When I tell friends and family—and any stranger who will listen—that I made a podcast, they usually ask me how. Do you record it in a studio? Did you go to Ireland to interview the sheepdog trainer? What does a producer do?

Truly, our setup could not be less fancy. OK, our editor Caden is pretty fancy.

I’ve written a BTS about how How to Be Anything is made. Now I’ll show you where.

Emily McCrary, host and writer (that’s me)

I work from a few locations: My desk at home, the coworking space I belong to, and coffee shops around Richmond. Whenever I can, I bring my dog June so she can practice her social skills. When I record voiceover, I do so sitting on the floor in my closet.

No, we don’t currently travel to interview guests, but if anyone wants to underwrite us, we will :)

Caden Baughman, editor

Ad Astra Books and Coffeehouse: My favorite local coffee spot to hunker down and slam an espresso. My dirty workspace. My mess of a desk, but I swear I'll clean it soon!

The studio. Lots of fun toys to make music and cut tapes for artists all around the globe.

—Caden

Lily I. Johnson, producer

This is Lily’s home desk, annotated!

Listen to HTBA on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

OK thanks, bye!

Emily

I like learning how people do their jobs, so we’re going to show you how we do this one. I’m going to walk you through how an episode of How to Be Anything gets made, step by step.

Word of warning: I could not be more of a rookie.

I’ve been an avid podcast listener for more than a decade. In college, I would connect to the internet, download a bunch of podcasts into iTunes, then drag and drop them into the sidebar where my silver iPod Mini gobbled them up along with my music. There was no Podcasts app.

So when I started making How to Be Anything, I thought, like a rube, how hard could this be? Very.

I can’t tell you how slick production companies make a podcast because I’m not one of them. I’m just one person who pays a producer and an editor part-time to help me out, so I can only tell you how we do it. And in fact, if you have a better way, let me know!

So, here we go.

Identify a job or a guest

When my producer Lily and I trade notes on the feedback we get, this is definitely number one: Where do you find these people?

I hope you’re not disappointed when I say we 1) ask around, and 2) start with Google.

This podcast started (in part) when I realized I knew several people with unusual jobs, among them were my friend Erin Bishop the death doula and a talented local puppeteer named Heidi Rugg. I had met wilderness physician Dr. Jen Pond while reporting a different story. So, I asked them first.

But most people in my orbit work pretty ordinary jobs, so I had to expand my search. I posted requests on social media and in journalism networks I belong to and asked, I’m looking for people with unusual jobs. Do you know anyone?

That’s how I found D&D lorekeeper Skye Smith, who responded with this message:

I also asked friends and family, who would you like to hear from? My dad said he wanted to know about tower climbers, so we went and found a tower climber.

I’ll turn it over to Lily to describe how she did that …

I think you would be surprised at how willing and generous people can be. People love to talk about what they do. So far, Emily and I have only gotten one seriously weird response back!

I found Brendon King through a YouTube video. I love looking for guests on YouTube, through podcasts, or finding someone who has been quoted or interviewed for NPR. Finding them this way already gives me a leg up on sourcing people who want to talk about what they do and gives me a good opening to make the cold email (or Instagram DM) personal. We can also sneakily evaluate them on their storytelling abilities before ever contacting them.

I looked up tower climbers on YouTube, and I found Tommy Schuch’s excellent documentaries on the tower climbing industry. No brainer! I emailed him to connect and see if he knew anyone who would be interested in being on the pod. He gave me Brendon’s email and Brendon generously agreed to a discovery call, which then led to him being a guest on the show.

Lily or I then send them an email and ask … would you like to be on a podcast? Let’s schedule a call to talk.

— Lily

Be open as you go. I found the former corporate butler because I was reading another Substack newsletter, and I found Dr. Cindy Otto, who teaches dogs to sniff cancer, because I was watching a Netflix documentary about dogs. If someone interests you, email them.

Research

This is my first time making a podcast, and I’ve learned a lot about how much up-front research it takes. It’s very different than writing a profile for print, where I can go back to the source several times and collect comments in any form since it’s going to end up in writing either way.

Generally, the research process works like this:

1. Familiarize myself with the job. Are there documentaries about the field or subject matter? This is a good place to start because I can multitask and watch them while I (stationary) bike or wash dishes.

