Katie Herzog Is the Most Powerful Podcaster AND CUNT in the World: An Open Love Letter

In the months after you were fired from The Stranger, I remember writing to you—again and again, in an annoyingly persistent way—about the way you carried yourself. Head up. Back straight. Like the ground had no right to argue with you. It became an example for me. I stole your line, too: they had to kick you out of the echo chamber from the inside.

I want you to know something simple and ridiculous and true: because of your example, this has been the best year of my life.

I built a productivity community where politics are banned. Full stop. And I’ve watched friendships get born inside that rule. I’ve watched new columnists appear out of nowhere. I’ve watched podcasts get invented by people who never would’ve talked to each other in the old world.

Aviso publicitario

I run an online radio station from my bedroom. Every morning at six, I do a show. It’s my dream. Not a metaphor. Not a “one day” dream. An actual daily, alarm-clock, microphone-on dream. And the music—you’d be proud. University of Pennsylvania college rock radio? You’ve got nothing on me.

I never imagined arriving at fifty like this. This happy.

Here’s the glamorous part: I have a gigantic brown stripe on my teeth from cigarettes and coffee. The radio couldn’t stop because there wasn’t money for it to stop. I have zero muscle. In terms of look, I’m closer to Tiger King than anything remotely aspirational.

And yet—this is the part that matters—I’ve never been happier. The audience loves the show. And they’re the most earnest people I’ve ever met. High-performance, too, in that quietly feral way. I love them.

The best part, though, isn’t even the radio.

My mother saw me again, and we found each other. We reconnected in a way that felt like a door quietly unlocking after years of being jammed. I got to take care of my father while he was dying. That sounds like tragedy, because it is, but it was also a privilege I didn’t know I’d get.

I know that for you none of this is “a big deal.” Making programs is a meat grinder. I did it for twenty years. Anything you say becomes content, becomes work, gets filed away, and then you’re expected to do it again tomorrow. Next segment. Next show. Next day.

But back then—when I wanted to die from sadness and impotence, when I couldn’t see a way forward—life put exactly what I needed right in front of me.

It was you.

No, I’m not proposing. I’m not doing the “will you marry me?” thing, even as a joke. (Okay, maybe as a joke. I’m gay. Top, though. Relax.) What I mean is: it was your voice. Your humor. Your thing. The particular way you refused to shrink. The way you didn’t bargain with your values just to make the room stop being awkward.

You were what I needed to see when everything in me was collapsing.

And I stood up.

Now I have a radio station that does strange, impossible things. People tell me it helped them ask for a raise. Close a deal. Finish a course. Keep going. I get those messages a lot. I know you’re grumpy and this probably makes you roll your eyes, like: sure, okay, whatever. But for me, your presence—your tone—was vital.

I ended up building three things: an online radio, a social network, and a magazine.

And I started with nothing.

Which sounds like failure, except it isn’t. It’s the clean kind of nothing. The before-and-after nothing. The “I lost what I was clinging to and discovered I could still build” nothing.

The best year of my life.

I’m writing this because I want your year to start with one thought: that technical gesture—seeing those stickers outside your office, lifting your chin, and walking away as yourself, not changing a single inch of what your values were—had a force you may not fully understand. It moved me. It redirected me. And now, every morning, I wake up the troops.

I know you don’t like praise. I know you’d rather die than hear someone say you’re “the definition” of anything.

So I won’t make you a definition.

I’ll just say this: don’t miss the chance to notice what you did. Don’t miss the chance to sit with it for a minute. To recognize the potency of your demeanor. Because that walk—head up, refusing to be reduced—wasn’t just survival.

It was a transmission, babes.

Happy 2026.

Greetings from paradise, Chile.

Our radio: www.josemiguelvillouta.com

Our magazine: www.revistapatron.com

Our social network: www.otropublico.com/portal