Fried Grief (S4E4)

And everywhere I am.

[upbeat music] I want you to hold me.

I don't want you to open me.

I've been sitting with those words and with a question that's becoming increasingly uncomfortable for me.

What am I doing here? Not just in this conversation.

Here, behind this microphone, asking people to come into a sanctuary for the wild ones, inviting them to bring their stories, their grief, their vulnerability Their beautiful, unruly selves.

And then turning those encounters into something we can listen to, something we can share, something we can call a podcast.

I wonder when listening becomes another kind of taking, when curiosity becomes extraction, when the invitation to be vulnerable begins to sound suspiciously like a request to perform.

Tell me what hurts.

Tell me what happened.

Give me something real, something moving, something worth broadcasting.

And I have to ask myself, how different is that from a boss lifting a work ticket above his desk and letting it fall? The gesture is different.

The room's different.

The language is certainly different.

But the bargain, what will you give me? What can I make of it? What is it worth? Those questions are alive in me too.

I want this show to matter.

I want these conversations to matter.

I want to make something beautiful.

And I want people to listen.

And yes, I want to be seen as someone who can make something beautiful.

There it is.

The performance of usefulness.

Even here.

Especially here.

There is a moment in today's conversation when someone says they want to come back to this podcast, even without a good story, just as they are.