2. What about books? Has the guest written anything, like in the case of the astrophysicist Dan Hooper? Don’t be afraid to start with the most elementary information. For the episode on dark matter, I needed a basic-level primer to begin, so I went to a bookstore and looked in the children’s section for books about outer space.

3. Search everywhere on the topic: Podcasts, YouTube, Netflix, Substack, etc. Consume anything and everything you can. You’re learning the lingo, figuring out context, noting important events and names, etc.

4. Ask someone who knows the job or subject matter (who’s not your guest). I don’t play D&D, so for the episode about Skye Smith, my producer Lily talked to a friend who does and got ideas for what we should ask. For the episode on tower climbers, I talked to climber Tommy Schuch, who’s shaking the tree for better industry regulations.

5. Make a list of questions as you go; some you’ll need to answer on your own, and some will be for the guest during the recording.

Prep with the guest

We then schedule a 30-minute Zoom call with the potential guest. I talk them through the recording process, but mostly this is to assess a few things:

• Are they good at talking about what they do? Some people are really talented but struggle to describe their work. I’ve had prep calls with people who never make the podcast.

• Do they love their job? Though we’re certainly open to industry criticism, we generally want to hear from people who really, really dig what they do.

• Do they have good stories to tell about their work?

• What about an origin story? Was there a moment when they realized this is the path for them?

Episode recordings aren’t rehearsed, but we do our best to uncover ahead of time the stories we want our guests to tell.

Prep for the recording

Then I go back into research mode. Now that I’ve learned some more industry vocab and context from the prep call, I keep researching to make sure I understand the job to the best of my ability.

We then come up with a story arc, or at least the notes we want to hit. It’s usually things like origin story, path into the job, friction (as in, are there moments when they really hate their job?), and what it means to them.

We turn that into a list of questions that will guide the recording. Some guests want to know what they’ll be asked ahead of time, and we oblige. Others want to fly by the seat of their pants. Fine too.

Conduct the interview

We record for 60–90 minutes on Zoom. I’d love to be able to visit guests working in their element, but I don’t have the budget to do that … yet! It’s not cheap to get to the Arctic Circle.

Write the episode

Then I start writing. This is chaos, and I wish I could describe it. But generally … I transcribe the conversation with HappyScribe so I can work with text rather than audio (this I do every time), Then, I build an outline and start putting blocks of the guest’s statements into place, making notes for where I will insert talk tracks.

I end up chopping up the conversation quite a bit, stitching together different parts to make a good story without distorting meaning. The final product is a script, marked with music cues and beats (pauses).

Follow-up questions and fact-checking

We check facts. We confirm employment and licenses, statistics, and whether some things are feasible. For instance, in our interview, Brendon stated that he could see the curvature of the earth from his perch on a cell tower. I have no doubt it feels that way, but that’s not possible from 500 feet (his highest climb). We cut those bits.

Sometimes we still get it wrong. In the episode about the Foley sound artist Ronnie Van der Veer, I misstated the director of one of the films he worked on, so we noted a correction in the show notes.

Record the talk tracks

I then record my narration, sitting on the floor of my closet for optimal sound. I use Descript and a Shure MV7+ microphone.

Caden edits the show

I upload everything—script and notes, all audio files, and music—into a shared folder and send it to my editor Caden.

I’ll turn it over to him to tell you about the edit process:

First, I import all audio files into Logic Pro and do a preliminary mix with equalization, compression, and noise reduction. Then I export those files and upload them to a Descript session to start cutting out all pertinent clips for the episode in the correct order.

A lot of episodes are edited to flow smoothly and do not follow the original chronological order of the raw interview. Sometimes I’ll do a bit of noise reduction and audio restoration in Descript, just depends on the day, ya know? After that is finished, I export a single file back into Logic and add music and Emily’s talk tracks before putting the last little bit of mastering polish on the episode, export it, and shoot it off to Emily.

—Caden

Audio review

I listen over and over, at least three times. Then send notes back to Caden. These are usually small changes, like add a beat after this clip or I’ll re-record that talk track because I didn’t like my delivery. I try to do only one round of edits, but sometimes it becomes two or three. It goes back to Caden for edits, who, by then, is probably sick of my tinkering.

