Explain the Universe: Behind the Scenes

To mark the 500th episode, Daniel gives a tour of the podcast's history and production process, including candid interviews with the co-hosts, Sean Carroll and other podcasters.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, Daniel here. Today's episode is our five hundredth
episode of the podcast. Thank you so much to everyone
out there who's joined us on this wild ride to
explore the beauty and mystery of our universe. Those people
who feel that buzzing need to know the truth about
the deepest cosmic questions, and who share my hunch that

(00:21):
humans are capable of figuring it all out. I always
wanted to share with all of you the incredible feeling
of satisfaction I get when something clicks into place in
my mind. It's been my absolute pleasure, and here's to
many more moments of deep insight. Everyone is curious about

(00:48):
how things work and how it all comes together, especially
you since you're listening to this podcast right now, and
over the last five years that we've been on air,
we've spent a lot of time talking about how the
universe works and how particles are woven together to make
our reality. But did you ever wonder how this podcast works.
How a physicist with a full time job puts up

(01:09):
two episodes per week with his co hosts and guests.
How lots of people working together weave all of their
efforts to make this podcast a reality. Hi, I'm Daniel.

(01:34):
I'm a particle physicist and a professor at uc Ermine,
and I'm a podcaster. I usually don't list that in
my introduction to episodes, which is kind of weird because
that's actually how most of you who know me. Very
few of you out there know me in any of
my other worlds a particle physicist or university professor. Those
are the worlds that occupy most of my time. You

(01:55):
all mostly know me through this podcast, and today I
want to meld those worlds a little bit to show
you how I ended up becoming a podcaster and how
it fits into the rest of my life and how
the podcast comes together. So welcome to the podcast. Daniel
and Jorge explain the Universe, in which we explore and
explain the nature of the universe from the smallest, tiny
little bits out there to the whole nature of the universe,

(02:18):
black holes and cosmic strings and everything out there. We
tackle the biggest questions and we try to break them
down and explain them to you. If you're new to
the podcast. The note that today is not a typical episode.
This episode instead is something of a celebration and self reflection.
We've done five hundred episodes of the podcast. Now, that's

(02:39):
two a week every week for about five years. Along
the way, we've had highs and lows, and moments of
laughter and moments of tears, and we'll share a lot
of those with you today. But mostly I did want
to use this episode to celebrate what we've accomplished here,
and to do that, I wanted to pull back the
curtain and let you in on the process of how

(02:59):
the podcast is made. So today's episode will not be
a deep dive into physics, but into the podcast itself.
I hope that's interesting to all of you out there.
While each episode is mostly about physics, I find that
listeners also usually respond positively to our occasional personal comment
like when I talk about white chocolate versus dark chocolate,

(03:20):
or complain about having to help my son with his
chemistry homework. And so I hope there's interest out there
in getting to know the team behind the podcast and
how they do what they do. I think it's pretty
unusual to put out such a high volume of content
with such a small team, and I want to show
you how we do it, what a joy it is
to do, and what it means to all of us,
because it wasn't always obvious that we were going to

(03:42):
get here five hundred episodes in. For example, here's a
frank comment from a listener along these lines. He's a
friend and a fellow particle physicist, Brian Field.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
I believe I saw a fellow podcaster who had retweeted
that there was going to be a new podcast. The
people that wrote, you know, we have no idea, you know,
sort of thing. These books that I enjoyed, and so
I got kind of got in on the ground floor,
and as a professional scientist myself, I was very surprised

(04:16):
to find how great they were, how high level they were.
And I have to admit that my first thought was, well,
these are great, but there's no way they're going to
be able to keep this level of discourse with this
many topics for any amount of time. They're just going
to run out of clever things to say, They're going
to run out of topics. They're going to cover it all.
But you know, while it lasts, this is going to

(04:37):
be great. And it was right that it was great,
and I was wrong about everything else. And I hope
that this is just the beginning and that it continues
to be a great source of science news in the future,
and I'm just so glad that it's part of my life.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
Keep doing.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Keep up the great work, guys, and from your number
one friend, Brian, talk to you later.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
Brian didn't think we could keep it up, have enough
clever things to say for all those episodes. Well I'm
glad to say that we proved him wrong. That five
hundred episodes of Bananas and black Holes later, we've kind
of found a rhythm and a team that works together
well and puts out two episodes a week without fail
every week. But let's start at the very beginning. Before

(05:18):
we can talk about how an episode is made, I
want to tell you the story about how the podcast
itself came to be. Like many podcasts, Ours came out
of writing a book, the book that Jorge and I
wrote together in twenty seventeen called We Have No Idea,
and that book grew out of some earlier collaborations, ones
that frankly I never thought could happen. Because while you

(05:39):
all probably know Jorge as the co host of this podcast,
I first knew him as the famous cartoonist behind PhD Comics,
and he certainly had no idea who I was. It
was kind of a miracle that I got to work
with such an internet celebrity at all. He was a
clip of me during a presentation we gave at Harvard
telling the story of how Orgey and I came to

(05:59):
work together till one. It's been a real pleasure working
on these projects with Jorge. Not only he's the an
amazing artist, he's also really modest. So for example, I
have to correct the story a little bit that he
told you because he leaves out some important details. When
I thought about explaining physics using cartoons, I thought that
would be a lot of fun, But I don't have

(06:19):
the artistic talent to do it myself. Who could I
get to do this? And my wife, who's also a
fan of PhD comics, she said, well, why don't you
email Jorge Chom And I thought, well, you know, Jorge
is not just some cartoonist, right, He's like in academia
and in research, he's world famous. You can't go to
a lab that does research and not find one of
his cartoons on the wall because he's really captured, you know,

(06:41):
the experience of being a graduate student and the suffering
of research and all of these things. So it's like
just emailing a famous person, right, So she says, why
don't you email Jorge Chom And I thought, sure, and
then I'll call Brad Pitt and ask him to make
a movie about me him, right, like while we're at it. Right,
So I still having her back from Brad. But I
did get to write this awesome book with Horage, which

(07:03):
is a lot of fun. So after I cold email
this internet celebrity, Jorge and I amazingly started out making
videos where I would explain the particle physics and he
would make these incredible cartoons to illustrate and clarify the ideas.
Then in twenty seventeen, the cartoonist behind the webcomic XKCD
had a massive best selling book called what If, which

(07:24):
if you haven't read, you should, and his agent reached
out to Jorge to see if Jorge was interested in
also doing a science comic book to blend explaining science
and comics, and you know, explaining physics using cartoons was
kind of my jam. So Jorge called me and said, hey,
I think we could write a book about particle physics.
And I said, I don't know. Let's find out what's involved.

(07:45):
I'm a physics professor. I don't really know anything about publishing. Well,
it turns out to sell a nonfiction book is pretty
weird process. If you want to sell a novel, you
typically have to write the whole thing and then sell it,
unless you're like Stephen King and have a track record.
But for nonfiction, you don't actually have to write it first.
You just write a sample chapter and an outline. So
we did, and the whole thing came together kind of

(08:06):
shockingly fast. I remember sitting down and banging out the
first draft of a sample chapter during my daughter's gymnastics
practice one Saturday morning, and it just kind of flowed
out of me. You know, all these thoughts and ideas
I had about dark matter and how little we know
about the universe, and how much there was left to discover,
and how exciting that was, and the opportunity and the
thrill of all that just sort of like flowed on

(08:28):
to the page. I sent it out to Jorge, who
whipped it into shape and made sure it was clear
and relatable in that way that he's so good at,
and then he drew his wonderful cartoons, and we sent
it off to the agent and just like two weeks later,
we had a very flattering book contract. The whole thing
was like really a whirlwind. Then of course we got
to actually write the book, which took about a year,

(08:49):
and it was a lot of fun. Jorge and I
had lots of conversations about what to write about and
how to write it. We talked about science, send me jokes,
and had a lot of fun, and you know, I
learned a lot just in trying to explain particle physics
to somebody who's really smart and ask good questions. So
many times Jorge would like back things up and say,
a whole lot a second, what do you mean we
don't know what mass is or we don't understand space,

(09:10):
And whole chapters of that book came into being from
his questions. And then of course the book came out
and we went on tour to promote the book. That
clip you heard earlier is from our presentation the book Talk,
and this something you need to understand about how that
book Talk came together. That's kind of shaped all five
hundred episodes of the podcast that followed. Let's just say
like it wasn't very highly prepared. Basically, we waned it

(09:34):
every time personally, I wanted to plan it, to lay
it out and nail it down, because I'm kind of
a planner the way I balance everything in my life,
you know, an overwhelming academic job, a family, a podcast,
a TV show. Book writing is vie staying organized and
getting things done in advance. But for the book talk,
we just kind of had a rough idea of what
we wanted to say and we went for it. Kind

(09:55):
of terrified me, but you know what, it went pretty well.
All in all. We gave that talk more than fifty
times across the country. In the UK, we'd get a
talking fields and auditoriums filled with one thousand people, or
the tiny bookstores with a handful of eager listeners. And
because it wasn't superscripted, every single time it really was different.
There was always like some new joke or a new twist.

(10:16):
Maybe Jorge would like draw a silly doodle of me
making fun of me while I was speaking. The audience
would roar with laughter while I was totally clueless, or
I'd make some dumb physics dad joke to earn a
rueful chuckle. It turned out that we kind of had
a knack for a spontaneous humor, and we had a
good chemistry together. We were just more natural and sincere
when it wasn't tightly planned, because we just had fun

(10:37):
talking and joking about science. And that's where the podcast
was born. Two guys at a company called stuff Media
reached out to us about launching a podcast. This is
like twenty seventeen, a few years after podcasts had started
to take off, but before they were like really huge,
before everybody had a podcast, so it wasn't really something
on my radar yet, but I thought it was an

(10:59):
intriguing idea. The guys of stuff Media thought that we
had what a take to make a podcast work, so
to understand what they saw in us, I recently sat
down with Will Pearson, one of the guys who originally
recruited us into the podcast world, to hear about why
he thought our podcast might work and whether it's turned
out as he's planned in the time since his company
was bought by iHeartMedia and he now runs their podcast division.

