I was listening to Chuck Tingle and McKenzie Goodwin’s podcast My Friend Chuck this morning and thinking about how much I enjoy their introductory banter. It got me to thinking about podcast intros and how divisive they can be. Some people love them, some people hate them. I think what it comes down to, really, is whether you listen to podcasts more for their content (and therefore you mainly think of them as a conduit for delivering that content) or whether you listen to them more for their personalities. Obviously, there is a lot of overlap. I think most listeners respond to the hosts on a personal level, and want the hosts to be interesting or genial or entertaining. And I think most people also want the content to be compelling. But I think it’s a meaningful distinction and one worth thinking about when considering what kind of show you want to make and what kind of audience you hope to attract.

The most common complaint I hear about podcast intros is that they are a waste of time, that people don’t want to hear all the “blah blah blah,” and would rather just skip straight to the good stuff. I think that makes sense if you’re listening mainly for content. I think in extreme cases, this kind of listener might think of the hosts as incidental or interchangeable—it’s not the host that matters, it’s everything else. That’s a bit reductive, of course, because I think most people understand on some level that the host’s style and demeanor and the qualities of their voice does make a difference in how the rest of the content is framed and delivered.

On the other hand, there are listeners who don’t mind intro monologues or banter, or who actively enjoy such. And I think this speaks to another aspect of podcasting people talk about a lot, which is the intimacy, and the relationship between listener and show/host. You hear this all the time, right? How having a podcaster’s voice in your head on a regular basis makes them a part of your inner life. How it almost feels like you’re friends or even family, even though intellectually you know that you’ve never met or even spoken.

Again, I do think there’s a lot of overlap here, because many people who dislike intros can still feel that relationship or connection to a show or its hosts. And many people who feel that connection will still get bored with some episodes if the content isn’t there.

I suspect that part of this also has to do with what kind of shows one gravitates toward. If you’re mainly listening to interview shows or round-table discussion shows or the ubiquitous “two guys talking” type of show, I think you’re more likely to feel that personal connection. (My gut feeling is also that the more DIY or casual sounding the podcast is, the more you may feel that connection—assuming that it is interesting or well-produced enough that you stay listening.)

On the other hand, if you’re mainly listening to news or news-adjacent shows, or if you’re listening to highly produced feature shows (e.g. Radiolab, This American Life) or documentary shows (e.g. Serial, S-Town), you might be listening more for the segments than the interstitials. That format of show tends to give you a lot less visibility into the host’s life or personality, often have rotating hosts, and just generally give you less time with the host. The structure of the show reflects this—the host talks during the interstitials, not the segments.

Not to say that you never get personality in these shows. I think that long-time listeners of This American Life do have a sense of who Ira Glass is, for example. And certainly his sensibility shapes the show. But that’s not really a focus of the show. Compare this with a show like WTF, where even though ostensibly the draw is the interview, the whole episode is run through and through with Marc Maron’s personality and point of view. In a lot of ways I think people listen more for him than for the guests.

Personally, I do listen to shows like Radiolab and This American Life and other reported or production-forward shows. I listen to a lot shows in that category, actually. But I find that I’m also much more likely to skip episodes of those shows if I’m not interested in the topic. On the other hand, the shows where I come back for almost every episode tend to be the ones where I’m connecting at least as much with the hosts as with the content. Some examples: Pop Culture Happy Hour, Between the Covers, VS, Commonplace, WMFA, My Friend Chuck, The Adventure Zone. These don’t all involve intro monologues or banter, but for the ones that do, I tend to find that part just as interesting and satisfying to listen to as the “content” portion of the show. And I think that speaks to the power of that personal connection.

None of this is to say that one way or the other is better or “right.” Each has its advantages and disadvantages. But I do think that that personal connection is something that encourages long-term audience retention and deeper audience engagement. And so if that’s something you want to do with your show, it can be worthwhile to think about how to format and structure your show to allow that kind of engagement. It could mean intro monologues/banter, but it could be something else. The point here isn’t to force it or to be presentational about it, but rather to think about how you can allow opportunities for your authentic personality to come through in your show. How can your listeners get to know you? I think that’s an important question to consider.

