Brett & Kate McKay 255 posts 0 comments

You’re on vacation and staying at a rental house with your future in-laws.They head out to do some shopping in town and you figure it’s a great time to take care of your daily constitutional.Once the deed is done, you flush the toilet.…
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 Of all the books in the Bible, Ecclesiastes is arguably the most philosophical. Dark, experiential, existential, and unsparingly honest about the human condition, it wrestles with work, money, ambition, pleasure, time, and death — and…
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Our recent article about backup power got me thinking about backup light sources. For most people, their backup light source when the power goes out is a flashlight.But flashlights come in handy even when the grid doesn’t go down. I…
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The Apartment. My most recent Zone 2 cardio movie was this 1960 Billy Wilder film. And man, it was sadder than I expected. Jack Lemmon plays C.C. Baxter, an ambitious insurance clerk who lends his apartment to his bosses so they can…
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 Not long ago, the primary concern people had about boys was that they were wild, impulsive, and out of control — getting into fights, pushing limits, and stirring up trouble. Today, the problem has flipped. The more common challenge…
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When I played football in high school, our head coach had one refrain that he’d hammer into us over and over again: act with class.It meant no trash talk. No showboating. Help the other guy up, even if he just tried to take your head…
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Whether you’re moving across town or across the country, there are a lot of factors to consider in deciding where to live. To figure out which factors to prioritize, it can be helpful to use what we call the “90/10 Rule.” Under the 90/10…
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The Hustler. The Hustler was my most recent Zone 2 cardio watch. Paul Newman plays “Fast Eddie” Felson, a pool shark gunning for the legendary Minnesota Fats (played by Jackie Gleason). The black-and-white cinematography is beautiful,…
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Polar exploration stories have a way of both terrifying and inspiring the soul. The combination of physical discomfort and psychological strain strips life, and leadership, down to its utter essentials: resilience, skill, competence, and…
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in: People, Podcast, Social Skills Brett & Kate McKay • January 27, 2026 We’ve all had that feeling — you meet someone new, and the conversation just flows. You’re in sync. You click. But what’s really happening when…
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Over the weekend, much of the United States was hit with a huge winter storm that affected over 200 million people. Some of those folks lost power on account of the ice and snow.A lot of people don’t think about their power until it goes…
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When the physician and psychiatrist Leonard Schwartz surveyed his life at middle-age, he was not particularly happy with the state of himself as a physical specimen. Decades of smoking, overwork, and living a sedentary lifestyle had left…
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 American football is so big — so braided into our weekends, our language, and our culture — that it can be hard to see it clearly as a whole.In his new book, Football, Chuck Klosterman helps us see the game from unexpected angles, and…
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Round House Duck Canvas Bib Overalls. For heavy chores around the house or helping my friend slaughter chickens at his farm, I put on my Round House overalls. This Oklahoma company has been making jeans and overalls right here in the…
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 We usually think of money as something very practical, concrete, and secular; we earn it, save it, spend it, and crunch the numbers behind it. But money is never just about money: it reflects our values, our priorities — and even our…
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Do you feel like your physical training has gotten stagnant and boring?Like you’ve woken up in a Planet Fitness Groundhog Day?Same gym. Same exercises. Same rep ranges. Year after year after year.I’m a big fan of consistency and…
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In the years after World War I, longtime Army colleagues and friends George S. Patton and Dwight D. Eisenhower contemplated what would happen if another global conflict broke out. As Patton envisioned it: “In the next war, I’ll be the…
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United 93. I don’t know how this one slipped past me when it came out in 2006, but we only just recently watched it. I initially wondered how you could make a whole movie out of what happened to United 93 — the only one of the four…
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There’s something about sunlight that really recharges you. If you don’t get enough of it, you feel very much like a potted plant that’s been kept too far from a window — you start to feel as though you’re physically and mentally…
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For decades, fitness culture has tended to break people into two categories: you’re either a strength guy or an endurance guy. You lift heavy or run far — but not both.But my guest today says you don’t have to choose; you can excel at…
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