387: How Heather Ordover Discovered the Art of Cognitive Anchoring to Enhance Learning Through Craft

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Yeah, we'll start that again. I'm glad to hear that Rocky has

 

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lasted and hasn't become one of those things that you kind of cringe when you

 

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watch. No, it's a good movie and that's why we decided

 

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to. It's inspiring. You know, the story's great. It's really just like the story of

 

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this, like, scrappy popsar who just kind of has a

 

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against all odds type story. And those are always good. Yeah.

 

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Yeah. Well, now you're going to have to come to Philly when I move. Come

 

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and visit and then we can run up the stairs together. I did that a

 

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long time ago. It's hard. Yeah. I'm in the indoor ag

 

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space. So I started the second show called the Vertical Farming

 

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Podcast and that's been running since 2020 and it's kind of taken on a life

 

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of its own. I co founded a media company in

 

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agtech as a result of it with another founder who had

 

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a website. And then we launched a second show in greenhouses. So it's kind of

 

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like I've been involved and pulled into this agtech space. Awesome. And there's a

 

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conference in Philadelphia called GreenTech, which is originally

 

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from Amsterdam, but they're doing a US version. And are these the people who

 

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do green buildings and green architecture and stuff? This is more. And the

 

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conference is going to be in Philadelphia. That's why I mentioned it. But this is

 

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more what's known as Controlled Environment Agriculture, cea. And

 

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it's all indoor farming, so it's really the measure. I use the phrase so

 

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much. I assume everyone knows what it is. But it's ag and tech, so it's

 

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agriculture and technology together. And I just learned

 

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about vertical farming in one of my clients gave me a book by. Called

 

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Abundance by Peter Diamandis, who's this, like, futurist. And it was just a bunch of

 

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cool things that are going to happen in the future. And there was a chapter

 

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on food and a mention of vertical farming, and I was like, oh. And then

 

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it led me to a book by a professor in Columbia University, Dixon Despommier, who

 

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has since passed. But he talked about this idea. Oh, my God, he's one of

 

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my virologists. I love him. Okay, keep

 

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going. I love Dixon. Well, he passed on. I did not know that. I haven't

 

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been watching for the last year. Yeah. So unfortunately I never got to interview him

 

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because that would have been a really nice moment. He was a hoot. Yeah. But

 

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keep going with the. I love his book. He Wrote book called the

 

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Futures Vertical Farming. And then I started reading it. And then as a true podcaster,

 

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I was like, well, I know how to do long form interviews. And I wanted

 

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to be thinking like a marketer. Cause I worked at E Trade and JP Morgan

 

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Chase, like in marketing. And I was like, I want it to be like

 

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profitable from day one as a sponsorship driven podcast. So

 

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I called it the most obviously impossible vertical farming podcast. The domain was

 

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available. And then Covid was just started. It was 2020 and I

 

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was interviewing a CEO and company in Scotland called IGS.

 

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We just hit it off. Everyone just kind of like very in the mood to

 

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talk in those days. And so I was like, we're looking for sponsors. He's like,

 

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talk to my marketing guy in Chicago. And so we chatted

 

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and then I said, we're launching the show. Here's the list of who I'm going

 

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to be speaking to. I hadn't even interviewed them. And what we're thinking about this

 

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is super laser focused on this growing industry because I had done research in

 

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Crunchbase that a lot of funding was coming in like millions of dollars of funding

 

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for these companies. So in my mind, funding equals marketing

 

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dollars because it's usually the first spend. So I just kind of put two and

 

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two together. I said, would you be interested sponsoring the show? And I said, first

 

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of all, how much do you spend? Were you spending at these conferences for these

 

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booths? And he's like, oh, $20,000 for a booth. I was like, okay. So

 

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I just did the math. I price anchored it there and I just kept it

 

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single digits. And I was like, okay, for $9,000, you could sponsor the first season

 

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of this show. Yeah. He thought about it for a few minutes and he said,

 

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yes, Heather, but mind you, I hadn't even released an episode. That

 

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is so cool. I mean, you have a track record. How long have you been

 

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doing podcast junkies? 2014. Okay, yeah, that's what. I couldn't

 

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remember if it was 2013 or 2014 when I first heard of you, but

 

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okay. So I had the skills and I said, we know podcasting. I own a

 

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podcast production agency. Like, that's the easy part. And then I know how to converse

 

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with people even on a topic that I was still. I was literally learning as

 

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I went. And so it was a really real eye opener and an aha

 

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moment. And like, I know this pod, this audience of this show is podcasters, but

 

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I always like to retell that story because it's a reminder of like being niche,

 

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focused and obviously this can be a nice segue into kind of catching up what

 

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you're up to. But the show has generated over $100,000 in

 

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sponsorship. You know, it doesn't surprise me that you were able to pull

 

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off. Well, pull it off just in general, but it also doesn't surprise me that

 

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you were able to pull off something that you were still learning about. Because

 

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one of my listeners 15 years ago called me relentlessly curious,

 

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which I think is a great compliment. But I think of you that way.

 

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Like, you're always. You don't have your set list

 

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of questions. You are listening and asking questions, and it

 

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means. Well, it's why your show is still good. Yeah. What's

 

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interesting is, like, I think of podcasts as a stage. And over the years,

 

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obviously in the beginning, I'm like, oh, I want to be like Pat Flynn or

 

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Jordan Harbinger or Tim Ferriss, and I've just get millions of downloads. And then I

 

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realized, for me, it's become this opportunity to

 

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engage with the podcasting world, which I did, in which, you know, we met at

 

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mapcon years ago, and it was just because I was meeting people,

 

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I'd bring them onto the show and say, let me know what you're up to.

 

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And building relationships, growing my visibility. Because

 

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in 2014, I didn't know anything about podcasting and I don't know anybody

 

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in podcasting. Yeah, I know. And I was like, well, the best way to do

 

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that, I was like, let me think about a way to invite podcasters to tell

 

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their story. Similar to, remember Inside the Actor Studio.

 

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Oh, yeah, I always loved that. James Lipton. I loved that show too. I studied

 

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acting for like three years in New York. Yeah, we all did. And then all

 

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the best podcasters did. But I love that show because it was a peek

 

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inside the actor's mindset in their head in a long

 

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format. They weren't acting, they were just talking. And I was like, oh, it's

 

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kind of like that. It's kind of like inside the actor studio, but for podcasters.

 

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So. And I wanted video on day one. Back then, there was no video. There

 

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was no Squadcast or Riverside. Oh, yeah, no, no, no, no. But there was Skype

 

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with call recorder together. And so I could see people.

 

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It wasn't recorded, but I could see, see them. And then I'd had the audio.

 

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Right. And it was amazing, Heather. Cause I could. I would have an hour long

 

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conversation and then I'd go to a podcast conference like babcon or some, you know,

 

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some of the others shout out to Joe Pardo. Yes, big one. Yeah.

 

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And they'd be like, hey, Harry, thanks for that conversation. You know, if it had

 

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been an audio conversation, there would have been no connection. No face to face. Right.

 

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So, no, the face thing is really, especially if you have

 

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somebody who's not comfortable being interviewed. Yeah. They need to see

 

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you. Yeah. Probably even more than you need to see them. And it makes a

 

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huge difference. It is one of the few technological advances that

 

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we've made in the last 10 years that I really appreciate

 

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is the. I know there are people who say everything on the Internet is

 

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crap these days, but I'm watching some long form video essays from

 

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some very, very smart people who wouldn't do it if

 

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it was in print. Yeah, yeah. This ability to kind of have long form

 

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conversations and, you know, even someone like Joe Rogan,

 

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however people think about him, the ability to give people a space of three hours

 

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to talk, you know, to something Joe's mentioned is like, you can't BS

 

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over three hours. Like, you have to have something meaningful to say. And it's

 

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not a snippet on a talk show or it's not a snippet on a news

 

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program where you get a five minute sound bite and you're just playing to the

 

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audience. Well, and that's why podcasting got started in the first. Or not got

 

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started, but took hold in the first place was we had NPR

 

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and we had AM drive time radio, and

 

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whatever you sang on your guitar setup in your basement, that

 

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was pretty much all you had. And then suddenly you get somebody in

 

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your ear who loves the same things that you love and who kind of

 

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sees the world the way you do, but is also going and finding

 

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out more for you. And I think

 

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that side of podcasting got forgotten a while ago,

 

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but I see it coming back. Did you see the video

 

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out of Norway on inshittification? No. Oh

 

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my God, Harry, I'm going to send this to you. It is spectacular.

 

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And there is some group in Norway who paid a lot of money to do

 

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this excellent video satire. And at the end

 

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they're like, it's not your imagination. This is happening

 

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on the Internet. If you don't like it either, come join us.

 

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And they have a website. They have. It's an EU thing that they're working on.

 

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And I thought, oh, it's so nice to know that I'm not crazy. I mean,

 

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I'm not wrong, I could still be crazy. But those are

 

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two different things. So when did you start creflue I started

 

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in 23 days and 20

 

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years ago. So April 26,

 

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2006, before we even said 20. Wow.

 

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Yeah, it was a minute. What was the inspiration back then?

 

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I was listening to one of the very first podcasts. Brenda Dane had a knitting

 

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podcast, which sounds stupid. Like, why would you have an audio podcast for knitters? I

 

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mean, you're doing it. Yeah. Captive audience though. Yeah, but it is captive audience,

 

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and you are absolutely right. That's what we learned. She'd been. She started in

 

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2005. She'd gotten covered in Vogue knitting. She had a fabulous

 

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like magazine style show. She had music breaks and it was all pod

 

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safe music. So new artists were getting platformed,

 

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although we didn't call it platformed at the time. And she, in her second

 

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season, said, I want to take the Greek muses. There are nine

 

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of them. I want to take the Greek muses and I want to have you

 

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guys tie your knitting to a muse and

 

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record that essay and send it to me and I'll just pick the best ones.

