Stephanie Wittels Wachs

Stephanie Wittels Wachs is Co-founder + CCO of Lemonada Media and host of Last Day. Her book is Everything Is Horrible and Wonderful. Follow her on Twitter here, and follow Lemonada on Twitter here.

Kindly introduce yourself.
I’m Stephanie. Steph, to some. Whatever suits YOU is fine with ME. I am the co-founder and CCO (Chief Creative Officer/Resident Feeler of Feelings) of Lemonada Media. I am the host of our flagship show, Last Day. I teamed up with CEO Jessica Cordova Kramer for the shittiest of reasons. We both lost our little brothers to opioid overdoses. Heroin for Harris, and fentanyl for her brother, Stefano. Jess is the Executive Producer of Pod Save the People and I have a background as a theatre director, voiceover actor, and best-selling author (Everything is Horrible and Wonderful), so we thought - okay let’s do a podcast about the opioid crisis because it’s killing everyone now. Once we started working on that show, we thought, why don’t we launch a (women-run) podcast network and create content and community around all the shit in life that’s hard. Let’s help people get out of bed in the morning. So here we are. Doing that. Weeeee!

Tell us about Last Day.
Last Day is a show about the things that are killing us. Starting with overdose deaths and the opioid crisis, which has take nearly 400,000 lives since 1999, we zoom in on a person’s last day of life, exploring how they got there and how we, as a society, have gotten here. In later seasons, we plan to confront other massive epidemics that are hard to discuss and getting worse every day. Most importantly, while these topics are a real bummer, to say the least, we’ll approach them with humanity, wit and a quest for progress. Our ultimate goal is to save some lives and give people a place to put their big feelings around things that are so physically and emotionally complex, layered, and destructive.

What makes Last Day different than other shows?
I hear about the opioid epidemic constantly. We're all totally inundated by it. Scrolling through Twitter. Listening to NPR. Listening to podcasts. Everyone is touching on it. But we don’t need to touch on it. What we need is an extensive deep dive. Our goal, having lost both our brothers to this nightmare, is to humanize this crisis; to tell tell the story of the opioid epidemic through a first-person narrative lens. It’s so interesting because when we started with this Last Day concept, we knew we were going to have to do something really hard. Whereas my brother Harris Wittels was a public figure, Jess hasn’t told her story yet at all, so we decided we’d kick off the series by telling the story of her brother Stefano. Specifically, his last day. We wanted to try to figure out how he got there and why. And once Jess got on the ground in Boston, where Stefano lived, with our producers, it became clear that we had two elements to this show: the story of Stefano, our main character, and then everything else. And the everything else was two things: 1) the broader policies and social climate we’re in that allows for more people to die of overdoses than car accidents (this is a FACT) and 2) Us. We’re part of the story. So it’s unique in that sense. We’ve created an arc that allows people to know us, me as a host who has been caught up in this crisis through my brother Harris, Jess as the executive producer whose brother also died the same way and who is the focus of the show, and then the broader societal context. It moves past the numbers. It helps people understand these mind-numbing statistics in a human, emotional way, and that's gripping. In the latter part of the season, we will be doing town hall-style live shows, where we go into communities, talk to local leaders and folks with boots on the ground there, hear from audience members about their personal experiences with opioids, and ultimately, try to get on the same page across the country about what IS working. We will also be doing one-off episodes in the /spring where we tell other last day stories. Our goal is to build community and save lives. And we truly believe that the first step is to decrease shame and stigma and increase empathy. What better way to do so than to literally tell our own stories?

Was working on Last Day ever a spiritual bummer for you? How will you handle serious topics without making people feel too despondent?
Shockingly, no. It’s actually been incredibly inspiring and uplifting to discover that there ARE things that work. My brother passed away almost 5 years ago, and prior to his death, we were on this horrible rehab/relapse roller coaster, and as a loved one, I just felt so utterly helpless. I didn’t know what I should be doing to support him or how to meaningfully help him in his recovery, or remission. (PS: Doing this show I’ve learned lots about HOW we talk about the disease of addiction and that “remission” is a far less loaded word to use than “recovery.” It really reframes the issue as being a medical one and not an issue of will-power or moral failing.) I would have given anything when Harris was still alive to have a resource like Last Day to listen to, to feel that sense of community and support, and to hear from people on the front lines who have valuable knowledge and experience to impart. If anything, this show has given me a lot of hope. 

As far as handling serious topics without making people feel too despondent…I am me! I make jokes. I keep it human. I keep it casual. I say fuck a lot. So I think it’s relatable. Sure, it can — and obviously will — be a bummer. But this stuff is part of life. Not talking about it is no longer an option. 

Have you been criticized for your voice?
Not yet, but I’m sure I will be! I LOVE THE INTERNET!

Have you been criticized for saying "like?" Are there other words that trigger people?
I remember when I was in college, loooong ago, the director of my program at NYU pointed out my excessive use of the word “like” when we were in a one-on-one meeting. She said something about how I was very intelligent, but when I said “like” all the time, it made me seem like I wasn't. I’M TOTALLY PARAPHRASING HERE, but that the was the main idea. Since then, I’ve always been super aware of it but unable to stop. So, I am who I am. Like, deal with it.

What do you hope Last Day does for people?
Gives them a supportive community, highlights data-driven solutions, and saves some lives in the process.

What was the moment when you realized you wanted to do Last Day?
When Jess shared her idea for a podcast about the opioid crisis, I honestly wasn’t sure if I wanted to do it. I was kinda opioided out. I didn't want to think about it anymore or focus on it day and night. But I distinctly remember when my son Harry was 4 or 5 months old, I saw a headline that said opioids are now killing more people than car accidents and I was like, okay cool. I’m in. I emailed Jess that moment. “Subject: Update. Body: I hate the world right now, and I'm ready to do something/anything to change it. So count me in.”

Are there too many damn pods?
I don’t think so. There’s certainly something for everyone! In general, I don’t tend to look at things like a pie chart. There’s plenty to go around.

What are the qualities of a good host?
Authentic, genuine, good listener, perceptive, innately curious. Funny. Funny is super important to me.

Who is the best host?
I love Nora McInerny from Terrible Thanks for Asking as a host and a human.

If you could create another show (don't worry about selling it, whether or not people would listen to it, or any of the logistics) what would it be?
We ARE creating other shows! We’re currently in production on 2 more shows right now that will launch this year. One is called “As Me with Sinead” hosted by the incredible, brilliant, phenomenal, MET-gala-attending, fashion icon Sinéad Burke. That show launches soon, on October 24th, so subscribe now!

And Good Kids: How Not to Raise an Asshole is just that. No one has a manual for this child-rearing gig, and speaking as a parent of two little kids, we need one. So for 15 mins each week, our listeners will get a panoply of stories, rants and ideas about how, based on each guest’s unique experience, to make your kids a little (or a lot) less shitty. From DeRay Mckesson to Reza Aslan to NFL player Michael Bennett and his wife Pele, it’s heartfelt, often funny, and honest perspectives on raising better humans with parents and educators as the core audience.

If you had 15 minutes with Ira Glass, or some other big name in radio/podcasting, what would you want to ask them about?
I’d want to talk shop. Narrative podcasting is a BEAST, and they’re the gold standard. How many script versions and bounces do they do for each episode of This American Life??? These are the things I’d like to know.