Publish!

We schedule the episode and celebrate on release day.

And that’s it! That’s how we make an episode of How to Be Anything. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

Thanks for reading and for listening. As you can tell, we’re an indie podcast, so please show your support by texting a friend with your favorite episode. Every download helps. Don't forget to rate and review and tell us what you really think. Those go a long way too.

Bye!

Emily

I love dogs. This should be clear by the fact that in a 10-episode season, two are about dogs and the people who work with them.

The latest episode, about Dr. Cindy Otto, is particularly fun, because her job is training dogs to do their jobs. At the Penn Vet Working Dog Center, dogs learn how to work in search and rescue, bomb and drug detection, and bio-detection—meaning that some of these magnificent critters are out here identifying cancer so scientists can learn what it’s made of. This is life-changing, life-saving work, and it takes a human–animal bond.

Our story begins on September 11, 2001, when Dr. Otto was part of the Pennsylvania Task Force 1, a search and rescue team called down to Ground Zero. She was in charge of medical care for the dogs that braved the wreckage to find survivors so rescuers could bring out alive. It was because of a dog, a German Shepherd named Trakr, that the last survivor was found 27 hours after the second tower collapsed. (Trakr was later cloned, btw.)

The work done by dogs on 9/11 inspired Dr. Otto to create a center, a kind of lab, where working dogs could be trained and studied.

OK, now go listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

Thanks for being here!

Emily

Keep learning

A list of things mentioned in the episode you would otherwise have to go Googling for.

• Info about the Penn Vet Working Dog Center

• A video tour of the WDC (you can also sign up to take an actual tour of the space)

• Profiles of the current working dogs (I mean, c’mon!!!!)

• Info about the WDC’s work on detecting hemangiosarcoma + how you can support it

• Two papers published about using dogs to detect Covid (here and here)

• A paper about ovarian cancer detection

And lastly, here’s a picture of my beautiful girl, Tallulah

In the latest episode of How to Be Anything, we meet Dr. Jen Pond, a physician who practices in Canada’s northernmost territory, Nunavut. It takes her two days to commute from her home in British Columbia to her job in the Arctic Circle, in a village called Taloyoak. Population: 1,042.

I met Jen last year when I was writing a profile of Dr. Luanne Freer, the physician who created the emergency room at Mount Everest Base Camp. Jen had worked with her there and was kind enough to talk to me about what it’s like to live and work on a glacier for three months.

I kept in touch with Jen after the story was published, and she was one of the first calls I made when putting together this season of HTBA.

Hers is a life and career totally unfamiliar to me. While she flies pole to pole, setting broken bones and saving lives from the deadly effects of altitude change, I carry my space heater around my house because I can’t keep my feet warm.

Yet, it was spending so much time speaking to people like Dr. Pond and Dr. Freer that got me out of the house and into the mountains again. I grew up backpacking with my dad, I enjoyed rock climbing in college, and there was a time when I would run two half marathons per year, but somewhere in adulthood, I stopped taking physical risks. I didn't know I missed it until I did.

I’ll let you in on what it’s like to be a writer for a living: It’s all material. So every new adventure I go on, every solo camping trip (don’t tell my mom), and every mountain I summit: I can write about it. It’s a perk of the job.

What’s not in the episode

We do a lot of editing to cut the final episode, so some interesting bits don’t make it in, like this story about practicing medicine at the South Pole.

And this one, about the world’s southernmost toilet.

Now go listen to Jen’s story. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

Bye and thanks for listening!

Emily

Keep learning

A list of things mentioned in the episode you’d otherwise have to go Googling for:

• A short BBC segment on Residential Schools, guided by a survivor of the system and a 60 Minutes segment in which survivors describe their imprisonment in the system

• Information about Residential Schools from the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba, and more from the Canadian Museum of Human Rights

• Travel Nunavut and Destination Nunavut are tourist sites about the territory, and both have great photos

• Everest ER and my profile of Dr. Luanne Freer

In the new episode of How to Be Anything, we meet Brendon King. People like Brendon are the reason you’re reading this newsletter right now, the reason you can send and receive text messages, and the reason you can watch the new episode of Love Is Blind UK tonight. Without him, you wouldn’t be able to collect your paycheck or call 911. You need Brendon.

