Dear Mr. Peters,

I’m writing as your constituent to congratulate you on winning reelection again this year. I’m also pleased, as I imagine you must be, to see such incredible wins across our country. As I write this letter, the Democrats are projected to win 259 seats in the House—the biggest gain for the party since the 1974 post-Watergate elections, and delivering the biggest Democratic House majority in more than three decades. And thanks to the work of the candidates, volunteers, and grassroots organizers around the country, not only will Democrats take control of the Senate with the biggest gain in 40 years, but we also saw a sea change in states previously written off as “deeply red,” including Kansas, Iowa, Mississippi, the Carolinas, and, of course, Texas. There is so much to celebrate and so much to be optimistic about for the future, and I know you join us all in that celebration.

Nevertheless, the optimism we feel also comes with a cautious note. I truly believe that this election is an opportunity for the American people and for the Democrats as a party, but only if we take away the correct message from the results and learn the lesson of history. This is not the time for bipartisanship or compromise. The Democrats must forcefully make the case for their ability to deliver for the nation. If they do, I believe that this year’s wins will be the beginning of a profound shift in American politics. If, on the other hand, the Democrats do not show results for America, the voters could just as easily abandon the party—and they’d arguably be right to do so. This election, as so many pundits and even Republicans have noted, was less an embrace of the Democratic party and more a thorough repudiation of Trump and the Republicans.

On Wednesday morning, Leader Jeffries appeared on Morning Joe and was asked by host Joe Scarborough, “How do you keep your caucus focused on the things that got them elected . . . instead of retribution?” Jeffries responded, “The American people don’t want us to get even; they want us to get things done on their behalf.” It may surprise you to know that despite the criticism that comment received from many of my grassroots colleagues on social media, I actually agree with Leader Jeffries, but perhaps not in quite the way he meant.

The American people desperately need the Democrats to get things done on our behalf. Not only do we need the Democrats to get things done, we need to see them getting things done. Households are breaking under the strain of rising prices and stagnant wages while corporate profits and wealth concentration are at all-time highs. Masked thugs have been kidnapping members of our community, separating families, imprisoning people in filthy, disease-ridden camps, and even killing people in the street, while the President, his family, and members of his regime use their positions to enrich themselves in the most nakedly corrupt ways seen in living memory. The very foundations of our democracy and our rights are being attacked, aided and abetted by a Supreme Court that has been thoroughly captured by the extreme right. No half-measures or incremental changes can fix this. Going back to the 2024 or 2016 status quo is not enough.

We need the Democrats to enact major structural change, but what can you actually accomplish? Despite the historic gains made in this election in both the House and the Senate, there remain huge obstacles. Democrats do not have enough votes in the Senate to overcome a legislative filibuster, nor are there enough votes in the combined Congress to override a veto. Republicans have shown time and again for decades that they will obstruct good governance at every turn, no matter how many conciliatory moves the Democrats make. There is no reason to assume this time will be any different. Indeed, just today Trump announced that he will be elevating Stephen Miller to the position of White House Chief of Staff, a clear sign that no conciliation from this regime is coming.

Faced with Republican obstruction in the past, Democrats have often aimed low or tried to reach across the aisle, and while in normal times bipartisanship can be a reasonable strategy and even a laudable moral position, the election results this year make clear in no uncertain terms that the American people do not want to work with the Republicans. Of course if any Republicans want to cross the aisle to do what’s right, they should be welcomed. But we can’t assume that will happen. Whatever you’re going to do, you need to do it on your own.

And this is where my second point of agreement with Leader Jeffries comes. The American people do not want or need the Democrats to get even. We do not want or need you to pursue retribution. What we do want and need is for you to protect us and repair the harms that have been done. We need you to show that you are fighting for the rule of law and fighting against corruption. That means investigations. It means prosecutions. And, yes, it may mean impeachment, not only of the President but of members of his administration.

Secretary Kennedy’s policies at HHS have left Americans sicker and poorer, and have allowed misinformation to spread like wildfire—or, more to the point, like measles. Secretary Hegseth’s policies at DOD were part of what got us into a pointless and costly war of choice, while also purging the military of many of its best and brightest. Secretary Mullin’s policies at DHS have terrorized communities all over this country while his masked agents operate with complete impunity. And at the top of it all, the President has allowed, facilitated, and directed innumerable actions against our people and our democracy while lining his pockets and cozying up to foreign dictators. Standing up to these men and doing whatever is possible to remove them from office is not retribution. It is harm reduction. It is upholding the ideals the Constitution is based on, the ideals of a free and fair and functioning society. It is patriotism.

