The original article can be found on the A&S News website.
A&S alum Katrina Onstad is bringing advice to “advice-skeptics and wisdom-lovers" through Don’t Listen To Us, a podcast featuring actors Mandy Patinkin, Kathryn Grody and their son Gideon.
“The podcast is advice, argument, love and relationships. It's very tender and very funny. It’s a show about life and growth,” says Onstad, who earned her master of arts in 1999 at the Department of English.
Onstad and her creative collaborator Debbie Pacheco developed the show and sold it to Lemonada Media. Both had previously worked with Patinkin on a podcast called Exile.
Onstad and Pacheco went on walks around Toronto with Patinkin while he was in Toronto filming a television series. They listened to stories about his life and long marriage to Grody, and out of those conversations, the idea for a new show began to take shape.
“This idea of a cross-generational conversation, tapping into their extraordinary life experience and careers as married artists, seemed like rich fodder for a podcast,” Onstad says.
Onstad earned her master of arts at the Department of English.
Patinkin and his family blew up on social media during the COVID-19 lockdowns, sharing slices of their family life through short TikTok videos posted by Gideon. With Don’t Listen To Us, Onstad and Pacheco capture the same charm, wit and deep insight in longform audio — qualities that made Patinkin and Grody so appealing online.
“They’re so authentic,” Onstad says. “You feel such intimacy with them right away, and they have so much wisdom to impart, but not in an aggressive, self-aggrandizing or self-promoting way.”
Onstad has worked on other podcasts, including Lately at the Globe and Mail, but her true love is writing. She’s the author of four books, including Everybody Has Everything, which was long listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
“At heart, I like to just sit with words and see if I can tame them,” Onstad says. “There usually comes a moment in writing when the swirling snow in the snow globe settles and everything comes together. Getting there is hell, but I love that moment.”
It was her interest in Canadian literature that spurred Onstad to pursue a master’s degree in English at Arts & Science. The one-year program was formative, and she remembers the free flow of ideas, intimate class sizes and stellar teaching above all else.
“It was such a luxury to spend that much time within a story and the granular work of examining sentences and the writing craft,” she says.
Onstad specifically highlights her studies under Professor Emerita Magdalene Redekop.
“It was a gift to spend time unpacking and unlocking the construction of stories under the expertise of someone like Professor Redekop,” she says.
Onstad has stayed in touch with the university, occasionally acting as a creative non-fiction instructor at U of T’s School of Continuing Studies.
After graduating, Onstad was a film critic at the National Post. As a lifelong lover of movies, it was a dream job and a great way to begin a career. She stayed in magazine writing for a time, before eventually pivoting and becoming a columnist at the Globe and Mail.
Onstad has now been freelancing on and off for 10 years. Although there’s more risk in being on her own, she likes the creative agency and being closer to the final product — and, crucially for Onstad, there are fewer meetings.
“Freelancing is terrifying and fiscally ridiculous,” she says. “But I like being in control of what gets put out there.”
Don’t Listen To Us was released in October, and the first seven episodes are now available online.
“We’re very proud of it,” Onstad says. “It’s personal and warm, and I think it’s going to provide a calm in the storm for people.”