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

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We'll talk about all that's viral and trending, with a little bit of cheesement and a whole lot of laughs. of course, the great bibras you've come to expect. Listen to the new season of Dacias Come Again on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace.

You discover the depths of your mother's illness. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the powerful stories I'll be mining on our upcoming 12th season of family secrets. We continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their courageously told stories. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone, Daniel here. Today's episode is our 500th 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 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 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 out 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. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine. 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 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 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, 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

500 episodes of the podcast now. That's 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 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 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 get here, 500 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. I believe I saw a fellow podcaster who had retweeted that there was going to be a new podcast by the people that wrote, you know, we have no idea, you know, sort of thing, these books that I enjoyed.

And so I kind of got in on the ground floor. And as a professional scientist myself, I was very surprised 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 at last, this is going to 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, a great source of science news in the future. And I'm just so glad that it's part of my life. Keep up the great work, guys. And

from your number one friend, Brian, talk to you later. Brian didn't think we could keep it up, clever things to save for all those episodes. Well, I'm glad to say that we proved him wrong that 500 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 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 2017 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 all

probably know Jorge as the co-host of his podcast, I first knew him as the famous cartoonist behind Ph.D 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. Here's a clip of me during a presentation we gave at Harvard telling the story of how Jorge and I came to work together. Hello, everyone. Thanks to me too. Thank you, Jorge. It's been a real pleasure working on these projects with Jorge.

Not only he's 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 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, 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, right?

Like, while we're at it, right? So I still haven't heard back from Brad, but I did get to write this awesome book with Jorge, which 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 2017, the cartoonist behind the webcomic XKCD had a massive bestselling book called What If? which 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, think we could write a book about particle physics?

And I said, I don't know. Let's find out what's involved. 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 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 onto 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. 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 and made jokes and 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, hold on a second. What do you mean? We don't know what mass is or we don't understand space. 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 remote the book. That clip you heard earlier is from our presentation, the book talk. And the something you need to

understand about how that book talk came together that's kind of shaped all 500 episodes of the podcast that followed. Let's just say like it wasn't very highly prepared. Basically, we wanged it 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, bookwriting is by 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 of terrified me, but you know what? It went pretty well. All in all, we gave that talk more than 50 times across the country in the UK. We gave that talk in fields and auditoriums filled

with a thousand people or at a tiny bookstores with a handful of eager listeners. And because it wasn't super scripted, every single time it really was different. There was always like some new joke or a new twist. Maybe Jorge would like draw a silly doodle of me, making fun to 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 turns 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 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 2017, a few years after podcast 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 intriguing idea. The guys at Stuff Media thought that we had what it 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 iHeart media and he now runs their podcast division that's pretty impressive i heart is the biggest podcasting company on the planet which means will is basically the worldwide precedent 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 13 year old son had, and I'm quoting him here, a very important gaming session. Here's my conversation with Will. Well, thanks very much, Will, for agreeing to have a candid conversation with me. First, introduce yourselves to our listeners. You're 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. Yeah, and Will Pearson. I run the podcast division here at IHeart. I was actually part of a company called Stuff Media or maybe more publicly known as how stuff works a few years ago. And we were acquired by iHeart media or iHeart radio to come on board and run the podcast division here but

you know we had come out of a world of podcasts that were all very general knowledge driven cool well let's not understate your job i heart 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 it's uh 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 we were 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 2017, 2018 when our podcast started. What was a podcast landscape like back then? What kind of things were you looking for?

I think, first of all, the thing that drew me to the podcast space, because that's right around the time that I had joined Stuff Media, as I mentioned before, was around 2017, 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 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. Awesome. And so why did you reach out to us? What did you see in us? What did you think that Daniel LaHorhe explained the universe might be a good fit for your company? 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 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 Vauer How 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, here are two guys that get it. You know, 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 less. lectured to it didn't feel like you were just you know had the pleasure of just being with somebody that was a hundred times smarter than 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 unfortunately the first time we heard you guys in a pilot when we said you know what we think 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. Wow. Awesome. And, you know, we've done 500 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? I mean, I would say fortunately it is what we were looking for because, you know,

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 when they listened to something. And if you can find the right blend there sort of walking that line in a really smart 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. I had no idea that it would run 500 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 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 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. 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 happen 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 I hope will inspire somebody else out there to make something else beautiful.

