I’ve been a fan and follower of the team of Disney influencers known as Allears for a little while now. I’ve been privileged to have had several of them on my show (AJ on June 5, Emma on July 24, JP on August 7) and will host more of them in the future (JP returns on September 18, Breea is coming on October 2).

And lately, I’ve been thinking about what it is that they, and other Disney influencers actually do. Yes, they run around the parks, eat and drink lots of great stuff, ride the rides, and show us all how to have a great time. But what they are actually doing, it seems to me, is performing for us.

This is not to say that they are not being genuine. But, like all great performers, they bring a part of themselves to us to share. Their best selves. Their happiest, most optimistic selves. And they keep the other parts of themselves—the parts that are a little less happy, a little less ready to have the best-day-ever—out of the shot, out of the frame.

It is, in a way, the new show business.

And, as with the old show business, the show must go on.

So, I was particularly impressed when watching the team’s video from the Food and Wine Festival at Epcot, which came out on Saturday.

Impressed because, if you’ve been following them on social media over the past couple weeks, you would know that several of their community have undergone some significant losses.

Dolly Parton passed away this past Tuesday. And while this may seem incidental for some of us (I personally don’t have a strong connection to her) to many members of the Allears crew, Dolly Parton and her theme park Dollywood were very important emotional and cultural anchors in their lives. The crew made several pilgrimages to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee over the past few months to experience the park, tell us why it’s great, and make some truly delightful videos. (And, holy crap, it turns out their cinnamon bread is vegan!)1

One of the team members, Emma (a Tennesseean, like Dolly), seemed particularly hard-hit by the icon’s passing.

But the next day, she dove back into filming games and antics for the rest of us to enjoy, as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

It’s what show people do.

And on Wednesday, one of the team’s most beloved members, known as Breedlove, lost his 100 year-old grandmother.

But, that next morning, he reported bright and early to Epcot to join the team to cover this festival, a job which requires him to be happy, cheery, excited, and, most remarkably, to interact with fans who expect him to be all of those things at all times.

It’s what show people do.

The show must go on…

I ask each of my guests one question before we go live: is there anything you don’t want to talk about? And many of them, including several of the Allears team, have responded “I’m an open book.“

That takes a certain amount of courage. And it takes a certain amount of strength to put a portion of that open book aside when you need to step into the public space. A part of the book that is heavy and sad and just wants to curl up under the sheets and go back to bed. Or look at old photos and remember someone who’s no longer here.

…you’re brokenhearted, but you go on.

So the next time you watch one of these videos where it looks like these Disney influencers have the most carefree existence on the planet, think about if you had to do what they do with all the emotional baggage we carry on our backs every day. Now think about doing it when your beloved grandmother or beloved icon is no longer walking the Earth.

And they do it anyway. It’s what show people do.

❤️

Adam

No live show today so I thought it a perfect time to begin rolling out classic Every Day, Luv episodes on YouTube!

Our first live show, way back on April 9, 2025, was with someone who has been with me from the very beginning, the fabulous ! We talked the value (and struggles) of maintaining a daily creative practice, a topic we have returned to again and again in many subsequent episodes.

Please enjoy and, while you’re at it…

See y’all next week!

❤️
Adam

I’ll admit it. I never think much about how our town is run.

How money is raised and collected into buckets and given out to projects or people that need it. How the sidewalks get cleared (or don’t) in the winter.

How new ideas see the light of day and old ideas pick up their ball and go home.

Tonight, I got to see just a little of how that is done. A friend of the family, who, like us, has a daughter with special needs, and, somehow, is an absolute powerhouse of ideas and energy and activism—she’s a beast—is helping start a committee on pedestrian and cyclist safety. A big component of what that committee would do is advocate for accessibility for people with special needs, like our daughter. It would look out for families like ours.

I attended our town’s select board meeting tonight to speak on behalf of the creation of this committee. I was really heartened to see a number of other people who came to speak, most of them far more eloquently than I. And I was heartened to hear that the select board members were generally open to the idea.

