A Beginner’s Guide to Beautiful Anonymous

In 2016, I started a podcast where the premise was I’d tweet out a phone number and talk to whomever called for a full hour straight. I forfeited the ability to hang up. I figured it would be a funny podcast where I’d get prank called by weirdos.

Instead, this project has transformed my life by becoming a weekly tribute to empathy, openness, and honesty. People have shared their lives, one by one, in a way that truly makes me feel like the world is a smaller place, and that people are people, and that everyone has a story worth telling. Some people share experiences as mundane as “I am currently walking around in the aisles of a Target” or “I am currently on a SEPTA train outside of Philadelphia”. Others share stories as deep and complex as, “I was sucked into a mysterious religious cult and managed to escape” or “I am watching a relative of mine who has Alzheimer’s degrade and want to share the experience.”

It can be anything on any given day. It transforms constantly. Even I don’t know what I’m getting into at the beginning of the episodes, and quite often the callers wind up sharing things they didn’t expect to tell me either.

I love it.

I’m also trying to be less self-deprecating about my work moving forward, less apologetic, so I’ll just put this out there: I think the show is great, and I…