Beautiful Stories From Anonymous People

This week's caller works in video games. The first half of the call gets into the current state of the industry and what it's like building a career in something you love. Halfway through, this caller earns a spot on one of our favorite unofficial Beautiful/Anonymous lists: people with incredibly specific, deeply nerdy hobbies they have gone fully in on. This one involves a surprising degree of vi...

It's this caller's birthday, and she has a lot to celebrate: a career she's crushing, a new house, and the chance to provide for people she loves. The conversation is funny and charming, and then the family stories start coming out. Every family has a little chaos, but hers might take the (birthday) cake. Sign up for Beautiful/Anonymous+ to get ad free episodes and access to exclusive audio includ...

A middle school Spanish teacher calls before first period to talk with Gethard about her deskless classroom, eating chocolate in front of her students, and finding an identity beyond teaching through slam poetry. Plus: a treacherous hike and an even more treacherous situationship. Sign up for  Beautiful/Anonymous+ to get ad free episodes and access to exclusive audio including 5 Random Questions w...

Smoking a cigar on a riverbank in Alaska, this caller tells Gethard about the therapist's offhand suggestion that sent him north, and the long, rambling road that led him there. From sleeping in a college library to living on Greyhound buses, with many stops in between, he and Gethard talk hardship, adventure, chosen family, and what might be next for this lifelong wanderer. Sign up for Beautiful/...

A proudly unpredictable mom calls to talk with Gethard about errant mouth bones, thrift-store vendettas, and escaping a fundamentalist upbringing. Plus: dead snakes, a dilapidated chicken coop, and a toddler determined to keep all of us on our toes. Sign up for Beautiful/Anonymous+ to get ad free episodes and access to exclusive audio including 5 Random Questions with this week's caller. Leave us...

Losing her job wasn't exactly the plan, but it gave this caller the reset she needed. She talks with Geth about ADHD, burnout, GenAI, and just how much drama happens offstage in community theater. Sign up for Beautiful/Anonymous+ to get ad free episodes and access to exclusive audio including 5 Random Questions with this week's caller. Leave us a voicemail at (973) 306-4676 Head to chrisgeth.com f...

It's Friday, and we've finally caught up. All week, we've been following the Prison Bound caller from the original 2018 episode through three follow-ups recorded during her time in federal prison. Today, six years after our last conversation, we hear from her again. This is an all-new call, and, after eight years, what feels like the final chapter of one of the longest-running stories in a decade...

It's Thursday, and Prison Bound Week is almost caught up to the present. We started on Monday with the original 2018 call, then followed the caller through two check-ins from inside federal prison. Today's episode comes from October 2020, as she was getting close to release. Right in the middle of COVID. It's a firsthand snapshot of what that moment looked and felt like from inside a federal priso...

It's Wednesday, and Prison Bound Week continues. We started Monday with the original 2018 call, and yesterday we heard from our caller nine months into her sentence. Today's follow-up comes from October 2019, about halfway through her time in federal prison. These follow-ups originally aired on Stitcher Premium, which means a lot of you have never heard them before. We'll keep following the story...

It's Tuesday, which is normally when you get your weekly episode of Beautiful Anonymous, but this week, we're doing things differently. Yesterday, we went back to the original "Prison Bound" call from 2018. Today, we're checking in with the caller nine months into her federal prison sentence. A heads-up: this one is short. These calls were coming from inside prison, and we were figuring out the lo...

Yes, it's Monday. Yes, Beautiful Anonymous is in your feed a day early. We're doing something a little different this week. Eight years ago, a caller phoned Beautiful Anonymous four days before reporting to federal prison. The episode became one of the most memorable (and divisive) calls in the history of the show. Now we're going back to the beginning. All week, we'll follow the Prison Bound call...

A sixth-degree black belt calls from a hacker convention to talk ham radio, phone phreaking, off-grid networks, hacking E-ZPass (fine, theoretically), and whether Chinese and Russian hackers already know your mom's maiden name. Sign up for Beautiful/Anonymous+ to get ad free episodes and access to exclusive audio including 5 Random Questions with this week's caller. Leave us a voicemail at (973) 3...

