#### That’s it: it’s our season finale—and our last episode of No You Go, ever. Really. But don’t worry, we’re not quitting the podcast game. We’re coming back January 10—with a new name that, well, we’re really feelin’. In this episode: we ask each other tough questions about our first year as podcasters—like what was great (spending time together! Learning new skills!), what was hard (uhhhhh long answer), and what we’d suggest to anyone looking to start a new jam. The highlights: - - How to celebrate a milestone while in the middle of some major burnout - What to do when you end an interview and realize there’s _no audio_ - Why we wish we’d made friends with other podcasters _a lot_ sooner (and what you can learn from our mistakes) Plus, we reveal our brand-new name: Strong Feelings—and talk about why we decided to rebrand the show. There’s so much great stuff we want to dig into next season on Strong Feelings, like unfucking your work life, trading #selfcare for true self love, facing our own bullshit so that we can be better feminists and activists, and what the power of female friendship can really do. **OH! And we want to hear from you, too! If you have strong feelings about something, we set up a hotline for you to share them. Leave us a voicemail at (267) 225–5923.** > Strength and emotions are often seen as being at odds with each other, and something that I really think we do on the show—and that I want to do on the show—is demonstrate that having feelings and talking about those feelings _is_ strong. That’s a strong thing to do. > —Sara Thanks for listening to NYG this year, and we hope you’ll join us next year for Strong Feelings. New episodes start January 10! If you’re already subscribed to the show, no sweat—NYG will simply become Strong Feelings in your podcast app in a few days. We’ll also be moving our site over to [strongfeelings.co](http://www.strongfeelings.co) later this week, and updating all our social, too. And while you wait for new episodes, definitely [sign up for I Love That, our biweekly newsletter](/newsletter/)—next edition comes this Friday! ## Sponsors This episode of NYG is brought to you by: [](https://www.getharvest.com/)_[Harvest](https://www.getharvest.com/), makers of awesome software to help you track your time, manage your projects, and get paid. Try it free, then **use code NOYOUGO to get 50% off** your first paid month._ [ ![]()](https://www.shopify.com/careers)
In this episode: we ask each other tough questions about our first year as podcasters—like what was great (spending time together! Learning new skills!), what was hard (uhhhhh long answer), and what we’d suggest to anyone looking to start a new jam. The highlights:
Plus, we reveal our brand-new name: Strong Feelings—and talk about why we decided to rebrand the show. There’s so much great stuff we want to dig into next season on Strong Feelings, like unfucking your work life, trading #selfcare for true self love, facing our own bullshit so that we can be better feminists and activists, and what the power of female friendship can really do.
OH! And we want to hear from you, too! If you have strong feelings about something, we set up a hotline for you to share them. Leave us a voicemail at (267) 225–5923.
> Strength and emotions are often seen as being at odds with each other, and something that I really think we do on the show—and that I want to do on the show—is demonstrate that having feelings and talking about those feelings is strong. That’s a strong thing to do.
> —Sara
Thanks for listening to NYG this year, and we hope you’ll join us next year for Strong Feelings. New episodes start January 10! If you’re already subscribed to the show, no sweat—NYG will simply become Strong Feelings in your podcast app in a few days. We’ll also be moving our site over to strongfeelings.co later this week, and updating all our social, too.
And while you wait for new episodes, definitely sign up for I Love That, our biweekly newsletter—next edition comes this Friday!
This episode of NYG is brought to you by:
Harvest, makers of awesome software to help you track your time, manage your projects, and get paid. Try it free, then use code NOYOUGO to get 50% off your first paid month.
Shopify, a leading global commerce platform that’s building a world-class team to define the future of entrepreneurship. Visit shopify.com/careers for more.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher Shout out to Harvest, our awesome sponsor once again. Harvest makes time tracking and project planning software for freelancers, tiny teams, huge corporations, and everyone in between—even me! Check them out at getharvest.com, and when you upgrade to a paid account, use code “noyougo” to get 50 percent off your first month. That’s getharvest.com, code “no you go.” [intro music plays for 12 seconds]
Katel LeDû Hey everyone. I’m Katel.
SWB And I’m Sara!
KL And you’re listening to the season finale of No, You Go—
SWB —the show about building satisfying careers and businesses,
KL —getting free of toxic bullshit,
SWB —and living your best feminist life at work! And speaking of best lives, Katel, welcome to our last 2018 show! How are you feeling?
KL So, I seriously cannot believe that it’s been a year and I’m really excited about next season and next year…but…I have not been doing super great—just in the last week or so—and I’m feeling a lot of feelings about that.
SWB Okay, so before we celebrate, [laughs] I think we have to talk about that. [KL laughs]
KL Yeah, so I was really kind of struggling last week and trying to keep on top of everything and just feeling like I wasn’t doing a great job at anything. I wasn’t doing anything well or right and I was also beating myself up over it, which felt even worse. And over the weekend, I pretty much spent all day Sunday crying.
SWB Oh, no! [KL laughs] I’m so sorry, Katel! [KL sighs]
KL So, I mean it felt good because I’m a person who likes to cry and that actually feels good because it’s a big release for me.
SWB Ughh same. I totally love to cry. [KL laughs] I do cry a lot. I definitely cry a few times a week.
KL Yeah, totally. But it also felt terrible because I kept thinking about how excited I should be and how ready I should feel about wrapping up this season and heading into everything we’re doing next and next year. And honestly, I sat down to write some notes for today’s show and all I wrote was that I feel burned out and I don’t know what to do about it. And then I just was like, “okay, what is my plan here?” I do know what to do next in these moments, but I have to take those steps. So, I’ve gotta talk to my people. I got to talk to my partner and my therapist and you. And I knew I just needed to say some of those words out loud.
SWB And I’m so glad that you did because I really want to know how you are and it’s A) because I care about you and I care about how you feel—I want you to feel good. And B) if things aren’t working for the show, then we have to pause and talk about it, even when that’s weird or hard. If we don’t talk about it, how are we going to have the show be meaningful and relatable and real? It’s going to start feeling fake—
[2:46]
KL Yeah.
SWB —and obviously we don’t want that.
KL No.
SWB And also, something I think about a lot is that it takes a lot to put together this show—we spent a lot of time on it. And so, it’s way too much time, [KL laughs] if it’s not going to be real, right?
KL Right.
SWB It feels like we need to get through that kind of stuff honestly, otherwise it’s not worth it to invest this time—and obviously, I want it to be worth it. So, I’m really glad you told me.
KL Yeah, and I think that is part of my plan is just connecting with people—letting people know that I’m struggling. I know that if I tell Jon, my partner, he will block for me. And I know that if I tell you, you’re going to block for me too in whatever way that is most helpful. And I know that if I go and talk to my therapist, she’s going to be there for me. She’s going to say, “that sucks” and she’s also going to give me some tools to help me get through whatever I’m dealing with. And she knows pretty much everything that’s happening with me, so she asks me to think about my optimal self. When I think about who that person is, what does she need? And to think about what that person needs and what am I missing right now? So, that really helped me just kind of think about what I’m missing and what I need to prioritize and one of those things is space and downtime.
SWB Yes, I think that we all need down time, obviously, but it’s always hard to actually consistently do for yourself. And then the other thing that I was thinking about as you were talking about feeling burned out and you weren’t doing great at everything…I think something that’s been extra stressful for me the last few weeks at least—and I suspect maybe for you too—is that we have been working on all of this kind of side planning for what we want to do next year. We’re going to have a big reveal later in the show. And so I feel like I’ve been kind of carrying around a lot of that with me, both the extra work of planning for it, as well as just kind of not talking about it. And so I’m hoping that when we talk about on this show, that means we won’t have to hold on to it anymore.
KL Yeah, I feel exactly the same way. It’s been very exciting [KL laughs] and very stressful. So, I can’t wait to just talk about it.
SWB Before we get to that though, first we want to talk a little bit more about the year that is about to end, so things we learned—which was a lot of things personally that I learned—and also what that means for what we want to do next and where we want to grow. So, is there something that you just can’t stop thinking about that you heard a guest say this year?
[5:06]
KL Yeah. When I sort of started to think about this, I thought back to one of our very early episodes with Eileen Webb when she said why should only work get my best brain? And that has been stuck in my brain ever since that episode. And I think we talked about it a little bit on the show—we kind of recapped it—and I think it’s something that has come up a lot and we’ve sort of come back to a bunch of times. So, I love that something so early on has kind of carried its way through.
SWB Yeah, I don’t think we’ve explicitly brought it back up, but I feel like it’s been lurking there in the back of my head. And you’re totally right, and it’s such a good concept, so thank you, Eileen. [KL laughs]
KL Yeah. Alright so, Sara, what was harder than you thought it would be?
SWB Oh my gosh. [KL laughs] You know what was really hard for me? Feeling like an amateur. [KL sighs]
KL Yeah, I get that.
SWB I don’t think I had done something that made me feel so out of my depth for a while. And that’s probably good for me! Like when I took that pottery class a couple of years ago, [KL laughs] and I was really bad at it. I think that was good for me to be bad at it and to just enjoy doing it anyway—enjoy doing it without feeling successful at it. I think that was good. But the difference is that like in this particular circumstance, I am doing something that I came in with no experience in and I’m doing it really publicly. And so it’s not like my pottery class where I’m like, “okay, I made some shitty pottery [KL laughs] and I can keep that to myself.” [SWB laughs]
KL [laughing] Yeah.
