June 30, 2025 • 55 mins
Kicking off the 3rd season of Hot SciComm Summer is Adam Cole. Adam started at NPR’s Science Desk in 2011 where he started making short videos and radio pieces. In 2014, he launched the YouTube channel Skunk Bear with NPR, which was a venue for fun, quirky, visual forays into science stories big and small. After NPR, he did work for Vox, including their Netflix series, “The Mind, Explained” in 2019.
Most recently, Adam’s work came on my radar again because he’s one half of the new YouTube channel, Howtown. Fans of SciCommSummer will remember my very first guest back in 2022—Joss Fong. Well, Joss is the other half of Howtown. Together, they’ve been doing really excellent work building an independent channel making long-form videos exploring big questions and the methods scientists use to answer them. It’s so good. You need to check it out if you haven’t yet.
Adam shares his story as a science journalist, the makings of Howtown, the value of having a creative partner, and the pros and cons of working for yourself or a more established institution.
Watch Howtown (YouTube) and support their Patreon.
You can find the rest of this summer's science communication podcast series here.
For a transcript of this episode, visit this episode's page at: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episodes/
Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Andy Luttrell (00:09):
Hey everyone, welcome to the third season of
Hot SciComm Summer, where I talkwith savvy science
communicators to figure out howto get science findings outside
of niche academic circles.
I'm excited to share the firstepisode of this season with Adam
Cole.
Adam started at NPR's ScienceDesk in 2011, where he started
making short videos and radiopieces.
(00:29):
In 2014, he launched theYouTube channel Skunk Bear with
NPR, which was a venue for fun,quirky visual forays into
science stories big and small.
But After NPR, he did work forVox, including their Netflix
series The Mind Explained in2019.
And more recently, Adam's workcame on my radar again because
he's one half of the new YouTubechannel Howtown.
(00:51):
Avid listeners of SciCom Summerwill remember my very first
guest back in 2021, Joss Fong.
While Joss is the other half ofHowtown, together, Joss and
Adam have been doing reallyexcellent work building an
independent channel makinglong-form videos that explore
big questions and the methodsscientists use to answer them.
(01:11):
It's so good.
You need to check it out if youhaven't already.
I was happy that Adam was downto talk about his work for the
podcast.
We'll get into his story as ascience journalist, the makings
of Howtown, the value of havinga creative partner, and the pros
and cons of working foryourself versus a more
established institution.
So here we go.
(01:31):
Season three of Hot SciCommSummer is off and running.
So let's jump right into mychat with Adam Cole.
So the first thing I want totell you is that the map
projection music video is waybetter than it has any right
Adam Cole (01:52):
to be.
Well, thank you.
It also performed way worsethan I expected.
Really?
What?
Well, I was hoping that itwould.
What metric?
Well, it's like one of ourworst performing videos.
So, you know, it was a littlebit of a disappointment.
But, you know, that's the waythings go on the Internet.
Andy Luttrell (02:10):
Well, a few of those are me because I kept
going like, how did they pullthis off?
It's not fair that they can bedoing what they're doing and
then also pull this out ofnowhere.
But I think my hunch is that itspeaks to your whole deal of
how you approach this kind ofstuff.
And I haven't had a lot ofsuccess sussing out your story
(02:33):
because there's a professionalwrestler who shares your name
that really dominates the Googlesearches.
Adam Cole (02:38):
My wife was mentioned this the existence of this
wrestler to someone justyesterday and so we googled my
name which I hadn't done inyears and it's so funny because
yes there's this professionalwrestler named Adam Cole his
real name is Austin Jenkins sohe took Adam Cole as his
wrestling name which I findhilarious like not intimidating
at all maybe because I know meit doesn't it doesn't strike
(03:01):
fear in my heart but if youscroll through the Google
results it's like his face foryou know probably 20 images and
then there's one image of me atNPR when I'm like 23 just like
bright-eyed like I have this bigcurly head and it's and I'm
just so earnestly beaming at thecamera it's really funny
Andy Luttrell (03:27):
so so having not been able to suss out your story
myself could you give us alittle clue as to like how did
what what got you here
Adam Cole (03:34):
well I'm from Oregon and It's an important part of my
identity.
I grew up in backpacking andspending a lot of time outdoors,
so I've always loved thenatural world.
I studied biology in college,and then I graduated right
around the recession, so I did amaster's to sort of avoid
entering the workforce or thelack of workforce.
(03:57):
And I did that in biology aswell, so I was really trained to
be a research scientist.
But I...
I really also enjoyed writing.
And so right after my master's,I got a job or an internship at
a small newspaper in NorthernCalifornia, had a subscription
of about 1000 people.
And I was the third employee.
(04:17):
So I got to do a lot of writingand journalism and the editor
in chief, I mean, localjournalism.
Some of these local journalistsare like incredible, you know,
reporters and incredibleinvestigators.
And so I really learned a lotfrom my boss, Caroline Titus.
That sort of got me intojournalism.
(04:38):
I then went to NPR, worked atthe science desk, worked briefly
at Radiolab, where I think Iwas sort of inspired by their
sensibility a little bit.
And then started a YouTubechannel at NPR about science
stuff.
I met Joss through that, sortof just we were professional
compadres.
And we've always talked aboutdoing something together and our
(05:03):
mutual obsession with themethods of science.
So originally, she sort ofpitched me on a YouTube channel
just called Methods, which weended up deciding was a little
too dry.
So we went with Howtown, whichis now our YouTube channel,
launched...
almost a year ago uh or alittle over a year ago may end
(05:24):
of may was when we published ourfirst episode so yeah that's
how i ended up uh doing this
Andy Luttrell (05:31):
so i mean that that that's a nice straight line
well it seemed like it'sstraight in retrospect but the
Adam Cole (05:39):
experience of it was very topsy-turvy
Andy Luttrell (05:42):
because because there's part of it that has to
be like there's a there's anartistic side of it.
There's like a technical sideof it too.
Because my impression is thatyou're not outsourcing a ton of
like animation or writing orvisualization stuff.
It seems like that is very muchin your wheelhouse is the
visual side of the coin.
So how does that, was that justsort of like you had to learn
(06:05):
on the fly or that was alwayskind of part of it?
Adam Cole (06:08):
Well, As a kid, I was always drawn.
You know, I was alwayssketching something or, you
know, I was very into art andmusic.
So that was always somethingthat I liked to do.
I didn't think I could evermake that part of my job.
Honestly, I never, every stepof my career has been into a job
that I did not know couldpossibly exist.
So I feel very lucky in that.
(06:29):
Yeah.
And so, yeah, we, you know, wetend to do most of the
animations ourselves.
We, a few months ago, we wereable to hire on a contract
animator to help us with sort ofthe workload.
And he's really great.
Probably more talented than meor Joss in terms of animating.
But, but yeah, that's alwaysbeen something I've really
(06:50):
enjoyed.
I think probably Joss and Ihave a similar experience, which
is we were at institutions.
You know, I was at NPR, she wasat Vox, which was not a legacy
institution, but it was stillheaded by people from
traditional media.
And they didn't know anythingabout video or visuals, really.
(07:12):
You know, I was working at aradio first place.
And so there was a real opensandbox to just sort of explore
in, and they were willing to letus do that.
I think...
it probably would have beenbetter if they'd hired people
who knew how to make a video,but we were around and we were
like young and, uh, you know,excited.
(07:32):
And so, um, so yeah, I learnedfrom a couple of coworkers who
were sort of more from the photoand sort of documentary side, a
lot of things.
And I learned from YouTube.
I mean, when I started makingillustrations, actually it was
the first thing I did for NPR.
Um, and then, then I had like atumblr that had like animated
(07:54):
gifs and then i started makinganimations and things like that
and most of that was me runninginto a problem and then looking
up a tutorial on youtube and youknow youtube is full of
tutorials that teach you how touse any program under the sun
and they're all narrated by youknow, a 13-year-old boy who is a
genius.
(08:14):
And they, you know, start,today we're going to talk about
maths, you know, and they'revery professional in their
presentations.
So, yeah, I've learned a tonfrom the, well, now they're, you
know, 30, but the teenagers ofthe time of YouTube taught me
most of what I know.
Andy Luttrell (08:33):
So it really was sort of like you had a
preparedness, but you weren'talready, like there wasn't some
separate track of you that waslike, I don't know, maybe I'll
do this visual arts thing oranimation thing.
No,
Adam Cole (08:48):
I always thought of it as just like a hobby that I
really enjoyed figuring.
And I just like learning aboutnew stuff.
And that applies to like toolsas well as the science stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Andy Luttrell (09:02):
So when it came time to jump into the open
waters of an independentchannel, what was that like?
That feels scary to me.
And I wonder if you could justsort of talk through like what
would have been, what were sortof the pros and cons to you at
the time of leaving a place thatis sort of an established
(09:25):
institution and Now having to doa lot of the junk part on your
own.
Adam Cole (09:31):
Yeah.
Well, I did it kind of instages.
So I left NPR to work for Vox'sNetflix show, Explained.
So that was my first step outof the fold.
And then I freelanced for awhile.
So I had a little bit ofexperience being on my own.
I also just moved to Bogota,Colombia.
Well, now it's been two years.
(09:52):
But that really helped me beokay with failure because I sort
of fail in my everydayinteractions all the time.
I'm not fluent in Spanish.
And so going out of theapartment means that I am about
to fail in myriad ways,etiquette, grammar, directions,
(10:12):
etc.
And I think that sort of helpedme break me from...
sort of perfectionism that Ihad always had.
And I think that was what washolding me back from going it
alone is there's a certainamount of protection when you're
at a legacy institution.
You can't fail that bad becauseyou're part of this bigger
thing that has so much momentumand there's people checking on
(10:35):
you and making sure thateverything is right before it
goes out.
And you also just have thesecurity, the job security and
all those things.
But I don't really worry aboutthat as much anymore.
I don't know.
I think it really just feltlike things are so uncertain in
the world.
We don't know if we're going tohave democracy in 10 years.
(10:57):
It just feels like you got totry things.
You got to do things.
Screw it.
I'll make a YouTube channel.
Yeah, exactly.
Andy Luttrell (11:07):
So what are the, are there, in terms of the like
financing, like all that is thestuff that I think of as the
junk part.
Yeah, for sure.
You guys are doing that on yourown, is my sense,
Adam Cole (11:20):
right?
Yeah, well, so we decided togive ourselves titles.
Joss is the social mediamanager and I am the business
manager.
So we sort of try to take careof those sides of the operation.
Yeah.
And yeah, I mean, we've had, wefound maybe like five videos in
(11:40):
a company called Space Stationthat helps us find sponsorships.
So we do have some outside helpwith that part of the
operation.
And that's about a third of ourincome comes from that.
There's about a third from theinherent AdSense ads that are on
YouTube videos, the ones thatpop up that you skip over.
And then we have a Patreon thatis another sort of third of the
(12:03):
income.
Although Lately, we've beengetting more views, so the other
two have sort of beenoutstripping Patreon.
But we hope that Patreon willalways be a major leg of the
stool.
Andy Luttrell (12:15):
And so, like, let's get into, like, how you
actually do the...
I mean, I jumped into theboring technical side.
But I think what people want tohear is, like, how are these
videos coming to be?
And it seems like...
they're, they're, they're,they're complex, right?
They, they, they integrate alot of aspects of a question
(12:37):
while still having kind of aclear focus.
Um, and we can think aboutmaybe a specific video, maybe if
there's one that, that you wantto sort of break down that kind
of, here's where the idea camefrom.
