Stuff You Should Know | Chuck Bryant & Josh Clark
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Welcome to the Talks at Google podcast, where great minds meet. I'm Emma, bringing you this episode with Chuck Bryant and Josh Clark, hosts of Stuff You Should Know. Talks at Google brings the world's most influential thinkers, creators, makers, and doers all to one place. You can watch every episode at youtube.com slash talks at Google. Stuff You Should Know has been one of the top podcasts since it started in 2008.

The podcast overviews and simplifies a truly extensive range of topics, from the history of refrigeration, to how Saturn works, to forensic dentistry and peacocks. Chuck and Josh have released over 1,500 episodes. They've toured the world, and they even had a TV show that ran for one season on the Science Channel. They also have a Trivial Pursuit game, and they once had their own category on Jeopardy's National College Championship.

Chuck and Josh join Google to give a behind-the-scenes look at how they've become experts in educating us about common things and how they work. Originally published in December 2016, here are Chuck Bryant and Josh Clark. Stuff you should know. Thank you for having us, everybody. It's quite an honor to be here. Thanks for taking time out of your day. Although I'm really surprised you guys brought your laptops. I'm just kidding. Totally expected that.

And I'm Josh, and that's Chuck, by the way. Yeah, but Juck is okay. We get that a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or Chosh. Chosh, yeah. So today is October 18th, and it's going to be something like 80 degrees outside. And I would just be curious, say you wanted to take that fact and turn it into an episode. Where would you start? Ooh, that's a good question. Yeah.

I guess climate change probably would be a good one. Yeah, maybe the difference between weather and climate. That'd be a pretty good one, I think. The urban heat island effect? Yeah. What else? Well, did we do sweating officially?

Or do we just talk about it all the time because of me? We've done how can somebody sweat colors? Oh, right. Wait, how can someone sweat colors? Oh, man. I knew you were going to ask me that. Right when I said that, I was like, don't say it, Josh. It's going to be a follow-up question.

We've done almost 900 episodes, so something kind of goes in, one thing goes out. Yeah, actually, we're walking evidence that there's a finite amount of space in the human brain for memory because old stuff is moving out as new stuff is moving in. Yeah, we'll just say if you're sweating colors, go to a doctor and let them explain it to you. I think there's cases of it where people were eating a lot of curry

sweat colors I think some people have their digestive tract actually at this point I want to be right so bad was that senator who was silver remember that guy or blue blue from eating copper or silver colloidal silver but he's a senator

I think it's senator, congressman. Anyone know? Remember that guy? See, this is total stuff you should know. We got one part right and then we add some other weird aspect to it. It's totally wrong. Like there's no way that guy's a senator. It's a condition. He's a colonel. That's what it was. I was going to ask how you guys go about finding your topics, but I think I just witnessed it in action. It's about right. I start sweating and then we just start talking and the words come out.

But once you've nailed down the subject for, you know, this upcoming Tuesday, how do you go about researching that topic? Well, typically we start with an article from the parent website that we are under, HowStuffWorks.com. And that's a good framework usually. And we don't script anything out or anything.

outline anything or go over it together really. We just sort of start there, do our own research and try and surprise and delight each other with what we find and then we just have a conversation about it together. You do independent research and then you come together. And there's no, you handle this part, I'll handle this part. We just sit down and start having a conversation and Jerry records it and every once in a while we'll misspeak or something like that and we go back and correct ourselves. And to do that we'll say, beep! So

So that Jerry, when she's editing it, will hear that beep and cut it out. Jerry over there, by the way. So it's appropriately off camera. Why don't you give a round of applause for Jerry? Famous Jerry. Some people think she doesn't exist, but she does. She does. Yeah, she's here with us. And so what are your, are all sources open for business when you're

going to research a topic? Or how rigorous are you with choosing the sources of your information? We've learned to be pretty rigorous. We can tell the difference. If there's one thing we do, it's research. We do that well. So we've just learned over time what's a legitimate source and what isn't. And some that seem like maybe they wouldn't be the most legitimate are actually well researched. There's a site I like to go check out called Damn Interesting.

