Oakland-based podcaster brings empathy and incredible stories to the microphone

For the last decade, Whit Missildine has surrounded himself with unbelievable stories. He’s spoken to a man who was hunted by the Japanese mafia. A woman who left a cult and reinvented herself. And a man who, after losing his arm and leg, circumnavigated the globe on a sailboat.

It’s all part of This is Actually Happening, Missildine’s weekly podcast, which has exploded in popularity since it was acquired by publishing company Wondery in 2020. Each episode features one individual telling an incredible story, utilizing a format that’s unique from most podcasts today: a single voice with no music, sound effects or back-and-forth conversation. Missildine spends between 15 to 20 hours editing each episode, and once he’s done, over 300,000 people tune into the episodes every week.

The Oakland-based Missildine wasn’t always set on being a podcaster: after studying poetry in college, he obtained his PhD in social psychology in New York City. But through his graduate degree and far after, he was always listening – a hobby that eventually led to him launching a side gig, and later, a full-time job as a podcaster. Missildine spoke with The Bay Area News Group about his journey finding his subjects, and how he helps them tell their stories in their own words.

Q: What got you interested in hearing and telling these types of stories?

A: I did research at an HIV center to pay my way through graduate school. We were looking at psychological interventions, and in particular, at a method of motivational interviewing.

Because I wasn’t a therapist and didn’t have a degree, my job was to be the control condition. We had to interview hundreds of men for these studies, all of whom were HIV-positive drug users. Half of those men were getting the therapeutic intervention, and half of them were just sitting with me in a room. My job was to listen to their stories. I wasn’t allowed to give any therapy. I was 23, and I was hearing the wildest things you could imagine. That was really how I got my education in deep listening.

After all of that, I’d watch as all the hundreds of stories we collected were inserted into papers on AIDS and AIDS education. Every one of those stories would become a data point, and that was so frustrating to me – to see these complexities of human behavior and experience reduced to statistics. I thought, there has to be a way to tell these stories more deeply.

Q: How did that experience launch you into podcasting?

A: It was a combination of things. By the time I got to Oakland and finished my degree, podcasting was just coming around. I had always had this need to tell these deep stories. And I had also started having a huge mental health crisis of my own: I developed a really severe panic disorder when I was in my late 30s, which led to what’s called a deep realization disorder.

At the same time, I was hearing stories of people around me that were having these unbelievable things happening in their lives. They were trying to make sense of that, and so was I. So, I just started turning on the recorder.

Early on, my method of finding people was friends, and friends of friends, and people I knew, and stories I heard. Also, Craigslist. I would just post on Craigslist saying, “If you have a life-changing story to tell, reach out.”

Once I got to episode 30, 40, 50, I started getting submissions. People started popping up across the country, so I would physically send my recording equipment so people could use it in their own homes. I’d put it in a little envelope and send it through the mail. It was actually really intimate: I’d get the recorder back with a story on it, and sometimes people would put a little note in it.

Q: What types of stories do you focus on?

A: Experiences that not just change your life but create a shift so massive that you can’t make sense of it. That’s what was happening to me, too, internally. I was having these panic attacks, and I had no idea what was happening to me. I thought I would end up on the street, and I thought I was falling apart. It gave me empathy for people struggling to understand what was happening to them, and I really wanted to connect with that aspect of people’s experiences.

Q: How do you vet the stories to make sure people are telling the truth?

A: I always ask for details wherever I can, like news stories or photos. Especially if it’s a crime, or an accident, or a hospitalization. However, some of the experiences are based on domestic situations, childhood traumas, or personal relationships that don’t really have “evidence” per se.

So, we as a team ultimately have to make judgments based on the emotional truth of their story. Like if someone talks about being assaulted or abused by a parent when they were young, we just have to dig deep into the emotional truth and description of symptoms and healing path they’ve taken, and see if it feels like a full picture told by someone who’s really been through it. Of course, we always assume that in any personal narrative there are distortions, even when the story is completely true, details and perspectives are very much up for interpretation, revision, misremembering etc. So, we never claim that we capture the truth of a person’s experience, but that we capture their story of what they’ve been through. My goal is to remain true to what their story is.

Q: What have you learned from all these stories?

A: This podcast has taught me more than anything else. Sure, I learned a lot in grad school and through my other jobs, but nothing compares at all to what I’ve learned from my show. I take that into the world – how I interact with people, how I understand trauma, how I understand just being on a subway and understanding that everyone on a subway is dealing with an invisible story of some kind that we’re not seeing. I just have a completely different way of being in the world as a result.

There’s one story that changed my thinking the most in some ways, that of a woman who lost their son to a lightning strike. He was an 11-year-old kid, just about to become an adolescent and take on the world. He had so much promise, and she had such a loving relationship with him. This thing that never happens to anyone in the world happens to this kid, randomly. And he dies. I asked her this question, which was something like, how did you get through this? She just said, “I didn’t make it through. I became the person that could make it through.”

That changed everything about how I saw my show, and how I saw a lot in my own life. These traumatic experiences can come into our lives and destroy a version of ourselves. When people struggle in that bewilderment period, they’re struggling with letting go of a former version of themselves and stepping into something new.

Whit Missildine
Company: This is Actually Happening, creator and producer
Age: 44
Birthplace: Lorain, Ohio
Residence: Oakland
Education: Bachelor of Arts in Social Psychology at Sarah Lawrence College, PhD in Social Psychology at the City University of New York

Five facts about Whit Missildine
1. His grandfather and namesake, W. Hugh Missildine, invented the term “inner child” in his 1963 book “Your Inner Child of the Past.”
2. He says he has a “middle theme.” He grew up middle class, is the middle child of three, and his birthday, July 2, is the middle-most day of the year.
3. He is a super picky eater: He won’t touch eggplant, arugula, green onions, and all seafood except shrimp.
4. He is missing eight teeth – he only has 24 instead of 32.
5. He was on his high school’s pole-vaulting team.