And then here are the twistsand turns that it took going
forward.
Uh, if any come to mind foryou, or I can throw one at you.
Adam Cole (12:56):
Sure, you can throw one at me.
I mean, I would know more aboutthe ones that I was in charge
of, of course, which is half ofthem, yeah.
Andy Luttrell (13:03):
Right.
I think what I like is it'spretty clear who took the lead,
but it's very, but like it'salways collaborative, right?
It's sort of, it's very muchlike a team effort, even though
one person is sort of the hostfor the hour.
Um, so, so the one that, that Irevisited just the other day
was the smoking or was the, um,excuse me, was the drinking one,
(13:26):
the alcohol one.
And I really, in retrospect, Iwas like, oh, I loved this one
because it was this Trojan horseof getting at a lot of sticky
methods issues like confoundingvariables and meta-analysis and
randomization and effect sizes.
All of these things that I havetrouble getting students to
(13:47):
care about, but that Packaged inan intriguing question about is
alcohol consumption dangerousor not, it sort of was sort of
this opportunity to just talkabout those things.
So there's the one I give you.
Where does that one come fromand how do you navigate it?
Adam Cole (14:05):
Well, you know, one of the things we're trying to do
is– and we're not alwayssuccessful at this– is tackle
questions that are sort of outthere in the world that you may
have seen a headline about andsaid, wait, how do they know
that?
Like, where's that coming from?
Especially when there'sconflicting information.
So another example might be alittle while ago, there was this
big paper that came out thatsaid, we found signs of life on
(14:28):
another planet in a differentsolar system.
And then there were a bunch ofheadlines that were like, no,
that's not that's not quiteright.
That was a lie, you know?
And so that might be somethingwe tackle because it's sort of
out there.
We've made a lot of headlines,but no one was doing a great job
of explaining the methods andwhy there's this uncertainty or
ambiguity.
Um, and one, you know, in thatsame category is all these
(14:52):
headlines about alcohol everyyear.
There's a new meta study thatcomes out and, uh, Lately, the
meta studies have been trendingvery negative on alcohol.
But the ones that are morepositive about alcohol always
make more headlines becausepeople want to hear that having
a glass of wine at night is goodfor them.
Of course, we want that to begood.
(15:13):
We want our vices to bevirtues.
So I knew that that was apotent area of curiosity for
people.
A lot of people drink.
A lot of people drink.
want to know what effect it'shaving on them how bad is it
really their doctors sometimesyou know more and more doctors
(15:34):
are telling people to quitdrinking so a lot of people have
experience with this we've seenthis we got questions from our
friends and audience membersabout this so all of that was
sort of accumulating it's likethis is a good topic for us and
uh so i had it i had actuallystarted it pretty early when we
launched the channel um and Itjust took a while for me to get
(15:57):
all of the interviews in place,and then it coincided with a
window that we had in January.
I thought, oh, dry January.
That's the perfect time topublish this.
So yeah, I read a bunch ofpapers.
I read a bunch of the latestpapers that had made these
headlines.
There was a big WHO report thatcame out that had like 500
(16:18):
authors from around the worldthat was trying to estimate the
impacts of alcohol.
And yeah, I just looked intothose and tried to pull out a
few indicative studies that weresort of All representing
different parts of our evolutionof understanding of alcohol.
So I picked one from the 80sthat was a cohort study from the
(16:39):
San Francisco Bay Area.
I picked one that was from theearly 2000s that was sort of
questioning the one glass ofwine a day is great for you.
And then a very modern one.
That was using this newtechnique called Mendelian
randomization, which is sort ofa genetic way to get at
randomized control trials.
(17:00):
So those all had interestingtechniques.
And of course, like you said,it's very dry.
Like on the page, it's verydry.
So I was trying to figure out away to make that more
interesting.
And I think coming at it fromthese questions of like, what's
really true?
Why are you seeing thisconflicting information?
(17:21):
That gives a little bit of themotivation at the beginning.
I tried to make...
I had plans to make a bunch ofdifferent little cork
characters.
So they'd be all differentshapes and sizes wearing
different little bottle cap hatsand tab hats.
And there'd be, you know, thesort of champagne cork shape and
the wine cork shape and havethose be the population that
(17:42):
were in these studies.
And they would sort of all beanimated.
It ended up as with everyproject, I had to cut that short
with just one cork characterthat I just duplicated a million
times.
So that was sort of the visualanchor was these corks.
populations of little corkpeople who were drinking at
different levels and dying offand things like that.
So that was sort of how I wastrying to make it a little more
(18:02):
fun visually.
Andy Luttrell (18:05):
So I'm glad you mentioned that because I wanted
to ask you about those choicesbecause that I think is where it
really brought to life thestatisticals.
insights where these littleguys are moving from one group
to another and you sort of seelike oh in disguise right who we
thought were non-drinkers areactually people who we should
(18:26):
expect to have maybe more severehealth problems despite their
quote non-drinking status andalso well that one and the
effect size one was interestingto this population of dots in a
grid and just showing that likea increase in drinking of X to Y
is means realistically fourmore people having a health
(18:48):
issue or whatever the number is,which when you zoom out in the
context of the entirepopulation, you sort of can see
what that actually means.
And it reminded me when Italked to Joss about what she
did at Vox, it was very likevisuals first, right?
Like every question when itcomes to like, what should we
cover?
How should we cover it?
It all comes back to like,what's going to appear on the
(19:10):
screen?
And if we can't get somethingto appear on the screen that
makes any sense, it's not a Voxexplainer video.
And so I'm curious, do you kindof approach these with the same
It sort of seems that way fromthe visualization, or is it
maybe not in the forefront?
Adam Cole (19:26):
It certainly makes your job easier if there's
existing visuals or somethingvery grabby that you can look
at.
I often have the hubris to say,I'll make anything visual.
It often really comes back tobite me.
But I do think that I thinkvery visually, and I...
(19:48):
I think that is one of myskills is like imagining
something that can be on screen.
It takes way more work to makesomething on screen than to find
something and put it on screen,right?
So I think a little bit less– Ithink Joss has the right idea,
which is find something that youknow is going to be amazing to
(20:09):
look at.
That will just draw the eye,right?
Right now she's working on anepisode about pterosaurs, you
know, these flying dinosaurs or,you know, sort of, they're
incredible looking.
I mean, you just want to likestare at them and be like, how
is this body put together?
Like what?
It's got a giant head, like agiraffe size neck.
It can fly somehow with allthis going on.
(20:31):
So those kinds of things arebetter.
Like they're just fun to lookat.
But there's also a piece of itwhere if you can bring something
to the visual realm that noone's ever seen, no one's ever
been able to conceive of becauseit's not visual, but you can
make it visual, then that hasincredible power as well.
Like I'm going to show yousomething that you've never seen
(20:53):
before is a pretty good, youknow, ad for your video.
The problem is that takes waymore work because you have to
create it out of nothing.
Andy Luttrell (21:07):
It's a struggle too with social science in
particular, I find.
For sure.
a lot of what we do is veryabstract and it doesn't lend
itself to these sort of likepunchy visuals and there are
graphs, then that's fine.
But it's not quite the same asa pterosaur's head, right?
And I think, so I share thesame sensibility of like, I
(21:31):
approach these things veryvisually and in teaching, I have
these elaborate PowerPointanimations where I'm like, if
only I could get you to see thisthe way I see it, you'll get
it.
But it doesn't, it's sometimeshard to translate it.
You mentioned that sometimesyou do this at your peril.
Does anything come to mind aslike, I really desperately was
trying to make this visual and Ijust couldn't crack the nut?
Adam Cole (21:55):
Hmm.
Well, I don't know.
I think I would abandon itbefore that stage if I really
felt that it wouldn't work.
You know, we do a lot of sortof, we sort of pitch each other
these ideas.
And...
Joss is very good atchallenging me on things that
aren't gonna work, right?
And I hope that I also providethat for her.
(22:17):
And so sometimes there's anidea and it's like, well, what
are we even gonna look at for 20minutes?
And it's like, you're right.
Let's not do that.
But I think that over mycareer, I've sort of gotten a
pretty good sense of what is notgonna be visual enough.
So I can't remember any recentmisses like that.
(22:37):
So you mentioned graphs, whichI thought was interesting
because that's something that Ireally always steered away from
until I really started workingwith the folks at Vox.
Because I had an earlyexperience where I made a video
about population rise.
It was for, if you can believeit, when we just hit 7 billion
people on Earth.
(22:58):
It was one of the first videosI ever did for NPR.
And I had this elaborate...
setup that I made.
It was sort of like physicaleffects where I represented
people being born by drippinginto a glass that was labeled
with the country or region.
So it was like North America,South America, etc.
And then dripping out of theglass was people dying.
(23:19):
And it just basically showedhow, you know, the population is
rising because fewer people aredying.
And so we're having thisexplosive effect.
So I had this This thing, itdid very well, the video.
But when I looked at theanalytics on YouTube, about
three quarters of the waythrough, I threw up a graph.
(23:40):
And it was just incredible.
Like the as the very frame thatthe graph showed up on screen,
people started clicking away.
And it was this precipitousdrop where they've been sort of
sticking with it.
So I probably over indexed thatlesson in my career.
And I was like, I'm never goingto show a graph again.
I'm always going to try tovisualize things without graphs.
But I think what Vox has donevery well, or what their
(24:05):
producers on their YouTubechannel did, was they would
spend, instead of just throwinga graph on screen and saying,
this shows this, they draw it.
They say, this is the X axis.
It shows this.
This is the Y axis.
These are the different pieces.
And so you really learn whatthe graph is showing you through
(24:25):
the video, which is somethingthat I wasn't really doing very
well.
So I think I've come around ongraphs, basically, that if you
give people the tools tounderstand them, they don't
click away.
You're opening that door forthem where, as before, maybe
they found graphs to be kind ofan intimidating thing.
People don't think like that,or maybe they don't encounter
them in their day-to-day lives.
But if you really break themdown for people, they like it.
Andy Luttrell (24:50):
It is surprising those moments when you realize
the things that You've spentyears learning how to read.
You can't just show it tosomeone.
Right, right, right.
I can very easily look at asimple graph and be like, well,
obviously, I know the wholestory now.
But if I show the same graph tosomeone else, they go, what
could this be?
Adam Cole (25:09):
Right, exactly.
I mean, that's just the biggestchallenge of being a science
journalist is...
You're doing so much researchand you're becoming more and
more knowledgeable all the time.
But you have to remember whatit was like when you started
that process.
And that's for every story.
We're not beat reporters, sowe're not getting deep into one
area that we stick with foryears.
Every time we start a story,we're entering a new field.
(25:32):
And so you have to rememberthat feeling when a month later
you've done all the research andnow you're like a mini expert
on the subject.
Like, oh, what was it like whenall of this was new to me and
it was very confusing?
Andy Luttrell (25:46):
The mantra that I always have is, remember the
person you were before you knewthis.
Right,
Adam Cole (25:51):
right, exactly.
Andy Luttrell (25:52):
And if you can do that, then you have a better
chance at conveying it back tosomeone in those shoes.
Adam Cole (25:57):
Yeah, and that's sort of the central spine of a lot
of our episodes is that we havea second person who doesn't know
anything.
So it's fun to play, you know,like, I'm very good at that.
I'm very good at being the dumbguy who Joss is explaining
things to, you know, that I amcoming with fresh questions.
(26:17):
I don't know what she's beenworking on.
We record a conversation whereshe basically tells me the
story, and I just reactnaturally.
