Why am I acting like this is my first podcast?

The anxiety of vulnerability never fades

I have launched so many podcasts in my career. A quick mental tally runs me…a dozen? More? But this is the first time since 2017 that I’ve launched a podcast that I am hosting and producing on my own, and I feel crazy.

I know we’re not supposed to say “crazy” anymore, but that is absolutely how I feel. My grip on reality is weak and my anxiety is in the driver’s seat, waking me up at four a.m., destroying my attention span, and wrecking my digestion. I’m irritable and flighty and I have had a hard time thinking anything that seems to be worth thinking. My brain is like a sandbox you expect to be several inches deep, but when you plunge your fingers into the sand you hit the plastic bottom of the tub way sooner than you expect, and now your fingertips are sore.

In case you missed the news, last week I announced a new podcast that I am hosting and producing with Defector and Radiotopia called Try Hard.

It is my answer to MTV Made in podcast form for the neurotics among us with a preferred SSRI and a sincere belief that nirvana is just one well-timed hobby away. In each episode of this show, I’ll work with someone to help them try a thing they’ve always wanted to do, from cartwheels to pickup basketball.

The idea for this podcast came to me last fall, when I was sitting in the passenger seat on the way home from the New York Sheep & Wool Festival in Rhinebeck.

I started knitting again in earnest during the pandemic, and what started as a way to pass the months of social isolation grew into an all-consuming pursuit that I spent thousands of dollars on and absorbed into my personality. It was my gateway to thinking more critically about the quality of my clothing and to question how much good clothes should actually cost. I have my own amish yarn winder and I’m an unbearable snob about sweaters now. I gave myself carpal tunnel one fall because I was a little too enthusiastic about a colorwork vest.

Knitting changed my life, but when I first picked it back up, I had no idea or expectation that it would. Trying new things tends to have that effect on a life. As I sat in the car and watched the sun set on upstate New York’s autumn leaves, I thought about all the things that wouldn’t be part of my life if I hadn’t tried knitting again.

That’s when the glimmer of the idea for Try Hard came to me. Surely there are so many things people would like to try, but haven’t for whatever reason. What if I created a space to prompt them to do the things they wished they could do?

I posted this poll to my Instagram story, just to see. So many people responded.

It was the weekend before Defector’s annual off-site meetings, where we were each meant to pitch an idea for the next year that we would work on. I had planned a different pitch, but I felt the momentum of this project pulling me. I pulled together a pitch over the weekend and presented it to my colleagues, who gave me the green light. I spent the next several months piloting and refining my idea, and next week, it will come into the world for all of you to hear.

I am a seasoned professional in the field of launching podcasts, and yet I feel like I’ve never done this before. I’m unwell!

The last time I launched a podcast that I hosted and produced myself was in 2017, when Other came out with the Washington Post.

Other was its own tortured process. It was my first real offering to the world in podcast form, and truly, I had no idea what I was doing. I just listened to the trailer again for the first time since it published, and I sound so young. I hadn’t quite perfected the art of reading a script, and the script itself is written on instinct more than any sense of what works in audio. A horrifying number of tape clips are fuzzy phone audio (how did I record those?). I didn’t know how to bring music into a moment intentionally and I hadn’t added my Korean name to my byline yet.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Other in the last few weeks because despite having eight more years of experience in this medium than I did then, I’m struck by how similar I feel. My return to hosting has also been a return to the scrappy, DIY production model I used in Other. I have more support this time around, both from Defector staff and from Radiotopia, but on a day-to-day production level, I’m alone. The energy I would normally exert showrunning—the project management, logistical problem solving, and emotional support—is left to swirl around my head, purposeless, and expresses itself in black holes of anxiety instead.

And oh boy, is it expressing itself. From the way I’ve been talking to myself, you would think these past eight years didn’t happen at all, that I am still that anxious 25-year-old girl trying to make her first big podcast while her replacement is being hired right next to her. I scroll through the photos on my phone to remind myself that these eight years did happen, and that I certainly, definitely, absolutely know more today than I did then.

So much—even everything—about your life can change, and you will still find times when you’re alone in your room with your insecurities. Putting yourself out there never gets easier. That’s kind of what this show is about, and yet here I am surprised by it all over again. Like the ten guests who are coming onto season one, I’m going into my challenge scared, but I’m doing it anyway.

You can listen to Try Hard wherever you get your podcasts (Apple link here). The first episode publishes Monday, 7/28.