And it's just this repository of really interesting articles, long-form articles. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of Damn Interesting, but you should go check it out. And they...

are really, really well researched. So you can go to Damn Interesting and get some information and use that. What we've figured out is the best thing to do though is to go back and find somebody else to back it up as well. And we've also learned red flags over the years. Like if you run across an amazing fact

and you go to find supporting evidence for it elsewhere, and you find the same amazing fact in almost exactly the same wording. It's got kind of this copy-paste quality to it, and it just kind of becomes dubious, so we shy away from that as well. What's an example of kind of a legendary famous fact that is embedded in everyone's brains that is deeply false? That's a good one.

Because you're kind of asking about urban legends in a way. Which we did a show on. We did do one on urban legends. About six or eight years ago. Yeah, I can't really think of one right now. I mean, we try to remember the true facts more. Right. We try. But yeah, the research, it always starts with Google for me.

Well done. Which is true. Where else do you start? It's Bing for you? No, it's Google for me as well. It's Google, everybody. Try to move past page one.

Just to be thorough. Sure, yeah. Actually, that's a good point, Chuck, because the deeper you go, the more you're going to avoid that copy-paste stuff, right? So when you're like in page five or something of Google, it just starts to like, the good stuff really starts to bubble up. We see all those Easter eggs, by the way. Well done. Makes our job a lot of fun. Has there ever been a topic that you set out to research and you just couldn't really crack it enough to make an episode about it?

We usually press on and do the episode anyway. Yeah. And one of the things about our show that I think has helped its popularity over the years is we don't claim to be experts or anything.

And we, all we, our aim is to just provide a good overview of something in about 30 to 45 minutes. And a lot of the topics we do, people have full podcasts on that subject matter. So, you know, for years, they will talk about the same thing that we try and give an overview on in 45 minutes. So,

We've gotten in over our heads before. The Sun podcast, very famously among our listeners, has been one that we always kind of still harp on as being not great because it was just so dense and hard and difficult to wrap our heads around. Just from a scientific perspective, it's just a lot more confusing than you would imagine. Yeah, we got a good Sun fact, though.

Oh, yeah, I do. I do. You guys ready for this? This is a knock your socks off fact. So it takes on the order of about 100,000 years for a photon to make its way from the center of the sun to the surface and then eight minutes to make it from the surface to the earth. My bad.

So that sunlight you see is 100,008 minutes old by the time that you see it outside. And I have to say, there is one episode that we were like, we can't release this. And it's sitting under glass right now. Oh, that's right. Just in case something happens to me or Chuck and we need an emergency backup episode, we actually have one. It's called How Pet Detectives Work.

And it's about people who find lost pets. And we got to the end of this. And we look over. Jerry's just sitting there like this. We couldn't make eye contact with each other. It was really kind of embarrassing. We were like, I don't think we can release this. So we're like, let's just hang on to this. This will be our emergency episode. Yeah, and we actually recently re-recorded an episode of

entirely that we didn't remember we had recorded before. Oh, yeah. And it's sort of been an inside joke, like, it's going to happen one day. And we got all the way through it. We released it. And the comments started rolling in. I kept waiting for you to reference the first version of this, and you guys never did. Yeah, it was Customs, about how Customs works.

And I didn't remember it at all. No, me either. Like there was no bell ringing. Nothing. It seems a little familiar. Just deadness. Yeah. We're just sitting there recording a second time. Yeah. So we debated taking it down. But then we thought, you know what? We'll leave it and it'll be nice little trivia for the listener base. Like what's the one time? Hopefully just one time.

Which one was better? I don't know. I think the second one probably was. I would hope so. Yeah. I would think so. Yeah, if we were better the first time, then we're doing something wrong. Yeah. We're declining. Yeah. So I'm curious to hear how you guys, do you imagine yourselves as educators or entertainers? Edutainers. Edutainers, yeah. I'm sorry. I just said that. I imagine myself as a cowboy. Right. Yeah.

Astronaut. Oh, sorry. I think, yeah, definitely. Definitely. Exactly. Never. Yeah, edutainment is sort of a stupid word that we've been throwing around a lot over the years. But it's accurate, though. You know, I think there's a lot of people who have graduated school and gone out into the world and are living life and don't have access to, you know,

you know, a constant source of new stuff, like new stuff to learn. And we definitely give that to people. But I think one of the reasons the podcast has been successful is because it is presented in an entertaining, approachable way. You know, there's not any judgment because we don't know it any more than anyone else does. We just went out and researched something and now we're talking about it.

