A conversational interview in which Josh Radnor describes how getting a dog (Nelson) transformed his emotional life by providing unconditional love and teaching caregiving and presence. Radnor recounts the recommendation from an astrologer to get a dog to be loved for no reason, vivid early caregiving moments (night wakings, cleaning up after the dog), and the bittersweet awareness of limited time with a pet. Connor Beaton and Radnor then broaden the topic to human relationships—how unconditional love challenges conditional, achievement-based notions of worth, especially for many men socialized to "earn" value—and the importance of relationships, community, and service as stabilizing life anchors.
Chapters
And the pivotal thing I had mentioned to you was getting my dog, Nelson.
Yeah.
Speaking of astrology, a friend of mine got me an astrology session with his teacher. Who do you know? James Hillman.
Oh, yeah?
Yeah. So his son Lawrence is a really amazing astrologer. Lawrence Hillman. And he's not woo woo. He's not a prophet. He's not predictive. He talks in archetypes. Like, he talks in a very Jungian language. Awesome. Incredible. Right? So I had this really powerful session with him, and he asked me if I had a dog. And I said no. I. I said I was. I've been allergic my whole life, you know? And he said, could you get a hypoallergenic dog? And I said, probably. And he said, I think it would be a very good idea for you to get a dog. And I said, why? Why is that? And he said, it would be very good for you to be loved by something for no reason.
And I immediately logged it away. And a couple months later, I. I started, you know, this kind of search and I ended up with this, you know. Nelson. Yeah. You know Nelson. Well, you saw Nelson. You spent a lot of time with Nelson his first year of his life.
I did, yeah. Yeah. Your.
Your wife, Vienna, one of her favorite things on the earth is to pick the black gunk out of Nelson's eyes.
The boogers.
The eye boogers. She loves it.
She's like such a. She's such a mom.
I know.
She's so good at that.
I know. She got mad when I would do it. She was like, that's my job.
Yeah. Do not steal this from me. Yeah.
But.
Nelson has radically altered my life. And.
I remember two things. One, I was very nervous about the first week when they were like, you have to run him downstairs every two or three hours. And I thought I was going to be so angry that my sleep was. And I just woke up so effortlessly and I scooped him up and I remember the feeling of holding. He was so little, you know, walking him downstairs in the middle of the night. And it was so tender. This. Yeah. And it was so beautiful. And I was out in the, you know, cold, like, waiting for him to go, and he would just look up at me. And my friend Ed says.
He said, we love babies because we clean up their poop. We love dogs because we clean up their poop. Anything. We clean up their poop, we love. You know, so weird. And it's. It is weird, but the truth is going back to that kind of thing of like, we want to be Dethroned. Like. Like, part of my pain as I was getting older was I was too focused on myself. I didn't have another thing outside myself that I was really paying attention to. And Nelson, all he does is love me back. But I feed him, I walk him, I clean up his poop. I do. You know, I do all these things, and it's just this. I get this deep love back. I get this shattering heart expansion. And the other thing about Nelson is that you get a dog. And part of the. The gift of a dog is you get the 10 to 15 years. Right. Like, you don't get 30, 40 years.
Yeah.
You get what you get.
Yeah.
And the moment I fell in love with this dog, which was very fast.
I can make myself cry just thinking about what you described with Bronx, like, the moment of goodbye and how much, like, I'll have to. Sorry. Like, how much I'll have to thank him for, you know? And I used to never understand when people get emotional about their pets. I was like, I wasn't an animal person until this dog just showed me, like, what that relationship can be. And also, like, what a teacher, you know, what a teacher of, like, loving for no reason. Because I. I think, like a lot of people, I learned a very conditional love. I thought I had to be excellent, Perform, perform, achieve to get love. And Nelson doesn't care if I book a big job or, like, he doesn't care. He's just excited I'm home.
Yeah.
You know, and there's something so sweet and achingly sweet about that, you know, and that he's going away, that he won't be here forever. And it's just like, what a teacher.
Yeah.
You know, what a teaching. Like a ferocious teaching.
Yeah. I love that notion of getting loved for no reason, you know, for no reason whatsoever. I feel like the moments that have in some ways defined my marriage and my relationship.
Have been these moments where I've either been loved in a moment where I thought I should. I didn't deserve it.
Yeah.
You know, or I've been loved for no reason whatsoever. It's like, oh, I didn't do anything, or. Yeah, there's not a.
This isn't impressive.
Loving me for no reason. It's not because I'm performing well or whatever it is. And vice versa, you know, where I've been. Where I've been conscious enough to actually give that to. To Vienna. And it's. It's something that I feel like we're all craving for, you know, at our cores is just that Sense of I belong. And I belong just because.
Yeah.
And I think part of the challenge that I see with a lot of men is there's this narrative out in modern society that says women are born with value and men aren't and men have to build their value. And I see this pushed out through certain channels quite a bit.
Almost saying, like, you as a man, don't have value until you've earned it. And I think that that value is different from the status that is often being talked about. But, yeah, it kind of breaks my heart a little bit to know that there's a lot of men that are out there who have probably been very successful, had a lot of achievements or maybe done nothing and have never experienced that getting loved for no reason, or if they did, they rejected it because they are under this spell that says you have to have done something in order to be valuable, in order to then receive love.
Right. But then you do something that by all accounts, by society standards, should secure you.
Yeah.
That love. And you don't feel it.
Right.
And in fact, like me, you feel more despairing than ever. I mean, I think that a relationship at its best, a good relationship, and there's no such thing as a perfect relationship, just a really healthy. Rooted in. In the kind of good, honest stuff. It'll. It helps rewrite some of these terrible scripts in our heads.
Yeah.
You know, my girlfriend says this great thing, that family is the only thing you get to do twice. You know, the first one you didn't have much of a say in, and the second one, you get to have a little, you know, you get to have more say a little bit here, a little bit. Not all of it.
It's a collaboration here and there.
Yeah. But. But I think we have to rewrite some of this stuff because.
You know, it's. It's. It's also like, I think there's a lot of wounded, hurting men out there who think, when I get this, I'll finally feel happy or I can get the kind of woman I want. And in some ways, you won't believe me when I tell you that won't be actually the case. So you actually have to do it. You have to get it. You have to go out, you hunt, you do the thing, you come back with the. The spoils. And. And maybe for a. It does work for a little while. Like, I don't want to say it doesn't work at all. Like, there's a kick. I mean, but it's a bit of a drug. Right. Like, you spike up and then you crash. Yeah, I. I just think that there are sturdier things, too. And not to say we shouldn't work or strive or succeed, I'm. I'm for those things, but there are sturdier things to kind of put our, you know, throw our lot in with and. And relationship and love and community and service and dogs and, you know, all that stuff is so, so good.
