Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Explain the Universe: Behind the Scenes

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Explain the Universe: Behind the Scenes · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

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Speaker 1: Hey everyone, Daniel here. Today's episode is our five hundredth
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Speaker 1: episode of the podcast. Thank you so much to everyone
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Speaker 1: out there who's joined us on this wild ride to
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Speaker 1: explore the beauty and mystery of our universe. Those people
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Speaker 1: who feel that buzzing need to know the truth about
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Speaker 1: the deepest cosmic questions, and who share my hunch that
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Speaker 1: humans are capable of figuring it all out. I always
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Speaker 1: wanted to share with all of you the incredible feeling
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Speaker 1: of satisfaction I get when something clicks into place in
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Speaker 1: my mind. It's been my absolute pleasure, and here's to
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Speaker 1: many more moments of deep insight. Everyone is curious about
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Speaker 1: how things work and how it all comes together, especially
0:51
Speaker 1: you since you're listening to this podcast right now, and
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Speaker 1: over the last five years that we've been on air,
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Speaker 1: we've spent a lot of time talking about how the
0:59
Speaker 1: universe works and how particles are woven together to make
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Speaker 1: our reality. But did you ever wonder how this podcast works.
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Speaker 1: How a physicist with a full time job puts up
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Speaker 1: two episodes per week with his co hosts and guests.
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Speaker 1: How lots of people working together weave all of their
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Speaker 1: efforts to make this podcast a reality. Hi, I'm Daniel.
1:34
Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist and a professor at uc Ermine,
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Speaker 1: and I'm a podcaster. I usually don't list that in
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Speaker 1: my introduction to episodes, which is kind of weird because
1:43
Speaker 1: that's actually how most of you who know me. Very
1:46
Speaker 1: few of you out there know me in any of
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Speaker 1: my other worlds a particle physicist or university professor. Those
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Speaker 1: are the worlds that occupy most of my time. You
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Speaker 1: all mostly know me through this podcast, and today I
1:58
Speaker 1: want to meld those worlds a little bit to show
2:01
Speaker 1: you how I ended up becoming a podcaster and how
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Speaker 1: it fits into the rest of my life and how
2:05
Speaker 1: the podcast comes together. So welcome to the podcast. Daniel
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Speaker 1: and Jorge explain the Universe, in which we explore and
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Speaker 1: explain the nature of the universe from the smallest, tiny
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Speaker 1: little bits out there to the whole nature of the universe,
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Speaker 1: black holes and cosmic strings and everything out there. We
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Speaker 1: tackle the biggest questions and we try to break them
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Speaker 1: down and explain them to you. If you're new to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. The note that today is not a typical episode.
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Speaker 1: This episode instead is something of a celebration and self reflection.
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Speaker 1: We've done five hundred episodes of the podcast. Now, that's
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Speaker 1: two a week every week for about five years. Along
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Speaker 1: the way, we've had highs and lows, and moments of
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Speaker 1: laughter and moments of tears, and we'll share a lot
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Speaker 1: of those with you today. But mostly I did want
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Speaker 1: to use this episode to celebrate what we've accomplished here,
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Speaker 1: and to do that, I wanted to pull back the
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Speaker 1: curtain and let you in on the process of how
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Speaker 1: the podcast is made. So today's episode will not be
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Speaker 1: a deep dive into physics, but into the podcast itself.
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Speaker 1: I hope that's interesting to all of you out there.
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Speaker 1: While each episode is mostly about physics, I find that
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Speaker 1: listeners also usually respond positively to our occasional personal comment
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Speaker 1: like when I talk about white chocolate versus dark chocolate,
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Speaker 1: or complain about having to help my son with his
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Speaker 1: chemistry homework. And so I hope there's interest out there
3:25
Speaker 1: in getting to know the team behind the podcast and
3:27
Speaker 1: how they do what they do. I think it's pretty
3:30
Speaker 1: unusual to put out such a high volume of content
3:34
Speaker 1: with such a small team, and I want to show
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Speaker 1: you how we do it, what a joy it is
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Speaker 1: to do, and what it means to all of us,
3:40
Speaker 1: because it wasn't always obvious that we were going to
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Speaker 1: get here five hundred episodes in. For example, here's a
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Speaker 1: frank comment from a listener along these lines. He's a
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Speaker 1: friend and a fellow particle physicist, Brian Field.
3:52
Speaker 2: I believe I saw a fellow podcaster who had retweeted
3:56
Speaker 2: that there was going to be a new podcast. The
4:00
Speaker 2: people that wrote, you know, we have no idea, you know,
4:04
Speaker 2: sort of thing. These books that I enjoyed, and so
4:09
Speaker 2: I got kind of got in on the ground floor,
4:11
Speaker 2: and as a professional scientist myself, I was very surprised
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Speaker 2: to find how great they were, how high level they were.
4:21
Speaker 2: And I have to admit that my first thought was, well,
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Speaker 2: these are great, but there's no way they're going to
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Speaker 2: be able to keep this level of discourse with this
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Speaker 2: many topics for any amount of time. They're just going
4:31
Speaker 2: to run out of clever things to say, They're going
4:34
Speaker 2: to run out of topics. They're going to cover it all.
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Speaker 2: But you know, while it lasts, this is going to
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Speaker 2: be great. And it was right that it was great,
4:41
Speaker 2: and I was wrong about everything else. And I hope
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Speaker 2: that this is just the beginning and that it continues
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Speaker 2: to be a great source of science news in the future,
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Speaker 2: and I'm just so glad that it's part of my life.
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Speaker 1: Keep doing.
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Speaker 2: Keep up the great work, guys, and from your number
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Speaker 2: one friend, Brian, talk to you later.
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Speaker 1: Brian didn't think we could keep it up, have enough
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Speaker 1: clever things to say for all those episodes. Well I'm
5:03
Speaker 1: glad to say that we proved him wrong. That five
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Speaker 1: hundred episodes of Bananas and black Holes later, we've kind
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Speaker 1: of found a rhythm and a team that works together
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Speaker 1: well and puts out two episodes a week without fail
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Speaker 1: every week. But let's start at the very beginning. Before
5:18
Speaker 1: we can talk about how an episode is made, I
5:21
Speaker 1: want to tell you the story about how the podcast
5:23
Speaker 1: itself came to be. Like many podcasts, Ours came out
5:26
Speaker 1: of writing a book, the book that Jorge and I
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Speaker 1: wrote together in twenty seventeen called We Have No Idea,
5:32
Speaker 1: and that book grew out of some earlier collaborations, ones
5:36
Speaker 1: that frankly I never thought could happen. Because while you
5:39
Speaker 1: all probably know Jorge as the co host of this podcast,
5:42
Speaker 1: I first knew him as the famous cartoonist behind PhD Comics,
5:47
Speaker 1: and he certainly had no idea who I was. It
5:50
Speaker 1: was kind of a miracle that I got to work
5:52
Speaker 1: with such an internet celebrity at all. He was a
5:54
Speaker 1: clip of me during a presentation we gave at Harvard
5:57
Speaker 1: telling the story of how Orgey and I came to
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Speaker 1: work together till one. It's been a real pleasure working
6:05
Speaker 1: on these projects with Jorge. Not only he's the an
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Speaker 1: amazing artist, he's also really modest. So for example, I
6:10
Speaker 1: have to correct the story a little bit that he
6:12
Speaker 1: told you because he leaves out some important details. When
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Speaker 1: I thought about explaining physics using cartoons, I thought that
6:18
Speaker 1: would be a lot of fun, But I don't have
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Speaker 1: the artistic talent to do it myself. Who could I
6:22
Speaker 1: get to do this? And my wife, who's also a
6:25
Speaker 1: fan of PhD comics, she said, well, why don't you
6:28
Speaker 1: email Jorge Chom And I thought, well, you know, Jorge
6:30
Speaker 1: is not just some cartoonist, right, He's like in academia
6:33
Speaker 1: and in research, he's world famous. You can't go to
6:36
Speaker 1: a lab that does research and not find one of
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Speaker 1: his cartoons on the wall because he's really captured, you know,
6:41
Speaker 1: the experience of being a graduate student and the suffering
6:43
Speaker 1: of research and all of these things. So it's like
6:46
Speaker 1: just emailing a famous person, right, So she says, why
6:49
Speaker 1: don't you email Jorge Chom And I thought, sure, and
6:51
Speaker 1: then I'll call Brad Pitt and ask him to make
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Speaker 1: a movie about me him, right, like while we're at it. Right,
6:58
Speaker 1: So I still having her back from Brad. But I
7:01
Speaker 1: did get to write this awesome book with Horage, which
7:03
Speaker 1: is a lot of fun. So after I cold email
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Speaker 1: this internet celebrity, Jorge and I amazingly started out making
7:09
Speaker 1: videos where I would explain the particle physics and he
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Speaker 1: would make these incredible cartoons to illustrate and clarify the ideas.
7:16
Speaker 1: Then in twenty seventeen, the cartoonist behind the webcomic XKCD
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Speaker 1: had a massive best selling book called what If, which
7:24
Speaker 1: if you haven't read, you should, and his agent reached
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Speaker 1: out to Jorge to see if Jorge was interested in
7:30
Speaker 1: also doing a science comic book to blend explaining science
7:33
Speaker 1: and comics, and you know, explaining physics using cartoons was
7:36
Speaker 1: kind of my jam. So Jorge called me and said, hey,
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Speaker 1: I think we could write a book about particle physics.
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Speaker 1: And I said, I don't know. Let's find out what's involved.
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Speaker 1: I'm a physics professor. I don't really know anything about publishing. Well,
7:48
Speaker 1: it turns out to sell a nonfiction book is pretty
7:50
Speaker 1: weird process. If you want to sell a novel, you
7:53
Speaker 1: typically have to write the whole thing and then sell it,
7:55
Speaker 1: unless you're like Stephen King and have a track record.
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Speaker 1: But for nonfiction, you don't actually have to write it first.
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Speaker 1: You just write a sample chapter and an outline. So
8:04
Speaker 1: we did, and the whole thing came together kind of
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Speaker 1: shockingly fast. I remember sitting down and banging out the
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Speaker 1: first draft of a sample chapter during my daughter's gymnastics
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Speaker 1: practice one Saturday morning, and it just kind of flowed
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Speaker 1: out of me. You know, all these thoughts and ideas
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Speaker 1: I had about dark matter and how little we know
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Speaker 1: about the universe, and how much there was left to discover,
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Speaker 1: and how exciting that was, and the opportunity and the
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Speaker 1: thrill of all that just sort of like flowed on
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Speaker 1: to the page. I sent it out to Jorge, who
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Speaker 1: whipped it into shape and made sure it was clear
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Speaker 1: and relatable in that way that he's so good at,
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Speaker 1: and then he drew his wonderful cartoons, and we sent
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Speaker 1: it off to the agent and just like two weeks later,
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Speaker 1: we had a very flattering book contract. The whole thing
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Speaker 1: was like really a whirlwind. Then of course we got
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Speaker 1: to actually write the book, which took about a year,
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Speaker 1: and it was a lot of fun. Jorge and I
8:50
Speaker 1: had lots of conversations about what to write about and
8:53
Speaker 1: how to write it. We talked about science, send me jokes,
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Speaker 1: and had a lot of fun, and you know, I
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Speaker 1: learned a lot just in trying to explain particle physics
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Speaker 1: to somebody who's really smart and ask good questions. So
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Speaker 1: many times Jorge would like back things up and say,
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Speaker 1: a whole lot a second, what do you mean we
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Speaker 1: don't know what mass is or we don't understand space,
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Speaker 1: And whole chapters of that book came into being from
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Speaker 1: his questions. And then of course the book came out
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Speaker 1: and we went on tour to promote the book. That
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Speaker 1: clip you heard earlier is from our presentation the book Talk,
9:21
Speaker 1: and this something you need to understand about how that
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Speaker 1: book Talk came together. That's kind of shaped all five
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Speaker 1: hundred episodes of the podcast that followed. Let's just say
9:30
Speaker 1: like it wasn't very highly prepared. Basically, we waned it
9:34
Speaker 1: every time personally, I wanted to plan it, to lay
9:37
Speaker 1: it out and nail it down, because I'm kind of
9:39
Speaker 1: a planner the way I balance everything in my life,
9:42
Speaker 1: you know, an overwhelming academic job, a family, a podcast,
9:45
Speaker 1: a TV show. Book writing is vie staying organized and
9:48
Speaker 1: getting things done in advance. But for the book talk,
9:51
Speaker 1: we just kind of had a rough idea of what
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Speaker 1: we wanted to say and we went for it. Kind
9:55
Speaker 1: of terrified me, but you know what, it went pretty well.
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Speaker 1: All in all. We gave that talk more than fifty
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Speaker 1: times across the country. In the UK, we'd get a
10:03
Speaker 1: talking fields and auditoriums filled with one thousand people, or
10:06
Speaker 1: the tiny bookstores with a handful of eager listeners. And
10:09
Speaker 1: because it wasn't superscripted, every single time it really was different.
10:13
Speaker 1: There was always like some new joke or a new twist.
10:16
Speaker 1: Maybe Jorge would like draw a silly doodle of me
10:18
Speaker 1: making fun of me while I was speaking. The audience
10:21
Speaker 1: would roar with laughter while I was totally clueless, or
10:24
Speaker 1: I'd make some dumb physics dad joke to earn a
10:26
Speaker 1: rueful chuckle. It turned out that we kind of had
10:28
Speaker 1: a knack for a spontaneous humor, and we had a
10:30
Speaker 1: good chemistry together. We were just more natural and sincere
10:34
Speaker 1: when it wasn't tightly planned, because we just had fun
10:37
Speaker 1: talking and joking about science. And that's where the podcast
10:40
Speaker 1: was born. Two guys at a company called stuff Media
10:43
Speaker 1: reached out to us about launching a podcast. This is
10:46
Speaker 1: like twenty seventeen, a few years after podcasts had started
10:50
Speaker 1: to take off, but before they were like really huge,
10:53
Speaker 1: before everybody had a podcast, so it wasn't really something
10:57
Speaker 1: on my radar yet, but I thought it was an
10:59
Speaker 1: intriguing idea. The guys of stuff Media thought that we
11:02
Speaker 1: had what a take to make a podcast work, so
11:04
Speaker 1: to understand what they saw in us, I recently sat
11:07
Speaker 1: down with Will Pearson, one of the guys who originally
11:10
Speaker 1: recruited us into the podcast world, to hear about why
11:12
Speaker 1: he thought our podcast might work and whether it's turned
11:15
Speaker 1: out as he's planned in the time since his company
11:18
Speaker 1: was bought by iHeartMedia and he now runs their podcast division.
11:22
Speaker 1: That's pretty impressive. I mean, iHeart is the biggest podcasting
11:26
Speaker 1: company on the planet, which means Will is basically the
11:29
Speaker 1: worldwide president of podcasting. He's an important guy, but when
11:33
Speaker 1: we spoke, he wasn't actually able to use his usual
11:35
Speaker 1: quiet space for high quality audio recordings because his thirteen
11:39
Speaker 1: year old son had and I'm quoting him here, a
11:42
Speaker 1: very important gaming session. Here's my conversation with Will. Well,
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Speaker 1: thanks very much, Will forging to have a candid conversation
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Speaker 1: with me. First, introduce yourselves to our listeners, to one
11:51
Speaker 1: of the many people behind the scenes that makes this happen.
