Podbit · Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Three large Eastern wolf-coyote hybrids were taking turns lunging at Billy, Sarah's 60-pound English Setter. Without hesitation, Sarah ran in, grabbed the dog's scruff and haunches, and played tug-of-war with the coyotes while kicking them off, eventually booting one hard enough to scatter the pack.
Where this was said
At 15:30 · chapter starts 8:50
Sarah had four dogs to discharge that April morning — her own two, her sister's dog, and a friend's six-month-old puppy — and took them to a familiar Manchester-by-the-Sea trail for an off-leash run. When her English Setter Billy's barks turned to screaming 150 yards deep in the woods, she tied two dogs to a tree and sprinted toward the sound [1] — Sarah "Three large Eastern wolf-coyote hybrids were taking turns lunging at Billy, Sarah's 60-pound English Setter. Without hesitation, Sarah ran …" 15:30 . She emerged into a clearing to find three large Eastern coyotes — a wolf-hybrid subspecies weighing up to 60 pounds each — taking turns lunging at Billy. Without hesitation, she grabbed him by the scruff and haunches and played tug-of-war with the coyotes while kicking them, eventually making hard enough contact to scatter the pack. She then ran backwards through the forest carrying the bleeding 60-pound dog while periodically facing down a trailing coyote, knowing that turning her back would trigger a chase. Billy arrived at the emergency vet with his intestines exposed; after hours of surgery, internal and external stitching, he survived. Her hero dog Remy held the line on retreat, lunging at coyotes without making contact to buy her time. Billy is now 15 [2] — Sarah "Billy the dog survived at age 15: Billy the English Setter, who survived a brutal three-coyote mauling that left his intestines exposed, wa…" 20:00 . Dax reflected that what made her capable of this was the maternal identity she had adopted toward her dogs — remove that, he observed, and she would never have gone near those coyotes.
Beverly Hills, California was named after Beverly Farms, Massachusetts — a small coastal town 20 miles north of Boston where President Taft used to vacation. The rolling hills were the inspiration.
The coyotes most people picture are small Western animals. Eastern coyotes are a 50/50 wolf-coyote hybrid that can weigh up to 60 pounds. Three of them are a genuinely lethal pack.
Eastern coyotes in New England are a wolf-coyote hybrid and can weigh 35–60 pounds, making them significantly more dangerous than their Western counterparts.
Sarah's 60-pound English Setter Billy was simultaneously attacked by three large Eastern coyotes, with his intestines exposed by the time he reached emergency surgery.
Sarah discovered that facing a coyote makes it stop immediately, while turning your back triggers it to chase — a key survival tip.
Running backwards sounds absurd until you realize turning your back on a coyote triggers its chase instinct. Sarah carried a 60-pound mauled dog through New England forest while periodically spinning to face down a trailing coyote, keeping it frozen in its tracks.
Most people confuse things they value instrumentally (because they get them other things) with things they value intrinsically (for their own sake). Greenberg's friend stayed in a miserable relationship for years because she was living by her parents' values, not her own — the values map made the mismatch instantly visible.
Jungian analyst James Hollis distills a good life to four things: shut up (have gratitude, stop whining), suit up (prepare yourself to fulfill a role), show up (do the actual work in service of others), and daily get out of stimulus-response to ask what your deeper wish actually is. The whole landscape of self-help slots into just these four bins.
Toward the end of their 20s, many men discover that all the strategies that earned them recognition and success have stopped working. It's a second adolescence — more important than the first — where the question shifts from 'how do I play the game?' to 'who do I actually want to become?' Most people going through it look fragile from the outside. They're actually building a foundation.
Boys are told from childhood not to cry, not to feel, not to be weak — but anger gets a pass. The result: a generation of men who reroute every emotion, including sadness and fear, through the only acceptable channel. Emotional avoidance isn't toughness, it's misdirected sensitivity.
Men need a 'bank account' of masculine status — muscle, money, success — before society grants them permission to express vulnerability. Chris Bumstead can cry at the Olympia and get celebrated. A struggling nobody doing the same thing gets contempt. This creates a tragic paradox where the men who most need emotional support get the least of it.
Emotional sensitivity isn't a defect — it's a high-resolution scanner for human experience. Highly sensitive people pick up body language, tone, and unspoken tension that others miss entirely. In the right environment, that's not a liability. It's a superpower.
Her supervisor told her she was too emotional for the pediatric ICU. So she asked herself: 'What area of medicine can I cry in?' That question led her to psychiatry. Finding the environment that holds your emotional sensitivity isn't retreat — it's strategy.
For someone with RSD, ghosting isn't ambiguity — it's a self-verdict. Their brain doesn't read 'this relationship ended,' it reads 'I am the reason this failed.' No closure means the brain fills the gap with evidence of personal insufficiency, and it keeps filling indefinitely.
More freedom doesn't produce more happiness — it produces more anxiety. Kierkegaard identified this 180 years ago: the more options you have, the more you feel the 'dizziness of freedom,' a paralytic unease at having to choose any single one. The freest generation in history is, by his prediction, exactly the most anxious.
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