Oh, I appreciate that. And congratulations to you guys. It's no big surprise to me that you've been successful, but I love it. I love that we get to partner with you guys and look forward to being back on for episode 1,000. Right. Awesome. Thanks very much, Will. So Will thought that Horhe 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 I have young kids at home. And most academics are already like drowning in work and emails. 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. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness the way it has echoed and reverberated throughout your life,

impacting your very legacy. Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the profound and powerful stories I'll be mining on our 12th season of failure. Family Secrets. With over 37 million downloads, we continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their courageously told stories. I can't wait to share 10 powerful new episodes with you, stories of tangled up identities, concealed truths, and the way in which family secrets almost always need to be told. I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests

for this new season of Family Secrets. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Brandford, and in session 421 of therapy for black girls, I sit down with Dr. Ophia and Billy Shaka to explore how our hair connects to our identity, mental health, and the ways we heal. Because I think hair is a complex language system, right, in terms of it can tell how old you are, your marital status, where you're from, you're a spiritual belief. But I think with social media, there's like a hyperfixation and observation of our hair, right?

That this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel is how our hair is styled. You talk about the important role hairstyles play in our community, the pressure to always look put together, and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying, don't miss session 418 with Dr. Angela Neil Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Get fired up, y'all. Season two of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway.

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Okay, we're back with our special behind-the-scenes episode of 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 like talking science for the Jorge, though, of course I do. Or because it was a fun new adventure, which it was. Or because I might make 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 it turns out you were looking at it backwards or upside down or missing 95% 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

Those are the most spiritual moments of 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 that clicks together. Or, wow, group theory describes a relationship between the particles. Or, wow, forces only exist to preserve the gauge symmetries of that 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 and no 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 I had as I was learning physics were so delicious. 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 listen to. And there are a lot of 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 it in a deep way, one that doesn't gloss over

with the same tired pop-sign 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 gives us. 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 help share this joy with the public, not just with the students who happen 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 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 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 how they got started. Here's Sean Carroll, well-known author and podcaster. Well, actually, let me let him introduce himself. 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 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. I also talk to Dan Hooper and Shalma Weggsman, hosts of Why This Universe, another of my favorite podcast. 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 in physics, obviously I have a master's. I started my PhD, but I left academia to pursue some like more media-related interests of mine. I'm Dan Hooper. I have a research position at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. So this is kind of the U.S. premier particle physics lab. and I also have a professorship in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at University of Chicago.

So I teach some classes. I advise grad students, that sort of thing, and generally just do research on kind of the interface of particle physics in cosmology. So some high 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. So then I asked John why he spends his very valuable time on, a podcast. 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 2016, it was about many different topics, including philosophy and neuroscience and biology. And I got to, you know, email big names in different fields 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 had 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 bunch of people who are very smart and interesting in very different fields. And here's Dan and Shalma 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, 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 I'm always in a band or two and playing shows and working on that. And some years ago, like, I just was a big consumer of podcasts.

I listened to a lot of them. And I thought there was space in the podcast, you know, ecosystem for something different in the physics science area. I also asked Katie Golden, who you know as a frequent guest host on this podcast, how she got into podcasting. I actually had no idea I 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. And then after that, I kind of just like got approached to come up with an idea for a podcast. Because you're a funny person, because you're like a good writer. Yeah. I mean, it's. because I kept harassing people until no I um yeah actually well actually the whole way I got started in comedy writing was a Twitter account which sounds kind of lame oh yes the the well-worn Twitter bird parody account to podcast pipeline exactly exactly 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. Well, you know, I actually did some research for this interview because you and I actually know a few people randomly in common. Oh, really? 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. But she's great. Who said this? This is my friend Jane Baldwin, who's a professor here at UC Irvine. I know Jane Baldwin. What the heck?

I was a bridesmaid with her. What the heck? I am, wow. This is, I was not expecting to, like, have basically a Jerry Springer moment here. And I asked Sean, what keeps him going after several years of podcasting? I have a lot of support. I got, I have both the ads and, you know, Patreon supporters. And so now I get paid to do the podcast. And so the, 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 don't, I'm not trying to imply that I want to give it up. But sometimes it's working. I have other things to do. 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 reason. group of around 12, 13 people, meaning I'm responsible for finding funding for them and leading their research and guiding their careers. And we're a pretty productive little group. We put out 10 to 12 papers every year. On top of that, I teach three classes here at UC 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 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 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 Verses. 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? 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 over a decade. I'm the supervising producer at Science Verses. 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. There's no top side and bottom side. This is true. As soon as that came out of my mouth, I was like, wow, this is bait to someone like you. So you're a science journalist at heart. How did you get into podcasting and how did you end up working on Science Versus? Just earlier this year, joined Wendy and the team at Science Versus, which is, Science Versus has been one of my favorite podcasts for a long time.