SWB It’s like I made some shitty pottery and now I’m going to, what? Sell it to the world at this art fair?
KL Yeah. I’m going to publish it.
SWB Right? And so I don’t think our podcast is shitty, don’t get me wrong. But I do think that we’re doing something that we hadn’t done before and that was tough. And I feel like over and over again, I was reminded of how I was an amateur. If you remember very early on we were interviewing Alisha Ramos, the founder of Girls Night In?
KL Mhm.
SWB Okay, so we hadn’t quite figured out at that time that in order to do that interview, we had multiple people signed into our recording service Zencastr that does separate tracks for each party. And that if you do that, you can’t all be in the same room because you will get your voice coming in over the airwaves, as well as the voice in the room, and it’s so disorienting.
KL Yeah.
SWB So, remember that Jenn was leading the interview, so we left her [KL laughs] in the office space [KL laughs] where she was recording and we moved to a couch on a different floor and huddled over a laptop—
[7:38]
KL Yeah.
SWB —and I remember just feeling so out of it.
KL Yeah, and then even you and I on that couch were sharing headphones. [laughs] So, it was just super awkward and we were like “is this right?” [laughs]
SWB And so, okay, that was when we weren’t consistently figuring out where we were going to record and how we are going to record. And I remember thinking, “well, I won’t make that mistake again,” [KL laughs] which is great—okay, fine, we learned something.
KL Yeah.
SWB However, I felt like very week we were making new mistakes. [laughs]
KL [laughing] Yes.
SWB Every week we’d stumbled upon something we hadn’t done before and that was hard. And I had a hard time balancing the idea that on the one hand, you got to learn somehow and you can’t learn unless you do it, with the idea that we wanted to make something that was good enough that people would want to subscribe to it and that it would be important to people and valuable to people.
KL Mhm.
SWB And so how do we make something that’s as good as a podcast we love without the experience [laughing] of the podcasters we love?
KL [laughing] Yeah.
SWB I feel like finding that balance and finding a place where I was both putting in enough time and energy to get better at it and try to make sure that the product was good, but without beating myself up that it was not perfect—which it wasn’t, sorry everyone.
KL [laughing] Yeah.
SWB Okay, Katel, I have one for you.
KL Okay.
SWB Is there anything that you learned from a guest this year that you feel like changed the way you look at your work or the way you look at running the show?
KL You know, when we talked to—just recently—the authors of New Erotica for Feminists, I really loved hearing how they collaborate and how they support each other and have each other’s backs. And we heard that they can legit break down in front of each other and they know that that’s not going to change anything. If anything, they’re going to just rally around each other and figure out how to make it work. I think when we asked them about how they work together—when you asked that question, you kind of expect them to be like, “oh, we have these stumbling blocks, we have these challenges”—and I’m sure that they did—but they were like, no, we work really well together and that’s why this is fun. And that’s why we made something we really love and we’re really proud of. So, I loved hearing such a positive story about that and I think it just made me think about and reflect on our relationship and how well we work together. And that’s made things feel good and easy, even in the face of [laughs] some of the things we didn’t feel like we were so good at.
[10:01]
SWB Yeah, and I think hearing from them, I really heard the trust that they had for each other. And I think that that’s valued in comedy writing that if you’re going to work with comedy writing partners, you have to be able to give each other hard feedback if the comedy is not working. And that if you’re going to collaborate on jokes, then there’s a lot of riffing off each others ideas until you figure out something good. And that bringing that spirit into their work meant that they had that collaboration because they trusted that if somebody was like, “hey, I wasn’t really meaning to go there“— like, ”eeegh, I don’t think this is working”—that that’s okay and right to say and that’s not mean or tearing other people down. It is all in the spirit of making it better. And so I like to think about that trust that they had for each other and think about, you know, the kind of trust that we need to bring to our relationship and the kind of trust that I’ve had in the best working relationships I’ve ever had.
KL Okay, so I’ve got a question for you. What’s something that you think went horribly wrong?
SWB Uhhh! [KL laughs] I don’t think talk about all the negative stuff, but I will. [KL laughs] Okay, so related actually to feeling amateurish—when we had recording issues, that was really tough for me.
KL Yeah.
SWB And we had a little bit of a spate of them this summer and fall. And what was especially tough about that is that I felt like we had hit our stride and I was like, “I thought we were past this!” [KL laughs] And then a few things happened where I was just like, “oh, no.” One of them was the time we were trying to record with Cindy Gallop. So, Cindy is a pro. She has done a lot of interviews and she’s so sure of her messages, right? And when we got her on the line to record, we were having some trouble with Zencastr. And it’s a little bit like a Google Hangout—everybody gets onto this line, but everybody is also on their own separate line for the recording. It’s pretty cool. Except that the VoIP—so like the internet connection—screwed up like three different times and we had to stop the recording and restart it, which I felt so silly about, and then eventually we actually switched to using my conference line to record, [KL laughs] which was like a whole, “okay, now we’re going to need you to do this instead.” And, of course, that has some other issues with it like you can’t record on separate tracks, so voices get on top of each other. Anyway, through all of this, Cindy was a pro, but I remember just feeling like, “she must think we are a mess.” [KL laughs] It was kind of traumatic!
[12:17]
KL I know. It felt very dire in the moment [laughs] because we were just like, “oh my gosh, are we gonna get through this?” [laughs]
SWB I know. And I felt so out of control—
KL Yeah.
SWB And that’s one of the the things that’s hard about when you have a technical issue is that it makes you feel out of control and I of course hate that.
KL And it eats up time, which just feels like it adds to that pressure.
SWB Yeah! And especially because I really value the time that our guests give us—
KL Yeah.
SWB —and I don’t want to go over the amount of time we’ve blocked. We try to be careful about blocking enough time. I think we learned a little bit about that early on. But I feel nervous as soon as we start having problems that are making us eat into that hour that they’ve given to spend with us.
KL Yeah.
SWB And then remember after? Okay after Cindy—
KL Ughh. Yeah.
SWB —then, if you remember, we had Keah Brown on the show, who was completely wonderful—
KL Amazing.
SWB —but what you don’t know if you weren’t here for the recording, [both laughs] is that when we first tried to record with her, she was having all of these mic connection issues or Zencastr wasn’t identifying her mic or whatever. It went round and round, we spent a long time on it, and she was so great through all of it. But finally it seemed like we got it worked out, Zencastr was like, “yep, we hear the mic.” When we started recording, it was showing little sound waves for her voice. And then we listen to the recording later…
KL Ughhhh
SWB It was nothing but static! [KL makes a horrified noise] 45 minutes of static.
KL That is—that still makes me cringe. [laughs]
SWB Thankfully, Keah is amazing and she was like, “let’s redo the interview.”
KL Yeah…
SWB And so we just redid it and, of course, she was awesome again. She might have been even better the second time.
KL I know.
SWB So I try not to think about what little gems she happened to say the first time that we are missing now because the interview is great and she’s great. But those things are a really good way to erode your confidence. And I started looking into more of this, the deeper we got in. The only real way to a 100 percent prevent this stuff it seems is if you’re booking studio space and everybody’s going into a studio. And sadly we’re not quite there yet. And also you need to have guests who are willing to take that extra time to go into a studio—
KL Yeah.
[14:18]
SWB —which is also, you know, kind of a lot of burden for them. And so we’ve talked to a few people about what they do and there’s lots of different things that people have suggested. We’ve heard from people who actually mail their guests high-quality mics and then expect them to mail them back and hopefully they usually do. We’ve talked people who use other kinds of services. But the biggest thing we heard was that we’re not alone in having these kinds of issues and that sometimes sound quality sucks. And sometimes you have flubs and it’s hard to get rid of and, you know, we’re not on a mega budget—we’re not Serial—[KL laughs] we’re doing what we can here I think something that I’ve realized is that when you have a tech issue with a guest, it can kind of go one of two ways. Either it can be really alienating for the guest where they’re like, “what’s going on” or it feels like they’re having their time wasted, or it can be a way to kind of take the wall down and be like, “oh, we’re all in this together,” you know?
KL Yeah, exactly. You can kind of build up a little bit of a rapport because you’re like “uhhh this is terrible but we’re gonna we’re gonna figure it out.”
SWB Yeah. And so, you know, some of that depends on the guest, but I’m thinking about what can I do when there is a tech issue to create more of that space for it to be something that we get through together and not something that makes them feel alienated. So, I’m hopefully going to get better at that and not feel so fucking awkward [both laughs] whenever there’s a tech issue.
KL [laughing] Yeah.
SWB So, Katel, I do have another question for you.
KL All right, hit me.
SWB What’s something that was really surprising to you about doing the show?
KL Well, I think back to the very first few episodes that we did when we were still figuring out how we were going to have the show produced. And we decided okay, we’re going to we’re going to work with someone to do that and also get transcriptions done. But you and I spent some time doing the transcriptions at first.
SWB Super fun. [KL laughs]
KL Super, super fun!
SWB Much love to people who do transcription regularly.
