Podcast

“I’ll Follow You” is the podcast I ran in 2020 and 2021 featuring light and lively discussions on film, music, and creative culture.

Episodes are available everywhere you source your podcasts
(Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Google Podcasts, and more).

See below for an index of all episodes.
The links will lead you to show notes.

Let’s just get this out of the way now–I hate podcasts!

They’re all either, like, three hours long, full of mumbling and wet mouth noises, or they’re super polished professional productions that should, by rights, be on the radio if there were any remaining mainstream support for radio. 100% of them are produced by tech bros.

Obviously I’m just kidding.

But only slightly.

But beyond these jokey cliches about subject matter and demographics, I’ve long resisted podcasts because I feel like I just have very little time to be putting extra words into my brain. I mean, I took precepts as a Zen Buddhist in 2009 because I wanted more silence in my life, not less.

So, why opt to start a podcast if I claim to hate them so much? Well, it’s not just because I can’t do any worse than some of the really crummy ones floating around out there. It’s more that podcasts are able to do a thing that I’ve never really been able to achieve through my years as a blogger. Which is that podcasts demand conversation–they demand community, and other people’s voices.

So much of my own writing (which you can read plenty of here!) can get navel-gazey and solipsistic. But, a podcast is necessarily going to involve other people’s thoughts and perspectives. And I think conversation is crucial if we’re going to evolve in the ways that our times are calling for us to evolve right now. And when it comes to the few podcasts that I think are getting it right, I feel a little selfish that I’m just consuming their content without returning the favor and putting any of that energy and commitment to greater togetherness and understanding back out into the world.

In an interview that artist Edie Fake gave to Art21 Magazine in 2013, he said, “I have felt part of communities where bartering and collaborating are critical parts of growth. Cross-pollinating is how ideas spread and get expanded upon. Sharing what we can is how we help each other thrive on this messed up planet. It creates networks, emotional bonds, kinship, thought, and physical resources. You can’t always give and you can’t always take.”

The wisdom of those words is something I’ve come back to repeatedly over the past several years. And as I’m cresting out of a period of time when I was needing to take for a while, I think I’m finally ready to make more of an effort to give again. As a highly chatty Gemini rising with a cerebral Aquarius sun and a dramatic Scorpio moon, the best way I know how to do that is to use my words.

Plus, I just know too many fascinating people! I have all these friends and acquaintances making music and writing and creating art and just generally being these amazing forces for good in the world. I wanted to find a way to talk to them about what they’re up to that would be nourishing not just to myself but hopefully to a wider circle of listeners as well.