(11:22):
That's pretty impressive. I mean, iHeart is the biggest podcasting
company on the planet, which means Will is basically the
worldwide president of podcasting. He's an important guy, but when
we spoke, he wasn't actually able to use his usual
quiet space for high quality audio recordings because his thirteen
year old son had and I'm quoting him here, a
very important gaming session. Here's my conversation with Will. Well,

(11:46):
thanks very much, Will forging to have a candid conversation
with me. First, introduce yourselves to our listeners, to one
of the many people behind the scenes that makes this happen.
But they don't know you, so tell us a little
bit about who you are.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
Yeah, and Will Pearson. I run the podcast division here
at iHeart.

Speaker 1 (12:01):
I was actually part of a.

Speaker 3 (12:02):
Company called stuff Bedia or maybe more publicly known as
how Stuff Works a few years ago and we were
acquired by iHeartMedia or iHeartRadio to come on board and
run the podcast division here. But you know, we had
come out of a world of podcasts that we're all
very general knowledge driven.

Speaker 1 (12:22):
Cool. Well, let's not understate your job. I mean iHeart
is like number one podcast company in the world and
you're heading up the podcast division there. That seems like
kind of a big deal.

Speaker 3 (12:30):
It's you know, it's one of those things that because
it doesn't happen overnight, you really don't stop to think
about it, but yeah, I didn't know.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
We're supposed to brag awesome. Well, podcasts are everywhere now
and everybody listens to podcast and sort of a big deal.
But take us back to like twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen
when our podcast started. What was a podcast landscape like
back then? What kind of things were you looking for?

Speaker 3 (12:54):
I think, first of all, the thing that drew me
to the podcast base, because that's right around the time
that I had joined and stuff media, as I mentioned before,
was around twenty seventeen, was the fact that it was
a medium built off of knowledge based shows, Like we
started seeing the biggest shows in the category were really
shows where people were coming to them because they wanted

(13:15):
to learn, They wanted to walk away feeling a little
bit smarter from whatever they were listening to. You could
find a great podcast for those, and that podcast sort
of stripped away the layers that you find in most
other medium and get down to the very basics of
a conversation.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
Awesome, And so why did you reach out to us?
What did you see in us? Why did you think
that danie Le Jorge explain the universe? It might be
a good fit for your company.

Speaker 3 (13:41):
Well, I mean, first of all, it was a category
that I've long been interested in, you know, the idea
of helping a general population or curious minds better understand
the universe, better understand astronomy. You know, as a kid,
was the nerd that was obsessed with you know, Carl
Sagan and Stephen Hawking and everything I could get my

(14:02):
hands on. That sort of made this category accessible, and
I just felt like that there was a larger population
that would be interested in this as well. You know,
we saw with the success of our House Stuff Works
line of shows that there really was a hunger for
good audio in the general knowledge space. And when we
saw we have no idea, we really felt like, Okay,

(14:24):
here are two guys that get it. You know, when
it's a rare moment that you find super smart people
that really know how to communicate with a general audience,
it feels like we're all in it together. It didn't
feel like you're being lectured to. It didn't feel like
you were just you know, had the pleasure of just
being with somebody that was one hundred times smarter than

(14:46):
you were. Like you guys obviously are incredibly intelligent, but
at the same time, it just feels like you're getting
the chance to listen in on a great conversation, and
we felt like there was that opportunity to create a
show with you two in a way that could do that.
And fortunately, the first time we heard you guys in
a pilot when we said, you know what, we think

(15:07):
this could be an interesting podcast. Let's have a conversation
about it. The first time you guys ever recorded, not
to say that it was perfect, but like you immediately
knew something was there, so we were super excited about it.

Speaker 1 (15:17):
Wow awesome, And you know we've done five hundred episodes
now and the show has evolved and you know, gained
its own inside jokes and all sorts of stuff. Would
you say that it's like different from what you might
have predicted it turned into five years ago, or is
it mostly what you were looking for?

Speaker 3 (15:32):
I mean, I would say, fortunately, it is what we
were looking for, because you know, we we try not
to be too prescriptive when we bring on a new podcast.
We know at the core what we were looking for
was something that could help curious minds better understand the
universe and also to feel like they were being entertained

(15:54):
when they listen to something and if you can find
the right blend there sort of walking that line in
a really small, a't way, I think you know, you've
got a hit show on your hands. And so we
didn't know exactly what it was going to sound like,
but the vibe and the sort of effect of the
show was exactly what we were going for. So no,
I think the show is exactly what we wanted to be.

(16:15):
I had no idea that it would run five hundred episodes,
but that's been part of the beauty of shows of
this type is that listeners fall in love with the hosts,
with the concept and just stick with it. And so
so it's been a blast to just watch it. I
didn't know that it would be as big as it
is because it felt like, Okay, this is a category

(16:37):
that maybe will be a little more niche. But you know,
you've got hundreds of thousands of people listening to every
single episode, which is just amazing.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
It feels like a huge privilege to me that all
those folks aren't trusting us with their time and energy.
So I'm really grateful. Well, thanks very much, Will for
sharing your perspective and for having that faith in us
to create this thing. I'm always touched that so many
people who make these shows happened were themselves inspired by
something earlier. It's just like feeds forward. You know, you
were inspired by Carl Sagan. You help make something which

(17:07):
I hope will inspire somebody else out there to make
something else beautiful.

Speaker 3 (17:11):
Oh, I appreciate that, And congratulations to you guys. It's
no big surprise to me that you've been successful.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
But I love it.

Speaker 3 (17:17):
I love that we get to partner with you guys,
and look forward to being back on for episode one thousand.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
All right, awesome, thanks very much. Will So Will thought
that Jorge and I had a chemistry together and a
knack for explaining this stuff and decided to give us
a chance. But you might also wonder, and many people
have asked me this, what made me want to do this?
I mean, I already had a more than full time
job as a physicist and have young kids at home,
and most academics are already like drowning in work and emails.

(17:45):
Why take on this other new thing? So when we
come back from the break, we'll talk about that, and
we'll hear from other physicists in the podcast space. And
why they do it, and I'll take you through how
we go from idea to episode twice a week in
a way that doesn't break my calendar or ruin my marriage. Okay,

(18:14):
we're back with our special behind the scenes episode or
the podcast to give you a glimpse into the origin
of the show and how it's put together. But I
haven't told you yet. Probably the most important thing to me,
at least, which is why I do the show. It
wasn't because I liked talking science with the Jorge, though
of course I do, or because it was a fun
new adventure, which it was, Or because I might make

(18:37):
some cash, though I have nothing against cash. Deep down,
It's really because I just wanted to share my joy
with you all. There are these moments when you study
physics that an idea clicks in your mind and you're
just shaken with the power of it. A veal is
pulled back and you have a new view of the
entire universe. You thought it worked like this, but then

(18:59):
it turns out you were looking at it backwards or
upside down, or missing ninety five percent of the picture,
or trying to read it in the wrong language. And
when you see it the right way, it connects in
this beautiful way that makes you want to like shout
with joy and whisper in reverence. At the same time.
I'm not personally a very religious person, but those moments
of deep understanding, those are the most spiritual moments of

(19:22):
my life. When I feel like I've glimpsed something deeply true,
I've seen behind the scenes. You know, when you realize, oh,
light is a wiggle in these fields, or oh, electricity
and magnetism is just one big idea clicks together, or wow,
group theory describes a relationship between the particles. Or wow,
forces only exist to preserve the gage symmetries of that

(19:44):
group theory, or oh, our laws only apply to the
current phase of the universe. Or wow, there isn't one
single clock for the universe, there are infinite series of clocks,
a new single history of events. Or oh, my gosh,
the speed limit of the universe comes naturally from this
new way of thinking about space. All of these moments
which I had as I was learning physics were so delicious,

(20:04):
and I wanted to share those because they're wonderful. They're
like drinks from the cup of the universe oracle, and
I felt like, there's a lot of great science communication
out there, but this wasn't out there yet. I didn't
find these moments that sheer joy, that deep understanding in
the pop side books I read, or in the podcast
that I listened to. And there are a lot of

(20:25):
great podcasts and books out there, but none were doing
what I thought needed to be done and saying it
in the way that I thought it should be said.
I've heard once that startup founders are often people who
are annoyed that nobody's doing something the right way, so
they feel this deep need to start a business to
do it right. And frankly, that's kind of how I felt.
I wanted to share these moments in physics and do

(20:46):
it in a deep way, one that doesn't gloss over
with the same tired pop side analogies and doesn't say,
trust me, the math works, but I can't explain it
any further. I wanted to really communicate the intuitive understanding
that the math, and I also felt a little bit
like it was part of my job. I mean, I'm
a professor at a public university, and I wanted to

(21:07):
help share this joy with the public, not just with
the students who happened to end up in my classroom.
This is something that belongs to everyone, and I hope
that my way of talking and thinking about it might
click with someone out there and encourage their curiosity or
inspire them to study physics and help humanity crack this
giant puzzle we call the universe. The way Will had

(21:27):
been inspired by previous generations of science communications. It didn't
turn him into a physicist, but it motivated him to
put money and resources behind another educational physics podcast. So yeah,
it was going to take some time, and you'll hear
in a bit about how we try to run a
streamlined operation. But for me, the fundamental motivation was that
I feel super lucky to get to do these things

(21:49):
for a living, and I wanted to connect with people
out there whose lives took other paths but still felt
a yearning to understand and wanted more of that joy
of deep connection with the universe. To understand whether this
was like a typical feeling or podcast origin story. I
reached out to some fellow science podcasters to ask them
about why and how they put their podcast together and

(22:12):
how they got started. Here's Sean Carroll, well known author
and podcaster. Well, actually, let me let him introduce himself.

Speaker 4 (22:19):
I'm just a person trying to understand how the universe
works in various ways and trying to share whatever I
figure out with other people. So my title is hilarious.
My official title is Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at
Johns Hopkins University and Fractal Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute.
So that's a mouthful and it captures the fact that

(22:41):
here at Johns Hopkins I serve both as a physicist
and a philosopher, and at Santa Fe I can think
about complexity in the wider world. And of course, in
addition to my day job as a professor and researcher,
I also write books and give talks, and I have
a podcast called Mindscape.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
I also talked to Dan Hooper and Shalma Wegsman, hosts
of Why This Universe, another of my favorite podcasts.

