The Loud Quiet - Empty Nest Living

Rick and Clancy are both mid-recovery and mid-appointment season, and this one gets into what that's actually like in our fifties. Between the two of them, this year alone brought a procedure Clancy had been putting off for years, a colonoscopy, and more skin checks than either of them expected to need yet. Some of it was elective. Some of it wasn't. Neither of them feels their age, but th...

Communication breaks down in the same few places for almost every couple. This episode is about finding those places before they turn into a fight. Rebecca Mullen joins Rick and Clancy to talk about the three roles inside a marriage, partner, lover, and friend, and how easily one of them gets neglected once kids leave the house. The conversation moves into why couples assume their partner can read...

The stadium they've seen a hundred times looks completely different through a stranger's eyes. Rick and Clancy talk World Cup fever in Dallas, from Rick's first match in 1994 to watching tourists fall for ranch dressing and a screen they stopped noticing years ago. The conversation moves through ticket prices, FIFA's reputation, and how different the sport felt before the US starte...

Three years into running a podcast together, Rick and Clancy are together constantly. That didn't stop them from arguing about cottage cheese, a dinner reservation in Spain, and a birthday gift for their son. None of those arguments were actually about the thing they were about. In this episode, Rick and Clancy walk through three real arguments unrehearsed, raw, on mic, in real time. What come...

Rick and Clancy just got back from ten days in Spain with both kids. This episode is about what family travel actually looks like when the kids are adults. The shared memories are still the point. They always have been. But the logistics are different now. The scheduling is a negotiation. The kids have opinions about destinations. And somewhere between the Sagrada Familia and the Picasso Museum, y...

Almost sixty percent of Michelle Puccinelli's virtual assistant students are empty nesters. She didn't design it that way. They just kept showing up. Michelle runs Virtual Work Studio, a marketing agency with a training program that prepares women to work as specialized virtual assistants. When she built the program, she was thinking career changers and moms returning to the workforce. Wha...

10 Travel Tips...This is a Greatest Hits episode. It originally aired as Episode 87 in May 2025 and we're bringing it back because the tips hold up. Ten travel tips from our trip to Germany. Not a general list. Specific things we did, tools we used, and habits that made the trip work. A lot of it applies well beyond Germany. The thread running through all of it is flexibility. The empty nest c...

Every summer, the kid who comes home is not the kid who left. And the house they're coming back to isn't the one they remember either. Rick and Clancy have navigated this seven times across two kids. This episode is what they've learned. They recorded this one mid-drive to Tucson, on their way to help Teagan move out of her apartment for the summer. Transition season in real time. The...

This episode is a flip. Rick and Clancy are in the guest seat, interviewed by Paul Basden, their pastor of nearly 20 years. He knows their kids. He knows their story. A question Clancy asked Rick in the car sits at the center of everything. So does the sadness both of them felt, the identity shift Clancy navigated, the dad connections Rick had to relearn from a distance, and how their faith guides...

Lisa Guzman didn't come to the empty nest the usual way. She came through foster care, homelessness at 17, building a life from scratch, 25 years as a wife and mother, and then losing her husband and her last kid leaving home within a year of each other. When the roles are gone, who are you? Lisa had to find out. This is that conversation. Rick and Clancy talk with Lisa about what it actually...

Graduation week has a way of swallowing you whole if you let it. Rick and Clancy have been through it and they're headed into it again. The logistics are real. Multiple ceremonies, ticket limits, restaurant reservations, parking, accessibility for grandparents. Get that handled early and you can actually be there when your kid walks across the stage. Because what can get lost in the chaos... y...

Rick and Clancy listen to a lot of podcasts. In this episode they run through their current favorites, from Bravo recaps to business professors to flight attendants spilling what they actually think about passengers. And they get into why people listen to podcasts in the first place. Convenience. Escapism. The strange intimacy of a voice in your ear for hundreds of hours. And maybe something speci...