KL Absolutely. And I just remember thinking this is really uncomfortable for me to listen to my own voice this much and I thought like, “this is either going to make me feel really anxious about moving forward and kind of getting over some of my own hang ups I have about listening to my own voice or it’s going to be really good.” And what I found is that it didn’t take me very long to get used to hearing my own voice and I feel really good about that. Now I think just something about knowing that I was going to have to listen to my voice made me think, “this is my voice and that’s what it sounds like and all I can do—and all I want to do—is get better at telling stories and articulating the things I want to say.” And, I mean, the other hard part of that was how hard it is to articulate some of the things that I want to say and some of the stories that I want to tell. So, I think just having it recorded added a little bit of pressure there. So, it was surprising.
[17:14]
SWB Listening to your own voice is tough—
KL [laughing] Yeah.
SWB —but I like your voice.
KL Well, I like yours. [laughs]
SWB Thank you. I feel totally numb to it now because I’ve listened to it so much.
KL Yeah.
SWB So I’m just like, “literally whatever.”
KL Yeah.
SWB Watching myself on video, I still find more challenging.
KL [laughing] Yeah.
SWB I’ve done it. I recommend it for anybody who wants to get over some of their self shame issues. Once you can make yourself numb-er to that [KL laughs] I feel like a lot of stuff gets better, but it’s not easy.
KL Yeah. Alright. So, even though we didn’t always feel like pros along the way, we did learn a lot of stuff. What advice would you give to someone trying to start a podcast?
SWB Find a community.
KL Mhmm.
SWB That is something that I don’t think we thought enough about or did enough for until later in the game than I want to admit. I think we got pretty heads down working on the show. And also, you know, I definitely felt like I had a strong community in some of the other parts of my professional life. I had all these women that I would turn to who worked in my field, but it didn’t occur to me that I didn’t really have other people to turn to who did podcasting and who wanted to talk about that. It wasn’t until we went to Werk It that I felt like I sort of saw what I was missing, [laughs] which was this community of women podcasters who were sharing ideas and sharing stories and experiences and were really generous with each other. And [laughing] that was 11 months in.
KL [laughing] Yeah. Well. [SWB laughs]
SWB So, we’re still building on that whole community thing. So, if you are starting to think about doing something—a podcast or any kind of side thing—I would say definitely find some of that community earlier than we did because I really think that that kind of support would have been really valuable to us. And it’s going to be valuable now. I know that we are following up on so many conversations from people we met there and already it feels really different.
KL Mhm.
SWB And I think particularly because podcasting is pretty male-dominated still.
KL Yeah.
SWB And so, I mean I listen to podcasts I have men on them. [laughs] I enjoy certain men in my life, but I feel like being a woman in podcasting, some of the stakes are different, some of my interests are different, and there’s also just not enough of us, and so finding that community I think has been hugely valuable. So, whatever it is that you want to do—it doesn’t matter if it’s podcasting or not—I think don’t skimp on finding community is definitely advice that I will be taking in the future and you may like to.
[19:34]
KL Yeah. I think that’s great advice.
SWB What about you? Do you have any advice?
KL I think give yourself a little room to stumble and know that that happens and it’s okay and you might have to [laughs] redo something here and there. Also just tapping into your networks and not forgetting that those folks are there and that the people who support you are going to support you in this new thing. You don’t get support unless you ask for it and tell people what you’re doing.
SWB Yes, definitely. I think talking more with people about what we’re doing is so important and it’s definitely what I was really getting out of that whole community thing too.
KL Yeah.
SWB Okay, so last question. What do you most want to improve next year?
KL So, I definitely want to develop the way that I tell stories and just how I share the things that I want to share. And I want to chip away at my fear of public speaking and this has been like such a huge step in that direction. And I know that I’m not in front of a crowd, but you know what I’m saying. And you have certainly helped me to do that. I think I loved doing our live event, so I would love to do more of that, and just do this a little bit more in front of people and just develop—develop the show a little bit more.
SWB So, I think that really dovetails with what I want to improve next year—
KL Yeah?
SWB —because I also want to do more joining of groups and attending events and doing live shows. And I think part of it for me is even evolving how I think about the show and sort of where it sits in my life. So, when we started this I kind of thought it would be like, “oh it’s a side thing, it’s going to take me a few hours a week.” And I mean, maybe I thought it was going to be more than a few hours a week, but I very much thought of it as something that was kind of a smaller thing over here. What I’ve realized over the course of this year is a couple things. One is that it takes a lot of time to do a good job. It takes a lot of time to grow and evolve. It takes a lot of time to work on the stuff that’s hard like marketing and promoting it or finding sponsors. All of that stuff is time consuming. And I’ve also really love doing the show.
KL Yeah.
SWB And so I think I need to be honest about like, “okay, this is going to be a substantial part of my life and this is not some little side gig, but it is actually a meaningful place in my professional world and it deserves care and feeding and nurturing.” Also though, it maybe needs to make more money, so I can get more time. [both laugh]
[21:52]
KL I was gonna say, “aww, I love that, that’s so…thats so beautiful”— [laughs]
SWB [laughing] It was so beautiful until I said it needs to make more money? [laughs]
KL No, no. That is also beautiful, I agree! [laughs]
SWB Well, I am so hyped to be getting into next year and I cannot wait to tell everybody what next year is going to look like! [music fades in, plays for five seconds, and fades out]
SWB Hey, it’s Sara ducking in for a quick break to talk about careers with our friends at Shopify. This week, they want us to tell you all about a couple job they’re super excited about. So, the first one is being the UX Lead for their payments and balanced team. Okay, so what that means is that you would be leading a team of researchers, designers, front-end developers, and content strategists. And what you would be doing is trying to help make financial information simpler and more understandable for Shopify’s customers, so that entrepreneurs around the world aren’t bowled over by confusing jargon and they can actually, you know, understand how their money looks. Oh, and it’s based in Montreal, which is just lovely. And then the other job Shopify is really, really hoping to find some amazing candidates for is based in Ottawa, which I actually got to visit a year or two ago for the first time and it’s so pretty there. I even took a run around some river paths and ended up crossing from Ontario into Quebec on my jog, which is something you could do everyday if you live there. But about the job, okay. So, this is another UX Lead position and this time it’s for Shopify Home, which is the most prominent artificial intelligence product at Shopify. And so in this role, you’d be responsible for actually redesigning that, which seems like a pretty big deal. But you wouldn’t be doing it alone. You’d be working with peers in product management, engineering, and data science and you’d be working together to figure out strategy. And then you’d be leading a team. That team would have product designers, content strategists, and researchers on it to help bring that all to life. So, that’s it! Two amazing new roles open right now at Shopify. Get all the details on these and over a hundred other open positions at shopify.com/careers. That’s shopify.com/careers. [music fades in, plays for five seconds, and fades out]
[23:49]
SWB So, it is time! It’s time for the big news part of the show. This is not just the season finale of No, You Go. This is the last No, You Go show ever.
KL Nooo!
SWB Okay, don’t freak out because you actually know what’s happening. [both laugh] Okay, we are coming back in January, we are just switching things up a little bit when we do. So, as we talked about last week in our episode, our third co-host, Jenn, decided to leave the show. And after that happened, me and Katel were really unsure what we were going to do. And then we happened to be on this long weird car trip one day—if you read the newsletter, you may remember this. Katel had to be in court to support someone who was filing a protective order. And so the court date was 9am, two states away and I’d literally had knee surgery [KL laughs] four days before…this is a terrible math problem!
KL [laughing] Yeah.
SWB 9am, two states away, four days of knee surgery. [both laugh] So, I was like, Katel, you cannot drive this five hour round trip drive to go do this horrible task alone. [KL laughs] You just cannot do that.
KL Yeah. Oh my gosh, we had to leave so early, I couldn’t even pick us up fancy coffee—I had to make it and bring it. But you were such a goddamn trooper and you coming with me made that really long day just so much more bearable. And something I think a lot about is that you are someone in my life who shows up.
SWB I do try to be somebody who shows up. [KL laughs] That’s definitely something that’s important to me and I think a lot about how powerful it is to show up for someone else when they really need it. And sometimes when they’re not even asking for it and then they realize later that it really helped them. And so I’m really glad that I did because I will say that on the way back from that trip—we’d gone to court and this whole thing and there was just so much emotional exhaustion in the car on the way back.
KL Yeah.
SWB And there was just so much going on. And I was really glad I was there because we could kind of decompress and you could process stuff out loud. We could talk about it. But also it was like the eighth hour [KL laughs] of the stressful fucking day that started at 5:30 in the morning. And so one of the things that came out of that totally exhausted state was, maybe we should change the name of the show and let No, You Go be something we did with Jenn and sort of have a fresh start with just us.
KL Yeah, totally. I remember sort of starting that conversation by asking, “okay, what if we change the name? What what could it be? What direction would we even go in?”
SWB Yeah, that was really helpful for me because at first I was actually a little nervous about changing the name because it felt like, “oh my god, that’s so much work,” or are we just creating more problems for ourselves?
KL [laughing] Right.
SWB But when you were like, “well, what if?” it allowed me to think about ideas without feeling like this was something we had to do or feeling like there was pressure.
KL Right, exactly. And I definitely hadn’t considered it that much until then and then when we were in the car together, we thought, okay, let’s spend some some of this ride home brainstorming and if we come up with something that we love, we’ll figure out what to do next with it.
SWB So, we did come up with something that we love, but before we tell you what that is, Katel, do you remember any of the names that we came up with that we did not go with?
[26:54]
KL Oh my gosh, I don’t!
SWB Well, you were driving.
KL [laughing] Yeah exactly!
SWB Its okay, I have some notes. Let me let me share some notes with you.
