The Healed Version of You Versus the Broken One featuring Jon Gustin
Release Date: 07/24/2026
How We Make Our Marriage Work With Four Kids and a Business featuring Larry & Jessica Hagner
The Dad Edge Podcast
Larry is back with his wife Jessica for the third installment of their Friday couples series, and this one tackles the quiet killer of long marriages: the drift. That slow slide where you get so buried in kids, sports, work, and the house that you look up years later and realize you lost each other somewhere along the way. Married 22 years, they're honest that they've hit those valleys too, and this episode is about how they catch it and climb back out. Larry opens up about being the avoidant one early on, walking away from hard conversations because it felt selfless when it was actually...
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How to Bring Up Sex Without Making Her Feel Like She Failed featuring Cailtin V
The Dad Edge Podcast
Caitlin V is a sexologist, relationship coach, and host of Good Sex on HBO Max who has built a YouTube channel with nearly a million subscribers and over 170 million views, working primarily with men on erectile dysfunction, performance anxiety, premature ejaculation, and the isolation that comes with all three. She started as a sexual health researcher and policy analyst before deciding that change happens in conversations with real people, not in research papers. This is a live Dad Edge Alliance Q&A where Caitlin takes real questions from married men about a sexless stretch, shame...
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The Guardrails That Keep Our Disagreements From Becoming Fights featuring Larry & Jessica Hagner
The Dad Edge Podcast
Larry is back in studio with his wife Jessica for part two of their conversation, recorded the week of their 22nd anniversary. Last week they covered how they met and the crucibles that shaped them. This week they get practical about the daily mechanics of a marriage that works: how they got aligned on parenting, how they resolve conflict, and how they back each other up in front of the kids whether they agree or not. They're candid that none of it came naturally at first. They walk through the parenting classes that helped early on, a hard season with one of their sons that turned out to be...
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The Situational Awareness Skills Every Dad Should Teach His Family featuring Sam Rosenberg
The Dad Edge Podcast
Sam Rosenberg has spent his career protecting some of the most recognized people on the planet, heads of state, CEOs, and celebrities including Warren Buffett, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Tom Cruise. A former Marine Corps officer who moved into close protection in 1996, he's since shifted his focus to teaching ordinary people the same skills he used to guard public figures, through his company Live Ready and his bestselling book of the same name. He's trained tens of thousands of people to recognize threats before they become emergencies. This one is a genuine masterclass in personal safety, and...
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Small Pursuits That Rebuild a Disconnected Marriage featuring Joe Bailey
The Dad Edge Podcast
This is a Wednesday Wins Q&A, with Larry joined by his longtime co-host Joe Bailey to tackle a question that lands for almost every married dad. Mike from Washington State wrote in about a marriage that isn't broken, no fighting, no affairs, but feels more like two coworkers running a small company called the family. He and his wife talk schedules, kids, and bills, physical intimacy has slowed, and as he puts it, he misses her even though she's only six feet away. Larry breaks down the four pillars of marriage from Lance and Brandi's work, individual, partnership, friends, and intimacy,...
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Connection Before Correction With Your Wife & Your Kids
The Dad Edge Podcast
This is a special live Q&A recorded inside Apogee, where the hosts turned the tables and interviewed Larry alongside his wife Jessica for a rare joint conversation. Married 23 years with four sons, the two open up about what actually creates safety in a home, and their answer surprises the room: it starts with relentlessly prioritizing the marriage. From there they get honest about the early years when Larry admits he floundered and didn't lead well, how Jessica learned to call him forward without emasculating him, and why connection always has to come before correction. They talk repair...
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The Difference Between Sight and Vision featuring Harry Psaros
The Dad Edge Podcast
Harry Psaros is an author, neuroscientist, health coach, and third degree black belt, known to Pittsburgh sports fans as the Pit Guru, but the title that matters most to him is dad. He and his wife Michelle have been married 24 years and raised two sons, and it was his journey raising Gus, who's on the autism spectrum, that led him to write his Amazon bestselling, award winning book From Struggle to Strength. He's one of the rare male voices in the autism space, and he doesn't shy away from calling other fathers forward. Harry and Larry, who's walked a similar road with his own oldest son, get...
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How to Actually Be There When You're With Your Kids featuring Joe Bailey
The Dad Edge Podcast
This is a Wednesday Wins Q&A, with Larry joined by his longtime co-host and friend of nearly a decade, Joe Bailey. The two open up about the Bible study they've been doing together before digging into two listener questions that hit at the heart of hands-on fatherhood. First, Steve asks how to prepare his three year old daughter for a new baby sister arriving in a few weeks, and how to keep the first child feeling seen. Then Brad from Florida sends in a question that lands hard: his wife says that even when he's home, he's not really there, and his 11 year old recently cut off a story with...