I ask the questions that firstcome to mind, and I think that
helps us get into that mindsetof, like, what's the audience
going to be asking as well.
Andy Luttrell (26:33):
I think I remember I did find a talk that
you gave, I think the NationalAcademies or something, and you
were talking about the Explainedseries, and...
Maybe I'm just...
Someone else said somethingthat I thought was profound and
now I'm telling it to you, but Ithink it was you.
I'd love to take
Adam Cole (26:49):
credit for it.
Andy Luttrell (26:52):
Which is rather than try and like suss out a
point and then present like aperfectly manicured story that
gets you to that point, insteadwe're sort of just on this
journey together to...
to answer a question and like,let's remember the question we
started with and stay true toit.
Because that sounds like aHowtown perspective of like,
(27:16):
we're gonna start with aquestion and then not abandon
that question once we sort offind sort of a clean way of
tying it up, right?
So how well does that resonatewith how you still approach
this, if that was how you did itbefore?
I
Adam Cole (27:30):
don't know if I can take credit for that idea, but
it does resonate with me.
So if it was me, yeah.
I think one of the things thatis in tension with this whole
world is you want to tell a goodstory.
And most good stories have agood ending that feels like, oh,
it wraps up nicely.
(27:50):
There's a nice little lesson.
You think about a sitcom whereit's like there's conflict and
then it's resolved.
And then like the charactershave figured something new out.
And isn't that nice?
The end.
And then we all applaud.
And so there is a lot ofpressure to make your stories
feel like that.
But it's not always possible.
(28:12):
And in fact, in science, it'soften...
the opposite of what'shappening.
The more we learn, the morecomplicated it gets, the more
new questions there are.
I mean, that's kind of acliche, like the more you know,
the more you know you don'tknow.
But it's very true, and it'shard to sometimes fit that into
a traditional narrativestructure.
And so when we started Howtown,we really wanted to
(28:36):
intentionally avoid that trap.
We wanted to say, we're goingto convey the nuance and
ambiguity of all this.
So that's what we attempt todo.
Andy Luttrell (28:48):
It's making me think that when those stories
wrap up too perfectly, I becomeobsessed with the question of,
like, how did they know that itwas getting to that place?
Adam Cole (29:01):
Right, right.
Andy Luttrell (29:03):
And I go like, wait a minute, hold on.
Now this makes me rethinkeverything because I go, oh,
they must have known where theywere going and then they
sprinkled all this stuff aheadof time.
And I...
I'm like, well, now I'm notinterested.
Even though it's like a nice,clean story, suddenly that's the
reason where I pull out and Igo, I don't buy it anymore.
Whereas I do like the, like,I'm just, hey, I'm with you,
(29:23):
man.
Like, I'll go where you'regoing and we'll see where we end
up.
And that I think is a unique, Ithink it does lend itself to
science journalism as a uniquesort of area.
Yeah, yeah.
So I want to, talk about theunique qualities of doing a
project like this with apartner.
You mentioned Radiolab assomething that you were inspired
(29:45):
by early on, and I get Radiolabvibes from Howtown in that
there are these kind of cutawaysto the kind of conversations
between you and Joss as sort ofa device that helps both make it
just kind of easy to relate toand also grounds it back in this
reporter talking to the hostsort of a situation where you
get to raise the questions thatpeople might be thinking in an
(30:07):
authentic way.
Because like I said, youalready know the answer now and
you can hear it on these thingswhere people pretend not to
know.
But I wondered, what aboutthis?
Or you can get like authenticcuriosity in sort of these live
conversations.
And every time I see a projectthat has sort of a co-host vibe,
I get jealous because I go,that feels nice to have this
(30:32):
sort of extra, this person tobounce off of, this person to
cut to, this person to groundit, and also someone, like you
said, to run it by and be like,does this work for you?
Do you know what I mean when Ishow you this graph as opposed
to this graph?
So I wonder if you could justtalk about how you found that
relationship going in terms ofhaving another person who is
(30:53):
sort of basically an equalpartner in this process.
Adam Cole (30:58):
Yeah.
Well, I mean...
The first thing I think of isjust sort of the emotional
support because it's hard to bean independent journalist and
it's hard to like weather theups and downs of launching
something new.
And I don't think I would beable to emotionally handle it if
I didn't have someone when I'msort of like really down, like,
(31:18):
oh man, no one's watching this.
Or like when we firstpublished, right, especially for
Joss, who was getting, youknow, baseline a million views
on every video that shepublished for Vox.
And I had been publishing forVox and also getting those
millions for like the last yearof my career where I'd been
(31:39):
freelancing for them.
You know, so we put up thefirst video and even though you
know you're starting fromscratch, it's like, oh, that
video got a thousand views inthe first day.
Like that is, you know, theratio of a thousand to a million
is...
An enormous emotional gulf tosort of contend with.
And obviously that's like sucha privilege to be able to say
(32:03):
that, like, oh, we used to get alot of views, but it's just,
you know, it's a little bit of ashock to the system.
where you're like, oh, this iswhat I thought of as success.
And now I have to redefinethat.
So the beginning was, eventhough I went in being like,
you're starting from scratch.
No one's going to watch this.
It's fine.
It's going to take two years tobuild an audience, et cetera.
(32:24):
It was still a little bit hard.
So I had to go to Joss and belike, is this okay?
Like, are we, did I fail bigtime?
Like, I think one of my biggestfears is like failing her, you
know, like that is like, a bigthing that I don't want to do.
And so to have someone to belike, no, it's fine.
Like the person who didn'tproduce the video has a much
(32:46):
better perspective on it.
Right.
They didn't pour as many hoursinto it.
So basically every episode wesay to each other, I don't like
this.
I don't think it's working.
And the other person says,yeah, it's great.
So it's just like having thatangel on your shoulder is so
nice.
Um, so that's before you evenget to like the content and the
process.
(33:07):
Uh, And then it's very helpfulfor that as well, just to have
sort of a built-in editor and,yeah, someone to bounce ideas
off of.
We do try to, you know, we comein fresh.
We are reacting in a real way.
But people still think thatit's acting.
(33:31):
People still think that it'sstaged.
We get a lot of comments likethat.
Like, why are you so unnatural?
This isn't how people reallytalk.
A lot of people think we're AI.
And so we're always striving tobe more authentic.
And it's hard too, because, youknow, we talk for probably
about two hours when we do theseconversations and we have to
cut them down to 20 minutes.
So that editing process alsomakes it less natural.
(33:52):
We're leaving out all of thelike stumbles and things like
that.
So we're trying to learn how tonot cut out the parts that make
us seem the most human.
So it's a struggle.
It's a struggle.
I get comments every day and itkills me.
Like, stop scripting the, youknow, this is so obviously
scripted.
(34:13):
And that really hurts becausewe're really trying to have real
conversations.
Andy Luttrell (34:20):
Yeah, I don't know what to do.
Because I will say for me, Theydo feel authentic.
They feel like it's sort ofthis nice contrast against the
scripted and the very producedside of the video to this kind
of lo-fi, two people checking inon what they care about.
And so what are the sorts ofthings that you're trying to do
(34:42):
to boost your reality?
Adam Cole (34:46):
Well, we do try to leave in more of the little
awkward edges.
I think that I have a tendencyto want things to be very clean
and straightforward.
And I've, you know, my earlycareer, I was really training
myself to try and be as conciseand direct as possible.
And when I talk, I'm not asconcise and direct as I would
(35:09):
want to be.
And so I have this instinct tocut myself out and replace those
moments with scriptednarration.
Yeah.
So just working against thatinstinct I think is part of it.
Andy Luttrell (35:20):
So when in the process are you having these,
like is it once you've done allof your reporting, you sit down
and just sort of like lay it allout or are you doing these a
few times along the way as youlearn more and sort of define
the structure of the video?
Adam Cole (35:35):
We generally just do it once.
I think there's been one or twotimes that we've done it twice
when like a new interview cameup and we needed to like
incorporate that into thestructure.
But yeah, generally just once.
And it is like after we finishthe reporting, before we start
editing, we sit down and we talkabout it for a couple hours.
Andy Luttrell (35:57):
Beyond that, are there other checkpoints in terms
of like you're running a cut?
by the other person and gettingsort of like a feedback, like
beyond the sort of thing that wesee in the final product, what
might be happening behind thescenes that's making this a
two-person operation rather thana one-person operation?
Adam Cole (36:17):
Well, the story selection is a collaborative
thing.
So we talk a lot about like,what should the next couple
episodes be?
And we discuss...
not only what's going to be inthem, but how are they going to
be packaged?
Because that's so important,and it's so annoying that it's
so important.
On YouTube, what's the headlinegoing to be and what's the
thumbnail going to be?
(36:37):
And those things have suchoutsized importance in terms of
is the video going to be asuccess or not, which is really
unfortunate because, you know,we want to tell these nuanced,
medium-long-form stories, and weput so much effort into that
part.
For the first half of Howtown,I would say, we would get to...
(37:01):
It'd be like 11 p.m.
the night before we publish,and we're like, oh, no, what's
the title going to be?
And then we'd make a thumbnail.
We'd make a thumbnail in thewee hours to put up, which is
obviously...
We know that that's not the wayto do it, but that's just not
the part that we're as excitedabout.
Now we try to talk about thatvery early.
(37:22):
So we have these...
I mean, we call them pitchmeetings, but it's always just
the two of us.
So it's just like we call eachother up.
Hey, I'm thinking about doingthis.
Now part of that process ishere's what the titles could be.
Here's what the thumbnailscould be.
So that's hopefully setting usup for success from the
beginning in terms of the clickyside of being a YouTuber.
(37:44):
You got to get people to click.
Then we have this conversation.
That's probably the next timewe check in.
Sometimes...
we'll say things like, youknow, I've talked to two people,
but they kind of cover the samestuff.
Do I need to have a thirdinterview?
Or, you know, just those likethe things you run into as
(38:05):
you're making a story.
Like, oh, should I put theeffort?
A lot of it is like, we don'thave very much money, right?
So it's like, should I buy thisasset?
Is it worth it?
Should I buy a train ticket soI can go down to this place for
the day to shoot something?
So we check in about thatstuff.
And then, and then we have thisconversation.
(38:27):
And then it's time to edit.
And that's like the big crunch.
And so during that process, weprobably send out two or three
drafts.
And oftentimes, we'll send outthose drafts with like specific
question, like, is the introworking?
Right?
Does this section need to beover here instead of over here?
And then the other person willwatch it down and leave notes.
(38:49):
And then sometimes we discussthose as well.
But it's pretty much, you know,a Joss episode is she's doing
98% of the labor and I'm kind ofjust around for that and vice
versa.
Andy Luttrell (39:03):
You mentioned sort of early shifts over time
and I'm curious about theevolution.
Even over a year, I went backand I watched the first episode
and...
There are different, it doesseem like once you have that
contrast, you can sort of seelike, oh, this has sort of
evolved over time.
So I'm curious to get your takeon like, what do you see as
having been sort of majorchanges?
And in particular, like, whatdoes it tell you about what
(39:26):
you've learned about how to dothis in a way that someone else
could sort of learn from thatyear you've spent working
Adam Cole (39:31):
on this?
Andy Luttrell (39:34):
Yeah,
Adam Cole (39:35):
that's so hard.
You know, we've learnedspecific things about how
Howtown looks and sounds, youknow, how we use visuals and how
we talk to each other.
Like I said, we're trying toput more and more of these
conversations in and we'regetting better, I think, a
little bit at being a goodconversation partner.
