D
r. Tracy Wood is focused on expanding his audience … and not just its size.
“We don’t want to be middle-class white dudes talking to other middle-class white dudes,” Wood said. An elementary teacher in St. Louis, Mo., Wood is co-host of a faith-based podcast called “We Used to be Friends.” He and co-hosts BJ Murray and Josh Neeley have grown their audience over the years, attracting a wide variety of well-known guests. With a lineup that has included movie directors and authors, infectious disease specialists and climate scientists, they have taken on topics that affect the world today. Wood graduated from MSSSU in 1999. He said he explored several career paths, including physical therapy, before realizing his place was in the classroom. In 2007, he graduated from St. Louis University with a doctorate in philosophy and has been a teacher in the Rockwood School District ever since.
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Even as Wood was going to school and starting his career, he kept in contact with his high-school friends, BJ and Josh. The three would spend hours on the phone, talking about books they recently finished, something that been bothering them for a while or even how their day was. “They’re my accountability partners … my brothers. They are my family,” Wood said. At some point the three friends realized that other people might be interested in what they were talking about. Wood wanted to record their talks and post them on YouTube, but it was BJ who suggested putting them into podcast form. “We called it ‘We Use to be Friends’ because that’s how we started out in high school,” he said. “But now we don’t consider ourselves to just be friends; those guys are my brothers.“ Often when something bad happens or when something is stressful in life, my wife is the first person to know. The next step in line is BJ and Josh.”
CROSSROADS MAGAZINE
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SPRING 2022