So, yeah, a big dream to come and work with that team. 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 than the creative stuff. I have the sense, just from looking at your website, you have a much more extensive team over there. How big is it?

What are the various roles? How does that all work? Yeah, it's a bigger team than I've ever worked on 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 verses and really kind of understands the program brief like so deeply, which is really great. coming on to a show, it's wonderful to have someone who just understands the DNA of that show like Wendy does. Blythe Terrell is our editor. So Blythe sort of has that sort of like really zoomed out editorial eye over literally everything to do with the show. She's kind of like the stopgap for any of those tricky editorial moments. And she just also like kind of is the glue that holds the team together. What's a tricky editorial moment?

Good question. 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, I'm the supervising producer. We have a couple of senior producers, Merrill Horn and Rose Rimler.

Michelle Dang is a producer, and then 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. 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.

Yeah, that's true. That's very true. So, like, from, yeah, like how the sausage is made, right? Like, let's 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 producer, like, I have a list. I have a kind of rolling Google doc of story ideas that I want to kind of 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 the reason you're choosing it. There's some really interesting research. Choosing that, going and chatting to a bunch of people.

So I'm working on a story idea at the moment. I probably emailed about, I don't know, like 20-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. Then we pitch that idea to the team. The pitch either gets like greenlit. That sounds great. Go ahead.

It gets rejected. We don't like the idea for this reason. Go and go and find another idea. Or there's an amber 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. 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. Yep, doing background interviews are like reading papers, like reading lots and lots of papers. And are you recording those background interviews? Do they ever end up in the actual show? Like not for me. 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 upwards of 20 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 it's, there's a lot of, a lot of work going on behind the scenes. It's the

classic, you know, like the duck on top of the water looks very calm, but underneath the water, the legs are swimming frantically. 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? In 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 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 fishing 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 in any interview. So it's about getting that 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 to kind of like have those very human moments that as a listener to a 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 facty point that we need, but you can't manufacture those, like, kind of very human moments that you have

in interviews. 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? Yeah, 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 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 go through and we'll like have that conversation. And again, trying to capture those really human moments. 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 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 to general public involves, you know, simplifications and approximations. 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? I mean, I think as a science journalists, 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 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 we're building the script, we're 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. research. And then we have an independent fact checker for each episode as well. So they come on for the episode for 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 push us to be kind of really definitive about everything that we're saying and how we're supporting it.

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 science does so well. It kind of brings an evidence based to the thing you're trying to explain to the world. And yeah, yeah, I think this show does it really well. 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 on. I was joking to my wife. I was saying, like, wow, every episode feels like a lit review

for a thesis. I'm like, should we just go and get a PhD now? 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. Oh, look, thank you for your podcast as well. I think the more science podcast we have in the world, the better. And yeah, it's a real pleasure to come and chat to you today. 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 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. I 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 I won't have them on in the first place. And then I edit it together.

It's usually not that much. I'm not even listening, honestly, to the whole podcast. I just don't have time or patience to do that, but I will listen to enough of it to get a feeling for the audio quality. So Sean just records natural conversations and edits them together. Dan and Shalma from Why This Universe have a slightly more involved production process. In my desk drawer, my home office, I have a list of like maybe future or 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 in a word file and I kind of use that as notes.

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 that I add in,

I often add in after this conversation. 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 Verses. 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 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 felt like I learned something deep about the universe, they just go on the raw idea list. I probably add like five

