You're Wrong About - The Hot Mess Express Spectacular!

Episode Date: May 29, 2023

“I felt that empathy like it was directed towards me, and it helped me feel like my unhappiness was enough.” On our fifth anniversary, we asked for your stories about what You’re Wrong About has meant to you. Here they are.Support us:Bonus Episodes on PatreonDonate on PaypalBuy cute merchWhere else to find us:Sarah's other show, You Are Good [YWA co-founder] Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseLinks:http://patreon.com/yourewrongabouthttps://www.teepublic.com/stores/youre-wrong-abouthttps://www.paypal.com/paypalme/yourewrongaboutpodhttps://www.podpage.com/you-are-goodhttp://maintenancephase.comSupport the show

Welcome to You're Wrong About. I'm Sarah Marshall and today we are five years old. Today we are going to be handing over the show to you the listeners. We put out a call a couple weeks ago asking for you to tell us about how you're wrong about had Intersected with your lives what affected it had on you what memories you had that connected to the show and I have had the joy of listening to every single one of your submissions It meant so much to me to get a chance to hear you and see you and then I feel like to let you see each other because both making a podcast and listening to a podcast can be very solitary things and yet it turns out we have been in community with each other for all this time whether we knew it or not

Carolyn and I have gotten to listen to stories from all across the world. Love stories, heartbreak stories, hospital stories, adventure stories, stories from teenagers, stories from not-so teenagers. It's been such a joy and I am so happy to once again, let you all take the reins. And if you don't hear your story in here, please know that we heard you and that the whole tapestry with all of its different pieces is irreplaceable to us.

Because this is your wrong about and because of the last five years that we have all had, we do have some content warnings for the show. As you might imagine, a lot of you came to us in the pandemic. A lot of these stories are about the general pandemic traumas that so many of us have experienced. We of course have stories that touch on mental health struggles, suicide, about domestic abuse, about the sort of eating sexual abuse accusations, one about child pornography possession, about people recovering from injury, about grief, and of course, we will reference cannibalism. So that's just to give you a sense of what's coming up. And there's also a lot of joy,

a lot of love, a lot of people being brought together. We really gave us a picture of both the hardest of times you have been through and the joy is on the other side. And we have tried to give you a picture of all of that. So please listen with care. And before we start, I also want, of course, to mention somebody who we all love, and that, of course, is Michael Hobbes, who I want to thank so much for the beginning of this journey, the fact that I am here, and we are here today, it was such a great adventure to undertake together. And the episodes that we did

together are so wonderful to hear about you listening to and finding back when they came out and finding now and that partnership will go on for as long as anybody is listening to the show. And I love that so much. And thank you all for being here on this journey. And Mike, thank you for beginning it. To all of you who sent in stories, to all of you who didn't, to all of you who have been listening this whole time or have tuned in for the first time today, to each and every one of you, thank you so much for being here. Here's your episode. Hi Sarah, I'm Carolyn, Happy Bimbo Nursery. Happy Fifth Anniversary to you. You're wrong about it.

This is a wonderful thing and I hope for five years longer that you continue to bring it into our worlds. And I can't wait to hear what the next five years have in store. Happy Anniversary. Thanks and happy five years. I love this show. So thank you so much. I'm so excited for the next five years. Your roundabout has been such a compassionate look at the culture around us. And I'm always in awe of the way you and Michael on your guests, stole the stories in such a comprehensive, well-research and compassionate weight towards the people in the stories.

And be able to refuse to reduce people to type. Thank you for your perspective and your thoughtfulness and your critical thinking and your empathy because the world needs more of that. I feel as though you're my dear friend who comforted me when my world flipped upside down. dear friend who comforted me when my world flipped upside down. You're just making my brain better.