He’s a tower climber, and tower climbers install and maintain the technology that powers our cellular, radio, and broadcast networks. This means strapping yourself to a steel tower that’s swaying like a spaghetti noodle and climbing hundreds, sometimes thousands of feet. Sometimes they don’t tie off at all, and they just free climb (they shouldn’t do this, you shouldn’t do this).

What surprised me most about Brendon is that while he loves being up there, he also …really doesn’t. “The older I get, the more dangerous the towers get,” he told me. The act of climbing is arduous work. They scale the towers on ladders or pegs attached to the structure (some of the taller ones do have elevator cages), but they’re wearing bulky safety gear, and the wind is blowing, and it’s cold up there, and sometimes a nesting falcon is living at the top. Keep in mind also that these ladders are vertical; it’s not like leaning a ladder against your house to clean the gutters. On a vertical ladder, you’re working against your body weight that wants to fall backward. Oh, and those pegs? They’re just wide enough for your hands. No, thank you.

Take a look at this video of a tower climber changing a light bulb at 2,000 feet and pay close attention to how wide those pegs are not, and how little is keeping those D-rings from slipping off into the abyss.

To me, this feels like invisible work. I know I take it for granted that my phone will work, that I can write this newsletter and post it instantly, that when I log into Hulu I can watch Love Island right away. I hope now that you’ll remember people like Brendon and be grateful, and support tower climbers in their efforts to make the industry safer (more on that in the links below).

I also hope that you’ll go on a scavenger hunt to find cell sites in your neighborhood. I spotted this one while walking the dog.

OK, now go listen. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

Bye and thanks for listening!

Emily

Keep learning

Here’s a list of things mentioned in the episode you’d otherwise have to go Googling for.

• Climbers like Tommy Schuch are campaigning for better regulation and corporate culpability in the tower climbing industry. Check out his organization, the Climber Protection Group.

• An excellent Frontline documentary about the dangers of the tower climbing industry.

• This article by Jeremy Markovich about climbing the tallest tower in North Carolina.

• This short segment about a company that disguises cell sites as things like cacti.

In the latest bonus episode of How to Be Anything, we meet Max Ufberg. Max is now a senior editor at Fast Company, but 12 years ago, he was a full-time butler at a wealth management firm in Philly. Tux and all.

In 2013, while trying to make it as a journalist by night, he took a day job as a butler, serving Michelin-star meals, running dry cleaning, and learning, after being in charge of infused water, that he didn’t know the difference between cucumber and zucchini. In this bonus episode, Max shares the strange, funny, and sometimes uncomfortable realities of working behind the scenes for the one percent.

Max insists he doesn’t have any pictures of him in his butling togs (likely story!), but he did send me the above picture of him from back in 2013, looking very normal. Do your best to imagine the clip-on bowtie.

The idea for this episode came while reading Your First Byline, which, back in May, featured an interview with Max where he mentions, in passing, that he used to be a butler. (Say no more!!!) Fortunately, I’ve written about hiring for Fast Company for several years, so I emailed my editor who made a warm intro to Max.

Like Max, I spent my early career waiting tables and tending bar while trying to make it as a writer. In fact, for a while I worked at the Hilton in downtown Nashville and once waited on Little Richard, who lived upstairs at the time (true story).

I remember those years fondly. Waiting tables is tough, physical, and satisfying work. And honestly, in moments when my writing career hasn’t gone to plan, I have thought seriously of donning an apron again.

Which is why—when I later found myself at a smug dinner for a startup where I worked, listening to one of my bosses berate the staff for being “common idiots” (I’m paraphrasing for decency)—I felt like I had wrongly defected. Less than two years before, I had been the common idiot. I say that not because waiters are idiots, but because I was a terrible waiter.

I like Max’s story. It’s a reminder that some jobs can provide a window into how other people live, and show us who we want to be.

Listen to the newest episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

Bye!

Emily

In episode 7 of How to Be Anything, we meet Melissa Cooper, a forensic artist in California’s Bay Area.

So, what does a forensic artist actually do?

Melissa’s work falls into three main categories:

• Composite sketches of suspects, drawn from witness statements—those familiar sketches you see on news reports or wanted posters.

