All The Feelings • Still Adulting

Pete was a true believer. ICQ. AIM. Friendster. MySpace. A Twitter ID below four thousand. He didn't just use the early social web — he helped build it, one weird forum and one enthusiastic post at a time. And then, somewhere between the algorithmic timeline and the fourteenth terms-of-service update, something got taken. Cory Doctorow has a word for what happened. Pete has feelings about it. This is that conversation.The thing about pet influencers is that they shouldn't work. The $24 billion pet influencer industry — a phrase that should not exist — is built entirely on content created by creatures who cannot consent, cannot read the comments, and are legally classified as property in most jurisdictions. And yet. Science has thoughts on why this is, and Pete has thoughts on what it says about everything we built on the internet and watched get taken apart. The dog, it turns out, never updated the terms of service.Tommy is here to make the affirmative case: pets are genuinely, measurably, peer-reviewedly good for you. He also has an origin story for his dog Foster that involves July 4th, a rescue organization, three rules he broke immediately, and what the scientific community refers to as a "foster failure." Pete's dog Gambit has a headcanon that is both extremely funny and, per Pete, incredibly derogatory. Both dogs are excellent. ---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. Visit allthefeelings.fum/join to learn more!

Here is something that should make you briefly furious: the reason so many adults stop trying new things — stop picking up instruments and languages and crafts, stop putting themselves in positions of gorgeous, humbling incompetence — is not laziness, and it is not age. It is a scientific consensus that was overturned decades ago and somehow never sent you notice.Pete brings some brain stuff. Tommy brings some hobbies. And together they make a case that two of the most underrated things an adult can do are: willingly be terrible at something new, and stop apologizing for what you do in your free time.Pete's side will change the way you talk to yourself about your own brain. Tommy's side will make you want to immediately go do something completely unnecessary and slightly obsessive. The Feeling Friends segment involves lemon juice, a Polaroid camera, and the birth of an entire field of psychology.Press play. You've got time. ---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. Visit allthefeelings.fum/join to learn more!

At some point in your adult life — somewhere between your first real prescription and the moment you quietly acquired a weekly pill organizer — you became a person with opinions about pharmacies. Strong ones. Opinions forged in the specific purgatory of an insurance pre-authorization, a fax machine that exists for reasons no one can explain, and a pharmacist who is simultaneously the most important person in your life and the person you are least willing to actually speak to. Pete is currently living inside this system, and he has questions.This week, Pete digs into why so many people with chronic conditions don't take the medications they've been prescribed — and the answer involves your body actively deceiving you, the emotional weight of swallowing a pill that means admitting something is wrong, and a healthcare system that was never actually designed with you in mind. Tommy, meanwhile, takes the other side of the problem: what happens when medicine overcorrects, when the pills start piling up, and when someone finally asks whether you actually need all of them. He arrives at this topic via some formative pharmaceutical history that spans elementary school, a diagnosis at thirty that his dermatologist called "the nuclear option," and a period of his life during which he was, technically, an international drug smuggler.Two segments. One topic. A combined lifetime of pharmaceutical anxiety that might, finally, make you feel a little less alone about yours. ---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. Visit allthefeelings.fum/join to learn more!

Nobody told you that your job title was quietly becoming your personality. Or that the moment you started thinking about leaving, you weren't just weighing pros and cons — you were grieving.This week, Pete and Tommy tackle the twin anxieties of work-life balance and quitting your job: two topics that sound like HR seminar titles but turn out to be about identity, mortality, and the specific pain of realizing you've been earning SMILES program letters instead of a raise.Tommy revisits his brief, glorious, and deeply instructive tenure at MOOVies — a cow-themed children's video store that pivoted to softcore pornography and never updated the signage — as a case study in what happens when you try to reclaim your life by taking a step sideways into something worse. Pete unpacks what psychologists James Marcia and Erik Erikson called "identity foreclosure": the unsettling discovery that leaving a job means evicting a self you didn't realize you'd moved in. And yes, there are five types of quitting. You already know which one you are.Plus: the Great Resignation by the numbers, a taxonomy of modern exits from the quiet fade to the loyalty trap, and the story of JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater — a man who grabbed two beers and became, briefly, America's most relatable employee. ---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. Visit allthefeelings.fum/join to learn more!