I’m glad I went to speak because that was the only time that the word “wheelchair” was uttered. Plenty of passioned missives on bike safety, terrifying teens on e-bikes, and other pedaler priorities.

Sure, the select board got bogged down in administrative nonsense:

“Don’t we already have too many committees?“

“We can’t get a quorum with the committees we already have.“

“Who is going to staff this?

And I get it. I worked in nonprofits for decades and know how much time is spent around a table or on a zoom talking to death about how to do things instead of actually doing the things.

But, for heaven’s sake, please have the wisdom to not let the nonsense of meetings and quorums and staffing and other administrative gobbledygook stand on the way of giving those who most need a voice in this community.

I’m friends with a couple of these select board members. They’re good people. I’m pretty confident they’ll figure it out.

But if they don’t, rest assured there’ll be an even-longer line of us at the next meeting, ready to remind them how things are done ‘round here.

❤️
Adam

We talked the power of referrals, how travel budget discussions are a form of therapy, and how her fear of flying (of turbulence, specifically) has led her to connect more deeply with clients.

You can find Ashleigh at her brand spankin’ new website and on Instagram.

Coming up on the show…

August 28: no show!

September 4: A very special guest for our 50th show!!!

September 11: Director of The Center for Western Priorities Aaron Weiss

You can watch all of these shows by simply going to our new YouTube channel at 12:30pm eastern on the days listed above. Easy peasy. :)

See y’all soon!

❤️
Adam

Watch it live now!

See you there. :)

Hey y’all,

As I sit here, listening to a Thomas Newman score—my preferred writing music1—I know that I didn’t come with a plan.

No stories of Tay Tay at Canobie Lake Park.

No heartfelt poem about a daughter’s not-so-good day.

No celebration of the Hadestown pro-shot despite its inappropriate trailers.

I didn’t come with a plan.

So, instead of panicking or skipping altogether, I think I’ll give a quick rundown of what’s good in our neck of the woods right now:

Mailed some books to some really cool show guests

I like to send copies of Every Day, Luv to guests who come on my weekly live show. Today they went out to our guinea pig’s brilliant veterinarian Dr. Melissa Magnuson (aka ) and crazy-talented theme park aficionado JP Sudduth.

I also send them to other important people in my world, which today included the sister of my late friend Chad, whom I saw for the first time in decades at his celebration of life last month. His sister is an amazing person who lives a…different kind of life way up in Chitina, Alaska. Population?…101.

Awesome shirts for the next Disney trip

My daughter and her bestie/sister-from-another-mother got some awesome shirts to sport at the parks. They’re fans of Moana 2, particularly the “big sis! little sis!” dynamic and now they’ll be able to look the part when cruising Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood Studios.

Really cool headliner for this month’s open mic

Last minute (very last minute) I snagged an amazing headliner— — for this Thursday’s open mic at Water Street Books in Exeter (7pm!). She read at an event earlier this year and was lovely, moving, wonderful. Come!

Babysat and released three butterflies

My sister-in-law and her fam are away on a little vaca and so asked us to butterfly-sit. Or, more accurately, crocus-sit. She told us that only two of the three would likely hatch. But, all three came out beautiful baby butterflies! Our kiddo got to be a part of releasing them and watching them take to the sky.

So that’s what’s good here.

What’s good with you?

Leave a comment

See you at open mic on Thursday and over on YouTube on Friday at 12:30pm eastern for our live show with travel expert !

❤️
Adam

We talked the challenges of maintaining momentum post-publication, the benefits of a long commute, and what’s it’s like to sit on a shelf next to Prince and Philip Roth.

Katie’s debut memoir, Grace Notes, is now available here and here! And be sure to read everything she writes on her substack.

Coming up on the show…

August 21: The return of afraid-to-fly travel advisor .

August 28: no show!

September 4: A very special guest for our 50th show!!!

You can watch all of these shows by simply going to our new YouTube channel at 12:30pm eastern on the days listed above. Easy peasy. :)

See y’all soon!

❤️
Adam

Watch it live now!

See you there. :)

Ashleigh Bergh joins us next week!

OK, I’ll admit it. We are spoiled.