ideas every week. But not everything on that raw list makes it on the the show. Then at the start of 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 mazer? Two, how were neutrinos discovered? And three, is Helion's fusion technology realistic. 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 the right level, make sure I didn't go too shallow or too deep. So at first, I was just walking around campus here at UC Irvine and asking people the question of the episode to see what they said and what they knew. You know, their response. responses were always wonderful to listen to and often way off, but they were always entertaining. And listeners really responded to this segment. A few wrote in to say that they wished 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 here from people all over the world. I loved it. It was like a little glimpse into 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, UC Irvine is open again, but frankly, I prefer to be polling our listeners because I love that it makes the podcast be two directional. I get to hear back from you and you all get to hear a 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 it take weeks or months to get back to me. And so while listener's 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 the front of the rotation. The episodes we're going to record that week joined 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 and the back where new episodes are being added and listening are being queried, is about a hundred episodes. That's about a year's worth of episodes I already have roughly 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 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 fact. physics, not like how does it work, but how to explain it. I try to think about the analogies I'll use to convey these ideas. I'll try to think about how to walk people through us so the ideas click together in their minds and really make sense. And then I try to anticipate what Jorge 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-simulated Jorge in my brain, and I ask simulated Jorge to suggest what real Jorge. hey, 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 to understand it like two or three or four or five levels deeper. So you can come up with analogies that capture that intuitive understanding, but don't oversimplified and don't

mislead anybody. Preparing the outline isn't always a lot of work. Sometimes I can sit down and write it 10 minutes. If it's something I know back to front, like the Higgs mass episode, I know all about how we measure the mass of particles. I think about it every day. I'm deeply engaged in it. So that just took a few minutes, really. Sometimes if an episode is more complex 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 UC Irvine who knows more about it. A frequent target of my questions is my colleague Arvind, who knows a lot about black holes and general relativity, but I also walk down 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 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 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, I call them up when we have a conversation and we each record our audio locally. Personally, my setup is a nice microphone, the Scher SM7B, 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 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-host do this, 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 Kelly for asking the exact questions they had in their mind when I explain 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.

And it also makes for moments like this where I'm trying to steer us back to the physics without much luck. What's going to happen? What's likely to happen in the next hundred years, million years, or a billion years? Or the next hour. I mean, I don't know where this conversation is going, to be honest. The podcast does seem kind of unpredictable. Doesn't seem to matter too much what I write in the outline. Well, I think that's what happens when you put two unstable people and try to create a stable system here.

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 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 themes to tie into what otherwise would seem a completely unrelated physics concept. Well, 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. You know, an example are these jokes we 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 air, listeners responded to it. So we just 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 a one person narrating.

So I sat down with my co-host to hear about 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, Jorge, thanks very much for 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 Jorge and not like the podcast Jorge. What do you mean? There's only one, Jorge. Wait, are there two?

Do you know of another Jorge? 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. Well, I mean, I think I consider this a real conversation. You know, I don't think this is a fake conversation. And the 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. It's like a real conversation, but, you know, you also have to keep in mind that there are people listening in. And I also chatted with Katie Golden. Are you going to play real hardball with me? Ask some real, like, who are you really? 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. Listeners might know you as Katie, who's a co-host on the podcast, but you're so much. much more than that. Tell us, who are you, Katie? 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 Creature Feature, where I'm the one in charge. I'm the Daniel of that show. And of course, I talked to Kelly Wiener-Smith.

Thanks for inviting me. But now you got me kind of scared. What are you going to ask me about? 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 to say. Daniel, I 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 a green smoothie. Then I meditate. I climb up a mountain. I clear my head and then I go and record.

Yeah, it's a whole process. Your dedication is very impressive. It's almost a full day, yeah. No, you know, you send me the outlines the day before the 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? 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 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. 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 would be a regular co-host for this podcast, we agreed that my responsibilities would include just reading the outline and showing up. And I was making this decision at a time when I was feeling kind of overwhelmed with various projects in my life. 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 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 I do do more prep for those. But for the, you know, more typical episodes, I do pretty much nothing. I also asked each of them about what's going through their minds during the episode, what their process is. Most I just ask you a question and then I surf Instagram.

No, I'm totally just kidding. No, this is, uh, it's an interesting question. I guess, um, it is a sort of a full body thing for me, you know, I'm thinking. I'm thinking about what you're saying, I'm thinking about what I can say, what questions I can have, what questions the 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 don't think about 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. In general, I just read through the notes and then really try to listen attentively and 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 when it's such interesting material.

Well, I think you're really excellent at that and like listening carefully and stopping me and asking a question when something doesn't make sense. And I'm always imagining that you're standing in for the listeners who have also lost and confused with my complicated jargon. So I really appreciate how you do that. I speak for all the confused people. I think that's, I'm president of the confused people. 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 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 120% of my brain. And so all I'm thinking is, do I understand what Daniel is saying? And lucky for me, you are very clear in your explanation.