The American people do not want or need half-measures. We do not want ICE to wear body cameras; we want the agency abolished and agents who broke the law to be prosecuted. We do not want to go back to the status quo of 2024 or 2016; we want universal healthcare and childcare, a livable wage, affordable housing and education, worker protections and environmental protections, monopolies broken up, and for the rich to finally pay their fair share of taxes. We want our rights, whether a woman’s right to choose, the right to vote, the right to worship or not worship as we choose, the right to love as we choose, to live in our own bodies as we choose. We want to live in a world where the wealthy and powerful are held to account for their crimes just as everyone else is.

A century ago, the Great Depression ravaged this country and America responded with the New Deal. In the 1950s, McCarthyism and the Red Scare turned American against American, but following the moral stance of journalist Edward R. Murrow, the Senate condemned Senator McCarthy. In the 1960s, America enacted the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. And in the 1970s, America stood up against the abuses and corruption of the Nixon Administration. The times we are living through now require the same scale of change and the same values and convictions. It is a daunting task, to be sure, but in Murrow’s words, we must “remember that we are not descended from fearful men.” America needs the Democratic Party to step up. If you can do so, not only will the momentum of this year’s elections continue but the country will be better off for it. But if you squander this opportunity, we will all pay for it.

Sincerely,
Mike Sakasegawa, constituent

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about resilience and strength and care lately. Let me start with something I posted to Bluesky a couple of weeks back:

Hey. I just wanted to tell you: if you’re feeling anxious or afraid, that is okay. It’s okay to be afraid when things are out of control. It’s okay to feel your feelings. In fact, you must feel them in order to let them pass through you. It probably feels like this feeling in your body will last forever. It won’t last forever. You will smile again. You will laugh again. It might not be today. But, then again, it might be.

But it’s normal to feel that this feeling will be forever. It’s okay to have that thought. Events are moving very rapidly right now. We don’t know what’s going to happen. That is very scary. It is okay to be scared. The unknowability of the future is one of the scariest things there is.

But this time will not last forever.

In fact, the future has always been unknown. We have never been able to say for sure what will happen tomorrow, next week, next year. It is a comfort to feel we know what our story will be, but that was always just a story.

Acknowledging that the future has always been unknown is difficult and scary. Acknowledging how little control we have over our lives is difficult and scary. But you can do this. I believe in you. Maybe you can’t do it today. Maybe not tomorrow. But you will. I believe in you.

And the thing is? Even if we are not in control of our lives, and even if the future is unknown and scary, we are not walking into the future alone. You are not alone. You are a part of a great web of humanity. You are connected to other people, to other life, and to the earth. None of us can do this alone. None of us has to do it alone. We get through it together. Maybe that is with our loved ones or our friends. Maybe it is with our community. Maybe it is with strangers on the internet. I don’t know what it looks like for you. But none of us is truly as alone as we feel.

The people who are behind the events that are scaring you are trying to make you afraid. They are trying to make you feel isolated and helpless. They are trying to make you feel trapped and alone. But you are not alone. And you are not helpless. There is real power in connection. There is real sustenance in love. If we can respond to this fear, this attack, by turning toward our love and reaching for each other instead of retreating into solitude, it makes us stronger. It makes us more powerful. Who are the people you love? Who loves you?

Yes, call your representatives. Yes, contribute to your community resources. Yes, march and rally. But remember, too, that resilience is not something that comes only from within. It is something that we build together. It is something we support in each other. Strength flows from love. Take care of the people you can take care of. Allow others to take care of you. It looks different for each of us. But these things matter. Interdependence, community, love, these things matter whether it is a neighborhood or an organization or just two people. You are not alone.

And I hope you will remember, too, that letting someone give you their care and their love is a gift to them. Letting someone help you is a gift to them. I hope you will let yourself believe you are worthy of love and care, because you are. And because those who want to love you deserve to do so.

I know you’re doing your best. I’m doing my best, too. Take care.

“Resilience is not something that comes only from within. It is something that we build together.” That’s the thing I’ve been thinking about almost every day for weeks now.