• Age progressions of people who’ve been missing for years, often children who disappeared long ago.

• Postmortem reconstructions of unidentified people, sometimes drawn from crime scene images or nothing more than a skull. These sketches often end up in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), helping families reclaim the identities of their loved ones.

Melissa’s work gives voice and identity to those who might otherwise be forgotten: survivors of crime, the missing, and the unidentified dead.

Btw, for those who haven’t heard of NamUs, it’s a database run by the U.S. Department of Justice that helps law enforcement, medical examiners, coroners, and even the public, work together to solve missing and unidentified persons cases. (Go search it using your city and state. You might be able to help solve a crime!)

But couldn't AI do this instead?

Melissa’s answer: absolutely not. “AI would be one of the worst candidates for this field,” she told me.

Memory is fragile, and forensic art depends on nuance and trust. If she phrases a question the wrong way, she could accidentally reshape a witness’s memory. “It’s like being a surgeon—you have to carefully extract what’s there without disturbing anything around it.”

How do you become a forensic artist?

It helps that Melissa grew up obsessed with faces. As a kid, she would spend hours sketching, filling entire notebooks with eyes, noses, and mouths. Sometimes she cut facial features out of magazines and rearranged them into new faces. It was a fascination that quietly prepared her for a career.

In 2007, she signed up for a course in forensic art, and learned that she’s really good at it. Her first job was at the Santa Monica Police Department.

And here’s the part that surprised me most (and didn’t make the episode): Melissa often never learns what happens to her sketches. Sometimes they lead to an arrest, sometimes to an identification, and sometimes they simply disappear into a file. Word of the results seldom reaches her. Her job is to draw the most accurate face possible and then let it go.

You can listen to Melissa’s story on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere else you listen to podcasts. And if you like the show, text it to a friend. :)

Keep learning

Here’s a list of things mentioned in this episode that you would otherwise have to go Googling for:

• Melissa Cooper’s website

• The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

• Gil Zamora, Melissa’s instructor at San Jose State University

• Gil Zamora’s book on witness interviewing

Bye and thanks for listening!

Emily

P.S. We’re an indie podcast, so please show us your support by rating and reviewing wherever you listen. <3

When I started making How to Be Anything, I had no idea how I would bring it to fruition, or if I could. I enjoy a long, arduous, all-consuming challenge, but I also enjoy the safety of knowing I can chuck out the results without notice if they’re no good.

Before I had recorded a word, my friend Sam Taylor suggested we host a celebration for the show. HTBA was just an idea then, a good one, but nothing more than a little germ. I told Sam one day, just in passing, about this thing I wanted to make about people who have strange jobs, because I want everyone to hear about things they could be doing because I think we’d be happier if we had a longer menu to choose from. Sam said that was worth celebrating.

Any writer will tell you that one of the best ways to get a project done is to sell it. Then you have no choice. So I agreed to throw a party. I didn’t know what the show’s format would be. I didn’t own a proper microphone. I sold the project to a date on the calendar and got to work.

And, reader, nearly didn’t happen in time. I severely underestimated how much time and energy a podcast requires and how steep my learning curve would be. I lost my first editor two weeks before the party, and so I had no shows at all to release.

Still, I sent invitations and prayed and cross fingers and did the rain dance that it wouldn't be crickets. Lo, my friends, it was not. I told myself I would be happy if 30 people came, but we bumped our heads on the capacity for our little venue, with about 60 of you showing up. Three of the show’s guests—Heidi, Erin, and Brie—were there too.

I was having so much fun seeing friends and meeting strangers that I neglected to take even a single photo, so all these photos were taken by the kind people who came. Thank you.

🎧 Listen to your work stories

At the party, I wanted to hear from you. So, I set up a telephone with an answering machine and asked for your best stories. Folks could pick from a few prompts, like tell me about your best/worst boss or what was your first job—that kind of thing. Then we cut those stories into a bonus episode.

The stories are funny, endearing, encouraging, infuriating, and puzzling. A panoramic view. You told me about winning your job back after being fired, shockingly disrespectful job candidates, and embarrassing yourself so badly you had to quit. There are stories of a woman trying to make a call on her shoe, being trapped in a junk truck with a SoundCloud rapper, and the world’s most committed Panera brownie fan.

