Yeah, one way or another, I do want to do another multi-contributor podcast. Those are fun! The problem with this post specifically is it’s too much about me. If I went with your second idea, I’d probably frame it a bit more broadly: “speaking with the enemy,” let’s say. Maybe something for Hiroshima Day…

The other idea that I had was one that suggested itself because it seemed to grow naturally out of your post with its multiple, thoughtful comments.

How about a post, a call for a podcast, something not dissimilar to the Emily Dickinson one, only this time a response to the issues raised in your post?

For instance, you put out the post you have here. And those who would like to participate write a response that they can post in their blogs, but also they are to record it -with some sort of time limit obviously- and send it to you.

Like, toxicity, the result of careless uncaring behaviour, or the shadow, the dark unacknowledged underbelly of us all, or the critic who is capable of being a saboteur… your post raises all sorts of interesting considerations and thoughts and can become a diving board for a collection of responses that’s not quite a conversation but can become one in comments to the podcast (or grows out of comments, like here).

So then you get all these 5 minute segments of responses, essays, poems, songs, whatever, and put them all together for a podcast. It’d be dynamite.

This is a very intriguing idea! I’ll keep thinking about it. Thank you.

love the creativity!

You are probably one of the most liked people I know of, on the Internet and off [so I’ve heard]. So the fishing motive, ditch. No-one in their right mind is going to come forth and say, yeh, interview me, I’m all those toxic things because I dislike. So why did you write this post? Triggered by some toxic sludge, yes, and then the mind roams to other toxicities. Perhaps?

Ok. Reading the post, and all the fabulous comments, some quite philosophical, I’d really suggest not a traditional podcast (is the form old enough to have a tradition? she wonders) but a Samuel Beckett sort of play. Recently I saw ‘Krapp’s Last Tape.’ Beckett dealt in this world of self-questioning with incredible dexterity as a playwright.

Sometimes you write poems in response to other poems that you are reviewing. How about a play called, ‘Flirting with Toxicity.’ Woody Allen generally creates a theme and a story, but lets his actors create their own parts. How about letting some of your commenters write their own parts. You’ve already outlined a story of finding who dislikes us, our work, and getting those nay-sayers to tell us their issues with our whatever in an interview/podcast so we can hear it and then like, scram out of there. (Or whatever it was you said above about not wanting to spend too much time with these negative folk.) Take it from there.

It could be entertaining, though with depth, with stuff to make us think.

Or you could just become a politician.

I admire your optimism, Paul.

I’m really just looking for interesting podcast subjects. That’s where this idea was coming from.

Hey! True love is surprisingly common.
Hate is extraordinarily rare.