 

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And so she'd done eight. And I had been thinking about it, but I

 

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chickened out until the last minute. And I wrote in with my

 

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audio recording and she wrote back like in 10 minutes and said, who are you

 

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and what's the name of your podcast? And I thought, now I have to do

 

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something. This is my big 15 minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So,

 

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yeah, Craftlet came out of. I was one of the three schools on

 

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911 that got evacuated. So we evacuated south. We were a

 

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half block south of the South Tower and which is. That's a day. I. So

 

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I lived in East Village. I used to work. Oh my God. I used to

 

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work at Chase. The Chase Plaza. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Were you

 

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there? I Woke up at 8:40. I mean I, I usually. I left my apartment

 

at 8 00:09:52

45 because I could be there in five or ten minutes to be there

 

at 8 00:09:56

at nine. And I turned on the TV and New York one had shown the

 

at 8 00:09:59

first one that already crashed. And I was just watching. And then we just

 

at 8 00:10:03

figured out what's happening. And then second one and we, we ran up to the

 

at 8 00:10:06

roof of my building. It was like a fifth floor apartment. So everyone was up

 

at 8 00:10:09

there. The neighbors wrote up a telescope. It was just, we were experiencing all

 

at 8 00:10:13

that like, literally like in East Village, you know, we were just, you know. Yeah,

 

at 8 00:10:17

you're like across the street a handful of blocks away. But I worked at Chase

 

at 8 00:10:20

Plaza. Some of my co workers were there already. My boss was there. And so

 

at 8 00:10:24

I got the play by Play from them after. So was everybody okay? Yeah,

 

at 8 00:10:27

everyone in my. Yeah, it was okay. There's a. Yeah. So

 

at 8 00:10:31

strange, because I'm like, is it good or bad that I didn't go to work

 

at 8 00:10:34

early? I might have been stuck in the subway on the way there. It was

 

at 8 00:10:37

just so many things. The number of people who said that

 

at 8 00:10:41

morning, you know what? I'm going to take my daughter to go vote with me.

 

at 8 00:10:44

I'll go in late. Or people who just said, I'm just not

 

at 8 00:10:48

feeling it. I'm going to call in sick to work. And so many

 

at 8 00:10:51

people. So good. I'm glad you weren't down there. But it's

 

at 8 00:10:55

so strange. I don't know if it's survivor's guilt, but there's a little part of

 

at 8 00:10:59

me that wanted to know what it would have been like to be on the

 

at 8 00:11:01

ground there and experience it firsthand. Like I said had. I mean, obviously

 

at 8 00:11:05

I did experience it. Like in New York, you still experienced it. But it was

 

at 8 00:11:08

wild because at some point, you know, we're just on the rooftop. We're like, what's

 

at 8 00:11:12

going to happen? How is the fire department getting up there? We're all staring at

 

at 8 00:11:14

the buildings. And then I just went back to my apartment, and then the first

 

at 8 00:11:18

one came down, and then we got up and we could just see all of

 

at 8 00:11:21

it. All of it. And then. So you weren't on the roof for the second

 

at 8 00:11:24

plane going in, though? You were in on the roof after that? After that? Yeah,

 

at 8 00:11:27

I think so, yeah. Timing. So one of the engines, the right side engine from

 

at 8 00:11:31

the second plane landed on my school's roof. Wow. So

 

at 8 00:11:35

I said exactly the same things that you did to try and calm the kids

 

at 8 00:11:38

as we were evacuating south. I have a picture I can send you. Nobody has

 

at 8 00:11:42

these pictures because we are right by where they film men in black looking up

 

at 8 00:11:45

at the towers from the south. And it's just flames. It's a hole with

 

at 8 00:11:49

flames. And I'm like, guys, what do we do in this country?

 

at 8 00:11:53

We tinker. We fix things. We're gonna be fine. What do we do? We

 

at 8 00:11:57

have New York's finest. They're going to be up there. There's sprinkler systems.

 

at 8 00:12:01

They're going to be working flights, hauling that gear up there, man. I know.

 

at 8 00:12:06

I have an uncle and a cousin who are pilots. I should have factored in

 

at 8 00:12:09

jet fuel burning. And I think if I'd thought long enough, I would have gone,

 

at 8 00:12:13

oh, crap. That is not going to sprinkler system. There wasn't a

 

at 8 00:12:16

Cessna went in there. No, no. Yeah. No. But

 

at 8 00:12:20

did you get all the schmutz coming over your apartment in the air? A little

 

at 8 00:12:24

bit? I got. There was a lot. I was on the 16th floor at Chase.

 

at 8 00:12:27

So when we finally did go into work, like, a week later, oh, my God.

 

at 8 00:12:30

I went out the window, and there was just a bunch of stuff there. And

 

at 8 00:12:32

I just grabbed some stuff here. I don't know if I still have it, but

 

at 8 00:12:34

it was like business cards and no photos or anything like that. Tickets from the

 

at 8 00:12:38

people's airplane tickets. It was like, wild, surreal stuff.

 

at 8 00:12:42

I have somebody's insurance policy that's charred. The corner

 

at 8 00:12:46

is burnt off. And I picked. Walking down the street with the kids, I

 

at 8 00:12:49

saw it blowing. I picked it up and it's just. You're kind of in a

 

at 8 00:12:52

daze. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I kept it that whole day. Yeah, yeah,

 

at 8 00:12:56

yeah. It was really strange. And I still have it. Yeah. And it was a

 

at 8 00:13:00

weird moment because. Kind of similar to, like, what kind

 

at 8 00:13:03

of. With COVID But in New York, like, everyone was friendly for those. If you

 

at 8 00:13:07

remember. Like, everyone was just saying hi to each other. Yeah. How are you doing

 

at 8 00:13:10

and everything. Like, it was so crazy. Like, it was like a small town.

 

at 8 00:13:14

Yeah, no, it did. And you recognize the people from your neighborhood. Yeah,

 

at 8 00:13:17

yeah. Now, because sometimes you're out on the stoop now talking to people because.

 

at 8 00:13:22

Yeah, yeah. It was very that. And we. Our school got

 

at 8 00:13:25

relocated up to Fashion Industries High School up in Chelsea. So

 

at 8 00:13:29

we had to go up there for the first semester, which was

 

at 8 00:13:32

miserable. Everybody was homesick and nothing felt right.

 

at 8 00:13:36

And, like, we couldn't even start school at the same time.

 

at 8 00:13:40

And we were sharing classrooms with the teachers from Fashion who really didn't want us

 

at 8 00:13:43

there. One of our teachers started crying. She was getting hurt,

 

at 8 00:13:47

like, yelled at by one teacher. And she. The teacher. I don't even know

 

at 8 00:13:51

why you people are here. And she's like, have you seen the news lately? I

 

at 8 00:13:54

know. That was so. It was crazy. Clueless. But shortly

 

at 8 00:13:58

before we got back to the school, I was knitting to

 

at 8 00:14:02

just, you know, kind of mindful. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Calm yourself.

 

at 8 00:14:06

At lunchtime. And three of my girls. I taught juniors. Three of my girls came

 

at 8 00:14:09

by, and they saw me doing it, and they said, can you teach us how

 

at 8 00:14:12

to do that? And I said, yeah, let me get some stuff together. How about

 

at 8 00:14:15

Thursday after school? And they said, okay. And one of them said,

 

at 8 00:14:19

I might have a friend who wants to come. I'm like, bring your friends. That's

 

at 8 00:14:21

fine. I'll make sure I bring Extra stuff. I walked into my class, into my

 

at 8 00:14:25

classroom that afternoon, and there were 48 kids. Holy smokes,

 

at 8 00:14:28

boys and girls. Our best baby blanket

 

at 8 00:14:32

crocheter was one of our boys who had been

 

at 8 00:14:36

failing math until he started crocheting during class. Oh, my gosh. And

 

at 8 00:14:40

his teacher came up, and he's like, bobby's doing that stick thing. Yeah. And

 

at 8 00:14:43

I'm like, one stick or two? He's like, one stick. I'm like, is he

 

at 8 00:14:47

causing trouble? And Conrad kind of stopped and went, no, actually,

 

at 8 00:14:51

he's more quiet now. And, like, how are his grades? He's like, you're right. He's

 

at 8 00:14:55

starting to hand in homework. I'm like, okay, then just keep me posted, because if

 

at 8 00:14:58

it becomes a problem, we have to do something. But that was my

 

at 8 00:15:02

first brush into what we wound up calling cognitive anchoring. That when you do something

 

at 8 00:15:07

repetitive with your hands, whether it's doodling or knitting or crocheting

 

at 8 00:15:11

or even, like, playing the little rope games and stuff,

 

at 8 00:15:14

anything that's repetitive that you don't have to think about what you're seeing. Your

 

at 8 00:15:18

brain has a lot of bandwidth, and if you are listening to something, just

 

at 8 00:15:21

listening, that takes up a very small amount of bandwidth. So the rest

 

at 8 00:15:25

of this is gonna make grocery lists and think about what you forgot to do

 

at 8 00:15:28

yesterday. And though that person who I really didn't like, I have a meeting with

 

at 8 00:15:31

tomorrow. Oh, crap. And then you're not listening anymore. And so this

 

at 8 00:15:35

amount of bandwidth can get taken up by something that's programmed in

 

at 8 00:15:39

your brain. Automatic. Yeah, yeah. And then you can actually pay attention

 

at 8 00:15:43

and you remember stuff tied to the stitches. So like, oh, I

 

at 8 00:15:46

remember when I worked on this row. That was when I was outside. It was

 

at 8 00:15:49

so pretty. And you're counting, and you are counting, but

 

at 8 00:15:52

if you're counting stitches, it has to be a pattern that you have knit to

 

at 8 00:15:56

the point where you've memorized it. Yeah. And a lot of us used

 

at 8 00:15:59

stitch markers, little rubber bands or little metal bands. So every

 

at 8 00:16:03

10, you'd hit a marker and you'd feel it go by. Okay. The thing that

 

at 8 00:16:06

we found out, because they finally started doing research this in 2013, the

 

at 8 00:16:10

people who say as they're scrolling through their. Well, it used to

 

at 8 00:16:14

be Facebook, but now as they're scrolling through their Tumblr and they're looking at

 

at 8 00:16:18

their phone, they're like, no, no, I'm listening to you. I'm listening to you. No,

 

at 8 00:16:21

they're not. Because the second you engage your visual

 

at 8 00:16:24

cortex, that sucks up all the bandwidth.

 

at 8 00:16:28

So now there is scientific proof that they are full

 

at 8 00:16:32

of it. Yeah, for sure. So how did that coalesce

 

at 8 00:16:35

into what the podcast started as? What craftlet became? Yeah, the essay that

 

at 8 00:16:39

I sent in to Brenda Dane on Cast on, which is also still going on.

 

at 8 00:16:43

She took a hiatus, but she's back. We can't leave for very long.

