Maybe Authenticity is the Way?

Have you ever had a lunch break completely derail you in the best possible way?

That's exactly what happened in Maybe Authenticity Is The Way? — the debut episode of While I've Got You. Gabby Turner sat down to eat, clicked on a podcast she had never heard, and eighteen minutes in found herself climbing into her closet to record because something had cracked open that couldn't wait.

That podcast was Les Alfred's She's So Lucky, and what started as a moment of "wait, is she making my podcast?" quickly became something else entirely. A mini spiral about carbon copies and competition that revealed itself to actually be something quieter and more honest — a moment of needing to see herself more clearly. Her aunt's Kroger and Publix wisdom helped. So did scrolling through the comments and recognizing that the same need was sitting in hundreds of other women too.

This episode moves through what it means to build something when you don't have a tangible product, when your vision is rooted in joy instead of struggle, and when you can see the shortcut but the shortcut isn't yours. Gabby connects Les Alfred's question about sacrificing vision for numbers to Issa Rae's observation on Emma Grede's podcast about the difference between content that makes you laugh for a second and content that stays with you for days. One is fleeting. The other is what she's building toward.

The throughline lands on Tabitha Brown accepting her first Emmy and closing her speech the same way she has closed every Instagram video for years. Not as a lesson. Just as a thing Gabby noticed that settled something in her — temporarily, incompletely, and exactly right.

Maybe authenticity is the way. Maybe. This episode doesn't answer that. It just lights the match.

While I've Got You is a short-form podcast with Gabby Turner about culture, identity, and the moments worth noticing. New episodes monthly.