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When Dave told me he’d found the podcast hosts, I nodded, let him go on about “emotional connection,” and pretended I hadn’t already figured it out. Bob Whitlock and Jane Hart, I knew their names. Knew their history. Knew exactly what kind of dynamic was about to play out on air.
Dave didn’t, of course. Not at first. He was too busy getting excited about their energy, their back-and-forth, the emotional weight they brought to the show. Thought he’d made some inspired choice, when really, he’d just walked into a very specific kind of chaos. One that people like me can spot a mile away.
I didn’t tell him, because why would I? Some things are better left to unfold naturally. Besides, he was always going to work it out. He just needed time.
Bob is exactly what I expected. A man who once thought he’d be important. You can hear it in his voice—that weight of self-importance, like he’s still waiting for the world to realize how much it owes him. He’s knowledgeable, sure, but mostly in the way that means he thinks he’s the smartest person in the room. He talks over Jane without meaning to. Talks over himself sometimes, like he’s trying to keep up with his own brilliance. It would be unbearable if it weren’t so transparent. He’s still trying to prove something. Still trying to win.
Jane, on the other hand, has already won.
Not in a big, showy way. She just knows things. Not just about Bob—though she definitely knows him better than he knows himself—but about how to handle him. She’s got that quiet control, that ability to let him go off on a long, self-congratulatory tangent before shutting him down with a single well-placed remark. And the best part? He doesn’t even notice half the time.
She hadn't truly forgiven Bob for the affair with the weather girl. Which is why when she suggested the weather interjections, I backed her completely.
It started small. A casual, “Well, looks like rain later,” just as Bob was mid-rant about some overcomplicated branding theory. He faltered, just slightly. Then another one—“Clear skies for now, but you never know”—right when he was building up to one of his big, sweeping conclusions. Jane never explained it. She just let it sit there, a little storm cloud hovering over him.
Dave, predictably, didn’t get it. “Why does Jane keep talking about the weather?” he asked me, genuinely baffled. “It’s a podcast about branding.”
This from a man who prides himself on seeing layers in everything. Who spends his life unpacking the meaning behind things. And yet, the simplest, most human joke flew right past him. Even so-called super consultants don’t always get life.
Because that’s the thing. Bob and Jane aren’t about branding or storytelling or whatever neatly packaged insight Dave wants to pull from it. They’re just two people sitting across from each other every week, knowing exactly what’s between them, and getting on with it anyway. That’s what I like about them.
Bob, for all his ego, is still showing up. Jane, for all the history, is still keeping him in check. They’re not solving anything, not wrapping it up in a neat bow. Just doing the job. Getting through it.
And in the end, that’s all any of us are really doing.
