The Mango Times Origin Story

This bonus episode of The Mango Times Podcast comes from an interview I recently had with Kevin Delaney. During the interview, he asked about the origin of The Mango Times. I kept it simple and pulled that audio to make a simple episode for my listeners.

This bonus drop is the raw origin story, pulled straight from a conversation and left unpolished on purpose.

From early blogging days to a homeschool podcast where we chose the hard topics instead of the safe ones, I walk through the pivots that brought me here, including the long pursuit of a conversation with Josh Harris (I Kissed Dating Goodbye) and what that moment taught me about harm, apology, and honesty. If you care about storytelling, starting a podcast, or building community without pretending you have it all figured out, you’ll hear how one small creative habit can compound into something bigger than you planned.

We also dig into the heart of the show: adventure at midlife. I push back on the shallow “midlife crisis” label, talk about motorcycles as just one expression of a lifelong pattern of exploring, and share what grief, 2020, and disillusionment with broken institutions did to my sense of direction. The thread that keeps me grounded is what my wife calls a “ministry of conversation” making space for people who are hungry for real connection.

New feature: You can now text me or leave a one-minute voicemail, and I can drop your voice into a future episode. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s reinventing themselves, and leave a review then tell me: what project are you finally ready to start?
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Guest Information
No Guests This Episode

Resources and Links
A Brief History of The Mango Times

Music used in this episode:
All music in this episode is licensed for use through Epidemic Sound.

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Transcript

Quick Break And Bonus Setup

Fletch 0:02

Welcome to the Mango Times Podcast. Hey, welcome to the Mango Times Podcast where we talk about adventure at midlife. This is your host Fletch, and I just wanted to let you know we're taking a little break this week. Uh nothing big, just a little breather between episodes. We're about a quarter of the way through the year, and I didn't want to leave you hanging, so this is a bonus episode. This actually came out of a recent conversation I had on a previous podcast with my friend Kevin Delaney. If you remember, that was episode number 57 called Doctors Said He Had 24 Hours to Live. It was about Kevin's midlife awakening after a major health scare. And it just he happened to ask me a question. He said, Hey, where did the Mango Times come from? And I realized I don't think I've ever really told that story all the way through here on the podcast. Um, I've done it, you know, on the blog, I've written about it. You can find the details if you search long enough. And I thought it would be pretty fun if I went into the whole story about, you know, how it started as email and then a blog and then all these weird podcast phases. So instead of recording something new, I just pulled that piece out of that conversation. And what you're about to hear is the real answer. As it happened, as Kevin asked me the question, I just answered. There's no polish, there's no cleanup, it's just the story. So if you've ever wondered where this whole thing started, this is it, the Mango Times.

The Question Behind The Name

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Tell me what made you do it and you know, play with it, not from any standpoint of signing up for another weekly thing, but uh what's been the best and worst part about starting

Email Newsletter Born In 1995

SPEAKER_01 1:48

a podcast?

Fletch 1:48

Well, the this started 12 years ago. So, you know, I've I've been through I'm not sure, Kevin, if you know it was the newsletter first. Well, it was the Mango Times. So it started off as I went in 1995, I moved to an Indian reservation in Northern California, and I wrote an email home to family and friends. And Jimmy Buffett had a newsletter called the Coconut Telegraph. So I'm like, oh, the Mango Times. And so I just was like, this is the fishing report, this is what we're doing, these are what the kids are doing. And I would always try and put some humor into it. And then I got home and people were like, Oh, I missed the Mango Times. I'm like, oh, well, I'll I'll do it once a month. And then I was at a wedding sometime, it's a random wedding, and somebody's like, Hey, are you Fletch? You write the Mango Times. I'm like, Hmm, yeah, I guess I do. And then I had a buddy who was he's kind of been my my tech creative muse throughout life. We bought our first apples together, the whole thing. Like we've just been like this week we talked about codecs and you know how to and just how to use chat better and blah, blah, blah. So we

Turning Mango Times Into A Website

Fletch 2:48

bought computers. We he's like, you could put it on a website. Like, oh, sweet. So I did a website, and then blogging was big. We were really involved in the Christian homeschool mus movement, so I had a Christian homeschool blog, then I started a blog, then and then somebody asked my wife to do a podcast on homeschooling, on Christian homeschooling, and we were I was super edgy, and I'm like, why don't we talk about

Homeschool Podcast And Hard Topics

Fletch 3:12

real topics? Like not about Christian homeschooling. Like anything that homeschoolers were afraid to talk about, we talked about. And we talked about it openly, crazy. And that went on and we were falling I was falling farther and farther away from Christian homeschooling. And so there were two things that happened. There was the the sex list that came out where people were worried if they were on the sex list, like Angie's list. It was not it wasn't Angie's list, but it was something like that. And there were some Christian homeschoolers that ended up on it. And I'm like, let's talk about it. That's a great topic. And then are you familiar with

Josh Harris Story And A Turning Point

Fletch 3:50

the Josh Harris guy? I kissed dating goodbye.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

No.

Fletch 3:54

Okay, so he wrote a book called I Kiss Dating Goodbye. It became like a mantra book for Christian homeschoolers about not dating and about courtship. And Josh Harris eventually just walked away from it all and got a divorce. And like, you know, when you get a divorce in the Christian community, you're a pariah and you shouldn't even talk to people anymore. You shouldn't even be involved. And I'm like, no, let's talk to this guy. Well, this woman wrote on Twitter, she's like, never got to go to my senior prom. Thanks, Josh Harris. And he wrote back in the public atmosphere, I'm so sorry that my words hurt you. And I'm like, that's a story. So we pursued him and he wouldn't talk to us. And I'm like, dude, we're actually on your side. So it took a year, and then finally his manager's like, Hey, Josh wants to talk out loud about this. So we had him on on like our final episode. So I had all this great equipment, I had microphones, I knew kind of what I was doing.