We are a Disney family. Disney adults (but with kids, or a kid). Disney obsessives. We have visited Disney World many times. A lot, by most standards.

One of the main reasons for this, as I have written about here pretty extensively, is how accessible Disney parks are. Our daughter can take her wheelchair onto many of the rides, and, for those that cannot accommodate a chair, can easily transfer into a shared seat where, sandwiched between my wife and me, she can enjoy even more rides. There are very few experiences at Disney parks in which our daughter cannot participate.

So, when my nephew had his 10th birthday party on Sunday at Canobie Lake Park in Salem, New Hampshire—a 40-minute jaunt from our home—we knew we had to lower our accessibility expectations a bit.

“A bit” as in three. That’s the number of rides at Canobie that can accommodate someone in a wheelchair—the Antique Carousel ^1., the Blue Heron Lake Cruise, and Canobie Express railway train.

Now I will quickly say what many of you are probably thinking: it’s really not fair to compare the options and resources of a small, regional theme park to Walt Disney World. And you’re absolutely right. And here are two of the reasons:

• Canobie is much older than Walt Disney World, by nearly 70 years. It’s not the oldest theme park in America, That honor belongs to Lake Compounce in Bristol, CT, continuously operating since 1846. But it is still a silver fox granddad compared to Disney. Wheelchair access was likely not top-of-mind for the folks who built it back in 1902.

• Disney is much, much bigger and wealthier than Canobie. Walt Disney World in Orlando takes in almost as much estimated revenue in a single day as Canobie does in an entire year.

So, of course, they cannot possibly be expected to be as responsive to the needs of a changing accessibility world as Disney.

But, maybe in the future, there could be… some small, affordable improvements?

• A beach wheelchair on castaway island so our daughter could go cruising through the splash pad? She still had a great time on the lazy river but that was really the only water park option open to her.

• A less steep grade to get up to the handicap entrance of the Giant Sky Wheel? My wife had to push me as I pushed our daughter up a near mountain of a ramp. A good workout? Yes. A necessary one? Nope.

But, make no mistake, we ended up having a wonderful day at Canobie, accessibility not withstanding. The highlight for our daughter was…Taylor Swift. No, the pop icon didn’t take a break from her honeymooning to play three sets at a quaint New Hampshire theme park. But a wonderful performer/impersonator named Olivia Claire sure did.

Although our daughter was certainly aware that this was not the actual Taylor Swift, she danced and sang as if it were, including when “Taylor“ came over and gave her a friendship bracelet during “22,“ a la the famous hat moment during the Eras Tour. At that point, all thoughts of not being able to ride very much in her wheelchair receded far into the background.

Disney World doesn’t have that.

So, Canobie Lake management: bring back “Taylor” every summer; bring back your wonderful, accommodating staff; and… maybe bring a few more accessibility enhancements so kids like ours can have a few thrills along with their splashes and shows?

Thanks. :)

❤️
Adam

We talked screenwriting, casting the perfect Santa Claus, and the challenges of managing autism and theme park crowds.

You can find everything JP does on her website and on Instagram. :)

Coming up on the show…

August 14: The return of afraid-to-fly travel advisor .

You can watch all of these shows by simply going to our new YouTube channel at 12:30pm eastern on the days listed above. Easy peasy. :)

See y’all soon!

❤️
Adam

Watch it live now!

See you there. :)

We talked homeschooling at any age, why reading slows after fourth grade, and how important boredom is for kids.

You can find Lauren at or on Instagram. :)

Coming up on the show…

August 7: Actress, writer, influencer, (and singer!) JP Sudduth.

August 14: The return of afraid-to-fly travel advisor .

You can watch all of these shows by simply going to our new YouTube channel at 12:30pm eastern on the days listed above. Easy peasy. :)

See y’all soon!

❤️
Adam

Our family has become huge fans of Hadestown. Our daughter, in particular, is completely smitten. Music is one of her superpowers and she could barely stay in her seat when we went to the version that was released in theaters this past weekend.

If you’re not familiar (and, if not, you should be!), the musical combines two classic love duos—Orpheus and Eurydice with Hades and Persephone. It’s brilliant and beautiful.

But before we could get to the brilliant and beautiful, we of course had many, many trailers to watch. I love trailers, but as they went along there seemed to be a growing…mismatch between the audience that would attend a show (or screening) of Hadestown and the one that would attend the movies that these trailers were promoting.

Big feelings aren’t bad for kids

While Hadestown isn’t exactly Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, I think it certainly qualifies as friendly for teens and preteens (our daughter is 12). It’s about big emotions, big feelings, love and death and poverty and trust. And (spoiler) it’s a tragedy. It doesn’t end well for our two main lovers. It’s good for younger audiences to understand that not all endings are happy.

So far, so good…

A trailer for a rerelease of The Piano put me on notice that these previews were going to skew more mature. But I was put at ease when this trailer made it clear that it was a movie for grown-ups, but left out any of the explicit material.

And many of the other trailers followed suit. But two of them decided to go off the reservation and left us scrambling to shelter our preteen’s eyes and ears from the images and words that cascaded over us.

Okay, what??

Maybe it’s the puritanical instincts that have risen to the surface from being a father with a young daughter…or maybe whomever matches trailers to features had never actually watched Hadestown and assumed that, since it has “Hades” in the title, it must be filled with sex, violence, and disturbing images.

Which is the only explanation I can come up with for why our daughter was expected to enjoy the trailers for I Want Your Sex and Victorian Psycho. Unlike The Piano (which, granted was a trailer from another era), these two films wore their content on their sleeves.

I’ll let y’all watch them for yourselves in the links above and judge. But we said no thanks. And we covered our daughter’s eyes and ears.

Do we need to just get out of the way?

I confess, I don’t know much about these two films, their directors, or their source material. They may, in fact, be great movies. Great for our daughter when she’s…at least a little older? I’m sure there are mature, film-nerd 12-, 13-, 14-year-olds somewhere who are watching them, loving them, having challenging, productive conversations about them.

And, yes, our daughter is treading into more mature waters already (anyone else read the Wynd series?) but, I’m sorry, the wife and I are putting the brakes on, at least a little for now.

If that makes us square…

…we can live with that.

❤️
Adam

We talked showing raw emotion on camera, the thrill of meeting fans, and the stress of being stranded in Singapore.

You can find Emma on Instagram and allears.net. We highly recommend watching her in the “everything" series on YouTube. Emma’s Disney love is infectious.

Coming up on the show…

July 31: Homeschooling coach Lauren Corning (aka Homeschool Path Coach)

August 7: Actress, writer, influencer, (and singer!) JP Sudduth.

August 14: The return of afraid-to-fly travel advisor .

You can watch all of these shows by simply going to our new YouTube channel at 12:30pm eastern on the days listed above. Easy peasy. :)

See y’all soon!

❤️
Adam

Watch it live now!

See you there. :)

There are two major reasons for this move.

Substack makes it hard to do the show, hard to get an audience

Substack makes guests and viewers jump through a number of frustrating—and quite frankly, unnecessary—hoops in order to participate in any way with the show.

Every guest has to create an account on substack in order to participate in the show. They then have to send me their username so I know where to find them in order to invite them onto the show. These hoops don’t exist for conversations hosted on zoom (which we now use) or Microsoft teams. We are used to getting a calendar invite, clicking once, and done.

I get it—substack is a smaller platform looking to grow its audience. By building account creation into the livestream experience they are bringing more people into the fold, into their ecosystem. Except, is that actually creating new readers, new creators? Almost every guest I’ve had who wasn’t already active on substack abandoned their account after our show was over.

And if that wasn’t annoying enough…

Anyone who wants to watch the show has to create an account on substack. They then have to answer or skip several maddening prompts asking them what kind of substacks they’d like to follow. When all they want to do is watch the show. Not only is this obnoxious, in some cases it’s alienating. I’ve had several friends tell me they gave up trying to watch our show because substack simply made it too confusing and cumbersome. YouTube has no such requirements.

So this part of the choice was easy.

