Ep. #9 - Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick

Episode Transcript

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And joining us in the PBJ spotlight today two podcasting rock stars Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick host of

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Stuff to blow your mind and the brand new podcast invention that was just launched
Robert and Joe, thanks for coming on. Yeah. Thanks for having us. Yeah. Thanks for having us
So the first question I'd like to ask everybody is how you got into podcasting?
Oh, well that's Robert you should go first
Well, basically I joined how stuff works as a writer

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This was I guess 10 years ago
and at the time the company was just beginning to
Dip their toes into the the podcasting world and they basically said hey who's interested in trying this out and
I just generally make it a practice that if there's some sort of new initiative at work
I'll give it a shot at any rate. And so I ended up

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Hosting a co-hosting a podcast called
Stuff from the science lab
Which it turns out the title didn't work all that well because people either came in expecting something harder or lighter than
Than the balance we actually delivered but that show eventually evolved into stuff to blow your mind and I'm still here co-hosting it today

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Let's see and I you know, neither of us actually came from an audio performance background
I started also as a writer. I was writing for
A video series that we were doing back in the house to work stays called
Forward thinking and I i'd been doing scripts for that video series and they wanted to start a podcast

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With the show so I was brought on as one of the hosts of that podcast with my co-workers
Who still of course work with us Jonathan Strickland host of tech stuff
And uh lauren vogelbaum one of the hosts of saber a food podcast here
And it was so we did that together and it was a lot of fun
But I remember at the very beginning. I had no idea what I was doing on mic. I I probably said uh for every

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Maybe 10 times for every word. I spoke it was just horrible, but I
Came to really love what I was doing. I'm not quite sure how that happened
Given how uh how terrifying it was at the beginning, but now it's I wouldn't want to do anything else
So so how was the chemistry between the two of you when you first started working together on the show?

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It was good. Basically, what was it three or four years ago now?
Yeah, it's been a while
So when I came onto the show that we had another host christian saiger who came on at the same time, right?
So so basically my original host co-host was a science editor for house to fire
A science editor for how stuff works allison lauter milk and then when it was rebranded to stuff to blow your mind

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julie douglas
Joined the show and so she was my co-host for years and years
uh, and then uh
She departed that to work on some other podcast projects and it's still a part of the company here working on on various
podcast projects, but at that point I needed a new co-host and um, and joe and christian both were looking to
To to work on some content. I had a pretty good rapport with both of them

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And so they both joined the show and we would switch back and forth
I would do an episode with joe then I do an episode with christian
And so I thought it was actually pretty great synergy between us because for years I had been watching
What robert was doing and I was like, I kind of want to be doing that like he was hitting exactly
The strange kind of subject matter that fascinates me and that I assume a lot of other people

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Might not have the tolerance for that. I that I would but like the intersections of technology and religion
Uh that that's exactly what gets me going and uh, and robert was, you know writing blog posts about I don't know what it was
You know robot mummies and stuff like that
So, uh, so once I actually got the chance to come on the show with robert
I was really excited and it turned out wonderful. In fact, I think one of the earliest sets of episodes we did was about

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Techno religion. I remember that being the kind of thing. I was like this could actually be done on this show where we could talk about
John Murray spear the the spiritualist creature who wanted to create a robot messiah in the 1840s or 50s
Right. Yeah, and yeah, that was yeah, I remember those episodes well
So talk about how cool it is to work for a company where you know, you really

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We talked to independent podcasters who were working from their bedroom or trying to get a podcast launch from their closet
And what equipment to buy and all that and here's a company that's that's that's really behind it
And it gives you some freedom to do some research things like that
Talk about you know, how neat how neat that is for you know, be able to do it for so many years
Oh, it's fantastic. I don't have to know anything

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I don't know. I don't know. I have to know what equipment we're using. I have no idea what i'm talking into right now. I uh
Yeah, it's it's a blessing. Yeah. I mean really we have we we get to work with some very talented people
We work with some very talented producers
alexander williams tarry harrison the two individuals we're working with with now and
They handle all of the technical stuff and gives us the room

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We need to just focus on content and of course delivery making sure we have the appropriate levels of caffeine in our system
And they are truly they are truly fantastic as producers. We we could not do what we do without them
So how do you guys uh qualify what blows somebody's mind?
Well
It basically just has to

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Intrigue us and then sort of uh and and also we think about the audience at this point
We have a pretty good feel for what listeners are looking for
and uh and
Generally, we don't have to to rein ourselves in too much. We uh, we just sort of go go by gut and we keep up with uh with
Current news, uh, it's coming out of science. What is we look at the journals?

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And also we're just if we have something just knocking around in the back of our head where we might just think oh well this
This is the the time we should finally do an episode say on the ark of the covenant and see if there's anything
You know sciency there that we can uh loop into the episode
You know, I think it actually is best not to pander and not to worry too much about

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What you think somebody else thinks you should be talking about because you can hear a podcast where somebody's talking
About a subject that they're not actually personally all that interested in and it's just dead in the water
You've got to talk about what you yourself have passion for and so uh, so yeah
We focus on topics that are personally interesting to us

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And hopefully that comes through with the kind of like energy and enthusiasm that we bring to the subject matter and that gets other people
Interested do you get feedback and suggestions from listeners and has any of that helped has any of that really taken off in a
Show for you
Oh, absolutely
We we try and feature one listener mail episode generally a month these days

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Where we we actually read mail that comes in and and it's great because our listeners will
They'll ask additional questions about topics that maybe we didn't think about or address
At times we will of course be corrected
And and more more often than not they'll just add a level of experience and sometimes professional expertise
To what we're talking about for instance

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Two great examples. We recently did some episodes on squirrels
Which was far more mind-blowing than I think we were even prepared for and of course everybody has experience observing squirrels at least
You know
Certainly in North America and so they wrote in with their experiences to us
But we also heard from quite a few listeners who worked directly with squirrels in like

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wildlife rehabilitation centers and
Stuff like that, you know, so they'd be working with squirrels in some kind of research or rehabilitation capacity
And they had the best stories about and say a bird getting loose in a facility and then a squirrel catching it and eating its face
Okay, so you you you come up with a topic like green tea and make that blow somebody's mind

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What was what was the research that you put into green tea?
Let's see. I think this was an episode that I did with christian and and if I recall correctly
He found one particular angle about I believe it was sort of xenophobic ideas about the effects of green tea from
From from history and you know that just kind of gives you the I guess it's like climbing or something

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You know it gives you that that one little bit of advantage to then say. All right. Well, what else is there?
What is the this gives us an excuse to then talk about just the basic
drier science of green tea and and also what
Look at other historical dimensions of the topic
But also part of our motto is that the world is so much weirder than you realize moment to moment day to day

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The underlying reality is almost always mind-blowing if you know how to look close enough
And so almost any topic I won't say any topic
But almost any topic can truly be fascinating if you're willing to dig deep enough to think hard enough
To ask the strange questions that people wouldn't normally think to ask

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Did you ever come up with a topic that you published as a show that turned out to be a dud?
I mean, yeah, I mean we've done shows that are better than others. Yeah, I mean there probably been some cases where
I would say that sometimes space topics as is amazing as space exploration is

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There have been times in the past where it's it's maybe a little more difficult to relay the subject matter to listeners
Just because it in words in words because it is so impersonal
Sometimes but then again, we've had some some some really fun topics about say black holes
But black holes are kind of the superstars of
Of the universe so

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That work in our advantage for sure
So so who's listening to the show and approximately how many do you have each episode?
Oh, man, I have not checked our numbers recently I uh
This is embarrassed. I should have a better answer to that
That's the kind of thing we've looked up in the past that I don't usually keep in mind

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Yeah, we've been so busy, especially right now just getting through the holidays and banking episodes that we haven't been
Personally paying as much attention to the metric which again is one of the benefits of working for a company
Where we have other individuals who?
Have their you know their finger on the pulse here
I think last time I checked it looked like we were getting around three and a half million downloads a month like

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in October or something, but
But yeah, I can't I can't vouch for that number. Yeah, and I think it's uh, what about the big ballpark is what?
100 million downloads to date. I think that's uh,
Okay figure that is frequently cited so you can see how you can see how on top of the business we are
So those listeners are from you know, all different backgrounds all different jobs

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It's not just a science listener. It's it's more than that. We hear from a
Really diverse cohort of people at least the people who choose to write in I know that's a subset and probably doesn't represent the whole but
At least the people who choose to write in
Yeah, we we hear from everybody we hear from a lot of artists actually very often people say that they're

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you know, they work in in arts or sculpting or
Crafts or knitting and stuff like that and they say they listen to us while they work
We also hear from just tons of people who you know work normal jobs and listen to us in the car
While they're doing spreadsheets or whatever. Yeah, it seems like people all over and definitely all over the world
And you guys don't really pay close attention to the length. I've seen 45 to an hour 37

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Well, it's uh, so recently we've been trying to do a little better about keeping it to an to an hour
uh, and that's both
It's both like a like a listenership issue like we don't we don't want people to to really feel like that the show is a slog
Oh, no, no, maybe not slogs the word. I know that people have for instance those that get a lot of attention

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An hour of podcast is a good idea. But then selfishly for us. There's this realization that well if we do a two-hour episode
Couldn't that just be a part one and a part two?
And then we can maybe get through the week a little easier
We have because we ultimately only have so much time and so much mental energy to put into the the episodes for a given week

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Well speaking of that you guys launched in Venom
What what is that? You know, how's that going to be different than uh than the first one?
Well, uh, obviously it's a different subject matter
So we're going to be looking at human creations there and I think we're trying to bring the same kind of curiosity and you know
The weird question motivation to inventions that we bring to scientific topics

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So we're not just going to be looking at the same kind of
Straightforward biography of you know who invented this and and how it was invented though. Of course, we are going to look at that
but we like to
Whenever we can figure out what's the stranger question about this invention?
Like how is it influenced human culture in ways that people might not expect?
What are the you know, what are the things that may have come before inspired it that people never would have thought of?

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Right, so we're going to be looking at the
What are the things that may have come before inspired it that people never would have thought of? We're always trying to bring something new when we can
Like for example one of our first episodes of invention
We actually looked at the guillotine and we discussed how how the invention of the guillotine may have affected people's views about
About life and death and the value of life

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Yeah, another aspect of it too is just like it's not only like who invented it or or what?
Or even what time period in ancient history came out of but the questions of like but why now?
Why this particular individual why this particular culture and not another?
What what was it about this time and place or individual that made them put the existing pieces together?

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Into this new way of doing things this new technology
So outside of how stuff works give me one or two of your favorite podcasts that you listen to and why?
Um for for me, I'd say some of my favorites. Oh man. There's a there's ideas which is a cbc radio show that uh that I really adore

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Um, they put out so many different fascinating topics that cover
History current events politics philosophy a little bit of science here and there. That's probably one of my
My favorites and uh, I also have been really enjoying code switch
Uh the npr podcast that talks about uh about race and culture and and also a fair fair amount of history

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Uh, that's that's been one of my favorites on on long drives recently
Uh, i've really appreciated a lot of history podcasts. Obviously. I love uh, you know a big favorite of everybody
Is his hardcore history, which is you know, almost more like audio books, uh with dan carlin. That's great. I really enjoy
Uh, you must remember this with kareena longworth, which is about hollywood history

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I think she does a fantastic job with that and that's a subject that i'm
Sort of interested in robert and I are both sort of fans of b movies and we end up threading discussions about
trash cinema into a lot of our
science conversations
So, um, why do you guys love to be podcasters?

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Well, I I kind of feel like the luckiest guy in the world getting to do a job like this
I mean, it's literally
A job where I get to spend my time thinking and writing and talking about the weird stuff that personally interests me the kind of stuff
That I would be reading about and writing about in my spare time if I wasn't doing it for my job
so yeah, I feel incredibly fortunate to have a job like this that uh,

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Uh that I can especially
I feel I feel most fortunate in the times when I get to dive into topics that I feel like
Almost nobody would care about unless I gave them a good reason to
For me, you know, I'd say it's it's it's much of the same thing. It's about like having

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the freedom and the incentive to engage in these topics and to to write and research and and also to have
Uh, I mean sort of free rein in what we do
I mean, we're very fortunate in that that nobody's nobody's coming along and saying all right hit this hit this topic
Here are your you know talking points for the week
Uh now we we pretty much have free rein to explore whatever we want

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And uh, and then of course just getting to connect with with listeners as well. Uh, that's that's always a joy
So what advice do you guys have for uh for other folks that are interested in becoming podcasters?
Uh, not everybody, uh, you know, we'll get the chance right off the bat to work for a great company like yours
Maybe eventually they would but uh, what device could you give them to get started and and stick with it to the point?

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Where they're successful at it
Focus on what you're passionate about
Your your subject matter should align with the things that you care about and have a natural enthusiasm for
If you're trying to talk about stuff that you don't actually care about it's it's probably not going to work
Absolutely. Um, yeah, you've got to you've got to have your your passion in line for it

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And and that's realizing too that there are just so many different types of podcasts out there
Uh, like I remember when when I first started podcasting
I think all the podcasts I listened to were were musical and form
Uh, so when when when people were saying oh we're doing we're doing these podcasts
It was kind of like a switch for me to start thinking about podcasts as talkies. I guess instead of just uh, you know musical experiences

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Yeah
I'd say from personal experience also, uh
I would say don't don't sand down your edges
Be yourself and be weird in the way that you are weird. I think people actually respond quite well to that
Yeah, I think that's that's one of the the strengths of our show
I think it's one of the reasons people keep listening to us and uh, keep coming back is that

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We're we're honestly ourselves and we we lean into that on the ship
So what are your thoughts on the podcasting industry as a whole there's there's been a you know
A lot of news about podcasting over the last year. We launched a brand new publication just for podcasting
There are others that have launched and uh, the revenue seems to be moving that way
What are your guys feelings overall about uh, how the industry is is going?

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I obviously I I like it. I'm all in favor of there there being being more
more investment in podcasts more
Advertising possibilities more marketing possibilities and you know, it also it opens up
It makes room for for new ventures in podcasting even in a company
Like ours, even though we've been doing stuff to blow your mind for so long and the product

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Hasn't really changed that much and and likely will not
Change, you know, we're going to stick to the format we're doing
But it gives us the opportunity to try other ventures on the side within the company
Yeah, I uh, I feel pretty good about the state of the industry I
Again, i'm not i'm not the biggest business to get guy. I'm not gonna pretend to be uh

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That person but from what I know it things seem to be looking good and um, I do wonder about about different sort of uh
Revenue models in the future like if podcasting is going to remain
Mostly ad driven or if you're going to have more kind of uh, like subscription
Audio content services in the future. I mean certainly you already have that

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As uh as with audiobooks like their audible and stuff
But yeah, I wonder about that kind of thing
But overall I I feel good about the industry and it's it seems like a good place to be right now
On the uh, the what you mentioned about the ads. What do you guys feel like works best for?
An hour-long podcast one of the big knocks against radio

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Is that I mean there's just so many commercials playing uh during an hour that uh, it's driving people away
What's the right number and where should they be in a podcast?
Well right now we're doing what a pre-post and two mids. Yeah, and that I mean who knows somebody could come along
Tomorrow and say actually the new standard is three mid rolls

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And I don't you know that i'm not sure that we could object too much if that's what we had to do
But like right now that really feels like a good balance uh for an episode
this length
And uh, I think that
I think most listeners that understand like the necessity of having those those ads there and also the more that they are in our voice

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And then they're they're not some sort of um, you know obnoxious
Radio tv style ad not that all radio tv ads are obnoxious some are quite captivating but
As long as they're uh, they're they're not obnoxious. I think people are cool with it
Well, I don't know what you guys think about this but as a listener
I think the most uh annoying thing is when you get jacked up about listening to a podcast and then the first thing you hear is an ad

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A pre-roll. Yeah. Well, uh, specifically I would say the the ones that get me or when it seems like the content is about to start in the house
Is they're talking but then they start doing the ad read that that one always really like
Slows me down when you have sort of the front-loaded ad reads like hey, i'm here i'm here to do the podcast but first 15 solid minutes

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Well guys any final thoughts before I let you go, I know you're doing a lot of work. I know you have a lot of things to do
Uh, no, I mean, uh, just uh, thanks for the opportunity to talk today. Uh, and uh, it's been a pleasure to be here
Yeah, and uh, you know, obviously we uh, we encourage uh, anyone who hasn't listened to our show to check out stuff to blow your mind to check out invention
Invention has launched. There are only a handful of episodes out, but it's going to keep publishing once a week

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Publishing every week on monday stuff to blow your mind comes out twice a week with a rerun of vault episode
We call it on saturdays and obviously on every platform
Available where podcasts are available. Oh, yes, everyone else great. Thank you so much for your time guys. Appreciate it. All right. Thanks for having us