Weekly observations on travel, work, parenting, and life as it goes on around me. Airing Fridays on Alabama Public Radio.
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Claim This Podcastby Cam Marston
4.9(18 reviews)
326 episodes
Updated Daily
Accepts GuestsHas SponsorsLocation 🇺🇸
61
Podcast Authority
BetaGoodBased on show quality, social media presence, reviews, charts, and more
Quality93
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YouTube0
Engagement71
Podcast Overview
Weekly observations on travel, work, parenting, and life as it goes on around me. Airing Fridays on Alabama Public Radio.
Language
🇺🇲
Publishing Since
8/30/2019
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61
Podcast Authority
BetaGoodBased on show quality, social media presence, reviews, charts, and more
Quality93
Social0
YouTube0
Engagement71
7
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excellent
Episode Length
4 minutes
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Every 8 days
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Recent Episodes
July 24, 2026
Couple's Retirement
<p class="MsoNormal">Cam Marston has been digging into what makes retirement happy — and it turns out, part of the answer is that spouses need a break from each other. Here's Cam...</p> <p class="MsoNormal">-----</p> <p class="MsoNormal">My work continues to lead me deeper into retirement studies. My small team and I are creating a non-financial retirement assessment that anyone can take and get a gauge on how well positioned you are to retire. The key here is this is non-financial information. It is not retirement readiness based on what's on the spreadsheet or what's in the bank account, it's retirement readiness based on how well prepared you are between the ears. From what I've learned in this study, about thirty-five to forty percent of retirees are unhappy in their retirement. The expression I've heard so many time is this: retirement isn't all it's cracked up to be.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Turns out there is data on what makes for a happy retirement. This data is collected in studies by some government agencies and big-name universities and if you know how to find it, the data will tell people what makes retirement happy. What's caught my attention lately is the information on couples and retirement.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I remember when my father-in-law retired. The story is he came into the kitchen at lunchtime and said to his wife, "Momma, what's for lunch?" She shot back something along the lines of "we will not be living this way. The refrigerator is there with food in it, the bread is over there, figure it. Make a sandwich." She was very clear that she was not going to serve him every day and, after that, it was never a problem again.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Turns out, retirement has a lot to do with boundaries and here are two that have caught my attention. One is that each person needs to have a place in their home that is uniquely theirs. Maybe it's a desk, a closet, a workshop space, a gardening shed. That space is not to be intruded upon by the other. There can't touch anything in there. They can't offer to help clean it or organize it. They enter that space or touch its contents only with permission and then, only carefully. Each person needs their protected and sacred territory.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The other is that each person becomes more interesting to their spouse if they have a completely separate social life. He needs his friends that don't much overlap with her world and she needs her friends that don't much overlap with his world. Each of them needs regular connection with those friends because, as it turns out, when they reconnect with their spouse after, say, a night out with these friends, they have content to share with the other. And that content makes each other interesting. That content gives the couple things to talk about and share. If they only ever do things together, whether it's only just the two of them or only going out with friends as a couple, they run the risk of becoming boring to each other. I found that fascinating. Having a healthy social life outside my wife promotes a happier retirement with the two of us. One may think the opposite is true but it's very clearly not.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">So, if you're looking at retirement, take my advice on this. Or try asking your spouse to make you a sandwich that first day, and see how it goes.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I'm Cam Marston and I'm just trying to Keep It Real.</p>
July 17, 2026
A Raccoon for Everyone
<p class="MsoNormal">The World Cup has taken over America this summer — and it's brought more than just soccer. It's brought raccoons drinking gin.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">------</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The World Cup sure has been wonderful to watch. I've loved all of it, though I'd be hard pressed to clearly explain offsides. The broadcasters show replays of goals that have been taken back and the commentators say "Oh yes, that's clearly offsides" and I have no idea what they're referring to. It's the equivalent of the infield fly rule in baseball or the tackle eligible receiver in football. It's taken me years to understand these rules, and I have to relearn them each time the season starts.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I've really enjoyed the fans that have travelled to the US to support their teams and what they they're enjoying about the US. Many have commented about large portion sizes in the restaurants and the huge variety of food available in the grocery stores. People new to the US and can quickly see why Americans are so large. We become immune to it, but I suspect anyone from abroad can walk down one of our cereal aisles and be bewildered by the many options we have to eat sugar for breakfast.