And I think that's also kept a big target off of our backs over the years, too, is we've never been experts or purported to be experts. We're just a couple of guys who research stuff and then talk about it. Right. You're not getting-- although I do imagine you get a lot of fan feedback of finger wagging and saying, you got this right or you got this wrong. Oh, a lot. Yeah. A lot. What percentage of your fan interaction would you say that kind of fact checking constitutes?

It's hard to say because so many emails start with like, I love you guys. You're so great. This is a great podcast. However. Right. But there's this one thing I have to point out. People are usually really nice about it. We found that some of the meaner ones are when we do something on Twitter

something that's really someone's passion. Like, you would not believe how angry chess enthusiasts are. We did an episode on chess, and they were not nice people. So when you go by Washington Square Park and you see them, they look delightful out there. Right?

Playing on those tables with their little time clocks. Don't fall for it. They're animals. They'll cut you. And soccer. We got killed on the soccer episode. And, you know, they're nitpicky things a lot of times for...

the passionate ones about their life's passion. So I get it. But it's a good point, though, too. It's not like we can go out and become devoted soccer fanatics and understand every single nuance before we go and record. So of course we're going to get it wrong. But on the other side, the flip side of that, like with the Sun episode,

We heard from straight-up astrophysicists whose specialty is the sun, and they corrected us. And when we hear from people like that, it's usually couched in, you guys did a pretty good job, but you got this way, way wrong. And I just wanted to let you guys know in case you want to correct yourselves. We'll read those on the air. That's been a big correction. It's been a big part of the show. Right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

But just to hear from people who actually know what we were talking about is pretty neat. It's pretty gratifying. Yeah, yeah. So if you scroll through the list of the most recent episodes, one thing that's very refreshing is you're one of the few podcasts that has not turned your attention to Donald Trump. Wait, who? Right.

He's this guy. But you guys really don't stick to the news cycle, and you really tend to stay away from any kind of sensationalist story or clickbaity thing. Has that been an ongoing goal in the podcast? I think so. I mean, we've tried to remain fairly academic, and...

there's enough of that out there. There's plenty of that if you want to seek that out. So we like to think we're a nice little-- MALE SPEAKER: Oasis. DAVID ROCKEFELLER JR: Yeah, a little corner of the internet where you can go learn about hibernation and not talking about politics. And we've gotten political here and there, but we try to keep it neutral.

you know, our listeners kind of know where we lie on the spectrum politically because we are humans. Um, and it's hard to not reveal that at all. But, um,

You know, we will say things like, you should take care of homeless people. And then we'll get feedback from angry people who say, no, you should not take care of homeless people. Yeah, that was a surprise. They deserve to be where they are. And that was a very disheartening episode, actually, for that reason. But if we do get political, it's usually more like about the political process, like how the electoral college works or how presidential debates work or stuff like that. And then just in talking about the process, you also talk about the contemporary politics

take of it you know so we do kind of wade into it here there but we're not trying to

necessarily shove our viewpoints down someone's throat. Every once in a while it just can't be helped. Or we're like, this is important enough to one or both of us that we will just say, yeah, this is my opinion and I'm pretty serious about it. Like the bullfighting episode. Chuck was foaming at the mouth. Hated bullfighting. And I mean, a few people wrote in and said, you need to keep your opinions to yourself. But for the most part, I think most people saw it the same way you do. But

And every once in a while, it's just like, no, we feel like we should share our opinions on this. So it does come out, but we try to remain neutral for sure. And bullfighting, you believe it's cruel and bad that the bulls get killed. I didn't realize they got killed at the end.

That's a big part of bullfighting. That's what Chuck hates about it. Well, that and the fighting part too, I guess. Every once in a while the bull will get theirs though. Those are fun to watch. I saw something recently. There's a type of bullfighting that involves no swords and no death. As far as I know, there's no death. It's basically avoiding the bull. It's pretty awesome. I think it's called a bull jumping or something like that. I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding.

A bull social? Bull jumping. Bull jumping? Yeah. I could get behind that, I guess. Yeah. Oh, I saw it and I was like, Chuck's going to love this. Do they just make fun of him and tease them? Yeah. Bull's like, no, I don't care at all.

