You're listening ad-free on Amazon music.

Just a reminder that Big M. Little Mood with Daniel M. Lavery happens twice a week.

Slate Plus members get an additional mini-episode or Little Big Mood every Friday.

Sign up now to listen at slate.com slash mood. Hello and welcome back to Big Mood Little Mood.

I am your host, Danny Amlavery, and with me in the studio this week is Tracy Leads Kaplan, the founder of small but mighty media, and the executive producer of The 10 News.

Tracy, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Great to be here.

I'm so looking forward to having you here.

I just mentioned before we started the show that I've been really fixated lately on an old ad from a 1919 edition of a no longer existing magazine called Farm and Fireside.

That was called I am the pony king of America.

I am giving away ponies. And I really, really just wish we could go back to advertising like that in this country. I kind of want a pony now. I mean, it was so, so beautifully done, too.

It was just like really capitalized on. It felt like someone took seriously, you know how some diners

will have like a joky sign that's like unattended children will be given free espresso and a puppy? Right, right. It felt like that, but like utterly

sincere and by someone who is like, I will do this. Everyone deserves a pony. Do not let anyone

tell you this is impossible. I will make it happen. Yeah, I think we all deserve a pony. We also,

um, I'll deserve the puppy and the espresso too. Yeah. Yeah. And just like just the idea that you could like write to a magazine and for like a certain amount of money, you could just let it be known. I'm called the pony king of America because I've given away so many Shetland ponies to boys and girls. I have already given away more than 500 ponies and I want to give away

more. And I don't know why, but I feel like that's the attitude I want to try to take into our questions today is just the attitude of a man who's already known as the Pony King of America, has a lot of ponies to give away and is ready to start doing it. So I don't know if that feels like an appropriate attitude for you, but that's what I'm going to be starting with.

I love it. I'm just trying to think now what the TikTok hashtag would be. Hashtag pony king, hashtag I need a pony. I think this could have legs. I think it absolutely could. And now I actually feel bad because our sort of first question is sort of fraught and a pony wouldn't help the situation at all. So I will try to switch gears and just get into our first question, the subject of which is

worry warrior. A friend of mine, Rich, moved to another city with his new partner, Carla, in 2019.

I have since moved to a different country, so we haven't seen each other since before the pandemic. Rich is in his early 40s while I'm in my early 30s. I know him as a kind, shy, slightly

anxious person. In the past few months, Carla, who I've never met, has posted about Rich going

missing three times on Instagram. It goes like this. Rich will leave the house without his phone after an

...