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. How do I find a way to ask it that makes it sound a little bit intelligent, maybe? 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. And I was also curious what each of them thought listeners might not understand about the process since they only hear the finished product. That's a great question. I guess. I wonder if people know how that it's edited, right? 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 awes and long pauses while we check our.

facts or think again about how to explain something. 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 describe or phrase something and you do a really good job of it. I think from the listeners 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. 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 surprise them the most is that at the bottom of the outline, you always write pale blue dots, and then in like, parentheses or carrots, 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 part that I would be most likely to plan ahead of time, because I am just, I guess I don't think of myself as being inspirational on the fly particularly well. 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 bated breath waiting to see what are you going to be able to come up with on the fly to inspire the audience. And you always do a great job. So I'm guessing that most people don't know that the inspirational.

operational parts are totally off the cuff. 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, 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. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness, the way it has echoed and reverberated throughout your life, impacting your very legacy. Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro.

And these are just a few of the profound, and powerful stories, I'll be mining on our 12th season of Family Secrets. With over 37 million downloads, we continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their courageously told stories. I can't wait to share 10 powerful new episodes with you, stories of tangled up identities, concealed truths, and the way in which family secrets almost always need to be told. I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests, for this new season of Family Secrets. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Joy Hardin-Brandford, and in session 421 of therapy for black girls, I sit down with Dr. Athea and Billie Shaka to explore how our hair connects to our identity, mental health, and the ways we heal. Because I think hair is a complex language system, right? In terms of it can tell how old you are,

your marital status, where you're from, you're a spiritual belief. But I think with social media, there's like a hyper fixation and observation of our hair, right? That this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel is how our hair is styled. We talk about the important role hairstylists play in our community, the pressure to always look put together, and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying, don't miss session four. 18 with Dr. Angela Neil Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Get fired up, y'all. Season two of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway. We just welcomed one of my favorite people and an incomparable soccer icon, Megan Rapino, to the show, and we had a blast. We talked about her recent 40th birthday celebrations, co-hosting a podcast with her fiancé Sue Bird, and former teammates retire and more. Never a dull moment with Pino. Take a listen. What do you miss the most about being a pro athlete?

The final. The final. And the locker room. I really, really, like, you just, you can't replicate, you can't get back. Showing up to locker room every morning just to shit talk. We've got more incredible guests like the legendary Candace Parker and college superstar A.Z. Fudd. I mean, seriously, y'all. The guest list is absolutely stacked for C.S. into. And, you know, we're always going to keep you up to speed on all the news and

happenings around the women's sports world as well. So make sure you listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Hello, puzzlers. Let's start with a quick puzzle. The answer is Ken Jennings appearance on The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs. The question is, what is the most entertaining listening experience in podcast land. Jeopardy truthers who say that you were given all the answers believe in... I guess they would be Kenspiracy theorists.

That's right. Are there Jeopardy truthers? Are there people who say that it was rigged? Yeah, ever since I was first on, people are like, they gave you the answers, right? And then there's the other ones which are like, they gave you the answers and you still blew it. Don't miss Jeopardy legend Ken Jennings on our special game. Game show week of The Puzzler podcast. The Puzzler is the best place to get your daily word puzzle fix.

Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 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 or giving people a little bit of a behind-the-scenes view. So first, I'd love if you introduce yourself to the listeners because though you're a crucial part of the show, they've never until now heard your voice. My name is Corey Nolan. I have worked in audio for, gosh, about 20 years now and I got into podcast editing about three or four years ago with IHeart as a freelancer. and was given Daniel and Jorge explain the universe. And that's been, are we going on three years? 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, a finished product for the listeners? 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 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 of a process of just kind of cleaning it up, which you know, doesn't usually take that much with y'all's audio. Y'all've got it really nailed down, but sometimes it takes a little bit with guests. Meaning that you have to like clean it up or process it or balance it or what happens there? 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 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 in a room with loud air conditioning or something like that. So it just 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 we just, yeah, we line it up. And then it's just a matter of cutting.

