---
title: "Your show is you. You are not your show."
author: "Christopher S Penn"
date: 2007-03-02
url: https://www.christopherspenn.com/2007/03/your-show-is-you-you-are-not-your-show/
categories:
  - "Blogging"
  - "Blogroll"
  - "Me"
---

# Your show is you. You are not your show.

In a conversation with [Bryan Person](https://www.bryper.com) last night, we were discussing why I was even setting up this web site, since I already devote a large amount of time to the Financial Aid Podcast. The essence of discussion was simply this: **Your show is you. You are not your show.**Your show is you. Unless you're podcasting with someone else or a team, as in the case of the many couplecasts out there, or shows like [Scriggity](https://www.scriggity.com) that have a team behind them, your show is you. You provide the visual, verbal, and textual personality behind your show, and without you, there really wouldn't be a show, or certainly, the community that currently enjoys your show might have their appreciation be altered or decline without you. Some shows have made the transition successfully to new personalities, such as [Rocketboom](https://www.rocketboom.com), but for the most part, if a host discontinues podcasting, the show simply fades away. You are not your show. There are a multitude of topics I'd love to be able to bring to the Financial Aid Podcast if it were a personal show, but it's not. I refrain, because of the divisiveness of it, from discussing politics in any great depth. Religion, taxes, belief systems of any kind, food, recipes, and so forth - all have little or nothing to do with financial aid except as analogies and metaphors, and all are things that at one point or another, I've wished I could post something about, but couldn't because the Financial Aid Podcast wasn't the right forum for it. That's what this site is. Don't get me wrong - the Financial Aid Podcast will continue to be my flagship media focus in virtually every way, but when I want to go off topic, here is where I'll be. For example, I think the George Foreman Grill is a lousy grill. It really is. What it's good at is making grilled sandwiches, panini, etc., but as a grill, it has a hard time with anything thicker than a slice of bread. The idea behind this site came from two sources - [Mitch Joel](https://www.twistimage.com/blog/) for encouraging me to create a digital identity independent of the podcast, and [C.C. Chapman](https://www.cc-chapman.com), who already manages several distinct digital identities, and whose template I'm more or less copying.