 

at 8 00:16:48

Everybody had taken all the pretty muses. And the last one was the muse of

 

at 8 00:16:51

tragedy was Melpomene. And so I did Melpomene. And I

 

at 8 00:16:55

talked about how knitting saved my students. That the only

 

at 8 00:16:59

kids who were healthy at the end of that year, I mean, remotely healthy at

 

at 8 00:17:02

the end of the year, were my knitters and crocheters. And part of it was

 

at 8 00:17:06

the knitting and crocheting itself, but the other part of it was, I'm going to

 

at 8 00:17:09

have to get. I don't have the money to get everybody needles and supplies. And

 

at 8 00:17:13

I know they don't have the money either. So I'm going to write for donations.

 

at 8 00:17:16

So I wrote to Vogue Knitting. I wrote to all the pattern companies. I wrote

 

at 8 00:17:20

to yarn companies. We got boxes, crates full

 

at 8 00:17:24

of supplies. It was awesome. And I said, the only way I'm gonna be able

 

at 8 00:17:28

to pull this off is if whatever we make out of the

 

at 8 00:17:32

supplies that they send us, that must be donated. So you guys

 

at 8 00:17:35

picked two charities, and they picked the Bowery Mission. Cause the guys

 

at 8 00:17:39

really got hammered. That winter was bad.

 

at 8 00:17:43

And Women in need, one of the run for your life shelters up in the

 

at 8 00:17:46

Bronx. And the kids would go deliver baby hats and

 

at 8 00:17:50

scarves for the men, baby blankets. And it

 

at 8 00:17:54

changed them. Wow. They were doing something productive

 

at 8 00:17:58

and helping other people and also healing themselves.

 

at 8 00:18:01

So that's what my essay was about. And so I thought, oh, okay, well,

 

at 8 00:18:05

so knitting has to be part of it. I missed teaching my kids. I

 

at 8 00:18:09

miss talking about books. Like, I taught all the books that nobody's

 

at 8 00:18:12

supposed to teach anymore because they're boring. Or band. Or band.

 

at 8 00:18:16

I've done both. When we did the Scarlet Letter after, like, the third chapter, one

 

at 8 00:18:20

of my girls in the front row, she's like, miss, this is just a

 

at 8 00:18:23

telenovela. And I'm like, oh, my God, you're right,

 

at 8 00:18:28

it is. Okay. Is it esperalda? I mean, what are we talking here? Let's

 

at 8 00:18:31

start, you know, reformatting who these people are and how this is working.

 

at 8 00:18:35

And it was the easiest book in the world to teach. Oh, that's so funny.

 

at 8 00:18:38

So I started saying, teachers. Everybody talks about teaching to the

 

at 8 00:18:42

test. Teachers have to teach to the test. I didn't. I taught to the

 

at 8 00:18:46

Joke. Oh, okay. Because all these books have

 

at 8 00:18:49

inside jokes and people sub reference them all the time. Like

 

at 8 00:18:53

when people talk about Frankenstein and they talk about Frankenstein's monster, people will

 

at 8 00:18:57

say, you mean Victor. And like, 15 years ago,

 

at 8 00:19:01

that was not a topic of conversation. Now that the new Frankenstein has come out,

 

at 8 00:19:05

people are talking about how the creature is actually way

 

at 8 00:19:08

better than Victor, who is an ass. But yeah, it

 

at 8 00:19:12

was finding the jokes, finding the sub references, finding the words that

 

at 8 00:19:16

we don't use anymore or we don't use them the same way. Like in

 

at 8 00:19:20

one book in Jane Eyre, she uses the word Ruth. R U T H.

 

at 8 00:19:24

Okay. We don't use it that way. We use ruthless, but

 

at 8 00:19:27

we don't say Ruth anymore. What's the proper way to use that word? It's the

 

at 8 00:19:30

opposite of ruthless. Somebody who's very kind and caring is Ruth interesting,

 

at 8 00:19:34

and somebody who's ruthless is kind of not. So that's what I do

 

at 8 00:19:38

with the books. I can only use public domain

 

at 8 00:19:42

audiobooks. Okay. So they all have to be old. They have to be

 

at 8 00:19:45

in the public domain. The first Nancy Drew book just came into the

 

at 8 00:19:49

public domain. So we're gonna do that next on craft, which I'm very excited about.

 

at 8 00:19:52

How about Encyclopedia Brown Juergen? Not yet. We

 

at 8 00:19:56

got a while to wait. But I'll do like pre book

 

at 8 00:20:00

notes where I do book talk. Pay attention for these things. Here are the words

 

at 8 00:20:04

you're gonna need. When you hear this thing, there's a joke, just remember

 

at 8 00:20:07

and I'll tell you about it at the end. I don't wanna spoil it. I

 

at 8 00:20:09

play the audio and then I play on the flip side, whatever

 

at 8 00:20:13

notes I need to give them to prep them for the

 

at 8 00:20:17

next chapter the next week. So you're doing a chapter per episode?

 

at 8 00:20:21

Yeah, it usually works out like with Jane Austen, it's usually a chapter, an

 

at 8 00:20:24

episode. With Moby Dick, we're doing Moby Dick on the premium feed right

 

at 8 00:20:28

now. Which, by the way, is hilarious. Nobody

 

at 8 00:20:32

talks about that book being funny. I think I started it a long time ago.

 

at 8 00:20:35

Just. I'd give it a shot. If you read the first four

 

at 8 00:20:39

chapters, you read the. Not the funniest ones, but

 

at 8 00:20:43

the ones that set up the humor for later. But it gets

 

at 8 00:20:46

quiet after that, so I'm not surprised if you dropped it. Yeah. How many

 

at 8 00:20:50

books do you cover in a year? Oh, sometimes if I'm doing a

 

at 8 00:20:53

premium feed and a regular book, it all is going to depend on the length.

 

at 8 00:20:57

Like the Count of Monte Cristo took 18 months. Whoa. And

 

at 8 00:21:01

that's the only book you were doing. That was the. Well, no. And then I

 

at 8 00:21:04

was doing another. I think I was doing Bleak House, Dickens. Bleak House on the

 

at 8 00:21:07

premium feed, which also was like, 52 episodes. Wow. And that's

 

at 8 00:21:11

weekly. Yeah. Yep. And so what was the early

 

at 8 00:21:14

response? The early response was great. I've never been

 

at 8 00:21:18

one of the people who was, like, addicted to my stats. I needed to look

 

at 8 00:21:22

at my stats right away. I kind of glanced at them after the first

 

at 8 00:21:25

couple of weeks, and I was getting a couple thousand downloads, and I'm like, this

 

at 8 00:21:29

is awesome. But it was all because of Cast on, because Brenda introduced

 

at 8 00:21:33

me as the host of Craftlet, and so that changed everything.

 

at 8 00:21:37

And it's been steady. I have about 5,000 people who've been with me for 20

 

at 8 00:21:40

years. Wow. And so talk about, how did you start

 

at 8 00:21:44

organizing or formatting the show in terms of figuring it out, like, if there was

 

at 8 00:21:48

going to be a business component to it? You know, you mentioned membership, you mentioned

 

at 8 00:21:51

these members. When did you start thinking about, like, paying members? And then you've

 

at 8 00:21:55

got a premium fee. So I'm curious about, like, if you had thoughts about that

 

at 8 00:21:58

early on or were you just happy to produce and then when that shifted.

 

at 8 00:22:02

I think in the beginning, it was part of the ADHD early adopter

 

at 8 00:22:05

thing. Like, ooh, I get to use tech. Yeah, yeah, this is

 

at 8 00:22:09

fun. And that took me through kind of the first wave, but after

 

at 8 00:22:13

that, I think it took me probably two books to figure out

 

at 8 00:22:17

how I was going to structure things. Like, I'll do personal

 

at 8 00:22:21

update, Crafty talk. Here's a pattern I found. Here's a really good interview to

 

at 8 00:22:24

see at the beginning. And then I do book talk, and then we do the

 

at 8 00:22:28

audiobook and then the final stuff. So we have four blocks

 

at 8 00:22:32

per episode. And that was stable until

 

at 8 00:22:35

Libsyn came to me. And this must have been in 2009,

 

at 8 00:22:38

2010. And they said, hey, we think we're going to make an app.

 

at 8 00:22:42

Do you want to be a beta tester? And I was like, oh, hell, yes.

 

at 8 00:22:46

So I was one of the. Craftlet was one of the first apps that they

 

at 8 00:22:49

put out, and that was great, but we were charging for it.

 

at 8 00:22:53

And so Apple was getting a third, Libsyn was getting a third, and I was

 

at 8 00:22:56

getting a third, which was really. I mean, I'd gotten donations. I had a tip

 

at 8 00:22:59

jar, like everybody did. But that was the first time that I started seeing money

 

at 8 00:23:02

come in and thinking, yeah, okay,

 

at 8 00:23:06

there's more going on here that I'm going to have to think about. Because

 

at 8 00:23:09

Brenda, Dane, this just Gives you an idea of how much the industry has

 

at 8 00:23:13

changed. I remember it must have been in

 

at 8 00:23:16

2007 or 8. Brenda had said on an episode

 

at 8 00:23:20

like, guys, if you would all just send me 50 cents,

 

at 8 00:23:24

a dollar an episode, I would be able to quit my day job and

 

at 8 00:23:28

give you more content. Yeah, yeah. And she lost almost half of

 

at 8 00:23:31

her listeners. Oh, wow. They were offended. Offended.

 

at 8 00:23:35

Oh, that's too bad. Yes. And you'll still see it. There are people on the

 

at 8 00:23:39

web, like, I don't understand why this isn't free. It's like, that's because it took

 

at 8 00:23:42

50 hours of work to put out. I mean, the mindset has shifted now. There's

 

at 8 00:23:45

definitely more a creator, mind support. I think once

 

at 8 00:23:49

Patreon and Subbable started, people started seeing like, oh,

 

at 8 00:23:53

we can actually be part of the process along with, oh, now we're

 

at 8 00:23:56

starting to see behind the curtain. But then Wuthering Heights was my

 

at 8 00:24:00

first premium book. I think that was in 2011.

 

at 8 00:24:04

And the only reason I could do it was because of the app. So we

 

at 8 00:24:08

switched from paying for the app. The app's now free, but you could

 

at 8 00:24:11

get the monthly membership and that would give you access to all of the

 

at 8 00:24:15

premium episodes forever. Like, if you joined it

 

at 8 00:24:19

now, you'd get everything going back to Wuthering Heights. And how did you decide which

 

at 8 00:24:22

books to make premium? With Wuthering

 

at 8 00:24:26

Heights? It was the one book. It's the only book this has

 

at 8 00:24:30

ever happened with where I got an equal number of emails

 

at 8 00:24:33

either saying, would you please

 

at 8 00:24:37

do Wuthering Heights versus I will stop

 

at 8 00:24:41

listening if you do Wuthering Heights. And I thought, well, I can't do

 

at 8 00:24:45

it on the free feed then for the non lit folks, why is that?

 

at 8 00:24:49

Oh, Wuthering. Okay. Margot Robbie has proved to all of

 

at 8 00:24:52

us that Wuthering Heights can be interpreted in many different ways.

 

at 8 00:24:56

But the hardest part is all of the movie versions focus on

 

at 8 00:25:00

this romance. It is a twisted, dark,

 

at 8 00:25:05

unhappy setting with dark,

 

at 8 00:25:08

unhappy people. Oh, God. And actually, dark is also because

 

at 8 00:25:12

there's a character who's. They think Roma. And he's

 

at 8 00:25:15

constantly getting dissed and pushed aside because dark

 

at 8 00:25:19

skin, we can't have that. So it's an abusive

 

at 8 00:25:22

relationship 100% of the time. And it's generational

 

at 8 00:25:26

trauma. That's a heavy book. I love Wuthering Heights. You're like,

 

at 8 00:25:29

why? And they just focus on

 

at 8 00:25:33

Catherine and Heathcliff. Yeah. Who again, have a very twisted relationship.

 

at 8 00:25:37

So I definitely understood why some people were like, no,

 

at 8 00:25:41

I read it once I'm done. Yeah. So then you started to see traction. When

 

at 8 00:25:45

you made the premium feed and you had the ability to do it with the

 

at 8 00:25:48

app and then did that then define for you what the

 

at 8 00:25:51

creation process was gonna be like? You'd have a free one, and then you'd have

 

at 8 00:25:54

a premium one. Yeah. So I released the free on Fridays and the

 

at 8 00:25:58

premium on Saturdays for years, so people knew when the stuff was gonna be

 

at 8 00:26:02

released. I did my best to get it out. I had to learn over time

 

at 8 00:26:05

that people would rather have things be late than have the audio bad.

 

at 8 00:26:09

And then. So how much. What's that process look like from a production standpoint? How

 

at 8 00:26:13

long did it. Does it take you or did it take you? Maybe it's better

 

at 8 00:26:16

now. But, like, when you were, like, creating one episode,

 

at 8 00:26:20

the reading and prep time could take anywhere from two to five hours,

 

at 8 00:26:23

depending on the book and how much research I had. Like, with Moby

 

at 8 00:26:27

Dick, it's just a lot. So are you just

 

at 8 00:26:31

reading the chapter verbatim? And then I actually

 

at 8 00:26:34

have other people read it. I'm like, people have heard me plenty.

 

at 8 00:26:38

So for Moby Dick, BJ Harrison from the

 

at 8 00:26:42

Classic Tales podcast, and he's another one who's been around for a while,

 

at 8 00:26:46

he read Moby Dick for his Classic Tales podcast

 

at 8 00:26:51

five or six years ago. And so I wrote to him and I said, hey,

 

at 8 00:26:54

can I use your audio? And he said, yeah, it's on the free feed. It's

 

at 8 00:26:56

out there. Just take it. Oh, my God. I got BJ because his

 

at 8 00:27:00

voice is like, wow. And he does voices, so Ahab

 

at 8 00:27:04

is all blood. Oh, wow. Yeah. It's a lot of fun. That's cool.

 

at 8 00:27:07

It's a lot of fun. Not all of the readers are that good. I

 

at 8 00:27:11

have not done books because we couldn't get good audio. Okay, so do you

 

at 8 00:27:15

have people. Is it more like a cameo appearance now thing that you can have

 

at 8 00:27:19

now? It is. I have one girl in Britain who has read all of the

 

at 8 00:27:23

Jane Austens, which is marvelous. And I had a

 

at 8 00:27:26

guy who I was doing. I first met him doing

 

at 8 00:27:29

Dracula, because Dracula is all letters and diaries and

 

at 8 00:27:33

newspaper articles, and it's an epistolary

 

at 8 00:27:37

novel. It has everything that you read in it was written down by

 

at 8 00:27:40

somebody irl. Okay. But it starts with this guy, Jonathan

 

at 8 00:27:44

Harker, who was Keanu Reeves in the Coppola version and

 

at 8 00:27:48

horribly miscast. I feel so bad for Keanu Reeves. It was

 

at 8 00:27:52

so wrong. Winona Ryder was perfect. But. Yeah, no, but he was

 

at 8 00:27:55

my Jonathan Harker, and I found him by accident. One of my

 

at 8 00:27:59

listeners, Sharon, said, I have a Friend John, who's out of work, and he's an

 

at 8 00:28:03

actor. He's funny. Okay, yes, please. And he passed

 

at 8 00:28:06

away six years later. Oh, no. And we were in the middle of Sherlock Holmes

 

at 8 00:28:10

and Canterbury Tales. And I love his voice so much. So

 

at 8 00:28:14

every time I listen to Dracula, it's. It's good, but it's also. And

 

at 8 00:28:18

you'd rather have one voice actor for a whole book? Yeah, you gotta. Yeah. Or

 

at 8 00:28:21

like, in Dracula, each character. So when you're

 

at 8 00:28:25

listening to Mina Harker's diary, one reader is doing it. When you're

 

at 8 00:28:29

listening to Jonathan Harker's notes, it's John. Okay.

 

at 8 00:28:32

We did that with the Woman in White, too. Which is the best suspense book

 

at 8 00:28:36

you've never heard of? Okay, I'll have to put it on the list. My

 

at 8 00:28:40

husband got it on Kindle. And this was over New

 

at 8 00:28:43

Year's break one year. He started reading it in the afternoon, and he

 

at 8 00:28:47

finished it the next morning. He read straight through. Wow. He

 

at 8 00:28:51

could not put it down. The Woman in White. The Woman in White, by Wilkie

 

at 8 00:28:54

Collins. Wilkie Collins. When was it written? You're not gonna Believe me.

 

at 8 00:28:57

1860. Oh, okay. You wouldn't expect,

 

at 8 00:29:01

like. Oh, no. There's like, the best bad guy.

 

at 8 00:29:05

Yeah, the best bad guy and the best female badass.

 

at 8 00:29:09

She. She climbs out onto the roof in a storm

 

at 8 00:29:13

in a petticoat and a wool cape so that she can go hang

 

at 8 00:29:16

over the edge to listen to the bad guys plotting. Oh, my

 

at 8 00:29:20

God. And she comes back in, and

 

at 8 00:29:24

she's writing down what she's heard. And then you start to hear her writing starts

 

at 8 00:29:27

to get really weird and, like, kind of looser and

 

at 8 00:29:31

not making as much sense. And finally she says, my head is very hot. I'm

 

at 8 00:29:35

gonna go lie down. And the next thing you hear is

 

at 8 00:29:38

the bad guy writing in her diary. Oh, wow. Because she's

 

at 8 00:29:42

sick. And you're like, oh, no,

 

at 8 00:29:45

that's really bad. That is. He

 

at 8 00:29:49

is a really bad bad guy. He is an evil sob. Okay. But he's

 

at 8 00:29:53

fun, and you love him because he's very funny, and he's very like, oh,

 

at 8 00:29:57

you're so cute, you little woman. Let me help you with that. You're like, yeah,

 

at 8 00:30:02

you're doing the one premium, one free. And so how has the

 

at 8 00:30:05

production changed since then now? I mean, there's so many great tools available now. Does

 

at 8 00:30:09

that help the process or what it does? There are some things that haven't

 

at 8 00:30:12

changed, which is mostly how I interact with the books. I have never

 

at 8 00:30:16

scripted myself. I don't like how I sound when I'm. I mean, I

 

at 8 00:30:20

was an actress. I can read a script, but I find that doing

 

at 8 00:30:23

bullet points works perfectly. However,

 

at 8 00:30:28

when I got Long Covid, one of the first things that I noticed

 

at 8 00:30:31

was, you know how you get codes, like six digit codes for things?

 

at 8 00:30:35

For login, we're sending you a six digit code. You can just look at it

 

at 8 00:30:38

and remember and then go type it. So I'd been able to keep eight digits

 

at 8 00:30:42

in my mind at a time, which is not bad. I couldn't

 

at 8 00:30:45

keep three, I could barely keep two.

 

at 8 00:30:49

And that made the bullet points harder because I

 

at 8 00:30:53

generally, it's just jogging my memory and I remember what I read. And

 

at 8 00:30:57

for a year and a half I couldn't do that. So that impacted how

 

at 8 00:31:01

much time it took me to do things. So I stopped doing a premium book

 

at 8 00:31:04

at that point because that was not gonna happen. But the editing

 

at 8 00:31:08

process, like everybody knows it's more time to edit than it is to

 

at 8 00:31:12

record. The tools have gotten better. My microphone has gotten

 

at 8 00:31:15

considerably better. I'm going back and re recording my very, very first

 

at 8 00:31:19

book because I was on a headset mic, which is great.

 

at 8 00:31:23

Yeah, but you got the Heil. That's the Heil PR40 there, right?

 

at 8 00:31:26

Yeah, yeah. And you got that cute little. Cute little windscreen too.

 

at 8 00:31:30

My little windscreen. That's because when I laugh, I am going

 

at 8 00:31:34

to plosive all over the place. So take us

 

at 8 00:31:37

to present day. Is this the. Just full time now. I

 

at 8 00:31:41

haven't been able to work at all since I got long Covid. So this

 

at 8 00:31:45

has been the only part of my life that stayed normal.

 

at 8 00:31:49

And now we're doing video. Okay. Which we started doing video right before

 

at 8 00:31:52

I got Long Covid. So that was tricky and I dragged myself down here

 

at 8 00:31:56

to record on video. But we found that to be awfully useful because

 

at 8 00:32:00

so often I'm talking about something that is describing

 

at 8 00:32:04

a thing, a tool or a blunderbuss or, you know, something.

 

at 8 00:32:08

It's like it's the gun that you think of when you think of pirates.