The second reason gets a bit more complicated…

Substack has a dark underbelly that’s getting harder to ignore

When I first started writing on substack, a friend from college wished me all the best but told me he wouldn’t read it because substack refuses to “ban Nazis.” This wasn’t the first time I’d heard this but I let it go, mainly because I saw so many wonderful writers, thinkers, artists on the platform doing such important work to improve the world I thought the good had to outweigh the bad.

But then I had a guest draw essentially the same line in the sand. Lucy Knisley, after agreeing weeks earlier to be on the show, told me that she would not create an account on substack because “the lax content moderation has given it a reputation for platforming nazis.”

And they’re right. It’s been well documented how far-right voices have found audience, and financial support, on substack. And, despite this, how its founders have held on tight to their free speech absolutism.

And I’ve been struggling with this ever since I got here. But…I’m not ready to give up on substack entirely…at least not yet.

I guess I’m holding on to the, perhaps naive, hope that change from within is possible. That if enough of us stay here and use this space to shine light into the world, that it will overwhelm and chase away the darkness.

So, the weekly live show will continue on over on YouTube. And I’ll continue writing here. I hope you’ll stick around and continue to support this work.

Subscribe now

But, if you can’t stomach it, I completely understand.

Hope to see you Friday for our show with Emma Cowan.

❤️
Adam

We talked sugar shacks, bat mitzvahs, and how we all do the best we can with imperfect tech platforms.

You can find everything about Lucy at her website. We highly recommend the Peapod farm series. :)

Coming up on the show…

July 24: Disney/theme park influencer extraordinaire Emma Cowan (!)

July 31: Homeschooling coach Lauren Corning (aka Homeschool Path Coach)

August 7: Actress, writer, influencer, (and singer!) JP Sudduth.

You can watch all of these shows by simply going to our new YouTube channel at 12:30pm eastern on the days listed above. Easy peasy. :)

See y’all soon!

❤️
Adam

Just a quick note to tell you that starting today our weekly live shows will be on YouTube.

Watch today's show here!

I’ll write a more in-depth post soon as to why we’re making this change, but, in the meantime, come take a lunch break with me and graphic novelist Lucy Knisley, today at 12:30pm!

Watch today's show here!

And don’t forget to subscribe to the channel!

See y’all there.

❤️
Adam

I did eventually reach him, once by phone and a handful of times by email before he passed away from a cancer I know very little about because he never wanted to talk about it. Instead, he always asked for details from my life—pictures, videos, stories of our vibrant existence with our vibrant daughter.

And so I gave them to him, emails with stories of the first day of sixth grade, kayaking on Mirror Lake, the latest trip to Disney, and many other milestones.

The second time I wrote about Chad was in memory of him and of our formative years together in high school—him, me, and our buddy Matt.

And now, for a third time, I’m compelled to talk to you about him again.

This past Saturday was a celebration of life held in his honor at his parents’ beautiful home and garden on the southern Maine coast. There were heartfelt tributes, hilarious stories, and a dedication of a new greenhouse in honor of a man who loved to sink his hands in the soil.

I was fortunate to reconnect with his sister (a warm and wonderful farmer in Alaska), his brother (who was so young the last time we saw each other that he barely remembered me), and with Matt, my oldest friend and a guy I’d really like to see more often if he didn’t live on the opposite coast.

I also got to (finally) meet and spend some time with his life partner who lives with their son in their native Switzerland. Our time together was far too short, but we started to fill each other in on the parts of his life we knew best that the other didn’t—me, the early years; her, the later ones.

I hope this isn’t the last time I see her. I hope the next time I can talk with their son, a shy teen who is the spitting image of his dad and seems to have his thirst for knowledge, for questions, for figuring it all out.

A celebration of our life, now

We carve out time and travel great distances to celebrate life that is no longer with us. I wanted to end today with a celebration of our life, as we live it now.

Today our daughter was back on the waves, surfing with over a dozen other special-needs kids and adults on a warm, blustery Maine beach.

It doesn’t get much better.

See y’all Friday for our live show with author Lucy Knisley. :)

❤️
Adam