(39:55):
Like now we know, I think bothof us are a little bit reserved
in a way and we're very contentto just like listen to the other
person explain.
you know, I think that Josh isa good storyteller.
So in those, in the firstconversations, I'd probably just
sit there and be like, uh-huh,you know, like, oh, that's
(40:17):
interesting.
Now I'm like, I go in, I don'treally drink coffee ever, but I
sometimes drink a coffee beforethe conversation.
So I'm a little bit morejittery, you know, like I'm a
little bit higher energy and I'mtrying to jump in and challenge
things or ask questions.
So that has changed a littlebit.
I think we get, we're gettingbetter at that.
(40:38):
Um, then I would say, so that'svery specific to our like
product, right?
It's a conversation.
A lot of the stuff that we arerefining is based on years of,
of work.
You know, we both started in2014.
We have all this experience.
(41:00):
And so it's just learning whatour voice is every time a little
bit more.
Um, So I don't know howapplicable that is to other
people.
I would say if you're going inand specifically, sort of in any
realm of storytelling for themasses, you just got to do a lot
(41:21):
of reps.
You know, you've just got tostart making stuff.
I think when I started, becauseI was coming from science into
journalism, I was really waitingfor people to give me
permission to try things.
And I was sort of like, oh, isthis okay?
Like...
Do I really have thequalifications to do this?
Shouldn't someone else be doingthis?
Someone should be telling mewhat the assignment is, kind of.
(41:43):
And as soon as I realized thatno one knew what they were
doing, especially in video, inlegacy media, that allowed me to
just experiment more.
And that's what gave me theskills and voice that I have
now.
I'm not super happy with thoseskills and voice.
I'm always trying to get betterat them.
(42:05):
And there's so much that I seeother people doing or
aspirations I have for myself,things I want to change.
And the only way to do that isjust to make more stuff and try
to be better in the next one.
So what I tell people a lot isjust do it to borrow Nike's
(42:27):
catchphrase.
Um, like don't, don't wait.
Like if you want to make videosfor YouTube, don't wait until
you have a position that allowsyou to do that, or you have a
job that allows you to do that.
Just do it sort of on the sidewhen you can.
And, uh, you'll start to getthe reps in that you need to, to
achieve that voice.
Andy Luttrell (42:49):
Well, one of the, um, to look at the Howtown
evolution.
One thing that I noticed inlooking at the first one, I got
the sense that one, thestructure felt a little more
rigid.
Like it felt like, here's howwe're going to do this.
We're going to talk to acreator who has a question and
then we will have our foursections.
Right.
(43:09):
And they're always going to bethe question, the method, the
this.
And I sort of see that havingrelaxed a bit, like as you get a
little more comfortable, like,okay, we kind of, We're not
telling ourselves how thisworks.
We just kind of feel it.
And it's going to come out inthe way that feels like the
right way to tell the story.
Does that seem right?
Am I getting on anything thatfeels true to the evolution?
Adam Cole (43:31):
Yeah.
I mean, I think chapterizationis very important when you're
dealing with a complex subject.
You need a lot of signpoststhat tell people, here's where
we are.
You know, that was a lot.
Now we're going to shift tothis aspect of the question.
You need to have moments thatare sort of a brief pause to
say, There is a plan.
Here's where we're going so theaudience doesn't get lost.
(43:53):
And I think there's alsosomething with YouTube where a
lot of the most successfulchannels, they have a formula,
sort of.
Not in a pejorative way, butjust they have figured out what
works and people expect thatfrom them.
And that makes them morewatchable because there's a
vocabulary that the audience isfamiliar with that they can
return to.
(44:14):
It's like, oh, this is thissection where they talk about
this and I know it's coming up.
I can follow it.
I enjoy it.
I expect it.
We like what we already know.
So we were aiming to findsomething like that for Howtown.
And we thought, well, what arethe major questions of any
scientific method?
The first one is probably, whyis it so hard?
Like, why was this not just aneasy question to answer?
(44:37):
Then there's the actual methodsthat were used.
That's another big piece of it.
And then there are thecomplications of, you know, oh,
it's not quite as simple as wethought.
These methods revealed nuances.
So we thought we can have thosechapters in every episode.
The problem is that thatdoesn't happen linearly for a
(45:00):
lot of narratives, right?
So...
You might say, why is it hard?
There's the why is it hard atthe beginning.
Then you do an experiment.
There's a new why is it hard.
There's a new challenge.
There's a new thing that'smaking it difficult to
understand.
And so I found in a lot of thestories I was doing, I couldn't
fit all of that into the firstsection because it was much
(45:24):
easier to tell chronologically.
And so we still try to havechapters in our episodes that
delineate different sections anddifferent ideas that we're
exploring.
But we don't follow that rigidstructure that we had set out at
the beginning to try and makeour brand more recognizable.
The questions at the beginningfrom our famous friends was sort
(45:48):
of, you know, I think we camein thinking that on YouTube,
it's very helpful to have aboost from another audience.
So If you like these people,there's sort of the inherent
YouTube recommendation thatsays, if you like these videos,
watch these videos.
It's more powerful if theperson you like is telling you
(46:10):
to go over and watch thosevideos.
And then they're in that video.
So it's like, oh, I recognizethat person.
I like Simone Yetch.
It's great to see her in thisvideo.
So we went in sort of with thatidea.
And it's hard to say if thathelped us A lot, I mean, we
(46:31):
probably got more views than wewould have at the very
beginning.
But it also seems like onYouTube today, every video kind
of has to stand on its own.
Every video has to make thepitch to the audience, you need
to watch this.
And so that sort ofrecommendation, we haven't found
to be as powerful as we hadhoped.
(46:53):
It's also a little bit of astilted way to start an episode.
having sort of a very formal,like, my question for Howtout
is, and then, you know, that'slaid out, is less dynamic and
keeps people around less in thatfirst 30 seconds, which is
another annoying YouTube metricthat's very important, than if
(47:13):
you throw something up on screenand say, look at this crazy
thing.
You know, isn't thisinteresting?
Isn't this a crazy mystery orjust a weird thing to look at?
Something that provokescuriosity.
Asking a question...
can provoke curiosity, but wefound it to be less effective
than some of those other things.
So we probably won't do thattoo much going forward.
(47:36):
We also found that we reallylike having the two of us in the
episode.
Some of these episodes we didwith other creators, they sort
of swap in.
When someone asks a question,that person swaps in for Joss.
So Joss is in the episode andvice versa.
And I think that's just notreally what our channel is.
(47:56):
We're Adam and Joss on Howtown.
And so we want to keep thatgoing throughout the different
episodes.
Andy Luttrell (48:06):
By way of wrapping up, and I appreciate
your time.
So you mentioned sort of whatwill we do in the future.
So I'm curious about the futureof Howtown and sort of
immediate plans.
One of the things we didn'treally talk about is I see you
guys doing like communitybuilding kind of efforts.
So I'm curious if that's kindof become an important part of
(48:26):
the process or if maybe that'snot going to be a central
feature going forward.
And even just more generally,like, is it going to is the team
going to expand?
Is it going to move beyondYouTube or is it we're going to
do what we're doing right nowfor as long as it works?
Adam Cole (48:41):
Yeah, well, those are a lot of different questions.
Yeah, and you must answer themall in sequence.
We always set out to have avibrant audience community.
We wanted to be making stufffor specific people.
We wanted Patreon to be thesubscription model that helps
support our work, where we'reworking for an audience of
(49:03):
people who like what we do andwant to see more of it.
And we found it very valuableand rewarding.
The people who are in ourPatreon sort of inner circle are
lovely people.
I not just say that becausethey're paid us $4 a month.
But it's just been really niceto meet them and talk to them.
(49:25):
We have a lot of we have thesemonthly events where we read a
science paper and talk about it.
And a lot of these people arejust really smart and are
academics in different fields.
So we could kind of talk tothem when we run into problems
or some things we don'tunderstand.
So that's great.
And then there's just a lot ofother curious people.
Maybe they're not aastrophysicist as some of our
(49:48):
Patriot supporters are, butthey're just enjoying chatting
together.
So we really want to facilitatethat conversation.
And I hope that that's always abig part of what Howtown is, is
sort of a place for thesepeople to come together and
meet.
And it's also just nice to havethem in mind when we're making
(50:08):
the episodes.
So it's all very lovely, and Idon't think we'll ever want to
abandon that.
So that was part one.
So then, yeah, what is Howtowngoing to be?
Well, right now we're twopeople with one contractor.
Uh, we hope to make thatcontractor a part of like a
(50:32):
permanent part of the team.
His name's Charlie Yunkin.
He's very, uh, very, verytalented.
And we want to make him, youknow, a permanent part of
Howtown.
That is sort of contingent onhow well the Patriot side,
Patriot side does.
Um, and just generally how wellthe channel does if we can sort
(50:52):
of financially bring anotherperson on.
Our hope is to have sort of afour-person team that we work
with.
So an animator, an editor, andthe two of us that we can sort
of spread around some of thiswork.
And then we're barely hangingon as it is.
I mean, we could barely handlethe work that we've given
(51:12):
ourselves.
So we're sort of right nowtrying to decide, do we want to
make...
the episodes lighter liftwhether that's in production
value or the amount of researchthat we do maybe taking on
smaller topics like you know theepisode we talked about was
alcohol question mark like itwas pretty broad it could have
been much more specific so isthere ways that we can take on
(51:35):
less work or are we okay youknow just publishing on a slower
cadence and can we make thatwork so We don't know.
We're going to try to figurethat out.
We need to get our hands aroundthe YouTube side before we do
anything else.
We've talked about maybe yearsdown the line, we might have an
(52:00):
audio podcast.
We might have a sub stack.
We might have a book.
We might try to make adocumentary that's more of a
feature length.
So those are all things thatwould be fun and exciting to try
and learn and obviously fail atand then that whole process
again.
But right now, we're barelyhanging on with the two, three
(52:24):
of us trying to produce 20minutes a month.
Andy Luttrell (52:30):
Well, whatever you're doing is working for
clearly a lot of people.
Clearly, the channel has grown.
And I think it is kind ofoverwhelming to me how much...
It's clear how much work isgoing into each of these,
knowing...
What a shoestring you'reprobably operating under.
And so, yeah, you are rising tothe occasion.
(52:52):
And so, fingers crossed.
Yeah, fingers crossed.
Things can get even bigger andinto new areas.
But for now, I'll just saythank you for taking the time to
talk about all this.
And good luck with the channelgoing forward.
Adam Cole (53:06):
Thanks so much.
It was really fun to talk toyou.
Andy Luttrell (53:15):
Thank you to Adam Cole for taking the time to
talk about his work.
I think SciComm Summer is offto a really great start.
Check out the episode webpagefor a link to Howtown's YouTube
channel and its Patreon page.
This series on sciencecommunication is a special
presentation of my podcast,Opinion Science, a show about
the science of our opinions,where they come from, and how we
talk about them.
(53:35):
You can subscribe any old placewhere they have podcasts, and
be sure to check outopinionsciencepodcast.com for
links to things that come up inthis episode and ways to support
the show and whoever you are Ihope you're enjoying the show
and I'm hoping this summerseries will reach folks with a
keen interest in sciencecommunication so please tell
people about it post onlineemail a friend make a poster and
(53:58):
stick it to a wall these arewild times and I think it's more
important than ever to help theworld understand good science
and champion its value so let'sall make an effort to get better
at doing that okie doke thankyou so much for listening and
I'll see you next week for moreSci I always
Joel Bervell (54:17):
have this actually saying that I say all the time
that even before I startedsocial media, if not now, when?
