Solo Thoughts 18: Welcoming Rough Seas

Many singles joke about creating a Golden Girls house when they get older. But the fantasy points to something serious: friendship at the center, chosen family under one roof, and a rich life beyond marriage. In this encore episode, Jen O’Donnell and Golden Girls expert Danielle Soto join Peter McGraw to examine why the show still matters—and what it got right about aging solo. Plus, cheesecake and trivia.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://www.petermcgraw.org/solo/

What does a man become when divorced from possessions?As Peter McGraw prepares to leave Denver for Bogotá, I discover that getting rid of stuff is the easy part. The harder part is confronting the scarcity, control, and old identity hiding inside it. This Solo Thoughts episode about decluttering, departure, and the difference between managing a move and actually making a transition. Onwards!Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://www.petermcgraw.org/solo/

Every day is a big day – but some days are bigger than others. For the final recording in the Solo Studio, Peter welcomes back a familiar guest: his soul sister of 22 years, Julie Nirvelli. Before Peter packs up, clears out, and heads to South America for sabbatical, the two sit down for a candid Q&A about friendship, independence, blind spots, and what happens when people who love each other disagree. Prompted by a beautifully messy listener question, Peter and Julie explore sensitive subjects, intellectualizing versus feeling, and the places where autonomy can both serve us and get in our way. They also reflect on how their views of Solo living have evolved – and look ahead to Peter’s next chapter: examining the “Solo economy” and the institutions still built around couples, despite a world increasingly filled with unmarried people and one-person households. It’s a conversation about rough seas, remarkable friendships, and making space for a new life without abruptly abandoning the old one.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://www.petermcgraw.org/solo/

What if some of history’s most fascinating people didn’t need better marriages — they needed permission not to marry? In this re-release of a fun, historically rich Solo classic, Mary Dahm and Peter McGraw discuss people who probably shouldn’t have married, using figures like Abraham Lincoln, Ernest Hemingway, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman to reveal how marriage became the expected escalator into adulthood, respectability, and belonging.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://www.petermcgraw.org/solo

In this Solo thoughts episode, Peter McGraw introduces the distinction between A-Life and B-Life. A-Life is achievement, optimization, production, and living through goals. B-Life is presence, pleasure, engagement, and doing things for their own sake. Drawing from anxiety, sabbatical planning, retirement, Seneca, and a vintage typewriter, Peter makes the case for shifting the dial from producing a remarkable life to actually living one, Solo or not.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://www.petermcgraw.org/solo/

Peter McGraw is joined by David Jitendranath for a Solo Book Club episode on Søren Kierkegaard’s The Present Age. They discuss why this slim, difficult book feels eerily modern: a culture of reflection without action, irony without commitment, resentment disguised as equality, and “leveling” as the force that pulls down anyone who dares to stand apart. A conversation about aliveness, deep water, and what it costs to act as an individual in an age of endless commentary.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://www.petermcgraw.org/solo/

Sarah Brock, the CEO of Sarah Bee Talent, joins Peter McGraw to examine how “family-friendly” workplaces often overlook solo employees. Building on Peter’s recent article in The Conversation, they discuss scheduling, workplace culture, benefits, amatonormativity, and practical ways companies can better support Solos in an era when unmarried adults are reshaping the workforce.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://www.petermcgraw.org/solo/

What does financial freedom look like when you’re climbing solo? Peter McGraw talks with Nick Maggiulli, author of The Wealth Ladder, about the six levels of wealth, what changes at each stage, and how singles can build money—and a remarkable life—on their own.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://www.petermcgraw.org/solo/

One in four Chinese households is now a single person. Pan Wang, Associate Professor of Chinese and Asian Studies at UNSW Sydney, joins Peter McGraw to talk about the “Are You Dead?” app, one-person hotpot restaurants, date-renting, AI companions, marriage markets, and how TV dating shows reshaped love and marriage in a single generation.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://www.petermcgraw.org/solo/

A high-achieving friend falls in love and suddenly finds himself in rough emotional seas. In this Solo Thoughts episode, Peter McGraw explores why calm, optimized lives can make us successful – but not truly alive – and why passion, uncertainty, and even heartbreak may be the price of a psychologically rich life.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://www.petermcgraw.org/solo/