KL [laughing] Oh gosh, oh gosh.
SWB So, the first one. Definitely a pass…which was, “In It Together.” [KL laughs] I mean…yeah!
KL I mean yes, accurate!
SWB But it’s a little too on the nose.
KL [laughing] Yes.
SWB I have no actual recollection of talking about this, [KL laughs] I was a little surprised to see this in my notes.
KL [laughing] Oh gosh.
SWB It must have been one of those things we wrote down going like, “this is bad.”
KL Yeah.
SWB “Talk It Out.”
KL Oh hmm. Yeah, that’s like, you know, Saved by the Bell era. [laughs]
SWB It’s a Saved by the Bell era local daytime TV show—
KL [laughing] Yes.
SWB —where your local celebrities get on to “Talk It Out” about the issues of the day.
KL Or it’s like the Saved by the Bell school radio show. [both laugh]
SWB Okay, pass! [both laugh] Okay, another one I don’t remember at all…“Sure Thing.” [KL laughs]
KL Oh my god.
SWB I don’t know!
KL That sounds…problematic, I think. [both laugh]
SWB Okay, there was some better stuff too. Okay, so here’s one. It wasn’t quite right, but I really loved the idea and I still love the idea because I think it’s definitely us: “Make Trouble.”
KL Mmm! Yeah, I do remember that now that you say it and I liked it too.
SWB Okay, and that one led to one that I actually still do kind of love. I would listen to a podcast that was named this—“Big Trouble.”
KL Ooh, yeah. I like that too.
SWB I mean, “Big Trouble”! I’d listen to a show called “Big Trouble.”
KL Yeah, absolutely.
SWB But that’s not what we’re calling the show because at some point we were in the car, we were kind of bouncing things back and forth and I said something like, “I have strong feelings about this.” And I remember just sort of pausing and being like, “wait… ‘Strong Feelings?’ [KL laughs]—is that…is that a name?” [KL laughs]
KL Yes, and I think we even said it out loud over and over like a dozen times just to kind of, you know, get a feel for it. And then I feel like it clicked and I love that there was this very literal duality in the words. Like, “strong” and “feelings,” but also we have strong feelings about a lot of things.
[29:02]
SWB Yeah, I do. [KL laughs] I think that strength and emotions are often seen as being at odds with each other and something that I really think we do on the show—and that I want to do on the show, is demonstrate that having feelings and talking about those feelings is strong. That’s a strong thing to do. And so I feel like it was a big moment to have that click into place. And if you remember, we were still in the car and I actually pulled out my laptop—again, Katel was driving—I pulled out my laptop and I started making the shittiest little mockup of a show tile that had our faces on it and “Strong Feelings” in big, bold type and it was not at all right. It was not at all the cover art that we are going to release later this week.
KL No.
SWB But I remember looking at it and being like, “oh my God.” And you were like, “yes!” And so we sat on this name for a few days and we ran it by some friends and people that we trusted and we just sort of thought through how much work is it really going to be to change things. Spoiler: kind of a lot. [KL laughs] But we were so hyped about it still that here we are! Katel, we are “Strong Feelings”!
KL Ahh I’m so excited. It’s so exciting to just share this with all of you. And yeah, this is awesome. And it feels like a lot is changing—or maybe that’s just us—but I’m really excited that even though we have a new name and a new look, were not changing too much about the show, it’s just evolving, like we are! And we’re still going to interview an amazing guest on each episode, we’re still fired up by our Fuck Yeahs—and mostly we’re going to be just digging in deeper on things like unfucking our work lives. And we get a lot of mail about this—even just in our listener survey we launched last week—we’ve had people ask us about how to be ambitious without beating yourself up all the time. And that is definitely part of unfucking your work life and your career, for sure. And just finding the stuff that you want, and finding joy in pursuing it, and not buying into all the really toxic bullshit out there that just gets in our way. And I think actually our January season premiere guest will get into some of that.
SWB Yes! And then I also want to talk about some work stuff that’s often not in conversations for quote unquote professional women. Like, for example, sex work. You know, we had Cindy Gallop on talking about sex tech and that was great. But specifically here what I mean is talking about sex work itself, like as a job people do to earn money. I think a lot about how activists in that space are always reiterating that sex work is work, which is very simple and it’s like, “sure it’s right there in the name.” But what that means, which is: sex work is labor. People deserve to be paid for their labor. They deserve to have a safe space. They deserve not to be exploited. And that we have so much in our culture that marginalizes sex workers and that is all about sort of indicting them on a personal level, as opposed to changing the systems that make so much of that work exploitive. And so if we’re going to have a conversation about work, and we’re going to try to have a feminist conversation about work, that we definitely need to make sure that our topics include sex work. So, I want to dig into some touchy subjects like that, some things that people maybe haven’t thought enough about, and that I hope that I can learn more about.
[32:10]
KL Yeah, absolutely, that we haven’t thought about. Another thing that I’m really excited to dig into more, are issues for parents and families. We have someone coming up to talk about family leave policy and we definitely want to hear more from moms and parents in general about what it’s like for them since we are not…parents or families.
SWB Yes. Oh, and another thing I definitely want to do—I really want to keep talking about what it means to take care of ourselves, like take care of our fragile little brains and bodies. You know, what do we do when we’re burned out? What do we do when we cry all day on Sunday?
KL [laughing Yeah.
SWB I feel like 2018 was a year where the kind of hashtag self-care reached a fever pitch. Self-care was getting sold to me in almost every single place I turned.
KL Ughh, yeah.
SWB And it was like a zillion bath bombs and face masks. And don’t get me wrong, bath bombs and face masks are fine.
KL Yes.
SWB They’re pleasant. Look, I’m not shaming you for enjoying a bath. Take all the baths you want. But I do think that there’s been so much emphasis on sort of productizing self-care instead of talking about, how do you actually nurture and protect and nourish yourself in a world that is constantly trying to drag you down, or tell you that you’re not enough, or that your face or your body are bad and shameful in all of the different ways? And that’s also trying to tell you that you don’t deserve safety, or you don’t deserve rights, that we’re going to put a fucking sexual assaulter on the Supreme Court?
KL [sighs] Yeah.
SWB You know, how do we actually take care of ourselves in the face of that? And so I want to keep talking about, what do you do to find joy and to believe that you deserve to have that joy, in this world that is so often so fucked up? That’s what I want to talk about.
KL Yeah. I think that’s so important because self care should be whatever you need it to be and it shouldn’t be like, “now you’re fucking up self-care” [both laugh] because it’s being sold to you. So, okay, we have a lot we’re thinking about, but we want to hear more. So, if you have strong feelings about something we actually set up a hotline for you to share them. Leave us a voicemail at (267) 225–5923.
SWB Yes, please leave us voicemails—and we’ll put it in the recording too, but if you want to have your voicemail potentially shared on the show, you can let us know. If you want it to be anonymous and never shared, that’s totally fine. But we really want to hear from you, so we hope that that will be one other avenue that you can do that. And also look for our new look out later this week. So, we’ll have a new URL—that’s strongfeelings.co. We will try to make sure all of our redirects work correctly though, so if you forget, no worries. And if you’re already subscribed to No, You Go, don’t worry about that either because the name of the show is just going to update in your listening app. So, it’ll go to “Strong Feelings” and you don’t have to do anything to make sure you keep on getting the show. But it’s going to move to “Strong Feelings,” we’re going to change everything over. And it’s pretty exciting because me and Katel did a photoshoot [KL laughs] we got a new logo and maybe that’s only exciting to us, but I think we look pretty cute.
[35:10]
KL Yeah, we do.
SWB So, welcome to “Strong Feelings,” and thank you so much for listening this year! [music fades in, plays for five seconds, and fades out]
KL All right, so something that is absolutely still sticking around is our Fuck Yeah of the Week. And I think this time we’re going to talk about what are we most proud of from this year?
SWB Oh, fuck yeah. [KL laughs] All right. I want to give a fuck yeah to something that might sound a little bit mundane at first. I want to give a fuck yeah to consistency. [KL laughs]
KL I love it, tell me more.
SWB Okay, it sounds boring. But given that we’ve never done anything like this before, given that it’s a lot of work, given that there was a lot of churn with what’s happening in our professional lives like travel and like I had this knee surgery, given that Jenn decided to leave the show during the year—there was just a lot going on. Given all of that, we got this show out weekly, pretty consistently on the schedule we had planned to from the beginning. We are going to end the year with 38 episodes of the show.
KL Wow.
SWB Yeah, and that’s pretty good. We started kind of late in January and we’re only going to mid-December. So, it’s like 11 months—38 episodes. That’s—
KL That’s a lot.
SWB Yeah, and I’m so proud of that. I’m super proud of that. And I’m also proud of just sort of feeling like we’re starting to hit a groove. We felt that at different points and then—
KL Sure.
SWB —got a little destabilized here and there. But nevertheless, I feel really proud of that work, I feel really proud of the consistency, and I feel like it’s really easy to start something with a lot of enthusiasm and then to sort of peter out as you go. But I keep finding new reasons to love what we’re doing and to get excited about what we’re doing and consistently finding new ways to improve and learn and grow. [KL laughs] There’s a lot of stuff I want to keep getting better at. So, I am so proud of that! I’m proud of sticking with it and I am proud that I feel like we have lined up a 2019 that’s going to be fucking great.