Some Mondays just arrive with a layer of meh. No obvious reason. This is what Rick and Clancy did about it. They get into why stuck feels different in the empty nest, why wallowing feels strangely satisfying even when it doesn't feel good, and why the empty nest version of a low day can feel louder than it should. They also walk through what actually moved them out of it... recognizing self-im...

Teagan's 21st birthday trip to Tucson turned into something neither of us expected. A wheelchair basketball national championship. Online friends who flew in from California. A signed book. It was a weekend that kept handing us things we didn't know to look for. That's the thread running through this episode. Not just Teagan. Tanner too. The music he's pulled back into our orbit, t...

Not every empty nest looks the same. In this guest episode, Shara and Aaron Goswick share their story of building a marriage that began right after high school, raising their family young, and navigating a version of empty nest life that still includes supporting an adult son at home. They also share why weekly date night has remained a non-negotiable part of their marriage, how they approach fami...

A blown tire turns into a bigger question… what do you actually owe your kids once they’re out of the house but still in school? Rick and Clancy find themselves on opposite sides of the same situation. One sees it as part of growing up… “that’s what savings is for.” The other sees it as simple… he’s still a student… you help. What follows isn’t a debate about money. It’s a look at the assumptions...

March is full in a different way when you’re in the empty nest. Rick and Clancy talk about birthdays that don’t carry the same weight, even while they still show up for their kids in bigger ways. That shift leads into a wider conversation about how life looks now... less centered on events, more on everyday rhythms. They also revisit spring break and travel... what they did then versus what they’r...

Rick and Clancy talk about a different side of the sandwich generation. Not caregiving… life events. More funerals connected to parents and their friends. More celebrations connected to adult children. The conversation started after Clancy arrived at happy hour straight from a funeral for one of her mom’s close friends. It sparked a discussion about how empty nesters often find themselves moving b...

At 49, Tracy Smith booked a trip to Ireland with friends. Then she changed the flight. Then she changed it again. What began as a group vacation slowly turned into arriving in Iceland alone… with no clear plan home. In this episode, Tracy talks about how travel became the vehicle for reclaiming parts of herself she had set aside during years of parenting and managing daily life. The shifts were no...

The Olympics just wrapped… so Rick and Clancy stepped back into their own arena. Two years ago, they created the “Empty Nest Olympics” and ranked themselves in five events. This week, they revisit the same categories and ask: did we improve… or are we still stretching before the race? They talk through friendship momentum, hobbies that still haven’t happened, whether group dinners count as date ni...

When your kids leave home, the communication changes. Sometimes it slows gradually. Sometimes it feels abrupt. In this episode, Rick and Clancy talk about what staying connected really looks like once your kids are living in a different rhythm. They share their experience navigating daily calls during a tough freshman year, the shift that often happens by spring semester, different communication s...

Valentine’s Day shows up every year with expectations attached. Reservations. Prix fixe menus. Cards that say more about obligation than affection. In this Greatest Hits episode of The Loud Quiet, Rick and Clancy talk honestly about why they stopped treating Valentine’s Day like a scripted performance and how their relationship evolved once they did. From early dating years and shared “love songs”...

Intimacy changes over time… especially when the house gets quieter. What once felt automatic often needs more intention, more conversation, and sometimes a better framework. Just in time for Valentine's Day, in this guest episode, we sit down with couples counseling team Dr. Amy and Roy Clark to talk about The Four Intimacies and why strong relationships are built on more than just physical co...

We spent several days at home during an ice storm in North Texas. Sweats instead of real clothes. Garage workouts because the gym was out. Too much food because that’s what people do when they’re stuck. We talk through how our routines unraveled, what we did to fill the time, and how empty nest life changes the feel of being snowed in. We also get into the small stuff… playing games we haven’t tou...

Spring semester drop-offs don’t get the same attention as fall move-in… but for a lot of parents, they’re tougher than they expect. The house was full again. The routines came back. And then, just like that, they left. In this episode, we talk honestly about why the sadness shows up again when college kids head back after the holidays. Not for the first time… and not because anything is wrong. We...