My grandmother could take flour, water, and whatever else she had on hand and make something I have been trying to find again for 57 years. Biscuits and gravy. Fried green tomatoes. Bacon. The smell of it all mixing together in that kitchen while she told stories and I waited.

I've had some close. Never the same. Never will be.

But here's what I finally understood — I'm not actually chasing the biscuits. I'm chasing that feeling. The simplicity of it. The joy of waiting for something good while all the details of the moment are right there in front of you — the smell, the sound, the sight of her working the dough — and you're fully inside it because you're a kid and nobody has taught you yet to skip ahead to the goal.

We are so focused on end results that we miss everything happening on the way there. The journey isn't the consolation prize. It's the thing.

So what do you actually want right now? Not globally. Not eventually. Right now, in this moment — what is it?

If you have to pull over to answer that honestly, pull over.

I went back and listened to the very first episode I ever recorded.

It was terrible. Not terrible because the ideas were wrong. Terrible because it wasn't me. I was trying to be subtle. Measured. Some version of what I thought a podcast host was supposed to sound like. What the fuck was I doing?

This episode is about where I actually come from — the foundational texts, the real ones, the ones I use as philosophical tools rather than religious weapons. The Bible isn't a cudgel I'm swinging at you. It's a set of allegories I broke down until they meant something to me personally, stripped of every pastor and parent and institution that tried to use it as a control mechanism.

You don't have to share my foundation. You have your own. What I'm asking is that you look at it honestly and make sure it's actually yours — not something handed to you that you've been carrying ever since without examining it.

I'm not here to beat you down. I'm here because I know what it's like to be down and I know there's another way. That's it. That's all this has ever been.

Part 2 of 2.

Someone commented on a post I made about St. Louis — flowers still bloom, birds still sing, even in a city that wrestles with being the murder capital of the country — and asked: what's the point of this post? What's the objective?

And I realized I didn't owe them an answer. Not because I'm being difficult. Because the objective was mine. I took the photos. I wrote the words. I put them up. What you do with that is yours.

That moment sent me back behind this microphone to say something I should have said closer to the beginning of this podcast. I have been managing my impression. Stopping words. Softening mannerisms. Running a quiet calculation in the background about how I might be perceived. And doing that — even slightly — pulls me away from the thing this podcast is actually supposed to be.

So here's my commitment. I'm done tap dancing. What you're going to get is where I actually come from, why I actually do this, and what I actually believe about who you are underneath everything you've been told you are.

This is Part 1. Part 2 is where it goes deeper.