11:54
Speaker 1: But they don't know you, so tell us a little
11:56
Speaker 1: bit about who you are.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, and Will Pearson. I run the podcast division here
12:00
Speaker 3: at iHeart.
12:01
Speaker 1: I was actually part of a.
12:02
Speaker 3: Company called stuff Bedia or maybe more publicly known as
12:05
Speaker 3: how Stuff Works a few years ago and we were
12:09
Speaker 3: acquired by iHeartMedia or iHeartRadio to come on board and
12:14
Speaker 3: run the podcast division here. But you know, we had
12:17
Speaker 3: come out of a world of podcasts that we're all
12:20
Speaker 3: very general knowledge driven.
12:22
Speaker 1: Cool. Well, let's not understate your job. I mean iHeart
12:24
Speaker 1: is like number one podcast company in the world and
12:27
Speaker 1: you're heading up the podcast division there. That seems like
12:30
Speaker 1: kind of a big deal.
12:30
Speaker 3: It's you know, it's one of those things that because
12:33
Speaker 3: it doesn't happen overnight, you really don't stop to think
12:36
Speaker 3: about it, but yeah, I didn't know.
12:36
Speaker 1: We're supposed to brag awesome. Well, podcasts are everywhere now
12:41
Speaker 1: and everybody listens to podcast and sort of a big deal.
12:45
Speaker 1: But take us back to like twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen
12:48
Speaker 1: when our podcast started. What was a podcast landscape like
12:51
Speaker 1: back then? What kind of things were you looking for?
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Speaker 3: I think, first of all, the thing that drew me
12:56
Speaker 3: to the podcast base, because that's right around the time
12:58
Speaker 3: that I had joined and stuff media, as I mentioned before,
13:02
Speaker 3: was around twenty seventeen, was the fact that it was
13:05
Speaker 3: a medium built off of knowledge based shows, Like we
13:10
Speaker 3: started seeing the biggest shows in the category were really
13:13
Speaker 3: shows where people were coming to them because they wanted
13:15
Speaker 3: to learn, They wanted to walk away feeling a little
13:17
Speaker 3: bit smarter from whatever they were listening to. You could
13:20
Speaker 3: find a great podcast for those, and that podcast sort
13:24
Speaker 3: of stripped away the layers that you find in most
13:28
Speaker 3: other medium and get down to the very basics of
13:30
Speaker 3: a conversation.
13:32
Speaker 1: Awesome, And so why did you reach out to us?
13:34
Speaker 1: What did you see in us? Why did you think
13:36
Speaker 1: that danie Le Jorge explain the universe? It might be
13:39
Speaker 1: a good fit for your company.
13:41
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, first of all, it was a category
13:43
Speaker 3: that I've long been interested in, you know, the idea
13:46
Speaker 3: of helping a general population or curious minds better understand
13:52
Speaker 3: the universe, better understand astronomy. You know, as a kid,
13:56
Speaker 3: was the nerd that was obsessed with you know, Carl
13:59
Speaker 3: Sagan and Stephen Hawking and everything I could get my
14:02
Speaker 3: hands on. That sort of made this category accessible, and
14:06
Speaker 3: I just felt like that there was a larger population
14:08
Speaker 3: that would be interested in this as well. You know,
14:10
Speaker 3: we saw with the success of our House Stuff Works
14:14
Speaker 3: line of shows that there really was a hunger for
14:17
Speaker 3: good audio in the general knowledge space. And when we
14:21
Speaker 3: saw we have no idea, we really felt like, Okay,
14:24
Speaker 3: here are two guys that get it. You know, when
14:26
Speaker 3: it's a rare moment that you find super smart people
14:31
Speaker 3: that really know how to communicate with a general audience,
14:35
Speaker 3: it feels like we're all in it together. It didn't
14:37
Speaker 3: feel like you're being lectured to. It didn't feel like
14:39
Speaker 3: you were just you know, had the pleasure of just
14:43
Speaker 3: being with somebody that was one hundred times smarter than
14:46
Speaker 3: you were. Like you guys obviously are incredibly intelligent, but
14:50
Speaker 3: at the same time, it just feels like you're getting
14:52
Speaker 3: the chance to listen in on a great conversation, and
14:55
Speaker 3: we felt like there was that opportunity to create a
14:59
Speaker 3: show with you two in a way that could do that.
15:02
Speaker 3: And fortunately, the first time we heard you guys in
15:05
Speaker 3: a pilot when we said, you know what, we think
15:07
Speaker 3: this could be an interesting podcast. Let's have a conversation
15:10
Speaker 3: about it. The first time you guys ever recorded, not
15:12
Speaker 3: to say that it was perfect, but like you immediately
15:15
Speaker 3: knew something was there, so we were super excited about it.
15:17
Speaker 1: Wow awesome, And you know we've done five hundred episodes
15:21
Speaker 1: now and the show has evolved and you know, gained
15:23
Speaker 1: its own inside jokes and all sorts of stuff. Would
15:26
Speaker 1: you say that it's like different from what you might
15:28
Speaker 1: have predicted it turned into five years ago, or is
15:31
Speaker 1: it mostly what you were looking for?
15:32
Speaker 3: I mean, I would say, fortunately, it is what we
15:35
Speaker 3: were looking for, because you know, we we try not
15:38
Speaker 3: to be too prescriptive when we bring on a new podcast.
15:42
Speaker 3: We know at the core what we were looking for
15:45
Speaker 3: was something that could help curious minds better understand the
15:49
Speaker 3: universe and also to feel like they were being entertained
15:54
Speaker 3: when they listen to something and if you can find
15:56
Speaker 3: the right blend there sort of walking that line in
15:59
Speaker 3: a really small, a't way, I think you know, you've
16:02
Speaker 3: got a hit show on your hands. And so we
16:04
Speaker 3: didn't know exactly what it was going to sound like,
16:07
Speaker 3: but the vibe and the sort of effect of the
16:10
Speaker 3: show was exactly what we were going for. So no,
16:13
Speaker 3: I think the show is exactly what we wanted to be.
16:15
Speaker 3: I had no idea that it would run five hundred episodes,
16:19
Speaker 3: but that's been part of the beauty of shows of
16:22
Speaker 3: this type is that listeners fall in love with the hosts,
16:26
Speaker 3: with the concept and just stick with it. And so
16:30
Speaker 3: so it's been a blast to just watch it. I
16:32
Speaker 3: didn't know that it would be as big as it
16:34
Speaker 3: is because it felt like, Okay, this is a category
16:37
Speaker 3: that maybe will be a little more niche. But you know,
16:41
Speaker 3: you've got hundreds of thousands of people listening to every
16:43
Speaker 3: single episode, which is just amazing.
16:45
Speaker 1: It feels like a huge privilege to me that all
16:47
Speaker 1: those folks aren't trusting us with their time and energy.
16:50
Speaker 1: So I'm really grateful. Well, thanks very much, Will for
16:52
Speaker 1: sharing your perspective and for having that faith in us
16:56
Speaker 1: to create this thing. I'm always touched that so many
16:58
Speaker 1: people who make these shows happened were themselves inspired by
17:02
Speaker 1: something earlier. It's just like feeds forward. You know, you
17:04
Speaker 1: were inspired by Carl Sagan. You help make something which
17:07
Speaker 1: I hope will inspire somebody else out there to make
17:10
Speaker 1: something else beautiful.
17:11
Speaker 3: Oh, I appreciate that, And congratulations to you guys. It's
17:14
Speaker 3: no big surprise to me that you've been successful.
17:16
Speaker 1: But I love it.
17:17
Speaker 3: I love that we get to partner with you guys,
17:19
Speaker 3: and look forward to being back on for episode one thousand.
17:22
Speaker 1: All right, awesome, thanks very much. Will So Will thought
17:26
Speaker 1: that Jorge and I had a chemistry together and a
17:28
Speaker 1: knack for explaining this stuff and decided to give us
17:30
Speaker 1: a chance. But you might also wonder, and many people
17:33
Speaker 1: have asked me this, what made me want to do this?
17:36
Speaker 1: I mean, I already had a more than full time
17:39
Speaker 1: job as a physicist and have young kids at home,
17:41
Speaker 1: and most academics are already like drowning in work and emails.
17:45
Speaker 1: Why take on this other new thing? So when we
17:48
Speaker 1: come back from the break, we'll talk about that, and
17:50
Speaker 1: we'll hear from other physicists in the podcast space. And
17:53
Speaker 1: why they do it, and I'll take you through how
17:55
Speaker 1: we go from idea to episode twice a week in
17:58
Speaker 1: a way that doesn't break my calendar or ruin my marriage. Okay,
18:14
Speaker 1: we're back with our special behind the scenes episode or
18:17
Speaker 1: the podcast to give you a glimpse into the origin
18:19
Speaker 1: of the show and how it's put together. But I
18:21
Speaker 1: haven't told you yet. Probably the most important thing to me,
18:25
Speaker 1: at least, which is why I do the show. It
18:28
Speaker 1: wasn't because I liked talking science with the Jorge, though
18:31
Speaker 1: of course I do, or because it was a fun
18:34
Speaker 1: new adventure, which it was, Or because I might make
18:37
Speaker 1: some cash, though I have nothing against cash. Deep down,
18:40
Speaker 1: It's really because I just wanted to share my joy
18:44
Speaker 1: with you all. There are these moments when you study
18:47
Speaker 1: physics that an idea clicks in your mind and you're
18:50
Speaker 1: just shaken with the power of it. A veal is
18:54
Speaker 1: pulled back and you have a new view of the
18:56
Speaker 1: entire universe. You thought it worked like this, but then
18:59
Speaker 1: it turns out you were looking at it backwards or
19:01
Speaker 1: upside down, or missing ninety five percent of the picture,
19:04
Speaker 1: or trying to read it in the wrong language. And
19:06
Speaker 1: when you see it the right way, it connects in
19:09
Speaker 1: this beautiful way that makes you want to like shout
19:12
Speaker 1: with joy and whisper in reverence. At the same time.
19:15
Speaker 1: I'm not personally a very religious person, but those moments
19:19
Speaker 1: of deep understanding, those are the most spiritual moments of
19:22
Speaker 1: my life. When I feel like I've glimpsed something deeply true,
19:25
Speaker 1: I've seen behind the scenes. You know, when you realize, oh,
19:30
Speaker 1: light is a wiggle in these fields, or oh, electricity
19:33
Speaker 1: and magnetism is just one big idea clicks together, or wow,
19:37
Speaker 1: group theory describes a relationship between the particles. Or wow,
19:41
Speaker 1: forces only exist to preserve the gage symmetries of that
19:44
Speaker 1: group theory, or oh, our laws only apply to the
19:47
Speaker 1: current phase of the universe. Or wow, there isn't one
19:51
Speaker 1: single clock for the universe, there are infinite series of clocks,
19:53
Speaker 1: a new single history of events. Or oh, my gosh,
19:56
Speaker 1: the speed limit of the universe comes naturally from this
19:59
Speaker 1: new way of thinking about space. All of these moments
20:02
Speaker 1: which I had as I was learning physics were so delicious,
20:04
Speaker 1: and I wanted to share those because they're wonderful. They're
20:08
Speaker 1: like drinks from the cup of the universe oracle, and
20:12
Speaker 1: I felt like, there's a lot of great science communication
20:14
Speaker 1: out there, but this wasn't out there yet. I didn't
20:17
Speaker 1: find these moments that sheer joy, that deep understanding in
20:21
Speaker 1: the pop side books I read, or in the podcast
20:23
Speaker 1: that I listened to. And there are a lot of
20:25
Speaker 1: great podcasts and books out there, but none were doing
20:28
Speaker 1: what I thought needed to be done and saying it
20:31
Speaker 1: in the way that I thought it should be said.
20:32
Speaker 1: I've heard once that startup founders are often people who
20:35
Speaker 1: are annoyed that nobody's doing something the right way, so
20:38
Speaker 1: they feel this deep need to start a business to
20:41
Speaker 1: do it right. And frankly, that's kind of how I felt.
20:44
Speaker 1: I wanted to share these moments in physics and do
20:46
Speaker 1: it in a deep way, one that doesn't gloss over
20:49
Speaker 1: with the same tired pop side analogies and doesn't say,
20:52
Speaker 1: trust me, the math works, but I can't explain it
20:54
Speaker 1: any further. I wanted to really communicate the intuitive understanding
20:59
Speaker 1: that the math, and I also felt a little bit
21:02
Speaker 1: like it was part of my job. I mean, I'm
21:04
Speaker 1: a professor at a public university, and I wanted to
21:07
Speaker 1: help share this joy with the public, not just with
21:09
Speaker 1: the students who happened to end up in my classroom.
21:12
Speaker 1: This is something that belongs to everyone, and I hope
21:15
Speaker 1: that my way of talking and thinking about it might
21:17
Speaker 1: click with someone out there and encourage their curiosity or
21:21
Speaker 1: inspire them to study physics and help humanity crack this
21:24
Speaker 1: giant puzzle we call the universe. The way Will had
21:27
Speaker 1: been inspired by previous generations of science communications. It didn't
21:30
Speaker 1: turn him into a physicist, but it motivated him to
21:33
Speaker 1: put money and resources behind another educational physics podcast. So yeah,
21:39
Speaker 1: it was going to take some time, and you'll hear
21:40
Speaker 1: in a bit about how we try to run a
21:42
Speaker 1: streamlined operation. But for me, the fundamental motivation was that
21:46
Speaker 1: I feel super lucky to get to do these things
21:49
Speaker 1: for a living, and I wanted to connect with people
21:51
Speaker 1: out there whose lives took other paths but still felt
21:55
Speaker 1: a yearning to understand and wanted more of that joy
21:59
Speaker 1: of deep connection with the universe. To understand whether this
22:02
Speaker 1: was like a typical feeling or podcast origin story. I
22:05
Speaker 1: reached out to some fellow science podcasters to ask them
22:08
Speaker 1: about why and how they put their podcast together and
22:12
Speaker 1: how they got started. Here's Sean Carroll, well known author
22:15
Speaker 1: and podcaster. Well, actually, let me let him introduce himself.
22:19
Speaker 4: I'm just a person trying to understand how the universe
22:22
Speaker 4: works in various ways and trying to share whatever I
22:24
Speaker 4: figure out with other people. So my title is hilarious.
22:29
Speaker 4: My official title is Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at
22:33
Speaker 4: Johns Hopkins University and Fractal Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute.
22:37
Speaker 4: So that's a mouthful and it captures the fact that
22:41
Speaker 4: here at Johns Hopkins I serve both as a physicist
22:46
Speaker 4: and a philosopher, and at Santa Fe I can think
22:49
Speaker 4: about complexity in the wider world. And of course, in
22:51
Speaker 4: addition to my day job as a professor and researcher,
22:54
Speaker 4: I also write books and give talks, and I have
22:57
Speaker 4: a podcast called Mindscape.
22:58
Speaker 1: I also talked to Dan Hooper and Shalma Wegsman, hosts
23:01
Speaker 1: of Why This Universe, another of my favorite podcasts.
23:05
Speaker 5: I'm Shalma. I'm one of us two co hosts of
23:08
Speaker 5: Why This Universe, and I also edit and produce it.
23:11
Speaker 5: And so I guess a little bit about me. My
23:13
Speaker 5: day job right now is actually I work in video games.
23:17
Speaker 5: My backgrounds and physics obviously, I have a master as
23:20
Speaker 5: I started my PhD, but I left academia to pursue
23:24
Speaker 5: some like more media related interests of mine.
