By Debbie Gardner
dgardner@thereminder.com
Ken Stearns was wearing his customary “The Jar” gray hoodie and black watch cap when he wheeled the tidy cart filled with the tools of his new trade – his podcast equipment – into the conference room at Reminder Publishing. As he worked to set up the mics, recording box, cell phone tripod and still camera, I was impressed by how efficiently the former insurance exec-turned-traveling interviewer could set up his rig.
It was going to be, as Stearns noted as he arranged his equipment, an interesting experience. I was going to interview him about his new venture, and he was going to interview me as a guest on “The Jar.”
Both were roles neither of us was used to playing.
That morning, Prime’s office was among the four stops on Stearns’s visit to Springfield, MA. – one of the 111 cities the newly-minted Apple podcast star had booked for this inaugural cross-country swing. He’d started in April with four interviews in Olympia, WA. His next stop from our office was Hartford,CT.
But on the morning of Oct. 5, he was telling his own story to Prime.
“It’s my third act, my investment in myself,” the 60-year-old Stearns said of his ambitious foray into the world of podcasting. “This is what I want to do – write, create, speak, come up with crazy ideas.”
Telling his story
Stearns explained that he returned to the U.S. this past January after enduring two years of COVID-19 induced lockdowns in Asia – “I spent nearly seven months in isolation,” he quipped – and a full 20 years as an insurance executive in the Far East. With his current contract up, he said he’d decided it was time to leave corporate life.
“I lived in 15 countries [and] helped run foreign insurance companies in an open market,” Stearns shared, explaining that he played “sort-of a turn-around, start-up” kind of role with the companies he worked for. That career, he shared, began innocently enough, when he answered an ad on the budding world wide web – which soon became the internet.
“It was an early internet [job posting],” Stearns explained, “kind of like a classified – ‘if you have this kind of insurance experience, come work in Hong Kong’… I sent an email; made a phone call and the next thing I know I’m dragging my wife and two daughters to Hong Kong.”
He and his family spent the first 12 years in that former British protectorate, Stearns said as he began a career that took him all over Southeast Asia. Much of the work involved long plane rides, which Stearns first filled with reading. that quickly led to a new hobby: writing.
“There was a lot of alone time on the planes, and I started writing a book,” Stearns shared.
This first foray into writing was comprised of letters to his dad, who died when Stearns was just 28 years old.
Titled “Dear Dad,” the yet-to-be published book reflected on life milestones he wished he could have shared with his father, such as getting a promotion, changing jobs and becoming a father. He’s also working a business-inspired advice book titled “Ken’s Rules,” based on posts from his website, KenStearns.com
His third – and published – book “Dear God: Letters to God” sprang from his mother’s strong Catholic faith, something he experienced during regular visits with her in her home in California over the years he lived abroad. That book, he said, was originally also a work in progress, something he started, and put aside, until he turned 52.
“I bought a guitar, and that started everything up again,” Stearns, who has also recorded several songs, said.
“Dear God” is currently available on Amazon and on Stearns website, kenstearns.com.
An idea is born
Stearns said the structure – and many of the metaphysical questions raised – by the “Dear God” book got him thinking. “It’s one of those unintended outcomes, “Stearns said of getting outside of his comfort zone while writing the book.
He knew he wanted to travel when he retired, and “the message in the book” began to coalesce into an idea for a post-career project.
“It was called Project 444 for the longest time, it only became ‘The Jar’ about a year ago,” Stearns said. He came back to the states and lived with one of his now-grown daughters in Portland, OR, while mapping out the structure and coordination of “The Jar”.
“I had to buy the van, source the equipment, write the questions and get the jars made. I commissioned four [different hand-blown glass] jars to be made,” Stearns said, adding that each of the hand-blown jars had a name. The one in front of me on the table the day we spoke was called “Peaches and Cream.”
While all that was taking place, Stearns began formulating a plan for his podcast adventure.
“The way I was going to organize the podcast was to visit 111 cities and interview 444 people” four in each location, Stearns explained. To locate the 111 cities, he said “the easiest way was to plan using capital cities as anchors and kind-of picking [smaller] cities in between.” In each location Stearns has interviewees pick a series of random questions from “The Jar” and answer them on the spot while he recorded them. The goal of his project is to tell “real stories of real people” – without the overarching influence of religion, politics or other divisive factors that are prevalent in our society right now, he explained.
As of mid-October – there were 92 stories posted on “The Jar” on Apple podcast.
“One of the things I hope to get out of this … the stuff in here I think is important … is that we have a lot more in common,” Stearns said of the very human topics “The Jar” has explored.
Though he’s driving cross-country alone – and admits that moving to a new location every four days is a bit taxing – Stearns isn’t completely creating “The Jar” on his own from his remote rig. He’s getting behind-the scenes production help from a daughter who now lives in Puerto Rico – she does the guest booking and podcast production – a “coach in South Africa, who is also a confidant,” a designer who is also based in South Africa, and a “sound guy and research assistant who is in Thailand.” Many of this crew are people he met during his long insurance career.
Stearns records the three sources of media himself on-site – the sound, the still pictures for his Facebook and Instagram pages and some video – to “put it on the drive,” he said, and sends it off to his sound people, who repackage the podcast in about 30 minutes. He then adds information from his field notes, and after about two hours of post-production work, the podcast is ready to put up on his Apple, Audible and YouTube channels.
To date, he said the podcast has had about “8,000 downloads – about 100 people a day, and its starting to pick up.”
Right now, it costs Stearns about $15,000 to $20,000 a month out of his own pocket to keep his dream project going, though he said he’s been working with a grant writer he met in New York City in the hopes of finding some funding to keep the project going. He’s also hoping to pick up a sponsor at some point.
Finding interviewees has been an interesting challenge, Stearns said, especially in the beginning before people discovered his podcast and were able to apply to become guests on the podcast site, or his Facebook page, or through LinkedIn.
One of his early – and best – interviews, Stearns said came in a “town with no stop light. The team had no guest … I pulled up into a bar … met a guy, and he had an amazing story.
“That’s how I still get some of my guests, I pick them up in a bar,” he joked. Among one of the interviews that stands out in Stearns’s mind is an atheist who became a preacher. “The theologians, they really take the questions deep,” he said.
Of his newfound “third act,” Stearns said he’s hoping it’s something he can pursue “for a long time.”
My turn behind the mic
Before Stearns and I met for our dual interview, he told me he’s already spoken to three other individuals in the Springfield area – Don Phillip Silverman, who Stearns said hosts his own Facebook news channel (Springfield Mass Media), Pharoah Bacon, a radio host at Digital Boombox Network, and Dan Richards, a local musician.
As I took my turn before The Jar, I wasn’t certain what to expect.
It’s very different being on the other side of an interview.
Stearns asked me to give a bit of information about myself, where I grew up, how long I’d lived in the Springfield area, how long I’d been with The Reminder. Then we dove into the questions in “The Jar.”
The questions were often philosophical- “Do you believe that hope exists?” and reflective – “What is your biggest regret” – and I chose and answered what “The Jar” asked for more than 40 minutes.
It was, as Stearns had explained, a reflective, almost cathartic experience, and one that left me thinking about the questions long after the equipment was packed up and Stearns had pulled out of the driveway.
I haven’t seen my interview posted yet, so I’m not certain I made the cut. But I’m glad I took the chance to answer what “The Jar” asked.