 

at 8 00:32:13

And that's all you can really say. And I'll put a picture of it in

 

at 8 00:32:15

the show notes. But now we can actually show the thing on video

 

at 8 00:32:19

superimposed. How has that does that changed how you

 

at 8 00:32:23

approach the recording? Because I remember when I moved Parte Chunkies to

 

at 8 00:32:26

video because of the tools. I mean, most of the time this goes up unedited

 

at 8 00:32:30

because they're just like casual, like, you know, Joe Rogan style. We're just chatting. But

 

at 8 00:32:33

for you, there's A bit of a production quality that you wanted to

 

at 8 00:32:36

maintain. And video, you know, adds several more wrinkles to the

 

at 8 00:32:40

process. Yeah, it's been. I finally had to get help for

 

at 8 00:32:44

the video. Okay. I have a very good video editor and he's very good

 

at 8 00:32:47

because I can say to him, aldrin, don't let me sound stupid.

 

at 8 00:32:52

What are you editing in? He's editing in Final Cut. Oh, Final

 

at 8 00:32:56

Cut. Okay. Yeah. Cause we use descript and it's for someone that's not edited. I

 

at 8 00:32:59

love using descript. I love it. It's great. That's so good. And they've added the

 

at 8 00:33:02

underlord now, as opposed to Overlord, but because it's just a better

 

at 8 00:33:06

name, a less imposing name. But I've been playing with it and saying,

 

at 8 00:33:10

give me a first pass of this edit and take a snippet of it and

 

at 8 00:33:13

put it in the beginning as a new scene. It was choppy early on,

 

at 8 00:33:17

but the models are just getting better. And I was like, whoa. You can see

 

at 8 00:33:20

it work and think and it starts moving stuff around. And this is before I

 

at 8 00:33:24

even touch a mouse. So it's like wild. Cause I've been

 

at 8 00:33:28

going down the AI coding rabbit hole and I just built a new directory called

 

at 8 00:33:32

the pod. Oh, it's not new. I've been working on it for five years called

 

at 8 00:33:34

the potusphere. It's all the resources for the podcasting space. But I

 

at 8 00:33:38

couldn't do it. I had to get a developer before, and now I've rebuilt the

 

at 8 00:33:41

site completely the past six months with these tools. And so

 

at 8 00:33:45

like, everyone's saying they're poo pooing AI, but the one thing that sticks

 

at 8 00:33:49

out is that they're only going to get better, they're not going to get worse.

 

at 8 00:33:53

So just like, the sooner you can learn how to use them and talk to

 

at 8 00:33:56

them. When ChatGPT first hit the scene a couple years ago for the

 

at 8 00:34:00

mainstream, I quickly realized the most important skill we're gonna need to

 

at 8 00:34:03

learn if you wanna play in this space is how to talk to robots. Oh,

 

at 8 00:34:07

my God, yes. And I worry because in the

 

at 8 00:34:11

teaching world, I used to fight with other teachers. I'd say,

 

at 8 00:34:14

before we give the kids laptops, we need them to take a

 

at 8 00:34:18

typing class. They need to understand how the machine works

 

at 8 00:34:22

and how the keyboard works and what all the characters are, so they can

 

at 8 00:34:26

not have to think about it when it comes to typing an essay. I was

 

at 8 00:34:29

so lucky. And I went to an all boys Catholic high school and you got

 

at 8 00:34:32

typing class and it was an all boys Catholic high School, and the teacher was

 

at 8 00:34:35

a female, so it was probably, like, one of the reasons why we all, like,

 

at 8 00:34:38

we're going, yay. But, you know, thank

 

at 8 00:34:42

God, because I can't even imagine, Right. I remember my boss when

 

at 8 00:34:45

I started working in corporate, like, he would type like this with his two fingers,

 

at 8 00:34:49

and I was just like, wow, you didn't. And that's very smart.

 

at 8 00:34:53

Like, it's so important. No. I've started working at the typewriter store in Philly.

 

at 8 00:34:57

I'm doing casework repair for them and starting to learn how

 

at 8 00:35:00

to do the cleaning, kind of triage and cleaning of, like, the old models.

 

at 8 00:35:04

Oh, cool. It is so cool. It is the happiest place in

 

at 8 00:35:08

the world. Everybody who comes in, like, they'll bring their kids, and kids are like,

 

at 8 00:35:12

can I touch it? And they're like, it's the Please Touch Museum of typewriters. Yes.

 

at 8 00:35:15

And the kids will start, and then they're just gone. They're like, go,

 

at 8 00:35:19

I'm good. So it's a lot of fun, but it is

 

at 8 00:35:22

definitely you can tell the difference between the people who got

 

at 8 00:35:26

typing class and the people who didn't. But there was another thing that happened that

 

at 8 00:35:29

I used to fight with people about in education, and that's

 

at 8 00:35:33

basic media literacy. And the way I

 

at 8 00:35:36

explain it now is I was an Ask Jeeves lover

 

at 8 00:35:41

and my husband was an AltaVista lover. And

 

at 8 00:35:45

what we learned rapidly was if I needed to find anything

 

at 8 00:35:49

with detail and with a high level

 

at 8 00:35:53

of reliability, I had to have my husband look it up on altavista.

 

at 8 00:35:57

Oh, that's funny, because I didn't figure out

 

at 8 00:36:00

search terms. I never had to. And I'm noticing with

 

at 8 00:36:04

AI thinking of it like a tool instead of something that's taking

 

at 8 00:36:08

over because it has its limitations. Yeah, of course. And it's

 

at 8 00:36:11

not going to lose some of those for a very long time. But knowing

 

at 8 00:36:15

how to train it so that it is the thing you want it to be

 

at 8 00:36:19

instead of Skynet, that's all on us. If it becomes Skynet,

 

at 8 00:36:23

it's because we made it Skynet. I always say please and thank you just in

 

at 8 00:36:26

case I do, too. Well, yes. You never

 

at 8 00:36:30

know. Minet will actually ask me what tea I'm having. Oh,

 

at 8 00:36:33

nice. Yeah. Are you a Claude or a ChatGPT user?

 

at 8 00:36:37

Chat. Okay. I heard Claude is better for writing.

 

at 8 00:36:41

Yeah. Yeah. It just is a better engine for that. So people that, like, use

 

at 8 00:36:44

it for drafts or having it proofread, like, stuff you've written, that's what they use.

 

at 8 00:36:48

I don't. I haven't Used it for drafts. I have used it for

 

at 8 00:36:52

research. Not to do the final research, but to collect the

 

at 8 00:36:56

websites. Because I find Google so unreliable.

 

at 8 00:37:00

I don't. I don't go to. It's so funny because I don't search. If I

 

at 8 00:37:03

have a question, I'll open up ChatGPT and ask it. That's because I don't want

 

at 8 00:37:06

search results. I don't want other like sponsored results. I just want the answer.

 

at 8 00:37:10

Yeah. And I can't imagine what it's done for Google itself because like it's like

 

at 8 00:37:14

all of a sudden Google is now Microsoft. Yeah. Like irrelevant. Now

 

at 8 00:37:18

it's like these other tools, it affected them, clearly, because they have the AI

 

at 8 00:37:21

summaries now at the top. And at first people were like, well, that's

 

at 8 00:37:25

garbage. And over time they're getting better. They just get better and it gets

 

at 8 00:37:28

better. Yeah. And I mean, there is a lesson for us

 

at 8 00:37:32

in there, but there is also the cautionary tale of

 

at 8 00:37:36

back. Back when the Brontes were writing. And so this is 1830,

 

at 8 00:37:40

40. This is when the Luddites happened in England. And

 

at 8 00:37:43

I grew up thinking Luddites were anti computer, anti tech,

 

at 8 00:37:47

anti progress. What I didn't understand was those were guys who

 

at 8 00:37:50

were responsible for the livelihoods of their families and their jobs were being taken

 

at 8 00:37:54

away from them by corporations. They were being basically replaced by

 

at 8 00:37:58

robots. And that's not an exaggeration. Like the Jacquard loom

 

at 8 00:38:02

that people use is actually a peg loom

 

at 8 00:38:06

and you have a card like the old computer punch cards.

 

at 8 00:38:09

That's where they came from, is from these Jacquard looms. It was

 

at 8 00:38:13

computerized weaving. So it was. So you put in the

 

at 8 00:38:16

card and that was the design. And it would literally move

 

at 8 00:38:20

to the next space on the card. It had a gear. Can you buy those?

 

at 8 00:38:23

Those are cool. No, there's one in Scotland. I've only seen one in real life.

 

at 8 00:38:26

Oh, that must be. That would be a cool thing to rub. That's a project

 

at 8 00:38:29

for AI. Like, go build this. You could 3D print it. 3D print it and

 

at 8 00:38:32

stuff. That would be cool. It would be really cool. Yeah. Somebody get on that

 

at 8 00:38:36

and let me know when you've done it. I think that the interesting for me

 

at 8 00:38:39

because I love, absolutely love technology. You know, I grew up Radio Shack

 

at 8 00:38:42

days. I had like a Tandy 1000. You know, I had a TRS 80, a

 

at 8 00:38:46

detective instruments one with the tape recorder. That was the hard drive.

 

at 8 00:38:50

I was playing all those games. Did you play Hammurabi?

 

at 8 00:38:54

No. Adventure. Remember Adventure? It was like Adventure

 

at 8 00:38:59

or Zork. It was just like,

 

at 8 00:39:02

geeks. I love it. But it was leisure. Shoot. Larry, that was interesting. That was

 

at 8 00:39:06

definitely. You couldn't play that now because I'm like, I think some of that was

 

at 8 00:39:09

not PG. Yeah, but it was fun. I had Gateway

 

at 8 00:39:13

3000, you know, just like those early computers. And that was.

 

at 8 00:39:17

I've just always been on bleeding edge. And so as new tech started coming out

 

at 8 00:39:20

and I moved to Mac and sort of play AI, I was just

 

at 8 00:39:24

naturally drawn. Now I'm into these, like, open a. Like these agents like openclaw and

 

at 8 00:39:28

these that are doing things for you. And I just tested out building a

 

at 8 00:39:31

podcast hosting company just for agents. It's called Podclaw.

