There's a podcast I've been listening to and I feel like you should know about it. It's called Whistling In The Dark. It's hosted by Shannon Fitzgerald, a television writer and producer (bio here). In this podcast, she celebrates women's successes, details the paths it took to get there, and is brazenly open about her experience with therapy. What's not to love?
The podcast is basically her interviewing her famous and semi-famous friends. But it's super interesting. The interview is never about fame, but about how they achieved their success. She's real into process, so she asks a lot of questions about how they structure their day, how they remain creative while running a business, how they started out and what their day-to-day challenges are. I love it!
I recently listened to the episode with Hillary Kerr and Katherine Power, the co-founders and CEO's of Who What Wear. I can't remember if she posed this question to Hillary or Katherine, but she asked how they structure their work day. Whichever one answered, said that she's most creative in the morning, so as she's waking up and drinking coffee, she basically reads the internet, which is where she gets a lot of her inspiration. Then she, you know, takes a shower and runs her company, all the while, her creative brain is marinating in everything she took in that morning. Later, in the afternoon, when everything is taken care of, she sits down to write, and all of that inspiration from the morning, her brain has digested and turned into ideas.
This speaks to me because I've been having trouble structuring my day now that I work from home. I'm also creative in the morning, but I tend to burn through all my energy before 10am and then I'm useless in the afternoon. So I've been using my mornings for inspiration and my afternoons for writing. It works!
Listen to this episode. They talk about all these other things, too, like how everyone told them they were crazy when they left their magazine jobs to start a website, that no one, especially women, were doing at the time. They also list their favorite beauty products, which, hello!
Another thing I appreciate about Shannon, the host, is how much she loves therapy. She even has two episodes with her therapist, and they are amazing!
Okay, the whole reason I wrote this post is to tell you about the episode where she interviews two of the writers from Friends. It's probably my favorite episode. It's a fascinating look into how television shows are written, or at least, how they used to be. And of course, they have all these hilarious, behind-the-scenes stories about celebrity guests, etc. As someone who works in two to three Friends references a day, this touched me on a spiritual level.
Side bar: After listening to this episode, I watched a documentary on Netflix called Showrunners, which is what television writers are called now. I highly recommend it.
If you're a podcast person, which aren't we all? Download some of these Whistling In The Dark episodes. I think you'll enjoy them. Like anything, she gets better as she goes along, so some of the early ones are long and a little unstructured, but I still like them. Here are my favs.
Episode 15: The CEO's of Who What Wear/Clique Media Empire
Episode 13: "Friends" 20th Anniversary Edition
Episode 11: Karen the Therapist
Episode 10: Ann Shoket
Episode 8: Mario Melchiot
Episode 6: Cynthia Rowley
Episode 4: Lesley Arfin
Episode 1: Dan Savage
Happy listening!
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