23:27
Speaker 6: I'm Dan Hooper. I have a research position at the
23:32
Speaker 6: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, so this is kind of the
23:35
Speaker 6: US premiere particle physics lab. And I also have a
23:41
Speaker 6: professorship at the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at University
23:44
Speaker 6: of Chicago. So I teach some classes, I advise grad
23:47
Speaker 6: students that sort of thing, and generally just do research
23:51
Speaker 6: on kind of the interface of particle physics in cosmology,
23:55
Speaker 6: so some hey energy astrophysics, some early universe stuff. Dark
23:59
Speaker 6: matter is kind of the thing I'm most known for.
24:01
Speaker 6: Those are the sorts of things that keep me up
24:03
Speaker 6: at night.
24:03
Speaker 1: So then I asked John why he spends his very
24:06
Speaker 1: valuable time on a podcast.
24:08
Speaker 4: Anytime that someone asks why I do something, the honest
24:11
Speaker 4: answer is because I think it's fun, unless it's something
24:13
Speaker 4: that I just literally need to do for other obligation purposes.
24:17
Speaker 4: So when I wrote a book of mine called The
24:20
Speaker 4: Big Picture back in twenty sixteen, it was about many
24:24
Speaker 4: different topics, including philosophy and neuroscience and biology, and I
24:28
Speaker 4: got to, you know, email big names in different fields
24:33
Speaker 4: and say hey, could we chat. I'm writing a book.
24:35
Speaker 4: You know, the book was sort of a license to
24:36
Speaker 4: get me into their offices and have them give me
24:39
Speaker 4: some time. And then the book went away. I finished
24:41
Speaker 4: with it, and I no longer had a reason to
24:43
Speaker 4: call people up and talk to them. And so someone
24:46
Speaker 4: pointed out that if I had a podcast, I could
24:49
Speaker 4: do that, And so really, for me, my benefit of
24:52
Speaker 4: the podcast is that I get to talk to a
24:55
Speaker 4: bunch of people who are very smart and interesting in
24:58
Speaker 4: very different fields.
25:00
Speaker 5: Yours, Dan and shelma answering the same question, I mean,
25:03
Speaker 5: I love it as a way to keep my foot
25:05
Speaker 5: in the physics store, in the physics world, you know,
25:08
Speaker 5: stay really like on top of physics. Yeah.
25:11
Speaker 6: So, I mean, I'm always been a person who has
25:16
Speaker 6: like their main, you know, day job, and then a
25:18
Speaker 6: bunch of side projects. I'm a side project guy. So
25:23
Speaker 6: in physics that might be writing books, and I've written several.
25:27
Speaker 6: I'm in the process of finishing a graduate level textbook
25:30
Speaker 6: now that's my current side project. I play music, so
25:33
Speaker 6: I'm always in a band or two and blank shows
25:36
Speaker 6: and working on that. And some years ago, like I
25:39
Speaker 6: just was a big consumer of podcasts.
25:42
Speaker 1: I listened to a lot of them.
25:44
Speaker 6: And I thought there was space in the podcast you know,
25:48
Speaker 6: ecosystem for something different in the physics science area.
25:53
Speaker 1: I also asked Katie Golden, who you know as a
25:55
Speaker 1: frequent guest host on this podcast, how she got into podcasting.
25:59
Speaker 7: Actually, we had no idea I would was going to
26:02
Speaker 7: get into podcasting. I had always kind of secretly wanted to.
26:05
Speaker 7: When I started listening to podcasts, it just seemed like
26:09
Speaker 7: so fun to have these kinds of conversations. So I
26:13
Speaker 7: got into comedy educational writing for a online magazine called Cracked,
26:21
Speaker 7: and then after that I kind of just like got
26:26
Speaker 7: approach to come up with an idea for a podcast.
26:30
Speaker 1: Because you're a funny person, because.
26:32
Speaker 7: You're yeah, I mean it's because I kept harassing people
26:37
Speaker 7: until no.
26:38
Speaker 8: I yeah.
26:39
Speaker 7: Actually, well, actually the whole way I got started in
26:42
Speaker 7: comedy writing was a Twitter account, which sounds kind of lame.
26:47
Speaker 1: Oh yes, the well born Twitter bird parody, Acount two
26:51
Speaker 1: podcast pipeline exactly exactly.
26:54
Speaker 7: It's actually it's a very bizarre path one that I
26:59
Speaker 7: I It was not like a grand scheme or a
27:01
Speaker 7: grand plan. I never planned at all. It was just hey,
27:05
Speaker 7: I like this thing, and hey I like that thing,
27:07
Speaker 7: much like a small bird getting distracted by shiny objects.
27:12
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I actually did some research for this
27:14
Speaker 1: interview because you and I actually know a few people
27:17
Speaker 1: randomly in common.
27:19
Speaker 7: Oh really.
27:19
Speaker 1: I spoke to somebody who went to college with you.
27:21
Speaker 1: What and she said, quote, Katie seemed very quiet in college,
27:25
Speaker 1: so I was sort of surprised when she became a podcaster.
27:28
Speaker 2: She's great, who said this?
27:32
Speaker 1: This is my friend Jane Baldwin was a professor here
27:35
Speaker 1: at UC Irvine.
27:36
Speaker 7: I know Jane Baldwin.
27:38
Speaker 4: What the heck?
27:40
Speaker 7: I was a bridesmaid with her.
27:42
Speaker 9: What the heck?
27:43
Speaker 7: I am? Wow, this is I was not expecting to
27:48
Speaker 7: like have basically a Jerry Springer moment here.
27:52
Speaker 1: And I asked Sean what keeps him going after several
27:56
Speaker 1: years of podcasting?
27:57
Speaker 4: I have a lot of support I got I have
27:59
Speaker 4: both as and you know, Patreon supporters, and so now
28:03
Speaker 4: I get paid to do the podcast. And so I
28:05
Speaker 4: say this as a joke, but it's totally true, Like
28:08
Speaker 4: the money that comes through to there keeps me going
28:11
Speaker 4: at the podcast. Like I could much more easily give
28:14
Speaker 4: it up if I just you know, I like doing it,
28:17
Speaker 4: so I'm not trying to imply that i want to
28:19
Speaker 4: give it up. But sometimes it's work and I have
28:21
Speaker 4: other things to do.
28:22
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's a good point. We all have other
28:25
Speaker 1: things to do. Sean and Dan, like me, are also
28:28
Speaker 1: full time physicists. I personally run a research group of
28:31
Speaker 1: around twelve thirteen people, meaning I'm responsible for finding funding
28:35
Speaker 1: for them and leading their research and guiding their careers.
28:39
Speaker 1: And we're pretty productive little group. We put out ten
28:41
Speaker 1: to twelve papers every year. Top of that, I teach
28:44
Speaker 1: three classes here at u SEE Irvine, which is no
28:47
Speaker 1: small time commitment. And you might have heard that Jorge
28:49
Speaker 1: and I were also creating and launching a public television
28:52
Speaker 1: science show during this time. So when we were thinking
28:55
Speaker 1: about taking this on, I wanted to make sure that
28:57
Speaker 1: I could do it while managing everything else going on.
29:01
Speaker 1: For me, that meant leaning heavily on what we learned
29:04
Speaker 1: during our book talk, which means winging it. The podcast
29:07
Speaker 1: was going to have to be unscripted, relying on us
29:10
Speaker 1: to say interesting things in the moment based on a
29:12
Speaker 1: very rough outline, and relying on our editor Corey to
29:16
Speaker 1: clean it up and make it all sound good. You'll
29:18
Speaker 1: hear from him in a minute what that's like and
29:21
Speaker 1: how hard it is. I think that this makes our
29:23
Speaker 1: podcast different from a lot of others that you might
29:25
Speaker 1: listen to this American Life Radio lab. Most of these
29:29
Speaker 1: podcasts are scripted. They write down what they're going to say.
29:33
Speaker 1: Here's a conversation I had with Joel Werner, supervising producer
29:36
Speaker 1: on the very well produced podcast Science Versus. So thanks
29:41
Speaker 1: very much for having a chat with me. First, I
29:43
Speaker 1: want to ask you to introduce yourself. What are your titles,
29:46
Speaker 1: what's your background? How do you describe yourself?
29:48
Speaker 10: Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. My name's
29:50
Speaker 10: Joel Werner. I'm a science journalist. I've been a science
29:53
Speaker 10: journalist for like a long time now.
29:55
Speaker 1: Over a decade.
29:56
Speaker 10: I'm the supervising producer at Science Versus. And before that
30:01
Speaker 10: I worked at the ABC, the Australian ABC, SO which
30:04
Speaker 10: is like the BBC for the bottom side of the world,
30:08
Speaker 10: not like the ABC in America.
30:10
Speaker 1: There's no top side and bottom side. This is true.
30:14
Speaker 10: As soon as I came out of my mouth, I
30:16
Speaker 10: was like, Wow, this is bait tour to someone like you.
30:21
Speaker 1: So you're a science journalist at heart. How did you
30:23
Speaker 1: get into podcasting and how did you end up working
30:26
Speaker 1: on Science Versus?
30:27
Speaker 10: Just earlier this year, joined Wendy and the team at
30:30
Speaker 10: Science Versus, which is as Science Versus has been one
30:34
Speaker 10: of my favorite podcasts for a long time. So yeah,
30:36
Speaker 10: big dream to come and work with that team.
30:39
Speaker 1: Well, that's so exciting when people get to like live
30:41
Speaker 1: their dreams. So tell us about the team there, because
30:43
Speaker 1: our podcast has a very small team. It's basically just
30:46
Speaker 1: a couple of hosts and editor and our producers don't
30:49
Speaker 1: like get very involved in the creative stuff. The sense
30:52
Speaker 1: just from looking at your website you have a much
30:54
Speaker 1: more extensive team over there. How big is what are
30:56
Speaker 1: the various roles? How does that all work?
30:58
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's a bigger team than I've ever worked one
31:00
Speaker 10: before to make a show. So Wendy Zuckerman, she created
31:05
Speaker 10: the show, she's the executive producer, she's the host, she's
31:08
Speaker 10: our north star. You know, I feel like Wendy lives
31:12
Speaker 10: and breathes Science Versus and really kind of understands the
31:15
Speaker 10: program brief like so deeply, which is really great coming
31:20
Speaker 10: onto a show. It's wonderful to have someone who just
31:22
Speaker 10: understands the DNA of that show like Wendy does. Blithe
31:26
Speaker 10: Terrell is our editor, so blithe so has that sort
31:31
Speaker 10: of like really zoomed out editorial eye over literally everything
31:35
Speaker 10: to do with the show. She's kind of like the
31:39
Speaker 10: stop gap for any of those tricky editorial moments, and
31:43
Speaker 10: she just also like kind of is the glue that
31:45
Speaker 10: holds the team together.
31:47
Speaker 1: What's a tricky editorial moment? Ah, good question.
31:50
Speaker 10: Let me think about one from my episode. Okay, So
31:55
Speaker 10: I did an episode about AI and in a storyline
31:59
Speaker 10: that didn't actually end up making it to air, there
32:02
Speaker 10: was a question about whether I could make one of
32:06
Speaker 10: my sources anonymous, so all of that kind of stuff.
32:10
Speaker 10: Then there's a team of producers. So, like I said,
32:13
Speaker 10: I'm the supervising producer. We have a couple of senior producers,
32:17
Speaker 10: Merril Horn and Rose Rimmler. Michelle Dang is a producer,
32:21
Speaker 10: and then we have an We've had an intern Ari
32:25
Speaker 10: Nadowitz as well. So yeah, like kind of a big
32:28
Speaker 10: production team as well. And usually, like producers, Wendy and
32:32
Speaker 10: the producers each kind of lead an episode.
32:35
Speaker 1: So tell us about how an episode comes together. I
32:38
Speaker 1: was listening to the startup podcast about how Gimlet Media
32:42
Speaker 1: came together, and there's a moment there where Bloomberg calls
32:45
Speaker 1: Gimlet Media shows quote obsessively crafted and highly produced. Tell
32:49
Speaker 1: us what that means.
32:50
Speaker 10: Yeah, that's true, that's very true. So like from yeah,
32:54
Speaker 10: like how the sausage is made right, Like, let's start
32:56
Speaker 10: start at the beginning of the production line. So we're
33:00
Speaker 10: kind of in that moment now, Like we're in between
33:03
Speaker 10: seasons at the moment, so everyone's working on pitches for
33:07
Speaker 10: the new season, and so that's a lot of firstly,
33:10
Speaker 10: like idea generation, Like I'm sure all of the producers,
33:13
Speaker 10: like I have a list, I have a kind of
33:15
Speaker 10: rolling Google doc of story ideas that I want to cover,
33:20
Speaker 10: and I'm sure all the producers have something similar. And
33:23
Speaker 10: so then it's kind of like picking something to focus on.
33:27
Speaker 10: It might be like there's something in the zeitgeist, there's
33:30
Speaker 10: something happening now as there is, and you're choosing it.
33:32
Speaker 10: There's some really interesting research choosing that going and chatting
33:36
Speaker 10: to a bunch of people. So I'm working on a
33:38
Speaker 10: story idea at the moment, I probably emailed about like
33:42
Speaker 10: I don't know, like twenty ish people yesterday, I'm lining
33:46
Speaker 10: up a whole bunch of conversations over the next few weeks,
33:49
Speaker 10: like doing all of those background chats to develop a pitch.
33:53
Speaker 11: Then we pitched that idea to the team. The pitch
33:57
Speaker 11: either gets.
33:58
Speaker 10: Like greenlit, that sounds great, go ahead, it gets rejected
34:03
Speaker 10: we don't like the idea for this reason, go and
34:05
Speaker 10: find another idea, or there's an amble light as well,
34:07
Speaker 10: where it's like, yeah, we think this could work, but
34:10
Speaker 10: like you might need to do X, Y and Z
34:12
Speaker 10: to get it across the line.
34:13
Speaker 1: So does that mean that you're doing a whole bunch
34:15
Speaker 1: of interviews before you even know what story you're telling.
34:18
Speaker 1: You're just like going out there and doing basic journalism
34:20
Speaker 1: like what's going on here? Looking for a story to emerge.
34:23
Speaker 10: Yeap, doing background interviews like reading papers, like reading lots
34:28
Speaker 10: and lots of papers.
34:29
Speaker 1: And are you recording those background interviews? Do they ever
34:31
Speaker 1: end up in the actual show?
34:33
Speaker 12: Like not for me.
34:35
Speaker 10: I'm sure there have been instances where a background interview
34:38
Speaker 10: has ended up in the show, But for like the
34:40
Speaker 10: AI episode I did last season, I interviewed up with
34:44
Speaker 10: the twenty people on background, and then I probably did
34:48
Speaker 10: formal interviews with about five of those people, and about
34:51
Speaker 10: three of those interviews made it into the show, So
34:54
Speaker 10: there's a lot of a lot of work going on
34:56
Speaker 10: behind the scenes. It's the classic you know, like the
34:59
Speaker 10: dark top of the water looks very calm, but underneath
35:02
Speaker 10: the water the lexa, the Lexa swimming frantically.
35:06
Speaker 1: So does that mean that you've done all the research
35:08
Speaker 1: to get sort of the rough outline of the story
35:10
Speaker 1: and then you do the sort of final interviews those interviews.
35:13
Speaker 1: Are you trying to get people to say the things
35:15
Speaker 1: you need them to say to tell the story you
35:17
Speaker 1: want to say, or are you still doing some.