This isn’t to say that it’s sufficient to just say “Well, I’m an interesting person so people will obviously want to listen to whatever I have to say.” There’s still craft involved in making a show for an audience. Aside from which, a lot of podcast newbies tend to overestimate just how interesting they actually are. This is why you end up with so many “three guys with a microphone talking about nothing” shows.

(To be clear, it’s perfectly fine to make a podcast just for yourself and your friends, just so that you can have fun. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. But if you want to make a show other people want to listen to, it does take more than that.)

Putting yourself and your personality into your show can be a really great way to create a loyal audience, I think. And so thinking about how to do that can be useful. But I think it’s important that it not be done cynically. It needs to be something that fits you. For myself, I quit doing personal monologues in my show a while ago, and now in my intros I just introduce the guest and do some show-related housekeeping. I do like having a venue to present my own thoughts, but it just never felt right for Keep the Channel Open, and writing the monologues was a lot of work. Even without the personal monologues, though, I think that KTCO does have a lot of opportunity for people to get to know me as the host, because the way I structure the interview portion of the show is very conversational and not just question-answer-question-answer. The monologues I used to do were intentionally about trying to create a connection with listeners, to keep them coming back even if they didn’t know the guest, but doing it that way always felt forced. Letting the interactions in my conversations speak for themselves is more organic and authentic for me.

Interestingly, LikeWise Fiction has a lot less opportunity for me appear as me during the “content” portion of the show, because I’m trying to present the story and its characters, not me. But, conversely, I can put more of me into the intro and outro when commenting on the story. I find that interesting, anyway. The intro monologues I did for KTCO were modeled on what Maron does in WTF (though in my own style and voice, not his), but that didn’t work for me. It just wasn’t a good fit. Meanwhile, the intro/outro commentary I do in LikeWise Fiction is modeled on what LeVar Burton does on LeVar Burton Reads, as well as a bit on the interview portions of the New Yorker: Fiction podcast and The Other Stories podcast. And this does feel right to me.

All this is just to say that I think it’s okay for some people to hate intro monologues and for some people to love them, that finding a way to connect with your audience is good, and doing it in a way that authentically fits you is best.

Episode 4 of LikeWise Fiction features "The Best Light Fades," by Rachel Lyon. In this story, a young writer struggles to find her voice and get her artistic career started, all while having to care for her aging father and her literal clown of a boyfriend.

Listen to the story at:

• Apple Podcasts   
• Google Podcasts  
• RadioPublic 
• Spotify 
• Stitcher 

You can also listen to the full episode and read the story text at the episode page on the LikeWise Fiction website.

Subscribers to the Likewise Media Patreon campaign at the $5 level and above can hear my special bonus interview with Rachel Lyon. In our conversation, Rachel and I talked about the characters' relationship to art, and how this story was sort of a prototype for her novel, Self-Portrait with Boy.

Episode 3 of LikeWise Fiction features "Crow's Eye," by Sarah Hollowell.

“Her entire life, Ruby has known that something lives in the lake. She’s never seen it, but she’s felt its fingers brush her ankle. She’s felt its gaze.”

Listen to the story at:

• Apple Podcasts  
• Google Podcasts 
• RadioPublic 
• Spotify 
• Stitcher 

You can also listen to the full episode and read the story text at the episode page on the LikeWise Fiction website.

Subscribers to the Likewise Media Patreon campaign at the $5 level and above can hear my special bonus interview with Sarah Hollowell. In our conversation, Sarah and I talked about sibling relationships in fantasy stories, fat representation, and the responsibility necessary when writing outside of your experience.