KL Yeah, me too. I’m very excited about sharing all of that. That makes me think of what I’m proud of, and that is how well we work together. And I know we talked about that a lot, but it’s such a huge part of why we love doing the show and why we want to make it as good as we can. And I think just like finding an even deeper friendship through this other thing that we do together has been so cool because I think there is just always a lot of opportunities to get tripped up on little things in something like this and just lose sight of what’s important. And I’m just proud of how much I’ve grown through this, and how much I’ve learned, and how much our friendship has grown.
[37:48]
SWB I can’t lose sight of what’s important because I can literally see from here. [KL laughs]
KL I mean, we can see each other’s eyeballs, that’s pretty much it.
SWB Well, fuck yeah! What a year! What an accomplishment. And fuck yeah to everybody who’s been listening—
KL Yeah.
SWB —honestly, you all are so rad. We sent out a listener survey last week like we talked about earlier and we’ve been getting such amazing feedback. There are definitely some places we want to improve—
KL Yeah.
SWB —but we’ve also been hearing so many stories of people who have found what we’ve been doing helpful and valuable to them. So, thank you, thank you, thank you for listening.
KL Thank you so much.
SWB Thank you for letting us know. Thank you for sharing with your friends and hopefully thank you for sticking around for Strong Feelings!
KL Yeah, definitely. Well, that’s it for this very last episode of No, You Go. NYG is recorded in our home city of Philadelphia and produced by Steph from EDITAUDIO. Our theme music is by The Diaphone. We’re taking a little holiday break, but we’ll be back as Strong Feelings starting January 10th. So, definitely keep listening and you will love what we have in store. In the meantime, make sure to sign up for our newsletter, I love that. It’s an every-other-Friday treat! See you again next year! [laughs]
SWB Bye!
KL [laughing] Bye! [music fades in, plays alone for 32 seconds, and fades out]
Sara Wachter-Boettcher Shout out to Harvest, our awesome sponsor once again. Harvest makes time tracking and project planning software for freelancers, tiny teams, huge corporations, and everyone in between—even me! Check them out at getharvest.com, and when you upgrade to a paid account, use code “noyougo” to get 50 percent off your first month. That’s getharvest.com, code “no you go.” [intro music plays for 12 seconds]
Katel LeDû Hey everyone. I’m Katel.
SWB And I’m Sara!
KL And you’re listening to the season finale of No, You Go—
SWB —the show about building satisfying careers and businesses,
KL —getting free of toxic bullshit,
SWB —and living your best feminist life at work! And speaking of best lives, Katel, welcome to our last 2018 show! How are you feeling?
KL So, I seriously cannot believe that it’s been a year and I’m really excited about next season and next year…but…I have not been doing super great—just in the last week or so—and I’m feeling a lot of feelings about that.
SWB Okay, so before we celebrate, [laughs] I think we have to talk about that. [KL laughs]
KL Yeah, so I was really kind of struggling last week and trying to keep on top of everything and just feeling like I wasn’t doing a great job at anything. I wasn’t doing anything well or right and I was also beating myself up over it, which felt even worse. And over the weekend, I pretty much spent all day Sunday crying.
SWB Oh, no! [KL laughs] I’m so sorry, Katel! [KL sighs]
KL So, I mean it felt good because I’m a person who likes to cry and that actually feels good because it’s a big release for me.
SWB Ughh same. I totally love to cry. [KL laughs] I do cry a lot. I definitely cry a few times a week.
KL Yeah, totally. But it also felt terrible because I kept thinking about how excited I should be and how ready I should feel about wrapping up this season and heading into everything we’re doing next and next year. And honestly, I sat down to write some notes for today’s show and all I wrote was that I feel burned out and I don’t know what to do about it. And then I just was like, “okay, what is my plan here?” I do know what to do next in these moments, but I have to take those steps. So, I’ve gotta talk to my people. I got to talk to my partner and my therapist and you. And I knew I just needed to say some of those words out loud.
SWB And I’m so glad that you did because I really want to know how you are and it’s A) because I care about you and I care about how you feel—I want you to feel good. And B) if things aren’t working for the show, then we have to pause and talk about it, even when that’s weird or hard. If we don’t talk about it, how are we going to have the show be meaningful and relatable and real? It’s going to start feeling fake—
[2:46]
KL Yeah.
SWB —and obviously we don’t want that.
KL No.
SWB And also, something I think about a lot is that it takes a lot to put together this show—we spent a lot of time on it. And so, it’s way too much time, [KL laughs] if it’s not going to be real, right?
KL Right.
SWB It feels like we need to get through that kind of stuff honestly, otherwise it’s not worth it to invest this time—and obviously, I want it to be worth it. So, I’m really glad you told me.
KL Yeah, and I think that is part of my plan is just connecting with people—letting people know that I’m struggling. I know that if I tell Jon, my partner, he will block for me. And I know that if I tell you, you’re going to block for me too in whatever way that is most helpful. And I know that if I go and talk to my therapist, she’s going to be there for me. She’s going to say, “that sucks” and she’s also going to give me some tools to help me get through whatever I’m dealing with. And she knows pretty much everything that’s happening with me, so she asks me to think about my optimal self. When I think about who that person is, what does she need? And to think about what that person needs and what am I missing right now? So, that really helped me just kind of think about what I’m missing and what I need to prioritize and one of those things is space and downtime.
SWB Yes, I think that we all need down time, obviously, but it’s always hard to actually consistently do for yourself. And then the other thing that I was thinking about as you were talking about feeling burned out and you weren’t doing great at everything…I think something that’s been extra stressful for me the last few weeks at least—and I suspect maybe for you too—is that we have been working on all of this kind of side planning for what we want to do next year. We’re going to have a big reveal later in the show. And so I feel like I’ve been kind of carrying around a lot of that with me, both the extra work of planning for it, as well as just kind of not talking about it. And so I’m hoping that when we talk about on this show, that means we won’t have to hold on to it anymore.
KL Yeah, I feel exactly the same way. It’s been very exciting [KL laughs] and very stressful. So, I can’t wait to just talk about it.
SWB Before we get to that though, first we want to talk a little bit more about the year that is about to end, so things we learned—which was a lot of things personally that I learned—and also what that means for what we want to do next and where we want to grow. So, is there something that you just can’t stop thinking about that you heard a guest say this year?
[5:06]
KL Yeah. When I sort of started to think about this, I thought back to one of our very early episodes with Eileen Webb when she said why should only work get my best brain? And that has been stuck in my brain ever since that episode. And I think we talked about it a little bit on the show—we kind of recapped it—and I think it’s something that has come up a lot and we’ve sort of come back to a bunch of times. So, I love that something so early on has kind of carried its way through.
SWB Yeah, I don’t think we’ve explicitly brought it back up, but I feel like it’s been lurking there in the back of my head. And you’re totally right, and it’s such a good concept, so thank you, Eileen. [KL laughs]
KL Yeah. Alright so, Sara, what was harder than you thought it would be?
SWB Oh my gosh. [KL laughs] You know what was really hard for me? Feeling like an amateur. [KL sighs]
KL Yeah, I get that.
SWB I don’t think I had done something that made me feel so out of my depth for a while. And that’s probably good for me! Like when I took that pottery class a couple of years ago, [KL laughs] and I was really bad at it. I think that was good for me to be bad at it and to just enjoy doing it anyway—enjoy doing it without feeling successful at it. I think that was good. But the difference is that like in this particular circumstance, I am doing something that I came in with no experience in and I’m doing it really publicly. And so it’s not like my pottery class where I’m like, “okay, I made some shitty pottery [KL laughs] and I can keep that to myself.” [SWB laughs]
KL [laughing] Yeah.
SWB It’s like I made some shitty pottery and now I’m going to, what? Sell it to the world at this art fair?
KL Yeah. I’m going to publish it.
SWB Right? And so I don’t think our podcast is shitty, don’t get me wrong. But I do think that we’re doing something that we hadn’t done before and that was tough. And I feel like over and over again, I was reminded of how I was an amateur. If you remember very early on we were interviewing Alisha Ramos, the founder of Girls Night In?
KL Mhm.
SWB Okay, so we hadn’t quite figured out at that time that in order to do that interview, we had multiple people signed into our recording service Zencastr that does separate tracks for each party. And that if you do that, you can’t all be in the same room because you will get your voice coming in over the airwaves, as well as the voice in the room, and it’s so disorienting.
KL Yeah.
SWB So, remember that Jenn was leading the interview, so we left her [KL laughs] in the office space [KL laughs] where she was recording and we moved to a couch on a different floor and huddled over a laptop—
[7:38]
KL Yeah.
SWB —and I remember just feeling so out of it.
KL Yeah, and then even you and I on that couch were sharing headphones. [laughs] So, it was just super awkward and we were like “is this right?” [laughs]
SWB And so, okay, that was when we weren’t consistently figuring out where we were going to record and how we are going to record. And I remember thinking, “well, I won’t make that mistake again,” [KL laughs] which is great—okay, fine, we learned something.
KL Yeah.
SWB However, I felt like very week we were making new mistakes. [laughs]
KL [laughing] Yes.
SWB Every week we’d stumbled upon something we hadn’t done before and that was hard. And I had a hard time balancing the idea that on the one hand, you got to learn somehow and you can’t learn unless you do it, with the idea that we wanted to make something that was good enough that people would want to subscribe to it and that it would be important to people and valuable to people.
KL Mhm.