35:19
Speaker 10: Exploration, like a bit of both, a bit of both,
35:22
Speaker 10: Like usually by that stage, well you know the story
35:25
Speaker 10: that got green with I'm terribly bad at phishing in interviews,
35:31
Speaker 10: so I'm a big tangent explorer, and if there's any
35:35
Speaker 10: I'll follow any loose thread and just pull and pull
35:37
Speaker 10: and pull in any interview. So it's about getting that
35:41
Speaker 10: information on tape, But it's also about, like, especially for
35:44
Speaker 10: a show like Science Versus, it's trying to get those
35:48
Speaker 10: moments captured on tape. So more than information, it's about
35:52
Speaker 10: like trying to have a moment that's funny or enlightening
35:57
Speaker 10: or meaningful or like something that one of those we
36:00
Speaker 10: call them like lean in moments, Right, So you're trying
36:02
Speaker 10: to kind of like have those very human moments that
36:06
Speaker 10: as a listener to podcast, you're like, oh wow, okay,
36:08
Speaker 10: this is getting juicy. Now I want to know what's
36:10
Speaker 10: going on. And so we're trying to trying to get
36:12
Speaker 10: those moments on tape, because that's the thing you can't,
36:16
Speaker 10: Like we can go and read a paper and we
36:18
Speaker 10: can write a few lines that fill in a factory
36:21
Speaker 10: point that we need, but you can't manufacture those like
36:24
Speaker 10: kind of very human moments that you have in interviews.
36:27
Speaker 1: And then the episode itself is structured with all these interviews,
36:30
Speaker 1: but then there's a lot of narration. Wendy does some
36:32
Speaker 1: you know, talking to the audience. Is that part scripted?
36:35
Speaker 1: Is that written before she reads it? Does she ever
36:38
Speaker 1: go off script?
36:38
Speaker 13: Yeah?
36:39
Speaker 10: So basically, like once we've done the interviews, we have
36:41
Speaker 10: like hours and hours of tape, we go and edit
36:43
Speaker 10: that tape and structure it out in like how we
36:46
Speaker 10: think the interview is going to go in the past,
36:49
Speaker 10: how it happened, was that like Wendy and the producer
36:51
Speaker 10: would then write script for her to read. But this season,
36:55
Speaker 10: we've changed the way that we work and we're now
36:58
Speaker 10: doing all of that in conversation. So it's not like
37:01
Speaker 10: it's not scripted scripted, it's like, we'll have dot points,
37:06
Speaker 10: we'll go, Okay, this is what we want to achieve
37:08
Speaker 10: in this section. But then like you and I are
37:10
Speaker 10: speaking now without a script. Sorry to break the illusion
37:14
Speaker 10: for anyone listening that this isn't heavily scripted, but yeah,
37:18
Speaker 10: like and then we'll we'll go through and we'll we'll
37:22
Speaker 10: like have that conversation and again trying to capture those
37:25
Speaker 10: really human moments.
37:27
Speaker 1: Wow, and so you boil down a huge amount of
37:30
Speaker 1: information into these fairly compact episodes. Well, it's great to
37:34
Speaker 1: hear that the climate of podcasting is moving towards conversation
37:36
Speaker 1: because we can't do scripted podcasts. We don't have the time,
37:39
Speaker 1: and we're also not very good at reading scripts. I mean,
37:43
Speaker 1: nobody could write the kind of terrible jokes that we
37:45
Speaker 1: make anyway. They only work if they're spontaneous. Tell me
37:48
Speaker 1: about the process of vetting the episodes, because you've talked
37:51
Speaker 1: to a bunch of experts and then you boil it
37:53
Speaker 1: down and we all know that like the process of
37:55
Speaker 1: explaining science in general public involves, you know, simplifications and approximation.
38:00
Speaker 1: Do you then go and make sure that your final
38:02
Speaker 1: output doesn't make the experts queasy, you send it back
38:06
Speaker 1: out to them and ask them for opinions.
38:08
Speaker 10: I mean, I think as a science journalist, like the
38:12
Speaker 10: biggest strength of Science Versus is just the depth of
38:16
Speaker 10: research that the show engages in. So like everywhere I've
38:20
Speaker 10: worked has always had quite rigorous fact checking, Like you
38:24
Speaker 10: kind of don't put anything out with at least getting
38:27
Speaker 10: you know, another expert in the field, an independent expert
38:30
Speaker 10: to vet the person that you're talking to and to
38:33
Speaker 10: kind of like you might give someone a call and go, look,
38:36
Speaker 10: these ideas aren't super fringy, are they, you know, just
38:38
Speaker 10: to kind of look for those red flags. But for
38:40
Speaker 10: Science Versus, Like, I mean, there's a citation count at
38:43
Speaker 10: the end of each episode, we're routinely referencing like hundreds
38:49
Speaker 10: of research papers literally everything in the show, Like as
38:53
Speaker 10: we're building the script where footnoting and you can see
38:57
Speaker 10: these scripts. There's a link to the transcripts in the
39:00
Speaker 10: show notes of each episode and so you can go
39:02
Speaker 10: through and see like literally every point we make has
39:05
Speaker 10: to be backed up by some piece of research. And
39:09
Speaker 10: then we have an independent fact checker for each episode
39:12
Speaker 10: as well, So they come on for the episode for
39:14
Speaker 10: a week. They're not connected to the team, they don't like,
39:18
Speaker 10: you know, they're not part of the kind of production process.
39:21
Speaker 10: So they come in cold and they're a professional fact checker.
39:24
Speaker 10: So they go through the script and they look at
39:26
Speaker 10: the referencing, and they ask really hard questions and they
39:31
Speaker 10: put they push us to be kind of really definitive
39:34
Speaker 10: about everything that we're saying and how we're supporting it
39:37
Speaker 10: and and yeah, like I said, it's the thing that
39:41
Speaker 10: Science Versus does that no other show I've worked on,
39:44
Speaker 10: Like I've worked on a bunch of shows, and like
39:46
Speaker 10: nothing else has ever come to the level of fact
39:48
Speaker 10: checking that this show does. And yeah, I'm really proud
39:52
Speaker 10: to be part of it now because it's you know,
39:54
Speaker 10: I think it does that thing that that science does
39:57
Speaker 10: so well. It kind of brings in evidence base to
40:01
Speaker 10: the thing you're trying to explain to the world. And yeah, yeah,
40:05
Speaker 10: I think this show does it really well.
40:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, Wow, congratulations, that's an amazing process. It sounds like
40:11
Speaker 1: it's more deeply vetted than probably a lot of the
40:13
Speaker 1: papers you're relying.
40:16
Speaker 10: I was joking to my wife, I was saying, like, wow,
40:19
Speaker 10: every episode feels like a litter review fasis. I'm like,
40:23
Speaker 10: should we just go and get a pitchd now.
40:28
Speaker 1: Well, thanks for all the work that you do and
40:30
Speaker 1: for Science Versus and for taking some time to talk
40:32
Speaker 1: to me. It's been very educational.
40:34
Speaker 10: Look, thank you for your podcast as well. I think
40:36
Speaker 10: the more science podcasts we have in the world the better.
40:38
Speaker 10: And yeah, it's a real pleasure to come and chat
40:40
Speaker 10: to you today.
40:41
Speaker 1: Wonderful. Thank you. So, as you heard from that conversation,
40:43
Speaker 1: they have a big team. They do huge amounts of
40:46
Speaker 1: background research and piece the episode together from an enormous
40:50
Speaker 1: number of hours and hours of conversation. But we can't
40:53
Speaker 1: do that on this show. We just don't have the
40:55
Speaker 1: staff or frankly, the free time. We're literally just recording
40:58
Speaker 1: two guys having a conversation about science that I roughly
41:01
Speaker 1: sketched out, and then leaning heavily on our editor to
41:03
Speaker 1: clean it up and pull it together. Mindscape, Sean Carroll's
41:07
Speaker 1: podcast is even more extreme. Sean told me he's just
41:10
Speaker 1: a team of one. He does it all, from research
41:14
Speaker 1: to editing. Here's Sean talking about how an episode comes together.
41:18
Speaker 4: Forgot the part where I do research. You know, sometimes
41:20
Speaker 4: I don't need to when I'm talking to someone who
41:24
Speaker 4: is in my field and I can just talk with them.
41:25
Speaker 4: But if I'm talking to someone in economics or neuroscience,
41:29
Speaker 4: I need to read their book or whatever. Hopefully that
41:31
Speaker 4: doesn't take too long. If it's too much, then and
41:33
Speaker 4: I won't have them on in the first place, and
41:36
Speaker 4: then I edited together. It's usually not that much. I'm
41:38
Speaker 4: not even listening, honestly to the whole podcast. I just
41:41
Speaker 4: don't have time or patients to do that. But I
41:43
Speaker 4: will listen to enough of it to get a feeling
41:45
Speaker 4: for the audio quality.
41:46
Speaker 1: So Sean just records natural conversations and edits them together.
41:50
Speaker 1: Dan and Shawma from Why This Universe have a slightly
41:53
Speaker 1: more involved production process.
41:55
Speaker 6: In my desk drawer my home office, I have a
41:58
Speaker 6: list of like maybe future Why This Universe episodes from
42:01
Speaker 6: these brainstorming sessions. But then like I'll pick one of
42:03
Speaker 6: them and I'll spend a week or two kind of
42:07
Speaker 6: researching it. Some of these things I already know a
42:10
Speaker 6: lot about and like researching it really is just kind
42:12
Speaker 6: of like writing down my thoughts and like I put
42:15
Speaker 6: it down, like just type a bunch of things down
42:17
Speaker 6: in a word file, and I kind of use that
42:19
Speaker 6: as notes.
42:20
Speaker 5: Yeah, often I'm like asking questions. I'm trying to kind
42:23
Speaker 5: of predict what people's reactions will be, where confusions will
42:27
Speaker 5: come up. You know, sometimes we'll say something and I'm like, wait,
42:31
Speaker 5: that like might confuse people based on things we've said
42:34
Speaker 5: in the past, you know, things like that, And then
42:36
Speaker 5: I we like discuss ways to clarify things, add things.
42:40
Speaker 5: I like give myself notes so often I'm the parts
42:43
Speaker 5: that I add in. I often add in after this conversations.
42:47
Speaker 1: So now you've heard a little bit about the production
42:49
Speaker 1: process on other podcasts, from the one man show of
42:52
Speaker 1: Mindscape to the small team of Why This Universe and
42:55
Speaker 1: the large team at Science Versus. So now let's get
42:58
Speaker 1: into the nitty gritty of how an episode of Daniel
43:00
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe is made. First, I find
43:03
Speaker 1: a topic. I have this file on my computer which
43:06
Speaker 1: is just a raw list of ideas. Every time I
43:09
Speaker 1: get a flash of inspiration or hear about a new
43:11
Speaker 1: cool result, or get a suggestion from a listener, or
43:14
Speaker 1: think about a moment when I was a student where
43:16
Speaker 1: understanding you just click together and I feel like I
43:18
Speaker 1: learned something deep about the universe. They just go on
43:21
Speaker 1: the raw ideal list. I probably add like five ideas
43:24
Speaker 1: every week, but not everything on that raw list makes
43:28
Speaker 1: it out of the show. Then at the start of
43:29
Speaker 1: each week, I look through the list and I pick
43:32
Speaker 1: three to go into the official rotation. It just depends on,
43:35
Speaker 1: you know, what I'm in the mood to talk about,
43:37
Speaker 1: or think about or feel inspired to explain. So, for example,
43:41
Speaker 1: this week, the three on the top of the raw
43:43
Speaker 1: pile were these questions one what is a maser? Two?
43:48
Speaker 1: How were neutrinos discovered? And three is Helion's fusion technology realistic?
43:53
Speaker 1: And honestly, I don't even remember putting those questions on
43:56
Speaker 1: the list, but they sounded good to me, so they
43:59
Speaker 1: went into the back of the rotation. The next step
44:01
Speaker 1: is to get the listener feedback. This is one of
44:04
Speaker 1: my favorite parts of the podcast. Early on, I just
44:07
Speaker 1: wanted to get a feeling for what the general public
44:09
Speaker 1: might know about a particular topic and might want to
44:11
Speaker 1: hear about, so that I could pitch the show at
44:14
Speaker 1: the right level, make sure I didn't go too shallow
44:16
Speaker 1: or too deep. So at first I was just walking
44:19
Speaker 1: around campus here you see Irvin and asking people the
44:22
Speaker 1: question of the episode, to see what they said and
44:24
Speaker 1: what they knew, you know. The responses that were always
44:27
Speaker 1: wonderful to listen to and often way off, but they
44:30
Speaker 1: were always entertaining, and listeners really responded to this segment.
44:34
Speaker 1: A few wrote in to say that they wish they
44:36
Speaker 1: were on campus when I was walking around so they
44:38
Speaker 1: could get a chance, And so I started occasionally including
44:41
Speaker 1: listener responses via email. Then, of course the pandemic hit
44:45
Speaker 1: and campus and everything else closed down, and so I
44:48
Speaker 1: reached out to a bunch of listeners over email to
44:50
Speaker 1: invite them to participate, and started to solicit volunteers on
44:53
Speaker 1: the podcast, and suddenly we were hearing from people all
44:57
Speaker 1: over the world. I loved it. It was like a
44:59
Speaker 1: little glimp send to all of these people's lives, people
45:02
Speaker 1: who are listening to our podcast and wanting to talk
45:05
Speaker 1: back to us a little bit. And now, of course,
45:07
Speaker 1: you see Irvine is open again. But frankly, I prefer
45:10
Speaker 1: to be pulling our listeners because I love that it
45:12
Speaker 1: makes the podcast be too directional. I get to hear
45:16
Speaker 1: back from you, and you all get to hear a
45:17
Speaker 1: little bit from each other. So I send the questions
45:20
Speaker 1: out to whoever volunteers that week, but the questions I'm
45:23
Speaker 1: asking people one week won't appear on the show for
45:26
Speaker 1: months and months. Sometimes listeners respond within a day, sometimes
45:29
Speaker 1: they take weeks or months to get back to me.
45:31
Speaker 1: And so while listeners feedback is trickling in for an
45:34
Speaker 1: episode on the back of the rotation, I start working
45:37
Speaker 1: on episodes to record that week, Taking two episodes from
45:41
Speaker 1: the front of the rotation. The episodes we're going to
45:43
Speaker 1: record that week join the back of the list many
45:45
Speaker 1: many weeks ago, so I already have listener comments to
45:48
Speaker 1: help me shape those episodes. The number of topics currently
45:50
Speaker 1: in the rotation between the front where episodes are being
45:53
Speaker 1: recorded in the back, where new episodes are being added
45:56
Speaker 1: and listener are being queried, is about one hundred episodes.
45:59
Speaker 1: That's the year's worth of episodes I already have roughly
46:02
Speaker 1: planned out. I need that kind of buffer in case
46:05
Speaker 1: something else happens in my life that demands all my attention,
46:08
Speaker 1: because I never want to be scrambling to come up
46:10
Speaker 1: with episode ideas. So this week, at the very front
46:13
Speaker 1: of the rotation are these questions, one why do moving
46:17
Speaker 1: objects look shorter? And two how do we measure the
46:20
Speaker 1: mass of the Higgs? The next step for me is
46:22
Speaker 1: to write an outline. This is like two pages, and
46:25
Speaker 1: I usually organize it in a few sections, starting with
46:27
Speaker 1: like what is the thing we're talking about? And then
46:30
Speaker 1: how does it work? And ending with what does it mean?
