by unclenching, and what he noticed was wrong with that- The specific correlation between how much you resent receiving direction and how much you resist giving it- The reframe at the end, which he responds to with two words: mic dropThe turn is this: the authority figures are gone now. So who's giving the orders? And what if the resistance he still feels is aimed at the last voice on earth he should be fighting?He says he used to beat himself up for twenty four hours after ignoring that voice. He's down to about four.For the ongoing version of these conversations, explore The Board: https://www.theboardwalks.com/the-board
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  The Creative Block: When Your Nervous System Won't Let You Level Up 22.10.2025 1min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thehoganshow.substack.comI asked Cam to cook me on this one. I woke up from a nap, sat down across from him, and told him to explain to the audience what has actually been going on with me lately. He took the assignment seriously.Here's the setup: there's one piece of work left before we launch the thing we have talked about for months, some days for nine hours straight. It's maybe six hours of work. He has taken every other responsibility off my plate, down to the emails and the car insurance. And I have missed two launch dates and cannot make myself sit down and do it.His diagnosis is not about discipline. It's that some part of my body still believes that building the next thing means signing up to be available to everyone forever, and no amount of logic touches that.In this one:- The reframe he received while napping (it's all downhill from here) and why that's the good news, not the bad- What happens to a product when you force it out before you're ready, and the 9pm bloodshot-eyes launch we both remember- What he actually said after three weeks of me announcing "today's the day"There's a Rudolph metaphor in here that is genuinely embarrassing for me and also completely accurate.Somewhere in the middle we land on a question I hadn't thought to ask: what would this look like if we treated the waiting like the week before a baby is due?For the ongoing version of these conversations, explore The Board: https://www.theboardwalks.com/the-board
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  What’s Really Behind My Fear of Approaching Women 17.10.2025 1min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thehoganshow.substack.comAkaash has walked up to a woman he was interested in twice in his life. Once at prom, where his friends had to physically point him in the right direction, and where he asked and then immediately ran away. Once not sober.Cam's read on the prom story: you were betting on a game rigged in your favor and you still couldn't put the money down.The part that stuck with me is the meditation group. He saw the same woman there weekly for a month, felt clearly that she had been placed in his path for a reason, and said almost nothing to her. Three weeks later she appeared on his Hinge. He calls that a wink from the universe. I'd call it something less polite.In this one:- What happened on his couch one afternoon after he threw out every rule about how to meditate properly- How he tells the difference between intuition and fear (his word for fear is "dirty")- The reframe Cam offers near the end, after which Akash says "bruh, I feel very seen right now"We also get into why "just go get the reps in" is bad advice for someone in his particular position, and where the fine line sits between honoring your intuition and using it as a hiding place.He says he can already feel the energy of the person he hasn't met yet. That is either the most beautiful or the most inconvenient thing about where he is standing.For the ongoing version of these conversations, explore The Board: https://www.theboardwalks.com/the-board
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  The Evolution of Our Show: Welcome to Whimsy World 15.10.2025 1min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thehoganshow.substack.comBefore we were together, Cam sent me a podcast episode he had just recorded, one where he laid out every problem he had ever had, current and past, without softening any of it. I read the text in the bath and thought, who does that?That instinct is the through line of this whole episode, and the reason the show has a new name.Listen Before Love was forty episodes I am genuinely proud of. But love is maybe ten percent of who we are, and the rest kept spilling out sideways or not getting recorded at all because it didn't fit the box we'd built. Meanwhile we were running a gratitude community with a call every single day for 230 days, plus a men's circle, plus a dating group, plus a walk in seven cities. All of it worked. All of it got half of us.In this one:- The twelve houses we were each half decorating, and the moment we understood the problem- What a year of trying to be coaches actually taught us, and why we stopped- The reason the deepest episodes were always the ones where we talked about what was happening that week, not what happened three years agoThere's also a thing we both blurted at the same time in the same silly voice, which is now, apparently, the show's opening.For the ongoing version of these conversations, explore The Board: https://www.theboardwalks.com/the-board
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  Getting Triggered on Social Media, High-Achiever Stress, And The “Should” Trap 06.10.2025 1min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thehoganshow.substack.comAkaash finally wrote and posted a long piece he had been circling for months. Within five minutes a stranger replied with six tweets systematically taking it apart, and then unfollowed him. He spent two hours spiraling and got close to deleting his account.That's the setup. The episode is what happens when Cam slows the whole thing down and walks him back through it beat by beat.Because the interesting part isn't the reply. It's the ladder Akaash went down after reading it: disappointment, then anger, then a flash of pride, and then shame at himself for feeling any of it. He knows precisely how a free person would have handled that comment. Living in the distance between that and his actual reaction is the real thing he's dealing with.In this one:- The question that finds where his "supposed to" was installed, and what his childhood city talked about at every dinner table- Why he calls the people whose approval he's chasing a blob he invented in his own head- The irony that lands about halfway through, when we realize what his original post was actually aboutThere's a moment near the end where Cam suggests Akaash set the whole thing up for himself on purpose. You can hear it land.His last line: I feel like I'm going to float away.For the ongoing version of these conversations, explore The Board: https://www.theboardwalks.com/the-board