Hey, everybody. I hope you're having a good summer. I know the news is a lot. Hang in there.

Over here, question everything. We're all off reporting. Well, we're taking a little break, but

we're mostly off reporting, preparing to come back full steam with some great stories for you in

September, helping make sense of the news and the world and how we get news about the world.

In the meantime, I wanted to share something kind of personal with you.

My friend Yo-Wei Shaw has a podcast called Proxy. Yo-e's a long-time radio journalist. She used to co-host

the NPR show Invisibilia. She and I worked together on a story years ago at This American Life.

And after Invisibilia got canceled in a round of MPR layoffs,

Yo-A set off on her own, started the show proxy, and gave herself a new title,

Emotional Investigative Journalist. She's come up with this approach to reporting, where she tries to help people who are going through some kind of personal or emotional problem,

a problem that others can relate to,

by setting them up with a proxy, either someone else who has gone through that problem already in

their own life and learned something about it, or with an expert on that problem, who has some

advice and help to share. And Yo-Wei recently did this process with me. She helped me with

something I've been struggling with a member of my family.

It was hard.

It was vulnerable.

And it was helpful.

I'm a little nervous to share it with you, but maybe some of you will get something out of it too.

Here it is.

An episode of proxy.

If you had to vocalize the sound of your emotional conundrum, what would it be?

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