SWB And so how do we make something that’s as good as a podcast we love without the experience [laughing] of the podcasters we love?
KL [laughing] Yeah.
SWB I feel like finding that balance and finding a place where I was both putting in enough time and energy to get better at it and try to make sure that the product was good, but without beating myself up that it was not perfect—which it wasn’t, sorry everyone.
KL [laughing] Yeah.
SWB Okay, Katel, I have one for you.
KL Okay.
SWB Is there anything that you learned from a guest this year that you feel like changed the way you look at your work or the way you look at running the show?
KL You know, when we talked to—just recently—the authors of New Erotica for Feminists, I really loved hearing how they collaborate and how they support each other and have each other’s backs. And we heard that they can legit break down in front of each other and they know that that’s not going to change anything. If anything, they’re going to just rally around each other and figure out how to make it work. I think when we asked them about how they work together—when you asked that question, you kind of expect them to be like, “oh, we have these stumbling blocks, we have these challenges”—and I’m sure that they did—but they were like, no, we work really well together and that’s why this is fun. And that’s why we made something we really love and we’re really proud of. So, I loved hearing such a positive story about that and I think it just made me think about and reflect on our relationship and how well we work together. And that’s made things feel good and easy, even in the face of [laughs] some of the things we didn’t feel like we were so good at.
[10:01]
SWB Yeah, and I think hearing from them, I really heard the trust that they had for each other. And I think that that’s valued in comedy writing that if you’re going to work with comedy writing partners, you have to be able to give each other hard feedback if the comedy is not working. And that if you’re going to collaborate on jokes, then there’s a lot of riffing off each others ideas until you figure out something good. And that bringing that spirit into their work meant that they had that collaboration because they trusted that if somebody was like, “hey, I wasn’t really meaning to go there“— like, ”eeegh, I don’t think this is working”—that that’s okay and right to say and that’s not mean or tearing other people down. It is all in the spirit of making it better. And so I like to think about that trust that they had for each other and think about, you know, the kind of trust that we need to bring to our relationship and the kind of trust that I’ve had in the best working relationships I’ve ever had.
KL Okay, so I’ve got a question for you. What’s something that you think went horribly wrong?
SWB Uhhh! [KL laughs] I don’t think talk about all the negative stuff, but I will. [KL laughs] Okay, so related actually to feeling amateurish—when we had recording issues, that was really tough for me.
KL Yeah.
SWB And we had a little bit of a spate of them this summer and fall. And what was especially tough about that is that I felt like we had hit our stride and I was like, “I thought we were past this!” [KL laughs] And then a few things happened where I was just like, “oh, no.” One of them was the time we were trying to record with Cindy Gallop. So, Cindy is a pro. She has done a lot of interviews and she’s so sure of her messages, right? And when we got her on the line to record, we were having some trouble with Zencastr. And it’s a little bit like a Google Hangout—everybody gets onto this line, but everybody is also on their own separate line for the recording. It’s pretty cool. Except that the VoIP—so like the internet connection—screwed up like three different times and we had to stop the recording and restart it, which I felt so silly about, and then eventually we actually switched to using my conference line to record, [KL laughs] which was like a whole, “okay, now we’re going to need you to do this instead.” And, of course, that has some other issues with it like you can’t record on separate tracks, so voices get on top of each other. Anyway, through all of this, Cindy was a pro, but I remember just feeling like, “she must think we are a mess.” [KL laughs] It was kind of traumatic!
[12:17]
KL I know. It felt very dire in the moment [laughs] because we were just like, “oh my gosh, are we gonna get through this?” [laughs]
SWB I know. And I felt so out of control—
KL Yeah.
SWB And that’s one of the the things that’s hard about when you have a technical issue is that it makes you feel out of control and I of course hate that.
KL And it eats up time, which just feels like it adds to that pressure.
SWB Yeah! And especially because I really value the time that our guests give us—
KL Yeah.
SWB —and I don’t want to go over the amount of time we’ve blocked. We try to be careful about blocking enough time. I think we learned a little bit about that early on. But I feel nervous as soon as we start having problems that are making us eat into that hour that they’ve given to spend with us.
KL Yeah.
SWB And then remember after? Okay after Cindy—
KL Ughh. Yeah.
SWB —then, if you remember, we had Keah Brown on the show, who was completely wonderful—
KL Amazing.
SWB —but what you don’t know if you weren’t here for the recording, [both laughs] is that when we first tried to record with her, she was having all of these mic connection issues or Zencastr wasn’t identifying her mic or whatever. It went round and round, we spent a long time on it, and she was so great through all of it. But finally it seemed like we got it worked out, Zencastr was like, “yep, we hear the mic.” When we started recording, it was showing little sound waves for her voice. And then we listen to the recording later…
KL Ughhhh
SWB It was nothing but static! [KL makes a horrified noise] 45 minutes of static.
KL That is—that still makes me cringe. [laughs]
SWB Thankfully, Keah is amazing and she was like, “let’s redo the interview.”
KL Yeah…
SWB And so we just redid it and, of course, she was awesome again. She might have been even better the second time.
KL I know.
SWB So I try not to think about what little gems she happened to say the first time that we are missing now because the interview is great and she’s great. But those things are a really good way to erode your confidence. And I started looking into more of this, the deeper we got in. The only real way to a 100 percent prevent this stuff it seems is if you’re booking studio space and everybody’s going into a studio. And sadly we’re not quite there yet. And also you need to have guests who are willing to take that extra time to go into a studio—
KL Yeah.
[14:18]
SWB —which is also, you know, kind of a lot of burden for them. And so we’ve talked to a few people about what they do and there’s lots of different things that people have suggested. We’ve heard from people who actually mail their guests high-quality mics and then expect them to mail them back and hopefully they usually do. We’ve talked people who use other kinds of services. But the biggest thing we heard was that we’re not alone in having these kinds of issues and that sometimes sound quality sucks. And sometimes you have flubs and it’s hard to get rid of and, you know, we’re not on a mega budget—we’re not Serial—[KL laughs] we’re doing what we can here I think something that I’ve realized is that when you have a tech issue with a guest, it can kind of go one of two ways. Either it can be really alienating for the guest where they’re like, “what’s going on” or it feels like they’re having their time wasted, or it can be a way to kind of take the wall down and be like, “oh, we’re all in this together,” you know?
KL Yeah, exactly. You can kind of build up a little bit of a rapport because you’re like “uhhh this is terrible but we’re gonna we’re gonna figure it out.”
SWB Yeah. And so, you know, some of that depends on the guest, but I’m thinking about what can I do when there is a tech issue to create more of that space for it to be something that we get through together and not something that makes them feel alienated. So, I’m hopefully going to get better at that and not feel so fucking awkward [both laughs] whenever there’s a tech issue.
KL [laughing] Yeah.
SWB So, Katel, I do have another question for you.
KL All right, hit me.
SWB What’s something that was really surprising to you about doing the show?
KL Well, I think back to the very first few episodes that we did when we were still figuring out how we were going to have the show produced. And we decided okay, we’re going to we’re going to work with someone to do that and also get transcriptions done. But you and I spent some time doing the transcriptions at first.
SWB Super fun. [KL laughs]
KL Super, super fun!
SWB Much love to people who do transcription regularly.
KL Absolutely. And I just remember thinking this is really uncomfortable for me to listen to my own voice this much and I thought like, “this is either going to make me feel really anxious about moving forward and kind of getting over some of my own hang ups I have about listening to my own voice or it’s going to be really good.” And what I found is that it didn’t take me very long to get used to hearing my own voice and I feel really good about that. Now I think just something about knowing that I was going to have to listen to my voice made me think, “this is my voice and that’s what it sounds like and all I can do—and all I want to do—is get better at telling stories and articulating the things I want to say.” And, I mean, the other hard part of that was how hard it is to articulate some of the things that I want to say and some of the stories that I want to tell. So, I think just having it recorded added a little bit of pressure there. So, it was surprising.
[17:14]
SWB Listening to your own voice is tough—
KL [laughing] Yeah.
SWB —but I like your voice.
KL Well, I like yours. [laughs]
SWB Thank you. I feel totally numb to it now because I’ve listened to it so much.
KL Yeah.
SWB So I’m just like, “literally whatever.”
KL Yeah.
SWB Watching myself on video, I still find more challenging.
KL [laughing] Yeah.
SWB I’ve done it. I recommend it for anybody who wants to get over some of their self shame issues. Once you can make yourself numb-er to that [KL laughs] I feel like a lot of stuff gets better, but it’s not easy.
KL Yeah. Alright. So, even though we didn’t always feel like pros along the way, we did learn a lot of stuff. What advice would you give to someone trying to start a podcast?
SWB Find a community.
KL Mhmm.
SWB That is something that I don’t think we thought enough about or did enough for until later in the game than I want to admit. I think we got pretty heads down working on the show. And also, you know, I definitely felt like I had a strong community in some of the other parts of my professional life. I had all these women that I would turn to who worked in my field, but it didn’t occur to me that I didn’t really have other people to turn to who did podcasting and who wanted to talk about that. It wasn’t until we went to Werk It that I felt like I sort of saw what I was missing, [laughs] which was this community of women podcasters who were sharing ideas and sharing stories and experiences and were really generous with each other. And [laughing] that was 11 months in.