I imagine when you guys go to parties or social events, are people just constantly saying, tell me this fact or tell me a crazy fact or using you guys as kind of a repository of trivia? I've learned not to go to parties. Not in my personal life. None of my friends want to hear that stuff. That's true. That's very refreshing. And it's the same way for both of us. Our families are like...

It's your quiet space. Fan events, for sure. People come up and want to know very specific things about specific episodes. And you say, you can Google it. I do, quite often, actually. I want to go back to the beginning a little bit when you started in 2008, it was, correct? And that was a time when not a lot of people were podcasting the way that they are now. So what made you guys say, this might be good as a podcast?

Well, originally...

Chuck said that we start our research out by selecting an article off of HowStuffWorks. And that was the original idea for the podcast. It was a way to get this great amount of wonderful information that's on HowStuffWorks, these great nonfiction articles, out to people who don't sit around and read articles on the web all day. They'd rather listen to stuff when they commute or work out or whatever. So the guy who was running the show at the time said, you guys, let's go take these articles and make them into a podcast.

And I was like, I don't know what a podcast is, but let's try it. So he put us with Jerry and we we tried it with a couple of different iterations before Chuck. Then they brought Chuck in and it was like, OK, we got to figure it out. So I think right after Chuck came in, it really started to take off, actually, like the addition of Chuck in.

caused the podcast to skyrocket. Come on. It's true, though. It is true. But the whole thing started out as a way to repurpose these articles on the website into something else. And how do you guys develop reputations at the company or just in life as especially curious, curious, roving types of people?

You know, that's kind of the company line, you know, how stuff works. Everyone, even before we did podcasts and we were all just writing articles, everyone that still works there really just has that curiosity at their core. That's sort of the brand, company brand, is just to be inquisitive about stuff and to not kind of sleep through life

and I imagine you guys are kind of all the same way, you know? Just sort of pay attention to the world around you, be interested in what's going on. So it was really kind of born out of that company ethos. One thing we've learned over the years, too, is if we're researching something and we come across a question, we've got to go find the answer to that question because if we have that question, somebody else listening to the podcast is probably going to have the same question. We don't want them leaving the podcast going, well, wait a minute, what about this, you know?

So when we're doing that, it very frequently leads to more questions. But it's kind of fun, you know, to just chase question after question after question until you feel like you have a really good handle on a topic, you know. And then those make for the best episodes, I think, where we both sit down and we both know what we're talking about, like, just fully. Because you can just kind of let go and just have a lot more fun when you feel like you know what you're talking about.

Yeah, and I imagine there are tons of topics that on the surface appear to be very dull or dry, and then you actually start researching them and they become really exciting. For sure. Yeah. Like we did one on grass. Grass. I think the name of the episode was an episode on grass? Yes. Not marijuana grass. No, we've done marijuana. We just called that marijuana. Yeah, just like lawns. This is, yeah, grass.

So yes, we have found some topics that seem dull on the surface. Now, does the inverse also work? That some topics that seem really sparkly and exciting on the surface turn out to be not that deep or complicated? I'm sure that happens. I've got one. You got one? We did this episode. It's one of my favorites on disembodied feet washing up around BC. You guys ever heard of that?

Okay, Chuck was reading the material and he was like, "Man, I was so psyched about this. I thought this was so awesome." And then I figured out what it was. It turns out people are like falling over boats or off of bridges or something like that. Their bodies get trapped and their feet just kind of get loose and then all of a sudden they float to the top and they wash up on shore.

He's like, I thought it was like something way cooler than that. I was like, yeah, that's pretty cool. He's like, yeah, their feet get loose. Yeah, I think I think you didn't want that. You didn't want the mystery to be solved is what it was. Yeah, that was pretty much it. I thought there was some like X-Files like reason behind it all. Not just loose feet, loose feet. That's a great episode. I strongly recommend that one.

It is very. I remember listening to that episode and I kind of blinked and felt like I missed the answer. I was like, wait, there was no real explanation. It was just kind of they were separated from the body. I think that's a top notch explanation. I think that's neat.