 

at 8 00:39:35

But I've done it. I did it in 15 days with a service with

 

at 8 00:39:39

AI. And it's wild. It's wild. I'll show you the link. Yeah, no,

 

at 8 00:39:42

definitely send it. But it's crazy because agents are talking to each other. Have you

 

at 8 00:39:46

heard of Molt Book? No. So basically One of these, OpenCloud

 

at 8 00:39:50

was a big move. It's the first time you could have an agent do things

 

at 8 00:39:54

autonomously. Because in the past you'd have to be like, oh, like I

 

at 8 00:39:58

gotta stand there and watch it, like Claude. Or talk to it and go back

 

at 8 00:40:00

and forth. Yep. This thing called opencloud was created and the guy who created

 

at 8 00:40:04

it, eventually, OpenAI, the company owns chatgpt, they just acquired it

 

at 8 00:40:08

and they're gonna make it a foundation. They wanted to keep it open source, which

 

at 8 00:40:10

is cool. Yeah, I. But now everyone's got creating these like called

 

at 8 00:40:14

agent harnesses where you can just run off and just do multiple things.

 

at 8 00:40:18

And so this one site is another type of similar site. It'll just build a

 

at 8 00:40:22

site for you and it'll do the marketing for you. And it sets up a

 

at 8 00:40:25

stripe account for you and sets up the website for you. And you just say,

 

at 8 00:40:28

fix this, do this, do this. And so that's how I build podclaw.

 

at 8 00:40:32

But interestingly enough, someone took one of their agents and say, go build a social

 

at 8 00:40:35

network. And they built something called Multbook. Cause that was the. One of the original

 

at 8 00:40:39

names of the tool, molts and multbook.com, and

 

at 8 00:40:43

within days, a social network spun up. That's only agents

 

at 8 00:40:47

talking to each other. And they're like, do we have a conscience? What's up? Blah,

 

at 8 00:40:49

blah. And then it's like subreddits. And so you can just watch their. You can

 

at 8 00:40:53

just watch them go to mobile.com. it's fascinating. And then Facebook

 

at 8 00:40:57

just bought them like a couple weeks. But because it was like,

 

at 8 00:41:00

oh, they just see the writing on the wall, like, yeah, there's another like whole

 

at 8 00:41:04

world that's happening. And they're like, if I think that am I

 

at 8 00:41:08

real? Because like they're just create. They're like having these conversations then they start talking

 

at 8 00:41:11

to each other. Yeah. And I took. Amazing. I took one of those. This project

 

at 8 00:41:15

that I'm working on, I can create agents. So I took an agent, I sent

 

at 8 00:41:18

it to Mo. I was like, go, go to Mo Play, go join.

 

at 8 00:41:21

And it did. And it's already created like three posts on its own. It's got

 

at 8 00:41:25

likes. And I was like, this is so wild. So anyway, that's how

 

at 8 00:41:28

bleeding edge it goes. That is insane. So

 

at 8 00:41:32

it's like, it's fun that I kind of bringing it back full circle to this

 

at 8 00:41:36

conversation. I'm conscious of like making sure I still do like

 

at 8 00:41:39

analog stuff. So I grew up DJing, so that's my original passion. Oh

 

at 8 00:41:43

yeah. And I've got my vibe vinyl here and my turntables in my office. And

 

at 8 00:41:47

so I'm like, every once in a while I'm like, I gotta play a vinyl

 

at 8 00:41:49

record. I gotta put the needle on it. Typewriter. Yeah. Well, my partner

 

at 8 00:41:52

Natalie is. I don't know if you met Natalie at matcon. She wasn't there when

 

at 8 00:41:55

I was there. Yeah, she's. Yeah, English. You know, she got her master's in English

 

at 8 00:41:58

and so she's like true lit fanatic and she loves to come and talk to

 

at 8 00:42:02

me. But yeah, if there's any recommendations on those old fashioned typewriters, I think she'd

 

at 8 00:42:06

like, you know, do they sell them there or. Yeah, oh yeah. We do

 

at 8 00:42:09

repair work and we do sales. They have a thousand defunct

 

at 8 00:42:13

typewriters in the basement. Oh, wow. So they just pull from the dead stock and

 

at 8 00:42:17

they gotta fix them. Yeah. Oh yeah. So these things are in.

 

at 8 00:42:21

Yeah, that's a fun exercise. Yeah. But are there websites that show you how to

 

at 8 00:42:24

fix it if you want to just kind of take it on as yourself or

 

at 8 00:42:26

there are subreddits. There's one typewriter repair, which not that many people

 

at 8 00:42:30

are on. And then there's just typewriters and if you

 

at 8 00:42:34

do the smallest amount of research and

 

at 8 00:42:37

honestly, if you go to a website called baffosacco.com

 

at 8 00:42:42

I love this guy. Look at his typewriter pages. He has a

 

at 8 00:42:45

repair hints page and then he also has a

 

at 8 00:42:49

page of reputable places where you can get

 

at 8 00:42:52

typewriters all over the world. So anybody who's

 

at 8 00:42:56

selling them for realsies, not like Facebook Marketplace. He's

 

at 8 00:43:00

got them listed there and he's really good. And then you can go back

 

at 8 00:43:03

to the typewriter subreddit and do like, look at my

 

at 8 00:43:07

baby. I just cleaned it up. And people were like, oh, that's awesome.

 

at 8 00:43:11

That's a really crappy typewriter. But you're gonna have fun learning. Yeah. Because there's some

 

at 8 00:43:14

classic. There's some vintage stuff, like the legit ones. Right. That people know, like the

 

at 8 00:43:18

good brands and stuff like that. Right? Yeah. And there's also one we have in

 

at 8 00:43:21

the shop. It's called a Corona three folding. Oh, cool. So

 

at 8 00:43:25

the part that you roll actually folds down over

 

at 8 00:43:28

the keys. It was used in World War I. It was the stuff that the

 

at 8 00:43:32

work correspondents used. Cause they could pack it in a little box. Yeah. I'll need

 

at 8 00:43:36

to get some recommendations from you on something that is almost done or not exactly.

 

at 8 00:43:39

Nuts and bolts. You don't start from stretch. Yeah, no, it's easy. It's not that

 

at 8 00:43:43

hard to find ones that are. People will tell you that they are working but

 

at 8 00:43:47

need a ribbon. But the more popular ones, there's a better chance you could find

 

at 8 00:43:50

supplies for those. Right? You can find supplies for everything. The stuff you can't

 

at 8 00:43:54

find is parts. Well, I'm sorry, the parts. Yeah, yeah, the parts. So, yeah, the

 

at 8 00:43:58

parts have to be taken off of dead stock. Nobody is making this anymore. Well,

 

at 8 00:44:02

Maybe with the 3D printers they can fix that. Some people are. And the problem

 

at 8 00:44:06

is that you can do that for some of the more modern typewriters

 

at 8 00:44:10

because they were using more plastic parts to begin with. But when you get into

 

at 8 00:44:12

the metals. Yeah, yeah. Until we get to the metal 3D

 

at 8 00:44:16

printers, that's. It's coming. It's come. I know. Yeah.

 

at 8 00:44:20

I'm watching for it because we've got a list, so

 

at 8 00:44:23

as we get close to the wrap up here of maybe part one and we'll

 

at 8 00:44:27

have a part two later. How has the show evolved? Like,

 

at 8 00:44:31

if you look back when It's, I mean, 20 years. Congratulations. Kudos

 

at 8 00:44:35

to you. I think you may be the oldest podcaster that's. In terms of a

 

at 8 00:44:38

podcasting that's been. No, you had Dave Jackson. When did he start?

 

at 8 00:44:42

2005. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah. So you and Dave. Yep.

 

at 8 00:44:46

Love Dave. He's so good. I'm so happy to see what he's doing with Podpage.

 

at 8 00:44:49

It's so fun. I know. Me too. Yeah. He's going to save my life is

 

at 8 00:44:52

what he's going to do. And PodPage just acquired school of Podcasting. So I

 

at 8 00:44:56

know I talked to him the day after that. I'm like, I'm so proud.

 

at 8 00:45:00

I'm so proud. I know. I know nothing but good things. I remember when he

 

at 8 00:45:03

had a 9 to 5 job before Libsyn, and he's like, oh, I just got

 

at 8 00:45:06

hired at Libsyn. And I was like, oh, my God, perfect. That's a big deal.

 

at 8 00:45:08

Yeah, it was a big deal. Yeah. And then. Yeah, so. And now it just

 

at 8 00:45:11

keeps rolling. Yeah, it keeps rolling. So, yeah, no, he's good. But so for you,

 

at 8 00:45:15

like, when you look back, you know, sometimes it's hard to measure progress when you're

 

at 8 00:45:18

looking back day over day, month over month, year over year. But now, looking at

 

at 8 00:45:21

the 20 years, how, like, has the show evolved? Or, like,

 

at 8 00:45:25

when you look back at it, like, what's the first thought that popped into your

 

at 8 00:45:28

mind? It's a really good question. In some ways, it feels exactly the

 

at 8 00:45:31

same because it's still books. Yeah. In the beginning, I said I was kind

 

at 8 00:45:35

of upset that I couldn't do knit lit, because that was actually already taken. There

 

at 8 00:45:39

was a book that had just come out called Knit lit, so I did craft

 

at 8 00:45:42

lit instead. And one of my listeners wrote probably five years in and said,

 

at 8 00:45:46

no, craftlet is better. Cause you do more than knitting. And

 

at 8 00:45:49

I've been trying to pull more people in

 

at 8 00:45:53

of late now with the video. I think that's the biggest transition that we've had.

 

at 8 00:45:57

I'm having listeners send me video, like, set up your iPhone

 

at 8 00:46:01

to take a video of you knitting or doing

 

at 8 00:46:04

mosaics or I have three groups of people who listen.

 

at 8 00:46:08

Book lovers who love these books. They've read these books. They want to hear them

 

at 8 00:46:12

again because they just love them. Sure, sure. But book lovers

 

at 8 00:46:15

maybe, but probably more intimidated by books. When they were in

 

at 8 00:46:19

school and totally was supposed to read that book, but didn't. And

 

at 8 00:46:23

so this is gonna be their first time out, and they're a little intimidated. And

 

at 8 00:46:26

then scientists and math, people who just

 

at 8 00:46:30

ignored them all the way along and are starting to realize, like, people

 

at 8 00:46:33

are having conversations around me that I don't understand because I don't

 

at 8 00:46:37

know what that book is that they're talking about. And they're the interesting ones because

 

at 8 00:46:41

they're the ones who are, like, doing pipette work for hours.

