Beautiful Stories From Anonymous People

A grassroots journalist calling in mid-haircut connects with Gethard over a shared love for community media. Together, they break down why public access matters now more than ever: how local TV and community-powered news can connect neighbors, build trust where traditional media has fallen short and, most importantly, help people tell their own stories. They swap favorite public access oddities (including a cat-costume...

This week's caller has dedicated her life to understanding hoarding disorder. Years ago, she married someone whose relationship with collecting changed the course of her own life. Now she's on a mission to educate others and replace stigma with compassion. She and Gethard get into what hoarding really looks like, the reasons people find it hard to let go, and how shows like Hoarders have turned personal struggle into p...

A caller checks in from a Costco parking lot to mark one year sober after 25 years of blackout drinking. He talks about kicking opioids, rebuilding his life, and what it's like to actually remember things again. He and Geth get into punk shows, lost friends, and how addiction doesn't always look the way people think it does.

Plus, Dog Talk makes a rare appearance from behind the paywall.

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Here we are. Episode 500. We celebrated the only way that makes sense. With a few hundred listeners packed into a theater in Jersey and a caller whose story pretty much sums up what this show is all about.

Our 500th caller is one year out from a stay in a mental hospital. She opens up about what it was like to lose her grip on reality in a pretty intense way and shares how far she's come with self-awarenes...

You've  heard us talk about it. Here's your reminder. In the last nearly TEN YEARS of Beautiful Anonymous, Gethard has had 499 unforgettable conversations with our callers. This Friday, October 17th, we're recording number 500. We'll be live at Kevin Smith's Smodcastle Cinemas in beautiful Atlantic Highlands, NJ. Get your tickets now, then come hang out, grab a shirt, get to know one another, and maybe win a chance to ...

Gethard talks with a caller who shares her story of adopting a young girl and what happened when, after a year, that child chose to return to her foster family. It's an honest conversation about one person's experience with adoption, the unpredictability of parenthood,  and finding a way forward when something you've hoped for doesn't turn out the way you imagined.

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An Australian on a solo vacation calls in from Italy. She and Gethard chat about travel, trade stereotypes about each other's countries, and get into how the rest of the world views the U.S. right now, all while the caller gives us a little walking tour of the charming Italian town she's calling from.

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This call starts at Burning Man but quickly opens up into a far more complicated conversation about grief, abuse, healing, and the long work of rebuilding. But the playa stays in the mix throughout, a touchstone for how this caller has tried to redefine life along the way. And, of course, we make a stop at the Orgy Dome.

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This week, Geth talks with a railroad worker who shares what it's really like on the job. They get into the nitty-gritty of trains, unions, and infrastructure, and explore how the rails often reflect bigger truths about where the country is headed. 

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This week, Geth talks with a firefighter/EMT who's training to be a paramedic. They get into the vital importance of volunteer work, what it's like to serve in rural communities versus tourist towns, and how showing up in moments of crisis can remind you what humanity is all about.

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Raised by a zoologist in a house full of wild animals, this psychology professor's life has remained just as untamed: coaching junior roller derby, a stint making high-end chocolate, parenting a trans kid, and that's just for starters. Unpredictable but never aimless, her conversation with Gethard is just as wide-ranging as her life.

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This week's caller takes us into the complicated, messy, and deeply human world of sex work. The conversation stretches from personal experience to bigger questions about society. It's thoughtful, challenging, and impossible to boil down.

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Does what it says on the tin. Gethard talks to a polyamorous witch librarian who once worked the front desk at a brothel, surprisingly perfect training for library life. They get into the realities of coven community, late-discovered neurodivergence, leaving a faith tradition, and why public libraries are such vital spaces, now more than ever. It's wide-ranging but never scattered. More like a life filed neatly into se...

Here's the pitch: Engineer by day. International award-winning clown by night. Learned to read and walk in her 20s. This caller has a lot going on, and every story branches into a whole new world of surprises.

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A couple weeks back, Gethard talked with a lawyer whose husband came up a few times. We learned two key facts about him: he's got a lot of birds, and he works on a tugboat. Well, he got through this week, and that means Geth got to ask him a few questions about the birds and a million more about life aboard a tugboat. It's a conversation packed with oddly fascinating details about this very specific, rarely discussed j...

This week, Gethard talks to a Vietnam veteran with a lifetime of stories. He's never listened to the podcast, but his granddaughter has, and she encouraged him to call in as a way to share and preserve the experiences he's carried for decades. He recounts some harrowing moments from his childhood before walking us through the catastrophic day in Vietnam that changed the course of his life. It's a conversation about tra...

This week's caller is a medical device engineer with a deeply personal stake in the healthcare system. She talks with Gethard about living with a rare liver disease, how Martin Shkreli changed the course of her life, and the three-legged, half-tailed foster cat who might just send her back to therapy.

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This week's caller joined Gethard at 10:30 on a Friday night to talk about wrestling and her love of a New Jersey ska band, but the conversation quickly turned into something else entirely. We hear about her tugboat captain husband (who happens to have Geth's secret dream job), her own work representing our most vulnerable population, and the utterly baffling hobby that's taken over her home. Somehow, this one-hour cal...

In another installment of our unofficial "The Young People Are Alright" series, a 19-year-old entrepreneur calls in to talk about hustle culture, mental health, and the lessons he's learning from his first relationship. He's thoughtful, ambitious, and asking big questions about what it means to grow up in a world where the American Dream feels increasingly out of reach and the future is anything but certain.