Hello, my name is Isabel. And my name is Teyesha. And we are calling together because we found that you're wrong about is kind of the foundation of our friendship. We both started listening to the podcast back in 2018 when we were working at a pretty toxic work environment. And I recommended that Is well listen to the going post-illepid episode, because I felt like it was really

relevant to what we were going through at work and kind of this discussion we were starting to have about personal autonomy and kind of how corrupt these workplaces can be. And I feel like we just really bonded over that. Yeah. And so Tyja recommended it to me. And I was really skeptical because I had tried podcasts

in the past, and I hadn't really liked them. But this is the first one that clicked. And now all the podcasts I listened to are kind of your wrong about extended universe. Yeah, and it's been really cool to kind of see you grow and watch how we grow with you as audience and as friends together listening to it. Yeah, we love you. Thank you so much for all the amazing years and all the amazing guests and

stuff you've had on the show as well. Love you. Bye. It was great bonding over the podcast for my partner and I as we were living separately due to the lockdowns. Even now three years later, we look at each other and say, quote, it's like, it was capitalism all along. It's okay to be wrong whether you're wrong because of the story you were fed by the media at large or apparent or just the way you understand the world. It's okay to be wrong. And it's okay to accept that and change. I remember driving to my parents' house, drinking coffee and listening to the 2000 election episode.

I took a sip from a coffee right when you compare choosing between gore and bush to choosing between a tuna sandwich and a chicken sandwich from the hospital vending machine. Fine! The tuna sandwich! I loved so hard, I spilled a coffee all over my car and it became a catchphrase in my family. Thank you for that and for all the other wonderful episode. I feel like I know you and you like a far away dear friend. Love Noah. I learn from every episode. Your podcast makes me giggle and gasp and feel bombed and frustrated and so angry at capitalism. I often thank your podcast as a starting point to interrogate my

boyfriend about his culture. He's from the US and I'm from Mexico. But unlike me, he didn't grow up on a steady diet of VH1 documentaries. So even though I may be vaguely aware of some things, I'd be like, did you know about this or like, how was it living during that time? I'm a bit... I am Clara from Wellington, New Zealand, and whistletters. And our story is when we were on holiday with our family in Franklin, New Zealand, which is one of the most beautiful surfing spots in the world. And it was a cyclone and it rained the whole time. And we had to be stuck inside in a tiny, tiny, tiny cabin. Maybe we need a little baby cabin that smell like feet. Smells so bad. And we listened to the Princess Diana podcast, among other ones, but the Princess Diana one, for the whole time that we were there.

And when we started to drive back, Averna, we're in the backseat. And it was our dad and our dad's partner in the front seat. Just did silent listening to this podcast. And when the final song came on at the end of this heartbreaking story of uptown girl, we just burst into tears just and cried for about 10 minutes. Oh my, I was in so much pain, but it was one of the most beautiful soul-bunding

experiences. I hate you because I will never be able to enjoy Uptown Girl ever again. So thank you very much for that. I had the pleasure of attending the live show in San Francisco in 2022 and I just left that show buzzing. I felt like everyone on that stage was using their gifts to contribute to remind us how to be good to each other to inform us of ways that we have in and to connect us as we slog our way towards it. I've been in a crossroads in my own life for the past couple of years and it was

of years and it was seeing that show and listening to the podcast that just reminds me that whenever I do figure out what my gift is and how to contribute to the world that it'll make an impact because I see the way that it does that your show does that. So thank you for all that you do and excited to keep on listening. When you now that the podcast was gonna change, I cried on the plane because I felt that it was time for me also to move on after the pandemic and yes, so you helped me move on. The week before the election, I played about 80 hours of Stardew Valley

while I binge most of the archive. And your episodes on Jessica Simpson hit me much harder than I ever could have expected. I was in a garden variety on loving bummer of a relationship. One of those where you feel lonely or living with your partner than you would alone. But I felt like the relationship would have to be much worse to justify the level of unhappiness I felt.

The deep empathy that you showed to Jessica Simpson in her garden variety, unleaving bummer of a relationship with Nicolay, opened my eyes to something I hadn't let myself see. I felt that empathy like it was directed towards me and it helped me feel like my unhappiness was enough and that my pain was enough. Thank you for all that you do, but especially for helping me leave that relationship. Hi Sarah, this is Caitlin and Chicago. And in March of 2020, my boyfriend broke up with me over FaceTime and our friend group chose him over me.

And I was working from home. I lived alone. I had no social support network and I got a dog and was walking for hours a day and discovered your podcast and you and Michael were like my cool smart friends and our Paris social friendship also helped me to envision what I wanted my real life friendships to look like. Hello, my name is Bailey and I'm speaking to you from South Korea. In late 2020, my wife was taken into hospital for an urgent surgery and needed a guardian to go with her.