If not me, who?
And I realized no one else wasdoing this.
Thank you so much.
on a platform that actuallyreached a lot more people and
(54:59):
bringing a lot more individualsinto this conversation.
So into the question of why didI do it?
It was really because no oneelse was doing it.
And I felt like this wassomething that I wanted to
create for my mom, my sister, mybrother, my dad, that no one
else was putting out there.
Hey, this is Joel Brevelle.
I'm better known as the MedicalMyth Buster on social media.
I create videos about healthinequities and the hidden
(55:20):
history of medicine.
Hey everyone, welcome to the third season of
Hot SciComm Summer, where I talkwith savvy science
communicators to figure out howto get science findings outside
of niche academic circles.
I'm excited to share the firstepisode of this season with Adam
Cole.
Adam started at NPR's ScienceDesk in 2011, where he started
making short videos and radiopieces.
(00:29):
In 2014, he launched theYouTube channel Skunk Bear with
NPR, which was a venue for fun,quirky visual forays into
science stories big and small.
But After NPR, he did work forVox, including their Netflix
series The Mind Explained in2019.
And more recently, Adam's workcame on my radar again because
he's one half of the new YouTubechannel Howtown.
(00:51):
Avid listeners of SciCom Summerwill remember my very first
guest back in 2021, Joss Fong.
While Joss is the other half ofHowtown, together, Joss and
Adam have been doing reallyexcellent work building an
independent channel makinglong-form videos that explore
big questions and the methodsscientists use to answer them.
(01:11):
It's so good.
You need to check it out if youhaven't already.
I was happy that Adam was downto talk about his work for the
podcast.
We'll get into his story as ascience journalist, the makings
of Howtown, the value of havinga creative partner, and the pros
and cons of working foryourself versus a more
established institution.
So here we go.
(01:31):
Season three of Hot SciCommSummer is off and running.
So let's jump right into mychat with Adam Cole.
So the first thing I want totell you is that the map
projection music video is waybetter than it has any right
Adam Cole (01:52):
to be.
Well, thank you.
It also performed way worsethan I expected.
Really?
What?
Well, I was hoping that itwould.
What metric?
Well, it's like one of ourworst performing videos.
So, you know, it was a littlebit of a disappointment.
But, you know, that's the waythings go on the Internet.
Andy Luttrell (02:10):
Well, a few of those are me because I kept
going like, how did they pullthis off?
It's not fair that they can bedoing what they're doing and
then also pull this out ofnowhere.
But I think my hunch is that itspeaks to your whole deal of
how you approach this kind ofstuff.
And I haven't had a lot ofsuccess sussing out your story
(02:33):
because there's a professionalwrestler who shares your name
that really dominates the Googlesearches.
Adam Cole (02:38):
My wife was mentioned this the existence of this
wrestler to someone justyesterday and so we googled my
name which I hadn't done inyears and it's so funny because
yes there's this professionalwrestler named Adam Cole his
real name is Austin Jenkins sohe took Adam Cole as his
wrestling name which I findhilarious like not intimidating
at all maybe because I know meit doesn't it doesn't strike
(03:01):
fear in my heart but if youscroll through the Google
results it's like his face foryou know probably 20 images and
then there's one image of me atNPR when I'm like 23 just like
bright-eyed like I have this bigcurly head and it's and I'm
just so earnestly beaming at thecamera it's really funny
Andy Luttrell (03:27):
so so having not been able to suss out your story
myself could you give us alittle clue as to like how did
what what got you here
Adam Cole (03:34):
well I'm from Oregon and It's an important part of my
identity.
I grew up in backpacking andspending a lot of time outdoors,
so I've always loved thenatural world.
I studied biology in college,and then I graduated right
around the recession, so I did amaster's to sort of avoid
entering the workforce or thelack of workforce.
(03:57):
And I did that in biology aswell, so I was really trained to
be a research scientist.
But I...
I really also enjoyed writing.
And so right after my master's,I got a job or an internship at
a small newspaper in NorthernCalifornia, had a subscription
of about 1000 people.
And I was the third employee.
(04:17):
So I got to do a lot of writingand journalism and the editor
in chief, I mean, localjournalism.
Some of these local journalistsare like incredible, you know,
reporters and incredibleinvestigators.
And so I really learned a lotfrom my boss, Caroline Titus.
That sort of got me intojournalism.
(04:38):
I then went to NPR, worked atthe science desk, worked briefly
at Radiolab, where I think Iwas sort of inspired by their
sensibility a little bit.
And then started a YouTubechannel at NPR about science
stuff.
I met Joss through that, sortof just we were professional
compadres.
And we've always talked aboutdoing something together and our
(05:03):
mutual obsession with themethods of science.
So originally, she sort ofpitched me on a YouTube channel
just called Methods, which weended up deciding was a little
too dry.
So we went with Howtown, whichis now our YouTube channel,
launched...
almost a year ago uh or alittle over a year ago may end
(05:24):
of may was when we published ourfirst episode so yeah that's
how i ended up uh doing this
Andy Luttrell (05:31):
so i mean that that that's a nice straight line
well it seemed like it'sstraight in retrospect but the
Adam Cole (05:39):
experience of it was very topsy-turvy
Andy Luttrell (05:42):
because because there's part of it that has to
be like there's a there's anartistic side of it.
There's like a technical sideof it too.
Because my impression is thatyou're not outsourcing a ton of
like animation or writing orvisualization stuff.
It seems like that is very muchin your wheelhouse is the
visual side of the coin.
So how does that, was that justsort of like you had to learn
(06:05):
on the fly or that was alwayskind of part of it?
Adam Cole (06:08):
Well, As a kid, I was always drawn.
You know, I was alwayssketching something or, you
know, I was very into art andmusic.
So that was always somethingthat I liked to do.
I didn't think I could evermake that part of my job.
Honestly, I never, every stepof my career has been into a job
that I did not know couldpossibly exist.
So I feel very lucky in that.
(06:29):
Yeah.
And so, yeah, we, you know, wetend to do most of the
animations ourselves.
We, a few months ago, we wereable to hire on a contract
animator to help us with sort ofthe workload.
And he's really great.
Probably more talented than meor Joss in terms of animating.
But, but yeah, that's alwaysbeen something I've really
(06:50):
enjoyed.
I think probably Joss and Ihave a similar experience, which
is we were at institutions.
You know, I was at NPR, she wasat Vox, which was not a legacy
institution, but it was stillheaded by people from
traditional media.
And they didn't know anythingabout video or visuals, really.
(07:12):
You know, I was working at aradio first place.
And so there was a real opensandbox to just sort of explore
in, and they were willing to letus do that.
I think...
it probably would have beenbetter if they'd hired people
who knew how to make a video,but we were around and we were
like young and, uh, you know,excited.
(07:32):
And so, um, so yeah, I learnedfrom a couple of coworkers who
were sort of more from the photoand sort of documentary side, a
lot of things.
And I learned from YouTube.
I mean, when I started makingillustrations, actually it was
the first thing I did for NPR.
Um, and then, then I had like atumblr that had like animated
(07:54):
gifs and then i started makinganimations and things like that
and most of that was me runninginto a problem and then looking
up a tutorial on youtube and youknow youtube is full of
tutorials that teach you how touse any program under the sun
and they're all narrated by youknow, a 13-year-old boy who is a
genius.
(08:14):
And they, you know, start,today we're going to talk about
maths, you know, and they'revery professional in their
presentations.
So, yeah, I've learned a tonfrom the, well, now they're, you
know, 30, but the teenagers ofthe time of YouTube taught me
most of what I know.
Andy Luttrell (08:33):
So it really was sort of like you had a
preparedness, but you weren'talready, like there wasn't some
separate track of you that waslike, I don't know, maybe I'll
do this visual arts thing oranimation thing.
No,
Adam Cole (08:48):
I always thought of it as just like a hobby that I
really enjoyed figuring.
And I just like learning aboutnew stuff.
And that applies to like toolsas well as the science stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Andy Luttrell (09:02):
So when it came time to jump into the open
waters of an independentchannel, what was that like?
That feels scary to me.
And I wonder if you could justsort of talk through like what
would have been, what were sortof the pros and cons to you at
the time of leaving a place thatis sort of an established
(09:25):
institution and Now having to doa lot of the junk part on your
own.
Adam Cole (09:31):
Yeah.
Well, I did it kind of instages.
So I left NPR to work for Vox'sNetflix show, Explained.
So that was my first step outof the fold.
And then I freelanced for awhile.
So I had a little bit ofexperience being on my own.
I also just moved to Bogota,Colombia.
Well, now it's been two years.
(09:52):
But that really helped me beokay with failure because I sort
of fail in my everydayinteractions all the time.
I'm not fluent in Spanish.
And so going out of theapartment means that I am about
to fail in myriad ways,etiquette, grammar, directions,
(10:12):
etc.
And I think that sort of helpedme break me from...
sort of perfectionism that Ihad always had.
And I think that was what washolding me back from going it
alone is there's a certainamount of protection when you're
at a legacy institution.
You can't fail that bad becauseyou're part of this bigger
thing that has so much momentumand there's people checking on
(10:35):
you and making sure thateverything is right before it
goes out.
And you also just have thesecurity, the job security and
all those things.
But I don't really worry aboutthat as much anymore.
I don't know.
I think it really just feltlike things are so uncertain in
the world.
We don't know if we're going tohave democracy in 10 years.
(10:57):
It just feels like you got totry things.
You got to do things.
Screw it.
I'll make a YouTube channel.
Yeah, exactly.
Andy Luttrell (11:07):
So what are the, are there, in terms of the like
financing, like all that is thestuff that I think of as the
junk part.
Yeah, for sure.
You guys are doing that on yourown, is my sense,
Adam Cole (11:20):
right?
Yeah, well, so we decided togive ourselves titles.
Joss is the social mediamanager and I am the business
manager.
So we sort of try to take careof those sides of the operation.
Yeah.
And yeah, I mean, we've had, wefound maybe like five videos in
(11:40):
a company called Space Stationthat helps us find sponsorships.
So we do have some outside helpwith that part of the
operation.
And that's about a third of ourincome comes from that.
There's about a third from theinherent AdSense ads that are on
YouTube videos, the ones thatpop up that you skip over.
And then we have a Patreon thatis another sort of third of the
(12:03):
income.
Although Lately, we've beengetting more views, so the other
two have sort of beenoutstripping Patreon.
But we hope that Patreon willalways be a major leg of the
stool.
Andy Luttrell (12:15):
And so, like, let's get into, like, how you
actually do the...
I mean, I jumped into theboring technical side.
But I think what people want tohear is, like, how are these
videos coming to be?
And it seems like...
they're, they're, they're,they're complex, right?
They, they, they integrate alot of aspects of a question
(12:37):
while still having kind of aclear focus.
Um, and we can think aboutmaybe a specific video, maybe if
there's one that, that you wantto sort of break down that kind
of, here's where the idea camefrom.
And then here are the twistsand turns that it took going
forward.
Uh, if any come to mind foryou, or I can throw one at you.
Adam Cole (12:56):
Sure, you can throw one at me.
I mean, I would know more aboutthe ones that I was in charge
of, of course, which is half ofthem, yeah.
Andy Luttrell (13:03):
Right.
I think what I like is it'spretty clear who took the lead,
but it's very, but like it'salways collaborative, right?
It's sort of, it's very muchlike a team effort, even though
one person is sort of the hostfor the hour.