Especially for those of us who have had to be emotionally independent for one reason or another, whether due to neglect or abuse or whatever, we can have this idea that we have to do things on our own. That the ultimate responsibility for our own wellbeing lies in ourselves. And there is a truth to that. We are responsible for our own emotions. We are responsible for our own choices. We are responsible for our own behaviors. Acknowledging this truth and integrating it into my life has been the single greatest adjustment I’ve made in terms of being able to do good in this world, to be compassionate and kind—in short, to be the kind of person I want to be.

But the other thing that has been so important for me to learn and integrate is how much easier it is to be strong, to be resilient, to live according to my values, when I am supported.

Consider a particularly resilient little plant: the dandelion. Dandelions will grow anywhere they can find a tiny little space. They will grow through cracks in concrete. They will grow in shallow clay soil. They will grow with little moisture, in heat, in shade. They’re hardy and will survive in pretty hostile environments. But there’s a difference between surviving and thriving, and dandelions do grow better, bigger, fuller, when they’re given good soil, enough water, and sunlight. When they’re given what they need.

We do all have the capacity to make choices that align with our values, even when times are difficult. But it is so much easier to make those choices when we are nourished, when we are supported, when we are loved. When we have the resources to be able to turn our minds towards our values instead of our survival.

What feeds you? What makes you feel supported? Who offers that to you? And to whom can you offer the same?

• My last grandparent died the day after Christmas. Misuzu Hamanaka Ellis, born September 29, 1926, died December 26, 2024. It had been a long time coming, and we knew it would be soon by the time the kids and I arrived on the Monterey Peninsula for the holiday, but somehow I was still surprised when I got my mother’s text that night, letting me know. I drove from Carmel to Salinas, sat beside my grandmother’s body with my mom and my aunts. She looked smaller than I remembered, even smaller than she had just a month before. She was lying on her side and her mouth was open just a bit. We talked about her, joked in front of the police officers who came, laughed a bit. I saw my aunts cry for only the second time in my life, the first time being when my grandfather passed in 1998.
  
  I didn’t know my mother’s mother well, not like I had known my father’s mother. Missy was quiet, shy. Possibly autistic, which only occurred to me after considering my own likely neurodivergence. I remember her giggling a lot when I was young. I remember that one of the last people to really capture her attention, after she had largely stopped speaking due to dementia, was my youngest daughter, who was 3 or 4 at the time. I remember the way she always made herself a cup of genmaicha or hojicha after dinner. I remember the way she taped Star Trek episodes and movies for us when we didn’t have access to cable or aerial reception. Sliced white bread with butter at every meal. Slender, nimble fingers, a seamstress’s fingers.
  
  After the EMTs—who came to confirm that she had, indeed, passed—left, and after the young police officers left, we noticed that her mouth had closed. We wondered how that had happened. She looked at peace. She left this world with her daughters by her side. It’s about all anyone could ask for.
• When I received the text from my mother, letting me know about her mother, I was sitting in the parking lot of a Starbucks in Carmel. It was about 10 at night, the parking lot was empty. It was the third day in a row that I had been in that parking lot, because it is the place where my kids’ mother and I do our complicated little dance to exchange custody for each day of the holiday. I was still there in my car in a dark and empty parking lot because I was in the process of falling in love with a woman on the opposite side of the Pacific Ocean.
• I’m in love.
• The world is on fire, in some places very literally. The day she flew into San Diego from Tokyo, there were two fires. I watched the smoke from the first one out my office window, rising just on the other side of the buildings to the west, no more than a mile away. That fire was put out in less than an hour, but the other one continued to burn for a week, eventually spreading over more than 6,000 acres before it was contained. Up in LA, friends of mine are posting about lines to get in and out of their neighborhoods, hazard signs everywhere. It will be a generation, at least, before those communities recover.
• And every day has brought a new shock, a new phase of what we can only call a coup, a constitutional crisis. Every day they take a sledgehammer to some new piece of our institutions, every day they implement some new harm not just to the most vulnerable of us—though, yes, especially them—but to the very fabric of our society, and all the while our elected representatives wring their hands and tweet about the price of eggs while voting to advance their legislation, confirm their nominees. It is breathtaking, to watch the speed with which it is all happening. Even remembering 2017, it is astonishing.
• And yet, I am in love.
• It feels ridiculous, selfish, even unethical to experience such a profound joy in the midst of such suffering. But what else could possibly sustain us through dark times besides love? What better to inspire our courage, our resolve, than to know who we need to protect, and who will be by our side through it all? If we must walk into the flames, how better to do it than joyfully, hand in hand with the ones who make our hearts sing?
• I learned how she makes her coffee. I started making it the way she makes it. I’ve been taking my coffee black since 1997. I make a coarsely ground pourover for myself on the weekends. She makes hers in a Moka pot, with sweetener and foamed milk. I made it for her while she was here, and now that she’s back in Tokyo, I’m drinking my coffee the way she drinks hers, and it makes me feel close to her.
• There is so much work to do. So much more than I know how to do, or that I can even identify as needing to be done. It is daunting, to say the least. Impossible, maybe. And yet necessary, all the same. Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes talk in their book Let This Radicalize You about hope as a practice, rather than a feeling: Just as patience is a practice, rather than a feeling, hope and grief are not simply things we feel but things we enact in the world.