Episode 2 of LikeWise Fiction features the story "How to Be Chinese," by Celeste Ng. In this story, Mackenzie is a Chinese American adoptee who has grown up with a white mother in a Michigan town with few other Asians. As she goes off to college, she's excited to explore and connect with her heritage, but finds the question of identity to be complicated.

Listen to the story at:

• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• RadioPublic
• Spotify
• Stitcher

You can also listen to the full episode and read the story text at the episode page on the LikeWise Fiction website.

Subscribers to the Likewise Media Patreon campaign at the $5 level and above can hear my special bonus interview with Celeste Ng. In our conversation, Celeste and I talked about the relationship between this story and her novels, and the complicated question of what heritage and culture mean for us as Asian Americans.

One of my best friends from college died about three weeks ago. I only found out yesterday. I was attending an art event—a gallery tour in Tijuana—and happened to check my email in between stops. At first, not recognizing the sender's name, I thought it was spam, but it turned out to be an ex-girlfriend of his, a woman I'd heard about many times but had never met. It's a strange, isolating experience to receive terrible news while you're surrounded by friends who are having a good time. My impulse was not to ruin everyone else's day, but of course I couldn't entirely keep my feelings to myself. A few people checked in with me, sensing my distress. I demurred.

In some ways, I suppose this friend was already gone from my life. It had been a couple of years since the last time we saw each other, or even really spoke. We had grown apart, and in some ways I had already grieved that loss. But in the back of my mind I guess I thought things might turn around. He'd had some changes in his life recently, and was engaged to be married. I was happy for him, and part of me thought that we might reconnect some day. That won't happen now.

I've thought so much about this man over the past few years, so often with sadness or worry. I met him the first day of college, and still, more than two decades later, that is how I remember him. He was slender and energetic, enthusiastic and outgoing in a way I've seldom seen, before or since. He laughed loudly and often. He hugged with his whole body. He was utterly un-self-conscious in telling his friends that he loved them, a rare thing for men of my generation. And that was something he gave to me—a willingness to say it back without feeling strange.

He was a man of big appetites and a passion for pleasure unlike anyone else I've ever known. He carried around a recipe for cheesecake in his wallet, and happily took every opportunity to make one and share it with you, even—usually—on the spur of the moment. Back then we all drank too much, ate poorly, failed to care for our bodies. A few of my friends drank like they were punishing themselves, but for him drinking and substances were always and only about pleasure. It took him to some dark places, eventually. I don't know how or why he died, but for some time now I have feared and maybe even expected the worst. I still thought we'd have more time.

And this is the thing that has haunted me, saddened me, worried me about our friendship as we got older. Some of the things that make us fun or funny or endearing when we are young become less and less excusable as we age. And, hopefully, as we learn. Some things he never learned. Some of the things that made us laugh at nineteen make me cringe now. Some of the things we said and did then are things that hurt people, or hurt ourselves. We were ignorant then, or maybe we were innocent. Maybe we should have known better then. Maybe somewhere inside some of us did. Either way, we should know better now. The fact that he couldn't or wouldn't learn to be better made it hard for me to be around him. Increasingly, in mixed company I found myself having to make excuses for him, or apologizing for him afterwards—something I'm sure he didn't want and certainly never asked for. He was sure of himself, even when he was wrong, even when the horribleness of what he said was evident to everyone but himself. When he dropped away from me I was sad, but part of me was also relieved.

I wonder if he was confused about why we stopped connecting. I wonder if he was angry with me. If he was, he never said so. As much of a pain in the ass as he could be, he was also one of the most unfailingly generous people I knew. He took genuine pleasure in seeing his friends enjoy things. Maybe in distancing myself, I was unfair to him. Maybe I was justified in doing what I needed to do. Did I cut him off, or did he move along on his own? I don't know how he saw it. Now he's gone, and I have to live with the fact that that's where we left things.