Um, so, so the one that, that Irevisited just the other day
was the smoking or was the, um,excuse me, was the drinking one,
(13:26):
the alcohol one.
And I really, in retrospect, Iwas like, oh, I loved this one
because it was this Trojan horseof getting at a lot of sticky
methods issues like confoundingvariables and meta-analysis and
randomization and effect sizes.
All of these things that I havetrouble getting students to
(13:47):
care about, but that Packaged inan intriguing question about is
alcohol consumption dangerousor not, it sort of was sort of
this opportunity to just talkabout those things.
So there's the one I give you.
Where does that one come fromand how do you navigate it?
Adam Cole (14:05):
Well, you know, one of the things we're trying to do
is– and we're not alwayssuccessful at this– is tackle
questions that are sort of outthere in the world that you may
have seen a headline about andsaid, wait, how do they know
that?
Like, where's that coming from?
Especially when there'sconflicting information.
So another example might be alittle while ago, there was this
big paper that came out thatsaid, we found signs of life on
(14:28):
another planet in a differentsolar system.
And then there were a bunch ofheadlines that were like, no,
that's not that's not quiteright.
That was a lie, you know?
And so that might be somethingwe tackle because it's sort of
out there.
We've made a lot of headlines,but no one was doing a great job
of explaining the methods andwhy there's this uncertainty or
ambiguity.
Um, and one, you know, in thatsame category is all these
(14:52):
headlines about alcohol everyyear.
There's a new meta study thatcomes out and, uh, Lately, the
meta studies have been trendingvery negative on alcohol.
But the ones that are morepositive about alcohol always
make more headlines becausepeople want to hear that having
a glass of wine at night is goodfor them.
Of course, we want that to begood.
(15:13):
We want our vices to bevirtues.
So I knew that that was apotent area of curiosity for
people.
A lot of people drink.
A lot of people drink.
want to know what effect it'shaving on them how bad is it
really their doctors sometimesyou know more and more doctors
(15:34):
are telling people to quitdrinking so a lot of people have
experience with this we've seenthis we got questions from our
friends and audience membersabout this so all of that was
sort of accumulating it's likethis is a good topic for us and
uh so i had it i had actuallystarted it pretty early when we
launched the channel um and Itjust took a while for me to get
(15:57):
all of the interviews in place,and then it coincided with a
window that we had in January.
I thought, oh, dry January.
That's the perfect time topublish this.
So yeah, I read a bunch ofpapers.
I read a bunch of the latestpapers that had made these
headlines.
There was a big WHO report thatcame out that had like 500
(16:18):
authors from around the worldthat was trying to estimate the
impacts of alcohol.
And yeah, I just looked intothose and tried to pull out a
few indicative studies that weresort of All representing
different parts of our evolutionof understanding of alcohol.
So I picked one from the 80sthat was a cohort study from the
(16:39):
San Francisco Bay Area.
I picked one that was from theearly 2000s that was sort of
questioning the one glass ofwine a day is great for you.
And then a very modern one.
That was using this newtechnique called Mendelian
randomization, which is sort ofa genetic way to get at
randomized control trials.
(17:00):
So those all had interestingtechniques.
And of course, like you said,it's very dry.
Like on the page, it's verydry.
So I was trying to figure out away to make that more
interesting.
And I think coming at it fromthese questions of like, what's
really true?
Why are you seeing thisconflicting information?
(17:21):
That gives a little bit of themotivation at the beginning.
I tried to make...
I had plans to make a bunch ofdifferent little cork
characters.
So they'd be all differentshapes and sizes wearing
different little bottle cap hatsand tab hats.
And there'd be, you know, thesort of champagne cork shape and
the wine cork shape and havethose be the population that
(17:42):
were in these studies.
And they would sort of all beanimated.
It ended up as with everyproject, I had to cut that short
with just one cork characterthat I just duplicated a million
times.
So that was sort of the visualanchor was these corks.
populations of little corkpeople who were drinking at
different levels and dying offand things like that.
So that was sort of how I wastrying to make it a little more
(18:02):
fun visually.
Andy Luttrell (18:05):
So I'm glad you mentioned that because I wanted
to ask you about those choicesbecause that I think is where it
really brought to life thestatisticals.
insights where these littleguys are moving from one group
to another and you sort of seelike oh in disguise right who we
thought were non-drinkers areactually people who we should
(18:26):
expect to have maybe more severehealth problems despite their
quote non-drinking status andalso well that one and the
effect size one was interestingto this population of dots in a
grid and just showing that likea increase in drinking of X to Y
is means realistically fourmore people having a health
(18:48):
issue or whatever the number is,which when you zoom out in the
context of the entirepopulation, you sort of can see
what that actually means.
And it reminded me when Italked to Joss about what she
did at Vox, it was very likevisuals first, right?
Like every question when itcomes to like, what should we
cover?
How should we cover it?
It all comes back to like,what's going to appear on the
(19:10):
screen?
And if we can't get somethingto appear on the screen that
makes any sense, it's not a Voxexplainer video.
And so I'm curious, do you kindof approach these with the same
It sort of seems that way fromthe visualization, or is it
maybe not in the forefront?
Adam Cole (19:26):
It certainly makes your job easier if there's
existing visuals or somethingvery grabby that you can look
at.
I often have the hubris to say,I'll make anything visual.
It often really comes back tobite me.
But I do think that I thinkvery visually, and I...
(19:48):
I think that is one of myskills is like imagining
something that can be on screen.
It takes way more work to makesomething on screen than to find
something and put it on screen,right?
So I think a little bit less– Ithink Joss has the right idea,
which is find something that youknow is going to be amazing to
(20:09):
look at.
That will just draw the eye,right?
Right now she's working on anepisode about pterosaurs, you
know, these flying dinosaurs or,you know, sort of, they're
incredible looking.
I mean, you just want to likestare at them and be like, how
is this body put together?
Like what?
It's got a giant head, like agiraffe size neck.
It can fly somehow with allthis going on.
(20:31):
So those kinds of things arebetter.
Like they're just fun to lookat.
But there's also a piece of itwhere if you can bring something
to the visual realm that noone's ever seen, no one's ever
been able to conceive of becauseit's not visual, but you can
make it visual, then that hasincredible power as well.
Like I'm going to show yousomething that you've never seen
(20:53):
before is a pretty good, youknow, ad for your video.
The problem is that takes waymore work because you have to
create it out of nothing.
Andy Luttrell (21:07):
It's a struggle too with social science in
particular, I find.
For sure.
a lot of what we do is veryabstract and it doesn't lend
itself to these sort of likepunchy visuals and there are
graphs, then that's fine.
But it's not quite the same asa pterosaur's head, right?
And I think, so I share thesame sensibility of like, I
(21:31):
approach these things veryvisually and in teaching, I have
these elaborate PowerPointanimations where I'm like, if
only I could get you to see thisthe way I see it, you'll get
it.
But it doesn't, it's sometimeshard to translate it.
You mentioned that sometimesyou do this at your peril.
Does anything come to mind aslike, I really desperately was
trying to make this visual and Ijust couldn't crack the nut?
Adam Cole (21:55):
Hmm.
Well, I don't know.
I think I would abandon itbefore that stage if I really
felt that it wouldn't work.
You know, we do a lot of sortof, we sort of pitch each other
these ideas.
And...
Joss is very good atchallenging me on things that
aren't gonna work, right?
And I hope that I also providethat for her.
(22:17):
And so sometimes there's anidea and it's like, well, what
are we even gonna look at for 20minutes?
And it's like, you're right.
Let's not do that.
But I think that over mycareer, I've sort of gotten a
pretty good sense of what is notgonna be visual enough.
So I can't remember any recentmisses like that.
(22:37):
So you mentioned graphs, whichI thought was interesting
because that's something that Ireally always steered away from
until I really started workingwith the folks at Vox.
Because I had an earlyexperience where I made a video
about population rise.
It was for, if you can believeit, when we just hit 7 billion
people on Earth.
(22:58):
It was one of the first videosI ever did for NPR.
And I had this elaborate...
setup that I made.
It was sort of like physicaleffects where I represented
people being born by drippinginto a glass that was labeled
with the country or region.
So it was like North America,South America, etc.
And then dripping out of theglass was people dying.
(23:19):
And it just basically showedhow, you know, the population is
rising because fewer people aredying.
And so we're having thisexplosive effect.
So I had this This thing, itdid very well, the video.
But when I looked at theanalytics on YouTube, about
three quarters of the waythrough, I threw up a graph.
(23:40):
And it was just incredible.
Like the as the very frame thatthe graph showed up on screen,
people started clicking away.
And it was this precipitousdrop where they've been sort of
sticking with it.
So I probably over indexed thatlesson in my career.
And I was like, I'm never goingto show a graph again.
I'm always going to try tovisualize things without graphs.
But I think what Vox has donevery well, or what their
(24:05):
producers on their YouTubechannel did, was they would
spend, instead of just throwinga graph on screen and saying,
this shows this, they draw it.
They say, this is the X axis.
It shows this.
This is the Y axis.
These are the different pieces.
And so you really learn whatthe graph is showing you through
(24:25):
the video, which is somethingthat I wasn't really doing very
well.
So I think I've come around ongraphs, basically, that if you
give people the tools tounderstand them, they don't
click away.
You're opening that door forthem where, as before, maybe
they found graphs to be kind ofan intimidating thing.
People don't think like that,or maybe they don't encounter
them in their day-to-day lives.
But if you really break themdown for people, they like it.
Andy Luttrell (24:50):
It is surprising those moments when you realize
the things that You've spentyears learning how to read.
You can't just show it tosomeone.
Right, right, right.
I can very easily look at asimple graph and be like, well,
obviously, I know the wholestory now.
But if I show the same graph tosomeone else, they go, what
could this be?
Adam Cole (25:09):
Right, exactly.
I mean, that's just the biggestchallenge of being a science
journalist is...
You're doing so much researchand you're becoming more and
more knowledgeable all the time.
But you have to remember whatit was like when you started
that process.
And that's for every story.
We're not beat reporters, sowe're not getting deep into one
area that we stick with foryears.
Every time we start a story,we're entering a new field.
(25:32):
And so you have to rememberthat feeling when a month later
you've done all the research andnow you're like a mini expert
on the subject.
Like, oh, what was it like whenall of this was new to me and
it was very confusing?
Andy Luttrell (25:46):
The mantra that I always have is, remember the
person you were before you knewthis.
Right,
Adam Cole (25:51):
right, exactly.
Andy Luttrell (25:52):
And if you can do that, then you have a better
chance at conveying it back tosomeone in those shoes.
Adam Cole (25:57):
Yeah, and that's sort of the central spine of a lot
of our episodes is that we havea second person who doesn't know
anything.
So it's fun to play, you know,like, I'm very good at that.
I'm very good at being the dumbguy who Joss is explaining
things to, you know, that I amcoming with fresh questions.
(26:17):
I don't know what she's beenworking on.
We record a conversation whereshe basically tells me the
story, and I just reactnaturally.
I ask the questions that firstcome to mind, and I think that
helps us get into that mindsetof, like, what's the audience
going to be asking as well.
Andy Luttrell (26:33):
I think I remember I did find a talk that
you gave, I think the NationalAcademies or something, and you
were talking about the Explainedseries, and...
Maybe I'm just...
Someone else said somethingthat I thought was profound and
now I'm telling it to you, but Ithink it was you.
I'd love to take
Adam Cole (26:49):
credit for it.
Andy Luttrell (26:52):
Which is rather than try and like suss out a
point and then present like aperfectly manicured story that
gets you to that point, insteadwe're sort of just on this
journey together to...
to answer a question and like,let's remember the question we
started with and stay true toit.