I also asked for ideas for future shows, and you delivered.

You can find the episode in our normal feed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere else you listen.

Many thanks to Sam/Ours for their help and hospitality. And to my friend Brandon Shillingford (who is a great writer and hosts a film podcast called Exposure) and my husband Dominic for their help. :)

Bye!

Emily

I love dogs. So much. So when my producer Lily suggested we find a sheepdog trainer for the show, I said yes before she finished the sentence.

Paddy Fanning is the hero of episode two, “How to Be a Sheepdog Trainer,” and he’s one of the world’s best, having represented Ireland in the World Sheepdog Trials and winning some national Irish titles as well. If there were an Olympics for herding sheep, Paddy and his dogs would be draped in medals.

But beyond the résumé, he’s just a truly lovely guy: easy to laugh, generous with his time, and quick to give a compliment.

Who needs a sheepdog these days?

A lot of Irish people.

Paddy’s job is to teach dogs how to move sheep—up a mountain, into a trailer, or through a competition course with impossible precision. That’s a really necessary job in Ireland with there are almost as many sheep as there are people (the government conducts a census of both populations).

If you’ve ever spread Kerrygold butter on toast, or sliced off a pat with a spoon and gobbled it up like a little prince (of course you have!), or if you’ve slipped on a Aran Island sweater, somewhere along the line, a sheepdog was part of the process.

It’s actually a necessary job all over the world. Machinery has transformed agriculture, computers have made a science of raising livestock, and AI is knocking on the barn door. Yet nothing has replaced a really good stock dog. As Paddy told me, even a high-tech Canadian cattle farm with all the latest gear still moves its animals the same way it’s been done for centuries: on horseback with dogs.

Here’s what Paddy had to say.

I didn't realize that sheepdog training is a jet-set lifestyle, but that tells you something about the critical role dogs play in farming livestock. Paddy’s work has taken him all over the world:Norway, Spain, South Africa, the US, Canada, and on and on. Pretty much anywhere livestock is raised, there are dogs to help move them. And where there are dogs, there’s someone like Paddy to teach them how. Often it is Paddy.

“They make the world small,” he told me.

Hear what didn't make the show

Here’s a bit that didn’t make the final episode: Paddy talking about his day-to-day schedule.

Now, go listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Keep learning

Here’s a list of things mentioned in the show you’d otherwise have to go Googling for.

• More about Paddy and his farm, Churchmount Sheepdogs

• Paddy and Bruce appearing on Ireland’s Today Show

• A video of Paddy’s beloved dog Bruce, doing his thing, whistles and all

• A news clip about the Irish National Sheepdog Trials

Bonus: More pictures of sheepdogs!

My husband Dominic and I spent some time in Ireland earlier this year, and I wanted to do two things most of all: Climb Benbulbin (check) and watch sheepdogs work (check).

Here’s a puppy named Pepsi I met at a farm in Dingle. You can see on my jeans where a lamb peed on me (I’ve never met an animal I didn’t pick up).

I was amazed by how focused the trained-up dogs are. Below is a picture of Pepsi’s dad, a veteran herding dog named Captain. Here, Captain has his eyes on a dozen sheep about 100 yards away. I’ve never seen such concentration; this dog had absolutely no interest in us. You could have set the barn on fire and I’m sure he wouldn’t have taken his eyes off the herd … though he did reach out his paw to ask for more pets.

Pepsi’s mom Rose was more friendly, and eager to show off her puppy.

OK that’s all. Bye!

—Emily

So, here’s something I learned while making this podcast: Most of the matter in our universe is invisible and, so far, indetectable.

And another thing: Some people make it their jobs to go looking for it.

In episode six of How to Be Anything, we meet two scientists: One of them works one mile underground in a decommissioned gold mine in the mountains of South Dakota. The other works at a desk with his feet up. (OK, that was a bad habit, but he still has the desk.)

Both of them are looking for dark matter, the unknown substance that constitutes 85% of the material universe. One of them might have found it.

What is dark matter?

Turns out, we really don’t know. According to Professor Dan Hooper—our resident astrophysicist and cosmologist (not cosmetologist, different job entirely) in episode six, “How to Search for Dark Matter Underground and in Space”—we know a few things. That dark matter is…

• Made of slow-moving particles

• Relatively stable and inert

• Not in the habit of radiating, reflecting, or absorbing light (that’s why they call it dark matter)

• And that’s…about it

Why do we care if we find it?