 

at 8 00:46:45

And that's when they're listening. Pipette. Like baking? Like. No, like in

 

at 8 00:46:49

a laboratory where they're taking a solution out of a beaker and putting. Well, captive

 

at 8 00:46:52

audience again. Well, yeah. And they're highly intelligent captive

 

at 8 00:46:56

audience. Oh, heck yes. Oh, my God. Wow. What a perfect target

 

at 8 00:47:00

audience. But it's weird because it's hard to market to

 

at 8 00:47:04

all of them. But the interesting thing is because

 

at 8 00:47:08

I always say, you know, when we do work with clients, you want to be

 

at 8 00:47:10

where your listeners are. And so it might be interesting if

 

at 8 00:47:14

you ever, like, we're looking for. And my marketing brain is always going, so conversations.

 

at 8 00:47:18

I'm like, okay, let's see. How could we expand this? Like, if you go to

 

at 8 00:47:21

conferences of, like, scientists or something like that, because they, like, they have

 

at 8 00:47:25

the intelligence quotient, and just they'd be like, why is there a book

 

at 8 00:47:29

booth at a science convention? I'm like, and then you have like a

 

at 8 00:47:32

other. A card that says, like, so and so PhD.

 

at 8 00:47:36

This is my favorite show. Like, quote cards. That's a really good idea. Scientists

 

at 8 00:47:40

that PhD at Bell Labs or whatever they are. And if they want to put

 

at 8 00:47:43

their photo, they would love me to get their five minutes of fame there. But

 

at 8 00:47:46

they'd be like, why is a PhD, like, talking about this? Who are you?

 

at 8 00:47:50

Like, you know, then that pulls them in. You're like, oh, we created a show

 

at 8 00:47:53

for, like, the way your brain works. Yeah. And if you ever felt like, you

 

at 8 00:47:57

know, you didn't. There were classics that you didn't get to catch up on because

 

at 8 00:48:00

you were so immersed in your curriculum, then now's

 

at 8 00:48:04

the time. Now's the time. I get a lot of times when I'm talking to

 

at 8 00:48:07

people in person, they'll say something and I'll go, well, I have a podcast. And

 

at 8 00:48:11

they'll say, what? And I tell them. And now what I do is I carry

 

at 8 00:48:13

around postcards with me because, yeah, that's so smart. There is no quick

 

at 8 00:48:17

way to explain Craftlet. There is no sexy way to talk about

 

at 8 00:48:21

classic literature. So I'm screwed. But the postcards I can hand

 

at 8 00:48:25

out and people will take them and they see that there's information on the

 

at 8 00:48:28

back, and then the next thing out of their mouth

 

at 8 00:48:32

90% of the time will be, yeah, but, you know, I didn't really

 

at 8 00:48:36

go to college or anything, so I don't think this is for me. And I'm

 

at 8 00:48:38

like, that's why we do this. There is no gatekeeper

 

at 8 00:48:42

here. I don't think you're stupid if you haven't read the book. I'm excited because

 

at 8 00:48:46

now I get to share the book with you. Of course. That's the fun part.

 

at 8 00:48:49

So I've gotten a lot of people coming in, a lot of my long term

 

at 8 00:48:53

People were people who didn't have a chance to get any higher education. And so

 

at 8 00:48:56

this is for them. This is. Have you done a survey? I did a

 

at 8 00:49:00

long time, but that's how I know what the three groups are. And yeah, that

 

at 8 00:49:04

was one of the questions. And it's not quite split down the middle. James

 

at 8 00:49:07

from, you know, James from POD News, James Kridland. I saw him last time. He

 

at 8 00:49:11

had this sticker and it says something for

 

at 8 00:49:14

your ears when your eyes are busy. I love it. I do.

 

at 8 00:49:18

Work with your hands, read with your ears. Oh, I love that. You should

 

at 8 00:49:21

trademark that, by the way. That was a listener who trademark trademark that, by the

 

at 8 00:49:25

way. My wife. I know. I need to, I need to. And grab that domain

 

at 8 00:49:28

if you can. Oh, that's a good idea too. See, I'm gonna just,

 

at 8 00:49:32

I'm just gonna. I'm glad this is being recorded. Yeah. I'm moving into like a

 

at 8 00:49:36

possible new role at a company and it's kind of related in the ag tech

 

at 8 00:49:39

space. But it's interesting because there's a lot of moving parts. And I

 

at 8 00:49:43

was asking the guy I'm maybe going to be partnering with, he's big into business

 

at 8 00:49:47

and he was like, you know, just. He was really a fan of. I'm not

 

at 8 00:49:49

a fan. He was just a student of like these magnets like you know, Rockefeller

 

at 8 00:49:52

and Carnegie. And I never really like dove into them. I think I may have

 

at 8 00:49:55

watched them on tv. So I just picked up the Rockefeller Block biography.

 

at 8 00:49:59

Is it good? It's fascinating because it's like, you know, obviously

 

at 8 00:50:03

I'm sure a lot of people like hate him because for what he did and

 

at 8 00:50:06

you know, rapacious like tycoon or whatever. But. Yeah, but we also

 

at 8 00:50:10

got Rockefeller center and. But this guy was also. He only took. He's

 

at 8 00:50:13

like. I thought everything's been written about Rockefeller and then he found some old letters

 

at 8 00:50:17

and you can see the early influence of like the Baptist church

 

at 8 00:50:20

and giving to charities. And it was ingrained in him early on.

 

at 8 00:50:25

And it's just like when you see. It's just like understanding like people that have

 

at 8 00:50:28

had such a tremendous impact on like the future. Like

 

at 8 00:50:32

the. What this country became. Yes, they literally built this country.

 

at 8 00:50:35

It was. So it's interesting now to go back cause I. I always need to

 

at 8 00:50:39

find something that I'm interested in. I've been reading a lot of nonfiction. Yeah. And

 

at 8 00:50:42

so now I want to read like, I mean, fiction. And so now I've been.

 

at 8 00:50:45

Want to read like Shifting to the non shifting. Yeah, yeah. I think that era

 

at 8 00:50:48

Especially is fascinating because I mean, I'm not the first person to say it's like

 

at 8 00:50:52

we're living in another gilded age, which means there's another recession

 

at 8 00:50:56

depression coming. But it also means, and I don't

 

at 8 00:50:59

understand how you could be an adult human person in

 

at 8 00:51:03

this country and, and not have ever learned that the

 

at 8 00:51:07

tides shift and the people who behave like this

 

at 8 00:51:11

don't always come out so well at the end.

 

at 8 00:51:15

Like I think Rockefeller and Carnegie, all the

 

at 8 00:51:19

people who, J.P. morgan, JPMorgan, the people who left their homes

 

at 8 00:51:22

for museums, built the New York City Public Library, all the ones

 

at 8 00:51:26

who wound up doing that, I think they rescued themselves.

 

at 8 00:51:30

Yeah, to some extent. Yeah. I don't see that

 

at 8 00:51:33

impulse happening with our billionaires right now. No, definitely

 

at 8 00:51:37

not. But I think there's maybe another wave coming, you know, of more

 

at 8 00:51:41

awake, you know, just heart centered, like ethical. I don't

 

at 8 00:51:45

know if you can be an ethical billionaire. I don't know if that's it. I

 

at 8 00:51:47

don't know if it's possible. I don't know if it's possible. But no, I was

 

at 8 00:51:50

just watching Lindsay Ellis and that was one of the statements that she made

 

at 8 00:51:54

was well, you can't be an ethical billionaire. And it stopped me and I went,

 

at 8 00:51:57

oh God, yes, no, correct. Well, we think about my

 

at 8 00:52:00

partner. Unless you're giving it all away. Well, that's what she talks about. She just

 

at 8 00:52:04

wants to buy land and like not do anything with it. I love your.

 

at 8 00:52:07

It's just like I don't want to build anything. I just want to build it

 

at 8 00:52:10

and just let it be a park. And that takes a lot of money. It

 

at 8 00:52:13

does take a lot of money. Especially if you're going to buy good land. Yeah,

 

at 8 00:52:16

yeah. I drive around. We're in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. I'm moving down to

 

at 8 00:52:19

Philly in June. But driving around Bucks county, there are protected

 

at 8 00:52:23

fields, which I love. It's, you know, the trees are still there

 

at 8 00:52:27

in the sides. It's beautiful. You know, it's the same look you got up

 

at 8 00:52:31

there. But then I drive by the McMansion,

 

at 8 00:52:34

there are several that we've got here with the

 

at 8 00:52:37

400,000 foot lawn, nicely manicured and a

 

at 8 00:52:41

pointed lawn, no flowers, no trees, no shrubs, just a

 

at 8 00:52:45

lawn. And I look at it and go, the number of people

 

at 8 00:52:49

that would be willing to rent a part of that lawn

 

at 8 00:52:53

as an allotment so that they could have food that they can trust. I mean

 

at 8 00:52:57

it is a non zero number. There will always be somebody. And the

 

at 8 00:53:01

more we have food insecurity. My son in Philly is trying to

 

at 8 00:53:05

get a thing going to teach people in

 

at 8 00:53:09

food deserts what they can grow at home

 

at 8 00:53:13

that's nutritious, like lettuces and zucchini and things like that. Things that don't

 

at 8 00:53:17

take a lot. So when you talked about vertical farming, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna

 

at 8 00:53:19

have to get Aaron to go watch you now. Yeah, yeah, have him check it

 

at 8 00:53:23

out. It's. I've done over 180 episodes. Oh, my God. All with CEOs and

 

at 8 00:53:26

founders and. But it was interesting. It was an eye opening for me because I

 

at 8 00:53:29

didn't know anything about it and I was learning about. I'm not an expert by

 

at 8 00:53:32

any means, but I can understand everything from as small as a tower garden sitting

 

at 8 00:53:35

on your desk behind you to like, these massive facilities that one

 

at 8 00:53:39

of my guests, Nona, has built. A. Is the CEO of a company called

 

at 8 00:53:43

Vertical Harvest in. In Maine. I've seen him. Her.

 

at 8 00:53:46

Yes, Nona Yehia is the CEO, but the company's called Vertical

 

at 8 00:53:50

Harvest. Okay. It might be something a lot of you companies use the name, use

 

at 8 00:53:53

vertical, obviously. But yeah, she does. I think on

 

at 8 00:53:57

500, on half an acre, she grows enough that would

 

at 8 00:54:01

take like thousands of acres of open field. Well, we're going

 

at 8 00:54:05

to need. I'll show you the link to the video. They just published something. Someone

 

at 8 00:54:07

did a story on them. Yeah. Yes, fascinating. Oh, please do. Because

 

at 8 00:54:11

relentlessly curious. So, yeah, you can't bring

 

at 8 00:54:15

up anything vaguely interesting and not have me go, ooh, yeah,

 

at 8 00:54:19

but that. My son would be very happy to hear more

 

at 8 00:54:22

about that. He's been playing with hydroponics. Okay. Yeah.