KL [laughing] Yeah. Well. [SWB laughs]
SWB So, we’re still building on that whole community thing. So, if you are starting to think about doing something—a podcast or any kind of side thing—I would say definitely find some of that community earlier than we did because I really think that that kind of support would have been really valuable to us. And it’s going to be valuable now. I know that we are following up on so many conversations from people we met there and already it feels really different.
KL Mhm.
SWB And I think particularly because podcasting is pretty male-dominated still.
KL Yeah.
SWB And so, I mean I listen to podcasts I have men on them. [laughs] I enjoy certain men in my life, but I feel like being a woman in podcasting, some of the stakes are different, some of my interests are different, and there’s also just not enough of us, and so finding that community I think has been hugely valuable. So, whatever it is that you want to do—it doesn’t matter if it’s podcasting or not—I think don’t skimp on finding community is definitely advice that I will be taking in the future and you may like to.
[19:34]
KL Yeah. I think that’s great advice.
SWB What about you? Do you have any advice?
KL I think give yourself a little room to stumble and know that that happens and it’s okay and you might have to [laughs] redo something here and there. Also just tapping into your networks and not forgetting that those folks are there and that the people who support you are going to support you in this new thing. You don’t get support unless you ask for it and tell people what you’re doing.
SWB Yes, definitely. I think talking more with people about what we’re doing is so important and it’s definitely what I was really getting out of that whole community thing too.
KL Yeah.
SWB Okay, so last question. What do you most want to improve next year?
KL So, I definitely want to develop the way that I tell stories and just how I share the things that I want to share. And I want to chip away at my fear of public speaking and this has been like such a huge step in that direction. And I know that I’m not in front of a crowd, but you know what I’m saying. And you have certainly helped me to do that. I think I loved doing our live event, so I would love to do more of that, and just do this a little bit more in front of people and just develop—develop the show a little bit more.
SWB So, I think that really dovetails with what I want to improve next year—
KL Yeah?
SWB —because I also want to do more joining of groups and attending events and doing live shows. And I think part of it for me is even evolving how I think about the show and sort of where it sits in my life. So, when we started this I kind of thought it would be like, “oh it’s a side thing, it’s going to take me a few hours a week.” And I mean, maybe I thought it was going to be more than a few hours a week, but I very much thought of it as something that was kind of a smaller thing over here. What I’ve realized over the course of this year is a couple things. One is that it takes a lot of time to do a good job. It takes a lot of time to grow and evolve. It takes a lot of time to work on the stuff that’s hard like marketing and promoting it or finding sponsors. All of that stuff is time consuming. And I’ve also really love doing the show.
KL Yeah.
SWB And so I think I need to be honest about like, “okay, this is going to be a substantial part of my life and this is not some little side gig, but it is actually a meaningful place in my professional world and it deserves care and feeding and nurturing.” Also though, it maybe needs to make more money, so I can get more time. [both laugh]
[21:52]
KL I was gonna say, “aww, I love that, that’s so…thats so beautiful”— [laughs]
SWB [laughing] It was so beautiful until I said it needs to make more money? [laughs]
KL No, no. That is also beautiful, I agree! [laughs]
SWB Well, I am so hyped to be getting into next year and I cannot wait to tell everybody what next year is going to look like! [music fades in, plays for five seconds, and fades out]
SWB Hey, it’s Sara ducking in for a quick break to talk about careers with our friends at Shopify. This week, they want us to tell you all about a couple job they’re super excited about. So, the first one is being the UX Lead for their payments and balanced team. Okay, so what that means is that you would be leading a team of researchers, designers, front-end developers, and content strategists. And what you would be doing is trying to help make financial information simpler and more understandable for Shopify’s customers, so that entrepreneurs around the world aren’t bowled over by confusing jargon and they can actually, you know, understand how their money looks. Oh, and it’s based in Montreal, which is just lovely. And then the other job Shopify is really, really hoping to find some amazing candidates for is based in Ottawa, which I actually got to visit a year or two ago for the first time and it’s so pretty there. I even took a run around some river paths and ended up crossing from Ontario into Quebec on my jog, which is something you could do everyday if you live there. But about the job, okay. So, this is another UX Lead position and this time it’s for Shopify Home, which is the most prominent artificial intelligence product at Shopify. And so in this role, you’d be responsible for actually redesigning that, which seems like a pretty big deal. But you wouldn’t be doing it alone. You’d be working with peers in product management, engineering, and data science and you’d be working together to figure out strategy. And then you’d be leading a team. That team would have product designers, content strategists, and researchers on it to help bring that all to life. So, that’s it! Two amazing new roles open right now at Shopify. Get all the details on these and over a hundred other open positions at shopify.com/careers. That’s shopify.com/careers. [music fades in, plays for five seconds, and fades out]
[23:49]
Welcome to… Strong Feelings!
SWB So, it is time! It’s time for the big news part of the show. This is not just the season finale of No, You Go. This is the last No, You Go show ever.
KL Nooo!
SWB Okay, don’t freak out because you actually know what’s happening. [both laugh] Okay, we are coming back in January, we are just switching things up a little bit when we do. So, as we talked about last week in our episode, our third co-host, Jenn, decided to leave the show. And after that happened, me and Katel were really unsure what we were going to do. And then we happened to be on this long weird car trip one day—if you read the newsletter, you may remember this. Katel had to be in court to support someone who was filing a protective order. And so the court date was 9am, two states away and I’d literally had knee surgery [KL laughs] four days before…this is a terrible math problem!
KL [laughing] Yeah.
SWB 9am, two states away, four days of knee surgery. [both laugh] So, I was like, Katel, you cannot drive this five hour round trip drive to go do this horrible task alone. [KL laughs] You just cannot do that.
KL Yeah. Oh my gosh, we had to leave so early, I couldn’t even pick us up fancy coffee—I had to make it and bring it. But you were such a goddamn trooper and you coming with me made that really long day just so much more bearable. And something I think a lot about is that you are someone in my life who shows up.
SWB I do try to be somebody who shows up. [KL laughs] That’s definitely something that’s important to me and I think a lot about how powerful it is to show up for someone else when they really need it. And sometimes when they’re not even asking for it and then they realize later that it really helped them. And so I’m really glad that I did because I will say that on the way back from that trip—we’d gone to court and this whole thing and there was just so much emotional exhaustion in the car on the way back.
KL Yeah.
SWB And there was just so much going on. And I was really glad I was there because we could kind of decompress and you could process stuff out loud. We could talk about it. But also it was like the eighth hour [KL laughs] of the stressful fucking day that started at 5:30 in the morning. And so one of the things that came out of that totally exhausted state was, maybe we should change the name of the show and let No, You Go be something we did with Jenn and sort of have a fresh start with just us.
KL Yeah, totally. I remember sort of starting that conversation by asking, “okay, what if we change the name? What what could it be? What direction would we even go in?”
SWB Yeah, that was really helpful for me because at first I was actually a little nervous about changing the name because it felt like, “oh my god, that’s so much work,” or are we just creating more problems for ourselves?
KL [laughing] Right.
SWB But when you were like, “well, what if?” it allowed me to think about ideas without feeling like this was something we had to do or feeling like there was pressure.
KL Right, exactly. And I definitely hadn’t considered it that much until then and then when we were in the car together, we thought, okay, let’s spend some some of this ride home brainstorming and if we come up with something that we love, we’ll figure out what to do next with it.
SWB So, we did come up with something that we love, but before we tell you what that is, Katel, do you remember any of the names that we came up with that we did not go with?
[26:54]
KL Oh my gosh, I don’t!
SWB Well, you were driving.
KL [laughing] Yeah exactly!
SWB Its okay, I have some notes. Let me let me share some notes with you.
KL [laughing] Oh gosh, oh gosh.
SWB So, the first one. Definitely a pass…which was, “In It Together.” [KL laughs] I mean…yeah!
KL I mean yes, accurate!
SWB But it’s a little too on the nose.
KL [laughing] Yes.
SWB I have no actual recollection of talking about this, [KL laughs] I was a little surprised to see this in my notes.
KL [laughing] Oh gosh.
SWB It must have been one of those things we wrote down going like, “this is bad.”
KL Yeah.
SWB “Talk It Out.”
KL Oh hmm. Yeah, that’s like, you know, Saved by the Bell era. [laughs]
SWB It’s a Saved by the Bell era local daytime TV show—
KL [laughing] Yes.
SWB —where your local celebrities get on to “Talk It Out” about the issues of the day.
KL Or it’s like the Saved by the Bell school radio show. [both laugh]
SWB Okay, pass! [both laugh] Okay, another one I don’t remember at all…“Sure Thing.” [KL laughs]
KL Oh my god.
SWB I don’t know!
KL That sounds…problematic, I think. [both laugh]
SWB Okay, there was some better stuff too. Okay, so here’s one. It wasn’t quite right, but I really loved the idea and I still love the idea because I think it’s definitely us: “Make Trouble.”
KL Mmm! Yeah, I do remember that now that you say it and I liked it too.
SWB Okay, and that one led to one that I actually still do kind of love. I would listen to a podcast that was named this—“Big Trouble.”
KLOoh, yeah. I like that too.
SWB I mean, “Big Trouble”! I’d listen to a show called “Big Trouble.”
KL Yeah, absolutely.