I try to take comfort in knowing that he was unafraid of dying. Neither of us believed in an afterlife, which terrified me and comforted him. Once—perhaps twelve, thirteen years ago—I was working myself up into a panic attack about my impending nonexistence. He just said to me, calmly, "It's nothing to be afraid of." I try to remember that, but of course the pain I feel now is about the hole he's left in my life. An absence that, yes, I will some day get used to, but which will never be filled. This is the thing about life: the longer you live, the larger and more numerous the holes become. Eventually everyone goes away, or we do.

And yet I cannot think about my friend without thinking about all the ways that he pursued his pleasures. The landscapes of our souls become furrowed and holed by loss, and new joy and new love cannot fill those voids. But what they can do is expand the boundaries of our emotional territory, giving us someplace new to stand.

I remember my friend smiling. It's all I can do.

• • •

I do have updates on my projects and my work, but I'm going to let them sit for now. It can wait.

I hope you're well, and that whatever you need, be it joy, peace, nourishment, or anything at all, finds its way to you soon.

Take care,

-Mike

Episode 1 of LikeWise Fiction is finally here! In this inaugural episode I'm reading Alvin Park's story "Whale Fall." In this beautiful flash fiction piece, a whale washes ashore, a village loses its memories, and a relationship falls apart.

Listen to the story at:

• Apple Podcasts 
• Google Podcasts 
• RadioPublic 
• Spotify 
• Stitcher 

You can also listen to the full episode and read the story text at the episode page on the LikeWise Fiction website.

Subscribers to the Likewise Media Patreon campaign at the $5 level and above can hear my special bonus interview with the author of today's story, Alvin Park. In our conversation, Alvin and I discussed the flash fiction form and why he's attracted to it as a writer, and what it means to be a "hyphenated American" writer.

I noticed a lot of people talking about kindness yesterday because of a video that was going around in which a celebrity was talking about being kind to everyone. It probably won't surprise you to know that I do believe we should be kind to everyone. I don't always live up to that ideal, but I try. But I think it's worth thinking about what kindness actually is, and what it does.

Because kindness isn't the same as politeness. It's not the same as non-confrontation. It's not the same as forgiveness, which is itself not the same as forgetting, or a lack of accountability. Kindness is not, at its root, about reducing tension. Kindness is, I think, about giving people what they need. When we focus on removing tension from our interactions, it may be more comfortable in the moment, but it doesn't necessarily feed us in the long run. Often, focusing on reducing tension merely delays a reckoning. It allows us to ignore harm, which often compounds that harm. That is not kind, I don't think.

I do think that difference is something that should be tolerated, even celebrated in many instances. But I think it's also important to recognize that not all differences are benign. Some differences of belief result in people choosing to harm other people. I think that using the language of kindness and tolerance to ignore and erase past harms is, itself, a harmful thing. It enables current and future harms. And it is therefore not kind.

We can have compassion for everyone, I think. Because everyone is in some way suffering—indeed, it's often because someone is suffering that they choose to harm others. And I think we can with kindness mitigate that suffering and enable people to be kind and generous to others. But I think it is important to understand that having compassion for someone's suffering does not mean that we must condone their actions. Neither does kindness mean that we must always make people comfortable.

Kindness is not amoral. It does not require us to eliminate our emotional or ethical boundaries. Indeed, I find it is just the opposite: it is only through understanding the difference between right and wrong that we can be truly kind. Kindness is not simple. It is not easy. It requires us to look at each other and ourselves clearly, to understand deeply, to overcome our own very natural urges toward seeking our own comfort or lashing out against others. Kindness is not safe. In order to be kind, we must be willing to see and understand our own shortcomings and complicities. We must be willing to make ourselves vulnerable, over and over again.

So, yes, let us be kind to everyone. Let us be kind across difference. Let us be kind also to ourselves. But let us not mistake deference or niceness or comfort for kindness. If we are going to commit to kindness, let us do so with the understanding that kindness and healing and justice are all of a piece, they go hand in hand, that none of them have meaning without the others.