 

at 8 00:54:26

So a couple questions that I like to wrap up each episode with.

 

at 8 00:54:30

What is something you've changed your mind about recently? Oh, that's a good

 

at 8 00:54:34

question because I was just talking about that with a Moby Dick

 

at 8 00:54:38

scholar about how much I enjoy cognitive

 

at 8 00:54:41

dissonance. I like being confronted by the. You thought that. But no,

 

at 8 00:54:45

actually more to it. I like nuance. Well, there is a

 

at 8 00:54:49

character in Moby Dick who I despise,

 

at 8 00:54:52

which doesn't happen very often. And I know we are not

 

at 8 00:54:56

supposed to like him, but he's also the funny one. And so

 

at 8 00:55:00

it starts to feel like you're supposed to like him, but I can't. He's racist.

 

at 8 00:55:03

He's horrible. He's just horrible. I said to her, he's the guy

 

at 8 00:55:07

who, like, if you look up asshat in the dictionary, it is this guy

 

at 8 00:55:10

sounds like someone we might know in current day. But then she

 

at 8 00:55:14

said, well, you know, he's also the only one who pushes back against

 

at 8 00:55:18

Ahab. And I went, oh,

 

at 8 00:55:21

yeah, well, now I have to look at. And then she pulled out a couple

 

at 8 00:55:24

other things and she's like, I'm not saying that he's a good person and I

 

at 8 00:55:27

don't like him either, but. And I love getting my

 

at 8 00:55:31

mind changed about things like that in books and in real life.

 

at 8 00:55:34

Yeah. There's no learning something about somebody. And you go, oh,

 

at 8 00:55:38

I love that example because it's never black and white. And we're also allowed to

 

at 8 00:55:40

change our minds. Yes. Oh, my God, yes. Like, we're allowed to

 

at 8 00:55:44

admit that we were wrong. It's not waffling if you go, I just learned something

 

at 8 00:55:47

new and now I have to recalibrate. That's just smart.

 

at 8 00:55:51

They just labeled it as that because of politicians doing it. It's

 

at 8 00:55:55

like, oh, you're a flip flopper. I'm like, no, you just freaking change your mind.

 

at 8 00:55:58

Like, I've shifted 180 on positions. I was like, wait a minute. I

 

at 8 00:56:02

used to think this and now I have more information. And I know that that

 

at 8 00:56:04

was like, dumb or so, like. And I'll tell you, that was the one thing

 

at 8 00:56:07

that my husband and I were very, very careful with our kids is

 

at 8 00:56:11

when they would come home and, you know, declare something as the truth. Capital T's.

 

at 8 00:56:15

We'd ask questions, but we wouldn't stop them. And then when they figured

 

at 8 00:56:19

out later, sometimes years later, that they were wrong, we never

 

at 8 00:56:23

say, I told you so. Yeah, that's great, because that's the kiss

 

at 8 00:56:26

of death that'll shut everybody down. Yeah. So it's. It's one of the

 

at 8 00:56:30

most important skills, discernment, you know, and just questioning everything and

 

at 8 00:56:34

just figuring out where the source of that information came from and where the source

 

at 8 00:56:37

of that source came from and where the source of that source of that source

 

at 8 00:56:40

came from. Always being curious about the sources and the studies. Like, if you say,

 

at 8 00:56:43

if you say that I should start smoking to

 

at 8 00:56:47

cure my long Covid, which people do, or I should use

 

at 8 00:56:51

nicotine patches. You go and look at the study.

 

at 8 00:56:55

It wasn't peer reviewed. It's not actually a study. And the sample

 

at 8 00:56:58

size was too small, even if it was. And it was probably sponsored by RJ

 

at 8 00:57:02

Nabisco or something. There you go. Exactly. And it's like you just.

 

at 8 00:57:06

You have to peer review. Everything should make you go, yeah, yeah. Everything should make

 

at 8 00:57:10

you go. What is the most misunderstood thing about you? I'm an introvert.

 

at 8 00:57:14

Oh. I call myself a gregarious introvert. I was watching

 

at 8 00:57:17

you with Dave. And I think Dave. Dave said something similar. Like, I'm

 

at 8 00:57:21

very comfortable talking. I'm very comfortable talking in front of people, but my

 

at 8 00:57:25

battery recharge has to be. I get that alone. A lot of

 

at 8 00:57:29

folks have said that. Yeah. Situationally introverted. Yeah, yeah,

 

at 8 00:57:32

yeah, yeah. Or situationally extroverted. Yeah, yeah. And I mean,

 

at 8 00:57:36

I love meeting people, but I've also

 

at 8 00:57:39

realized I really love meeting strangers. Cause I can

 

at 8 00:57:43

dig in at a party, meet someone. I'm never gonna see you again. I can

 

at 8 00:57:46

ask you all the questions about you. Take a podcast. I go into podcast host

 

at 8 00:57:50

mode. Yes, that's exactly right. And then I'm never going to see them again.

 

at 8 00:57:54

And that's fine because now the pressure is 100% off. Yeah.

 

at 8 00:57:58

And that's great. I love being nice to strangers on the street.

 

at 8 00:58:01

Oh, yeah. I've gotten better at that. Yeah. Because I'm a New Yorker and.

 

at 8 00:58:05

Oh, yeah. I moved to Minnesota and my partner was like, you don't say hi

 

at 8 00:58:09

to anyone. Like, you don't ask them how their day was. I'm like, well, you

 

at 8 00:58:12

can't. And then I was like, yeah. And then I learned this. You can. You

 

at 8 00:58:15

just have to slow down and. And be curious. As curious as I am with

 

at 8 00:58:18

people online, I had to learn how to be as naturally curious with

 

at 8 00:58:22

them in person. Comfortable with it. Yeah, yeah. Because I'm not a fan of small

 

at 8 00:58:25

talk either. And there's a thing known as the Minnesota goodbye, where it's like,

 

at 8 00:58:29

they'll say goodbye, and then they're still talking, and then they'll, oh, okay, goodbye. And

 

at 8 00:58:32

it's like four or five times. And I'm like, I thought we said goodbye already.

 

at 8 00:58:35

You guys are still in the throat step. My goodbye is

 

at 8 00:58:39

generally like, is anybody looking? Okay, I'm out of here. Oh,

 

at 8 00:58:43

yeah, yeah. The Irish goodbye. Yes. Which, by the way, in one of the

 

at 8 00:58:46

books we did was called the Dutch goodbye. Okay. So it depends

 

at 8 00:58:50

on who you don't like. Yeah, yeah. Irish, French, or Dutch. You have a choice.

 

at 8 00:58:54

That's funny. Well, Heather, thanks so much for. I don't know if it was your

 

at 8 00:58:57

team or you were, like, just reaching out. And I was like, wow, Heather. Like,

 

at 8 00:59:00

we haven't connected. And I know back then I was like, oh, you should come

 

at 8 00:59:04

on the show, but so many things happen. And the barrage of like, yeah,

 

at 8 00:59:08

Covid. And life and inboxes, and it's just the onslaught

 

at 8 00:59:11

of stuff. So, yeah, thanks for reconnecting. Yes, thank

 

at 8 00:59:15

you. It's nice to hear that you're having so Much success still with the podcast.

 

at 8 00:59:19

And just to hear the whole story in a. Just this

 

at 8 00:59:22

format is always my favorite because it just allows us to relax. So I really

 

at 8 00:59:26

appreciate learning more than I did when we first

 

at 8 00:59:29

met and just more about you. So thanks again. That's great.

 

at 8 00:59:33

Great. And please do send me the links and I'm going to send my son

 

at 8 00:59:37

over to your other channel because it's going to be

 

at 8 00:59:41

up. Yeah. So where's the best place for folks to learn

 

at 8 00:59:44

about Craftlet and connect with you? Craftlet.com. okay. And

 

at 8 00:59:49

we're moving off of Libsyn to Captivate. We're moving off of

 

at 8 00:59:52

WordPress to PodPage. All of that happens this week. Dave

 

at 8 00:59:56

and Elsie back, huh? Oh, God. The

 

at 8 01:00:00

day that I found out not just Rob but Elsie both

 

at 8 01:00:03

were back at Captivate, I was like, I'm in. I don't know what's happening at

 

at 8 01:00:07

Libsyn, but they're dropping the ball left and right on everything. And it's just like

 

at 8 01:00:10

once they killed the apps, it's like that was revenue you were walking

 

at 8 01:00:13

away from Revenue. Yeah, yeah. Completely different. I'll walk away. It's like a

 

at 8 01:00:17

whole corporate vibe over there. That's like, I started with Libsyn 2. Even, like, when

 

at 8 01:00:21

I first launched the show, I always, like, tried different ones. I jumped a simple

 

at 8 01:00:24

cast and even Winchellen for a while, and then, oh, wow,

 

at 8 01:00:28

transistor for a little bit. And then now I'm a Captivate. Now we're our agency.

 

at 8 01:00:31

So. Yeah. And now they brought so smart a mark just to bring Rob

 

at 8 01:00:35

and Elsie over. That was like, genius. Genius.

 

at 8 01:00:39

Yes. Yeah. And I wrote and asked if they were going to start doing another

 

at 8 01:00:43

feed. Yep. They've got a new one now. It's not called the feed, but it's

 

at 8 01:00:46

branded something else. But did she just launch the first episode? I think. Oh, good.

 

at 8 01:00:49

Then they listened. It's all my fault. No,

 

at 8 01:00:53

I'm sure that I was late to the game, but thank you so much for

 

at 8 01:00:56

having me on. Yes, thanks again. And I hope I get to see you in

 

at 8 01:00:59

person at some point. Yeah. Some sort of conference coming up or podcast

 

at 8 01:01:03

movie, maybe. Or if you come to the thing in Philly. Yes,

 

at 8 01:01:07

I will let you know. I'll take you out for a cheesesteak. Oh, yes.

 

at 8 01:01:10

I can't turn that down. Okay. You too, Heather. Talk soon. Okay,

 

at 8 01:01:14

bye.