Here's something nobody puts in the adulting manual: lending money to a friend and writing them a thank you note are the same problem wearing different pants. Both require something real from you. Both get catastrophically weird the longer you wait. And both have been quietly torching relationships since before your grandparents were born. Tommy has a story about a cousin, a con as old as the 19th century, and the one rule that makes all of this survivable. It's simpler than you'd think, and more expensive.Pete, meanwhile, owns a box of thank you note cards that have never been opened. This is not a character flaw. It is, it turns out, a documented psychological phenomenon — which means enough people do this that researchers felt compelled to study it. The Victorians, bless them, made everything worse. They always do.The good news: the rules have genuinely evolved, and there is a rubric. The bad news: you've probably been getting at least one of these wrong for decades, and a myth you've been confidently repeating has almost certainly damaged a relationship you care about. Pete and Tommy work through all of it — including a vibe-coded quiz, the etymology of the word "thank," and a kitchen renovation that ends somewhere neither of them expected. ---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. Visit allthefeelings.fum/join to learn more!

Here's something nobody tells you about adulthood: at some point, you will be expected to both host people in your home and maintain meaningful friendships with those people over decades, with no training, no manual, and no one checking in to see how it's going. This is, it turns out, a lot to ask. Pete and Tommy are asking it anyway.This week the guys dig into the deeply relatable anxiety of being a good house guest and a good host — the unwritten rules, the creature comfort confessions, and the one historical cautionary tale about a famous author whose name you absolutely know that will make you feel significantly better about your own guest behavior. You're welcome.From there, the conversation turns to friendship itself — specifically, why maintaining it feels so much harder than it used to, what the research actually says about why that is, and what embarrassingly simple things turn out to make the biggest difference. Spoiler: it's not a grand gesture. It never is.Want more? Check out The Friendship Issue: We Just Met. I Miss You Already. from Season 10, and The Regrets Issue: Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Pizza for when the guilt spiral hits. ---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. Visit allthefeelings.fum/join to learn more!

Pete has replaced three toilets, ripped out three sinks, and installed a deadbolt — and he still approaches every new project like a man who has never held a wrench. This is the competence paradox at its most domestic, and it lives underneath your bathroom floor in something called a wax ring that you absolutely did not know existed until right now.Then Tommy takes Pete on a world tour of tipping culture — from Japan (embarrassing) to Egypt (hold out your hand) to Iran (bring jeans) — before landing on the one that hits closest to home: why is the airport kiosk asking how much you appreciate it? The history is darker than you'd expect. The math hack Tommy's dad taught him is genuinely useful.Nobody walks away with answers. Somebody walks away with five podcast dollars. It's a good episode.Next week: maintaining friendships in middle age, and the surprisingly fraught question of how to be a good guest — or a good host.Here are a few related episodes!The Money Issue: Magically Adjusted Gross Incompetence The Season 10 deep dive into homeownership, financial dread, and the myth that being an adult means knowing what you're doing. Spoiler: it does not.Guilty Giving: A Tale of Charity Pete and Tommy on the anxiety of giving — when to do it, how much, and why the whole thing somehow ends up feeling like your fault. Sound familiar?---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. Visit allthefeelings.fum/join to learn more!

There is a particular kind of confidence that comes from having never, not once, understood how a car works. Tommy Metz III has that confidence in spades. In this episode, he reveals that his first car — a used Jeep Cherokee he lovingly named "Peace" (short for "piece of," well, you can fill in the rest) — featured a steering wheel so structurally compromised that he'd been casually jamming it back into the dashboard for months, under the assumption that this was simply how cars sometimes worked.It was not.The steering wheel eventually came off entirely at a stoplight. Which truly sets the tone for this week’s episode about two adults who have been winging the maintenance of their lives with varying degrees of success.From there, the episode splits into dual adulting topics: car maintenance and laundry — two pillars of what Pete calls "maintenance rituals," the invisible, unglamorous labor of keeping your life from quietly falling apart. Tommy confesses to a lifetime of automotive ignorance and makes a surprisingly persuasive case for dealership loyalty. Pete delivers a laundry crash course, dismantling myths about fabric softener (it's coating your clothes in wax), detergent dosing (the cap is lying to you), and dry cleaning (it's not dry, and please stop smelling it).Competence in adulthood isn't about mastering everything, it's about finding the one or two maintenance rituals you're willing to own and doing them with quiet, slightly irrational pride. For Pete, that's a drawer full of Marie Kondo-folded t-shirts. For Tommy, it's the peace of mind that comes from letting a dealership send him a video before they touch anything. Neither of them knows what a fan belt is. ---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. Visit allthefeelings.fum/join to learn more!

