F*ck The Standard is a no bullsh*t podcast for people who look “fine” but know they’ve been coasting on comfort, fear, distraction, and half truths. Hosted by Rob McCarthy, this show digs into discipline, identity, mental health, sobriety, family, emotional resilience, and the rebuild that happens when you finally take ownership. No gurus, no hype, just real conversations for blue-collar minds, parents, spouses, anyone tired of numbing out, avoiding the mirror and pretending they’re good.
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Craig Sotkovsky responded to the World Trade Center on 9-11. He came out of it with lung cancer, GERD, PTSD, and a government program that kicked him off healthcare over a paperwork technicality. He rebuilt his life in Mexico on $350 a month and wrote a book called Everybody Pays a Vig about the price everyone pays for the life they're avoiding.
In this episode, Craig and Rob go after everything: the politicians who use 9-11 as a soundbite and ignore survivors the rest of the year, the pharmaceutical industry, parents who let a tablet raise their kids, and a culture that hands out reflection rooms and crayons instead of consequences. Two New York guys, zero filter, one hard truth after another.
This is not a polished survivor story, it's the story about what surviving actually costs, and what you do with it after.
Get Craig's Book, Everyone Pays a Vig: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732232415?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback
Get your copy of F*ck The Script: https://www.amazon.com/-/es/CK-SCRIPT-Caring-Others-Rebuild/dp/B0FQ4F5NBB (https://www.amazon.com/-/es/CK-SCRIPT-Caring-Others-Rebuild/dp/B0FQ4F5NBB)
12 Sept 2026
Remembering 9/12
Every year we say never forget, and every year fewer and fewer of us remember what happened the day after.
On September 12th, 2001, this country did something it hasn't done since. Nobody asked who you voted for before they helped you. Strangers gave blood, hugged each other, and asked one question: What can I do to help?
Twenty five years later, I look at what we did with the time the victims never got. It's not another angry take, just the truth I see about where we've landed, and what it would take to get back.
This one's not my usual energy, it's quieter, so give it the space it needs.
11 Sept 2026
You Don't Need Rescuing, with "The Music God" C.J. Plain
CJ Plain spent sixteen years driving truck while chasing a music career on the side. Then a half inch chain snapped on the side of a highway in Denver and caught him across the forehead hard enough to kill him. He survived. What came after nearly broke him anyway.
He lost his income overnight, and he spent three years fighting a disability system that already had the paperwork proving his injury. His marriage ended in a way he never chose. He came out the other side raising his son alone. He is finishing a degree at fifty five and getting ready to drop a record he almost did not live long enough to make.
In this conversation, CJ breaks down the accident in full detail and the three year fight for disability approval that followed. He also names the belief he had to unlearn to rebuild without waiting for someone else to save him: that you need a woman to be happy.
"I don't need a woman. I want a woman. I don't have to have her."
That is not a throwaway line, that is the whole episode.
F*ck The Script, is on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/-/es/CK-SCRIPT-Caring-Others-Rebuild/dp/B0FQ4F5NBB (https://www.amazon.com/-/es/CK-SCRIPT-Caring-Others-Rebuild/dp/B0FQ4F5NBB).
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