Because that sounds like aHowtown perspective of like,
(27:16):
we're gonna start with aquestion and then not abandon
that question once we sort offind sort of a clean way of
tying it up, right?
So how well does that resonatewith how you still approach
this, if that was how you did itbefore?
I
Adam Cole (27:30):
don't know if I can take credit for that idea, but
it does resonate with me.
So if it was me, yeah.
I think one of the things thatis in tension with this whole
world is you want to tell a goodstory.
And most good stories have agood ending that feels like, oh,
it wraps up nicely.
(27:50):
There's a nice little lesson.
You think about a sitcom whereit's like there's conflict and
then it's resolved.
And then like the charactershave figured something new out.
And isn't that nice?
The end.
And then we all applaud.
And so there is a lot ofpressure to make your stories
feel like that.
But it's not always possible.
(28:12):
And in fact, in science, it'soften...
the opposite of what'shappening.
The more we learn, the morecomplicated it gets, the more
new questions there are.
I mean, that's kind of acliche, like the more you know,
the more you know you don'tknow.
But it's very true, and it'shard to sometimes fit that into
a traditional narrativestructure.
And so when we started Howtown,we really wanted to
(28:36):
intentionally avoid that trap.
We wanted to say, we're goingto convey the nuance and
ambiguity of all this.
So that's what we attempt todo.
Andy Luttrell (28:48):
It's making me think that when those stories
wrap up too perfectly, I becomeobsessed with the question of,
like, how did they know that itwas getting to that place?
Adam Cole (29:01):
Right, right.
Andy Luttrell (29:03):
And I go like, wait a minute, hold on.
Now this makes me rethinkeverything because I go, oh,
they must have known where theywere going and then they
sprinkled all this stuff aheadof time.
And I...
I'm like, well, now I'm notinterested.
Even though it's like a nice,clean story, suddenly that's the
reason where I pull out and Igo, I don't buy it anymore.
Whereas I do like the, like,I'm just, hey, I'm with you,
(29:23):
man.
Like, I'll go where you'regoing and we'll see where we end
up.
And that I think is a unique, Ithink it does lend itself to
science journalism as a uniquesort of area.
Yeah, yeah.
So I want to, talk about theunique qualities of doing a
project like this with apartner.
You mentioned Radiolab assomething that you were inspired
(29:45):
by early on, and I get Radiolabvibes from Howtown in that
there are these kind of cutawaysto the kind of conversations
between you and Joss as sort ofa device that helps both make it
just kind of easy to relate toand also grounds it back in this
reporter talking to the hostsort of a situation where you
get to raise the questions thatpeople might be thinking in an
(30:07):
authentic way.
Because like I said, youalready know the answer now and
you can hear it on these thingswhere people pretend not to
know.
But I wondered, what aboutthis?
Or you can get like authenticcuriosity in sort of these live
conversations.
And every time I see a projectthat has sort of a co-host vibe,
I get jealous because I go,that feels nice to have this
(30:32):
sort of extra, this person tobounce off of, this person to
cut to, this person to groundit, and also someone, like you
said, to run it by and be like,does this work for you?
Do you know what I mean when Ishow you this graph as opposed
to this graph?
So I wonder if you could justtalk about how you found that
relationship going in terms ofhaving another person who is
(30:53):
sort of basically an equalpartner in this process.
Adam Cole (30:58):
Yeah.
Well, I mean...
The first thing I think of isjust sort of the emotional
support because it's hard to bean independent journalist and
it's hard to like weather theups and downs of launching
something new.
And I don't think I would beable to emotionally handle it if
I didn't have someone when I'msort of like really down, like,
(31:18):
oh man, no one's watching this.
Or like when we firstpublished, right, especially for
Joss, who was getting, youknow, baseline a million views
on every video that shepublished for Vox.
And I had been publishing forVox and also getting those
millions for like the last yearof my career where I'd been
(31:39):
freelancing for them.
You know, so we put up thefirst video and even though you
know you're starting fromscratch, it's like, oh, that
video got a thousand views inthe first day.
Like that is, you know, theratio of a thousand to a million
is...
An enormous emotional gulf tosort of contend with.
And obviously that's like sucha privilege to be able to say
(32:03):
that, like, oh, we used to get alot of views, but it's just,
you know, it's a little bit of ashock to the system.
where you're like, oh, this iswhat I thought of as success.
And now I have to redefinethat.
So the beginning was, eventhough I went in being like,
you're starting from scratch.
No one's going to watch this.
It's fine.
It's going to take two years tobuild an audience, et cetera.
(32:24):
It was still a little bit hard.
So I had to go to Joss and belike, is this okay?
Like, are we, did I fail bigtime?
Like, I think one of my biggestfears is like failing her, you
know, like that is like, a bigthing that I don't want to do.
And so to have someone to belike, no, it's fine.
Like the person who didn'tproduce the video has a much
(32:46):
better perspective on it.
Right.
They didn't pour as many hoursinto it.
So basically every episode wesay to each other, I don't like
this.
I don't think it's working.
And the other person says,yeah, it's great.
So it's just like having thatangel on your shoulder is so
nice.
Um, so that's before you evenget to like the content and the
process.
(33:07):
Uh, And then it's very helpfulfor that as well, just to have
sort of a built-in editor and,yeah, someone to bounce ideas
off of.
We do try to, you know, we comein fresh.
We are reacting in a real way.
But people still think thatit's acting.
(33:31):
People still think that it'sstaged.
We get a lot of comments likethat.
Like, why are you so unnatural?
This isn't how people reallytalk.
A lot of people think we're AI.
And so we're always striving tobe more authentic.
And it's hard too, because, youknow, we talk for probably
about two hours when we do theseconversations and we have to
cut them down to 20 minutes.
So that editing process alsomakes it less natural.
(33:52):
We're leaving out all of thelike stumbles and things like
that.
So we're trying to learn how tonot cut out the parts that make
us seem the most human.
So it's a struggle.
It's a struggle.
I get comments every day and itkills me.
Like, stop scripting the, youknow, this is so obviously
scripted.
(34:13):
And that really hurts becausewe're really trying to have real
conversations.
Andy Luttrell (34:20):
Yeah, I don't know what to do.
Because I will say for me, Theydo feel authentic.
They feel like it's sort ofthis nice contrast against the
scripted and the very producedside of the video to this kind
of lo-fi, two people checking inon what they care about.
And so what are the sorts ofthings that you're trying to do
(34:42):
to boost your reality?
Adam Cole (34:46):
Well, we do try to leave in more of the little
awkward edges.
I think that I have a tendencyto want things to be very clean
and straightforward.
And I've, you know, my earlycareer, I was really training
myself to try and be as conciseand direct as possible.
And when I talk, I'm not asconcise and direct as I would
(35:09):
want to be.
And so I have this instinct tocut myself out and replace those
moments with scriptednarration.
Yeah.
So just working against thatinstinct I think is part of it.
Andy Luttrell (35:20):
So when in the process are you having these,
like is it once you've done allof your reporting, you sit down
and just sort of like lay it allout or are you doing these a
few times along the way as youlearn more and sort of define
the structure of the video?
Adam Cole (35:35):
We generally just do it once.
I think there's been one or twotimes that we've done it twice
when like a new interview cameup and we needed to like
incorporate that into thestructure.
But yeah, generally just once.
And it is like after we finishthe reporting, before we start
editing, we sit down and we talkabout it for a couple hours.
Andy Luttrell (35:57):
Beyond that, are there other checkpoints in terms
of like you're running a cut?
by the other person and gettingsort of like a feedback, like
beyond the sort of thing that wesee in the final product, what
might be happening behind thescenes that's making this a
two-person operation rather thana one-person operation?
Adam Cole (36:17):
Well, the story selection is a collaborative
thing.
So we talk a lot about like,what should the next couple
episodes be?
And we discuss...
not only what's going to be inthem, but how are they going to
be packaged?
Because that's so important,and it's so annoying that it's
so important.
On YouTube, what's the headlinegoing to be and what's the
thumbnail going to be?
(36:37):
And those things have suchoutsized importance in terms of
is the video going to be asuccess or not, which is really
unfortunate because, you know,we want to tell these nuanced,
medium-long-form stories, and weput so much effort into that
part.
For the first half of Howtown,I would say, we would get to...
(37:01):
It'd be like 11 p.m.
the night before we publish,and we're like, oh, no, what's
the title going to be?
And then we'd make a thumbnail.
We'd make a thumbnail in thewee hours to put up, which is
obviously...
We know that that's not the wayto do it, but that's just not
the part that we're as excitedabout.
Now we try to talk about thatvery early.
(37:22):
So we have these...
I mean, we call them pitchmeetings, but it's always just
the two of us.
So it's just like we call eachother up.
Hey, I'm thinking about doingthis.
Now part of that process ishere's what the titles could be.
Here's what the thumbnailscould be.
So that's hopefully setting usup for success from the
beginning in terms of the clickyside of being a YouTuber.
(37:44):
You got to get people to click.
Then we have this conversation.
That's probably the next timewe check in.
Sometimes...
we'll say things like, youknow, I've talked to two people,
but they kind of cover the samestuff.
Do I need to have a thirdinterview?
Or, you know, just those likethe things you run into as
(38:05):
you're making a story.
Like, oh, should I put theeffort?
A lot of it is like, we don'thave very much money, right?
So it's like, should I buy thisasset?
Is it worth it?
Should I buy a train ticket soI can go down to this place for
the day to shoot something?
So we check in about thatstuff.
And then, and then we have thisconversation.
(38:27):
And then it's time to edit.
And that's like the big crunch.
And so during that process, weprobably send out two or three
drafts.
And oftentimes, we'll send outthose drafts with like specific
question, like, is the introworking?
Right?
Does this section need to beover here instead of over here?
And then the other person willwatch it down and leave notes.
(38:49):
And then sometimes we discussthose as well.
But it's pretty much, you know,a Joss episode is she's doing
98% of the labor and I'm kind ofjust around for that and vice
versa.
Andy Luttrell (39:03):
You mentioned sort of early shifts over time
and I'm curious about theevolution.
Even over a year, I went backand I watched the first episode
and...
There are different, it doesseem like once you have that
contrast, you can sort of seelike, oh, this has sort of
evolved over time.
So I'm curious to get your takeon like, what do you see as
having been sort of majorchanges?
And in particular, like, whatdoes it tell you about what
(39:26):
you've learned about how to dothis in a way that someone else
could sort of learn from thatyear you've spent working
Adam Cole (39:31):
on this?
Andy Luttrell (39:34):
Yeah,
Adam Cole (39:35):
that's so hard.
You know, we've learnedspecific things about how
Howtown looks and sounds, youknow, how we use visuals and how
we talk to each other.
Like I said, we're trying toput more and more of these
conversations in and we'regetting better, I think, a
little bit at being a goodconversation partner.
(39:55):
Like now we know, I think bothof us are a little bit reserved
in a way and we're very contentto just like listen to the other
person explain.
you know, I think that Josh isa good storyteller.
So in those, in the firstconversations, I'd probably just
sit there and be like, uh-huh,you know, like, oh, that's
(40:17):
interesting.
Now I'm like, I go in, I don'treally drink coffee ever, but I
sometimes drink a coffee beforethe conversation.
So I'm a little bit morejittery, you know, like I'm a
little bit higher energy and I'mtrying to jump in and challenge
things or ask questions.
So that has changed a littlebit.
I think we get, we're gettingbetter at that.