And then you have your own, like I go through and have, you know, Daniel has his own like effects chain. Oh, wait. What are the Daniel effect? Is there like a button there like make Daniel sound smart? 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 just by association and I have to explain to them that it's not that's not the case yeah you I mean you know that just comes from the years I did I did music for still do some music 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 that needs to happen to to kind of fit your voice specifically. And because y'all record the same way, unless somebody gives me a heads up, I think Jorge 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 fun that part of it. 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 fluency breaks? Yeah. I mean, as mentioned is an hour podcast and so there's 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 learn better how to show personas through edits, yours are very succinct. Jorge's, I think, it kind of matches the way he talks to kind of for it to not be like that. Now, there's things 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 thing. And even though I might miss one or two and listen, 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 kind of needs to be an oversight kind of process like we have to make sure that nothing else was messed. 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 well there is also another question of how much of my am i capable of understanding the content and i will say and i've said this to you all over email like i 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, 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, 20 minutes in.

And then it's, and then it's a good bit over my head. But there are some others like, you know, like listener question episodes. I really love those because that's a little more, you know, children ask those questions a lot of times. so 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, that just have made me think

and the answers that you guys kind of come to are really thought-provoking and really big-picture stuff. So, you know, it just depends. Episode to episode, it depends on what you are going into. But I will be honest and say that it's often over my head. 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. Yeah, yeah, let me have that. Let me have that superpower. So how long does it take for you to process one episode? 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're emailing you. I need this file.

I need this file. I'm trying to get 10 to 12 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 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 40 minutes, it's about four hours. So it's about an hour for every 10 minutes of final content. And you know, by comparison, you know, 40 minute for you, y'all may have recorded. It may have taken you 55 minutes or something like that. So there's usually, you know, know, 10 or 15 minutes, 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 a few second increments, they just, you know, they happen a good bit along the way. So it just takes a little bit of time. 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 about the making of the podcast. You know, there's been some listener feedback about my chuckles that I'm always laughing at Jorge's jokes. 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? 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 may be a little bit delayed or it may be like you're, you may talk over each other for a second. And that's just not how we don't we 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 laughs than having to add them in no oh no oh I can't help it 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? I mean, this isn't so much on my end, but honestly, I'm not just trying because you're technically my boss. I'm 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 10 episodes and like that was it like coming up a content was like i mean we may have could have kept doing it but couldn't have done two a week i couldn't have done two in an hour yeah so your ability to process that and to mine that out of the world and i think that you probably would give your listeners credit for that too for sure but i just think and if you 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 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 sometimes you have to be on your toes and you have to be able to adjust to to what is happening in the world and i think maybe on my side that if 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 late at night or maybe even you know in stops along at the airport and we try not 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 at high quality. And that's not just talking about me. That's to Tyler and to the whole crew

that's around this program. Well, I think you should take a lot of credit because we love the editing that you do. The way you stitch together are raw stuff into something that sounds so smooth and good and makes us all sound like we know. we're talking about. You edit out all of our Wikipedia breaks. Thanks for that. Am I supposed to edit out the reference to the Wikipedia breaks now? No. We're keeping that in. We're keeping that in.

Okay. Good. Thanks so much for the candid conversation. I 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. It'd be the difference between 10 to the 49 truckloads or 10 to the 48 truckloads, which is Still a lot of truckload, which is the truckload of truckload. It's still a lot of truckloads. Yeah, exactly. And we try to be careful about these uncertain. We try to be careful about what we don't know, but there's always room for surprises.

Here it is after he cleans it up. It's the difference between 10 to the 49 truckloads or 10 to the 48 truckloads, which is still a lot of truckload, which is a truckload of truckload. It's still a lot of truckloads. 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, 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 like they have at Science Verses. Corey just sends me a draft of the episode. If it's a topic I'm not 100% confident in, I will send it to some colleagues who are experts 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 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 rated a post. Probably 80, 85% 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 16 to 20 episodes. And, you know, that gives Corey 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 are a few comments sent in by listeners. Hey, Daniel and Jorge. Thanks to the opportunity to let me comment about the show. This is Bob Pokris in my 70s, 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 regularly, but pretty occasionally. I guess in the last couple of years I've probably written about 10 or 12 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. I plan on keep on listening for as long as you've got the podcasts. Giday. 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 and Jorge can scratch. 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 2 a.m., because I'm pondering the effects of time dilation

or how a Feynman diagram can help illustrate a virtual photon interaction, I know Daniel and Jorge are just an electromagnetic interaction away. While we certainly can't explain the entire universe yet, Daniel and Jorge do a wonderful job painting that picture for all of us. Hey, I'm Joe, one of the many baseless 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 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 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. Hello, Daniel and Hoche and the team around the podcast. I always enjoy your podcast with questions of the very small like quarks to the biggest and hardest questions in the universe. No questions the strange or weird. You take them on anyways with great and understandable explanations and comparisons with everyday phenomenon. You renewed my curiosity about how the world works.