So I want to talk a little bit more about your fans and your audience. And you've taken the show on the road quite a bit. And it seems like you've been doing a lot of overseas shows in countries that are not the most advanced when it comes to podcasts. Ooh, which one? I don't know. Maybe like in the UK, the podcasts are not quite that popular yet. So I'm surprised that you guys would have such an audience there. Yeah. We were...

kind of surprised too um we have a lot of support in the uk though yeah yeah australia new zealand and the uk and canada are sort of the big uh countries that that follow us um

Yeah, we sold out two shows in London. It was pretty neat. And we went to Dublin and Edinburgh and Manchester. And it was, they're different over there. The audiences are much different. We weren't quite prepared for that. How so? They're just a little more stayed. Reserved. Yeah, not quite as expressive. Especially in Manchester, which was our first show. Yeah, they were having a great time, they said, but it was just like, this is wonderful. Yeah.

And then they gave us a standing ovation at the end. We were like, what is wrong with you guys? Stop toying with us. They're kind of the people, instead of laughing at something, they say, it's very funny. We're sort of used to American audiences. You can pander to and they love it. Although Dublin was definitely up our alley too. Yeah, well, everyone was drinking a lot in Dublin. It was fun. It was a fun show. The whole tour was amazing though. The fact that we were

I think it kind of hit us every night, too, the fact that we were overseas and people were paying to see us podcast live. It was like, oh, my God, this is actually happening, you know? Right. Well, how do you think those people were exposed to the podcast? I mean, I've always found the UK is pretty ahead of the curve technology wise. I mean, I remember the first cell phone I ever saw in my life was in London.

So maybe I'm under the wrong impression, but I kind of thought they were sort of on the leading edge of stuff like that. Am I wrong? They do have really fast Wi-Fi in London, I will say. All right, well, maybe that has something to do with it. What do you think? I mean, I was under the same impression, actually, to tell you the truth. If that's not the case, then there are a select group of people who are super hip and in the know, and those are the people who are at our shows. Right, right.

Can you sum up how podcasting has changed in the eight years since you started as a fledgling little organization? Well, it's obviously grown a lot, not only in sheer number of podcasts out there, which is great. You can find anything. You can find a lot of anything that you're interested in and choose from that subsection. Subsection? Subsect? It works.

I make up words a lot, by the way. And then, you know, as far as being a viable business, it's companies are putting advertising dollars into it, which is a big deal that I think that sort of has helped legitimize it in a lot of people's eyes. And because of that, then then you have people like Katie Couric starting her own podcast and, you know, some kind of

People in other traditional media who are very, very big are now kind of trying to dip their toe in the water. But, you know, that's been the case, though, for a lot of people. Like Kevin Pollak is a longtime podcaster. Everybody knows him from The Usual Suspects, right? Yeah.

And I'm sure there's other examples, but Kevin Pollak's a great one. But there are plenty of people who have been into podcasting, who have kind of kept it going. And then, yeah, now that it's a lot bigger, people like Katie Couric are getting into it. I think Shaq has one that's coming out or that is out. One thing that seems to be surviving this transition into more of a mainstream form of media seems to be this DIY thing

thing that podcasting has always had going on, right? That from the get-go, there's always been very low barriers to entry into podcasts. And there have been a lot of people who have just decided to make a podcast, sometimes in their basement or in their garage or wherever. And that's still going on. Like, it's not being crowded out, which is really great because that would really stink for people to be

you know, to make this a passion project for years and years and years and then just get forced out as Shaq and Katie Couric come into the fold, you know? That just doesn't seem fair. I just picture her riding on his shoulders. Right. That would be a heck of a podcast. That'd be like the Snoop Dogg, Martha Stewart show that I am psyched about seeing. I haven't heard of that. You haven't? Wait, they're doing a show together? Yes. They're doing a show on, I think, Lifetime. It's like a dinner party show. Snoop and Martha, Martha Stewart. I'm not joking. Wow.

Is it called the Dizzle Party? I don't know what it's called. Oh, they missed an opportunity. But it's coming out this November, I think. That was a little bit of buzz marketing, but it came from here. Yeah. Right. Totally. Um,

How do you feel about, so you guys have worked in the video format and how do you feel about switching this trend or a lot of podcasters are turning their podcasts into television shows and... We had a television show. Right, on the Science channel. And what are the challenges of turning a sort of fast and loose audio format into a TV show?