And that was me. Now, because this was the height of COVID, that meant that the guardians could not just come in and out of hospitals, so I would be staying with her. And because the hospitals were not equipped to deal with this, with this number of guardians kind of staying, it meant that I would sleep next to hospital bed. We didn't know at the time how long the surgery and recovery would take, but it turned out to be just over three weeks. So with this kind of extreme lockdown and extreme circumstances,

comes a lot of anxiety and it was playing quite heavily on my mind. So in the evenings when my wife was in the kind of pain killer induced sleep, I find a window sill on the wards somewhere as far away from people as I could, and dig into the Yorong about back catalog and just for that hour I could just feel that anxiety, just release just a little bit, just for that hour. So I'll forever be grateful to the podcast for being there and being a window into normality that was really essential at the time. So I'll forever be grateful for that.

Your podcast got me through some very long days and nights, both in the neonatal intensive care unit and for months afterward, as I sat up with my newborn trying to figure out how to nurse and pump and stay awake for this brand new human. You're wrong about helped me feel centered and connected to the wider world around me, and it took my mind off things I couldn't change in the moment. I've listened to every episode and will forever be grateful to you for being part of my and my daughter's journey from the start. Hi, my name is Elliott. I am probably one of your younger listeners. I am in my teenage years. I started listening to the show in late 2020, early 2021. And it really came at an important time in my life where it was sort of in the pandemic and I was

trying to figure out how to grow up without being around people and I am really grateful that the show came to me when and how it did. I have loved it since the first episode I listened to, and it has had a huge impact on who I am now, and I think it has made me a more empathetic person. So thank you for that. that. Academia wanted me to be a person. I definitely wasn't and I had never seen anyone do the kind of scholarship that I really cared about, but then I heard you're wrong about. PS Sarah, your casual flings at academia were life to me at this time. They still are, even though I'm a literature professor now somehow. And in all seriousness, I wouldn't be one without this podcast. It got me through the end of my PhD and it's made me a much better

teacher. I teach these anti-academic courses now about things like friendship, lesbian pulp romance, low brow literature, all of these trashy, joyful, neglected things that actually make up our lives and ourselves. Finally, on the topic of the Bimbo, I am reformed. And in Nicole Smith, Nicole Brown Simpson, Jessica Simpson, Paula Barbieri, these are episodes that live rent-free in my brain at all times and have completely transformed the way that I think about them aligned women of my youth, including myself. Our bimbos ourselves! Love you guys! I think that's what I value the most is how you manage to find nuance and

radicality at the same time and being radical. You always find those great areas that make the people you talk about complex figures and not perfectly good, not perfectly bad, they're just human beings making smart, irrational, dumb or great decisions. But you always have that kind of radical way of looking at them, which is being having empathy. I think having empathy in our days is radical. It is that I think it's very important, it's very crucial. To me, YorongaBao has helped me get my college degree. Recently, I graduated with a bachelor's in history, and I used Yorong on-about as sources for many papers.

And most recently, the Martha Stewart episode was the direct inspiration for my senior thesis, which I just completed. And the thesis won the Outstanding Senior thesis award from the history department at my college. So thanks to the year-long about team, I couldn't have gone through college without you guys. Take care. The reason I clung to this podcast so tightly and I've been grateful for it since those first episodes, is because it was at that time that through the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests,

I was trying to get a degree in criminology. I went into this field because for many years my heart has been broken by the state of the criminal justice system and the millions and millions of lives that have been shattered by its cruelty. As you can imagine, being a prison abolitionist while getting a degree in criminology is not an easy or very comfortable experience. Most of my fellow classmates were in the field because they wanted to work in law enforcement someday and many of them had law enforcement members in their families. Always an outspoken student, I struggled to communicate my heart and have it be understood in my criminology classes. I desperately tried to explain why I believed that people are worth more than the worst thing they've done, and how our

criminal justice system creates a vicious cycle of violence that we all suffer from. If any one of my peers agreed with me, I did not know, as I only ever received negative and at times angry responses to my beliefs. Most hurtful of all was the accusation that I did not care about victims of violence, knowing in my heart that it is because I care about victims of violence that I am so strongly against the carceral system. I often felt alone and defeated, even crying in class at times, and then I found this podcast, and I listened to Sarah and Michael talk about issues the way I talked about them, and care about the things I cared about. It is through this podcast that I suddenly felt completely understood. It's important to me to let you guys know that I started listening to your show when I was living in a group home during my freshman and sophomore years of high school. I was 2019 to 2021

all of Information I received from the outside world my education and contact I had with people back home The music I listened to, the books I read, everything was really heavily monitored, censored, and scrutinized, and I was just surrounded by all of these fucking QAnon-type theories and anti-Vax myths, and I wasn't really able to protest or reject these ideas, I felt very sort of stuck, not just physically, which I was, but mentally. I felt myself wanting to give in and just have smooth sailing with every authority figure around me for the sake of just getting through it. But when I got my own iPod towards the end of my stay and I just threw some episodes of your show on there, I was just trying to

keep myself entertained and distracted and you guys ended up being the voices of reason in my life at that point. I felt grounded and connected to the outside world in a way that I really hadn't otherwise at that point. You were like the most formal piece of my education at that time in my life. And I'm back home. I'm graduating from high school, I'm a senior, and I'm doing my final senior paper on the satanic panic, going back and listening to all these old episodes

of your show that I listened to all those years ago, and it just reminds me how much of myself I got to hold on to through your guys' words and through your show. So thank you. You know, there's a point in my life very recently where I felt alone and unimportant. And I now know that a lot of the things that made me feel so alone were because I am autistic and I have trouble connecting with people and I just thought that I was broken. Now I can understand myself better and I can have more empathy for myself, but when I couldn't, I had to lean on the show a lot and it really helped

it, helped me get through that. Don't know what I would have done if I didn't have at least something to give me little bits of hope and the right for every story to be important. In the meantime, well, I didn't find myself important. The most impactful episodes of the podcast for me are the Princess Diana episodes. episodes of the podcast for me are the Princess Diana episodes. She's always been my biggest hero and, you know, having Sarah and my goal talk about her as an actual human being and not some fairy tale really changed how I view her for the better. You know, I admire her even more now. And my favorite quote from the show in general comes from those episodes, you know, the, you can be a hot mess express and still leave the world better than you found it.

I want that on my grave marker when I die. It's so good. In addition to the deconstructing of the big cultural myths that you do in every episode, you're also implicitly deconstructing the idea that you can't be emotional and intelligent at the same time. I have a father where every discussion is an argument or a debate, and if you show emotion or personal investment, then that means you lose. And that's really a misogynistic way to look at the world and also, you know, when marginalized people are forced to argue for their existence, that's inherently a much more emotional topic in conversation than people who don't have that investment. And I think what you're wrong about really does is show that you can't have one without the other, like these situations that you look at and talk about

can't be understood without emotional intelligence. They can't, you can't understand them in all their nuances and great areas unless you're looking at these people as volable human beings who deserve our care and empathy, if not our love. I really, really felt that in the episode on Christmas Candles, who is someone I have always loved and felt to have a very personal connection to, and it was just very, very lovely to hear you have that conversation, and I really appreciate the work you do. One fun fact about me listening to you wrong about is that it has helped me really feel a little less terrified of the idea of cannibalism, not to say that I've turned into a cannibal, but I'm much less scared the moment it comes up now.

Your recent series on various survival stories with Blair have been just incredible for that for me. I listen to you guys all the time and I find you such a comfort in this really discomforting world. Just when I thought I couldn't look at humanity in the world any differently, you started covering survival stories. As someone who has always had pretty big global warming anxiety, it has been really grounding for me to hear you and any of your guests remind us that Mother Nature has no intent. The Earth has no malintent. The climate is going to do what it does, whether we are here or not, to do what it does, whether we are here or not, despite our impacts, the earth will keep spinning with or without us. Hi, my name is Brienne. I'm from Alberta, Canada. I had a baby on March 12, 2020.

And that's also when I discovered the podcast, you're wrong about like many other listeners. When I think of you're wrong about, it does get me right in the heart because I think of how much I needed this podcast during my first pandemic winter. So being where I'm from, our winters are very cold and they're very dark.

And during a very isolated, anxious time, I remember how my routine was after kids went to bed. I would bundle up, grab my dog, take him for a walk, and listen to you wrong about. And one episode in particular I'll never forget is listening about Gary Hart and Michael Ducakis. While it was a heavy snowfall, big, beautiful snow like you see in a movie, it was dark, it was quiet, and listening about someone who picks up trash, and collects turkey carcasses to make soup for people who need it. At a time when we couldn't talk to the people we loved, we were alone and scared, and it was a dark and scary time, and listening to that podcast, crying about politicians from something that happened the year I was born is a memory

I'll never forget. So thank you for being there in dark times. After finishing up my first year of law school, I was in a really bad car accident caused by a driver that didn't check their blind spot when merging into my lane. So please, everybody, please check your blind spot. Among other injuries, I suffered a traumatic brain injury which resulted in post-concussion syndrome

and other difficulties with my brain processing visual information. Ultimately, I lost my job difficulties with my brain processing visual information. Ultimately, I lost my job and I had to drop out of law school. The doctors couldn't tell me when I could expect to get better because everyone's brain is different and some patients have taken as long as seven years. The only thing I could do was listen to podcasts and so this podcast became my saving grace. At the time, I was so symptomatic that holding a conversation was difficult and so I joined it on your conversations instead, laughing with you and learning from you. I felt a lot less lonely and scared.

Once the constant dizziness subsided, I spent less time listening to your podcast in bed and instead listened while doing my therapy, knitting, juggling, or walking. But whenever I needed a break, I laid down my listen to this podcast. After a year, I was able to return to law school, which I was so happy about, but it was very painful. I'd get symptomatic often, and so I had to build my endurance slowly, going from working in 20 minute increments to now being able to spend hours on end working. But whenever I get to symptomatic, I lay down in bed and look to see if you've posted any new podcasts.

I think the fan of our series, The Wood Anniversary, right? So if it is, it seems fitting that most of my memories about listening to your wrong about involved going to a public park, shaded by the neighboring forest, sitting at a picnic table, and writing completely unrelated fan fiction while crying about maligned women. I'd just graduated from my masters and was burnt out. And so I'd go for long walks every day, trying to find outdoor areas where I could write. I always enjoyed it when you and Michael would acknowledge

the imperfect circumstances you were recording in. In cars, in hotel rooms, closets, that sort of thing. It made me feel comfortable about the fact that if I wanted to start something like this, I wouldn't need ideal circumstances. Anyways, this week, I can record the first episode of my queer history podcast. I've been pouring every spare moment into it for the past year, partially because you guys inspired me. In true, you're wrong about style. I am starting with my favorite maligned woman of history, Othike Koukichi. The show is going to be called the Dragon Flipperade and will be out next month if everything

goes right. And since I have to learn how to edit now, I wanted to especially thank Carolyn for sharing her editing process on the pod because that advice has burned itself into my brain and will certainly make my podcast better in the long run. Thank you so much for everything you do. I was really having to rethink my relationship to work, so I have a year wrong about, quote, hanging over my desk that says, there's something between Slipshot, heried work and absolute perfection, and there is a place for us in it. So thank you for retelling stories, for keeping us company during a hard time,

and for modeling how we can all work towards trying to find a balance between the drive, to create great work, and to be creative, and flexible, and forgiving on ourselves. Hi, I'm Matt and what you're wrong about has given me is a language to better articulate my thoughts. The way the show explains how a moral panic works and the way you've given such a diverse set of case studies into them, it's trained my media literacy and taught me what to look out for in things that previously would have just kind of felt a bit icky to me. Especially episodes like

losing relatives to Fox News and the Council Culture Series, which highlight that all of these panics are basically the same, like George Lucas says, it's like poetry at rhymes. And so now I like George Lucas says, it's like poetry at rhymes. And so now I use Sarah's kind of Colombo approach to challenging people's beliefs, to steer people I know away from culture war bullshit. And I use the framework for moral panic to explain to people like my parents why trans people aren't the greatest danger of our time.

I still laugh about it all the time, but the episode that got me hooked was the obesity epidemic. I love that episode so much and it's so near and dear to my heart that a joke that Sarah once said I had tattooed on my body, rotisserie chicken is a human right. And that's been my mantra for the last few years now to just live your life to the best and just do what you can and do what you can, don't hurt yourself. Hi Sarah, I just wanted to share a quote from you that I found really powerful. It was from the Karen Carpenter episode part two. People have the

power that you give them and that's not to say that it's easy to take it away. It's like extremely fucking hard to stop giving it to them. That's real. That's the real torture of it all. I just found that quote so powerful and touching. I discovered this show sometime within the past year of my life. I'm not quite sure, but I am kind of glad that I discovered it fairly recently because I feel like it has prepared me for the absolute onslaught of moral panic. That is the quote-unquote trans debate in modern politics. It's something that's been really hard to deal with. I'm non-binary, a lot of my friends and loved ones are trans and it can be so scary to have a moral panic centered around your very existence and the existence of people you love. As you can properly tell by my accent

I'm not American I'm actually Finnish and because of that to me some of your episodes are not really your wrong about but I bet you've never heard about. Even though I love learning and getting debunked, it's still so hard to shake away the first impressions we get from the media, and that's why I'm glad I've heard some stories for the first time through this podcast. I loved that the first time I heard about Amy Fisher or Tamifei, I learned about them from kind people who cared about telling those stories right. Hi, I've been listening to you wrong about since July or August of 2020 and the episode that made the most lasting impact on me was the Terry Shive episode, but I grew up with

my own disordered eating habits. And when I heard Sarah and Michael talking about potassium levels and how that led to Terry's heart attack, I was thinking about how I grew up with doctors encouraging me to increase my potassium levels because I had really low potassium. I'm glad nothing happened to me and I'm glad that I'm okay. But the Terry Shiveau episode convinced me to go into eating disorder recovery and it's been a few years and I'm doing alright and I love the show and I recommend it to everyone I talk to. I'm not a child of the satanic panic, but I did live through something similar. My parents

divorced when I was about one, and by the time I was about two, my mom had brought accusations of sexual abuse against my dad and his entire family. And the entire process, Internet of itself, was deeply traumatizing, but once they found no evidence of any abuse having happened, my mom didn't accept that. It's extremely hard to accept that you've made that level of mistake, and she didn't keep it a secret either and it tore my entire family apart. When I've talked about this part of my story with people, including therapists as an adult, people just can't get over that sense of relief that the sexual abuse didn't happen and it always felt off and incomplete and unsatisfying. And I never knew why until I heard you acknowledge what that experience does. And I just want to say thank you for pushing us all to be more empathetic, insightful,

and caring towards each other. Thank you a million times over. Some more around June in 2020. So about three months into the pandemic, when I got the call that my brother had been arrested in a different state for possession of child pornography imagery. And this news hit me and my family pretty hard. I had no idea what to do with this. It was pretty devastating. I finally cracked and ended up telling one of my bosses about it, and he suggested that I listen to this episode of your show on sex offender's and it was

just one of the first one of the very few things I've ever come across that helped me to make any kind of sense of it and to understand that there could be more than one explanation for what it happened and almost three years later I still don't have the full explanation of what happened. We're still waiting for trial. We're caught in the middle of the injustice system, which other episodes of yours have also helped me to work through. And it was just amazing for me to hear from two people who had your level of empathy and the willingness to do something other than just say save the children and then turn their brain off in the face of this extremely uncomfortable topic. So I've listened ever since and I will always be grateful to you guys for helping me at that really hard time.

Hello, you're wrong about my name is Sarah. I live in Iowa City, Iowa, and I am a single mom of three kids and a domestic violence survivor experienced all the different faces of domestic violence and when I tell my story to other people I've always shared that the mental and emotional manipulation pieces and the terror as a result of those were the worst, way worse than physical violence. I'm eight years out from the relationship and still entangling those experiences for myself. And so the episodes that really stick out for me of your show were the DC sniper episodes because it was the first time that I really heard

the type of abuse that I experienced, explained in that way and also of course like a horrible gruesome end that it can end up at and even though mine did thankfully have the same outcome, I think the terror that I experienced just knowing that this person was so unhinged and uncertain and so willing and able to abuse women and children just really drove that reality home for me and validated my experience. And so I'm really thankful that you opened not only my eyes, but lots of other people's eyes to this type of abuse as well.

And it just highlighted the malignancy of the abuse of women and children in a way I've never heard before. And I'm just so grateful that you did that. And also thank you so much for opening my eyes to Miljard Mahamed, the work that she's doing is just so cool. And I had no idea she even existed. So thank you for making my internal terror somehow external. I appreciate that.

And I appreciate your show so much in all the episodes. It was hard to even pick one. But thank you. Hi, Among many other things you're wrong about has allowed me to share with friends and lucky strangers The more nuanced story regarding the infamous Courtney love It hits very close to home for me as I witnessed the suicide of my ex

and along with the grief, trauma, and what would become PTSD. I also faced a lot of accusations and judgments from my peers and her friends and family. I really relate to Courtney and wish for everybody to understand her because maybe it will help them understand me too. In April of 2021, I almost committed suicide because I was dealing with a lot of trauma and stress in a way that I didn't know how to deal with them.

So I laid on the floor instead at my lowest moment and they listened to an episode of Your Wrong About. It was the postal killer episode from like 2018, like really early on. I really just want to say thank you for being there in my really slowest moment. Since then, I've been able to write about my trauma and create a resource for others through a fellowship project, but I actually presented today only two years later, and I was able to say you're wrong about to myself. And I let a whole new chapter of my lifestyle. That's all, thank you.

You're wrong about operates as a trusty lifeline for me when things are hardest. I have various mental health struggles and you're wrong about is one of the precious few things that can bring me up and out of any abyss reliably, including the scariest of the abyss is for me, which is the nighttime abyss when I can't sleep, and my mind is being unwieldy and unkind,

and I don't want to call and wake a friend or call the hotlines. So I know that I can queue up an episode of your wrong about and it will comfort me, it will teach me and make me laugh and make me realize that life is full and worth partaking in. At the end of a recent episode you said, we need you here, you. I cannot begin to describe how needed that was in that moment. And I cried and so did my friends who also listened and so did thousands of others I am sure. Your words made me feel held, and I am still here. Thank you so much. The quarantine isolated us,

and this podcast helped me feel less alone. When businesses started opening up again, I got out of the habit of listening to you or wrong about until my mom died. When I was a senior in high school, I remember hearing a landslide by Fleetwood Mac for the first time. Landslide made me feel less alienated.

Grief can also be alienating. So when I saw you posted a two-part episode on rumors the week after I buried my mother, I subscribed again and spent an afternoon streaming Christmas lights around a swimming pool and listening to this show. If you listen to a podcast using earphones, the host is literally a voice inside your head, and the power of art is connection. Podcasting is an art. Sarah Marshall and Carolyn Kendrick's conversation about rumors helped me remember that emotional pain is universal. If you don't think

you're wrong about create deep connections with its audience, you're wrong about universal. If you don't think you're wrong about creates deep connections with its audience, you're wrong about that. Thank you for being there for me. And in those final moments as I held my mom's hand, I promised her that I was going to be okay even though I wasn't really sure how I was going to keep that promise. And what I started to do was just walk and I walked every morning at sunrise, and I would listen to you wrong about. So you opened up a new world to me, and you really did help me get through the darkest, most difficult time of my life by giving me something to focus on besides my incredible grief. Give me a new connection with my daughter. And

now we celebrate when a new podcast drops, she'll message me, and then we'll talk about whatever the episode is at the time. And you've opened up my world to new experiences, new thoughts, and introduce me to other podcasts as well. So thank you. Keep being awesome. Hope to see you in person someday. Hello Sarah. It's Sarah here, calling from Adelaide South Australia. And the thing that your podcast gives me is knowledge that there are still good people out there. Sometimes I get really anxious and sad about humanity and how cruel humans can be to each

other, but listening to your podcast and yourself and Michael and your guests. You've all shown me that not everyone's first instinct is to think a cruel or mean thought about other people. You guys enter every situation with clanness and compassion and thoughtfulness and that's something that I've tried to be since listening to your podcast. I hope I was that before, but I think your podcast has made me better. Hello, my name is Dean, hailing from Southern Massachusetts. I've always been someone more interested in the obscure and fascinating, so I'm just delighted when there's a whole episode dedicated to Kato's guest house in relation to the OJ trial So I imagine some people they look forward to coming home having a beer out of the fridge watch their favorite episode of the office

For me, it's just my blissful 45 minute drive home late in the evening with you're wrong about playing and This is one of the only two podcasts that I actually listen to at regular speed. Instead of the usual one and a quarter speed, I listen to everything else at. I do this for most of my podcasts just to consume more information in the same amount of time. If I wasn't lactose intolerant, I would probably be the type of person to add powdered milk to my actual milk so I could have more milk per milk if that makes any sense. But an episode of You're Wrong About is to be savered so I listened to it the way it was intended.

There are three takeaways of this show that I've always carried with me. Believe in the bimbos, it was capitalism all along, and most importantly, you are good. Like many people I was especially struck by your Princess Diana series. It helped me through a really difficult move. I listened to it from my drive from Pennsylvania to Chicago where I now live. And when I got to Chicago, I like many people set up an online dating profile and in my hinge profile for one of the prompts, I can't shut up about, I put podcasts about Princess Diana. I wanted to, you know, attract the right people and have a little bit of a, if you know you know, situation.

One day I got a match and the prompt that someone responded to was that prompt and they said, do you mean you're wrong about? We started going on dates and whenever there would be any sort of lull in conversation, we would bring up wrong about or maintenance phase or any of the other amazing podcasts in the year wrong about cinematic universe. And I am so happy to say that the person that your podcast connected me to is my person, is my girlfriend, is the love of my life. In July, we will have been dating for two years now. And in in September we are moving in together with our beautiful dog, Frankie May, and I cannot begin to express my gratitude for it has connected me to my person who I love so badly. Hey, Carolyn. And everybody listening, it's me, Sarah, listening to all of the voice memos that you sent in.

Has really made me think about what the show has meant to me to make and to have be really the central fixture in my life for these five years. And also to over time, and especially having just done this live tour to get to see you and to meet you and to now hear from you in this way and to understand what the show has been for you and what is possible when we open our hearts. Something I believe so deeply about people and something that was kind of challenged by the pandemic and that doing the show meant that I had to stay inside of and had to sort of be that girl if only for a few hours a week is the belief that people want to connect.

They want to love each other. We want to be caring and protect each other and be vulnerable with each other. And the fact that we cause so much destruction, I don't think it's because anyone would prefer that to love and connection, but because we're very easily damaged and we're sometimes not handled with care. And that's one of the biggest things that I have learned from these memos and from everything that you have said and from doing that this show, these five years is that connection is what we all need, whether we know it or not, and that the power of one voice, one of voice can do so much. It can offer so many people, solace, it can bring so many people together. I am a very imperfect person, but within that swamp of my humanity, I have found comfort and love and felt seen and understood by you. to do whatever projects you're thinking about, if you're doubting the power of your own voice, your own soul, your own vulnerability, I hope that this shows you how much can happen. If you

simply offer people a space to feel like they can witness themselves and accept themselves, and not simply continue punishing themselves as we're taught to do. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for continuing to be here. And I'm so excited for everything we're going to do together. And Carolyn, I love working with you. And I feel so lucky every day to get to create things with you and to be present in this place of vulnerability and love. And I'm just so happy we're all here. Thank you. Thank you so much. I just wanna say thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much for everything you do. Thanks for being an icon for autistic nerdy women out there. Thank you so much for giving my eyes and my heart open. Thank you for being part of my life. Thanks for so many amazing memories and older laughs along the way. And yeah, so I just want to say thank you. Thank you so much for everything you have done. Thank you. And that was our episode. Thank you for these five years. Thank you so much to Carolyn Kendrick for editing and sound design and for wanting to try

something new with this episode. And by the way, if you're in Portland and you want to see some comedy from another friend of the show, you should go see River Booker at Helium on June 4, there are two shows, 6pm and 8.30. I think it's very exciting that you could tease the parl parlance of Ang just like that be part of a comedy concert. You should go, we love River, and I'm very excited to get to see him this week. Thank you again to all of you for being part of this community, for making this community, for making everything possible. It's always so wonderful to get to hear from you and I can't wait to see what we do next. you you