There is a good chance that the long-running medical drama, Grey’s Anatomy will end. Should it end, the show’s lead actor (and now producer), Ellen Pompeo, may not return to acting. Pompeo has said in multiple interviews that she is more interested in producing than acting now. It is no secret that Grey’s Anatomy has broken a lot of barriers on what can and cannot work in television, courtesy producer Shonda Rhimes - who has now moved on to Netflix from ABC Network, home of Grey’s Anatomy.

But while speculation continues (as it has for many years now), something special this way comes. It’s Ellen Pompeo’s podcast called Tell Me with Ellen Pompeo.

Since launching in September 2021 and labelled as ‘Society and Culture’, the podcast is described in the following words: ‘’On her first-ever podcast, Ellen Pompeo sits down with a wide range of guests and celebrity friends who inspire her to do extraordinary things.”

It continues: “Through in-depth, candid conversations, Ellen shines a light on people and issues that are important to her and the world at large...” Presented by Cadence 30, it is reflective of Ellen Pompeo’s personal activism for equal pay for women in Hollywood - among other things.

Released weekly, the conversations last somewhere between 30 to 50 minutes approximately. One of the episodes features her former Grey’s Anatomy co-star Patrick Dempsey (Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd) and another features another former co-star Eric Dane (Mark “McSteamy" Sloane). But the podcast is not only about her Grey’s Anatomy co-stars and what is going on in their lives and filming overseas. Au contraire, her guests include prominent figures such as Dr. Sanjay Gupta who discusses the broken health care system. Other equally interesting figures have appeared on the podcast since it launched. Among them are figures as diverse as Cindy Crawford (talking about motherhood) to the first African-American black bachelorette (Rachel Lindsay), Yara Shahidi, college student about When We Vote, Michele Harper about her memoir The Beauty in Breaker, Emily Ratajkowski about her new book and Adam Grant (author and organizational psychologist) about the power of rethinking.

The guests are diverse, the questions intelligent and there is a level of comfort that Ellen creates because of which the guests are very candid when they speak. The subject matter varies where we learn various things such as the off-camera relationship between Patrick Dempsey and Ellen Pompeo even though on-camera their chemistry was undeniable.

Podcasts, like Netflix content, exist in such numbers that picking one to invest your time in – especially one featuring a celebrity – is a daunting decision. But Tell Me with Ellen Pompeo (Ellen Pompeo & Cadence13) is smart, funny and informative enough that you can listen to it even if you’ve never been a fan of the TV serial, Grey’s Anatomy.

Ellen Pompeo is captain, and she knows exactly how to manoeuvre this ship.