Welcome to Season 11 of All The Feelings: Still Adulting, where Pete and Tommy prove that being a grown-up is just an elaborate prank we're all somehow still falling for.This week: The culinary industrial complex.Pete wages a one-man war against grocery store architecture while searching for a discontinued cookie with the fervor of someone who's lost far more than a snack. Tommy confronts his mageirocophobia (the fear of cooking—yes, it's real), learns he's been a Meat Man, discovers he's aging into his Fish Era, and finally—finally—figures out how to freeze leftovers without creating a Jenga tower of regret in his freezer.Also: the theological implications of coriander, and why the death of the Choco Taco is actually about mortality.It's 45 minutes of two adults realizing that "What's for dinner?" is the most existentially terrifying question in the English language.Merch Drop: We’re Aging Into Our Fish Era • The Omega-3 Wars are Coming for US ALL. ---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. Visit allthefeelings.fum/join to learn more!

Remember when you thought being an adult meant you'd finally have your act together? That one day you'd wake up and just... know how to do taxes, maintain friendships, and keep a plant alive for more than three weeks?Yeah. Us too.Welcome back to All the Feelings: Still Adulting—proof that getting older doesn't mean getting better at any of this.

In the final members-only break, Pete and Tommy cover the big stuff: birthday cards that forget the birthday, handwritten letters that hit harder than expected, and two baby goats who briefly solve the problem of human interaction. Along the way, they take Thanksgiving from Oregon to East Texas, tour a town shaped by oil booms and beauty salons, and debate the hygiene implications of goat yoga.There’s also immersive horror theater that actively breaks reality, a reckoning with which kinds of fear are fun versus intolerable, and an enthusiastic endorsement of Ken Burns’ The American Revolution that may or may not accidentally signal middle age.  ---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. Visit allthefeelings.fum/join to learn more!

In this mid-season members-only installment, Pete and Tommy trade Halloween stories, debate the ethics of haunted-house waivers, revisit emotionally scarring escape-room adventures, and brainstorm how a man in his 50s should celebrate his birthday (spoiler: laser tag turns him into a war criminal). There’s also pirate television, Dan Brown shade, and the ongoing mystery of why holiday pine-cone scent exists at all.They wrap with early scheming for next month’s holiday-food-themed Feeling Friends special, plus a reminder to hold onto as much patience and generosity as you can during the emotionally bonkers weeks ahead.Want to hear the whole episode? Become a Feeling Friend today and you'll be ready when the next season starts! ---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. Visit allthefeelings.fum/join to learn more!

You know that moment when you realize civilization might have peaked at “salt, oil, and potato”? That’s where we begin this bonus episode. Pete, Tommy, and returning culinary chaos agent Mandy Kaplan gather around a table piled high with some of the strangest snack inventions ever unleashed on the palate—because if adulthood is about making terrible decisions and pretending they’re research, then this is a dissertation.Armed with a scientific scoring system that rates flavor accuracy, emotional resonance, and the elusive chaos factor, the trio wade bravely into the salty abyss: Late Night Loaded Taco Doritos, Dill Pickle Lays, Flamin’ Hot Limón Cheetos, Hot Ones Verde Pringles, Pizza Pringles, Special Sauce Kettle Chips, and a truly cursed bag of Stranger Things “Cool Ranch Collisions.”Along the way, Pete delivers a history lesson revealing that the potato chip was invented out of spite (because of course it was), Tommy questions every life choice that brought him to this recording, and Mandy achieves spiritual awakening through protein chips. Together they confront the unspoken truth of snack evolution: we’ve weaponized flavor.This is an episode about chips, sure—but it’s also about curiosity, regret, and the very adult ability to know better and eat it anyway. So grab a bag, loosen your moral compass, and join us as we discover which chip truly embodies the modern condition: chaotic, over-flavored, and proud of it.Get the whole show! Become a Feeling Friend today at https://allthefeelings.fun. ---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. Visit allthefeelings.fum/join to learn more!