Dear Eva,

Last night when I said goodnight to you, I told you to get some good sleep so that you'd have a good birthday. You responded with a laugh "Yeah, I want to go to sleep!" And then you just... did. You went straight to sleep. It's something I've always envied a little bit about you, honestly, how good you are at falling asleep. I think you will have a good birthday, though.

This year you had your first audition, for the Performance Crew at your dance school. Beforehand, I asked you how you were feeling about it, whether you were nervous. And you were, a little. That's natural. But you didn't let it stop you from trying. When I asked you how you'd feel if you didn't get in, you thought about it and then said "I think I'd be sad, but that's OK." You've found something that you care about so much: dance. And now that you've found it, you work at it really hard. Sometimes it's difficult, sometimes you don't get all of the moves right away, but you never get discouraged. You just say "Practice makes improvement," which is something you came up with on your own because, as you pointed out, nobody can be perfect. You put yourself out there, and you are so, so brave. You made it through your audition and got into Performance Crew, but I know that you'd have been OK if you hadn't gotten in, that you'd have kept working and tried again next year. All of that is why I'm so proud of you.

You are talented and hard-working in so many ways, but you are also kind and thoughtful. I hope that you always stay that way. And I hope that we can always keep laughing together, the way we do now. And right now I hope that you have a very happy birthday.

I love you!

Recently I was listening to an episode of Carrie Fountain's podcast This Is Just to Say, which was a tribute panel to poet Tony Hoagland, who died last year at the age of 64, due to pancreatic cancer. I don't really know Hoagland's work—it's possible that this podcast was the first time I'd ever heard one of his poems. What awareness I had of him came from some references some of my poet friends had made to his problematic public exchange with poet Claudia Rankine.

If you're not much involved with the world of poetry—which, to be fair, most people aren't—then you might not be familiar with that incident. To summarize: In his 2003 book What Narcissism Means to Me, Hoagland—who is white—included a poem called "The Change," in which the speaker of the poem (which Hoagland may or may not have intended to be himself) describes a tennis match between a white woman and a black woman, and his reaction to it, and does so in language that is, to say the least, problematic. In 2011, Claudia Rankine—an acclaimed and important African-American poet, and a former colleague of Hoagland's—gave a talk at the AWP Conference in which she read Hoagland's poem and then presented an open letter in which she described the dismay she felt upon reading the poem, and talked about why it was hurtful. About a month later, Hoagland responded with his own open letter, which was... not great. Subsequently, Hoagland was pretty widely criticized for both his poem and his letter—and rightly so, in my opinion.

I had known all of this before but had mostly forgotten about it by the time I started listening to that This Is Just to Say episode, though as the episode progressed my memory was refreshed. I found the episode to be an interesting and nuanced discussion about a person and poet all of the panelists loved, but who they acknowledged also said and did problematic things. Interesting because I think it's interesting and necessary to consider what it means to love someone who has flaws, and what our responsibilities are to the ones we love, and how to keep loving someone even when they are wrong or shitty.

I don't want to say "We all have our flaws" or "We are all problematic" because that flattens the discussion and draws the kind of false equivalence that we cannot afford in this political climate. Because there are lines that shouldn't be crossed, which have been crossed, and which continue to be crossed, often with real and terrible consequences. To simplify the world we live in by saying "we all have our flaws" is to engage in the kind of both-sides-ism that has plagued our political discourse for years.

Except that we all do have our flaws and we all are problematic, and we do engage in and uphold a culture in which we expect purity, which is neither reasonable nor sustainable. And we especially do that online. Online spaces are not and never have been and probably never will be good for nuance. But I feel like it should be possible to distinguish between unforgivable harm and everyday thoughtlessness. Not in a way that ignores the latter, but in a way that allows for judgment. And when I say "judgment" I mean a process. I mean an individual process of weighing and balancing and looking at as much context as possible, context that includes both the personal and the global. I mean deliberation and care rather than snap decisions. I mean to say that one's bad deeds don't erase one's good deeds, nor do their good deeds erase their bad, but each filters each, and there are more ways to hold the totality of a person than to either defend them or throw them away.

