After Tuesday, Elect to Listen
… To this Podcast (& Each Other)
“Thanks for calling, and so much love to you.”
“Thank you. I appreciate talking with you.”
The above exchange could be the conclusion to any number of phone calls. Maybe it’s an uncle and a distant nephew who haven’t seen each other since Thanksgiving of 2013, when Grandpa Jeb burned the turkey and crazy Aunt Lydia had all the cousins paint their thanks in garish blues and pinks across the decorative gourds she harvested herself. Maybe it’s a couple of old college friends, signing off after a long-awaited reminiscence on the alma mater and, my, how the times have changed, and aren’t we getting old?
In fact, this snatch of dialogue is lifted from an episode of the podcast Beautiful/Anonymous, hosted by comedian Chris Gethard. The podcast, which has been running since April, runs on a simple but unique premise. When Gethard is in the studio, he tweets out the show’s phone number, inviting his followers to call in. Once on the phone with Gethard, the caller has a full hour (“no more, no less”) to talk about anything they want (“no holds barred”). The catch? They are to reveal nothing about their identity — who they are, where they’re from — and in the inevitable event of a name or place slipping out, Gethard goes so far as to bleep out the information.
The effect is palpable — without any threat of exposure, Gethard’s callers are free and willing to bare all. Episodes range from informative (in “Passport, Exodus,” the caller, a lapsed Orthodox Jew, explains the details of kosher law and the challenge of leaving his faith) to heart-wrenching; in another episode, the caller divulges the horror of discovering her husband was a child molester. Whatever the tone of an episode, Gethard consistently proves himself a gifted listener, laughing and crying in all the right places, and, through his questions and good nature, actively working to make sure the caller has room to tell their story.
No episode puts Gethard’s good-natured listening skills to the test quite like episode 21, entitled “Make Fruit Baskets Great Again”. The conversation starts casually enough. Gethard and the caller, a middle-aged woman with an easy laugh and a tendency to say “Right” as Gethard talks, exchange pleasantries about the weather. When the caller asks Gethard how he’s doing, he says, “I’m pretty hungry. That describes me right now.” The conversation sputters. In desperation, they’ve resorted to talking about the conversation itself when, five minutes in, the caller asks, unprompted: “What do you think about Trump for president? How about that?” It’s as if politics were third on her list of go-to small-talk conversation starters. Though caught off-guard by her question, Gethard is quick to assert that Trump is, at best, a “confusing nightmare.” He then asks her what she thinks; she says, “Actually, I like him… He sounds like he’s someone with ‘oompf’ behind him.”
The political cat now out of the bag and on the prowl, the pair launch into a fervent discussion on nearly every possible topic to haunt a Thanksgiving table: ISIS and the refugee crisis, Trump’s treatment of women, Hillary’s record of lies, Benghazi, and Trump’s bewildering spray tan. On almost every point, Gethard and his caller land on opposite sides of the political spectrum, Gethard’s blue as far from the caller’s red as can be.
And yet, even though they share little ideologically, the two can’t help but laugh together. At one point, in an impassioned speech against ISIS, the caller says: “You just gotta stand up for yourself. You can’t give them love and peace and fruit baskets.” Struck by the phrasing, Gethard cracks up. The caller, far from getting offended, is quick to follow suit. “I don’t think there’s any world where our strategy in the Middle East is giving people fruit baskets,” Gethard rejoins. Later, when the caller starts chuckling over her daughter’s response to her politics (that she’s a terrible person for supporting Trump), Gethard comments, “I love that you cackle with glee as you say that.”
Caller: “Might as well laugh!”
Gethard: “If [crying’s] the other option, then I vote for laughing.”
As the conversation continues to unfold, Gethard starts to peel back the layers of the caller’s life, deepening their discussion from who’s a worse crook, Hillary or Trump, to the life of the caller herself. We learn that the caller spent 25 years married to a man who abused her emotionally and physically. We learn that when she faced health complications from her pregnancy, and she lost all function in her legs, her husband forced her to keep doing all the household chores — she had to drag herself around the house using only her arms to do his laundry. We learn about her daughter and son, and the battle she waged for their custody.
At one point, she says, “I was never allowed to open my mouth with him, so now it’s like, eh, what’s it going to hurt to open my mouth now? It’s just my opinion!” This prompts Gethard to proclaim enthusiastically: “I have disagreed with almost everything you have said today, but that being said, I am f — in’ psyched that you’re allowed to say it, that you’re bold, and that you’re catching up on your right to say it.” By the end of the conversation, now freely flowing from the political to the personal and back again, Gethard bursts with gratitude for the caller, thanking her again and again.
In an election cycle steeped in vitriol, scandal, and utter bemusement, in the face of America’s divided Twitter feeds, its Facebook politics, and the news that’s written just for you, we’ve lost sight of our shared human dignity. Both sides have proven themselves master artists at painting the other side as monstrous, deplorable — not worth the time of day, let alone respectful attention. Gethard’s conversation with this anonymous Trump supporter shines as a beacon of empathy in a wasteland of hate speech and disdain.
Tomorrow, after your “I Voted” sticker is charmingly affixed to your chest or forehead, after the polls have closed and the results pour in, and you know whose name will follow “President” and precede “Administration” for the next four years, follow in Gethard and his caller’s footsteps. Place yourself in the path of someone who voted differently from you, and walk beside them a while. I can promise you that it won’t be easy. At times, you will be so angry, you’ll want to tear your hair out, and theirs, too.
But as you listen, and as you disagree, you may learn what Gethard learned about his caller: that no front-yard sign or bumper sticker can change the truth that shared humanity matters far more deeply than unshared politics. Along the way, you may find yourself saying to those who disagree with you what Gethard said to his caller by the episode’s end — “You and I do not agree, but I vehemently am into your right to say it. I got your back… Thank you for calling, and so much love to you.”
