Listening, Legacy, and What Comes Next: Season 5 Finale
- Amy Boyle
- Dec 31, 2025
- 4 min read
Season 5 of Speaking of Phenomenal wasn’t about answers. It was about attention. Across eleven conversations, one question kept returning quietly but persistently:
What does it mean to leave a mark without disappearing?
That question surfaced early in the season through Maryam Myika Day’s work. Her storytelling has taken many forms, from movement on a stage to words on a page to teaching and coaching others.
“Seeing written by Maryam Myika Day on the screen is a reminder that I’m making my mark,” she said. “My biggest desire is to leave a legacy where people know I was here.”
She framed legacy not as recognition, but as responsibility.
“I want to give people the space, the comfort, and the access to tell their stories,” she said.
Access became a quiet throughline. Not access as charity. Access as design. Access as belief.
That belief was central to Anna Tess’s work advocating for children with hearing loss.
“Any child with a disability has so much potential,” she said. “We should never stop and believe that they can do less. We should always believe they can do more.”
Her work focuses on educating families, teachers, lawyers, and professionals so children’s educational needs are met early and fully. All of it offered freely. Access as trust.
Trust also shaped conversations about mentorship and systems. Laura Jordan LeClair described mentorship not as advice-giving, but as infrastructure.
“It’s more than a buzz. It’s a movement,” she said.
“Mentorship is vital,” she added. “Sometimes you don’t have that support in your own company, so having external connections is crucial.”
If people are falling through the cracks, Season 5 suggested, the problem is rarely motivation. It is design.
That question of design sat at the center of my conversation with journalist and founder of Connect Puerto Rico, Jillian Melero.
“It’s not just about the grid,” she said. “It’s about strengthening Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans.”
Her reporting begins with questions that are deceptively simple.
“What is it that people need? How can we help? What can we do about it?”
Listening, this season reminded us, is not passive. It is directional.
Midseason, the question widened. Not just who tells stories, but what happens to them over time. That tension came into focus through the award-winning podcast Division Street Revisited.
Mary Schmich described Studs Terkel’s Division Street as “a curious book.”
“Because if you really start to analyze it, you don’t know that much about these people,” she said. “But somehow you sense that you know them.”
When the Library of Congress began digitizing Terkel’s original interview tapes, the story was no longer finished. It was waiting.
“The not knowing was both thrilling and terrifying,” Mary said. “How do you find their kids? Their grandkids? And once you find them, how are you going to make a story out of this?”
The podcast became a seven-episode series. Four of those stories focused on women whose lives reflected resilience, contradiction, and quiet power.
“Each of the women I would describe as resilient,” Melissa Harris said. “They each overcame, they each persevered, they each survived, and in some cases, thrived.”
Even the theme song mattered.
Will the circle be unbroken
By and by, Lord, by and by
There’s a better home awaiting
In the sky, Lord, in the sky
That question sits underneath much of this season indirectly. Whether the stories we inherit are carried forward with care.
That concern surfaced again in Tonika Lewis Johnson’s work on place through the Folded Map project and her book Don’t Go as they challenge perception.
“It doesn’t necessarily take a massive movement,” she said. “It’s the small things that people do in their own lives that really will propel the change that we want to have.”
“It was really important for me to create another tool for people to use,” she said. “It’s knowledge and education that will get us to the world that we want to have.”
Continuity also appeared through learning itself. Kari Fagin spoke about her work with OLLI, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, a national program serving adults over 50.
“You’re not just growing in the topic that you are addressing,” she said. “You’re growing in the people you meet in that new lane that you wouldn’t have met otherwise.”
At OLLI, learning does not end with a career. Curiosity does not retire.
Listening took on sharper stakes in my conversation with Ellen Wilcox.
“We must be able to listen,” she said. “Because that’s really where investing in untapped and amazing opportunities is going to lie.”
Listening shapes decisions. It directs resources. It reveals what has been overlooked.
By the end of the season, the question turned inward. Taylor Elyse Morrison described realizing her portfolio career was not a problem to solve.
This was the work. A feature, not a bug.
Community, she reminded us, is sustenance.
When I step back from Season 5, a many truths rise clearly.
These women are renegotiating success.Listening is shaping leadership across industries.Women are done fragmenting themselves to be understood.Stories still move power, resources, and possibility.
Season 5 did not rush to conclusions. It stayed with the questions.
That is the work Speaking of Phenomenal is committed to continuing.
Season 6 returns in 2026. The conversations will deepen. The reporting will expand. Some stories may take visual form as well. That work will grow intentionally, in service of the story, not the algorithm.
If someone came to mind while reading this, consider sharing the podcast with them. I invite you to hear these voices directly.
Until next time, remember you are phenomenal!
-Amy
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