Keep up the amazing work. All best, Niklas von Sweden. Jorge 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 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 in

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 over the years by you and your team. I look forward to learning new things in upcoming episodes. And some of the comments I get over email bring tears to my eyes, you know, like the listener who at 60 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 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 I needed a 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 his chemistry homework and how I wasn't really a fan of chemistry at all. And I got a bunch of email from chemists and chemistry professors and chemistry teachers who were 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 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 listen. sometimes just a few, sometimes dozens, and like I say 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. Help some people 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 in Chase if they were aware of the podcast

and if they listened to it. Do you guys listen to podcasts? Yes. You do. Are your podcast listening? Not since I moved away from Orange County because I don't spend half my day in the car anymore. 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. I'm sorry. Okay. 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. daughter on that topic. Usually when I interview you, you're anonymous because I'm just asking you a question for like a person on the street, but why don't you introduce yourself, say with your name is? I'm Hazel. He's my dad. I'm Katrina Weitson, and I live in Irvine, California, with my husband, Daniel Whiteson. All right, so the dog does not speak here as well. Yes, he does. Our dog Pepito is here, too, for the record. Yeah, thank you. 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, it doesn't matter? Is it cool? Is it embarrassing? What's your experience? 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 a soothing voice. It's not just me. He used to call me crazy for that. I used to call you crazy for what? We're like, I do not have a soothing voice. And now I have people to back me up. I see. So he's giving me a disapproving look.

You can't see it, but he is. It's true you used to fall asleep to my podcast well before I knew that other people did that. Yeah. That's true. The least defeating way possible. I feel like it's really proud of you for this. you've built this thing up and I love hearing the stories about people who like reinvigorate their interest in science. It like gives me hope for education and

having people have the chance to like remake their lives using knowledge. I think it's really cool. 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. So sometimes I interview guys with the person in the street I feel like need somebody and I don't have time to collect, um, stuff online you guys like being part of the podcast is that embarrassing is it fun what does that feel for you i don't usually know the answers so i hear my voice and i'm like the one they got it completely wrong um 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 asked you if i could eat it

and you said no um so you don't mind if i include little personal tidbits in the podcast no i think that's cute haven't you could train your word it has made that your life more fun Is it embarrassing with that? I think it's really fun. I love getting to hear about who you've been interviewing, because it's often, you know, like, you interviewed my postdoc 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 like, so what's dark matter? What are quarks? He made me late to school with it, and then he texted me, why are you late to school? And I had to answer.

It was a very sweet moment, though. All of the service of public science communication. All right, anything else you guys want to add? Don't we get to share some favorite moments? What are your favorite moments? Well, I love hearing stories from listeners. And during the pandemic, instead of doing the 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, these Australian housemates who were like all giggling and answering your questions. And I feel like there was music involved somehow. Did you feel like you wanted to be part of that house?

Yes, I did. And when we went to New Zealand last year, one of your listeners was 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. And I'd like to end this special episode with What the Pondon. 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 my head well enough to explain it. And I love having joking science conversations with Jorge and with Katie and with Kelly, and I really hope that the podcast has helped you share in the joy of science. Thank you all so much for listening. Hey, it's Jorge from the podcast, and I'm super excited to announce that my new book, Oliver's Great Big Universe, is available to order now. 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. These are just a few of the powerful stories I'll be mining on our upcoming 12th season of Family Secrets. We continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their courageously told stories. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Honey German, and I'm back with season two of my podcast. Grazias, come again. We got you when it comes to the latest in music and entertainment with interviews with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition.

I haven't audition in, like, over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We'll talk about all that's viral and trending, with a little bit of cheesement and a whole lot of laughs. And, of course, the great Vibras you've come to expect. Listen to the new season of Dacia's Come Again on the I-HeartRadio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. It's important that we just reassure people. that they're not alone, and there is help out there. The Good Stuff Podcast, season two, takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a non-profit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join host Jacob and Ashley Schick

as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. One Tribe saved my life twice. Welcome to Season 2 of the Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast. Thank you.