40 Is Coming

How much of our lives, from the smallest everyday choices to the biggest life decisions, are impacted by our sense of what  everybody is doing, or what  nobody   is doing? Many of us first encountered the everybody-to-nobody spectrum at school, especially during our pre-teen and teenage years, when knowing who was included in the word "everybody" , who was being referred to by the word "nobody ",...

How much of our lives are lived in the gray, somewhere between telling the full truth at all times, an "innocent" white lie when it's convenient, and outright deception to get what we want? Do you find that your relationship with speaking the truth, about a situation or about yourself, changes based on the power/status/authority of the coworker you're interacting with? Have you found that your wil...

Do you have enough space for your stuff? A recent look around my kitchen after watching the latest episode of my favorite home design YouTube channel got me thinking about how our relationship between our living spaces and our stuff is a helpful metaphor for thinking about the space we have, or lack, for all the stuff that comes with entering this stage of life. Is your life at 40 defined by the c...

Survival is an interesting word to associate with turning 40.  Some of us arrive at this season of life having suffered, endured, overcome, recovered, fallen, struggled, and battled to make it. Others of us have built, earned, discovered, acquired, protected, and preserved the pieces of lives that we are proud of, and pleased with. Inspired by a good book I remember reading when I turned 30, and a...

Recently, I've been thinking about the saying "we'll cross that bridge when we get to it". And if turning 40 is about anything, it is about getting to a lot of life's bridges. family bridges health bridges relationship bridges career bridges Are you arriving at 40 feeling hopeful and more free to build bridges, as many of the gates and gatekeepers that controlled access to bridges of opportunity a...

By 40, for every feel-good story of the sacrificially kind, altruistic, good samaritan, whose generosity helped someone else get back on their feet and rebuild their lives; we've heard a cautionary tale of a person who also tried to be kind, and tried to help someone in need. Often a friend, a family member, a neighbor, a romantic partner, or a co-worker. Only to have their entire life turned upsi...

Is anyone's face good enough? We have arrived at a moment in society where the range of people who feel compelled to undergo signficant shape-shifting procedures to alter their appearance has expanded well beyond those in entertainment, and now includes people from all walks of life. In some ways, the plastic surgery spectacle of many in ithe public eye is a funhouse mirror of the rest of us. Thei...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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. Curiosity about myself & others is one of the reasons this p...

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 interrupted the dream of young adulthood. For o...

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 abo...

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. Follow us on social media:  @40iscoming_ on IG and @40iscoming everywhere else. Intro Theme Music: Stressed by artbybigvee Beats Provi...

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...

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 ser...

 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 t...

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 dealin...

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 assessments to evaluate employees, to the experimentation with tests like the Enneagram within spiritual communities to help individuals i...

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...

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 y...

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 s...

In many ways, this podcast is about timing. Turning 40 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 pe...

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....