When we enact grief with intention, and in concert with other people, we can find and create moments of relief, comfort, and even joy—and those moments can sustain us. As Malkia Devich-Cyril writes, “Becoming aware of grief gives us more choices about how to respond to grief and opens up possibilities to approach grief not only with compassion for self and others, but also with joy. Joy is not the opposite of grief. Grief is the opposite of indifference.”

Hope, too, requires us to reject indifference. And like any indifference-rejecting phenomenon, it demands effort in order to thrive. When we talk about hope in these times, we are not prescribing optimism. Rather, we are talking about a practice and a discipline … This practice of hope allows us to remain creative and strategic. It does not require us to deny the severity of our situation or detract from our practice of grief. To practice active hope, we do not need to believe that everything will work out in the end. We need only decide who we are choosing to be and how we are choosing to function in relation to the outcome we desire and abide by what those decision demand of us.

• I am afraid. I am heartbroken. I am exhausted. And I am in love.
• I hope you get what you need. I hope you can find the strength to do what you must do. I hope you will offer your care to the people in your life, and that you will be sustained by their connection to you. I hope you are loved. I hope at least three good things happen to you today, and that you can hold onto them. I hope we win. I hope, I hope, I hope.
• And I am in love.

Since the election in November, the news has been full of terrible things—as, indeed, it has been for many years, but the terribleness continues to accelerate. One of the things that has been on my mind the most in the past month is how important community and connection are during difficult times. How it’s the people who we know and who know us who end up sustaining us.

In January, it will be nine years since Keep the Channel Open started, and in that time I have talked with a lot of people. So, taking a page from Rachel Zucker’s “Global Roll Call” episodes of Commonplace, which she produced during the depths of the pandemic lockdowns in 2020, I reached out to past KTCO guests and invited them to give some updates about where they are, how they’re doing, and who they’re thinking of right now. I’m pleased to be able to share the responses with you.

Wherever you are, I hope you’re safe and healthy, that you’re thriving. Wishing you the best possible 2025.

• Web Player + Show Notes
• Apple Podcasts
• RSS

Rachel and I recorded this episode just a few days after the election, and one of the first things we talked about was whether to try to release it right away or whether to wait until it would normally come up in the release schedule. And in retrospect I’m glad we waited. There’s something kind of nice about ending the year with this particular episode, which, yes, has a lot of anxiety in it but also has the two of us doing what we do best: just being friends.

I hope that, wherever you are, you are surrounded by people who love you, who you love. I hope you’re getting what you need. Take care.

• Web Player + Show Notes
• Transcript (coming soon)
• Apple Podcasts
• RSS

Despite being a huge Star Trek fan for most of my life, there are still a number of Trek series that I haven’t watched all the way through. I’ve been taking the opportunity lately to remedy that, and am currently watching my way through Voyager. Which is what prompted me to post a thread on Bluesky a couple of months ago in which I speculated about whether the various men of Star Trek would be any good in bed. That thread, in turn, is ostensibly what Rachel and I are talking about in today’s episode of Hey, It’s Me.

I say ostensibly, though, because—as you might guess—the conversation goes completely off the rails, despite both of us repeatedly trying to bring ourselves back on topic. Over the course of nearly 90 minutes, Rachel and I talk about hating men, the difference between arousal and attraction, several different flavors of my shame, tender porn, aligning kinks, and whether “being good in bed” even means anything. I’m not sure whether this episode is hilarious or cringy or both, but hopefully it’ll be a good listen.

