Speaker
Mercedes Hesselroth
Appearances over time
1 episodes
Episodes
1
Podcasts
Quotes & moments
Mercedes Hesselroth's grandparents had been together for 72 years before her grandmother's unexpected death in 2019.
What was meant to be a week-long visit for her Tata's 90th birthday became a six-week stay for Mercedes when COVID lockdowns grounded all air travel.
Mercedes Hesselroth was visiting Texas to celebrate her grandfather's 90th birthday when the COVID pandemic locked down New York City and extended her stay.
Mercedes Hesselroth realized the depth of her negative self-talk when she called herself a cow out loud to her hard-of-hearing grandfather, and had to repeat it louder each time.
After fleeing Chicago and vowing never to return, Harold Cox found an unlikely life lesson in his most embarrassing moment. Freedom, he concluded, is what happens when you finally let go of your blunders.
In the middle of an epic five-set amateur tennis comeback, Tim Lopez and Evan stopped screaming insults at each other and started communicating through gestures and facial expressions alone. Their friends later said it was the longest either of them had ever gone without speaking. They won the match.
Harold Cox's plan to document his weight loss with time-lapse nude photos seemed brilliant — until the AV guy accidentally projected them during a live work presentation. A woman walked in, screamed, and Harold yanked every cable from the wall to stop what he now calls 'the rotisserie of shame.'
Tim Lopez and his college frenemy Evan couldn't agree on anything. They were garrulous, emotionally volatile, and each convinced the other was the bigger idiot. But down 5-0 in the third set of a late-night doubles match at UCLA's Arthur Ashe Tennis Center, something shifted. Their stubbornness stopped pointing at each other and started pointing at the scoreboard.
When Mercedes Hesselroth snapped back at her grandfather's self-deprecation with 'Well, if you're a fish, I'm a cow,' he couldn't hear her. So she had to say it louder. And louder. Each repetition drove the insult deeper. It was the first time her chronic inner self-abuse had come out of her mouth.
Three months before leaving China for a biochemistry PhD, Di Cai entered a live English talent competition on Tianjin TV — her 'last chance at becoming a TV star.' When her improv topic was to propose marriage to a random audience member, she dropped to one knee, cried, and the audience member said yes. She won.
The caravan passed rebel groups, survived a mudslide, and arrived in Tugi to hundreds of dancing, singing villagers. In the video footage that came back, Akwi Nji could see Auntie Helen's feet — still wearing her boots. The shoes she bought to feel close to her father had carried him all the way home.
Alone in her father's office in Cameroon, Akwi Nji found a gallery of family photos — her parents' wedding, childhood portraits — that he had titled 'The Glorious Past.' She sat on the floor, poured wine, and wept. After twenty years of silence, the evidence of his love was all around her.
To bury their father in Tugi — where Cameroonians believe you must be buried to achieve eternal peace — Akwi Nji's family had to cross rebel-controlled territory. Uncle Rambo warned that as children of a high-profile man, the siblings were a lucrative target. Akwi said no. Her boots went instead.
Akwi Nji's father died of cancer in 2021 after more than 20 years of silence between them. She scrambled for emergency visas and flights to Cameroon with her seven siblings. Packing her bags, she found the hiking boots she'd bought the exact year they stopped speaking — because they looked like her dad's.
After winning the competition, Tianjin TV offered Di Cai a full-time hosting role. The work was grinding — 5AM to 9PM, meals in the van, no glamour — but the people were warm and the experience eye-opening. She turned it down anyway. She couldn't let the PhD go to waste. She became Doctor D instead.
Mercedes Hesselroth flew to Texas for her grandfather's 90th birthday and ended up trapped there for six weeks as the pandemic grounded all flights. As she administered his medication and whispered affirmations to a man who wouldn't believe them, she realized she had never believed them about herself either.
Analysis
What they talk about
- Health & Fitness 67%
- Society & Culture 33%
Connections
Shows they appear on and people they share episodes with. Drag to explore.