Speaker 5 (23:05):
I'm Shalma. I'm one of us two co hosts of
Why This Universe, and I also edit and produce it.
And so I guess a little bit about me. My
day job right now is actually I work in video games.
My backgrounds and physics obviously, I have a master as
I started my PhD, but I left academia to pursue
some like more media related interests of mine.

Speaker 6 (23:27):
I'm Dan Hooper. I have a research position at the
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, so this is kind of the
US premiere particle physics lab. And I also have a
professorship at the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at University
of Chicago. So I teach some classes, I advise grad

(23:47):
students that sort of thing, and generally just do research
on kind of the interface of particle physics in cosmology,
so some hey energy astrophysics, some early universe stuff. Dark
matter is kind of the thing I'm most known for.
Those are the sorts of things that keep me up
at night.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
So then I asked John why he spends his very
valuable time on a podcast.

Speaker 4 (24:08):
Anytime that someone asks why I do something, the honest
answer is because I think it's fun, unless it's something
that I just literally need to do for other obligation purposes.
So when I wrote a book of mine called The
Big Picture back in twenty sixteen, it was about many
different topics, including philosophy and neuroscience and biology, and I
got to, you know, email big names in different fields

(24:33):
and say hey, could we chat. I'm writing a book.
You know, the book was sort of a license to
get me into their offices and have them give me
some time. And then the book went away. I finished
with it, and I no longer had a reason to
call people up and talk to them. And so someone
pointed out that if I had a podcast, I could
do that, And so really, for me, my benefit of
the podcast is that I get to talk to a

(24:55):
bunch of people who are very smart and interesting in
very different fields.

Speaker 5 (25:00):
Yours, Dan and shelma answering the same question, I mean,
I love it as a way to keep my foot
in the physics store, in the physics world, you know,
stay really like on top of physics. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (25:11):
So, I mean, I'm always been a person who has
like their main, you know, day job, and then a
bunch of side projects. I'm a side project guy. So
in physics that might be writing books, and I've written several.
I'm in the process of finishing a graduate level textbook
now that's my current side project. I play music, so

(25:33):
I'm always in a band or two and blank shows
and working on that. And some years ago, like I
just was a big consumer of podcasts.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
I listened to a lot of them.

Speaker 6 (25:44):
And I thought there was space in the podcast you know,
ecosystem for something different in the physics science area.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
I also asked Katie Golden, who you know as a
frequent guest host on this podcast, how she got into podcasting.

Speaker 7 (25:59):
Actually, we had no idea I would was going to
get into podcasting. I had always kind of secretly wanted to.
When I started listening to podcasts, it just seemed like
so fun to have these kinds of conversations. So I
got into comedy educational writing for a online magazine called Cracked,

(26:21):
and then after that I kind of just like got
approach to come up with an idea for a podcast.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
Because you're a funny person, because.

Speaker 7 (26:32):
You're yeah, I mean it's because I kept harassing people
until no.

Speaker 8 (26:38):
I yeah.

Speaker 7 (26:39):
Actually, well, actually the whole way I got started in
comedy writing was a Twitter account, which sounds kind of lame.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
Oh yes, the well born Twitter bird parody, Acount two
podcast pipeline exactly exactly.

Speaker 7 (26:54):
It's actually it's a very bizarre path one that I
I It was not like a grand scheme or a
grand plan. I never planned at all. It was just hey,
I like this thing, and hey I like that thing,
much like a small bird getting distracted by shiny objects.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
Well, you know, I actually did some research for this
interview because you and I actually know a few people
randomly in common.

Speaker 7 (27:19):
Oh really.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
I spoke to somebody who went to college with you.
What and she said, quote, Katie seemed very quiet in college,
so I was sort of surprised when she became a podcaster.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
She's great, who said this?

Speaker 1 (27:32):
This is my friend Jane Baldwin was a professor here
at UC Irvine.

Speaker 7 (27:36):
I know Jane Baldwin.

Speaker 4 (27:38):
What the heck?

Speaker 7 (27:40):
I was a bridesmaid with her.

Speaker 9 (27:42):
What the heck?

Speaker 7 (27:43):
I am? Wow, this is I was not expecting to
like have basically a Jerry Springer moment here.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
And I asked Sean what keeps him going after several
years of podcasting?

Speaker 4 (27:57):
I have a lot of support I got I have
both as and you know, Patreon supporters, and so now
I get paid to do the podcast. And so I
say this as a joke, but it's totally true, Like
the money that comes through to there keeps me going
at the podcast. Like I could much more easily give
it up if I just you know, I like doing it,
so I'm not trying to imply that i want to

(28:19):
give it up. But sometimes it's work and I have
other things to do.

Speaker 1 (28:22):
And yeah, it's a good point. We all have other
things to do. Sean and Dan, like me, are also
full time physicists. I personally run a research group of
around twelve thirteen people, meaning I'm responsible for finding funding
for them and leading their research and guiding their careers.
And we're pretty productive little group. We put out ten
to twelve papers every year. Top of that, I teach

(28:44):
three classes here at u SEE Irvine, which is no
small time commitment. And you might have heard that Jorge
and I were also creating and launching a public television
science show during this time. So when we were thinking
about taking this on, I wanted to make sure that
I could do it while managing everything else going on.
For me, that meant leaning heavily on what we learned
during our book talk, which means winging it. The podcast

(29:07):
was going to have to be unscripted, relying on us
to say interesting things in the moment based on a
very rough outline, and relying on our editor Corey to
clean it up and make it all sound good. You'll
hear from him in a minute what that's like and
how hard it is. I think that this makes our
podcast different from a lot of others that you might
listen to this American Life Radio lab. Most of these

(29:29):
podcasts are scripted. They write down what they're going to say.
Here's a conversation I had with Joel Werner, supervising producer
on the very well produced podcast Science Versus. So thanks
very much for having a chat with me. First, I
want to ask you to introduce yourself. What are your titles,
what's your background? How do you describe yourself?

Speaker 10 (29:48):
Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. My name's
Joel Werner. I'm a science journalist. I've been a science
journalist for like a long time now.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
Over a decade.

Speaker 10 (29:56):
I'm the supervising producer at Science Versus. And before that
I worked at the ABC, the Australian ABC, SO which
is like the BBC for the bottom side of the world,
not like the ABC in America.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
There's no top side and bottom side. This is true.

Speaker 10 (30:14):
As soon as I came out of my mouth, I
was like, Wow, this is bait tour to someone like you.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
So you're a science journalist at heart. How did you
get into podcasting and how did you end up working
on Science Versus?

Speaker 10 (30:27):
Just earlier this year, joined Wendy and the team at
Science Versus, which is as Science Versus has been one
of my favorite podcasts for a long time. So yeah,
big dream to come and work with that team.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
Well, that's so exciting when people get to like live
their dreams. So tell us about the team there, because
our podcast has a very small team. It's basically just
a couple of hosts and editor and our producers don't
like get very involved in the creative stuff. The sense
just from looking at your website you have a much
more extensive team over there. How big is what are
the various roles? How does that all work?

Speaker 10 (30:58):
Yeah, it's a bigger team than I've ever worked one
before to make a show. So Wendy Zuckerman, she created
the show, she's the executive producer, she's the host, she's
our north star. You know, I feel like Wendy lives
and breathes Science Versus and really kind of understands the
program brief like so deeply, which is really great coming

(31:20):
onto a show. It's wonderful to have someone who just
understands the DNA of that show like Wendy does. Blithe
Terrell is our editor, so blithe so has that sort
of like really zoomed out editorial eye over literally everything
to do with the show. She's kind of like the
stop gap for any of those tricky editorial moments, and

(31:43):
she just also like kind of is the glue that
holds the team together.

Speaker 1 (31:47):
What's a tricky editorial moment? Ah, good question.

Speaker 10 (31:50):
Let me think about one from my episode. Okay, So
I did an episode about AI and in a storyline
that didn't actually end up making it to air, there
was a question about whether I could make one of
my sources anonymous, so all of that kind of stuff.
Then there's a team of producers. So, like I said,

(32:13):
I'm the supervising producer. We have a couple of senior producers,
Merril Horn and Rose Rimmler. Michelle Dang is a producer,
and then we have an We've had an intern Ari
Nadowitz as well. So yeah, like kind of a big
production team as well. And usually, like producers, Wendy and
the producers each kind of lead an episode.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
So tell us about how an episode comes together. I
was listening to the startup podcast about how Gimlet Media
came together, and there's a moment there where Bloomberg calls
Gimlet Media shows quote obsessively crafted and highly produced. Tell
us what that means.

Speaker 10 (32:50):
Yeah, that's true, that's very true. So like from yeah,
like how the sausage is made right, Like, let's start
start at the beginning of the production line. So we're
kind of in that moment now, Like we're in between
seasons at the moment, so everyone's working on pitches for
the new season, and so that's a lot of firstly,
like idea generation, Like I'm sure all of the producers,

(33:13):
like I have a list, I have a kind of
rolling Google doc of story ideas that I want to cover,
and I'm sure all the producers have something similar. And
so then it's kind of like picking something to focus on.
It might be like there's something in the zeitgeist, there's
something happening now as there is, and you're choosing it.
There's some really interesting research choosing that going and chatting

(33:36):
to a bunch of people. So I'm working on a
story idea at the moment, I probably emailed about like
I don't know, like twenty ish people yesterday, I'm lining
up a whole bunch of conversations over the next few weeks,
like doing all of those background chats to develop a pitch.

Speaker 11 (33:53):
Then we pitched that idea to the team. The pitch
either gets.

Speaker 10 (33:58):
Like greenlit, that sounds great, go ahead, it gets rejected
we don't like the idea for this reason, go and
find another idea, or there's an amble light as well,
where it's like, yeah, we think this could work, but
like you might need to do X, Y and Z
to get it across the line.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
So does that mean that you're doing a whole bunch
of interviews before you even know what story you're telling.
You're just like going out there and doing basic journalism
like what's going on here? Looking for a story to emerge.

Speaker 10 (34:23):
Yeap, doing background interviews like reading papers, like reading lots
and lots of papers.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
And are you recording those background interviews? Do they ever
end up in the actual show?

Speaker 12 (34:33):
Like not for me.

