Today’s article is about the lovely ‘This Feels Terrible,’ a semi-comedic show involving disccusions of romantic entanglements, love and occasionally, or maybe often, sex. The effervescent and fantastic Erin McGathy hosts with a smooth clarity, a kind voice and a true listener’s ear that all work together to make the podcast a refined, charming and intimate experience.
One of the most overlooked and ignored aspects of being a great host and a great friend is the ability to be a fantastic listener. Offering a real presence in conversations, whilst allowing the time and space for the people you are talking with to talk, so that they can tell their own story without having a framework or sojourn thrust upon them. The capacity to let things ‘be’ or ‘breathe,’ to lend a story the freedom to simply be told is a relatively rare quality in podcasting, where anecdotes are more frequently praised for their hilarity, brevity or how much comedic fruit they bear, rather than simply being merited for what they tell the listener about human existence. And it is herein that both Erin McGathy and This Feels Terrible find their niche. In a slightly odd but obvious way, the show rotates almost entirely upon the axis of it’s host, Erin McGathy, whose skill as a speaker is exponentially increased by her willingness to be a listener, which allows her to push her fellow performers to the forefront of the show, allowing them to talk about their past engagements in a very natural, heartfelt and personal way. She guides the show with an elegant restraint, kind heart and soft voice that make it all the more emotive and intimate an experience for the audience and guests, her simple honesty imbuing the show with a beautifully minimalist truth, sourced from her own past relationships, intertwined with the experiences being told to her. McGathy’s presence, in short, gives the show a gorgeous sheen, a feeling of heartfelt kindness and purity of intention that make This Feels Terrible the simple gem that it is.
Erin McGathy!
Alongside the fantastic McGathy are the stories which make the podcast a show. Ranging from discussions of high school exes, tales of stunning heartbreak to relationships that were simply confusing, they all possess a level of pure and untempered emotional depth; a sincerity that puts them above the level most podcasts could attest to. They bring with them discussions of faith, lust and the inner turmoils that lead to mutually destructive relationships, coming together in ways that vary between the poignant and the puerile, most all of them told with a beautiful perspective about how the relationships, however terrible they felt at the time, have come to mean a lot in hindsight. Whilst these stories do bring the focus back on the guests, McGathy’s ability to read situations in a wonderfully accurate and simplistic way provides them a perfect staging point, their nature and telling highlighting the joy of the atmosphere that she has managed to craft for herself.
Creating an atmosphere that is the warmest of kind embraces, it is intimate podcasting magic. What washes over the podcast, and the listener in turn, is the simplicity and heart that runs right through it. It is entirely and absolutely a conversation podcast, one that works beautifully in weaving connections between the past and the present, between McGathy and her guests, between the relationships that didn’t work out and those that will. This Feels Terrible is a really exquisite and special podcast, one with a heartbeat so strong and sensitive that it quickly becomes a part of your life, truly impulsive and addictive listening.
You can find the podcast on iTunes or at www.FeralAudio.com, whilst the host is over on twitter @ErinMcGathy, or @ThisFeelsTerrible or you can find more from the podcast on www.thisfeelsterrible@tumblr.com, it’s a link festival up in here! Gogo!