I’ve been using this online tracker to track my offline time.
Austin, Texas is heavy with grief today after the harrowing realization that two of its most prolific podcasters shared nearly an hour of masculine riffing that will never be monetized.
Mike (host of the Mike’s Manliness) and Luke (host of the Life with Luke) spoke in the lobby of the local sauna and cold plunge studio and were horrified to realize that neither of them had brought a boom arm mic or a backup Zoom recorder.
Luke later spoke to reporters.
“I knew Mike from when he went on Chris’s podcast and he knew me from when I went on Joe’s podcast but we just had never really connected. I really wanted to talk to Mike about how to balance a consistent 5-step nighttime protocol while also staying present as a businessman, husband, podcaster, and father.”
Mike declined to share the full details of the conversation but confirmed that “matcha” came up more than once — specifically when combined with creatine and immediately following testicular red light therapy. Mike also noted that the two bonded over one of their common interests — Navy SEALs.
“We talked about Navy SEALs for at least 10 minutes,” Mike said. “What happened was Luke went on Steve’s podcast, who was a Navy SEAL — ”A Team Guy” — and they riffed on Andy and Mark’s conversation about morning routines when Joe had the two of them on his podcast. The big takeaway? Unracking the bar at zero seven hundred hours. Full stop.”
Both men confirmed that the conversation turned toward optimization or rather — how sometimes the best way to optimize is to stop trying to optimize. Here’s Luke again.
“There’s a lot of research about living life offline,” Luke explained. “So we really went down a rabbit hole about what it even means to be online or offline anymore, ya know? I came away with some great ideas that I think I’m going to do a solo podcast about.”
Reporters then addressed the elephant in the room: a 55-minute, face-to-face conversation that was never recorded.
“Yeah,” Mike said. “We really lost a lot of long-form content. Honestly, it’s been tough to process. Luckily, Luke and I did talk through some protocols for handling grief as a man in 2025, so I’ll probably dive into that for my next solo episode.”
Mike added that legal options were briefly explored.
“We did try to do a court order to get the audio/video footage from the sauna and cold plunge studio,” he said. “But they told us we didn’t have standing. We’ll see about that. My brother-in- law is a divorce attorney in California and says that’s bullshit and he’s going to do an episode on his podcast about it.”
Luke, however, described the experience as unexpectedly restorative.
“It was actually nice to just talk,” Luke said. “I’ve been using this online tracker to track my offline time and that’s 55 minutes in the plus column. I also came away with some great thoughts on the importance of being present and unrecorded — that I’m probably going to record.”
When asked whether the two plan to sit down for a recorded conversation in the future, Mike confirmed that something is already in the works. A teaser clip is expected to drop later this week, with the full conversation available exclusively to paid subscribers.
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