Speaker 10 (34:35):
I'm sure there have been instances where a background interview
has ended up in the show, But for like the
AI episode I did last season, I interviewed up with
the twenty people on background, and then I probably did
formal interviews with about five of those people, and about
three of those interviews made it into the show, So
there's a lot of a lot of work going on

(34:56):
behind the scenes. It's the classic you know, like the
dark top of the water looks very calm, but underneath
the water the lexa, the Lexa swimming frantically.

Speaker 1 (35:06):
So does that mean that you've done all the research
to get sort of the rough outline of the story
and then you do the sort of final interviews those interviews.
Are you trying to get people to say the things
you need them to say to tell the story you
want to say, or are you still doing some.

Speaker 10 (35:19):
Exploration, like a bit of both, a bit of both,
Like usually by that stage, well you know the story
that got green with I'm terribly bad at phishing in interviews,
so I'm a big tangent explorer, and if there's any
I'll follow any loose thread and just pull and pull
and pull in any interview. So it's about getting that

(35:41):
information on tape, But it's also about, like, especially for
a show like Science Versus, it's trying to get those
moments captured on tape. So more than information, it's about
like trying to have a moment that's funny or enlightening
or meaningful or like something that one of those we
call them like lean in moments, Right, So you're trying

(36:02):
to kind of like have those very human moments that
as a listener to podcast, you're like, oh wow, okay,
this is getting juicy. Now I want to know what's
going on. And so we're trying to trying to get
those moments on tape, because that's the thing you can't,
Like we can go and read a paper and we
can write a few lines that fill in a factory
point that we need, but you can't manufacture those like

(36:24):
kind of very human moments that you have in interviews.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
And then the episode itself is structured with all these interviews,
but then there's a lot of narration. Wendy does some
you know, talking to the audience. Is that part scripted?
Is that written before she reads it? Does she ever
go off script?

Speaker 13 (36:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 10 (36:39):
So basically, like once we've done the interviews, we have
like hours and hours of tape, we go and edit
that tape and structure it out in like how we
think the interview is going to go in the past,
how it happened, was that like Wendy and the producer
would then write script for her to read. But this season,
we've changed the way that we work and we're now
doing all of that in conversation. So it's not like

(37:01):
it's not scripted scripted, it's like, we'll have dot points,
we'll go, Okay, this is what we want to achieve
in this section. But then like you and I are
speaking now without a script. Sorry to break the illusion
for anyone listening that this isn't heavily scripted, but yeah,
like and then we'll we'll go through and we'll we'll

(37:22):
like have that conversation and again trying to capture those
really human moments.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
Wow, and so you boil down a huge amount of
information into these fairly compact episodes. Well, it's great to
hear that the climate of podcasting is moving towards conversation
because we can't do scripted podcasts. We don't have the time,
and we're also not very good at reading scripts. I mean,
nobody could write the kind of terrible jokes that we
make anyway. They only work if they're spontaneous. Tell me

(37:48):
about the process of vetting the episodes, because you've talked
to a bunch of experts and then you boil it
down and we all know that like the process of
explaining science in general public involves, you know, simplifications and approximation.
Do you then go and make sure that your final
output doesn't make the experts queasy, you send it back
out to them and ask them for opinions.

Speaker 10 (38:08):
I mean, I think as a science journalist, like the
biggest strength of Science Versus is just the depth of
research that the show engages in. So like everywhere I've
worked has always had quite rigorous fact checking, Like you
kind of don't put anything out with at least getting
you know, another expert in the field, an independent expert

(38:30):
to vet the person that you're talking to and to
kind of like you might give someone a call and go, look,
these ideas aren't super fringy, are they, you know, just
to kind of look for those red flags. But for
Science Versus, Like, I mean, there's a citation count at
the end of each episode, we're routinely referencing like hundreds
of research papers literally everything in the show, Like as

(38:53):
we're building the script where footnoting and you can see
these scripts. There's a link to the transcripts in the
show notes of each episode and so you can go
through and see like literally every point we make has
to be backed up by some piece of research. And
then we have an independent fact checker for each episode
as well, So they come on for the episode for

(39:14):
a week. They're not connected to the team, they don't like,
you know, they're not part of the kind of production process.
So they come in cold and they're a professional fact checker.
So they go through the script and they look at
the referencing, and they ask really hard questions and they
put they push us to be kind of really definitive
about everything that we're saying and how we're supporting it

(39:37):
and and yeah, like I said, it's the thing that
Science Versus does that no other show I've worked on,
Like I've worked on a bunch of shows, and like
nothing else has ever come to the level of fact
checking that this show does. And yeah, I'm really proud
to be part of it now because it's you know,
I think it does that thing that that science does

(39:57):
so well. It kind of brings in evidence base to
the thing you're trying to explain to the world. And yeah, yeah,
I think this show does it really well.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
Yeah, Wow, congratulations, that's an amazing process. It sounds like
it's more deeply vetted than probably a lot of the
papers you're relying.

Speaker 10 (40:16):
I was joking to my wife, I was saying, like, wow,
every episode feels like a litter review fasis. I'm like,
should we just go and get a pitchd now.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
Well, thanks for all the work that you do and
for Science Versus and for taking some time to talk
to me. It's been very educational.

Speaker 10 (40:34):
Look, thank you for your podcast as well. I think
the more science podcasts we have in the world the better.
And yeah, it's a real pleasure to come and chat
to you today.

Speaker 1 (40:41):
Wonderful. Thank you. So, as you heard from that conversation,
they have a big team. They do huge amounts of
background research and piece the episode together from an enormous
number of hours and hours of conversation. But we can't
do that on this show. We just don't have the
staff or frankly, the free time. We're literally just recording
two guys having a conversation about science that I roughly
sketched out, and then leaning heavily on our editor to

(41:03):
clean it up and pull it together. Mindscape, Sean Carroll's
podcast is even more extreme. Sean told me he's just
a team of one. He does it all, from research
to editing. Here's Sean talking about how an episode comes together.

Speaker 4 (41:18):
Forgot the part where I do research. You know, sometimes
I don't need to when I'm talking to someone who
is in my field and I can just talk with them.
But if I'm talking to someone in economics or neuroscience,
I need to read their book or whatever. Hopefully that
doesn't take too long. If it's too much, then and
I won't have them on in the first place, and
then I edited together. It's usually not that much. I'm

(41:38):
not even listening, honestly to the whole podcast. I just
don't have time or patients to do that. But I
will listen to enough of it to get a feeling
for the audio quality.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
So Sean just records natural conversations and edits them together.
Dan and Shawma from Why This Universe have a slightly
more involved production process.

Speaker 6 (41:55):
In my desk drawer my home office, I have a
list of like maybe future Why This Universe episodes from
these brainstorming sessions. But then like I'll pick one of
them and I'll spend a week or two kind of
researching it. Some of these things I already know a
lot about and like researching it really is just kind
of like writing down my thoughts and like I put
it down, like just type a bunch of things down

(42:17):
in a word file, and I kind of use that
as notes.

Speaker 5 (42:20):
Yeah, often I'm like asking questions. I'm trying to kind
of predict what people's reactions will be, where confusions will
come up. You know, sometimes we'll say something and I'm like, wait,
that like might confuse people based on things we've said
in the past, you know, things like that, And then
I we like discuss ways to clarify things, add things.
I like give myself notes so often I'm the parts

(42:43):
that I add in. I often add in after this conversations.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
So now you've heard a little bit about the production
process on other podcasts, from the one man show of
Mindscape to the small team of Why This Universe and
the large team at Science Versus. So now let's get
into the nitty gritty of how an episode of Daniel
and Jorge Explain the Universe is made. First, I find
a topic. I have this file on my computer which
is just a raw list of ideas. Every time I

(43:09):
get a flash of inspiration or hear about a new
cool result, or get a suggestion from a listener, or
think about a moment when I was a student where
understanding you just click together and I feel like I
learned something deep about the universe. They just go on
the raw ideal list. I probably add like five ideas
every week, but not everything on that raw list makes
it out of the show. Then at the start of

(43:29):
each week, I look through the list and I pick
three to go into the official rotation. It just depends on,
you know, what I'm in the mood to talk about,
or think about or feel inspired to explain. So, for example,
this week, the three on the top of the raw
pile were these questions one what is a maser? Two?
How were neutrinos discovered? And three is Helion's fusion technology realistic?

(43:53):
And honestly, I don't even remember putting those questions on
the list, but they sounded good to me, so they
went into the back of the rotation. The next step
is to get the listener feedback. This is one of
my favorite parts of the podcast. Early on, I just
wanted to get a feeling for what the general public
might know about a particular topic and might want to
hear about, so that I could pitch the show at

(44:14):
the right level, make sure I didn't go too shallow
or too deep. So at first I was just walking
around campus here you see Irvin and asking people the
question of the episode, to see what they said and
what they knew, you know. The responses that were always
wonderful to listen to and often way off, but they
were always entertaining, and listeners really responded to this segment.

(44:34):
A few wrote in to say that they wish they
were on campus when I was walking around so they
could get a chance, And so I started occasionally including
listener responses via email. Then, of course the pandemic hit
and campus and everything else closed down, and so I
reached out to a bunch of listeners over email to
invite them to participate, and started to solicit volunteers on
the podcast, and suddenly we were hearing from people all

(44:57):
over the world. I loved it. It was like a
little glimp send to all of these people's lives, people
who are listening to our podcast and wanting to talk
back to us a little bit. And now, of course,
you see Irvine is open again. But frankly, I prefer
to be pulling our listeners because I love that it
makes the podcast be too directional. I get to hear
back from you, and you all get to hear a

(45:17):
little bit from each other. So I send the questions
out to whoever volunteers that week, but the questions I'm
asking people one week won't appear on the show for
months and months. Sometimes listeners respond within a day, sometimes
they take weeks or months to get back to me.
And so while listeners feedback is trickling in for an
episode on the back of the rotation, I start working
on episodes to record that week, Taking two episodes from

(45:41):
the front of the rotation. The episodes we're going to
record that week join the back of the list many
many weeks ago, so I already have listener comments to
help me shape those episodes. The number of topics currently
in the rotation between the front where episodes are being
recorded in the back, where new episodes are being added
and listener are being queried, is about one hundred episodes.
That's the year's worth of episodes I already have roughly

(46:02):
planned out. I need that kind of buffer in case
something else happens in my life that demands all my attention,
because I never want to be scrambling to come up
with episode ideas. So this week, at the very front
of the rotation are these questions, one why do moving
objects look shorter? And two how do we measure the
mass of the Higgs? The next step for me is
to write an outline. This is like two pages, and

(46:25):
I usually organize it in a few sections, starting with
like what is the thing we're talking about? And then
how does it work? And ending with what does it mean?
But the outline is not a script at all. It's
just a few bullet points with what I think are
the most interesting bits, some basic science explainer. And when
I'm preparing an episode, the part that I think most
about is not the physics, not like how does it work?