46:33
Speaker 1: But the outline is not a script at all. It's
46:35
Speaker 1: just a few bullet points with what I think are
46:37
Speaker 1: the most interesting bits, some basic science explainer. And when
46:41
Speaker 1: I'm preparing an episode, the part that I think most
46:43
Speaker 1: about is not the physics, not like how does it work?
46:47
Speaker 1: But how to explain it? Try to think about the
46:49
Speaker 1: analogies I'll use to convey these ideas. I'll try to
46:54
Speaker 1: think about how to walk people through so the idea
46:56
Speaker 1: is click together in their minds and really make sense.
46:59
Speaker 1: And then I try to anticipate what Orge might ask,
47:02
Speaker 1: what might be confusing or need another analogy to back
47:05
Speaker 1: it up. At this point, after so many years of
47:07
Speaker 1: talking to him, I have something like a little mini
47:09
Speaker 1: simulated hooge in my brain, and I ask simulated Jorge
47:13
Speaker 1: to suggest what real Hogey might ask me, so I
47:16
Speaker 1: can try to prepare myself, and then I think about
47:19
Speaker 1: ways to answer those questions without just saying, look, it's
47:22
Speaker 1: in the math, or trust me. Try to think of
47:24
Speaker 1: ways to really convey those ideas. Because to explain something
47:28
Speaker 1: in a clear way that's simple and understandable, you have
47:31
Speaker 1: to understand it like two or three or four, five
47:34
Speaker 1: levels deeper. So you can come up with analogies that
47:36
Speaker 1: capture that intuitive understanding, but don't oversimplify it and don't
47:40
Speaker 1: mislead anybody. Preparing the outline isn't always a lot of work.
47:43
Speaker 1: Sometimes I can sit down and write it down in
47:45
Speaker 1: ten minutes. If it's something I know back to front,
47:48
Speaker 1: like the Higgs mass episode, I know all about how
47:51
Speaker 1: we measure the massive particles. I think about it every day.
47:54
Speaker 1: I'm deeply engaged in it, so that just took a
47:56
Speaker 1: few minutes.
47:57
Speaker 8: Really.
47:57
Speaker 1: Sometimes if an episode is more common plex and it's
48:00
Speaker 1: on a topic that I don't think about every day,
48:03
Speaker 1: like when we talked about spinning black holes or black
48:05
Speaker 1: holes with electric charges, then I'll go and talk to
48:08
Speaker 1: somebody in my department here at you see Irvine, who
48:10
Speaker 1: knows more about it, and a frequent target of my
48:13
Speaker 1: questions is my colleague Arvind, who knows a lot about
48:16
Speaker 1: black holes in general relativity. But I also walk down
48:18
Speaker 1: the hall and talk to condensed matter experts when we
48:21
Speaker 1: talk about things like band gaps and superconductors and semiconductors,
48:25
Speaker 1: and that part is super fun for me because I'm
48:27
Speaker 1: interested in all these areas of physics, and I haven't
48:30
Speaker 1: always had an opportunity or an excuse to dig into them,
48:33
Speaker 1: so it's really a pleasure to carve out a little
48:35
Speaker 1: bit of time to read some papers on these other
48:37
Speaker 1: topics and educate myself. For me, the hardest part of
48:40
Speaker 1: preparing an episode is the cold open, those first few
48:45
Speaker 1: moments of the podcast where we introduce a topic and
48:47
Speaker 1: make a couple of jokes. That's the only scripted part
48:50
Speaker 1: of the podcast, and that's why it's so hard. Coming
48:53
Speaker 1: up with a new, silly way to start the podcast
48:55
Speaker 1: after hundreds of episodes can really be a challenge, and
48:59
Speaker 1: so for me, it's always the last part of the
49:01
Speaker 1: outline I write. So I prepared the outline and I
49:04
Speaker 1: send it to Jorge or to Katie or to Kelly
49:06
Speaker 1: the night before we record, and you'll hear from them
49:08
Speaker 1: in a minute about how they prepare and their process
49:11
Speaker 1: and experience. Then it's time to record an episode. Jorge
49:14
Speaker 1: lives in Pasadena, Katie lives in Italy, and Kelly lives
49:17
Speaker 1: in Virginia, so we're never sitting together in the same room. Instead,
49:21
Speaker 1: I call them up when we have a conversation, and
49:23
Speaker 1: we each record our audio locally personally. My setup is
49:27
Speaker 1: a nice microphone, the Sure SM seven B, which I'm
49:30
Speaker 1: told is the same microphone that Michael Jackson used to
49:33
Speaker 1: record Thriller, Not of course the same microphone, but the
49:36
Speaker 1: same model. During the pandemic, I used to record at
49:39
Speaker 1: home in my closet, but now record here in my
49:42
Speaker 1: office at UC Irvine. So we sit down and we
49:44
Speaker 1: start recording, and the outline is there to give the
49:47
Speaker 1: other host an idea of where I wanted to go.
49:50
Speaker 1: But we never feel limited by it. Sometimes we only
49:52
Speaker 1: get halfway through it because we spend most of the
49:54
Speaker 1: episode on the what is it part or backing up
49:57
Speaker 1: to explain something subtle and basic but really important. And
50:01
Speaker 1: you know, I love that my co hosts do this,
50:03
Speaker 1: that they take us off the outline when something needs
50:05
Speaker 1: to be explained, because I feel like often they're standing
50:08
Speaker 1: in for the audience, making sure to ask a question
50:11
Speaker 1: when I haven't been clear enough, or when something seems
50:13
Speaker 1: obvious to me as a physicist but really needs a
50:15
Speaker 1: few more dots to connect in the minds of listeners.
50:18
Speaker 1: And lots and lots of listeners have written in to
50:20
Speaker 1: say very specifically thank you to Jorge and Katie and
50:23
Speaker 1: Kelly for asking the exact questions they had in their
50:27
Speaker 1: mind when I explained something. So I think the unscripted
50:29
Speaker 1: nature of the podcast is key. It makes those conversations real,
50:33
Speaker 1: and also it makes it a lot less work to prepare.
50:37
Speaker 1: It also makes for moments like this where I'm trying
50:40
Speaker 1: to steer us back to the physics without much luck.
50:44
Speaker 1: What's going to happen, what's likely to happen in the
50:47
Speaker 1: next hundred years, million years, or billion.
50:49
Speaker 14: Years, m or the next hour. I mean, I don't
50:52
Speaker 14: know where this conversation is going.
50:54
Speaker 1: To be honest, the podcast does seem kind of unpredictable.
50:57
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem to matter too much what I write
50:59
Speaker 1: in the outline.
51:00
Speaker 14: Well, I think that's what happens when you put two
51:02
Speaker 14: unstable people and try to create a stable system here.
51:08
Speaker 1: And a lot of my favorite parts of an episode
51:10
Speaker 1: are those spontaneous parts, you know, the jokes that we
51:13
Speaker 1: come up with along the way. None of that is scripted,
51:16
Speaker 1: That just bubbles up out of a conversation that we're having.
51:19
Speaker 1: When I introduce myself, I always say I'm a particle
51:22
Speaker 1: physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, and then I
51:24
Speaker 1: add something else which is silly, and that's always just
51:27
Speaker 1: made up on the spot, and then we riff from
51:29
Speaker 1: there for the whole episode. I got a question about
51:31
Speaker 1: our joke writing process from somebody on Discord who said, quote,
51:36
Speaker 1: although you guys may get heckled for all your jokes,
51:38
Speaker 1: I would like to know how much of that is
51:40
Speaker 1: scripted in advance and how much is on the fly,
51:42
Speaker 1: and how you come up with your joking theme to
51:44
Speaker 1: tie into what otherwise would seem a completely unrelated physics concept. Well,
51:49
Speaker 1: it's a good question, and it's always spontaneous. It's not scripted,
51:52
Speaker 1: and it's just something that comes out of our common
51:54
Speaker 1: sense of humor and having fun together.
51:57
Speaker 15: You know.
51:57
Speaker 1: An example are these jokes who make about bananas. I'm
52:00
Speaker 1: always joking that Jorge is a huge fan of bananas,
52:02
Speaker 1: and that's mostly just me teasing him. Back when we
52:04
Speaker 1: used to give those book talks, Jorge would always disappear
52:07
Speaker 1: for five minutes before we were supposed to go on
52:09
Speaker 1: stage to have a banana and a drink and gather
52:12
Speaker 1: his thoughts. He had this routine and so I would
52:14
Speaker 1: tease him about it, and the first time I did
52:16
Speaker 1: it on their listeners responded to it. So we just
52:18
Speaker 1: kind of leaned into it and sort of made it
52:20
Speaker 1: a thing. And that's how all the humor on the
52:22
Speaker 1: show works. It just sort of like bubbles up randomly
52:24
Speaker 1: and naturally, and we follow it wherever it leads. But
52:27
Speaker 1: you know, so far, I've just been talking about my experience,
52:30
Speaker 1: and a crucial part of the podcast is that it's
52:33
Speaker 1: a conversation. It's not just the one person narrating. So
52:37
Speaker 1: I sat down with my co host to hear about
52:39
Speaker 1: their experience on the podcast, and this was a different
52:42
Speaker 1: kind of conversation that I usually have with each of them,
52:45
Speaker 1: not with their podcast physics question asking persona, but with
52:49
Speaker 1: the real them. All Right, Horge, thanks very much. We're
52:52
Speaker 1: going to answer a few questions about your experience on
52:54
Speaker 1: the podcast, And this is sort of a fun conversation
52:57
Speaker 1: because now I'm talking to like the real joege and
53:00
Speaker 1: like the PODCASTE.
53:01
Speaker 14: What do you mean there's only one?
53:03
Speaker 5: He?
53:05
Speaker 14: Wait? Are there too? Do you know of another who?
53:07
Speaker 15: He?
53:08
Speaker 1: Well, I know that the way you have a conversation
53:10
Speaker 1: on the podcast is not always the same way you
53:11
Speaker 1: have a conversation in real life. Sometimes you ask me
53:14
Speaker 1: questions about things that I know you already understand because
53:17
Speaker 1: you're standing in for the listeners.
53:18
Speaker 14: Well, I mean, I think, uh, this, I consider this
53:21
Speaker 14: a real conversation. You know, I don't think this is
53:23
Speaker 14: a fake conversation.
53:24
Speaker 1: And we're the.
53:25
Speaker 14: Only difference is we're sort of having this conversation in
53:28
Speaker 14: front of a crowd. You know, it'd be no different
53:30
Speaker 14: than like if we were on stage in front of
53:32
Speaker 14: an auditorium or you know, having a conversation for a
53:36
Speaker 14: video or something like that, where it's like a real conversation.
53:39
Speaker 14: But you know, you have also have to keep in
53:41
Speaker 14: mind that there are people listening in.
53:43
Speaker 1: And I also chatted with Katie Golden.
53:46
Speaker 7: Are you going to play real hardball with me? Ask
53:48
Speaker 7: some real like who are you really?
53:51
Speaker 1: I'm going to unmask you in this interview, Katie, we're
53:53
Speaker 1: going to do a Scooby Doo moment. No, I'd love
53:57
Speaker 1: to ask you, first of all, to introduce yourself. Anders
54:00
Speaker 1: might know you as Katie who's a co host on
54:02
Speaker 1: the podcast, but you're so much more than that. Tell
54:04
Speaker 1: us who are you, Katie?
54:06
Speaker 7: I contain multitudes. Yeah, I mean I am very, very
54:11
Speaker 7: lucky and very happy to occasionally co host on the show.
54:15
Speaker 7: It's really fun for me given that I do not
54:19
Speaker 7: have a background in physics. I actually have a background
54:22
Speaker 7: in psychology and evolutionary biology. I have another podcast called
54:29
Speaker 7: Creature Feature where I'm the one in charge. I'm the
54:32
Speaker 7: Daniel of that show.
54:36
Speaker 1: And of course I talked to Kelly Wiener Smith.
54:39
Speaker 9: Thanks for inviting me, but now you got me kind
54:41
Speaker 9: of scared. What are you going to ask me about?
54:44
Speaker 1: Of course, I wasn't trying to put them on the spot.
54:46
Speaker 1: I just wanted to know how they prepare for each episode.
54:50
Speaker 1: Here's what they had.
54:51
Speaker 14: To say, Daniel, Like work out. You know, I go
54:54
Speaker 14: for like a three mile run for our recording. Just
54:59
Speaker 14: imagine like a Rocky style montage where I'm like pull ups,
55:02
Speaker 14: hitting a punching bag. Drinking is a green smoothie. Then
55:06
Speaker 14: I meditate, I climb up a mountain, I clear my head,
55:12
Speaker 14: and then.
55:12
Speaker 1: I go and record.
55:13
Speaker 14: While Yeah, it's a whole process.
55:16
Speaker 1: Your dedication is very impressive. It's almost a full day.
55:18
Speaker 14: Yeah, no, you know. You send me the outlines the
55:23
Speaker 14: day before are recordings, and I sort of read them.
55:26
Speaker 14: I go through them and I sort of get a
55:28
Speaker 14: sense of what we're talking about, and here's Katie.
55:30
Speaker 7: I read it because I want to have a sense
55:33
Speaker 7: of where it's going. I don't want to start you
55:36
Speaker 7: on tangents that don't end up going back to our topic.
55:40
Speaker 7: If the topic has something to do with the life sciences,
55:44
Speaker 7: I might do a little bit of refresher just so
55:46
Speaker 7: that if the topic comes up that I'll kind of
55:49
Speaker 7: have ideas for good questions about it. Or if it's
55:52
Speaker 7: something where I read the notes and I'm so lost
55:55
Speaker 7: I cannot even conceive of what's about to happen, I
55:58
Speaker 7: might try to do some extra research.
56:00
Speaker 16: And Kelly, I would like to say that I do
56:03
Speaker 16: some prep, but I would be lying. I don't do
56:07
Speaker 16: any prep besides reading the outline that you send me
56:11
Speaker 16: ahead of time. And partly that's because when we were
56:13
Speaker 16: discussing whether or not I.
56:15
Speaker 9: Would be a regular co host for this podcast.
56:19
Speaker 16: We agreed that my responsibilities would include just reading.
56:23
Speaker 9: The outline and showing up.
56:25
Speaker 16: And I was making this decision at a time when
56:27
Speaker 16: I was feeling kind of overwhelmed with various projects in
56:30
Speaker 16: my life, and so I started off by doing exactly
56:34
Speaker 16: what we had agreed on, and I've kind of stuck
56:37
Speaker 16: with that. So I'll do a little bit of prep.
56:39
Speaker 16: I'll read the outline ahead of time. I'll think about
56:42
Speaker 16: whether or not I know an anecdote or you know,
56:44
Speaker 16: some funny story that might relate to the topic that
56:47
Speaker 16: I can sort of try to wedge in there. But
56:49
Speaker 16: in general, I don't do much more prep than that.
56:53
Speaker 16: Except for the episodes where we interview sci fi authors,
56:57
Speaker 16: I read those whole books and I think about what
56:59
Speaker 16: would be an interesting thing to talk to the author about,
57:02
Speaker 16: and so so I do do more prep for those,
57:04
Speaker 16: But for for the you know, more typical episodes, I
57:08
Speaker 16: do pretty much nothing.