In saying this, though, it is important to understand the broader context of such rhetoric, and the instances in which it is most often deployed. It is not lost on me that the thing that is prompting me to talk about nuance and care and deep judgment is a white man's misdeed. It is important to understand how rarely the marginalized and oppressed are offered the opportunity for deliberate consideration, for care, for understanding. And it is important to understand how often white men are offered that opportunity. It is important not as a way of castigating white people or men for being white or male. It is important because we cannot work toward a world in which the humanity and dignity of all people is affirmed unless we first understand that such affirmation is not given equally now, and unless we understand why.

But I suppose I feel that the path to justice lies more in offering care and understanding and context to the vulnerable than it does in denying it to the comfortable. Again, there are lines that we cannot cross or allow to be crossed. But I think that when we love someone, or when we love the things they've done, whether that be a friend or a relative or simply someone we admire, we owe it to them and to ourselves and to each other to reckon with their misdeeds and hold them accountable. Sometimes that means walking away from them. But sometimes it means pulling them closer. And either way it doesn't necessarily mean ceasing to love them.

And, yes, those whom we love bear a responsibility as well, to listen, to learn, to do better. It's a responsibility that so often they (and we, and I) fail to live up to. But I believe we can rise to it, even if sometimes we might need to be shown how. It's not about erasing harm or giving passes. It's about trying to get past binary thinking, to get past good/bad, right/wrong, stay/leave, and to get toward care and responsibility.

As an addendum, what I am doing now is considering how much of my feeling on this is or might be driven by my own biases and privileges. And considering whether and how having and expressing these opinions might contribute to further harm.

Nothing is ever as simple as I'd like it to be. But I do my best.

• • •

Some other news:

• A couple of weeks ago I released an episode of Keep the Channel with poet Yanyi. We discussed his book The Year of Blue Water, which is part poetry, part essay, and part journal, a document of self-discovery and human connection. We also talked about Hannah Arendt's seminal book The Origins of Totalitarianism.
• On this week's episode, I talked with poet Rachel Zucker about her book The Pedestrians and about her podcast Commonplace, which is one of my favorite literary shows. It was a particularly interesting episode for me in that Rachel and I approach interviewing in very similar ways and with similar concerns (and similar anxieties).

• • •

My family has been up in Canada without me for the past week, visiting J's relatives. They're coming home tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to it. I hope that you get some time soon to be with people you love, whether that's family or friends or even yourself.

Dear Mary,

Last night as I was leaving your room after saying good night, you called out “Wait. How about one more hug and one more kiss?” And, of course, I obliged—it wasn’t so long ago that you never wanted hugs or kisses from me, and I’m happy that you like having me around. Still, when I left for work that morning and asked if I could give you a hug, you just shook your head and went back to your video. This might surprise you right now, but both of these interactions make me happy. It makes me happy that you feel comfortable and confident setting your own boundaries, that you feel control over your own body. It makes me happy that when you do decide to be affectionate, you do it with your whole self. And it makes me happy that I’ve earned some of that affection.

You have a lot of interests and a lot of talents. You love to sing, to dance, to draw, to read, to work with numbers, to learn. You love to do things on your own. More than most people I know, you are your own person. You insist on it. You can be led, but you won’t be pushed. You have a huge spirit, and that means that sometimes you will clash with others. People will try to change this about you, to make you smaller, and even though it means that sometimes I’ll be on the receiving end of your displeasure, I hope you never lose this. I hope you always keep going after what you want, and putting your whole heart into everything you do.

Very soon you’ll be starting kindergarten. Very soon to me, at least—to you that’s still a ways off. And, truth be told, it’s not as close as it feels to me. We still have time, and lots to do. But it’ll happen soon enough, and I know you’ll do great. Because that’s who you are. You are great. I’m so happy to know you, and I love you so much. I hope the day brings you much joy. Happy birthday, Mary!