Beautiful Stories From Anonymous People
Chris Gethard
300 episodes · Explicit
1 phone call. 1 hour. No names. No holds barred. Thats the premise behind Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People, hosted by comedian Chris Gethard (the Chris Gethard Show, Broad City, This American Life, and one of Time Outs 10 best comedians of 2015). Every week, Chris opens the phone line to one anonymous caller, and he cant hang up first, no matter what. From shocking confessions and family secrets to philosophical discussions and shameless self-promotion, anything can and will happen! Theme song by Shellshag.
Episodes page 1 of 6
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Raised by a Criminal and a Drifter
A 25-year-old with a quarter-life crisis calls to talk with Geth about capitalism, growing up too fast, complicated sibling dynamics, how childhood shapes adulthood, and getting back into the things you love. Plus,…
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How to Keep Going After You Lose a Child
Five years ago, this week's caller lost his 15-year-old son. Today, he's raising his 15-year-old daughter and navigating what it means to live with grief while continuing to move forward. It's a conversation about…
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Secret Lives of Cruise Ship Workers
This week's caller met her husband while working on a cruise ship. She's got plenty of stories about life behind the scenes at sea: from a painful breakup that sent her into the world to finding love, to building a new…
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Armored Combat Game Designer
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…
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Enough Good to Counteract the Bad
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…
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A Fish With Legs
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:…
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Arizona to Alaska
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…
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A Proudly Unpredictable Human Being
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…
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I Didn't Come Here to Win
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…
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Prison Bound Week: Day 5 - Eight Years Later
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…
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Prison Bound Week: Day 4 - COVID Lockdown
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…
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Prison Bound Week: Day 3 - Halfway Through
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…
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Prison Bound Week: Day 2 - Nine Months In
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,…
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Prison Bound Week: Day 1 - The First Call
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…
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Hacker Tendencies at a Hacker Convention
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…
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This One Is NOT About Avatar: The Last Airbender
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…
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Gratuitous Live Turkeys
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…
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A Completely Normal Call That Goes Exactly As Planned
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…
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Stopped a Serial Killer?
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…
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Forty-One Unscripted Plays About Our Sport
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…
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Cheers to All the Sluts Out There
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…
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Homeschooled Public School Theater Teacher
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…
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Psychedelic Researcher
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…
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A Beautiful Anonymous Pastiche
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…
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Ten Years in the Making
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…
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I Just Want To Be a Bridge
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…
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Avatar Stories from Anonymous Benders
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,…
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A Dancer's Revenge
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…
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Air Force Veteran (One for Our Logistics Nerds)
This week's caller is an Air Force veteran and longtime listener who talks with Gethard about military logistics, global shipping, what you can learn from a grocery store if you know what to look for, and the…
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The Most Important Guy You've Never Heard Of
An airline dispatcher calls to tell Gethard about the most important job at the airport that most of us don't even know exists. He tells us what it takes to keep multiple planes safely in the air, gives us some…
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Existential Psychologist
An existential psychologist calls in this week and gets Gethard to open up about a tough dad moment before the conversation turns toward the loneliness epidemic, AI psychosis, mental health TikTok, burnout, dating, the…
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SWAT Medic
A paramedic calls in this week, and he and Gethard bond fast over the real deal world of first response. This caller is operating at a pretty intense level, working in roles that require very specific skill sets. He…
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Two Years, Five Jobs
Our caller talks with Gethard about graduating from NYU into a job market that's getting worse by the minute, bouncing between temp jobs, losing health insurance, and the exhaustion of trying to build a future when…
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6'3" Runt of the Family
A caller from South Jersey (Editor's Note: 856 4EVER) tells Gethard what it was like being more than six feet tall by age 10 and growing up as, by far, the tallest girl in school while still being the "runt" in a very…
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A Card Game in the Sky
Our caller lost her husband to cancer when he was only 33. She talks with Gethard about working in oncology while carrying her own history of caregiving, the strange persistence of grief, and finding a partner who…
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Ex-Mother-in-Law Ice Cream Dates
This week's caller tells us about a living situation so uniquely hilarious it feels like it came straight from a sitcom. He also shares how he found community and culture far from home. Plus, we get a look at some of…
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Three Different Dads
This week officially marks the 10-year anniversary of the very first episode of Beautiful Anonymous, and we might have the perfect call for the occasion. Our caller learned as a teenager that the man she knew as her…
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Pottery-Based Death Threats
A potter who just had their biggest sales day ever calls in to talk about what life has been like since their political post went viral. They talk about the simultaneous blessing and curse of viral attention as a small…
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Sorority House Jane Goodall
This week's caller is a 44-year-old sorority house director who lives in the house full-time and walks Geth through the ins and outs of the job. From coordinating chefs and plumbers to the occasional late-night…
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The Witches Are Running This Episode (Live from Pittsburgh, PA)
Live from Bottlerocket Social Hall in Pittsburgh, Gethard talks to a witch as she prepares for a full moon ritual, and . . . let's just be honest, he has absolutely no idea what's happening. Tarot cards, birth charts,…
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Construction, Mob, Sex, Movies (Live from Hamtramck, MI)
Live from Hamtramck, Michigan, a Chicago caller joins us with an all-time pitch: "I'm a woman in construction. I technically worked for the mob in high school. I almost died having sex . . . or we can talk about movies…
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Sexual Awakenings to Robin Hood (Live From Chicago)
Live from The Hideout in Chicago, Gethard talks with a Detroit-based tattoo artist about silly ink, meaningful art, Disney adults, and the sometimes strange intimacy of tattooing. Along the way, the crowd weighs in,…
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Pregnant Ultramarathon Runner
An ultramarathon runner who's 37 weeks pregnant calls to talk with Gethard about trail running, support crews, and how some ultra runners are in it for the hallucinations. Also in this episode, making a living as an…
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Morality Muscles, Midwest Chili, Medical Devices
A newly minted Doctor calls to talk about earning their PhD in medical devices, how they managed to end up in the middle of a red panda escape, and the small surprises that come with moving to the U.S. He and Geth talk…
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Bubble Busker Bingo Card
This week's caller is an outsider whose deep love for one specific kind of art ended up shaping her entire life. Geth talks with her about creativity, being on the fringe, and why we need to take the things that bring…
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Attempts at Friendship in Your 40s
This week's caller is an avid kayaker with a Friday night all to himself. He tries not to make this episode about kayaking, but come on, when you're this passionate about something, it's going to show up. If you're not…
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A Kiln, Political Activism, and a Baller Catchphrase
As Beautiful/Anonymous kicks off its tenth year, Gethard talks with a mail carrier turned artist who's done settling and ready to take some big swings, following a plan that might take you a minute to wrap your head…
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2026 New Year's Resolutions
As the year turns, Gethard keeps the tradition alive by talking with callers two minutes at a time about their hopes for 2026. We hear from familiar voices and first-time callers alike, all checking in with what…
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A Really F**ked Up Time to Be an Immigrant in the U.S.
Our caller immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico just weeks before 9/11. He talks with Gethard about growing up as an immigrant in the Midwest and how figuring out his place there led him to question everything else in…
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What's After Happening Now?
Home on a snow day, a Canadian caller talks with Gethard about parenting, mental health, and dealing with a difficult change in her life. Along the way, they get into Star Wars, Italian brainrot, and whether or not…
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