The beloved television host and author Fred Rogers, aka Mr. Rogers, once said, “Grandparents can be very special resources. Just being close to them reassures a child about change and continuity, about what went before and what will come after.”
Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School Class of 2013 alumni Chandler Pierce, Ari Ness and Yossi Kuttler took this sentiment to heart when they hit the airwaves last March.
The trio launched “Call Your Bubby,” a podcast “to capture the wisdom of our elders (both bubbies and zaydies) and to share it with anyone who can benefit from it.”
Pierce and Ness host the show, while Kuttler serves as producer. Ari’s brother, Elad, a Baltimore School for the Arts grad, manages social media and his pal, Zack Zweig, runs the show’s analytics.
Jmore recently spoke with Kuttler about the team’s inspiration, plans and goals.
Jmore: How did this podcast originate?
Kuttler: En route to a beach vacation, Ari and Chandler simultaneously called up their grandparents seeking life advice. Realizing how lucky they were to have such close relationships with their grandparents and how valuable and relevant the advice was, they decided to record conversations with their grandparents and document the lessons learned. Then, they thought about how many other grandparents were out there with their own unique stories to share with the world, and ‘Call Your Bubby’ was born.
Did you have any experience with podcasting/media?
This is our first foray into the podcast world. I work as a farmer and timber farmer. Chandler is an accountant and project manager. Ari works in data privacy. Zack works as a project manager in the high-tech industry. Elad is an actor on Disney Cruise ships.
Despite most of these day jobs, our team has some varied experience with creating different forms of art. Chandler and Ari are musicians, and I am a fiction writer. Elad is an actor and photographer. We are used to putting ourselves and ideas out there.
What are your criteria for guests?
We figured if we were going to produce a podcast called ‘Call Your Bubby,’ it made sense to begin with our own beloved grandparents. Episode 1 featured Ari’s bubby, Renee Bernstein. Episode 2 featured Chandler’s grandma, Sharon Mossovitz. (Sadly, she has since passed away).
Episode 3 featured Beth Tfiloh’s Rabbi-in-Residence Mitchell Wohlberg. We have more conversations forthcoming with Ari’s grandfather and my own grandma.
There’s no set age range or even any restrictions on if someone has had their own children and grandchildren. We don’t want to disqualify anyone who might have some great advice and stories to share with us.
Is there a wish list?
Dream interviewees would be people like Larry David and Mel Brooks. We’d also love to meet esteemed Jewish American leaders and politicians like Robert Kraft, Bernie Sanders and Beth Tfiloh’s own Ben Cardin. (Joseph Lieberman was high on our list before he passed away.)
What topics will you cover?
We tailor each conversation to the experiences of each of our guests. We do often ask some of the same questions in each of our interviews, like if our guests have had any great successes or failures that they’ve learned from in life, what advice they want to pass onto the younger generation and if they are optimistic or pessimistic about the future.
The key focus is allowing our elders the opportunity to share key life lessons that they’ve learned over the course of their life that they think will help our younger viewers who are just starting out on their own journeys.
Where and how frequently do the episodes drop?
We’re on Spotify, Apple, YouTube and Listen Notes. We started by releasing about an episode a month, and hopefully we’ll be able to share episodes more frequently as we streamline our production process.
What’s the promotional strategy?
We are seeking partnerships with organizations that share our values and want to help bridge the gap between the generations. So far, most of our promotion has been word of mouth and through social media engagement.
We’re focusing on expanding our reach through a new ‘Question of the Week’ initiative. We realized that if we are the only ones conducting interviews, there are only so many bubbies we can interact with and learn from every year.
With that in mind, we came up with the idea of bringing the show to the people and having them film themselves asking their own bubbie’s questions. Every week, we will share a prompt with our audience, such as, ‘Ask your bubby what their favorite dish is to cook’ or ‘What was your Bubby’s favorite dish that their own bubby cooked for them?’
We’ll ask our audience to record a few minutes of their bubby’s answers and then share the videos with us, which we will then share through our channels.
What else would you like people to know about the show?
Our greatest hope for the show is it will remind people of the value of intergenerational connectivity. There are so many negative elements in our society that divide the generations — the popular phrase, ‘OK, Boomer,’ being a great example, and we want to remind people that we would literally not be here without our predecessors.
For information, visit callyourbubby.com or follow @callyourbubby on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok and YouTube.
Caryn R. Sagal is a Baltimore-based public relations consultant and freelance writer.
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