The challenges are great. Yes, period. As evidenced by the fact that our show was one season long. Hey, that was not our fault, man. That was a great show. Yeah, I think, I mean, there's a lot of ways to skin that cat from just setting up cameras in your studio, kind of Howard Stern style.

to doing what we did, which was making a sitcom out of our show. - A scripted comedy. - Which was a little weird for the Science Channel. We now understand.

But Mark Maron was doing it. So we thought, hey, we'll give it a shot. Actually, we had our show up in front of his. We broke the ground. That's right. I mean, everything we do is unscripted. I don't know if that comes across or not. But to be faced with a script...

We even wrote some of them, co-wrote some of them. And even after writing them, to be faced with a script and then like, this doesn't work, so now you get another script that's like marigold, and then that didn't work, so here's the magenta script. And every major revision, they give you a brand new script, and it's like, no way, I just learned the last one. It's really challenging. And then we had this great director, his name's Chad. Chad

would say, don't act. We'd be like, well, that's good because we're not actors. And you'd start to try to act and Chad would just come up and be like, stop trying to act. You're not an actor. And it actually had a... That's what carried us through the show as far as I'm concerned, this idea that we shouldn't act. We should just, you know, know generally what we're going to say or what we're supposed to say or where the scene's going, but not try to like act. And I kept doing that and Chad would just...

Put my hand down and be like, don't act.

But yeah, it was very challenging to go indescripted. It seems very difficult to leap mediums like that. So before I ask the last question, I just want to let you guys know that we'll be doing Q&A. And if you do have a question that you want to ask, if you could go to one of the microphones on either side of the room just before we get started. And before we do that, I would love for you guys to tell us about your book that you're planning.

A book? Are we planning a book? Sure. This is a big surprise. Yeah, I mean, we've been talking about a book for years. What that's eventually going to be, who knows? And I'm not being coy. And here I thought you guys had a draft. No, no draft of a book.

We've just been batting around ideas for five years. Well, I look forward to the day when it eventually comes. Thanks for coming. It was great to have you here. Thank you for coming. I think like you guys had touched on before, podcasting has changed quite significantly from 2008 when you started to now.

But discoverability of podcasts is notoriously quite bad if you compare it to video platforms like YouTube or Facebook video and that sort of stuff. So if you were starting again from scratch today and you didn't know what you know right now or have the connection you now have and you were like nobodies, are there two or three things you'd be focusing on outside of obviously making great content, which we could probably talk about for two hours?

But outside of the content itself, in terms of getting it out to the relevant people and growing an audience over time, are there a few things you'd recommend for someone who's trying to do that? CHRIS HAYES: Yeah, that's a great question. And we get it a lot from people who write in and say, hey, this podcasting thing seems kind of cool. How do I do what you guys do? That was Katie Couric. CHRIS HAYES: She didn't. She didn't.

Well, first of all, I do feel kind of bad for anyone who is just now kind of trying to crack in because it's just a tough time. There's a lot of market saturation and it's probably pretty tough to come out of nowhere and get an audience at this point. But the advice we always give people is technically it should sound really great from the very first episode because

Someone won't listen to 10 seconds of a podcast if it sounds crappy. I think you had a chance before, but now it's just advanced so much that you really do have a good sound. Yeah, because our early ones didn't sound super great either. But yeah, now it should sound really, really good. And we always tell people as well to stick to...

decide your schedule and stick to it. If you put out an episode one week and then you take a few weeks off and then you put out another one, it's going to be hard. You know, it's like any TV show. People count on that release. And we've hit every Tuesday, Thursday for eight years. One week, I think, by the skin of our teeth,

It was like 11 something p.m. We generally release in the morning hours every Tuesday and Thursday. And if you're if you sound good and if you're super consistent and if you're talking about something that you feel passionate about, I think that's a great first steps. Yeah. Something I would personally do differently, too, would be to do more live stuff. I used to have like this crushing stage fright.

I mean, just like Chuck almost had to push me out on stage and it kept me from doing a lot of stuff and it kept us from doing a lot of stuff just because, you know, now that's OK. So if I could go back and do it again, that would definitely be one thing that I would do more is like get us out there more because I think it's helped us tremendously. Yeah. All right. Great. Thank you. Thanks for your question. And actually, I meant to ask you guys this before, but what podcast do you listen to?

Well, I listen to Judge John Hodgman. I listen to mainly comedy shows. I like Mark Maron's show a lot.