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The 4 Survival Responses Hiding Inside Your ADHD featuring Jenna Free
The Dad Edge Podcast
Jenna Free is a counselor who specializes in ADHD, and she doesn't teach it from a textbook, she lives it, having been diagnosed herself at 32. Her work zeroes in on the piece she says the field keeps missing: dysregulation. Through her ADHD regulation groups and her training for mental health professionals, she teaches a method built around regulating the nervous system, thoughts, and behaviors, and she's put it all into her bestselling book The Simple Guide to ADHD Regulation, a Toronto Star and Globe and Mail bestseller. The core idea here reframes almost everything men think they know...
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Why Willpower Never Beats Your Subconscious featuring Thais Gibson
The Dad Edge Podcast
Thais Gibson is the co-founder of the Personal Development School and the creator of Gibson Integrated Attachment Theory, whose work on attachment and subconscious rewiring has reached more than 75 million people. He holds a PhD, is certified in over 13 therapeutic modalities, and his research shows that 88% of the more than 70,000 people he's worked with developed a secure attachment style in just 90 days. He got there the hard way, through a six and a half year opioid addiction that only broke when he understood he wasn't running from his outside world, he was running from his inside one....
info_outlineJon Gustin is the founder of Tired Dad, a community of more than 2 million followers built on one honest premise: parenting is only hard for good parents. A former personal trainer of 14 years who started making short videos during the sleepless newborn stretch of 2020, he became one of the first men online talking openly about the mental load of fatherhood. He co-hosts the Tired Dad and Tired Mom podcasts with his wife Jessica and released his book The Tired Dad: 100 Reflections on Showing Up for What Matters Most in May.
Larry and Jon get into the exhaustion that comes from doing the work right, both of their fathers coming home from Vietnam unable to talk about it, the rebellion and loss that followed Jon's parents' divorce, and the ego death that pulled his marriage out of the roommate phase. If you're tired in the best way possible and still wondering whether you're doing a good job, this conversation is for you.
Timeline Summary
[1:02] – Parenting is only hard for good parents, and why tired means invested
[3:19] – Tired from parenting, not tired of parenting
[6:23] – How the newborn stretch of 2020 accidentally birthed Tired Dad
[8:10] – Nobody was talking about the mental load of fatherhood, so Jon did
[12:16] – The Justin Gustin problem and Larry's own Hagman mixup
[13:29] – Full introduction: 2 million followers, two podcasts, and the book
[16:54] – Growing up the baby of the family with siblings seven and eight years older
[20:18] – A Vietnam veteran father, a World War Two grandfather, and night terrors that never left
[21:55] – Watching your dad go from Superman to human during the divorce
[26:38] – Running from it: partying, drugs, theft, and total chaos at 14
[28:26] – Losing friends to overdoses and deciding to get out
[29:48] – Moving to Tennessee, meeting Jessica, and marrying 11 months later
[34:08] – The Gottman research and why only 12% of marriages truly thrive
[36:27] – Marry the right person for the right reasons, because marriage fixes nothing
[37:59] – Postpartum, the roommate phase, and the darkest stretch of their marriage
[40:56] – Killing the ego and why keeping score breeds resentment
[43:48] – Getting sober three and a half years ago and what changed
[46:42] – Ego death without becoming a doormat or a nice guy
[48:55] – Eliminate the guessing and learn what your wife actually needs
[52:42] – Inside the book: the weight fathers carry and the mantra to keep showing up
[54:47] – Wearing exhaustion as a badge of honor versus being the healed version of you
[57:18] – Legacy, being a home worth coming back to, and the 3am call
5 Key Takeaways
- Tired Means You're Doing It Right — If parenting feels hard and exhausting, that's evidence you care enough to invest in it. You're tired from the work, not of it.
- Marriage Fixes Nothing — Your partner isn't responsible for healing your wounds and you aren't responsible for healing theirs. Two people can both do their own work and build something great, but expecting rescue guarantees misery.
- The Ego Is a Heavy Backpack — Keeping score is the breeding ground for resentment. Dropping the ego means asking how you can help the situation, not tallying what you're not getting.
- Ego Death Is Not Becoming a Doormat — Killing the ego doesn't mean happy wife, happy life, or becoming a yes man. It means eliminating the guessing, expressing your own needs clearly, and understanding hers.
- Be the Healed Version, Not the Broken One — Carrying exhaustion proudly while running on empty leaves you injured at the end of the road. The goal is showing up tired but well, in shape for the job.
Links & Resources
- Episode page and all links: https://thedadedge.com/1508
- Join the Dad Edge Alliance (July promo: signed book, two courses, 50 conversation starters): https://thedadedge.com/join
- Dad Edge Boardroom Goal Setting Intensive (July 31, 8am central): https://thedadedge.com/goals
- The Tired Dad: 100 Reflections on Showing Up for What Matters Most by Jon Gustin: available wherever books are sold
- Tired Dad website: https://tireddad.com
Enjoyed This Episode?
If Jon's line about being tired from parenting rather than tired of it reframed something for you, pass it along. Send this episode to a dad who's running on empty and quietly wondering if he's cut out for this, and ask yourself whether you're carrying the weight well or just carrying it. If the show keeps delivering, follow, rate, and leave a review so more fathers can find these conversations.