Opinion
The conversation was recorded October 6, 2026. The episode was published November 4, 2026.
Lee Gottsch and Michael Starr Hopkins talk about getting the life they were taught to want, then finding their friends too far away to enjoy it with them. They describe the familiar instructions to chase money and buy the house. In their IT MATTERS conversation, the reward comes with an awkward detail: 3,500 square feet, but not enough people nearby to watch football on Sunday.
In the opening exchange, less square footage looks like a fair trade for more friends living close by. A real estate listing can tell you the size of the living room. It cannot tell you whether anybody you love will be sitting in it.
The frustration reaches beyond this conversation. The U.S. surgeon general’s 2023 advisory on social connection reported that surveys found roughly half of U.S. adults experienced loneliness. That is a finding described in 2023, not a fresh count for 2026. A bigger house cannot answer the question of who will come over.
Lee and Michael met in college and lived together more than once. Their friendship has room for long gaps; they describe being able to pick things up after a year without much conversation. They also disagree about plenty of politics. The friendship survives both.
Knowing somebody over years gives you more to work with than the last opinion that annoyed you. You can challenge an argument without reducing the person making it to that argument.
A friendship worth keeping should be able to bear an honest disagreement. That asks something of both people. You have to listen closely enough to answer what your friend believes, and care enough to keep talking when agreement would be easier. Winning an argument and keeping a friend ought to fit inside the same idea of a successful life.
The conversation returns to Sunday dinners that faded. Put those dinners beside the opening complaint about the house, and the missing part of the bargain becomes clear. A place to gather matters less if gathering keeps getting postponed. Sunday dinner deserves a place in the accounting, right alongside whatever the house is worth.
A regular meal with people you care about is already a substantial ambition. It deserves some of the planning and protection that go into acquiring more space. Otherwise, the life being built can leave very little time for the people meant to share it.
Fatherhood makes the question of success harder to dodge. In the conversation, Michael talks about wanting to raise a good person. That ambition asks more than a question about what a child will earn. It asks how that child will treat somebody else.
A good person has obligations that a successful résumé cannot fulfill. Decency has to survive inconvenience. Friendship has to survive some disagreement. If those things count, then the definition of doing well has to make room for them before everything else has used up the week.
Listen to the full IT MATTERS episode with Lee Gottsch.
The house should make room for your life, not become the thing you have instead.