57:09
Speaker 1: I also asked each of them about what's going through
57:12
Speaker 1: their minds during the episode, what their.
57:14
Speaker 14: Process is most I just asked you a question, and
57:17
Speaker 14: then I serve Instagram totally just kidding, No, this is
57:24
Speaker 14: that's an interesting question. I guess it is a sort
57:27
Speaker 14: of a full body thing for me. You know, I'm
57:29
Speaker 14: thinking about what you're saying. I'm thinking about what I
57:33
Speaker 14: can say, what questions I can have, what questions the
57:36
Speaker 14: audience might have, what's coming up ahead, where we are
57:39
Speaker 14: in terms of time, and whether or not, you know,
57:45
Speaker 14: maybe we need to take a hard right or hard
57:47
Speaker 14: left on whatever we're talking about, or move on. So
57:51
Speaker 14: I'm definitely sort of it's a full mental engagement, I
57:56
Speaker 14: would say, I would, you know, I don't think about
57:57
Speaker 14: the process that much. I just as I said before,
58:00
Speaker 14: I just think of it as a real conversation we're
58:02
Speaker 14: having in front of an audience of people.
58:04
Speaker 7: In general. I just read through the notes and then
58:08
Speaker 7: really try to listen attentively, and you know, just think
58:13
Speaker 7: of questions that come to me, like what am I
58:15
Speaker 7: curious about hearing more clarification on and I assume that's
58:20
Speaker 7: hopefully what the audience is also interested in learning about.
58:24
Speaker 7: So just listening with rapt attention, which is not hard
58:27
Speaker 7: when it's such interesting material.
58:30
Speaker 1: Well, I think you're really excellent at that, like listening
58:33
Speaker 1: carefully and stopping me and asking a question with something
58:35
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense, And I'm always imagining that you're standing
58:38
Speaker 1: in for the listeners who I've also lost and confused
58:41
Speaker 1: with my complicated jargon. So I really appreciate how you
58:44
Speaker 1: do that.
58:44
Speaker 7: I speak for all the confused people. I think that's
58:48
Speaker 7: that's I'm president of the confused people.
58:51
Speaker 16: Well, so you know, in the role of every person,
58:55
Speaker 16: I'd like to tell you that what I'm thinking is, Okay,
58:58
Speaker 16: what is an all audience member likely to be thinking
59:02
Speaker 16: in response to Daniel's explanation? And what follow up question
59:05
Speaker 16: should I be asking? But honestly, physics requires like one
59:09
Speaker 16: hundred and twenty percent of my brain, and so all
59:12
Speaker 16: I'm thinking is do I understand what Daniel is saying?
59:16
Speaker 16: And lucky for me, you are very clear in your explanations,
59:20
Speaker 16: so the answer is usually yes, I understand what Daniel
59:23
Speaker 16: is saying. But sometimes what I'm thinking is, Okay, this
59:27
Speaker 16: question that I have is probably profoundly stupid.
59:31
Speaker 9: How do I find a way to ask it that
59:33
Speaker 9: makes it sound a little bit intelligent?
59:36
Speaker 8: Maybe?
59:37
Speaker 16: So yeah, I guess mostly I'm just sort of listening
59:40
Speaker 16: and trying to, you know, just have a conversation with you.
59:44
Speaker 16: About physics, and it's a conversation that has rails, you know,
59:47
Speaker 16: since we've got this outline that sort of keeps us
59:49
Speaker 16: on track.
59:50
Speaker 1: And I was also curious what each of them thought.
59:53
Speaker 1: The listeners might not understand about the process since they
59:56
Speaker 1: only hear the finished product.
59:58
Speaker 14: Uh, that's a great question. And I guess just I
1:00:02
Speaker 14: wonder if people know how that it's edited, right.
1:00:05
Speaker 1: And of course you should all know that this podcast
1:00:08
Speaker 1: is edited, and we'll talk to the editor in a
1:00:10
Speaker 1: moment about what it takes to clean up all of
1:00:12
Speaker 1: our ums and aws and long positive while we check
1:00:15
Speaker 1: our facts or think again about how to explain something.
1:00:19
Speaker 7: Here's Katie Well, I hiccup all the time. No, I
1:00:25
Speaker 7: think that. I mean, one thing I think is interesting
1:00:28
Speaker 7: is that they probably don't hear how thoughtful you are
1:00:33
Speaker 7: in terms of thinking about how to phrase something. So
1:00:36
Speaker 7: like you will really think about the best way to
1:00:40
Speaker 7: describe or phrase something, and you do a really good
1:00:44
Speaker 7: job of it. I think from the listener's perspective, it
1:00:47
Speaker 7: just sounds like you're having a casual conversation, but you're
1:00:50
Speaker 7: really thoughtful in terms of I guess, giving the best
1:00:55
Speaker 7: explanation of something, and Kelly.
1:00:57
Speaker 16: I hope that they are surprised to find out that
1:01:00
Speaker 16: the conversation is sort of outlined ahead of time, because
1:01:05
Speaker 16: I think we try really hard to make our conversations
1:01:07
Speaker 16: feel natural and for them to actually be natural, but
1:01:11
Speaker 16: you know, to sort of have a final destination that
1:01:15
Speaker 16: we're hoping to get to. But the thing that might
1:01:17
Speaker 16: surprise them the most is that at the bottom of
1:01:19
Speaker 16: the outline you always write pale blue dot and then
1:01:23
Speaker 16: in like parentheses or carots, inspire humanity here. And even
1:01:28
Speaker 16: though you've figured out everything else in the outline, all
1:01:32
Speaker 16: the important facts are there, you leave that part to
1:01:36
Speaker 16: figure out on the fly. And to me, that's the
1:01:38
Speaker 16: part that I would be most likely to plan ahead
1:01:41
Speaker 16: of time because I am just I guess they don't
1:01:43
Speaker 16: think of myself as being inspirational on the.
1:01:48
Speaker 9: Fly particularly particularly well.
1:01:52
Speaker 16: But you know, at the end of every episode, I
1:01:54
Speaker 16: see that we're just about at the inspire humanity here
1:01:57
Speaker 16: part of the outline, and I always just you know,
1:02:00
Speaker 16: sit with baited breath waiting to see what are you
1:02:02
Speaker 16: going to be able to come up with on the
1:02:03
Speaker 16: fly to inspire the audience, and you you always do
1:02:07
Speaker 16: a great job, so I'm guessing that most people don't
1:02:10
Speaker 16: know that the inspirational parts are totally off the cuff.
1:02:14
Speaker 1: I personally love that pale blue dot moment in the outline.
1:02:18
Speaker 1: That was Will's original idea to end with a moment
1:02:21
Speaker 1: of inspiration. But it's hard sometimes to think of something
1:02:24
Speaker 1: meaningful and sincere to say like in advance, so I
1:02:27
Speaker 1: usually just let the conversation inspire me. And so that's
1:02:31
Speaker 1: the recording process. Well, it's time to take another quick break,
1:02:34
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we'll talk to our editor,
1:02:36
Speaker 1: who we've been working with for years and who has
1:02:38
Speaker 1: listened to countless hours of our yapping, but whose voice
1:02:42
Speaker 1: I had never heard before this conversation. After the break,
1:02:59
Speaker 1: we're back, and we talked a bit about how the
1:03:01
Speaker 1: raw substance of the podcast is put together. We're spontaneous
1:03:05
Speaker 1: and we're unscripted, and that relies on us to be
1:03:07
Speaker 1: clever and interesting in the moment, but it also relies
1:03:11
Speaker 1: on an editor to weave it together and make it
1:03:13
Speaker 1: sound good. Now, let's hear about how it gets polished
1:03:16
Speaker 1: into the final product that you hear. I called up
1:03:19
Speaker 1: our editor, Corey, who does this magic for us, and
1:03:22
Speaker 1: until this conversation. I had never spoken to him on
1:03:25
Speaker 1: the phone or in video or in person. I don't
1:03:28
Speaker 1: even know where he lives. Here's my chat with the
1:03:31
Speaker 1: mysterious Corey. So thanks very much Corey for having a
1:03:34
Speaker 1: chat with me about how the podcast comes together. We're
1:03:38
Speaker 1: giving people a little bit of a behind the scenes view.
1:03:41
Speaker 1: So first, I'd love if you introduce yourself to the listeners,
1:03:44
Speaker 1: because though you're a crucial part of the show, they
1:03:47
Speaker 1: have never until now heard your voice.
1:03:49
Speaker 11: My name is Corey Nolan. I have worked in audio
1:03:52
Speaker 11: for Gosh about twenty years now and got into podcast
1:03:56
Speaker 11: editing about three or four years ago with iHeart as
1:04:00
Speaker 11: a free lancer and was given Daniel and Jorge explain
1:04:04
Speaker 11: the universe. And that's been are we going on three years?
1:04:08
Speaker 1: The podcast is five years old? Yeah, So tell us
1:04:11
Speaker 1: a little bit about the process. What's it like for you?
1:04:13
Speaker 1: You get these files from us, and how do you
1:04:16
Speaker 1: weave that together into something? You know, I finished product
1:04:19
Speaker 1: for the listeners.
1:04:20
Speaker 11: Well, you guys get a lot of the credit because
1:04:23
Speaker 11: you stay so far in advance. I mean you put
1:04:26
Speaker 11: out two hour long shows a week. I mean that's
1:04:28
Speaker 11: that's a lot of content, you know, you deliver those files,
1:04:31
Speaker 11: you and Jorge do, or Kelly or Katie and whoever's
1:04:35
Speaker 11: guest hosting, and they just kind of go through a workflow,
1:04:39
Speaker 11: a process of just kind of cleaning it up, which
1:04:41
Speaker 11: you you know, doesn't usually take that much. With y'all's audio,
1:04:45
Speaker 11: y'all got it really nailed down, but sometimes it takes
1:04:48
Speaker 11: a little bit with guests.
1:04:49
Speaker 1: Mean neither you have to like clean it up or
1:04:51
Speaker 1: process it or balance it or what happens there.
1:04:54
Speaker 11: Well, yes and yes, and so there's one phase of
1:04:58
Speaker 11: it that is sort of a take out the room
1:05:01
Speaker 11: noise phase. That's an initial process that's sort of again,
1:05:05
Speaker 11: you and Jorge are pretty consistent now and you don't
1:05:08
Speaker 11: have a whole lot of background noise happening, but it
1:05:10
Speaker 11: helps if you're you know, you're in a room with
1:05:13
Speaker 11: wild air conditioning or something like that. So it just
1:05:15
Speaker 11: kind of removes the extra stuff that you don't want
1:05:18
Speaker 11: to hear and be annoyed by. And then from there,
1:05:21
Speaker 11: you know, it goes into the software and the program,
1:05:23
Speaker 11: which is an Adobe program that's kind of the standard
1:05:27
Speaker 11: for podcasting, and and we just yeah, we line it
1:05:30
Speaker 11: up and then it's it's just a matter of cutting,
1:05:34
Speaker 11: and then you have your own like I go through
1:05:37
Speaker 11: and have you know, Daniel has his own like effects chain.
1:05:41
Speaker 1: Oh wait, what are the Daniel effect? Is there like
1:05:43
Speaker 1: a button there like make Daniel sound smart?
1:05:46
Speaker 11: You do that just fine, which is actually maybe skipping
1:05:50
Speaker 11: a little bit ahead. Is one of every once in
1:05:53
Speaker 11: a while, I'll come across people who listen to the
1:05:55
Speaker 11: show and they think I'm really famous and also think
1:05:58
Speaker 11: I'm really smart by association, and I have to explain
1:06:02
Speaker 11: to them that it's not that's not the case. Uh yeah, you,
1:06:05
Speaker 11: I mean, you know, that's just comes from the years
1:06:07
Speaker 11: I did. I did music for still do some music,
1:06:10
Speaker 11: but but just listening and trying to find what even
1:06:14
Speaker 11: though you are recorded well and you have good equipment,
1:06:17
Speaker 11: you know, there's just some shaping that needs to happen
1:06:20
Speaker 11: to kind of fit your voices specifically, and because y'all
1:06:24
Speaker 11: record the same way unless somebody gives me a heads up.
1:06:28
Speaker 11: Three changed his setup a few months ago, but it
1:06:32
Speaker 11: just kind of went going back and just kind of
1:06:34
Speaker 11: fine tuning it to where it's still putting out the
1:06:37
Speaker 11: sound that I think is good and right. You have
1:06:40
Speaker 11: such a good low end voice that there's stuff that
1:06:42
Speaker 11: like you want to kind of beef up and bring
1:06:45
Speaker 11: out so without overdoing it. Yeah, it's kind of it's
1:06:48
Speaker 11: kind of fun to that part of it.
1:06:49
Speaker 1: So tell me about the editing process, because when we're recording,
1:06:51
Speaker 1: sometimes we'll stop repeat ourselves, but sometimes we'll just talk
1:06:54
Speaker 1: for minutes and minutes. What is your process there? You're
1:06:56
Speaker 1: listening to it very carefully and trying to like remove
1:06:59
Speaker 1: any stumbles or leuency breaks.
1:07:00
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, as mentioned as an our podcast, and
1:07:04
Speaker 11: so there's a lot of content and it's different for
1:07:08
Speaker 11: you and Jorge. I think the way as I've done
1:07:10
Speaker 11: this and kind of learned better how to show personas
1:07:14
Speaker 11: through edits, yours are very succinct. Jorges, I think it
1:07:18
Speaker 11: kind of matches the way he talks to kind of
1:07:20
Speaker 11: for it to not be like that. Now, there's things
1:07:22
Speaker 11: that have to be edited on his, probably just as
1:07:26
Speaker 11: much as they are on yours. But as far as
1:07:28
Speaker 11: how it comes across, we're not trying to make y'all
1:07:31
Speaker 11: sound exactly the same because it's just not how your
1:07:35
Speaker 11: speech comes across and how your personalities come across. But yeah,
1:07:38
Speaker 11: you can't do anything else when you're editing a podcast.
1:07:40
Speaker 11: Because you have to be paying attention to every little
1:07:44
Speaker 11: thing and even though I might miss one or two
1:07:46
Speaker 11: and listening to something, in the end, there's a lot
1:07:49
Speaker 11: of little breaks and things like that that really have
1:07:53
Speaker 11: to be lined up. So it takes your full attention
1:07:56
Speaker 11: to do it. And even at that, you know there's
1:07:58
Speaker 11: still there still kind of needs to be an oversight
1:08:01
Speaker 11: kind of process, like we have to make sure that
1:08:03
Speaker 11: nothing else was messed.
1:08:04
Speaker 1: Something I've always wondered is how much you're listening to
1:08:08
Speaker 1: the content, like the physics of it, and how much
1:08:10
Speaker 1: you're just listening to the words and the fluency in
1:08:12
Speaker 1: the language, Like are you digesting the physics also or
1:08:16
Speaker 1: is your whole brain required just to like make sure
1:08:19
Speaker 1: that everything is sounding smooth.
1:08:20
Speaker 2: Well.