In our first members-only check-in of the season, Tommy celebrates turning 50 by becoming a human pincushion, Pete fights raccoons for dominion over his crawlspace, and we both spiral about doctors, insurance, and glasses that make us look like malfunctioning robots.There’s also a detour through indie films, legacy podcasts, and the unsettling realization that ChatGPT knows way too much about our sore feet. Think of it as adulthood bingo—except the free space is “raccoon poop.”Become a Feeling Friend today at https://allthefeelings.fun. ---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. Visit allthefeelings.fum/join to learn more!

You know that moment when you find out your “contact us” form has been quietly dumping listener questions into a black hole for months? No? Well, Pete and Tommy do, and it’s exactly as humbling, awkward, and hilarious as you’d imagine.In this bonus-but-also-a-bit-of-a-mistake 13th episode of All The Feelings: Adulting, our hosts finally open the floodgates to the backlog of listener questions, comments, and fever-dream confessions you’ve been sending since episode three. What follows is part confessional, part group therapy, and part feverish improv jam session featuring:The story of Daisy the dog, who unearths a grease-soaked “treasure” that her humans nearly turn into lunch.The ethics of eating from the garbage (or as Tommy calls it, “a betrayal from God Himself”).The delicate art of managing your mom’s dating life without auditioning for Law & Order: Elder Crimes.Theme park survival strategies when your traveling companions are slower than Splash Mountain in January.Anxiety dreams that combine advanced mathematics with rodeo equipment.The suspicious prevalence of unopened crockpots in Midwestern garages.Why your parents need a “safe word” in case someone clones your voice to scam them for Bitcoin.This episode is proof that your stories are as weird and wonderful as we’d hoped… and that we should really check our filters more often. ---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. Visit allthefeelings.fum/join to learn more!

Ah, adulthood—the never-ending escape room with no clues, no key, and someone yelling “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” in the background. In this season finale of All the Feelings: Adulting, Pete and Tommy break down one of the biggest lies we’ve ever told ourselves: that one day, magically, we would become Real Adults™. Spoiler: we do not. As far as our research has demonstrated, no one does. We’re all still wondering how to reheat pizza without judgment.This week, we confront the myth of generational superiority, from Gen X’s latchkey nihilism to Gen Z’s emotionally stoic eye contact, and the deep, soul-sucking silence of the millennial pause. Why do Boomers look so confident while setting their routers on fire? Why does Gen Alpha speak only in sound effects? Why are we, Gen X, the most stressed-out and financially unprepared sandwich in the buffet line of existence?So it’s anecdotes, slang trivia, a breakdown of eye-contact etiquette, and a dash of Lord of the Flies (plus its real-life, wholesome Tongan counterpoint) this week as we ask the central question: what if nobody knows what they’re doing and that’s… actually the point? Whether you’re prepping your taxes or debating whether mozzarella sticks count as a coping mechanism (they do), we invite you to put down the measuring stick and pick up that diploma, because you’re already here—and you’re already doing it.Congratulations. You’re an adult.Now go cancel your trial of AMC+ before it renews.💖 Become a Feeling Friend!Ready to take your relationship with this podcast to the next level (without having to notarize anything)? Become a Feeling Friend today at allthefeelings.fun. For just $35 a year ($25 to renew), you’ll get:Early access to episodesA private podcast feed with bonus contentThe secret handshake (okay, it’s a sticker, but still)And our eternal affection, even from beyond the grave---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. Visit allthefeelings.fum/join to learn more!

Death! That thing we pretend we’ll deal with later, even though “later” is very much someone else’s problem. This week, Pete and Tommy dive headfirst into the gloriously unsexy topic of postmortem administration. Not grief. Not funeral playlists. The actual hellscape of what happens when you suddenly have to explain to Costco that your dad no longer needs a membership because, well, he’s gone to the big food court in the sky.In part one, Tommy reflects on “stuff”—the knickknacks, photos, and inexplicable oven mitt collections we leave behind. He shares his strategies for helping friends confront the emotional paralysis of legacy clutter, including the deeply rational rule: no landscapes unless they’re breathtaking, and no tuna casserole recipes unless they’re really different.In part two, Pete takes us on a bureaucratic rollercoaster through the modern administrative afterlife: joint credit cards that implode, death certificates that cost a fortune, and the absolutely vital necessity of a password manager for your aging parents (seriously, do this now). He makes the case for creating a “digital death file,” so your loved ones don’t have to hack into your Apple account to cancel Hulu while you’re ghostbathing.Plus: a brief but oddly moving tribute to 17th-century haberdasher John Graunt, who basically invented epidemiology by accident while counting plague victims and also possibly ribbons. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll immediately back up your two-factor authentication.💖 Become a Feeling Friend!Ready to take your relationship with this podcast to the next level (without having to notarize anything)? Become a Feeling Friend today at allthefeelings.fun. For just $35 a year ($25 to renew), you’ll get:Early access to episodesA private podcast feed with bonus contentThe secret handshake (okay, it’s a sticker, but still)And our eternal affection, even from beyond the grave---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. Visit allthefeelings.fum/join to learn more!

