Jaclyn pulls back the curtain on the phrase that became this podcast's name. It's a family story — her parents' love story, a hospital mix-up in Brooklyn, and how a funny accident of geography became a lifelong identity. More than an origin story, this is the conversation that explains everything else about the show.
About This Episode
Every podcast has a name, but not every podcast name has a story. This one does — and it starts with Jaclyn Richard's parents, their love story, and a quirk of timing that placed her conception in Brooklyn even though her whole life has been rooted in Rochester. It sounds almost like a punchline. In this episode, Jaclyn leans into that — because the best origin stories often do.
Jaclyn's parents met in the kind of circumstances that tend to produce strong people: working-class backgrounds, real stakes, no guarantees. The Brooklyn piece of the story comes from a period when they were there — a hospital visit, a mix-up in records, a bureaucratic accident that would have been forgettable if it hadn't planted the seed of a phrase the family would carry for decades. Conceived in Brooklyn, born in Rochester. That's Jaclyn's story, and it's funnier and more poignant than any branding strategy could produce.
But this episode isn't just a fun family anecdote. It's also a meditation on what gets passed down. What does it mean to carry something in you from a place you've never really lived? Brooklyn has long stood for a particular character in the American imagination: direct, unpretentious, tough in the ways that actually matter, soft in the ways that count. Jaclyn's parents embodied that, and she absorbed it growing up in Rochester — even without the ZIP code.
What the episode gets at, underneath all the family warmth, is something true about Rochester itself. The city has its own version of that energy: gritty, inventive, loyal, not easily impressed. Rochester is a place where people built things — Kodak, Xerox, Bausch and Lomb — and then had to figure out how to keep going when those anchors shifted. That's a Brooklyn kind of story. The pride without the glamour. The hustle without the headlines.
By the end of this episode, the podcast's name stops sounding like a quirky branding choice and starts sounding like an honest statement of purpose. Jaclyn is here to find the people in Rochester who have that thing — that combination of realness, resilience, and warmth — and put them on the record. If you've been listening since episode one wondering where all of this was going, this is the episode that connects the dots. Come for the family story. Stay for the Rochester thesis.
About the Host
Jaclyn Richard is the host of I've Got a Little Brooklyn in Me, a Rochester, NY podcast celebrating the entrepreneurs, civic leaders, artists, and changemakers shaping the city's future. New episodes drop biweekly on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.