First of all, Humanitou and We Are Chaffee: Looking Upstream are essentially the same podcast. Different names, same me leading them. Same humanness and vulnerability and awesomeness of the show guests.
A short explanation of why I started out as Humanitou, for podcasting and various creating under that name, almost as a nom de guerre, and now produce a podcast, and publish photography and writing, for others who use a different name, We Are Chaffee: Looking Upstream …
Well into the covid pandemic experience, in the summer of 2021, I organically came to a hiatus from the Humanitou podcast. I was burned out, trying to sustain the flow of work with guests from around the United States and far beyond. So were the prospective guests. I was burned out, trying to raise and teach two sons who were no longer going to school and were at home 24/7. When the hiatus from Humanitou came, I didn’t know if I’d ever host and produce a podcast again.
In the spring of 2022, an opportunity to be paid as a podcaster (and well, which frankly hadn’t developed yet with my passion project, Humanitou) fell into my lap. I became the host, producer and photographer of the new We Are Chaffee: Looking Upstream podcast for Chaffee County (Colo.) Public Health.
I’ve described Looking Upstream as being Humanitou by a different name. It has the same conversational humanness, with all the depths and vulnerability I aimed to cultivate with the Humanitou podcast.
Now, my energy for podcast research and conversations, production and editing, portrait photography and publishing, social media content creation and writing a monthly newspaper column related to the podcast for two newspapers in Chaffee County is focused on Looking Upstream.
I love Humanitou. It will always be my online home for sharing what I create, as a writer and poet, photographer and visual artist, podcaster and whatever else I choose to make available over the coming years.
But for now, for the past ~18 months and for the foreseeable future, my Humanitou work largely is cloaked under the We Are Chaffee: Looking Upstream banner. Same me, same conversations, same humanness and opportunities for connection.
I hope you will listen to the Looking Upstream podcast just the same as you have the Humanitou podcast. And follow the @wearechaffeepod Instagram account. I run it. The photography is my work. The audio soundbites come from the conversations I have with amazing guests. It’s Humanitou by another name. We all are.
Listen to the three-minute We Are Chaffee audio trailer to hear me tell what the Looking Upstream podcast is about:
