We’re back on the Better Humans Podcast — and this episode is a little different. Instead of a studio-style interview, I invited two of my close friends into my home for an in-person couch conversation: Kyle Rand and Craig Baltes. We hang out, we’ve done small group together, and we’ve built a lot of life side-by-side (including our D&D livestream, Overworked Nerds). So this one feels less like an “episode” and more like you’re sitting in on the kind of conversation guys usually have when nobody’s recording. Craig is the Director of Partner Security at Aflac — deep in cybersecurity, leadership, and now AI — and he’s also a man of faith who’s walked through real personal restoration and the slow process of becoming who you actually are (not who you’re performing as). Kyle is a full-stack engineer working in AWS and infrastructure, and he’s also living in one of the most intense “life changed overnight” scenarios you can imagine: going from a small household to a family of seven after remarrying — and learning how to lead, parent, and stay grounded inside beautiful chaos. We talk about the kind of stuff that actually makes men better: Why “What do you do?” is a deeper question than people realize — and how work, purpose, and providing value shape identityFaith that isn’t performative, and what it looks like to come back to God when you’re in a real personal crisisJesus in Matthew as a table-flipping, authority-carrying King — and how the Sermon on the Mount is both an impossible standard and a blueprint for non-violent strengthParenting in a world where we’ve removed most real hardship… and now have to engineer difficulty just to stay humanWhy community matters more than ever as AI accelerates comfort, isolation, and “digital life” to dangerous levelsThe honest reality of modern pressure: screens, stress, responsibility, and trying to build a meaningful life without numbing out And… in the most painfully real moment possible, we had one microphone die near the end and lost about 15 minutes of what was honestly some of the best conversation. I still published the episode because Kyle and Craig are the kind of men worth listening to — imperfect, grounded, thoughtful, and genuinely trying to live out what they say they believe. If you’re a husband, a dad, a builder, a believer (or a skeptic), or just someone trying to become a more grounded human in a very synthetic world — this episode will feel like a breath of fresh air. We’re also on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5oou7RXcQ177Fgd2UmCtqO?si=19356ebbcad74d9a Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/better-humans/id1795206136