SWB But that’s not what we’re calling the show because at some point we were in the car, we were kind of bouncing things back and forth and I said something like, “I have strong feelings about this.” And I remember just sort of pausing and being like, “wait… ‘Strong Feelings?’ [KL laughs]—is that…is that a name?” [KL laughs]
KL Yes, and I think we even said it out loud over and over like a dozen times just to kind of, you know, get a feel for it. And then I feel like it clicked and I love that there was this very literal duality in the words. Like, “strong” and “feelings,” but also we have strong feelings about a lot of things.
[29:02]
SWB Yeah, I do. [KL laughs] I think that strength and emotions are often seen as being at odds with each other and something that I really think we do on the show—and that I want to do on the show, is demonstrate that having feelings and talking about those feelings is strong. That’s a strong thing to do. And so I feel like it was a big moment to have that click into place. And if you remember, we were still in the car and I actually pulled out my laptop—again, Katel was driving—I pulled out my laptop and I started making the shittiest little mockup of a show tile that had our faces on it and “Strong Feelings” in big, bold type and it was not at all right. It was not at all the cover art that we are going to release later this week.
KL No.
SWB But I remember looking at it and being like, “oh my God.” And you were like, “yes!” And so we sat on this name for a few days and we ran it by some friends and people that we trusted and we just sort of thought through how much work is it really going to be to change things. Spoiler: kind of a lot. [KL laughs] But we were so hyped about it still that here we are! Katel, we are “Strong Feelings”!
KL Ahh I’m so excited. It’s so exciting to just share this with all of you. And yeah, this is awesome. And it feels like a lot is changing—or maybe that’s just us—but I’m really excited that even though we have a new name and a new look, were not changing too much about the show, it’s just evolving, like we are! And we’re still going to interview an amazing guest on each episode, we’re still fired up by our Fuck Yeahs—and mostly we’re going to be just digging in deeper on things like unfucking our work lives. And we get a lot of mail about this—even just in our listener survey we launched last week—we’ve had people ask us about how to be ambitious without beating yourself up all the time. And that is definitely part of unfucking your work life and your career, for sure. And just finding the stuff that you want, and finding joy in pursuing it, and not buying into all the really toxic bullshit out there that just gets in our way. And I think actually our January season premiere guest will get into some of that.
SWB Yes! And then I also want to talk about some work stuff that’s often not in conversations for quote unquote professional women. Like, for example, sex work. You know, we had Cindy Gallop on talking about sex tech and that was great. But specifically here what I mean is talking about sex work itself, like as a job people do to earn money. I think a lot about how activists in that space are always reiterating that sex work is work, which is very simple and it’s like, “sure it’s right there in the name.” But what that means, which is: sex work is labor. People deserve to be paid for their labor. They deserve to have a safe space. They deserve not to be exploited. And that we have so much in our culture that marginalizes sex workers and that is all about sort of indicting them on a personal level, as opposed to changing the systems that make so much of that work exploitive. And so if we’re going to have a conversation about work, and we’re going to try to have a feminist conversation about work, that we definitely need to make sure that our topics include sex work. So, I want to dig into some touchy subjects like that, some things that people maybe haven’t thought enough about, and that I hope that I can learn more about.
[32:10]
KL Yeah, absolutely, that we haven’t thought about. Another thing that I’m really excited to dig into more, are issues for parents and families. We have someone coming up to talk about family leave policy and we definitely want to hear more from moms and parents in general about what it’s like for them since we are not…parents or families.
SWB Yes. Oh, and another thing I definitely want to do—I really want to keep talking about what it means to take care of ourselves, like take care of our fragile little brains and bodies. You know, what do we do when we’re burned out? What do we do when we cry all day on Sunday?
KL [laughing Yeah.
SWB I feel like 2018 was a year where the kind of hashtag self-care reached a fever pitch. Self-care was getting sold to me in almost every single place I turned.
KL Ughh, yeah.
SWB And it was like a zillion bath bombs and face masks. And don’t get me wrong, bath bombs and face masks are fine.
KL Yes.
SWB They’re pleasant. Look, I’m not shaming you for enjoying a bath. Take all the baths you want. But I do think that there’s been so much emphasis on sort of productizing self-care instead of talking about, how do you actually nurture and protect and nourish yourself in a world that is constantly trying to drag you down, or tell you that you’re not enough, or that your face or your body are bad and shameful in all of the different ways? And that’s also trying to tell you that you don’t deserve safety, or you don’t deserve rights, that we’re going to put a fucking sexual assaulter on the Supreme Court?
KL [sighs] Yeah.
SWB You know, how do we actually take care of ourselves in the face of that? And so I want to keep talking about, what do you do to find joy and to believe that you deserve to have that joy, in this world that is so often so fucked up? That’s what I want to talk about.
KL Yeah. I think that’s so important because self care should be whatever you need it to be and it shouldn’t be like, “now you’re fucking up self-care” [both laugh] because it’s being sold to you. So, okay, we have a lot we’re thinking about, but we want to hear more. So, if you have strong feelings about something we actually set up a hotline for you to share them. Leave us a voicemail at (267) 225–5923.
SWB Yes, please leave us voicemails—and we’ll put it in the recording too, but if you want to have your voicemail potentially shared on the show, you can let us know. If you want it to be anonymous and never shared, that’s totally fine. But we really want to hear from you, so we hope that that will be one other avenue that you can do that. And also look for our new look out later this week. So, we’ll have a new URL—that’s strongfeelings.co. We will try to make sure all of our redirects work correctly though, so if you forget, no worries. And if you’re already subscribed to No, You Go, don’t worry about that either because the name of the show is just going to update in your listening app. So, it’ll go to “Strong Feelings” and you don’t have to do anything to make sure you keep on getting the show. But it’s going to move to “Strong Feelings,” we’re going to change everything over. And it’s pretty exciting because me and Katel did a photoshoot [KL laughs] we got a new logo and maybe that’s only exciting to us, but I think we look pretty cute.
[35:10]
KL Yeah, we do.
SWB So, welcome to “Strong Feelings,” and thank you so much for listening this year! [music fades in, plays for five seconds, and fades out]
KL All right, so something that is absolutely still sticking around is our Fuck Yeah of the Week. And I think this time we’re going to talk about what are we most proud of from this year?
SWB Oh, fuck yeah. [KL laughs] All right. I want to give a fuck yeah to something that might sound a little bit mundane at first. I want to give a fuck yeah to consistency. [KL laughs]
KL I love it, tell me more.
SWB Okay, it sounds boring. But given that we’ve never done anything like this before, given that it’s a lot of work, given that there was a lot of churn with what’s happening in our professional lives like travel and like I had this knee surgery, given that Jenn decided to leave the show during the year—there was just a lot going on. Given all of that, we got this show out weekly, pretty consistently on the schedule we had planned to from the beginning. We are going to end the year with 38 episodes of the show.
KL Wow.
SWB Yeah, and that’s pretty good. We started kind of late in January and we’re only going to mid-December. So, it’s like 11 months—38 episodes. That’s—
KL That’s a lot.
SWB Yeah, and I’m so proud of that. I’m super proud of that. And I’m also proud of just sort of feeling like we’re starting to hit a groove. We felt that at different points and then—
KL Sure.
SWB —got a little destabilized here and there. But nevertheless, I feel really proud of that work, I feel really proud of the consistency, and I feel like it’s really easy to start something with a lot of enthusiasm and then to sort of peter out as you go. But I keep finding new reasons to love what we’re doing and to get excited about what we’re doing and consistently finding new ways to improve and learn and grow. [KL laughs] There’s a lot of stuff I want to keep getting better at. So, I am so proud of that! I’m proud of sticking with it and I am proud that I feel like we have lined up a 2019 that’s going to be fucking great.
KL Yeah, me too. I’m very excited about sharing all of that. That makes me think of what I’m proud of, and that is how well we work together. And I know we talked about that a lot, but it’s such a huge part of why we love doing the show and why we want to make it as good as we can. And I think just like finding an even deeper friendship through this other thing that we do together has been so cool because I think there is just always a lot of opportunities to get tripped up on little things in something like this and just lose sight of what’s important. And I’m just proud of how much I’ve grown through this, and how much I’ve learned, and how much our friendship has grown.
[37:48]
SWB I can’t lose sight of what’s important because I can literally see from here. [KL laughs]
KL I mean, we can see each other’s eyeballs, that’s pretty much it.
SWB Well, fuck yeah! What a year! What an accomplishment. And fuck yeah to everybody who’s been listening—
KL Yeah.
SWB —honestly, you all are so rad. We sent out a listener survey last week like we talked about earlier and we’ve been getting such amazing feedback. There are definitely some places we want to improve—
KL Yeah.
SWB —but we’ve also been hearing so many stories of people who have found what we’ve been doing helpful and valuable to them. So, thank you, thank you, thank you for listening.
KL Thank you so much.
SWB Thank you for letting us know. Thank you for sharing with your friends and hopefully thank you for sticking around for Strong Feelings!
KL Yeah, definitely. Well, that’s it for this very last episode of No, You Go. NYG is recorded in our home city of Philadelphia and produced by Steph from EDITAUDIO. Our theme music is by The Diaphone. We’re taking a little holiday break, but we’ll be back as Strong Feelings starting January 10th. So, definitely keep listening and you will love what we have in store. In the meantime, make sure to sign up for our newsletter, I love that. It’s an every-other-Friday treat! See you again next year! [laughs]
SWB Bye!
KL [laughing] Bye! [music fades in, plays alone for 32 seconds, and fades out]