'Grownups Read Things They Wrote As Kids': Dear Mr. Prime Minister

A Canadian podcast series features grown-ups reading things they wrote as kids.

All this week, we'll hear excerpts from the series and today Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson talks with the podcast's creator and producer Dan Misener, as they listen to a bit of Caleb Beyers giving advice to the prime minister on nuclear disarmament.

On how the podcast was born

“A couple of years ago, it was about 2007, and my wife and I were visiting her parents and going through a bunch of old boxes in their basement and we came across my wife’s diary. It was written when she was 12, 13, 14 — kind of the awkward teenage years, the early teenage years. And we were in the basement having a drink and reading her diary out loud to each other and there were parts that were quite funny, and parts that were kind of bittersweet and it just sort of struck us that lots of folks probably have this kind of thing tucked away in their parents’ basement, or in a storage locker, or in a box that they lug from apartment to apartment to apartment. So we basically booked a night at a bar, invited some friends, had some drinks and we’ve been doing it ever since.”

On what makes childhood diary entries funny

“The fundamental tension here is that part of what makes this funny is that a lot of this stuff was never intended to be read on stage — it was never intended to be read by anybody ever.”

On airing kids’ ideas to an adult audience

“The thing that strikes me about it is that it touches on this feeling that I had as a kid. Like I remember really desperately wanting adults to take me seriously, and you know wanting to have some kind of meaningful interaction in adult conversations and never quite being able to get there.”