Glad you asked! Lots of things could happen.

The discovery of different forms of matter births entire fields of science. In the 18th century, the discovery of gases gave us chemistry. In the 20th century, the discovery of the electron gave us quantum mechanics. It’s not unreasonable to think the discovery of dark matter might do the same. So…in some ways, you might think of it as a job creator.

And another: We could get a glimpse of what our universe looked like a fraction of a second after the big bang. 💥

Where do we look for dark matter?

Because we’re not sure exactly what dark matter is, scientists are looking for different things in different places: Underground, with dark matter detectors, like the LUX-ZEPLIN, they’re looking for one type of interaction. And in space, with devices like the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, they’re looking for another.

There are a few theories of what dark matter might be.

One is that they’re weakly interacting massive particles, or wimps. And as Gavin Cox, a research support scientist at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota, tell us in episode six, “these are very small, very dense particles that are theorized to be distributed all throughout the galaxy. So that means our solar system and our planet is washing through this sea of wimps.” Gavin works with the LZ Dark Matter Detector, waiting for one of those wimps to pass through the earth.

Another theory says dark matter might be a little unstable, so if it decays, it could spit out gamma rays. Or, two particles might smash together and, I quote astrophysicist Dan Hooper, “visible stuff comes out.”

So…

So, we send telescopes into space.

When NASA’s Fermi Telescope sent back its first data in the late 2000s, scientists absolutely lost their minds and Dan Hooper and his colleague Lisa Goodenough went full geek. The plan was to rule out some theories about what dark matter could be—because, in “the dark matter game” (Hooper’s words, not mine) most of your work is just crossing ideas off the list.

But. But! There was a bump, and “most things in nature don’t make bumps.”

Was that…? Could it be…? Is it…dark matter?

This is where I tell you to listen to the episode and find out. Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.

Keep learning

Here’s a list of things mentioned in this episode that you would otherwise have to go Googling for:

• Info about the Sanford Underground Research Facility

• A diagram of the LZ Dark Matter Detector

• Info on the NASA Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope

• Dan Hooper’s book on dark matter, Dark Cosmos: In Search of Our Universe's Missing Mass and Energy

• Dan Hooper’s podcast, Why This Universe? (This episode about dark matter is particularly good primer)

• Dan Hooper’s band, The Spectral Distortions

• And if you would like to feel very unproductive, you can read more about Enrico Fermi, who, as “a youngster in Italy, Ph.D. not yet in hand, he taught himself the novel theories of quantum physics and relativity.” (What have I done today?)

Bye and thanks for listening!

—Emily

Listen wherever you get your podcasts, but you might start here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

When Heidi Rugg was a college student, trying to figure out what her life would look like after school, she had a moment of clarity under a canopy of autumn leaves: Puppetry was the path forward. It was the one thing that would allow her to pursue all of her creative interests at once—building, storytelling, painting, performance—and make them make sense.

Nearly 30 years later, Heidi is a full-time puppetry artist. She writes, builds, performs, and tours original shows that she’s brought to schools, libraries, and major institutions like the Smithsonian and the Detroit Institute of Arts. She’s also built her life around an ancient and persistent art form, one that many people may not realize they enjoy all the time. Puppets are everywhere. And in this episode, How to Be a Puppetry Artist, Heidi shows us where.

Hear what didn’t make the episode

In episode four, you’ll hear Heidi mention that’s she’s a process junkie. It’s true, she’s always ready for a chat about what she’s creating and how others artists are honing their crafts.

Heidi on being comfortable with ambiguity:

Heidi on the chaos of the show-building process:

Meet Heidi

Heidi Rugg is a puppetry artist, performer, and founder of Barefoot Puppets. For nearly three decades, she’s been writing, building, and performing original puppet shows for audiences across the country, from the Smithsonian Discovery Theater to libraries, classrooms, and hospitals. Her work blends storytelling, textile arts, and stagecraft, often weaving in themes of nature and environmental justice. Based in Richmond, Virginia, Heidi is also an active member of and advocate for the puppetry community around the world.

