For Ali Weiss, accessibility means using her podcast to let people share stories.
A native of New York City, the so-called “princess of taboo” uses her popular Tales of Taboo podcast as a platform for listeners to candidly and anonymously share their experiences about a variety of subjects. On her website, the show is described as an effort to “humanize controversial subject matter” while “[dissolving] the traditional boundaries between host and audience by creating conversations around their unique experiences.” In addition to her popular podcast, Weiss is popular on social media. She boasts over 25,000 followers on Instagram, with 24,000 on TikTok.
In an interview with me via videoconference early last month, Weiss explained her she’s been a podcaster since around 2010. Tales of Taboo came about amidst the pandemic, when Weiss explained she was quarantined at home with COVID and “basically did not see anyone for two weeks straight alone in my room.” She recounted reading an article in which it was reported that SoulCycle instructors were cutting the line for getting vaccinated because they claimed to be educators. There was also a quote from someone at SoulCycle who said people can build up their immune system by regularly exercising, which Weiss took as insinuation that SoulCycle could cure COVID. Her interest piqued, Weiss shared an Instagram story about the article and asked to hear from current or former SoulCycle employees. The query ended up getting “so many responses,” according to Weiss, which she initially attributed to her past experiences working in the health and wellness space.
“I had tons of former SoulCycle employees respond to me directly,” Weiss said of the response to her Instagram story. “But then they told their friends and their former colleagues or former co-workers that I was looking to just chat, and a lot of people DM’d me saying ‘We have been waiting for years to tell our stories about what happened here, and we want to tell you, [but] the only rule is we don’t want to be named or seen because we don’t want to get in trouble.’ I ended up sending out this questionnaire to everyone who had reached out to me with a series of questions about SoulCycle as a whole, and then some pointed questions for instructors and some pointed questions for front desk people. I got the most incredible response. Given this cloak of anonymity, people were dumping their guts to me everywhere—from people who used to work in corporate as former executive assistants for the most powerful people at the company to locally famous instructors. I didn’t know what I was doing from an editing standpoint. I was doing all my own editing. I threw together this episode and created this storytelling, I think it was about an hour-and-a-half of the inner workings of SoulCycle.”
Weiss continued: “That episode blew up. It got a lot of downloads. It went far and wide. It got shared. I had people who reached out to me afterwards saying, ‘I found your episode or your episode was sent to me. Oh my god, I thought I was alone. I thought I was the only one. I’ve been sitting on this trauma.’”
There was an object lesson in that Instagram story, unbeknownst to Weiss. She said the responses helped her realize a fascination with people’s behaviors when they’re anonymized. Logistically, she knew who they were behind the proverbial scenes, but it mattered to her that “they trusted me for whatever reason, and they trusted that they could tell me their stories that I could then share with the world.” Weiss told me Tales of Taboo has become a show “overwhelmingly composed of anonymous confessions, from people who have existed in various subcultures, or out of the ordinary careers or controversial life experiences.”
Although Weiss doesn’t cater specifically to the disability community, what she does very much has relevance to disabled people. This comes in two parts. The first should be obvious—disabled people listen to podcasts, myself included, and the likelihood is high that some portion of her listeners have disabilities. The second part is more poignant. As Weiss told me numerous times during our conversation, she feels “honored” that strangers are entrusting her with the deepest recesses of their hearts and minds. For a disabled person, that feeling of anonymity and safety can go a long way in helping propel one to share things about themselves that ordinarily would be criticized. The reason accessibility and assistive technology is a thing is because the world was not built with people with disabilities in mind. Society was not built for me and others in my community, so we need accessibility to literally navigate and just survive. This is important context for Weiss and her podcast because it’s oftentimes not easy to advocate for and explain why we need certain accommodations. As a personal anecdote, for me it feels like constantly having to justify my existence. Thus, Tales of Taboo can theoretically serve as an outlet for people in the community not so much to air grievances, but to share these feelings of inadequacy and frustration, on a smattering of topics related to everyday life. From a technical perspective, Weiss offers a platform that, in generations past, weren’t available for disabled people to use to their emotional advantage.
“It is such a privilege to have thousands, if not millions, of strangers who don’t know you, trust you and trust your product recommendations and trust your favorite music and trust your advice,” Weiss said.
When asked about technology’s role in what she does, Weiss told me she’s most impressed by the way social media, largely propelled by Generation Z, is being used for good in terms of amplifying awareness of marginalized and underrepresented communities. For her part, Weiss has a goal of “trying to take the the openness of the free for all that is social media, making it a little bit more cerebral [and] a little bit more personal, instead of just asking people to shout into the void in the hopes that the algorithm catches on to it and people see it.” She also marvels at how modern technology allows for more storytelling and more anonymity than ever before, saying it can be hard for people to speak their truth without fear of judgment because so much of the digital experience isn’t anonymized. “I almost feel like you have to choose in this day and age,” Weiss said. “It’s either you’re seen but not heard or you’re heard but not seen in terms of making the choice to protect yourself. I think how social media has really helped me, despite my own qualms with it, is it’s allowed me to reach a much wider audience than I otherwise would have. I think people have become increasingly more comfortable with sharing intimate parts of themselves with strangers.”
Owing to her theater background in high school and college, Weiss said she sees parallels in theater and social media, insofar as they’re mirrors or dramatizations of the human experience. There’s human connection in congregating in a place to observe art, albeit with disparate interpretations of said art. Social media is a lot like that, although the literal connectedness takes a backseat to a virtual one. Looking towards the future, Weiss explained a big challenge for her going forward is figuring out how she can translate what she provides on the internet into the physical world. A first step, she told me, has been inviting a diverse group of women to her Manhattan home, replete with wine and cheese and candy, for a so-called “salon series” in which she encourages her guests to allow themselves vulnerability and open up on “controversial or lesser-discussed topics.” She described witnessing these events as “the most magical thing,” adding “it has been so incredible to see how fast people are willing to open up when the safe when the space feels safe.”
At its core, everything Weiss does is rooted in technology. She couldn’t do what she does without modern technology making it accessible.
“I think what’s really important to highlight here is that I couldn’t do this [podcasting and more] without social media. I couldn’t do this without technology,” she said. “It’s been the honor of my life figuring out a way to kind of take that parasocial relationship and flip it into something that’s genuinely productive and useful.”
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