(46:47):
But how to explain it? Try to think about the
analogies I'll use to convey these ideas. I'll try to
think about how to walk people through so the idea
is click together in their minds and really make sense.
And then I try to anticipate what Orge might ask,
what might be confusing or need another analogy to back
it up. At this point, after so many years of
talking to him, I have something like a little mini

(47:09):
simulated hooge in my brain, and I ask simulated Jorge
to suggest what real Hogey might ask me, so I
can try to prepare myself, and then I think about
ways to answer those questions without just saying, look, it's
in the math, or trust me. Try to think of
ways to really convey those ideas. Because to explain something
in a clear way that's simple and understandable, you have

(47:31):
to understand it like two or three or four, five
levels deeper. So you can come up with analogies that
capture that intuitive understanding, but don't oversimplify it and don't
mislead anybody. Preparing the outline isn't always a lot of work.
Sometimes I can sit down and write it down in
ten minutes. If it's something I know back to front,
like the Higgs mass episode, I know all about how
we measure the massive particles. I think about it every day.

(47:54):
I'm deeply engaged in it, so that just took a
few minutes.

Speaker 8 (47:57):
Really.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
Sometimes if an episode is more common plex and it's
on a topic that I don't think about every day,
like when we talked about spinning black holes or black
holes with electric charges, then I'll go and talk to
somebody in my department here at you see Irvine, who
knows more about it, and a frequent target of my
questions is my colleague Arvind, who knows a lot about
black holes in general relativity. But I also walk down

(48:18):
the hall and talk to condensed matter experts when we
talk about things like band gaps and superconductors and semiconductors,
and that part is super fun for me because I'm
interested in all these areas of physics, and I haven't
always had an opportunity or an excuse to dig into them,
so it's really a pleasure to carve out a little
bit of time to read some papers on these other
topics and educate myself. For me, the hardest part of

(48:40):
preparing an episode is the cold open, those first few
moments of the podcast where we introduce a topic and
make a couple of jokes. That's the only scripted part
of the podcast, and that's why it's so hard. Coming
up with a new, silly way to start the podcast
after hundreds of episodes can really be a challenge, and
so for me, it's always the last part of the

(49:01):
outline I write. So I prepared the outline and I
send it to Jorge or to Katie or to Kelly
the night before we record, and you'll hear from them
in a minute about how they prepare and their process
and experience. Then it's time to record an episode. Jorge
lives in Pasadena, Katie lives in Italy, and Kelly lives
in Virginia, so we're never sitting together in the same room. Instead,

(49:21):
I call them up when we have a conversation, and
we each record our audio locally personally. My setup is
a nice microphone, the Sure SM seven B, which I'm
told is the same microphone that Michael Jackson used to
record Thriller, Not of course the same microphone, but the
same model. During the pandemic, I used to record at
home in my closet, but now record here in my

(49:42):
office at UC Irvine. So we sit down and we
start recording, and the outline is there to give the
other host an idea of where I wanted to go.
But we never feel limited by it. Sometimes we only
get halfway through it because we spend most of the
episode on the what is it part or backing up
to explain something subtle and basic but really important. And
you know, I love that my co hosts do this,

(50:03):
that they take us off the outline when something needs
to be explained, because I feel like often they're standing
in for the audience, making sure to ask a question
when I haven't been clear enough, or when something seems
obvious to me as a physicist but really needs a
few more dots to connect in the minds of listeners.
And lots and lots of listeners have written in to
say very specifically thank you to Jorge and Katie and

(50:23):
Kelly for asking the exact questions they had in their
mind when I explained something. So I think the unscripted
nature of the podcast is key. It makes those conversations real,
and also it makes it a lot less work to prepare.
It also makes for moments like this where I'm trying
to steer us back to the physics without much luck.

(50:44):
What's going to happen, what's likely to happen in the
next hundred years, million years, or billion.

Speaker 14 (50:49):
Years, m or the next hour. I mean, I don't
know where this conversation is going.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
To be honest, the podcast does seem kind of unpredictable.
It doesn't seem to matter too much what I write
in the outline.

Speaker 14 (51:00):
Well, I think that's what happens when you put two
unstable people and try to create a stable system here.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
And a lot of my favorite parts of an episode
are those spontaneous parts, you know, the jokes that we
come up with along the way. None of that is scripted,
That just bubbles up out of a conversation that we're having.
When I introduce myself, I always say I'm a particle
physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, and then I
add something else which is silly, and that's always just
made up on the spot, and then we riff from

(51:29):
there for the whole episode. I got a question about
our joke writing process from somebody on Discord who said, quote,
although you guys may get heckled for all your jokes,
I would like to know how much of that is
scripted in advance and how much is on the fly,
and how you come up with your joking theme to
tie into what otherwise would seem a completely unrelated physics concept. Well,

(51:49):
it's a good question, and it's always spontaneous. It's not scripted,
and it's just something that comes out of our common
sense of humor and having fun together.

Speaker 15 (51:57):
You know.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
An example are these jokes who make about bananas. I'm
always joking that Jorge is a huge fan of bananas,
and that's mostly just me teasing him. Back when we
used to give those book talks, Jorge would always disappear
for five minutes before we were supposed to go on
stage to have a banana and a drink and gather
his thoughts. He had this routine and so I would
tease him about it, and the first time I did
it on their listeners responded to it. So we just

(52:18):
kind of leaned into it and sort of made it
a thing. And that's how all the humor on the
show works. It just sort of like bubbles up randomly
and naturally, and we follow it wherever it leads. But
you know, so far, I've just been talking about my experience,
and a crucial part of the podcast is that it's
a conversation. It's not just the one person narrating. So
I sat down with my co host to hear about

(52:39):
their experience on the podcast, and this was a different
kind of conversation that I usually have with each of them,
not with their podcast physics question asking persona, but with
the real them. All Right, Horge, thanks very much. We're
going to answer a few questions about your experience on
the podcast, And this is sort of a fun conversation
because now I'm talking to like the real joege and

(53:00):
like the PODCASTE.

Speaker 14 (53:01):
What do you mean there's only one?

Speaker 5 (53:03):
He?

Speaker 14 (53:05):
Wait? Are there too? Do you know of another who?

Speaker 15 (53:07):
He?

Speaker 1 (53:08):
Well, I know that the way you have a conversation
on the podcast is not always the same way you
have a conversation in real life. Sometimes you ask me
questions about things that I know you already understand because
you're standing in for the listeners.

Speaker 14 (53:18):
Well, I mean, I think, uh, this, I consider this
a real conversation. You know, I don't think this is
a fake conversation.

Speaker 1 (53:24):
And we're the.

Speaker 14 (53:25):
Only difference is we're sort of having this conversation in
front of a crowd. You know, it'd be no different
than like if we were on stage in front of
an auditorium or you know, having a conversation for a
video or something like that, where it's like a real conversation.
But you know, you have also have to keep in
mind that there are people listening in.

Speaker 1 (53:43):
And I also chatted with Katie Golden.

Speaker 7 (53:46):
Are you going to play real hardball with me? Ask
some real like who are you really?

Speaker 1 (53:51):
I'm going to unmask you in this interview, Katie, we're
going to do a Scooby Doo moment. No, I'd love
to ask you, first of all, to introduce yourself. Anders
might know you as Katie who's a co host on
the podcast, but you're so much more than that. Tell
us who are you, Katie?

Speaker 7 (54:06):
I contain multitudes. Yeah, I mean I am very, very
lucky and very happy to occasionally co host on the show.
It's really fun for me given that I do not
have a background in physics. I actually have a background
in psychology and evolutionary biology. I have another podcast called

(54:29):
Creature Feature where I'm the one in charge. I'm the
Daniel of that show.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
And of course I talked to Kelly Wiener Smith.

Speaker 9 (54:39):
Thanks for inviting me, but now you got me kind
of scared. What are you going to ask me about?

Speaker 1 (54:44):
Of course, I wasn't trying to put them on the spot.
I just wanted to know how they prepare for each episode.
Here's what they had.

Speaker 14 (54:51):
To say, Daniel, Like work out. You know, I go
for like a three mile run for our recording. Just
imagine like a Rocky style montage where I'm like pull ups,
hitting a punching bag. Drinking is a green smoothie. Then
I meditate, I climb up a mountain, I clear my head,

(55:12):
and then.

Speaker 1 (55:12):
I go and record.

Speaker 14 (55:13):
While Yeah, it's a whole process.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
Your dedication is very impressive. It's almost a full day.

Speaker 14 (55:18):
Yeah, no, you know. You send me the outlines the
day before are recordings, and I sort of read them.
I go through them and I sort of get a
sense of what we're talking about, and here's Katie.

Speaker 7 (55:30):
I read it because I want to have a sense
of where it's going. I don't want to start you
on tangents that don't end up going back to our topic.
If the topic has something to do with the life sciences,
I might do a little bit of refresher just so
that if the topic comes up that I'll kind of
have ideas for good questions about it. Or if it's

(55:52):
something where I read the notes and I'm so lost
I cannot even conceive of what's about to happen, I
might try to do some extra research.

Speaker 16 (56:00):
And Kelly, I would like to say that I do
some prep, but I would be lying. I don't do
any prep besides reading the outline that you send me
ahead of time. And partly that's because when we were
discussing whether or not I.

Speaker 9 (56:15):
Would be a regular co host for this podcast.

Speaker 16 (56:19):
We agreed that my responsibilities would include just reading.

Speaker 9 (56:23):
The outline and showing up.

