Subscribers Only: Ask Me Anything with Sayre Quevedo

You asked, and we delivered! In this week’s bonus episode, Sayre Quevedo, creator and host of the 2026 Tribeca Festival Award-winning podcast Reaching Out, sits down with Executive Editor Maria Garcia to answer questions submitted by you about this hit series. The Futuro Plus Team includes associate producer Liliana Ruiz, production manager Victoria Estrada, and development manager Danetsy Len. Mixing by Multitude Productions. Want to support our independent journalism? Join Futuro+ for ad-free listening, early-access and exclusive bonus episodes with the chisme behind “Reaching Out” and all our podcasts: www.futuromediagroup.org/joinplus http://www.futuromediagroup.org/joinplus. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Sayre Quevedo?

  Hey, this is Sayre. Once again, I just want to say how blown away I am by the responses to this work. I never imagined that it would resonate so widely, and I am so grateful to all of you for listening. I'm also really happy to report that as of this week, almost 3,000 of you have supported us by subscribing to Futuro Plus. So, thank you. Because of you, we are quite literally able to make this work possible. Memoirs and documentaries that are this ambitious and take this many risks are incredibly hard to get funded and hard to support with ads. So, we want to make more things like Reaching Out, and your subscription allows us to do that. The last episode is out now, but there are still lots

• 0:44Sayre Quevedo?

  of good reasons to subscribe. We have a bunch of subscriber-only episodes coming out in the coming weeks, including an Ask Me Anything, where I'll answer some listener questions, and an extended conversation with a special guest. But most importantly, if enough of you subscribe, it'll allow us to make more shows like this for you to enjoy. So, thank you again, and on to the show.

• 1:15Sayre Quevedo?

  Hey, this is Sayre. This is a bonus episode of Reaching Out. We decided we wanted to do an episode because we have heard so many interesting questions, received so much fantastic feedback and thoughtful messages from all of you. And so, this is an Ask Me Anything Reaching Out edition. We put a call out to all of you, and you sent your questions. And so, we're going to try to respond to as many of them as we can.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm so excited to be here with you, Sayre. I am Maria Garcia. I'm the editor of Reaching Out, and I had, truly, one of the highlights of my career was seeing your vision come to life over the year and a half that we got to work together, Sayre. And so, I'm so excited to read to you some of the voicemails and messages we got from folks who listened to the episode. So, let's just get right to it, okay? Now, if you haven't listened to the whole series, please go back and do that, because there are many spoilers.

• 2:16Sayre Quevedo?

  There's one. I mean, you should listen to the sixth episode, too, because, like, it's out.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Yes, listen to the sixth episode and then come back to this. And also, it's, episode six is very cathartic. Okay, so, question one. Did meeting your biological father help you understand yourself better?

• 2:35Sayre Quevedo?

  I really like this question, and I have thought a lot about how to answer it, because the events that are captured in the series, at least in the last episode, happened,

• 2:49Sayre Quevedo?

  God, now, like, almost two years ago, three years ago, right? So, I've had a lot of time to reflect on the impact that it's had on me. And I know this is about to get, I'm about to get really, like, semantic with it, but I do think the meeting him had less of an impact, which is not to say no impact, but the meeting him had less impact than the search for him in a lot of ways. I do think it was the process of looking for him taught me a lot more about myself than the meeting him and talking to him. And again, that's not to say I didn't. There weren't things that were revealed to me through having conversations with him and getting to know him, but I think in a lot of ways, you know,

• 3:29Sayre Quevedo?

  especially, especially doing that with my twin, too, right? Like, I think that, that process taught me a lot about my own relationship to absence. Does that make sense?

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course. And I got that sense also as, as we were editing it, that the story is equally about the search itself. One of the reviews or comments that really stuck with me is when Ira Glass said that this podcast really captures what it feels like to be alive right now. I've heard you say before, like, this podcast is also about, like, the end of your twenties.

• 4:07Sayre Quevedo?

  Yeah.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  And like, what you're wrestling with, and breakups, and what life felt like for you during the pandemic, and being a twin. And so, all of those things really factor into the search, I felt like. And I just, I know there's a lot of things that you didn't share, but you also did share a lot, and I just got a sense of your life and like, what it felt like to be alive for you at the end of your twenties.

• 4:37Sayre Quevedo?

  Something that I think was really unique about this editorial experience and working with you and working with Futuro in general, too, was that it didn't feel like I had to 100% prioritize that plot element over, over what, like, my stylistic goal was exactly the thing that you're talking about, right? And, and I was very happy to hear Ira say that, too, because that was, the thing that I wanted most was to sort of try to, as much as is possible for anyone, kind of capture what it felt like to be alive. And so, much of my life had nothing to do with looking for my father.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:08Sayre Quevedo?

  And of course, some of it rhymes, right, in an interesting way? But I was really lucky to get to work with you in that I felt like you really respected that we were going to go on some weird little sidebar. We were going to, like, you know, we were going to go to the club. We were going to go to the 7-Eleven. We were going to go, you know, like, we were going to do all of these things that I think in, in maybe a more commercial or a commercially sort of driven space.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:33Sayre Quevedo?

  Like, that stuff wouldn't have survived. That, they would have ended up on the cutting room floor, because it, you know, is sort of tangential to the, the plot. But I, I'm glad that it stayed in, because I think that's, that is what life is, right? Like, it's like, you have important things happening and small things happening all at the same time, and it's like, they all get the same weight. No, one of those things, like, in the day-to-day, me looking for my dad is, is as important as, like, going on Tinder and getting a date. And like, even though they feel sort of like, obviously, they're happening at different emotional registers, like, when I'm sitting there on my phone on Tinder, whatever's happening right in front of me is the thing that's most important, even if I know in the back of my head, like, oh, man, this crazy thing is also happening. So, I felt very, very lucky that I got to, to work with you and collaborate with you

• 6:14Sayre Quevedo?

  in that way, and that you really respected and tried to kind of, like, keep those elements as a part of the story as well.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Thank you, Sayre. Thank you. Let's go to question two. Well, this one's not really a question, but we received a lot of messages like this one.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  My name is Minnie, and I don't have a question, but I just wanted to say that your mom is incredible.

• 6:36Speaker 03

  Hey, my name is Jesse. Calling from St. Louis, and I just want to give kudos to your mom.

• 6:43Speaker 04

  I was so moved by your mom with you and your brother, as I know many people in the comments were as well.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  If she's not a therapist already, she should be.

• 6:54Speaker 03

  Especially in episode four, and the conversation with you and your brother. I think she just asked the most perfect questions and had some of the most perfect answers. And I just really loved, truly loved, your mom.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  We got so many messages like that, especially at the end of episode four. I mean, that conversation between you and Connor and your mother, and you know, when we were editing, I was like, your mother, like, as a mom myself, she's goals, you know? What's her, her reaction been like?

• 7:32Sayre Quevedo?

  That was a preview of our special Ask Me Anything bonus episode for Futuro Plus. If you want to listen to the whole thing and also get even more bonus content from our show, then join Futuro Plus today. You can find a link in the show notes. Next week, I'm going to have an extended conversation with my brother Connor, following the release of the podcast. And we also have a few in-person and virtual events coming up that I am very excited to tell you about soon. And I really just want to say that when you sign up for Futuro Plus, you get all those extras, but more importantly, your support allows us to make more shows like this, ambitious documentaries that take time to produce. So, join at futuromedia group.org backslash join plus. See you over on the Futuro Plus feed. Thank you.