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September 22, 2004.
For me, that date will always live in infamy. It’s the day that set off a chain of events, a long, winding, beautifully unpredictable thread, that eventually led both you and me to this very moment right now. To this podcast. To this community. To each other.
It was a day for which I will always be grateful.
Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. This is episode 703, “Found.” I’m Darrell Darnell. This year marks 20 years that I’ve been listening to podcasts, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.
I’ve made it pretty abundantly clear over the years that I am a massive fan of the TV show LOST. When it premiered on that Wednesday night in September 2004, I was immediately hooked. There was nothing else like it on television. The storytelling, the mystery, the characters. I was all in from the very first episode. My wife fell in love with it right along with me, and we spent a lot of time talking about it, trying to piece together what was happening on that island and what might happen next.
But that still wasn’t enough for me.
I needed more. I had a few coworkers who were also fans, and we had some great conversations at work, but even that didn’t fully scratch the itch. So I did what any reasonable, slightly obsessive LOST fan would do. I found my way onto forums and Facebook groups, talking to random people all over the world about a TV show. And it was on one of those forums in 2006 that someone mentioned podcasts.
I went straight to iTunes and started searching.
What I found changed everything.
I discovered The Transmission with Ryan and Jen. The Lost Podcast with Jay and Jack. The Weekly Lost Podcast with Cliff and Stephanie. The Official Lost Podcast with Damon and Carlton. Each one was different. Each one brought something unique to the fandom. But what they all had in common was this: they made listeners feel like they were part of something. Like they belonged. Random people from all over the world, connected by a show, welcomed into a conversation.
My favorite of all of them was The Weekly Lost Podcast with Cliff and Stephanie. Two reasons. First, they were genuinely weekly. Even during the off-season, when there was no new LOST to discuss, Cliff and Stephanie showed up every single week with something. It kept me connected even during those long off seasons. And B, they did a live reaction show immediately after each new episode aired.
Those initial reaction shows were amazing! In those first few minutes after an episode ended, when your mind was racing and you had seventeen questions and zero answers and you absolutely needed to talk to someone, Cliff and Stephanie were already there. Webcam on, live stream running, phones open. You could call in. You could be part of it. You weren’t just a listener. You were a participant.
A real community formed around that. People who didn’t just get to know Cliff and Stephanie, but they got to know each other. And that’s actually where I first met some of you. Many of you know Geoff, because he’s a frequent contributor to this podcast and several others here at Golden Spiral Media. I first met Geoff in that community with Cliff and Stephanie, back when we were both just fans talking about a show we loved.
That experience planted something in me. It showed me what was possible.
So in 2008, when some friends and I launched our first podcast, The Fringe Podcast, we built it the same way. Almost immediately, we started doing it live. We had a chat room where fans could watch the show with us in real time and we streamed our recordings live, talking with the audience as we recorded. We invited people to write in and call in with their thoughts and theories. We didn’t just want an audience. We wanted a community.
And that community has stayed with us. Some of you listening right now first found us eighteen years ago when we launched that show. You’ve been here through all of it. That’s not a small thing, it’s a big, amazing, beautiful thing.
Except Geoff. Geoff found a different Fringe podcast and ignored ours entirely. I’ve forgiven him. But I bring it up every chance I get. Love you, Geoff.
Bringing in the audience has always been central to what we do at Golden Spiral Media. We encourage feedback and contributions across all of our shows. When we launched The Fringe Podcast Rewatch in 2022, we brought the live element back. We’re still watching together, still interacting in the chat room, still recording in front of a live audience. The format has evolved, but the heart of it has never changed.
In 72 days, we will record the final episode of The Fringe Podcast Rewatch. And it’s hitting me harder than I expected.
Fringe was the show that started everything for me as a podcaster. It’s the show that led directly to the creation of Golden Spiral Media. I covered it during its original run and now I’ve covered it all over again as a rewatch. And when we record that final episode, that’s it. I won’t be covering Fringe again. As far as the community aspect of the show is concerned, that chapter will be closed.
I have mixed feelings about it. Every day that passes, every episode we get closer to the end, I feel it a little more. There’s grief in finales. Not just for the story ending, but for the gathering of people that formed around it. The community that will now disperse, move on, find new shows and new conversations. That’s the bittersweet reality of what we do..
Here’s what I learned.
The shows were never really the point.