1:08:21
Speaker 11: There is also another question of how much am I
1:08:24
Speaker 11: am I capable of understanding the content? And I will say,
1:08:30
Speaker 11: and I've said this to you all over email, like
1:08:32
Speaker 11: I think y'all do a fantastic job of making this
1:08:35
Speaker 11: available and accessible to average people. I do think that
1:08:39
Speaker 11: your audience in general are not generally average, and so me,
1:08:44
Speaker 11: if I am me being an average person, I there
1:08:48
Speaker 11: are certain concepts that I just don't I don't follow along,
1:08:51
Speaker 11: so I may I may make it as far as
1:08:54
Speaker 11: the content wise, and following may make it to you know,
1:08:57
Speaker 11: twenty minutes in, and then it's then it's give it
1:08:59
Speaker 11: a my head. But there are some others, like you know,
1:09:02
Speaker 11: like listener question episodes. I really love those because that's
1:09:05
Speaker 11: a little more you know, children ask those questions a
1:09:08
Speaker 11: lot of time, so I can I can kind of
1:09:10
Speaker 11: play in that ballpark. And you guys come up in
1:09:13
Speaker 11: my conversations like if I'm hanging out with friends or
1:09:15
Speaker 11: sitting around campfire or whatever. They just have made me think.
1:09:19
Speaker 11: And you know, the answers that you guys kind of
1:09:21
Speaker 11: come to you are really thought provoking and really big
1:09:25
Speaker 11: picture stuff. So you know, it just depends episode two,
1:09:28
Speaker 11: episode depends on what you are going into. But I
1:09:30
Speaker 11: will be honest and say that it's off and over
1:09:32
Speaker 11: my head.
1:09:34
Speaker 1: So does that mean that you're able to edit it
1:09:36
Speaker 1: and make it sound good and smooth even if you're
1:09:39
Speaker 1: not understanding? That seems like sort of a superpower.
1:09:43
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, let me have that. Let me have that superpower.
1:09:46
Speaker 1: So how long does it take for you to process
1:09:48
Speaker 1: one episode?
1:09:49
Speaker 11: If you are not counting the pre process, like I'll
1:09:53
Speaker 11: take a day, and you'll know those days because I'm saying, hey,
1:09:57
Speaker 11: I email you, I need this file or need this file,
1:09:59
Speaker 11: and try to get ten to twelve episodes just kind
1:10:02
Speaker 11: of knocked out. And that's where I'll go through and
1:10:04
Speaker 11: do that remove noise process and just make sure everything
1:10:08
Speaker 11: is in the correct folders, and at that point when
1:10:12
Speaker 11: I actually then go in, because it might be another
1:10:14
Speaker 11: few days before I bust into an episode. I usually
1:10:17
Speaker 11: say that if an episode ends up being forty minutes,
1:10:21
Speaker 11: it's about four hours. So it's about an hour for
1:10:24
Speaker 11: every ten minutes of final content. And you know, by comparison,
1:10:29
Speaker 11: you know, forty minute for you y'all may have recorded,
1:10:32
Speaker 11: it may have taken you fifty five minutes or something
1:10:35
Speaker 11: like that. So there's there's usually you know, ten or
1:10:39
Speaker 11: fifteen minutes something something around that range that's being removed.
1:10:44
Speaker 11: Maybe not quite that much that might be, but still
1:10:46
Speaker 11: it takes Even if those are just small second or
1:10:49
Speaker 11: few second increments, they just you know, they happen a
1:10:52
Speaker 11: good bit along the way, so it just takes a
1:10:54
Speaker 11: little bit of time.
1:10:54
Speaker 1: So I have a question for you from some of
1:10:56
Speaker 1: our listeners. I pulled some folks on discord to ask
1:10:59
Speaker 1: them what they wanted to know. But the making of
1:11:00
Speaker 1: the podcast, you know, there's been some listener feedback about
1:11:03
Speaker 1: my chuckles that I'm always laughing at Joeyes jokes. Yeah,
1:11:06
Speaker 1: And so the question for you was how many Daniel
1:11:09
Speaker 1: chuckles do you have to edit out or do you
1:11:12
Speaker 1: have to sometimes go in and add more chuckles to
1:11:14
Speaker 1: meet the required chuckle quota.
1:11:16
Speaker 11: Yeah, you know, actually I like that part of it
1:11:19
Speaker 11: because I like crafting y'all's conversation because sometimes when you're editing,
1:11:26
Speaker 11: it doesn't always I mean, the laughs are real and
1:11:29
Speaker 11: they're happening, but they they may be a little bit delayed,
1:11:32
Speaker 11: or it maybe like you're you may talk over each
1:11:35
Speaker 11: other for a second, and that's just not how we
1:11:38
Speaker 11: don't leave that stuff in on these episodes. We clean
1:11:40
Speaker 11: that up. And so like it's kind of fun to
1:11:43
Speaker 11: like move your laugh right, like as the peak of
1:11:47
Speaker 11: the joke is falling off and kind of like Daniel's
1:11:50
Speaker 11: laugh has moved over. It's just a timing thing. Again,
1:11:53
Speaker 11: it doesn't change like what actually happened. But I actually
1:11:55
Speaker 11: kind of enjoy that, And there are I would say
1:11:57
Speaker 11: there's probably more times that I'm removing Daniel's and having
1:12:01
Speaker 11: to add them in.
1:12:01
Speaker 1: No, no, oh, I can't help. But it's just so
1:12:06
Speaker 1: much fun to chat with all of our hosts about science.
1:12:09
Speaker 1: All right, Well, last question for you is what do
1:12:11
Speaker 1: you think listeners might not understand about the process from
1:12:15
Speaker 1: just hearing the finished product that goes into it.
1:12:17
Speaker 11: I mean, this isn't so much on my end, but honestly,
1:12:20
Speaker 11: I'm not just trying because you're you know, technically my boss.
1:12:23
Speaker 11: I am just really impressed by the in addition to
1:12:28
Speaker 11: the other jobs, that you have the ability to handle
1:12:31
Speaker 11: this much content and to keep coming up with content. I,
1:12:34
Speaker 11: for example, did a podcast with a buddy of mine
1:12:37
Speaker 11: with music and some other cultural things, and we did
1:12:41
Speaker 11: ten episodes and like that was it? Like coming up
1:12:45
Speaker 11: a content was like I mean, we may have have
1:12:48
Speaker 11: kept doing it, but it couldn't have done two a week.
1:12:49
Speaker 11: I couldn't have done to it in an hour.
1:12:51
Speaker 15: Yeah.
1:12:51
Speaker 11: So your ability to process that and to mind that
1:12:54
Speaker 11: out of the world. And I think that you probably
1:12:56
Speaker 11: would give your listeners credit for that too, for sure.
1:12:58
Speaker 11: I just think and if you I don't want to
1:13:00
Speaker 11: take full credit and that I would say maybe generally
1:13:03
Speaker 11: there is a whole lot that goes on that makes
1:13:06
Speaker 11: these happen before it ever gets to me. You know,
1:13:09
Speaker 11: what I do is a task, you know, at the
1:13:12
Speaker 11: end of the day. But as far as how this
1:13:15
Speaker 11: show thrives, and I think it is thriving, I think
1:13:18
Speaker 11: it does well, and I think that really comes from
1:13:22
Speaker 11: just a whole lot of work on the back end
1:13:24
Speaker 11: before I ever even see a file. And then, you know,
1:13:27
Speaker 11: I do think maybe if I were to bring myself
1:13:30
Speaker 11: into that, you know, there are some times you just
1:13:32
Speaker 11: have to be on your toes and you have to
1:13:34
Speaker 11: be able to adjust to what is happening in the world.
1:13:38
Speaker 11: And I think maybe on my side that if I
1:13:41
Speaker 11: were to give myself a little more credit on that,
1:13:43
Speaker 11: it would be you just have to be willing to adapt.
1:13:47
Speaker 11: And my life is on the road. I spend a
1:13:49
Speaker 11: lot of my time on the road, and so a
1:13:51
Speaker 11: lot of that is either happening in a hotel room
1:13:54
Speaker 11: late at night or maybe even you know, and stops
1:13:57
Speaker 11: along at the airport. And we try to do that,
1:14:00
Speaker 11: we try to plan out, but there are a lot
1:14:01
Speaker 11: of things that do need to happen because they're just
1:14:04
Speaker 11: important to the show. And so I think that a
1:14:07
Speaker 11: lot of the reason why the show is so good
1:14:10
Speaker 11: is because you just have a lot of people that
1:14:12
Speaker 11: care about the content and care about it operating a
1:14:15
Speaker 11: high quality. And that's not just talking about me. That's
1:14:18
Speaker 11: to Tyler and to the whole crew that's around this program.
1:14:22
Speaker 1: Well, I think you should take a lot of credit
1:14:24
Speaker 1: because we love the editing that you do, the way
1:14:26
Speaker 1: you stitch together our raw stuff into something that sounds
1:14:29
Speaker 1: so smooth and good and make us all let me
1:14:32
Speaker 1: know we're talking about you edit out all of our
1:14:34
Speaker 1: Wikipedia breaks. Thanks for that.
1:14:39
Speaker 11: Am I supposed to edit out the reference to the
1:14:41
Speaker 11: Wikipedia breaks?
1:14:41
Speaker 1: Now we're keeping that in. We're keeping that in. Okay, good,
1:14:45
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for the candid conversation. Really appreciate it absolutely.
1:14:48
Speaker 1: Corey talks about his editing process there, but I thought
1:14:51
Speaker 1: it'd be useful for you to hear an example of
1:14:53
Speaker 1: him doing his magic. Here's a raw clip of me
1:14:56
Speaker 1: and Jorge talking.
1:14:57
Speaker 14: To be the difference between ten to the forty nine
1:14:59
Speaker 14: truckloads or ten to the forty eight truckloads, which is
1:15:02
Speaker 14: still a lot of truckloads, which is a truckload of truckloads.
1:15:05
Speaker 1: It's still a lot of shrugloads. Yeah, exactly, And we
1:15:09
Speaker 1: try to be and we try to be careful about
1:15:11
Speaker 1: these uncertain and we try to be careful about what
1:15:13
Speaker 1: we don't know, but there's always room for surprises.
1:15:15
Speaker 6: Here.
1:15:16
Speaker 1: It is after he cleans it up to.
1:15:18
Speaker 14: Be the difference between ten to the forty nine truckloads
1:15:20
Speaker 14: or ten to the forty eight truckloads, which is still
1:15:23
Speaker 14: a lot of truckloads, which is a truckload of truckloads.
1:15:25
Speaker 1: It's still a lot of shrugloads. Yeah, exactly, And we
1:15:28
Speaker 1: try to be careful about what we don't know, but
1:15:30
Speaker 1: there's always room for surprises, right, And so in that
1:15:33
Speaker 1: clip you hear me starting and stopping again, trying to
1:15:35
Speaker 1: think about the best way to phrase something. And you
1:15:37
Speaker 1: speak differently if you know you're going to be edited,
1:15:40
Speaker 1: because if something doesn't come out right, you back up
1:15:42
Speaker 1: and you try it again, because you want the best
1:15:44
Speaker 1: possible way to say something. If you're speaking live, of course,
1:15:47
Speaker 1: that would be a very awkward way to speak. And
1:15:50
Speaker 1: so when I'm speaking in public, I don't rely on
1:15:52
Speaker 1: an editor, of course, I just speak naturally. So the
1:15:55
Speaker 1: last step in the process is the review and the
1:15:57
Speaker 1: fact checking. We don't have a huge team have its
1:16:00
Speaker 1: science versus Corey just sends me a draft of the episode.
1:16:03
Speaker 1: If it's a topic I'm not one hundred percent confident in,
1:16:06
Speaker 1: I will send it to some colleagues who are experts
1:16:09
Speaker 1: and ask them to review it to let me know
1:16:10
Speaker 1: if I've goofed up. Because while I want the podcast
1:16:13
Speaker 1: to be very accessible, it's also super important to me
1:16:17
Speaker 1: that it's accurate and that nothing I say is misleading
1:16:20
Speaker 1: to you. Occasionally I'll have to re record something and
1:16:23
Speaker 1: Corey will patch it up. Very rarely an episode requires
1:16:26
Speaker 1: major surgery because an expert tells me that I've misunderstood
1:16:29
Speaker 1: something or explained it in a misleading way. That happened,
1:16:32
Speaker 1: for example, with the quantum computing episode. Usually, though the
1:16:35
Speaker 1: episode is all good as it is and ready to post,
1:16:37
Speaker 1: probably eighty eighty five percent of the episodes don't need
1:16:40
Speaker 1: any further work or trimming. But we record episodes pretty
1:16:44
Speaker 1: far in advance. We try to keep about two months
1:16:46
Speaker 1: of buffer between recording episodes and posting them. That's like
1:16:49
Speaker 1: sixteen to twenty episodes, And you know, that gives Corey
1:16:52
Speaker 1: flexibility to edit when he's available, and it gives us
1:16:54
Speaker 1: a chance to take breaks when we need to, which
1:16:57
Speaker 1: means that by the time you hear an episode, I
1:16:59
Speaker 1: actually haven't thought about it in quite a while. But
1:17:02
Speaker 1: then it's out there and it's up to all of
1:17:03
Speaker 1: you to listen to it and to react. And we
1:17:06
Speaker 1: get lots of fun comments from listeners all over the
1:17:08
Speaker 1: world about the show. Here a few comments sent in
1:17:11
Speaker 1: by listeners.
1:17:12
Speaker 13: Hey, Daniel and Jorge, thanks the opportunity to let me
1:17:15
Speaker 13: come in about the show. This is Bob Pokers in
1:17:19
Speaker 13: my seventies, live in Silver Spring, Maryland. Been a listener
1:17:22
Speaker 13: for a couple of years now. I generally listen to
1:17:25
Speaker 13: science podcasts, and this is my go to podcast for
1:17:29
Speaker 13: some of the more esoteric stuff about science. A real
1:17:32
Speaker 13: plus about the show is that I email Daniel, not
1:17:36
Speaker 13: regularly but pretty occasional. I guess in the last couple
1:17:38
Speaker 13: of years I've probably written about ten or twelve times,
1:17:41
Speaker 13: and it's nice that he gets back to me and
1:17:43
Speaker 13: answers every question I've got, and often will lead me
1:17:45
Speaker 13: to a previous episode that covers a topic I've got
1:17:49
Speaker 13: a question about, or to an article that also covers it.
1:17:53
Speaker 13: In Layman's terms, I love the show. A long time listener,
1:17:58
Speaker 13: I planning keep on listening for as long you've got
1:18:00
Speaker 13: the podcasts.
1:18:02
Speaker 17: Get a I'm Callum from Tasmania, Australia in the Land
1:18:06
Speaker 17: down Under. I discovered the podcast a few years ago
1:18:10
Speaker 17: after googling the words physics and podcast, and I've been
1:18:13
Speaker 17: quantumly entangled ever since. I have a deep itch for
1:18:17
Speaker 17: knowledge about the universe that only Daniel.
1:18:20
Speaker 1: And Jorgey can scratch.
1:18:22
Speaker 17: Daniel delivers his profound knowledge and insights into physics in
1:18:25
Speaker 17: such a captivating and passionate way that makes you refresh
1:18:28
Speaker 17: the podcast daily in anticipation of a new episode when
1:18:32
Speaker 17: I can't sleep at two am because I'm pondering the
1:18:35
Speaker 17: effects of time dilation or how a Fineman diagram can
1:18:38
Speaker 17: help illustrate a virtual photon interaction. I know Daniel and
1:18:42
Speaker 17: Jorgey are just an electromagnetic interaction away.
1:18:46
Speaker 12: While we certainly can't explain the entire universe, yet, Daniel
1:18:51
Speaker 12: and Jrhey do a wonderful job painting that picture for
1:18:53
Speaker 12: all of us. Hey, I'm Joe, one of the many
1:18:56
Speaker 12: beastless speculators heard at the beginning of episodes. So why
1:19:00
Speaker 12: is this podcast at the top of my listening preferences?