(40:38):
Um, then I would say, so that'svery specific to our like
product, right?
It's a conversation.
A lot of the stuff that we arerefining is based on years of,
of work.
You know, we both started in2014.
We have all this experience.
(41:00):
And so it's just learning whatour voice is every time a little
bit more.
Um, So I don't know howapplicable that is to other
people.
I would say if you're going inand specifically, sort of in any
realm of storytelling for themasses, you just got to do a lot
(41:21):
of reps.
You know, you've just got tostart making stuff.
I think when I started, becauseI was coming from science into
journalism, I was really waitingfor people to give me
permission to try things.
And I was sort of like, oh, isthis okay?
Like...
Do I really have thequalifications to do this?
Shouldn't someone else be doingthis?
Someone should be telling mewhat the assignment is, kind of.
(41:43):
And as soon as I realized thatno one knew what they were
doing, especially in video, inlegacy media, that allowed me to
just experiment more.
And that's what gave me theskills and voice that I have
now.
I'm not super happy with thoseskills and voice.
I'm always trying to get betterat them.
(42:05):
And there's so much that I seeother people doing or
aspirations I have for myself,things I want to change.
And the only way to do that isjust to make more stuff and try
to be better in the next one.
So what I tell people a lot isjust do it to borrow Nike's
(42:27):
catchphrase.
Um, like don't, don't wait.
Like if you want to make videosfor YouTube, don't wait until
you have a position that allowsyou to do that, or you have a
job that allows you to do that.
Just do it sort of on the sidewhen you can.
And, uh, you'll start to getthe reps in that you need to, to
achieve that voice.
Andy Luttrell (42:49):
Well, one of the, um, to look at the Howtown
evolution.
One thing that I noticed inlooking at the first one, I got
the sense that one, thestructure felt a little more
rigid.
Like it felt like, here's howwe're going to do this.
We're going to talk to acreator who has a question and
then we will have our foursections.
Right.
(43:09):
And they're always going to bethe question, the method, the
this.
And I sort of see that havingrelaxed a bit, like as you get a
little more comfortable, like,okay, we kind of, We're not
telling ourselves how thisworks.
We just kind of feel it.
And it's going to come out inthe way that feels like the
right way to tell the story.
Does that seem right?
Am I getting on anything thatfeels true to the evolution?
Adam Cole (43:31):
Yeah.
I mean, I think chapterizationis very important when you're
dealing with a complex subject.
You need a lot of signpoststhat tell people, here's where
we are.
You know, that was a lot.
Now we're going to shift tothis aspect of the question.
You need to have moments thatare sort of a brief pause to
say, There is a plan.
Here's where we're going so theaudience doesn't get lost.
(43:53):
And I think there's alsosomething with YouTube where a
lot of the most successfulchannels, they have a formula,
sort of.
Not in a pejorative way, butjust they have figured out what
works and people expect thatfrom them.
And that makes them morewatchable because there's a
vocabulary that the audience isfamiliar with that they can
return to.
(44:14):
It's like, oh, this is thissection where they talk about
this and I know it's coming up.
I can follow it.
I enjoy it.
I expect it.
We like what we already know.
So we were aiming to findsomething like that for Howtown.
And we thought, well, what arethe major questions of any
scientific method?
The first one is probably, whyis it so hard?
Like, why was this not just aneasy question to answer?
(44:37):
Then there's the actual methodsthat were used.
That's another big piece of it.
And then there are thecomplications of, you know, oh,
it's not quite as simple as wethought.
These methods revealed nuances.
So we thought we can have thosechapters in every episode.
The problem is that thatdoesn't happen linearly for a
(45:00):
lot of narratives, right?
So...
You might say, why is it hard?
There's the why is it hard atthe beginning.
Then you do an experiment.
There's a new why is it hard.
There's a new challenge.
There's a new thing that'smaking it difficult to
understand.
And so I found in a lot of thestories I was doing, I couldn't
fit all of that into the firstsection because it was much
(45:24):
easier to tell chronologically.
And so we still try to havechapters in our episodes that
delineate different sections anddifferent ideas that we're
exploring.
But we don't follow that rigidstructure that we had set out at
the beginning to try and makeour brand more recognizable.
The questions at the beginningfrom our famous friends was sort
(45:48):
of, you know, I think we camein thinking that on YouTube,
it's very helpful to have aboost from another audience.
So If you like these people,there's sort of the inherent
YouTube recommendation thatsays, if you like these videos,
watch these videos.
It's more powerful if theperson you like is telling you
(46:10):
to go over and watch thosevideos.
And then they're in that video.
So it's like, oh, I recognizethat person.
I like Simone Yetch.
It's great to see her in thisvideo.
So we went in sort of with thatidea.
And it's hard to say if thathelped us A lot, I mean, we
(46:31):
probably got more views than wewould have at the very
beginning.
But it also seems like onYouTube today, every video kind
of has to stand on its own.
Every video has to make thepitch to the audience, you need
to watch this.
And so that sort ofrecommendation, we haven't found
to be as powerful as we hadhoped.
(46:53):
It's also a little bit of astilted way to start an episode.
having sort of a very formal,like, my question for Howtout
is, and then, you know, that'slaid out, is less dynamic and
keeps people around less in thatfirst 30 seconds, which is
another annoying YouTube metricthat's very important, than if
(47:13):
you throw something up on screenand say, look at this crazy
thing.
You know, isn't thisinteresting?
Isn't this a crazy mystery orjust a weird thing to look at?
Something that provokescuriosity.
Asking a question...
can provoke curiosity, but wefound it to be less effective
than some of those other things.
So we probably won't do thattoo much going forward.
(47:36):
We also found that we reallylike having the two of us in the
episode.
Some of these episodes we didwith other creators, they sort
of swap in.
When someone asks a question,that person swaps in for Joss.
So Joss is in the episode andvice versa.
And I think that's just notreally what our channel is.
(47:56):
We're Adam and Joss on Howtown.
And so we want to keep thatgoing throughout the different
episodes.
Andy Luttrell (48:06):
By way of wrapping up, and I appreciate
your time.
So you mentioned sort of whatwill we do in the future.
So I'm curious about the futureof Howtown and sort of
immediate plans.
One of the things we didn'treally talk about is I see you
guys doing like communitybuilding kind of efforts.
So I'm curious if that's kindof become an important part of
(48:26):
the process or if maybe that'snot going to be a central
feature going forward.
And even just more generally,like, is it going to is the team
going to expand?
Is it going to move beyondYouTube or is it we're going to
do what we're doing right nowfor as long as it works?
Adam Cole (48:41):
Yeah, well, those are a lot of different questions.
Yeah, and you must answer themall in sequence.
We always set out to have avibrant audience community.
We wanted to be making stufffor specific people.
We wanted Patreon to be thesubscription model that helps
support our work, where we'reworking for an audience of
(49:03):
people who like what we do andwant to see more of it.
And we found it very valuableand rewarding.
The people who are in ourPatreon sort of inner circle are
lovely people.
I not just say that becausethey're paid us $4 a month.
But it's just been really niceto meet them and talk to them.
(49:25):
We have a lot of we have thesemonthly events where we read a
science paper and talk about it.
And a lot of these people arejust really smart and are
academics in different fields.
So we could kind of talk tothem when we run into problems
or some things we don'tunderstand.
So that's great.
And then there's just a lot ofother curious people.
Maybe they're not aastrophysicist as some of our
(49:48):
Patriot supporters are, butthey're just enjoying chatting
together.
So we really want to facilitatethat conversation.
And I hope that that's always abig part of what Howtown is, is
sort of a place for thesepeople to come together and
meet.
And it's also just nice to havethem in mind when we're making
(50:08):
the episodes.
So it's all very lovely, and Idon't think we'll ever want to
abandon that.
So that was part one.
So then, yeah, what is Howtowngoing to be?
Well, right now we're twopeople with one contractor.
Uh, we hope to make thatcontractor a part of like a
(50:32):
permanent part of the team.
His name's Charlie Yunkin.
He's very, uh, very, verytalented.
And we want to make him, youknow, a permanent part of
Howtown.
That is sort of contingent onhow well the Patriot side,
Patriot side does.
Um, and just generally how wellthe channel does if we can sort
(50:52):
of financially bring anotherperson on.
Our hope is to have sort of afour-person team that we work
with.
So an animator, an editor, andthe two of us that we can sort
of spread around some of thiswork.
And then we're barely hangingon as it is.
I mean, we could barely handlethe work that we've given
(51:12):
ourselves.
So we're sort of right nowtrying to decide, do we want to
make...
the episodes lighter liftwhether that's in production
value or the amount of researchthat we do maybe taking on
smaller topics like you know theepisode we talked about was
alcohol question mark like itwas pretty broad it could have
been much more specific so isthere ways that we can take on
(51:35):
less work or are we okay youknow just publishing on a slower
cadence and can we make thatwork so We don't know.
We're going to try to figurethat out.
We need to get our hands aroundthe YouTube side before we do
anything else.
We've talked about maybe yearsdown the line, we might have an
(52:00):
audio podcast.
We might have a sub stack.
We might have a book.
We might try to make adocumentary that's more of a
feature length.
So those are all things thatwould be fun and exciting to try
and learn and obviously fail atand then that whole process
again.
But right now, we're barelyhanging on with the two, three
(52:24):
of us trying to produce 20minutes a month.
Andy Luttrell (52:30):
Well, whatever you're doing is working for
clearly a lot of people.
Clearly, the channel has grown.
And I think it is kind ofoverwhelming to me how much...
It's clear how much work isgoing into each of these,
knowing...
What a shoestring you'reprobably operating under.
And so, yeah, you are rising tothe occasion.
(52:52):
And so, fingers crossed.
Yeah, fingers crossed.
Things can get even bigger andinto new areas.
But for now, I'll just saythank you for taking the time to
talk about all this.
And good luck with the channelgoing forward.
Adam Cole (53:06):
Thanks so much.
It was really fun to talk toyou.
Andy Luttrell (53:15):
Thank you to Adam Cole for taking the time to
talk about his work.
I think SciComm Summer is offto a really great start.
Check out the episode webpagefor a link to Howtown's YouTube
channel and its Patreon page.
This series on sciencecommunication is a special
presentation of my podcast,Opinion Science, a show about
the science of our opinions,where they come from, and how we
talk about them.
(53:35):
You can subscribe any old placewhere they have podcasts, and
be sure to check outopinionsciencepodcast.com for
links to things that come up inthis episode and ways to support
the show and whoever you are Ihope you're enjoying the show
and I'm hoping this summerseries will reach folks with a
keen interest in sciencecommunication so please tell
people about it post onlineemail a friend make a poster and
(53:58):
stick it to a wall these arewild times and I think it's more
important than ever to help theworld understand good science
and champion its value so let'sall make an effort to get better
at doing that okie doke thankyou so much for listening and
I'll see you next week for moreSci I always
Joel Bervell (54:17):
have this actually saying that I say all the time
that even before I startedsocial media, if not now, when?
If not me, who?
And I realized no one else wasdoing this.
Thank you so much.
on a platform that actuallyreached a lot more people and
(54:59):
bringing a lot more individualsinto this conversation.
So into the question of why didI do it?
It was really because no oneelse was doing it.
And I felt like this wassomething that I wanted to
create for my mom, my sister, mybrother, my dad, that no one
else was putting out there.
Hey, this is Joel Brevelle.
I'm better known as the MedicalMyth Buster on social media.
I create videos about healthinequities and the hidden
(55:20):
history of medicine.
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