Podbit · Call Her Daddy
Riley spent years trying to drag her mother into rehab and keep all the plates spinning, only to watch addiction ultimately claim two family members. The lesson she was forced to learn: you cannot fix it. Surrender is the only option.
Where this was said
At 47:28 · chapter starts 46:31
Alex acknowledges the compounded weight of what Riley has carried — losing both her brother and her mother within approximately two years — and asks how she has thought about processing that grief, both for herself and in how she might eventually explain it to her daughter. [1] — Riley Keough "The only like step that I've actively taken is to like feel my feelings. Which is a lot harder than it sounds." 46:31 Riley's answer is quiet and honest: the only active step she has taken is to feel her feelings. Not to manage them, not to channel them productively, not to make them useful — just to actually let them exist. She acknowledges that sounds simple and is not. Some of the feelings have been unbearable. When her brother died, she describes not being able to see how she could survive it. Her response was to seek out people who had lost siblings, who had lost people to suicide, who had experienced the specific shape of her loss — to hear from them that she was going to be okay. She went on Reddit forums, DM'd strangers on Instagram, read blogs. Anyone who had been where she was.
Riley lost both her brother Benjamin and her mother Lisa Marie Presley within a span of roughly two years, a compounded grief experience she describes as deeply isolating.
Lisa Marie Presley firmly believed that tough love does not work for people struggling with addiction, a view Riley says she fully agrees with.
AI nailed Andrew Huberman's vertigo-vs-low-blood-pressure diagnosis because that pattern has been reported millions of times. But every patient's liver is different and data on liver surgeries is scarce worldwide — making solo robot surgery dangerous. The rule is simple: data abundance means AI can help; data scarcity means keep the human in the loop.
Fei-Fei Li's father had liver surgery performed by a da Vinci robot guided by a surgeon. The result: 10 times less blood loss than a typical procedure. This isn't replacement — it's the gold standard of human-machine collaboration, where the human's judgment and the robot's precision combine.
US drug overdose deaths fell from 110,000 to roughly 70,000 — the biggest CDC-recorded single-year drop ever. Men's rates fell 27% in one year, and the steepest decline of all was among 15–24-year-olds, down 37%. The crisis narrative around young men needs to make room for signs of genuine progress.
Kessler thought his grief expertise would protect him. It didn't. When his son David died unexpectedly, he found himself on the floor — and eventually realized that acceptance alone wasn't enough. That unmet need became the sixth stage: finding meaning.
Grief isn't just death — it's any unwanted change. Kessler lectured at Coca-Cola and General Mills not because they had lots of funerals, but because change management is grief management. People who grieve well live well.
Witnessing someone's grief isn't just emotional support — it's an essential act of healing. Kessler argues grief is a severance and connection heals it. But real witnessing has two steps: seeing the pain AND affirming the person's capacity to recover.
Avoiding grief isn't free — it's exhausting. Kessler's beach ball metaphor nails it: pushing a small balloon down is easy, but holding a massive beach ball underwater takes constant, draining energy. Unattended feelings don't disappear; they just consume you.
Most people try to control their environment to avoid triggers. Kessler flips this entirely: triggers aren't problems to manage around — they're a detailed map to your pain and your healing. Every trigger points directly to what needs attention.
Running from pain doesn't leave it behind — it accelerates the chase. Whatever we run from pursues us, and whatever we face transforms us. Both Kessler and Lewis Howes testify to knowing both roads firsthand.
We use essential and analytics cookies to run Vuci. To understand how the site is used: Privacy Policy.
Install Vuci on your phone
Add it to your home screen for a faster, app-like experience.
Install Vuci on your phone
Tap the Share button, then “Add to Home Screen”.
A new version is available
Reload to get the latest Vuci.