• Web Player + Show Notes
• Transcript
• Apple Podcasts
• RSS

In my earliest memories of Jim Ida, my great-uncle, he was already an old man. I remember him as a slender man with gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses, soft-spoken with a gentle smile and a slight stoop in his shoulders, which I assume was from his years working at a desk for Lockheed. Married to my grandmother’s younger sister Sada, he and his family came down to Salinas from Palo Alto for Thanksgiving and my grandmother’s annual summer barbecue, where his main responsibility was mixing drinks—even now, years after his passing, everyone still talks when we get together about how smooth and perfect his martinis were. Like most children with their extended family, I never really got to know Uncle Jim all that well, though I remember him congratulating me when I got into a top-tier engineering school for college. But I always liked him. I’m pretty sure everyone did.

The photograph above was taken in 1942 by the great photographer Dorothea Lange, who had been commissioned by the War Relocation Authority to document the removal of the 110,000 Americans of Japanese descent from their homes in the Pacific coastal regions, and their incarceration in government camps in the interior. Before this photograph, and another from the same day, I’d never seen Uncle Jim as a young man or a child before. In 1942, in this photograph, he was 17 years old.

As far as I know, my family—like most Japanese American families—doesn’t have any photographs from their time in the camps or the removal beforehand. This is unsurprising, because cameras were not allowed in the camps. The images most of us have seen, if we’ve seen any, come from WRA photographs like Lange’s, or perhaps from Ansel Adams’s famous photographs of Manzanar. We all have stories, of course. But actual photographs are rare. I first saw the above photo when I was in my late thirties.

In the moment this photograph was made, Jim and his family were on their way to the Tanforan Assembly Center, where they would be detained until later being sent on to an incarceration camp in Topaz, Utah. Tanforan is now a mall but at the time it was a racetrack. Some families were kept in hastily built barracks, while others slept in horse stalls. In Salinas, where my grandmother’s family lived (and lives), it was a similar story, with families first being sent to a temporary detention center in the Rodeo Grounds and then to a larger camp in Poston, Arizona.

I look at this photograph and I see the uncertainty and worry in Jim’s body language. The tilt of his left foot, the ankle rolled following the angle of his body as he looks off out of the frame. The way that I’d thought at first that he was holding his right fist in his left hand, but that on looking closer I see the little crook of his left pinky, how his fingertips brush along the knuckles of his other hand in just the same way I sometimes do when I need to ground myself. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen but he knows it’s not good.

At 17, Jim was not my uncle yet but he was a citizen of the United States, having been born here. So, too, were my grandmother and her siblings, and even her parents. My grandmother’s father was in the first graduating class of Salinas High School. On the other side of her family, her uncle Harry played semipro baseball—I’m told that a photo of him is part of the collection at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Their citizenship did not protect them from being rounded up, labeled as enemy aliens, and incarcerated in the desert far from the only homes they’d ever known.

A common refrain in activist parts of social media is “our institutions will not save us.” As we look ahead toward an administration that promises to inflict great harm on many of the most vulnerable people in this country, there are still many people who believe that they will be safe because of their citizenship, or because they see themselves as fine, upstanding, hard-working members of their communities. The people in my family had committed no crimes when they were ordered to report for detention with only the belongings they could carry with them, nor indeed had the tens of thousands of other Japanese Americans who went to the camps with them. Citizenship, civil rights, character, and even innocence mean nothing in the face of a government and a country that is determined to hate and fear you.

As was true for many Japanese American families, my family lost a lot due to the incarceration. The Japanese on the West Coast had come as cheap immigrant labor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but by the time immigration from Japan was shut down in 1924, my family and many others had begun to prosper. The immigrant generation were not able to own property themselves, but through their American-born children they began to farm for themselves, own small businesses—barbershops or grocery stores or boarding houses. Most of that was lost during the incarceration, with Japanese-owned businesses shuttered and Japanese homes and land sold off at deep discounts, mostly to the white people who called for their removal in the first place. Still, what my own family experienced was not as terrible as what many others faced at that time in other communities or countries—to the best of my knowledge, none of my family members died in the camps, and all of them eventually returned home, or made new homes elsewhere. It could have been worse. It was bad enough.

Still, though every Japanese American family I know has stories of camp, of hardship, of losing their property and their dignity, many of them also have stories of people who helped them. People who took in their pets or stored belongings that couldn’t be brought to the camps, who looked after their homes or offered them work when they returned. In Monterey, a group of more than 400 community members signed a petition urging kindness and welcome to the returning Japanese American families. Of course, this petition only came about because of an organized effort to prevent the Japanese from returning to the Monterey Bay area. But it still mattered.