This week's caller has a full-time job, a toddler, and somehow also helps run an anime convention in their spare (lol) time. Gethard gets a crash-course in anime as he talks with our caller about what happens when the thing you love starts becoming a whole lot of work. Plus, an energetic 18-month-old brings some adorable kid chaos to the call. Sign up for Beautiful/Anonymous+ to get ad free episod...

This week's caller had an encounter with a psychic that is tailor-made for Beautiful/Anonymous. She tells Gethard that story, shares memories of her free-range '90s childhood, and opens up about an experience from those years that left her with a unique phobia. It might sound a little strange at first, but as she and Geth get into it, we learn just how deeply it still affects her life, to this day...

Let's all agree we can blame Mercury retrograde for the technical difficulties we had in getting this one off the ground. The rest of the chaos, though, is entirely on this week's caller, a true maker of mischief who calls in on their birthday eve eve looking for a little trouble. They come in hot with a competition that pits Maryland against New Jersey, but it's not all fun and games. She and Get...

Recovering from surgery and ten days into a liquid diet, our caller is hungry for conversation. Geth and this Good Vibes Caller compare shared surgeries, shared interests, and decide whether or not he once stopped a woman from becoming a serial killer's next victim. Sign up for Beautiful/Anonymous+ to get ad free episodes and access to exclusive audio including 5 Random Questions with this week's...

This week, an audio engineer at a major sports arena calls in from a seat in the arena bowl. He and Gethard talk about what it's like to work in a place built for tens of thousands of people before the fans arrive, the changing landscape of live sports events, which artists travel with the best crews, and the surprising amount that sports and musical theater have in common. Sign up for Beautiful/A...

This week's caller is an environmental scientist who studies stormwater. She's also a mischievous little trickster. She and Geth talk about what our water can tell us about the health of the world around us and share a few changes you can make in your own yard to help care for your corner of the planet. Then she shares something that really shifts the energy of the rest of the conversation toward...

This week, Gethard talks with a middle school theater teacher about growing up homeschooled, her time in a traveling Christian theater troupe, and what it was like adjusting to public school life. She and Geth talk about the importance of arts in schools, what kids learn when they get comfortable being on stage, and why 6th grade boys might be the toughest crowd of all. Sign up for Beautiful/Anony...

This week's caller works in psychedelic medicine, and Gethard has questions. They talk about ketamine, psilocybin, what it really means to do this work responsibly, how therapy changes when the problem is the world around you, and why real connection might be the thing we all need most right now. Sign up for Beautiful/Anonymous+ to get ad free episodes and access to exclusive audio including 5 Ran...

A life that started in Pleasantville doesn't stay there. This week's caller talks with Gethard about marriage, motherhood, identity, grief, and how listening to Beautiful/Anonymous made her realize how many different stories make up her own life. Sign up for Beautiful/Anonymous+ to get ad free episodes and access to exclusive audio including 5 Random Questions with this week's caller. Leave us a v...

This week's caller has been listening since the beginning and thinking about what she'd say when she finally got through. Ten years in, she tells Gethard about the life that's happened in the meantime: meeting her now-husband during a very heavy chapter for his family, spending a year on a sailboat, and the shape of her family today. But first, we kick things off with some Jersey mall talk.  Sign...

This week's caller wants to build something good in a place where help can be hard to find. She and Geth talk about small-town life in the South, harm reduction, family, survival, and finding ways to keep going when life has handed you way too much already. Sign up for  Beautiful/Anonymous+  to get ad free episodes and access to exclusive audio including 5 Random Questions with this week's caller....

For Gethard's birthday, we're doing something kinda stupid but also totally sincere: an entire episode about  Avatar: The Last Airbender . After months of threatening to turn Beautiful/Anonymous into an Avatar podcast, Geth finally makes good on his word and talks to callers about bending, Zuko, Uncle Iroh, family bonding, and uh . . . a dog who isn't really a dog? Maybe? (Sorry, I still don't rea...

This week's caller is a dancer and choreographer who takes Gethard inside the intense, demanding world of ballet and the path that led her to her life's work. She also opens up about a traumatic experience outside of dance and tells us about the ways movement has helped her turn her pain into purpose. Sign up for Beautiful/Anonymous+ to get ad free episodes and access to exclusive audio including...