1:19:03
Speaker 12: Simply put Daniel, Jorge and their engaging guests take topics
1:19:08
Speaker 12: from the seemingly mundane to mind bogglingly complex and bring
1:19:12
Speaker 12: them down to earth for all of us in a
1:19:14
Speaker 12: fun and accessible manner. I've learned more from this series
1:19:18
Speaker 12: than all my formal classes, but more importantly, it fosters
1:19:22
Speaker 12: an ongoing curiosity for literally every aspect of our universe.
1:19:26
Speaker 12: In some way. We're all scientists, all physicists, each with
1:19:31
Speaker 12: unique insights and questions into this vast thing we call
1:19:34
Speaker 12: the universe. Having the opportunity to contribute is a fun
1:19:38
Speaker 12: way to share knowledge or ignorance okay, mostly ignorance on
1:19:43
Speaker 12: a huge range of areas that inform our collective understanding
1:19:46
Speaker 12: of what makes it all tick. Thank you to everyone involved,
1:19:50
Speaker 12: Stay tuned for more.
1:19:52
Speaker 18: Hello Daniel and Jojo and the team around the podcast.
1:19:56
Speaker 18: I always enjoy your podcast that we questioned so very
1:19:58
Speaker 18: smoll like quirks to the biggest and hardest questions in
1:20:01
Speaker 18: the universe, no questions to strange to weird. You take
1:20:05
Speaker 18: them on any ways, with great and understandable explanations and
1:20:09
Speaker 18: comparisons with every day Pheemina. You're in near my curiosity
1:20:14
Speaker 18: about how the world works. Keep up the amazing work.
1:20:17
Speaker 18: All best Nicholas and Sweden.
1:20:19
Speaker 19: Hi, Hore and Daniel. This is Robin from Alberta, Canada.
1:20:24
Speaker 19: I love that you use your podcast to explain so
1:20:26
Speaker 19: many interesting things to your listeners. There are endless, deep,
1:20:30
Speaker 19: fascinating questions out there to be explored, and your podcast
1:20:34
Speaker 19: is an accessible and approachable way for all kinds of
1:20:36
Speaker 19: people to learn about these topics. I like the person
1:20:39
Speaker 19: on the Street segment at the beginning of the podcast
1:20:41
Speaker 19: episodes because it highlights just how many people think about
1:20:44
Speaker 19: and are curious about these different science topics. I think
1:20:47
Speaker 19: it also encourages people to be free and feel comfortable
1:20:50
Speaker 19: about exploring these topics that they would like to know
1:20:53
Speaker 19: more about, regardless of how much they currently know. Thank
1:20:56
Speaker 19: you for all the hard work and chocolate and bananas
1:21:00
Speaker 19: the years by you and your team.
1:21:01
Speaker 5: I look forward to learning.
1:21:03
Speaker 19: New things in upcoming episodes.
1:21:05
Speaker 1: And some of the comments I get over email bring
1:21:08
Speaker 1: tears to my eyes, you know, like the listener who,
1:21:10
Speaker 1: at sixty years old, was inspired to go back to
1:21:13
Speaker 1: school and get a degree in astrophysics, or the listener
1:21:17
Speaker 1: who had a stroke and relied on the podcast to
1:21:20
Speaker 1: keep his mind nimble while he worked through months of recovery,
1:21:23
Speaker 1: or the listener who had trouble talking to his teenagers
1:21:26
Speaker 1: until he discovered the podcast as something they could do
1:21:29
Speaker 1: together and talk about. And lots of moments of laughter,
1:21:32
Speaker 1: like the listener who said that he loved the podcast
1:21:35
Speaker 1: but he listens while he makes dinner and often ends
1:21:37
Speaker 1: up burning it when the topic gets really juicy. His
1:21:40
Speaker 1: family keeps asking him to turn it off, but he refuses,
1:21:43
Speaker 1: Or the eight year old listener who asked if it
1:21:45
Speaker 1: was possible to blow up Mars made me wonder if
1:21:47
Speaker 1: I needed to write back to his parents maybe before
1:21:50
Speaker 1: answering that question. And of course there are people who
1:21:52
Speaker 1: listen to the episode while falling asleep because my voice
1:21:55
Speaker 1: makes them feel cozy and tired. That's cool, you know,
1:21:58
Speaker 1: whatever works for you. And then there was the moment
1:22:00
Speaker 1: when I complained about chemistry and helping my son with
1:22:03
Speaker 1: this chemistry homework and how I wasn't really a fan
1:22:06
Speaker 1: of chemistry at all, and I got a bunch of
1:22:08
Speaker 1: email from chemists and chemistry professors and chemistry teachers who
1:22:11
Speaker 1: are offended that I was negative about science, and you
1:22:13
Speaker 1: know what, they were right. There's so many different areas
1:22:16
Speaker 1: of science, and all of them are fun in different ways,
1:22:19
Speaker 1: and they suit different people. And we should only be
1:22:21
Speaker 1: positive about everybody's joy for science, because we're all different
1:22:24
Speaker 1: people and we all have different joys. And I said
1:22:27
Speaker 1: something on the podcast. I apologized for my careless slander
1:22:31
Speaker 1: of chemistry, and then I was pleased to hear back
1:22:34
Speaker 1: from some of those people. Here's a quote from one
1:22:36
Speaker 1: of them. She wrote, I'm a chemistry teacher. I wrote
1:22:38
Speaker 1: to you earlier to complain about your attitude towards chemistry,
1:22:41
Speaker 1: and I want you to know that I appreciate your
1:22:43
Speaker 1: apology and your efforts to do better. See we can
1:22:46
Speaker 1: all learn. But every day I also get emails from listeners,
1:22:49
Speaker 1: sometimes just a few, sometimes dozens, and like I say
1:22:52
Speaker 1: in the podcast, I answer all of them. It is
1:22:55
Speaker 1: important to me to be accessible and that the curious
1:22:58
Speaker 1: public out there has ways to ask academics good faith
1:23:01
Speaker 1: questions motivated by curiosity. And often people are amazed that
1:23:05
Speaker 1: I actually do respond, that they're really hearing from me,
1:23:08
Speaker 1: and I'm really happy about that. It's nice to think
1:23:10
Speaker 1: that I've had some impact out there, helped some people
1:23:13
Speaker 1: understand science and given some people an opportunity to ask
1:23:16
Speaker 1: their question and to get a specific answer to the
1:23:19
Speaker 1: thing that they were wondering about. And sometimes I wonder
1:23:21
Speaker 1: about the scope and the breadth of our listenership, wondering
1:23:24
Speaker 1: if there are people out there in academia or even
1:23:26
Speaker 1: in physics who are listening to the podcast. So I
1:23:28
Speaker 1: did something very unscientific, and I asked two random people
1:23:31
Speaker 1: in my research group and Chase if they were aware
1:23:34
Speaker 1: of the podcast and if they listen to it. Do
1:23:37
Speaker 1: you guys listen to podcasts? Yes? You do? What are
1:23:42
Speaker 1: your podcasts not?
1:23:43
Speaker 14: Since I moved away from Orange County because I don't
1:23:45
Speaker 14: spend half my day in the car anymore.
1:23:48
Speaker 1: Okay? Cool. So then my random question for you is
1:23:51
Speaker 1: are you aware that I do a podcast? I am aware?
1:23:54
Speaker 1: You are aware? Okay? Do you ever listen to it? No?
1:23:56
Speaker 1: You never do. Okay, I am aware, and I still
1:23:59
Speaker 1: don't listen to it.
1:24:00
Speaker 8: I'm sorry.
1:24:01
Speaker 1: Great, cool, awesome, thanks very much. So that was kind
1:24:04
Speaker 1: of humbling. Then I was wondering how the podcast has
1:24:07
Speaker 1: impacted other people in my life, like my family, if
1:24:11
Speaker 1: they felt like it made me too busy, or if
1:24:13
Speaker 1: they didn't like that I sometimes talked about them on
1:24:15
Speaker 1: the podcast. Here's a conversation I had with my wife
1:24:18
Speaker 1: and my daughter on that topic. Usually, when I interview you,
1:24:21
Speaker 1: your anonymous because I'm just asking you a question for
1:24:24
Speaker 1: like a person on the street. But why don't you
1:24:26
Speaker 1: introduce yourself to the ginas.
1:24:28
Speaker 8: I'm Hazel, he's my dad.
1:24:31
Speaker 15: I'm Katrina Whitson, and I live in Irvine, California with
1:24:35
Speaker 15: my husband, Dana Whitson.
1:24:39
Speaker 1: All right, so the dog does not speak here.
1:24:44
Speaker 15: Our dog Pupizza is here too, for the record, Yeah,
1:24:47
Speaker 15: thank you.
1:24:49
Speaker 1: So my number one question for you guys is like,
1:24:51
Speaker 1: what is it like for you that I have this podcast?
1:24:54
Speaker 1: Is it like whatever doesn't matter? Is it cool? Is
1:24:57
Speaker 1: it embarrassing? What's your experience?
1:25:00
Speaker 20: I mean, it's not like it affects my day day life.
1:25:03
Speaker 20: I think it's kind of cool. There's like people out there.
1:25:06
Speaker 20: I also think that it's cool that other people agree
1:25:08
Speaker 20: that you have.
1:25:09
Speaker 8: A soothing voice. It's not just me. He used to
1:25:11
Speaker 8: call me crazy for that.
1:25:13
Speaker 1: I used to call you crazy.
1:25:14
Speaker 5: What you like?
1:25:16
Speaker 8: I do not have a soothing voice, And now I
1:25:18
Speaker 8: have people to back me up.
1:25:19
Speaker 1: I see.
1:25:20
Speaker 8: So he's giving me a disapproving look. You can't see it,
1:25:23
Speaker 8: but he is.
1:25:27
Speaker 1: It's true you used to fall asleep to my podcast,
1:25:30
Speaker 1: well before I knew that other people did it.
1:25:32
Speaker 8: It's true then the least debating way possible.
1:25:37
Speaker 1: How at you dream?
1:25:38
Speaker 15: I mean, I'm really proud of you for this. It's
1:25:41
Speaker 15: I think it's amazing you have this following. I brag
1:25:43
Speaker 15: about you regularly. I feel like it's really cool you've
1:25:49
Speaker 15: built this thing up. And I love hearing the stories
1:25:51
Speaker 15: about people who like reinvigorate their interest in science. It
1:25:55
Speaker 15: gives me hope for education and having people have the
1:26:00
Speaker 15: chance to like remake their lives using knowledge.
1:26:03
Speaker 1: I think it's really cool.
1:26:04
Speaker 15: It's just like it's a force for good out in
1:26:07
Speaker 15: the world, and I'm just so glad that the world
1:26:09
Speaker 15: has you in your soothing voice.
1:26:13
Speaker 1: So sometimes I interview you guys with the person on
1:26:15
Speaker 1: the street, like need somebody and I don't have time
1:26:18
Speaker 1: to collect stuff online. You guys like being part of
1:26:21
Speaker 1: the podcast. Is that embarrassing or is it fun? What
1:26:24
Speaker 1: does that feel for you?
1:26:25
Speaker 20: I don't usually know the answers, so I hear my voice.
1:26:27
Speaker 20: I'm like the one they got it completely wrong. But
1:26:31
Speaker 20: I think it's cool. There was one time you talked
1:26:33
Speaker 20: about it. You talked about the lollipop I found in
1:26:35
Speaker 20: the closet you got when you got your degree, and
1:26:38
Speaker 20: I actually like it, And you said, no, you mind.
1:26:43
Speaker 1: If I include the little personal tidbits in the podcast.
1:26:45
Speaker 8: No, I think that's cute, haven't you It.
1:26:47
Speaker 1: Hasn't made your life porfolion or is it embarrassing?
1:26:51
Speaker 15: I think it's really fun. I love getting to hear
1:26:53
Speaker 15: about who you've been interviewing, because like it's often you know,
1:26:56
Speaker 15: like you know, you interviewed my post doc or my student,
1:26:59
Speaker 15: and then I hear their voice on the podcast. And
1:27:02
Speaker 15: sometimes you do ask me questions, like right when I'm
1:27:04
Speaker 15: in the middle of something else, it's like the morning
1:27:06
Speaker 15: rush and you're.
1:27:07
Speaker 9: Like, so, what's dark matter?
1:27:10
Speaker 1: What are quirks?
1:27:12
Speaker 20: He made me late to school a bit and then
1:27:14
Speaker 20: he texted me why are you late to school?
1:27:16
Speaker 8: And I had to answer it was it was a
1:27:20
Speaker 8: very sweet moment with though all of the.
1:27:22
Speaker 1: Service of public science communication. All right, anything else?
1:27:27
Speaker 15: Do we get to share some favorite moments?
1:27:29
Speaker 1: What are your favorite moments?
1:27:31
Speaker 12: Well?
1:27:31
Speaker 15: I just well I love hearing stories from listeners. And
1:27:34
Speaker 15: during the pandemic, instead of doing a man on the
1:27:37
Speaker 15: street interviews, like when you were out in the world,
1:27:39
Speaker 15: you were getting them as recordings and sometimes I got
1:27:42
Speaker 15: to hear them and I remember like just really fun
1:27:45
Speaker 15: moments people had shared with you, like these Australian housemates
1:27:48
Speaker 15: who were like all giggling and answering your questions, and
1:27:51
Speaker 15: I feel like there was music involved somehow.
1:27:53
Speaker 1: Did you feel like you wanted to be part of
1:27:55
Speaker 1: that house?
1:27:55
Speaker 11: Yes, I did.
1:27:57
Speaker 8: And when we went to New Zealand last year, one
1:28:00
Speaker 8: of your listeners was.
1:28:01
Speaker 15: So kind and gave us a ton of advice that
1:28:03
Speaker 15: we totally followed and that was amazing. And if I
1:28:06
Speaker 15: remembered their name, I would say it right now. But
1:28:08
Speaker 15: that was so kind and I don't know. It just
1:28:11
Speaker 15: brings out the good in people. It's like made the
1:28:13
Speaker 15: world a better place.
1:28:14
Speaker 1: And I'd like to end this special episode with what
1:28:17
Speaker 1: the podcast has meant to me. It means the world
1:28:20
Speaker 1: to me to know that I can share that joy,
1:28:23
Speaker 1: that there are people out there who are hearing it
1:28:25
Speaker 1: and feeling it. I love having an excuse to learn
1:28:28
Speaker 1: about areas of physics I never otherwise had time to
1:28:31
Speaker 1: dig into. I love having to think super carefully about
1:28:34
Speaker 1: my own understanding to make sure it really clicks in
1:28:37
Speaker 1: my head well enough to explain it. And I love
1:28:40
Speaker 1: having joking science conversations with Hooge and Mkatie and Mkelly,
1:28:44
Speaker 1: and I really hope that the podcast has helped you
1:28:47
Speaker 1: share in the joy of science. Thank you all so
1:28:50
Speaker 1: much for listening.
1:28:54
Speaker 14: Hey ho hey from the podcast, and I'm super excited
1:28:56
Speaker 14: to announce my new book, Oliver's Great Big Universe, is
1:29:00
Speaker 14: available to order now.
1:29:09
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
1:29:12
Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
1:29:16
Speaker 1: from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
1:29:21
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.