Welcome to a very special episode of All the Feelings, brought to you by REM sleep, tennis elbow, and the visceral horror of trying to put on socks like you’re still in your 30s.This week, Pete and Tommy are pulling a two-for-one special: first, they dive into the dreamscape of adult anxiety—why our nighttime brains love to drop us in college final exams we never studied for and why Tommy keeps losing his car in a parking garage that exists only in the astral plane. Then, they shift to the nighttime betrayals of the body: the mysterious transformation from human being to fragile pile of orthopedic complaints, where simply “sleeping” can result in injuries typically reserved for Olympic gymnastics.Along the way, we get hot tips from Tommy’s therapist (shout-out to Bonnie!), dream science from the BBC, and Pete’s personal musculoskeletal origin story—which involves surprise vertebra fusion, leg-length inequality, and an orthotic insert named Steve. There’s also a powerful case made for the humble foam roller, a pony running off with Tommy’s Mazda, and a rare Greek myth about moon-gazing lovers that ends, predictably, in a curse.If you’ve ever woken up more injured than you were when you went to bed, if you’ve ever texted your group chat just to be out-sympathied by someone who dislocated their shoulder sneezing, or if you’ve ever been haunted by the ghost of your own plantar fascia, this one’s for you.Support the show at allthefeelings.fun and become a Feeling Friend today—for early episodes, bonus content, and a front-row seat to Pete’s ever-expanding sneaker collection. ---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. Visit allthefeelings.fum/join to learn more!

There comes a time in every adult’s life when you look at your parents and think, “Wait, are you… dating?” And suddenly, the woman who once grounded you for not using a coaster is fielding calls from a man probably named Art who knew her in the sixth grade and now rides a bicycle suspiciously close to her begonias.In this week’s episode of All the Feelings, Pete watches in emotional 4K as his recently widowed mother begins navigating the uncertain terrain of late-in-life romance. There are awkward phone calls, vintage flirting, and—somehow—tool borrowing. Meanwhile, Tommy explores the slow-motion wonder and quiet stew of trying to travel anywhere with aging parents, from the battlefield that is airport security to the glacial crawl of choosing produce.We talk role confusion, emotional gatekeeping, and the surprising revelation that your parents might be the actual ride you were rushing past. Also: a diamond heist pulled off by British grandpas, the dangers of amusement park pizza, and the secret power of a well-timed smile.This is an episode about love, loss, patience, power poses, and what happens when your mom becomes the heartthrob of the neighborhood. Again.Become a Feeling Friend!Help us keep the precinct weird: allthefeelings.funGet early access, bonus content, stickers, and the satisfaction of supporting emotional democracy for only $35 a year. ---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. Visit allthefeelings.fum/join to learn more!

Welcome back to All The Feelings, the podcast where adulthood means pretending you know how to say sorry and hoping lasagna can fix emotional devastation. This week, Pete and Tommy dissect the modern apology: why “I’m sorry if you were offended” is a disaster, and how real apologies require actual specificity, remorse, and the superhuman courage to say, “Yeah, I messed up.”Then, Pete shares what happens when life hits hard—specifically, the loss of his father—and how sometimes the only thing that makes a dent in the pain is a well-timed pizza, not a well-worded condolence. Turns out, nobody teaches you how to support a grieving friend, and “Let me know if you need anything” is about as helpful as an escape room with no exits. Show up, do something practical, and skip the TED Talk.Stick around for Feeling Friends—your reminder that supporting the show is the easiest emotional win you’ll have all week.Become a Feeling Friend!Help us keep the precinct weird: allthefeelings.funGet early access, bonus content, stickers, and the satisfaction of supporting emotional democracy for only $35 a year. (Or just vote Pete back into office. Either works.) ---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. Visit allthefeelings.fum/join to learn more!