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Today online I saw that one of the Norwegian players got off the plane in Norway carrying a stuffed raccoon drinking a bottle of gin. It's something you'd see sold at a strange store on a remote interstate exit and you wonder who would buy that other than a drunk crowd of fraternity boys. Well, apparently, international soccer stars buy them while they're shopping in Dallas. For some kid in Norway, watching their heroes come home from the US, they've got to wonder what goes in the USA that their players come home with stuffed raccoons drinking gin. What happens over there? they must wonder. Who are those people? We'll, we Americans don't buy such things very much. But we do make them for people to bring home and tell their friends "you won't believe what I bought in the US."</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Now, for those that think that soccer is boring, they're right most of the time. It can be terribly boring. Any game that ends after ninety minutes of play with a score of one to nothing or two to one is going to be a boring game. But when the scoring happens it's as thrilling as any moment in sports. Precise passes punctuated with balls kicked incredibly hard past a goal defended by an above average sized and very athletic guy. And the celebrations in the stadium and video feeds from back home of streets full of people exploding in celebration are also as good as any celebrations in sports, maybe even the best. It's hard not to smile.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I'll miss the World Cup when it's over. I've developed a greater appreciation for the game, a big appreciation for the soccer fans who have traveled from across the globe to support their teams, and a deep pride and satisfaction knowing that people from all corners of the world can come to the USA and leave amazed by our grocery stores, portion sizes, and bring home a stuffed, boozing raccoon to remember it all. Good bless America.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I'm Cam Marston and I'm just tryin' to keep it real.</p>
July 10, 2026
Death of the Accord
<p class="font-claude-response-body">Cam Marston has a confession today — eighteen months ago, he and his wife made a pact to declutter their house for good. Here's why it didn't survive contact with a U-Haul trailer.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body">-----</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body">About eighteen months ago, my wife and I made a deal in a hotel room overlooking the Atlantic. We called it the Fort Lauderdale Accord — not a bucket list of what we wanted before we died, but a list of what we wanted gone. Our aim was to simplify and we agreed on one thing: we had collected too much stuff. So we made a rule. One thing in, two things out. Net loss, every time. We clinked glasses, pinkie truced, and named it like a treaty.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body">For a while, it worked. Drawers emptied. Goodwill runs multiplied. Countertops and the bottoms of drawers reappeared — visible countertops, with nothing on them, visible drawers with nothing in them. We were smug about it. We could do this.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body">Then my mother-in-law passed away, and my wife and her siblings spent two weeks in Raleigh emptying her parent's home. Room by room, drawer by drawer — the work nobody prepares you for. My wife came home in her SUV towing a U-Haul trailer, both packed to the roof. We had to get a storage unit due to so much stuff.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body">And here's the thing — the Accord didn't fail because we lost discipline. It failed because we'd built a rule for the wrong category of object. One thing in, two things out works fine against impulse buys and gadgets and garage-sale finds, because those things are interchangeable. Lamps are lamps. They have little emotion to them.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body">However, a grandfather clock that chimes every half hour and puts my wife back in her bedroom where she could hear the chimes throughout the night all during her childhood? That's not an object competing for shelf space. That's not even really an object. It's a delivery system for a memory, and the rule we wrote was never built to take that into account.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body">That's the part I missed when we pinkie truced our little treaty. We treated "stuff" as one category, when it's really two: things you acquired, and things that acquired meaning long long ago. The first kind has gravitational pull — it accumulates because it's easy, and stays put out of inertia. Not because it matters. The second kind doesn't accumulate at all. It just shows up loaded with emotion and memory, and you'd never get rid of it on a technicality.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body">So we've set a new plan — two years from now, whatever the kids haven't claimed for their own houses and apartments by then goes. But, truth be told, I give that plan poor odds. My wife and my long-term history is to collect, not cull. However, I've stopped thinking we have a discipline problem. It's a category problem. Maybe this stuff means too much, and its outside a rule pinkie truced and clinked over wine glasses.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body">When the last box gets unpacked, we're opening a bottle and clinking glasses again. Not to the Accord — but to what it taught us about ourselves. And a U-Haul trailer. And a grandfather clock that still chimes on the half hour, exactly like it did in her parent's home.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body">I'm Cam Marston, and I'm just tryin' to keep it real.</p>
326 total episodes available
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Rob Herndon
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