I mean, I love these shows. LOST, Fringe, Stranger Things, The Twilight Zone, Star Trek. I genuinely love them. But the reason I’ve spent the better part of two decades building podcasts around them isn’t because of the mythology or the plot twists or the cliffhangers. It’s because of what great genre television does that almost nothing else can do as well.
It opens doors.
Science fiction and genre storytelling have always been Trojan horses for the conversations we actually need to have. Twilight Zone and Star Trek were doing it in the 1950s and 60s, sneaking commentary about race, war, politics, and human dignity past censors and into living rooms because it was dressed up as science fiction. And that tradition has never stopped. LOST made us wrestle with faith and fate and redemption. Fringe made us ask questions about identity and what it means to be human. Stranger Things opened up conversations about grief and fear and the things we carry that no one else can see.
When I shared the story of my mom during the final season of Stranger Things, I didn’t know what would happen. What came back was overwhelming. An outpouring of support, yes, but more than that, an avalanche of people sharing their own stories. Their own grief. Their own fears. People who had been quietly listening for years, suddenly willing to be seen. That moment reminded me that what we’ve built here isn’t just a podcast network. It’s a place where people feel safe enough to be real.
And that brings me to one of my favorite moments from our Fringe rewatch community recently.
We invite listeners to join us as a co-host for an episode. It’s one of my very favorite things we do. This summer, one of our guests was a trans lesbian. And we sat down together, a trans lesbian and a devout Christian, and we had a two-and-a-half-hour conversation that was warm, fun, honest, and genuinely joyful.
Think about the world we live in right now. Think about how rare that is. Think about how many people would have told us that conversation wasn’t possible. And yet there we were.
That is what great genre TV can do. More importantly, that is what a great community can do.
It can make space for people who the rest of the world has told don’t belong at the same table. It can hold two people who might disagree about almost everything and say, “You’re both welcome here. You both matter here.” It can remind us that the things we share are almost always deeper and more powerful than the things that divide us.
The Stuff I Learned Yesterday community has always reflected that. We have listeners who aren’t yet teenagers, and listeners closing in on 70. We have Christians and atheists and agnostics and everyone in between. We have people from all over the world, from every kind of background and walk of life. And I don’t just tolerate that diversity. I treasure it. I think it makes every conversation richer. I think it makes every one of us better.
That’s why the Monday Mailbag contributions mean so much to me. I have never sat here and assumed I have all the best ideas. I don’t. Not even close. Some of the most insightful, thought-provoking, perspective-shifting things I’ve encountered have come from listener feedback. From your emails and voice messages. From people who took a few minutes out of their day to share what they were thinking. That generosity changes things. It changes me.
Next week is another Monday Mailbag week and I can’t wait to hear your stories. The submission deadline is the end of day this Wednesday, June 24th by the way.
But community is what it’s all about.
Community is where we are found. Where we feel known. Where we feel like we belong to something bigger than ourselves. And I want you to hear this clearly, whether you’ve sent in a hundred feedback or Monday Mailbag contributions or you’ve never once hit reply and you just quietly listen every week: you are a valued part of this community. Your presence here matters. You matter.
Gratitude feels like too small a word for what I feel when I think about the people who have gathered around this show and this network over the years. You trusted us with your time, which is the one thing none of us can get back. You trusted us with your stories. You showed up, week after week, and that is not something I take lightly. Not ever.
Twenty two years ago, a TV show premiere set something in motion that I never could have predicted. A forum post about podcasts. A phone number you could call to be part of a live show. A community that formed around shared curiosity and grew into something I still don’t have the right words for.
It led here. To this podcast, to this episode, to this moment. To you.
Our community is better because you’re in it. And I am genuinely, deeply grateful for you.
I’m Darrell Darnell, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
I want you to be a part of the next Monday Mailbag coming up NEXT WEEK on June 29th! The submission deadline is the end of day THIS WEDNESDAY June 24th. Monday Mailbag is your opportunity to Share what YOU’VE learned, so that other listeners and I can learn from YOU. It can be a message as short as 30 seconds or several minutes long. It really doesn’t matter just as long as it’s something that will benefit others. You can send in questions or responses to my SILY episodes, and I’ll respond to them via Monday Mailbag episodes. You can participate in Monday Mailbags by visiting the Golden Spiral Media listener feedback page.