This is what I’m thinking about as we brace for what is to come. Things will break down. People will be uprooted and endangered. And though there will be protests and actions, and these may help, it will not be enough to save everyone from what’s coming. It may not be enough to save anyone. But the attempt still matters. As do the small acts of care that we can offer, one to another.

Over the course of my life, I’ve shared my family’s story of incarceration many times, to many different people. Sometimes people are shocked that such a thing could happen in America. Sometimes people are surprised that this episode of our history isn’t often taught in schools. For me, this has never been history. It has always been alive. I have never been able to talk about the Internment without becoming emotional, because even though it didn’t happen to me, it happened to people I know. Uncle Jim passed some time ago now, as have many of my family members from his generation, including both of my dad’s parents. But Auntie Sada, Jim’s wife, is still with us, still comes to Thanksgiving at the house that used to be her sister’s, where my aunt and uncle live now.

Why do I share this story so often? Why am I sharing it now? In part I’m sharing it because, as happened back in 2017, I see so many people declaring that they will fight, resist, stop the coming atrocities. And I am, of course, glad of this. It’s necessary to fight. But I wonder what will happen for people if and when the fight fails, and the atrocities cannot be stopped. How do we continue after hope fades? For me, the ability to offer care, comfort, respite to those in danger comes much less from hope than from love.

I’m reminded of a quotation from the Senegalese conservationist Baba Dioum, one that I was first introduced to when I worked a summer job at the Monterey Bay Aquarium: “In the end, we will save only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we have been taught.” This story is a small thing I can share with you so that you might learn something about where we’ve been and where we’re going. To get you to consider who you love and how to turn toward that love, how to widen it and deepen it, so that you can offer care to those who need it. There will be so much need, so soon.

In the wake of the 2016 election, a lot of people—including me—found themselves newly awakened to the necessity of becoming politically active, of getting organized, but without the connections or experience to know exactly what that looked like. Looking around at social media and my in-person friends and acquaintances today, I’m seeing a lot of the same energy now, and a lot of the same confusion about what organizing looks like. Back in 2016, those of us who became new activists and organizers did eventually figure some things out on our own about what works and what doesn’t, but the most valuable lessons we learned mostly came from the people who had already been here doing the work. That’s exactly what this book is.

The title comes from a quotation by Mariame Kaba, one that often gets shared around social media after some new atrocity emerges: “Let this radicalize you instead of leading you into despair.” Kaba and co-author Kelly Hayes are experienced organizers, well-known for their work in prison abolition, and in this book they’re sharing a lot of hard-won lessons from their own work.

I think whether you are new to activism and organizing or are returning after a break, there is a lot of useful and practical information here. It’s not a “how-to,” exactly. Rather, Hayes and Kaba show you how organizing works in the day-to-day, show you how an organizer thinks, show you how activism isn’t about individual heroism but instead that it’s something anyone can do when we prioritize interdependence and connection. They show you how hope isn’t a feeling but rather a practice, and how “good” isn’t something you can be but rather something that you make in the world. This book won’t give you the answers to every question you might have about organizing but it is a great place to start.

Here are some purchase links:

• Haymarket Books
• Bookshop.org

The thing that struck me the most when reading Perry Janes’s debut poetry collection, Find Me When You’re Ready, is not that it contains poems about trauma. Rather, it’s that the poems about the speaker’s trauma make up such a relatively small part of the collection. The rest of the collection doesn’t ignore what came before, but rather than dwelling in the moment of trauma, the later poems allow the speaker to move on and begin to heal. That’s just one of the things that Perry and I talked about in our conversation, which I hope you enjoy.

• Web Player + Show Notes
• Apple Podcasts
• RSS

If there is any person who has been a part of this show without having actually appeared in it, it’s David Naimon. Back in episode 7, Rachel said she feels like “we’re in a throuple on this podcast with David” and then asked if we should finally invite him to join us. Well, we did, and this is it.

We start off in a very Between the Covers-ish kind of space, discussing form and genre in podcasting and how that all applies to the making of Hey, It’s Me. But by the end, we wind up in an extremely Hey, It’s Me place. After all, wild tonal shifts are what this show is all about.

• Web Player + Show Notes
• Transcript
• Apple Podcasts
• RSS