Speaker 16 (56:25):
And I was making this decision at a time when
I was feeling kind of overwhelmed with various projects in
my life, and so I started off by doing exactly
what we had agreed on, and I've kind of stuck
with that. So I'll do a little bit of prep.
I'll read the outline ahead of time. I'll think about
whether or not I know an anecdote or you know,
some funny story that might relate to the topic that

(56:47):
I can sort of try to wedge in there. But
in general, I don't do much more prep than that.
Except for the episodes where we interview sci fi authors,
I read those whole books and I think about what
would be an interesting thing to talk to the author about,
and so so I do do more prep for those,
But for for the you know, more typical episodes, I

(57:08):
do pretty much nothing.

Speaker 1 (57:09):
I also asked each of them about what's going through
their minds during the episode, what their.

Speaker 14 (57:14):
Process is most I just asked you a question, and
then I serve Instagram totally just kidding, No, this is
that's an interesting question. I guess it is a sort
of a full body thing for me. You know, I'm
thinking about what you're saying. I'm thinking about what I
can say, what questions I can have, what questions the

(57:36):
audience might have, what's coming up ahead, where we are
in terms of time, and whether or not, you know,
maybe we need to take a hard right or hard
left on whatever we're talking about, or move on. So
I'm definitely sort of it's a full mental engagement, I
would say, I would, you know, I don't think about

(57:57):
the process that much. I just as I said before,
I just think of it as a real conversation we're
having in front of an audience of people.

Speaker 7 (58:04):
In general. I just read through the notes and then
really try to listen attentively, and you know, just think
of questions that come to me, like what am I
curious about hearing more clarification on and I assume that's
hopefully what the audience is also interested in learning about.
So just listening with rapt attention, which is not hard

(58:27):
when it's such interesting material.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
Well, I think you're really excellent at that, like listening
carefully and stopping me and asking a question with something
doesn't make sense, And I'm always imagining that you're standing
in for the listeners who I've also lost and confused
with my complicated jargon. So I really appreciate how you
do that.

Speaker 7 (58:44):
I speak for all the confused people. I think that's
that's I'm president of the confused people.

Speaker 16 (58:51):
Well, so you know, in the role of every person,
I'd like to tell you that what I'm thinking is, Okay,
what is an all audience member likely to be thinking
in response to Daniel's explanation? And what follow up question
should I be asking? But honestly, physics requires like one
hundred and twenty percent of my brain, and so all

(59:12):
I'm thinking is do I understand what Daniel is saying?
And lucky for me, you are very clear in your explanations,
so the answer is usually yes, I understand what Daniel
is saying. But sometimes what I'm thinking is, Okay, this
question that I have is probably profoundly stupid.

Speaker 9 (59:31):
How do I find a way to ask it that
makes it sound a little bit intelligent?

Speaker 8 (59:36):
Maybe?

Speaker 16 (59:37):
So yeah, I guess mostly I'm just sort of listening
and trying to, you know, just have a conversation with you.
About physics, and it's a conversation that has rails, you know,
since we've got this outline that sort of keeps us
on track.

Speaker 1 (59:50):
And I was also curious what each of them thought.
The listeners might not understand about the process since they
only hear the finished product.

Speaker 14 (59:58):
Uh, that's a great question. And I guess just I
wonder if people know how that it's edited, right.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
And of course you should all know that this podcast
is edited, and we'll talk to the editor in a
moment about what it takes to clean up all of
our ums and aws and long positive while we check
our facts or think again about how to explain something.

Speaker 7 (01:00:19):
Here's Katie Well, I hiccup all the time. No, I
think that. I mean, one thing I think is interesting
is that they probably don't hear how thoughtful you are
in terms of thinking about how to phrase something. So
like you will really think about the best way to

(01:00:40):
describe or phrase something, and you do a really good
job of it. I think from the listener's perspective, it
just sounds like you're having a casual conversation, but you're
really thoughtful in terms of I guess, giving the best
explanation of something, and Kelly.

Speaker 16 (01:00:57):
I hope that they are surprised to find out that
the conversation is sort of outlined ahead of time, because
I think we try really hard to make our conversations
feel natural and for them to actually be natural, but
you know, to sort of have a final destination that
we're hoping to get to. But the thing that might

(01:01:17):
surprise them the most is that at the bottom of
the outline you always write pale blue dot and then
in like parentheses or carots, inspire humanity here. And even
though you've figured out everything else in the outline, all
the important facts are there, you leave that part to
figure out on the fly. And to me, that's the

(01:01:38):
part that I would be most likely to plan ahead
of time because I am just I guess they don't
think of myself as being inspirational on the.

Speaker 9 (01:01:48):
Fly particularly particularly well.

Speaker 16 (01:01:52):
But you know, at the end of every episode, I
see that we're just about at the inspire humanity here
part of the outline, and I always just you know,
sit with baited breath waiting to see what are you
going to be able to come up with on the
fly to inspire the audience, and you you always do
a great job, so I'm guessing that most people don't
know that the inspirational parts are totally off the cuff.

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
I personally love that pale blue dot moment in the outline.
That was Will's original idea to end with a moment
of inspiration. But it's hard sometimes to think of something
meaningful and sincere to say like in advance, so I
usually just let the conversation inspire me. And so that's
the recording process. Well, it's time to take another quick break,
and when we come back, we'll talk to our editor,

(01:02:36):
who we've been working with for years and who has
listened to countless hours of our yapping, but whose voice
I had never heard before this conversation. After the break,

(01:02:59):
we're back, and we talked a bit about how the
raw substance of the podcast is put together. We're spontaneous
and we're unscripted, and that relies on us to be
clever and interesting in the moment, but it also relies
on an editor to weave it together and make it
sound good. Now, let's hear about how it gets polished
into the final product that you hear. I called up
our editor, Corey, who does this magic for us, and

(01:03:22):
until this conversation. I had never spoken to him on
the phone or in video or in person. I don't
even know where he lives. Here's my chat with the
mysterious Corey. So thanks very much Corey for having a
chat with me about how the podcast comes together. We're
giving people a little bit of a behind the scenes view.
So first, I'd love if you introduce yourself to the listeners,

(01:03:44):
because though you're a crucial part of the show, they
have never until now heard your voice.

Speaker 11 (01:03:49):
My name is Corey Nolan. I have worked in audio
for Gosh about twenty years now and got into podcast
editing about three or four years ago with iHeart as
a free lancer and was given Daniel and Jorge explain
the universe. And that's been are we going on three years?

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
The podcast is five years old? Yeah, So tell us
a little bit about the process. What's it like for you?
You get these files from us, and how do you
weave that together into something? You know, I finished product
for the listeners.

Speaker 11 (01:04:20):
Well, you guys get a lot of the credit because
you stay so far in advance. I mean you put
out two hour long shows a week. I mean that's
that's a lot of content, you know, you deliver those files,
you and Jorge do, or Kelly or Katie and whoever's
guest hosting, and they just kind of go through a workflow,
a process of just kind of cleaning it up, which

(01:04:41):
you you know, doesn't usually take that much. With y'all's audio,
y'all got it really nailed down, but sometimes it takes
a little bit with guests.

Speaker 1 (01:04:49):
Mean neither you have to like clean it up or
process it or balance it or what happens there.

Speaker 11 (01:04:54):
Well, yes and yes, and so there's one phase of
it that is sort of a take out the room
noise phase. That's an initial process that's sort of again,
you and Jorge are pretty consistent now and you don't
have a whole lot of background noise happening, but it
helps if you're you know, you're in a room with
wild air conditioning or something like that. So it just

(01:05:15):
kind of removes the extra stuff that you don't want
to hear and be annoyed by. And then from there,
you know, it goes into the software and the program,
which is an Adobe program that's kind of the standard
for podcasting, and and we just yeah, we line it
up and then it's it's just a matter of cutting,
and then you have your own like I go through

(01:05:37):
and have you know, Daniel has his own like effects chain.

Speaker 1 (01:05:41):
Oh wait, what are the Daniel effect? Is there like
a button there like make Daniel sound smart?

Speaker 11 (01:05:46):
You do that just fine, which is actually maybe skipping
a little bit ahead. Is one of every once in
a while, I'll come across people who listen to the
show and they think I'm really famous and also think
I'm really smart by association, and I have to explain
to them that it's not that's not the case. Uh yeah, you,
I mean, you know, that's just comes from the years

(01:06:07):
I did. I did music for still do some music,
but but just listening and trying to find what even
though you are recorded well and you have good equipment,
you know, there's just some shaping that needs to happen
to kind of fit your voices specifically, and because y'all
record the same way unless somebody gives me a heads up.

(01:06:28):
Three changed his setup a few months ago, but it
just kind of went going back and just kind of
fine tuning it to where it's still putting out the
sound that I think is good and right. You have
such a good low end voice that there's stuff that
like you want to kind of beef up and bring
out so without overdoing it. Yeah, it's kind of it's
kind of fun to that part of it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
So tell me about the editing process, because when we're recording,
sometimes we'll stop repeat ourselves, but sometimes we'll just talk
for minutes and minutes. What is your process there? You're
listening to it very carefully and trying to like remove
any stumbles or leuency breaks.

Speaker 11 (01:07:00):
Yeah, I mean, as mentioned as an our podcast, and
so there's a lot of content and it's different for
you and Jorge. I think the way as I've done
this and kind of learned better how to show personas
through edits, yours are very succinct. Jorges, I think it
kind of matches the way he talks to kind of
for it to not be like that. Now, there's things

(01:07:22):
that have to be edited on his, probably just as
much as they are on yours. But as far as
how it comes across, we're not trying to make y'all
sound exactly the same because it's just not how your
speech comes across and how your personalities come across. But yeah,
you can't do anything else when you're editing a podcast.
Because you have to be paying attention to every little

(01:07:44):
thing and even though I might miss one or two
and listening to something, in the end, there's a lot
of little breaks and things like that that really have
to be lined up. So it takes your full attention
to do it. And even at that, you know there's
still there still kind of needs to be an oversight
kind of process, like we have to make sure that
nothing else was messed.

Speaker 1 (01:08:04):
Something I've always wondered is how much you're listening to
the content, like the physics of it, and how much
you're just listening to the words and the fluency in
the language, Like are you digesting the physics also or
is your whole brain required just to like make sure
that everything is sounding smooth.

Speaker 2 (01:08:20):
Well.