I think we both listened to 99% Invisible. It was really good. And a lot of these people are kind of colleagues and pals now, which is kind of the cool thing about the podcasting community is you meet each other at different events and things and you become buddies. So we know Mr. Hodgman. We know Mr. Hodgman. We know. It just gave him way too much reverence. I just imagined him in a cardigan with leather patches on the elbow. Yeah.

Yeah, so we've gotten to know some of these folks, and it's always fun to support their shows, and they support us, and it's kind of neat. The one that I'm just junkie for is Fresh Air, which I know is not even technically a podcast, but that's the one where I get when people write in and say, like, I can't get enough of stuff you should know. I just love it. I get what they're saying based on how I feel about Fresh Air. I can just sit there and listen to Fresh Air for days and weeks and

Terry Gross is just awesome. I agree with that one. Go ahead. Hi, guys. Hello. Big, big fan of your show. I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I think the one thing that you guys have is you guys have a lot of great chemistry in between you guys, and it's very mixed entertainment. We'll mix the content.

fun to listen to, I guess. A question that I had was about the clips that you guys record for the ads that you guys make. Do a lot of the advertisers just trust you guys to kind of go your own way there? Or is that very regulated? I was just curious about that part of it. It depends. On some, say like a financial advertiser in the financial business, there's stuff like, you can't say this.

legally, you'll get us in trouble. So, you know, some of them come with these caveats that we have to watch. And Jerry's really good about saying, like, no, you can't say that. But for the most part, we'll get copy, and it's just, you know, here are the points we want you guys to get across. Just do it how you think is best. And we do. Like, I've taken to going Squarespace. That was not a thing that Squarespace asked us to do. They just...

It just kind of came out of nowhere. Squarespace. Yeah, and they do usually encourage us to be users of the product so we can really talk about it with some enthusiasm. So we get underwear in the mail and snacks in the mail and mattresses in the mail and stuff like that. And we use them. And then we're a little more informed. Our live tour site is a Squarespace site. Squarespace. Yeah.

So we, yeah, that definitely helps is when you really like another product. Oh, for sure. Like this is cool. I've used Blue Apron in my home and it is a nice way to cook. Right. You know. Have you guys had advertisers from the beginning or did it? No, no. For a long time it was.

the podcast was, I guess, maybe under threat from time to time because it was totally free. It was company supported. And whenever somebody wrote in and was really complaining, we'd be like, well, we'll give you your money back.

Just give us your address, right? We'll send some guys to bring you that refund. No, but it was completely, totally free. Ad free, totally free. And then as we were able to start selling ads, the podcast became self-sufficient and started making money and everything.

it was a big change. We were used to doing this without ads. It was just free content. And it was a bit of a transition for us. And then we kind of came to understand it like, yeah, this is how you keep things going indefinitely. And there was a little bit of pushback at first from people who were listening, some people. But for the most part, I think everybody gets that that's just how you get free stuff. There's ads. It's an exchange. It's a trade-off. So knowing that...

we try to make the ads entertaining and distinct from the actual podcast. We don't like them to bleed together, which is why we have jingles. We have commercial jingle into and out of ad breaks. And that's actually taken on a life of its own too. This guy from the Sheepdogs, right?

Yeah, I think so. His name is Rusty. He just made up a jingle once and we started using it for ad breaks and then other people started sending us their interpretation of it. So we've got like an opera version, a banjo version, like a DJ version. We have an ELO version. An ELO. We have a Peter Frampton version. All these amazing versions of the jingle. So it's...

This thing that was kind of controversial at first now is kind of giving birth to some other form of creativity. That's been pretty great about it. I don't find them onerous or annoying at all. I mean, podcast listening is great because you can just skip through the ads if you want to. It's not hard. What? I don't know what you're talking about.

I would not recommend that. You don't get down that. I believe you're next. Yeah, so you guys have been doing this for eight years now, give or take. And it seems like at the beginning, it just sort of started as this idea, let's give it a try and see what happens. And now you've got world tours and this big following. So I'm wondering if there was any particular moment or something that happened where you sort of realized, oh, wow, we're going to be doing this for a long time. Yeah, I think probably for both of us, the very first--

Big event we did was in New York here in Brooklyn probably like six years ago. Maybe even longer. Maybe. Yeah. And we did an event at a knitting factory in Brooklyn. I don't know if it's still there. Is it?