Get involved in the puppet community

• Learn more about Heidi and her work at BarefootPuppets.com

• Center for Puppetry Arts (Atlanta)

• National Capital Puppetry Guild

• Puppeteers of America

Listen wherever you get your podcasts, but you might start here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

In 2012, Erin Bishop’s close friend was diagnosed with cancer, so she brought him into her home and became his primary caregiver. He refused hospice, and his death was protracted, unmedicated, and traumatic—for him and for the 10 people who were in the room when he died.

That experience changed her life. Years later, Erin left a successful career in market research to become a death doula.

I had a dawning understanding that every death affects every other death. That is the learning that I hold most close to my heart now in the work that I do today. When I work with individuals who are trying to redefine their relationship with their mortality, that’s where we start, is on all of the deaths that they’ve experienced.

So, what is a death doula?

It’s non-medical support for the end of life. It can be very practical in nature, like help setting advanced directives (to be clear, doulas are not attorneys), or very philosophical in tone, like help exploring one’s relationship with death.

However, death doulas aren’t just for our final days. Many of us are interested in talking about death, yet we’re seldom afforded the opportunity to do so. I think this episode offers a lot of catharsis in that way. In our conversation, Erin notes that there are “a lot of people eager to have a conversation [about death], but feeling like it’s not going to be a welcome topic. I rarely find that somebody really, truly doesn’t want to talk about it.” Part of a death doula’s work is to help their communities have conversations about death and dying.

What may surprise you about this episode of How to Be Anything (How to Be a Death Doula) is that it’s not morbid and it’s not crunchy. Erin and I chat about:

• What a death doula actually does and how she became one

• Why some people choose to die alone

• How growing up in a “death-denying culture” shaped Erin’s understanding of grief

• What Erin believes makes for a good death

Listen to what didn’t make the episode

Death doulas are not hospice care, though they often work with hospice, and the relationship can be mutually beneficial. Here’s what Erin had to say:

The death of a loved one can be devastating and the separation painful, but it can also be beautiful. I asked Erin what it’s like to be in the room when a client dies. Here’s what she told me:

Meet Erin Bishop

Erin is an INELDA-certified end-of-life doula in Richmond, VA. She supports families and individuals through the final stages of life, helping plan for the end, process what it means to die, and find meaning in death.

Erin brings openness and compassion to her work—whether she’s holding vigil, facilitating legacy projects, or hosting community death cafés.

Learn more about Erin, death doulas, and death cafes at …

• The International End-of-Life Doula Association (INELDA)

• Going with Grace (another well-respected accreditation program for doulas)

• Deathcafe.com

• You can find Erin at her website, nightsongdoulas.com, and connect with her on LinkedIn.

As a journalist, I mostly cover business and the world of work—hiring, firing, corporate culture and all that. But last summer, I became really interested in people with unusual jobs.

VCU Magazine had asked me to write a profile of Dr. Luanne Freer, the physician who created the first (and only) emergency room at Mt. Everest Base Camp, the highest medical clinic in the world. She spent her days doing things most people never do, namely setting bones in a tent pitched on a cracking glacier.

At the same time I was thinking and writing about Dr. Freer, I was also taking a darkroom photography class at my local art museum. One evening, a classmate arrived and unloaded her water bottle on the desk in front of me. It was pasted all over with stickers, and one of them said Barefoot Puppets. I asked her if she was into puppets, and, in that way teenagers do, she told me with slight embarrassment that her parents run a traveling puppet theater. But really, she was more into circus camp.

I needed to meet this family right away, so I invited myself to their house.

Since then, I’ve been collecting people around me, people who do unusual things with their time. Find one original person and they will introduce you to more. I like people with strange jobs—people who made up their own strange jobs, stumbled into their strange jobs, or pursued their strange jobs with verve and decisiveness.

So, I decided to try a new kind of project (for me). How to Be Anything is a podcast about people with unusual jobs. Here’s a little more about what you can expect in season 1.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts.

Subscribe on Spotify.

RSS: https://shows.acast.com/how-to-be-a-podcast

Original people are my favorite people, and I’ve gotten to meet a lot of them thanks to this podcast.

The trailer is out now, and episodes will publish later this month. See you then! :)

Subscribe now