Thanksgiving: An “I Heart This Manifesto”
In October of 2022, I decided to start a podcast about things that I loved. At the time, this seemed like a not-terrible idea. It turns out that I am the world’s foremost authority on things that I love, so I was actually somewhat qualified to speak on the subject. And seeing how it was focused on my own obsessions,it was also pretty much guaranteed to interest me . But mostly, in a media world populated with trolls, cynics, and conspiracy-pedaling gadflies … well … talking about delightful things seemed like a novelty. Like I said, all in all, a not-so-terrible idea.
The next thing I probably should have asked myself was “Who would want to listen to hours and hours of some random guy talking about the things that he loves?” But I kinda skipped that part.
Instead, I asked myself, “What do I love? What do I want to talk about?” I liked that question better because it meant I got to write a list. And I really love writing lists. In fact, “making lists” is #20 on my list of things that I like, and it will probably end up with its own episode at some point. I put this list in a spreadsheet, because, well, I also really like spreadsheets. (They’re #65).
But now that I Heart This has reached the end of its first season, it seems like it's probably time to ask the existential questions that I avoided asking at the beginning.
Because, y’all know, the last thing the world needs is a new podcast. We’ve got enough “influencers” and “personalities” and hucksters and reminders to like and subscribe. We’ve got enough people feeding the algorithms, thank you very much. What good could it possibly do to add yet another voice to the media circus. It’s like shouting into the void.
Why spend hours of a good life scripting and revising and recording and listening to the same sentence over and over again to edit out all the weird noises my voice makes?
And … why listen? There are a thousand other things you could tune into to right now. You could listen to the news … or someone who will make you laugh … or financial advice … or, y’know, like nine out of ten podcast listeners, you could tune into an endless and moderately disturbing stream of true crime.
So, even it is a bit belatedly, let’s go there. “Who would want to listen to hours and hours of some random guy talking about the things that he loves?” Why gratitude? Why a project like this at all?
Move over Karl Marx. It’s a Thanksgiving I Heart This manifesto.
I’m Ben Lord. You’re listening to “I Heart This.”
First, let me tell you a bit about how I came to be such a gratitude cheerleader in the first place.
In my mid-twenties, I enrolled in a nature study correspondence course for cavemen. Okay, it wasn’t really a course for aspiring cavemen … but it was for people interested in wilderness survival and wild edible plants and stalking around in the woods and getting close to wildlife. So … y’know … cave man stuff. And it really was a good old-fashioned, pre-Zoom correspondence course. Assignments would arrive in my literal IRL mailbox. And I would use these things called stamps to send envelopes full of my work back to the school.
About half of these assignments had me researching local animals and plants in books. But the other half were a kind of in-the-woods practicum. The approach was simple. Go to the same spot in the woods every single day. Sit there until all the things I’d scared away relaxed and returned to going about their business. And then … watch.
Does that sound boring? I guess that sometimes it was. And sometimes it...