Speaker 11 (01:08:21):
There is also another question of how much am I
am I capable of understanding the content? And I will say,
and I've said this to you all over email, like
I think y'all do a fantastic job of making this
available and accessible to average people. I do think that
your audience in general are not generally average, and so me,

(01:08:44):
if I am me being an average person, I there
are certain concepts that I just don't I don't follow along,
so I may I may make it as far as
the content wise, and following may make it to you know,
twenty minutes in, and then it's then it's give it
a my head. But there are some others, like you know,
like listener question episodes. I really love those because that's

(01:09:05):
a little more you know, children ask those questions a
lot of time, so I can I can kind of
play in that ballpark. And you guys come up in
my conversations like if I'm hanging out with friends or
sitting around campfire or whatever. They just have made me think.
And you know, the answers that you guys kind of
come to you are really thought provoking and really big
picture stuff. So you know, it just depends episode two,

(01:09:28):
episode depends on what you are going into. But I
will be honest and say that it's off and over
my head.

Speaker 1 (01:09:34):
So does that mean that you're able to edit it
and make it sound good and smooth even if you're
not understanding? That seems like sort of a superpower.

Speaker 11 (01:09:43):
Yeah, yeah, let me have that. Let me have that superpower.

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
So how long does it take for you to process
one episode?

Speaker 11 (01:09:49):
If you are not counting the pre process, like I'll
take a day, and you'll know those days because I'm saying, hey,
I email you, I need this file or need this file,
and try to get ten to twelve episodes just kind
of knocked out. And that's where I'll go through and
do that remove noise process and just make sure everything
is in the correct folders, and at that point when

(01:10:12):
I actually then go in, because it might be another
few days before I bust into an episode. I usually
say that if an episode ends up being forty minutes,
it's about four hours. So it's about an hour for
every ten minutes of final content. And you know, by comparison,
you know, forty minute for you y'all may have recorded,
it may have taken you fifty five minutes or something

(01:10:35):
like that. So there's there's usually you know, ten or
fifteen minutes something something around that range that's being removed.
Maybe not quite that much that might be, but still
it takes Even if those are just small second or
few second increments, they just you know, they happen a
good bit along the way, so it just takes a
little bit of time.

Speaker 1 (01:10:54):
So I have a question for you from some of
our listeners. I pulled some folks on discord to ask
them what they wanted to know. But the making of
the podcast, you know, there's been some listener feedback about
my chuckles that I'm always laughing at Joeyes jokes. Yeah,
And so the question for you was how many Daniel
chuckles do you have to edit out or do you
have to sometimes go in and add more chuckles to
meet the required chuckle quota.

Speaker 11 (01:11:16):
Yeah, you know, actually I like that part of it
because I like crafting y'all's conversation because sometimes when you're editing,
it doesn't always I mean, the laughs are real and
they're happening, but they they may be a little bit delayed,
or it maybe like you're you may talk over each
other for a second, and that's just not how we

(01:11:38):
don't leave that stuff in on these episodes. We clean
that up. And so like it's kind of fun to
like move your laugh right, like as the peak of
the joke is falling off and kind of like Daniel's
laugh has moved over. It's just a timing thing. Again,
it doesn't change like what actually happened. But I actually
kind of enjoy that, And there are I would say
there's probably more times that I'm removing Daniel's and having

(01:12:01):
to add them in.

Speaker 1 (01:12:01):
No, no, oh, I can't help. But it's just so
much fun to chat with all of our hosts about science.
All right, Well, last question for you is what do
you think listeners might not understand about the process from
just hearing the finished product that goes into it.

Speaker 11 (01:12:17):
I mean, this isn't so much on my end, but honestly,
I'm not just trying because you're you know, technically my boss.
I am just really impressed by the in addition to
the other jobs, that you have the ability to handle
this much content and to keep coming up with content. I,
for example, did a podcast with a buddy of mine
with music and some other cultural things, and we did

(01:12:41):
ten episodes and like that was it? Like coming up
a content was like I mean, we may have have
kept doing it, but it couldn't have done two a week.
I couldn't have done to it in an hour.

Speaker 15 (01:12:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:12:51):
So your ability to process that and to mind that
out of the world. And I think that you probably
would give your listeners credit for that too, for sure.
I just think and if you I don't want to
take full credit and that I would say maybe generally
there is a whole lot that goes on that makes
these happen before it ever gets to me. You know,
what I do is a task, you know, at the

(01:13:12):
end of the day. But as far as how this
show thrives, and I think it is thriving, I think
it does well, and I think that really comes from
just a whole lot of work on the back end
before I ever even see a file. And then, you know,
I do think maybe if I were to bring myself
into that, you know, there are some times you just
have to be on your toes and you have to

(01:13:34):
be able to adjust to what is happening in the world.
And I think maybe on my side that if I
were to give myself a little more credit on that,
it would be you just have to be willing to adapt.
And my life is on the road. I spend a
lot of my time on the road, and so a
lot of that is either happening in a hotel room

(01:13:54):
late at night or maybe even you know, and stops
along at the airport. And we try to do that,
we try to plan out, but there are a lot
of things that do need to happen because they're just
important to the show. And so I think that a
lot of the reason why the show is so good
is because you just have a lot of people that
care about the content and care about it operating a

(01:14:15):
high quality. And that's not just talking about me. That's
to Tyler and to the whole crew that's around this program.

Speaker 1 (01:14:22):
Well, I think you should take a lot of credit
because we love the editing that you do, the way
you stitch together our raw stuff into something that sounds
so smooth and good and make us all let me
know we're talking about you edit out all of our
Wikipedia breaks. Thanks for that.

Speaker 11 (01:14:39):
Am I supposed to edit out the reference to the
Wikipedia breaks?

Speaker 1 (01:14:41):
Now we're keeping that in. We're keeping that in. Okay, good,
Thanks so much for the candid conversation. Really appreciate it absolutely.
Corey talks about his editing process there, but I thought
it'd be useful for you to hear an example of
him doing his magic. Here's a raw clip of me
and Jorge talking.

Speaker 14 (01:14:57):
To be the difference between ten to the forty nine
truckloads or ten to the forty eight truckloads, which is
still a lot of truckloads, which is a truckload of truckloads.

Speaker 1 (01:15:05):
It's still a lot of shrugloads. Yeah, exactly, And we
try to be and we try to be careful about
these uncertain and we try to be careful about what
we don't know, but there's always room for surprises.

Speaker 6 (01:15:15):
Here.

Speaker 1 (01:15:16):
It is after he cleans it up to.

Speaker 14 (01:15:18):
Be the difference between ten to the forty nine truckloads
or ten to the forty eight truckloads, which is still
a lot of truckloads, which is a truckload of truckloads.

Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
It's still a lot of shrugloads. Yeah, exactly, And we
try to be careful about what we don't know, but
there's always room for surprises, right, And so in that
clip you hear me starting and stopping again, trying to
think about the best way to phrase something. And you
speak differently if you know you're going to be edited,
because if something doesn't come out right, you back up
and you try it again, because you want the best
possible way to say something. If you're speaking live, of course,

(01:15:47):
that would be a very awkward way to speak. And
so when I'm speaking in public, I don't rely on
an editor, of course, I just speak naturally. So the
last step in the process is the review and the
fact checking. We don't have a huge team have its
science versus Corey just sends me a draft of the episode.
If it's a topic I'm not one hundred percent confident in,
I will send it to some colleagues who are experts

(01:16:09):
and ask them to review it to let me know
if I've goofed up. Because while I want the podcast
to be very accessible, it's also super important to me
that it's accurate and that nothing I say is misleading
to you. Occasionally I'll have to re record something and
Corey will patch it up. Very rarely an episode requires
major surgery because an expert tells me that I've misunderstood

(01:16:29):
something or explained it in a misleading way. That happened,
for example, with the quantum computing episode. Usually, though the
episode is all good as it is and ready to post,
probably eighty eighty five percent of the episodes don't need
any further work or trimming. But we record episodes pretty
far in advance. We try to keep about two months
of buffer between recording episodes and posting them. That's like
sixteen to twenty episodes, And you know, that gives Corey

(01:16:52):
flexibility to edit when he's available, and it gives us
a chance to take breaks when we need to, which
means that by the time you hear an episode, I
actually haven't thought about it in quite a while. But
then it's out there and it's up to all of
you to listen to it and to react. And we
get lots of fun comments from listeners all over the
world about the show. Here a few comments sent in
by listeners.

Speaker 13 (01:17:12):
Hey, Daniel and Jorge, thanks the opportunity to let me
come in about the show. This is Bob Pokers in
my seventies, live in Silver Spring, Maryland. Been a listener
for a couple of years now. I generally listen to
science podcasts, and this is my go to podcast for
some of the more esoteric stuff about science. A real
plus about the show is that I email Daniel, not

(01:17:36):
regularly but pretty occasional. I guess in the last couple
of years I've probably written about ten or twelve times,
and it's nice that he gets back to me and
answers every question I've got, and often will lead me
to a previous episode that covers a topic I've got
a question about, or to an article that also covers it.
In Layman's terms, I love the show. A long time listener,

(01:17:58):
I planning keep on listening for as long you've got
the podcasts.

Speaker 17 (01:18:02):
Get a I'm Callum from Tasmania, Australia in the Land
down Under. I discovered the podcast a few years ago
after googling the words physics and podcast, and I've been
quantumly entangled ever since. I have a deep itch for
knowledge about the universe that only Daniel.

Speaker 1 (01:18:20):
And Jorgey can scratch.

Speaker 17 (01:18:22):
Daniel delivers his profound knowledge and insights into physics in
such a captivating and passionate way that makes you refresh
the podcast daily in anticipation of a new episode when
I can't sleep at two am because I'm pondering the
effects of time dilation or how a Fineman diagram can
help illustrate a virtual photon interaction. I know Daniel and

(01:18:42):
Jorgey are just an electromagnetic interaction away.

