About

About Us

At its heart, the Acme Coffee Klatch Podcast is about story telling. The type of stories I heard visiting the pharmacy with my grandmother in rural Georgia, as well as the type of stories I have covered throughout my career as a journalist.

On a deeper level the Acme Coffee Klatch Podcast is also about listening in order to let the story take root.

Stories and storytellers of all shapes and sizes are featured here. Some will be well known, while others may be slightly less known. Despite the level of fame, everyone has a story to tell when given the opportunity to tell it.

Long ago while working as a newspaper reporter I learned that one has to ask the right questions. Equally as important though, is listening to the answers given and letting a conversation form organically from there. I have long prided myself on my preparation before interviews by researching subjects to craft the perfect interview questions.

Despite this attention to detail, some of the best responses I received during interviews were not directly in response to questions I had written down before the interview, but were from questions asked in the moment as the conservation unfolded.

Once I accepted that not knowing what I don’t know is allowed, I became more open to allowing interviews to jump beyond the set questions I had written down on my trusty reporter notepad.

One of my favorite questions to ask in an interview setting is, “Is there anything else you’d like to add?” It is a question I have asked interview subjects for over 30 years now going back to some of my first interviews as a sports stringer in high school and it has never failed to generate great responses.

Journalists like to think we know all of the questions to ask, but letting a subject share what is important to them by admitting that one does not have all of the questions to ask is a true act of listening.

It is my hope that through attention to preparation beforehand, as well as letting conversations have wiggle room to meander, the conversations we have here with people from all backgrounds will be entertaining, informative and enlightening.

Come on in, we just started a fresh pot of coffee and the conversation is about to begin.

-Ryan Anderson, 2022