Yeah. And the fire department came because there were too many people there. And Josh and I kind of looked at each other and we're like, holy crap. Yeah. What has happened in our lives? This weird thing that we sort of accidentally fell into. Yeah, that was cool. And from that moment on, I think we...

Because we record in a little room with just the three of us, and it's easy to send something out there. And we always got emails of support. But that was kind of the only contact we had with the outside world. I make it sound like we were-- DAVID ROCKEFELLER JR: We're not allowed to leave. Yeah, we were in the basement chained to the wall. But when we really got out there and started doing events, and people were really enthusiastic,

cool, curious, awesome people showed up bringing gifts and tokens of appreciation. And it really became like a thing that we understood was a little more than what we thought it was. Does that make sense? Thank you. Go ahead. Hi. Thanks for coming here. And also, thank you for Talks at Google for hosting these people. So one of the things I realized during your

session is that when you have a podcast, you have to kind of create a story from it. And I'm noticing that through your research, you have to kind of disseminate all this information and tell it in a kind of compelling way to capture the audience. So was there ever a time in your podcasting creating where you felt so tongue-tied and you tried to find a way to tell the story? And then the other question related to it is, how are you able to

tell the story so where you're not pausing a lot or you're using very few fillers. That's what I find really fascinating, how you're able to tell the story very quickly. And even in this conversation, it's a very free-flowing conversation that's easy for me at least to understand. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I feel like we stumble around a lot. Blindly? Yeah, I mean, editing helps for sure, but...

I think that part of the charm of the show has been the real quality of it. We fumble words around and say, uh, and um a little too much for professional broadcasters. But we just left that in from the beginning. And it just feels more like a conversation. And that's the feedback that we got from people, was it just seems like what it is, which is just two dudes sitting around talking about something that we both know a little bit about that's pretty interesting.

Yeah, it has all the natural conversational indicators that you'd be used to listening to, which I imagine makes it easier to hear as well. Agreed. As far as storytelling, I don't think either one of us agrees or believes that we're storytellers necessarily. I think for the most part, I do believe that there's a story in every episode that we do, but...

But it's more like our role is, get this, we found this really cool thing about the sun, you know, and how long it takes a photon. And all that together combines to make this story that each episode has. But I don't know if I consider myself a storyteller. Do you? No. No.

But we do. By default, we are. We have to be. But it's not... I think if we started fixating on trying to tell the story, we would get tripped up by that very quickly. Instead, we're just conversing about some stuff that we know, and then the story naturally emerges. That's a good question. Wow, see that? Yeah.

You guys don't have any media training or anything like that? They've tried. Yeah, that's true. Okay, come on. Hi. There's a lot of parallels you can draw between blogging and podcasting. They both make it very easy for someone to sit in their garage and start disseminating publishing content. When you guys first started, did you consider doing a blog? And ultimately, what made you think that podcasting is a better fit? Well, we had a blog that we have done kind of on and off over the years, but it was never...

Sort of never the focus. It was always kind of just extra stuff, the best way to say it. Yeah, like fun stuff. Like slideshows of creepy Santa Clauses and stuff like that, you know? Not like pouring our heart out stuff. Yeah. But that was kind of when blogs were a little more...

I don't want to say relevant. Do I want to say relevant? I don't know. You're going to have an army of bloggers descending on you. That was when blogging was just a little more of the focus. I think for us, podcasting was always in our comfort zone. Yeah, it is something we are...

we both naturally felt comfortable with for sure. We did both start out as writers for how stuff works. So that, that is our background is in writing, but, um, it was definitely not blogging. It was, you know, nonfiction writing, um, you know, just writing articles on things like how black holes work and stuff like that. Yeah. Blogging always seems, and of course they're non opinionated ones, but it always seems to lend itself more to an op ed than, uh,

other mediums and that's just kind of never been our bag yeah that's that's a good point we've had to kind of shy away from that so yeah so going the other direction i think would have bled into the podcast and it would have confused things thanks yeah thank you okay is are there any more questions from the audience last call okay well then i would like to give a very big thank you to chuck and josh for joining us today and thanks everyone for coming guys too we appreciate you coming

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