Six Questions With

I kept having the same conversation with different people. Not the same words. The same feeling. The same moment where someone said something that made me think: I have heard this before. From someone completely different.

So I started writing things down. And then I started asking. I sent the same six questions to a ceramicist in Portland and a retired firefighter in Detroit and a music producer in Atlanta. I expected different answers. I got different answers.

But underneath the different answers, there was something that kept showing up. A thread. The same fears, the same regrets, the same small joys described in completely different language by people who had never met.

That's what this is. An attempt to find the common thread.

We are more alike than we think. Not in our circumstances. In our questions.

The things that keep us up at night, the things we wish we had said, the small rituals that make a day feel like a life. These cross every boundary we think separates us.

This series is not trying to flatten those differences. It's trying to find what lives underneath them.

For as long as I can remember, I've been fascinated by people. My career has allowed that curiosity to unfold in different rooms: higher education, legal work, organizational culture. Through everyday conversations and experiences, I've noticed people contradict themselves in ways they don't often acknowledge. Someone will tell you they're fine while their shoulders climb toward their ears. Someone minimizes something they've done brilliantly until the moment they don't, and suddenly you're seeing someone far braver than they let the world believe.

But I didn't start this project as an observer. I started it because I recognize this pattern in myself. I've minimized achievements, underestimated my abilities, and misunderstood parts of my own personality. There's almost always a gap between who we are, who we think we are, and who the world assumes we are. I wanted to understand what happens when people sit with that gap honestly, when they describe it themselves.

Six Questions With exists to explore that space. Not to expose anything. Just to see what emerges when you ask someone: What do people misunderstand about you? When do you actually feel like yourself? What does that tell you about all the times you don't?

We're more connected than we've ever been technologically, yet many of us feel increasingly disconnected from one another. We know what people accomplish, where they travel, what they create, and what they choose to share. We often know far less about what grounds them, what they wrestle with, or what they wish other people understood about them. My hope isn't that these conversations solve that disconnect. It's that they make it a little harder to believe we're alone in our experiences. Maybe you'll recognize a piece of yourself in someone you never expected to.

That's also why every participant answers the same six questions. Titles, careers, and public recognition may shape our lives, but they don't define our humanity. Here, no one receives a different set of questions because of who they are. The goal isn't to elevate status. It's to create space where honesty matters more than identity, and where the common threads between us become just as meaningful as our differences.

This project is independently produced so the conversations can remain guided by curiosity rather than obligation. If partnerships become part of its future, they'll support the work, not shape the questions.