Speaker 12 (01:18:46):
While we certainly can't explain the entire universe, yet, Daniel
and Jrhey do a wonderful job painting that picture for
all of us. Hey, I'm Joe, one of the many
beastless speculators heard at the beginning of episodes. So why
is this podcast at the top of my listening preferences?
Simply put Daniel, Jorge and their engaging guests take topics

(01:19:08):
from the seemingly mundane to mind bogglingly complex and bring
them down to earth for all of us in a
fun and accessible manner. I've learned more from this series
than all my formal classes, but more importantly, it fosters
an ongoing curiosity for literally every aspect of our universe.
In some way. We're all scientists, all physicists, each with

(01:19:31):
unique insights and questions into this vast thing we call
the universe. Having the opportunity to contribute is a fun
way to share knowledge or ignorance okay, mostly ignorance on
a huge range of areas that inform our collective understanding
of what makes it all tick. Thank you to everyone involved,
Stay tuned for more.

Speaker 18 (01:19:52):
Hello Daniel and Jojo and the team around the podcast.
I always enjoy your podcast that we questioned so very
smoll like quirks to the biggest and hardest questions in
the universe, no questions to strange to weird. You take
them on any ways, with great and understandable explanations and
comparisons with every day Pheemina. You're in near my curiosity

(01:20:14):
about how the world works. Keep up the amazing work.
All best Nicholas and Sweden.

Speaker 19 (01:20:19):
Hi, Hore and Daniel. This is Robin from Alberta, Canada.
I love that you use your podcast to explain so
many interesting things to your listeners. There are endless, deep,
fascinating questions out there to be explored, and your podcast
is an accessible and approachable way for all kinds of
people to learn about these topics. I like the person
on the Street segment at the beginning of the podcast

(01:20:41):
episodes because it highlights just how many people think about
and are curious about these different science topics. I think
it also encourages people to be free and feel comfortable
about exploring these topics that they would like to know
more about, regardless of how much they currently know. Thank
you for all the hard work and chocolate and bananas
the years by you and your team.

Speaker 5 (01:21:01):
I look forward to learning.

Speaker 19 (01:21:03):
New things in upcoming episodes.

Speaker 1 (01:21:05):
And some of the comments I get over email bring
tears to my eyes, you know, like the listener who,
at sixty years old, was inspired to go back to
school and get a degree in astrophysics, or the listener
who had a stroke and relied on the podcast to
keep his mind nimble while he worked through months of recovery,
or the listener who had trouble talking to his teenagers

(01:21:26):
until he discovered the podcast as something they could do
together and talk about. And lots of moments of laughter,
like the listener who said that he loved the podcast
but he listens while he makes dinner and often ends
up burning it when the topic gets really juicy. His
family keeps asking him to turn it off, but he refuses,
Or the eight year old listener who asked if it
was possible to blow up Mars made me wonder if

(01:21:47):
I needed to write back to his parents maybe before
answering that question. And of course there are people who
listen to the episode while falling asleep because my voice
makes them feel cozy and tired. That's cool, you know,
whatever works for you. And then there was the moment
when I complained about chemistry and helping my son with
this chemistry homework and how I wasn't really a fan
of chemistry at all, and I got a bunch of

(01:22:08):
email from chemists and chemistry professors and chemistry teachers who
are offended that I was negative about science, and you
know what, they were right. There's so many different areas
of science, and all of them are fun in different ways,
and they suit different people. And we should only be
positive about everybody's joy for science, because we're all different
people and we all have different joys. And I said
something on the podcast. I apologized for my careless slander

(01:22:31):
of chemistry, and then I was pleased to hear back
from some of those people. Here's a quote from one
of them. She wrote, I'm a chemistry teacher. I wrote
to you earlier to complain about your attitude towards chemistry,
and I want you to know that I appreciate your
apology and your efforts to do better. See we can
all learn. But every day I also get emails from listeners,
sometimes just a few, sometimes dozens, and like I say

(01:22:52):
in the podcast, I answer all of them. It is
important to me to be accessible and that the curious
public out there has ways to ask academics good faith
questions motivated by curiosity. And often people are amazed that
I actually do respond, that they're really hearing from me,
and I'm really happy about that. It's nice to think
that I've had some impact out there, helped some people

(01:23:13):
understand science and given some people an opportunity to ask
their question and to get a specific answer to the
thing that they were wondering about. And sometimes I wonder
about the scope and the breadth of our listenership, wondering
if there are people out there in academia or even
in physics who are listening to the podcast. So I
did something very unscientific, and I asked two random people
in my research group and Chase if they were aware

(01:23:34):
of the podcast and if they listen to it. Do
you guys listen to podcasts? Yes? You do? What are
your podcasts not?

Speaker 14 (01:23:43):
Since I moved away from Orange County because I don't
spend half my day in the car anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:23:48):
Okay? Cool. So then my random question for you is
are you aware that I do a podcast? I am aware?
You are aware? Okay? Do you ever listen to it? No?
You never do. Okay, I am aware, and I still
don't listen to it.

Speaker 8 (01:24:00):
I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:24:01):
Great, cool, awesome, thanks very much. So that was kind
of humbling. Then I was wondering how the podcast has
impacted other people in my life, like my family, if
they felt like it made me too busy, or if
they didn't like that I sometimes talked about them on
the podcast. Here's a conversation I had with my wife
and my daughter on that topic. Usually, when I interview you,

(01:24:21):
your anonymous because I'm just asking you a question for
like a person on the street. But why don't you
introduce yourself to the ginas.

Speaker 8 (01:24:28):
I'm Hazel, he's my dad.

Speaker 15 (01:24:31):
I'm Katrina Whitson, and I live in Irvine, California with
my husband, Dana Whitson.

Speaker 1 (01:24:39):
All right, so the dog does not speak here.

Speaker 15 (01:24:44):
Our dog Pupizza is here too, for the record, Yeah,
thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:24:49):
So my number one question for you guys is like,
what is it like for you that I have this podcast?
Is it like whatever doesn't matter? Is it cool? Is
it embarrassing? What's your experience?

Speaker 20 (01:25:00):
I mean, it's not like it affects my day day life.
I think it's kind of cool. There's like people out there.
I also think that it's cool that other people agree
that you have.

Speaker 8 (01:25:09):
A soothing voice. It's not just me. He used to
call me crazy for that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:13):
I used to call you crazy.

Speaker 5 (01:25:14):
What you like?

Speaker 8 (01:25:16):
I do not have a soothing voice, And now I
have people to back me up.

Speaker 1 (01:25:19):
I see.

Speaker 8 (01:25:20):
So he's giving me a disapproving look. You can't see it,
but he is.

Speaker 1 (01:25:27):
It's true you used to fall asleep to my podcast,
well before I knew that other people did it.

Speaker 8 (01:25:32):
It's true then the least debating way possible.

Speaker 1 (01:25:37):
How at you dream?

Speaker 15 (01:25:38):
I mean, I'm really proud of you for this. It's
I think it's amazing you have this following. I brag
about you regularly. I feel like it's really cool you've
built this thing up. And I love hearing the stories
about people who like reinvigorate their interest in science. It
gives me hope for education and having people have the

(01:26:00):
chance to like remake their lives using knowledge.

Speaker 1 (01:26:03):
I think it's really cool.

Speaker 15 (01:26:04):
It's just like it's a force for good out in
the world, and I'm just so glad that the world
has you in your soothing voice.

Speaker 1 (01:26:13):
So sometimes I interview you guys with the person on
the street, like need somebody and I don't have time
to collect stuff online. You guys like being part of
the podcast. Is that embarrassing or is it fun? What
does that feel for you?

Speaker 20 (01:26:25):
I don't usually know the answers, so I hear my voice.
I'm like the one they got it completely wrong. But
I think it's cool. There was one time you talked
about it. You talked about the lollipop I found in
the closet you got when you got your degree, and
I actually like it, And you said, no, you mind.

Speaker 1 (01:26:43):
If I include the little personal tidbits in the podcast.

Speaker 8 (01:26:45):
No, I think that's cute, haven't you It.

Speaker 1 (01:26:47):
Hasn't made your life porfolion or is it embarrassing?

Speaker 15 (01:26:51):
I think it's really fun. I love getting to hear
about who you've been interviewing, because like it's often you know,
like you know, you interviewed my post doc or my student,
and then I hear their voice on the podcast. And
sometimes you do ask me questions, like right when I'm
in the middle of something else, it's like the morning
rush and you're.

Speaker 9 (01:27:07):
Like, so, what's dark matter?

Speaker 1 (01:27:10):
What are quirks?

Speaker 20 (01:27:12):
He made me late to school a bit and then
he texted me why are you late to school?

Speaker 8 (01:27:16):
And I had to answer it was it was a
very sweet moment with though all of the.

Speaker 1 (01:27:22):
Service of public science communication. All right, anything else?

Speaker 15 (01:27:27):
Do we get to share some favorite moments?

Speaker 1 (01:27:29):
What are your favorite moments?

Speaker 12 (01:27:31):
Well?

Speaker 15 (01:27:31):
I just well I love hearing stories from listeners. And
during the pandemic, instead of doing a man on the
street interviews, like when you were out in the world,
you were getting them as recordings and sometimes I got
to hear them and I remember like just really fun
moments people had shared with you, like these Australian housemates
who were like all giggling and answering your questions, and

(01:27:51):
I feel like there was music involved somehow.

Speaker 1 (01:27:53):
Did you feel like you wanted to be part of
that house?

Speaker 11 (01:27:55):
Yes, I did.

Speaker 8 (01:27:57):
And when we went to New Zealand last year, one
of your listeners was.

Speaker 15 (01:28:01):
So kind and gave us a ton of advice that
we totally followed and that was amazing. And if I
remembered their name, I would say it right now. But
that was so kind and I don't know. It just
brings out the good in people. It's like made the
world a better place.

Speaker 1 (01:28:14):
And I'd like to end this special episode with what
the podcast has meant to me. It means the world
to me to know that I can share that joy,
that there are people out there who are hearing it
and feeling it. I love having an excuse to learn
about areas of physics I never otherwise had time to
dig into. I love having to think super carefully about
my own understanding to make sure it really clicks in

(01:28:37):
my head well enough to explain it. And I love
having joking science conversations with Hooge and Mkatie and Mkelly,
and I really hope that the podcast has helped you
share in the joy of science. Thank you all so
much for listening.

Speaker 14 (01:28:54):
Hey ho hey from the podcast, and I'm super excited
to announce my new book, Oliver's Great Big Universe, is
available to order now.

Speaker 1 (01:29:09):
Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.