The Early Solo Podcast Experiments

Fletch 4:52

I'm like, I'm gonna do my own podcast, and it was just stupid, dude. It was just me being a dork online. I mean, just nonsense. And then I wrote this thing called the Fletch Festo, which is like my manifest for life, and I just went through each point. And I thought, I'm gonna bring guests on.

Defining Midlife Adventure And Crisis

Fletch 5:08

So I did that. And then last year it was kind of talking about adventure, but I kept feeling this pull to say, let's talk about adventure at midlife. Let's talk about what a midlife crisis is. Because I bought motorcycles and people are like, Oh, you're having a midlife crisis. I'm like, I don't think you know what that means. So I argued with what a midlife crisis was with just saying, I've always lived a life of adventure. Currently, I'm really enjoying motorcycles. I used to be hiking and camping up in the middle of the Sierra, and it still is. I'm just adding new things to it, just continue to live life. So the podcast that's kind of where the podcast

Grief 2020 And Finding Community

Fletch 5:44

came from. And then this year, then my mom died last January, she was 93. And I hadn't been creative for a lot of years. I had just been doing like dentistry and church and just hit a crisis. I'm still in the middle of a crisis in a not a midlife, but just not sure where I'm going, well what I'm doing, and I'm totally comfortable where we are. I'm I my wife and I tended to we dropped into it at the same time. And yeah, it's you know, we we went through 2020, we saw a church blow up and people behave nonsensically to me, like within the church. I had a friend that or my brother-in-law died of cancer at the time when we were really hoping people would wear masks, and I'm like, he's he was immunocompromised. I'm like, he he can't get sick. Like, this is a thing, and it's a real thing. I have a son with a brain injury from a virus. To me, it was a real thing, like it was palpable. I was living with the effects of a virus every day, still do. And so we just saw churches that weren't behaving very well, and then what I found was a community outside of the church that was behaving a hell of a lot better. And then last year I stumbled into or five years ago, four years ago, I stumbled

Improv Stand-Up And Creative Return

Fletch 7:02

into improv and started doing improv. Love it. And then I tried doing a little stand-up, and I found out that, like you, there are some things I let out into the world that I'm like, can't get that back. But so I've been doing a little bit of all that, and that's kind of where this came from. That's

Why The Show Exists Now

Fletch 7:18

it's just to me, it's just a hobby project. This year I've decided to do kind of go outside of my world, find people like you, and then I'm really hoping that other people will just lead me to other people. Like, hey, you know who you should talk to is this person. And then I go through the contact and find this person's so that's kind of where this all led to. Yeah. And I'm hoping it's entertaining to people. I hope people like it. And so far, the feedback and the growth of this year has been just straight up.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

That's so cool. I love uh Kendra saying it was a ministry of conversation. That's just a great phrase.

Fletch 7:53

Dude, I literally have it in front of me right now. It's like that's what you do, Fletch.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

That is coinable, that is something that is got legs.

Fletch 8:01

Yeah. I'm not intentionally pointing anybody anywhere. I'm just making space to have communication and I'm finding that that's what

Family Chaos And Showing Up

Fletch 8:09

people love. People are looking for community.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

Yeah, I agree.

Fletch 8:12

Whether it's a community group, I used to run community groups at church, but whether it's community groups in a church setting or it's a bunch of guys at the cigar club, they're just looking for a place to hang out with other people. So and I mean I have a gift of eight kids. So there's never not a time when it's chaotic, noisy community conversation. And like I've raised some great humans, dude. Not at all what I thought they were gonna be. Like life choices and you know, where they are and what they're doing. I just I wouldn't have guessed this. But I'm so glad they didn't become what I was putting them in a box to become because it's just so much fun from from music to entertainment to just you know, showing up. You know, I had one son with a brain tumor during COVID, and that was crazy, it was a stressful part of life. But to see the whole family suddenly end up at UCSF, and they came from all four corners of the globe to be there for their brother. Like, I didn't create, I mean, yes, we created that, but it wasn't like we didn't have a dinner every night, and like, don't forget, if somebody gets sick, we all show up. It's just they just loved each other that much.

Leave A Voicemail To Join In

Fletch 9:32

Alright, folks, that's the story. That's how the Mango Tines went from being an email to well, whatever this is now. And honestly, it's still morphing a little bit. I'm I'm still trying to figure out what this podcast is supposed to be, and that's kind of the point of midlife adventure. Hey, here's a quick heads up. There's something new that we are trying out. If you look in the show notes, just slide down the app, you can now see that you can send me a text or a voicemail. And here's the fun part. If you leave a voicemail, I can actually drop your voice into the show. It's basically like calling into a radio show, which I think could get really interesting and could become really fun really fast. So if you have a thought, if you have a question, if you have a story, or you know someone I should talk to, you can send however long of a text message you want to, but on the voicemail you're limited to one minute. So send it my way, and who knows, you may hear your voice on the Mango Times podcast. Alright, I will be back soon with more conversation. I look forward to telling you the story about a husband and wife team that decided to open an independent bookstore at MidLife. I look forward to talking to you about a teacher who decided to become a farmer in urban St. Louis. And I look forward to talking to you about a teacher who's facing retirement and has questions, and we're gonna work those out together. Until then, climb on board and let's get out there and quietly make some noise.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

I love the theme, you know, midlife adventure. Sounds like the title of a book. Adventure at midlife, yeah. Keep doing what you're doing. I love the ministry of conversation. So, brother. Later. Take care.