What happens when you take a podcast of four individuals made up of two couples and isolate them?
What happens when they’re asked about themselves, each other, and then the same 10 questions?
What happens is magic, and that magic was created by Grant Markham, host of The Stranger Conversations, when he sat down individually with the four members of Couple Things Podcast: Ray, Ben, Michelle, and Molly, then brought them all back together with special guest co-host Dan Lizette from The Podcast Digest for a round table recap of the “social experiment.”
Social experiments happen all the time but not all of them are successful. This one was and although Couple Things Podcast was apprehensive at the term “social experiment” that is precisely what it was.
During the five episode run capping with a listen and tweet for the Round Table episode (#CTPinJulyLT) you get to hear stories from many different sides, you get to know them as individuals, as a group, and why those individuals work within that group.
You get to learn about friendships and marriage, trials and tribulations. You learn about chemistry and how the social experience that we all have is one we all share because introvert or extrovert we are all social creatures.
The podcasters of Couple Things Podcast
Grant isolated each of the four laying down ground rules that none of them was to listen to any other episode until all four individual episodes were complete. This wouldn’t tip any of them off to what the others had said during their individual episode recordings.
The results are spellbinding and miraculous. Couple Things Podcast is funny and insightful, but individually they are all unique people with vastly different stories, indifferent to the fact that they are, in fact, two couples.
What Grant has done is pull back the curtain on Couple Things Podcast not only to their listeners but to themselves as well.
Why won’t I go into specifics to share the stories they told individually and those they shared together at the round table? The answer is simple. Because it’s something that needs to be heard; it’s not something anyone can tell you about no matter how many words they throw at you. It’s just something that needs to be experienced for yourself.
I said Grant accomplished the miraculous and he did. Whether in isolation or together these are four individuals, four strangers that you just can’t help but relate to. And I call them strangers because I don’t know them, or at least I didn’t know them until this #CTPinJuly “social experiment” occurred.
The Stranger Conversations with Grant Markham
It’s something Grant does with all of his guests on The Stranger Conversations. He has this natural ability to peel back someone’s layers and find out who that person is without being intrusive. But in doing this little “social experiment” he took it to a whole different level–one that must be listened to and experienced, and that is why I’m writing. You need to listen and experience this “social experiment” for yourself, whether you relate to all four or just one; you will learn, you will laugh, and you just might cry.
But regardless of your thoughts on the guests, as the host, Grant has done something special. In accomplishing what he set out to do he has shared a piece of humanity with all of us
If you’ve listened to the episodes, please share your comments below on why this was so amazing. And if you haven’t, why haven’t you?
The human condition is something we all share and, as social beings, we can only learn from each other that which we haven’t experienced ourselves.
Even if you don’t listen to all of The Stranger Conversations, the five episodes that make up #CTPinJuly are brilliant and deserve to be heard by one and all, young and old, of every social condition. Because deep down there is more that unites us than divides us.
And Grant is showing us that every week … one stranger at a time.
The Stranger Conversations #CTPinJuly Episodes
Episode 22: Ray Loflin “CTPInJuly” Part 1
Episode 23: Ben Mendenhall “CTPInJuly” Part 2
Episode 24: Michelle von Hirschberg “CTPInJuly” Part 3
Episode 25: Molly Mendenhall “CTPInJuly” Part 4
Episode 26: “CTP In July” The Round Table! “CTPInJuly” Part 5
Couple Things Podcast #CTPinJuly Episode