Free Will Burning
A podcast about survival, reinvention, music, culture, and what comes next.
Free Will Burning is a podcast and video project hosted by brothers Steve R. Patterson and Troy Patterson.
The show began as a conversation between two Gen X brothers who both survived liver transplants and rebuilt their lives after years of illness, chaos, recovery, and change. It has grown into a broader conversation about survival, health, music, culture, technology, masculinity, aging, memory, freedom, and adaptation.
Free Will Burning is not a polished performance brand and not a narrow political show. It is an honest conversation project about what happens when people outlive the life they expected to have and have to figure out what comes next.
Watch Free Will Burning on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@SRPValkyrie
What the Show Covers
Free Will Burning moves across the subjects that shaped Steve and Troy’s lives and continue to shape the world around them.
- Gen X life, memory, and adaptation
- Liver transplant, illness, survival, and recovery
- Heavy metal, classic rock, Grateful Dead culture, and music history
- Masculinity, aging, family, identity, and reinvention
- AI, digital culture, online life, and technology change
- Health systems, medical survival, and rebuilding after collapse
- Expat life, freedom, cost of living, and starting over
- Politics and culture without turning the show into a campaign machine
- Old stories, road stories, work stories, and the strange comedy of surviving long enough to look back
Why It Exists
Free Will Burning is built around a simple idea: many people reach the middle or later part of life and realize the world they were prepared for no longer exists.
Steve and Troy talk from inside that reality. They are not selling fantasy, perfection, or easy answers. They are talking as men who have been sick, broke, lost, addicted, angry, changed, and still here.
The show is about adaptation. It is about what people do after the old map fails. It is about finding language for the second half of life without pretending the first half made sense.
Steve and Troy
Steve R. Patterson is a writer, digital media pioneer, Army veteran, liver transplant survivor, recovery educator, and creator of Healing Pathways. He founded UGASports.com in 1997 and has worked remotely and independently since the 1990s.
Troy Patterson brings his own history of survival, recovery, humor, hard experience, music, family, work, and transplant life into the conversation. His stories and perspective are central to the show’s raw, unscripted character.
Together, Steve and Troy bring the sound of two brothers who have lived enough life to stop pretending.
Not Just a Transplant Podcast
Liver transplant is part of the story, but Free Will Burning is not limited to transplant content.
The transplant experience gives the show its backbone: survival, mortality, gratitude, anger, medical systems, second chances, and the blunt reality of having to rebuild. But the conversation moves far beyond that into culture, memory, music, technology, work, relationships, and the future.
For Gen X — and Anyone Who Feels Out of Place
Free Will Burning began with a strong Gen X frame, and that remains part of the show’s identity. Steve and Troy came of age in a world of garage bands, muscle cars, cassette tapes, MTV, metal, classic rock, bad jobs, latchkey childhoods, analog friendships, and no internet safety net.
But the show is not only for Gen X men. It is for anyone who feels out of place in the modern script, anyone rebuilding after illness or collapse, and anyone trying to adapt without surrendering their sense of self.
Watch the Show
YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@SRPValkyrie
New episodes, clips, live conversations, and related material are published through the Free Will Burning YouTube channel.
Related Work
- StevePatterson.online — Steve’s central hub for books, media projects, essays, digital legacy, and public work.
- Wind and Raven — the public home for Healing Pathways, illness archive, videos, and reflections.
- Valkyrie Counseling Group — the professional home for facilitator education and recovery-oriented group resources.
Contact
For podcast, media, collaboration, or project inquiries: