Lawrence and I started the show the way we often do lately: mid-thought, mid-work, mid-spiral about attention and productivity and what Substack does to your brain if you let it. There was warmth and a little overwhelm in the mix — the good kind of honest that makes the show feel like a real conversation instead of a performance.
I talked about launching my new project, I Write Out Loud — a daily memoir practice with audio, built around the idea of letting personal writing live in public.
I shared my most recent essay, “My Dad, Dementia, and the Things We Don’t Forget,” and how different it feels to build something so intimate in a new corner of the internet. It’s vulnerable work, and it feels that way.
Then our guest joined us from Minnesota, and the conversation widened fast.
Teri Leigh 💜 writes multiple Substack publications, including HUSH: Highly Unapologetic Sensitive Humans, which recently exploded after one of her notes went viral. What pulled us in wasn’t just the growth — it was the clarity behind it. The work comes from lived experience and emotional intelligence, not branding strategy.
We talked about Minnesota not just as a place, but as a kind of moral weather system. She shared what it’s been like living amid increased ICE activity, including a moment at a local park when unmarked vehicles began circling families and kids. The fear was immediate — and so was the response. Neighbors opened their businesses as warming centers. People brought food, water, hand warmers. No coordination. No spectacle. Just people showing up.
One story stopped us cold: two women detained by ICE who helped save the life of an agent having a seizure — and were handcuffed again afterward. When asked why they helped, they said simply: because he was human. We stayed with that moment, not to dramatize it, but because it says something essential about dignity that no policy memo ever could.
We also talked about sensitivity — how being labeled “too sensitive” as a kid often turns into the very skill set that lets someone notice harm and respond to it. What was once framed as weakness now shows up as awareness, attunement, and refusal to look away.
We closed on a very Gen X note when she named Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love of All” as the most Gen X song of all time — a reminder that self-worth is not fluff, it’s the starting line for caring about other people.
Thank you Cat: Poli-Psych, The Vegan Curious, Neil Cunningham 🫧, cynmac, Jason Odell, Noble Blend. Thank you to Karen Marie Shelton for moderating The Whatever chat and Yanni Hamburger for being a mod on our YouTube channel.
We’ll be back bright and early on Wednesday for The Daily Whatever Show with our guest Cliff Schecter from Blue Amp Media (BAM).
We love you all—truly!—mean it.
