The Monday After (Podcast)

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themondayafter2025.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themondayafter2025.substack.com/subscribe

This wasn’t supposed to be the episode. It started as a Tuesday leftovers show, the stuff Ryan, Ashton, and guest Sarah Mueller didn’t get to the day before, the gossip that didn’t make the cut. But somewhere between the ex-wife jokes and the vodka metaphors, the conversation turned into something realer: three people, three very different dating histories, trying to answer the question nobody on a dating app actually wants to sit with. What does it take to find true love when everyone’s lying about their height, their intentions, or both?Ashton opens with the story that sets the tone for the whole hour: a Bumble date who claimed six feet and delivered something closer to five-nine, best case. Ryan, a former basketball player who’s spent his whole life around measuring tape and rosters that round up, doesn’t let it go — if a guy lies about something that obvious on date one, he says, that’s not vanity, that’s a preview. “What else is he lying about?” And that question becomes the spine of the episode. Because the stories that follow aren’t really about height, or bad matches, or ghosting. They’re about the gap between what people say they want and what they’re actually willing to give.That gap gets a name about twenty minutes in — Ashton calls it out first, Sarah backs her up — the guy who wants the girlfriend treatment without being the boyfriend. Ryan pushes back, then doesn’t, then tells on himself a little: dinner at Coquette, a hundred-dollar plate of lamb chops, a date he called a friend hangout right up until she mentioned an ex-boyfriend, and suddenly it wasn’t a friend hangout at all. Ashton doesn’t let him off easy. “You’re describing a date and then calling her a friend. That’s a mixed signal you’re sending.” It’s the funniest exchange in the episode and also the most honest — because Ryan actually sits in it instead of laughing it off.From there it spirals in every direction a real conversation does: the three-page questionnaire a guy sent Ashton trying to sort her into wife, girlfriend, or hookup before so much as saying hello. The Reddit thread about a man weighing whether to break up with his girlfriend over something she couldn’t control in her sleep. The stat about a third of twenty-five-to-thirty-two-year-olds not having sex at all, and whether that’s about attraction, exhaustion, or something else entirely. A story involving a parking lot, a police officer, and a location choice bad enough that even the room agreed it shouldn’t have been said on air. Somewhere in the middle of all of it, Sarah says the line that might be the real thesis of the episode: she doesn’t want the first thing about her to be judged on appearance, and that’s exactly why dating apps don’t work for her — not because she’s picky, but because the format itself asks the wrong question first.Nobody lands on an answer. That’s the point. What you get instead is three people who’ve each been burned differently, laughing about it because the alternative is bitterness, and occasionally landing on something that sounds less like a joke and more like the truth: that most people aren’t looking for perfect, they’re looking for someone who doesn’t lie about the little things — because the little things are never actually little. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themondayafter2025.substack.com/subscribe

Tonight on The Monday After: Taylor Frankie Paul was too messy for network television in March. By November, apparently, she’s exactly messy enough — ABC has resurrected her long-buried Bachelorette season, and somehow she’s also locked in a new deal for Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Eight months ago this woman was radioactive. Now she’s got two shows. We’re asking the question nobody at Disney wants asked out loud: what, precisely, changed? (Spoiler: nothing changed. The calendar did.)Then we go somewhere heavier — and somewhere the internet has strong, deeply unqualified opinions. Lindsay Clancy is on trial for killing her three children, and while the actual courtroom sorts out actual evidence, TikTok’s wine-mom commentariat has appointed itself judge, jury, and character witness — for Patrick. Ryan’s not interested in the astrology-chart theories. He’s got his own read on what happened in that house, and he’s saying it flat, no hedge, no “allegedly.”Plus: Ashton’s grab bag (a fraud professor, a womanhood debate nobody asked for, and a farewell nobody wanted to write), and the return of Burn Line — new number, zero excuses not to use it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themondayafter2025.substack.com/subscribe

This week's episode covers a lot of ground, but it's really one question asked five different ways: who gets graded on a curve, and who doesn't. The WNBA spent another week proving it would rather manage optics than answer anything directly — a flagrant foul, a suspended team co-owner, a league office still allergic to defining its own rules. Courtney Clenney walked out of a Miami courtroom with six years for killing her boyfriend, and we sit with what that number actually means. A rapid-fire grab bag hits four smaller versions of the same pattern — due process, performance, leverage. Ashton brings a pick I didn't get to preview. And I close the show pointing my own five-pattern framework at my own relationship history instead of somebody else's, for the first time on this show. Accountability isn't a mood. It's what you do when nobody's watching. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themondayafter2025.substack.com/subscribe

From the studio. Special guests TBA. When you do you stop paying the tab for your ex. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themondayafter2025.substack.com/subscribe