Speaker 1: Text with Technology with tex Stuff from stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to text Stuff. I am your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer here at How Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: and we made it, guys all the way to episode
Speaker 1: nine hundred, and they said it couldn't be done or
Speaker 1: shouldn't be done one of the two. Who's to say,
Speaker 1: but happy nine episode of text Stuff at least according
Speaker 1: to my notes, which could clearly be totally wrong. Uh,
Speaker 1: this may or may not be the nine episode. I
Speaker 1: use a spreadsheet and I do a little plus one,
Speaker 1: and according to that, it's nine. So we're gonna treat
Speaker 1: it like it's the nine, because if it's not, you
Speaker 1: can just be comforted in knowing that there's no real
Speaker 1: significance to any particular number anyway. In other words, listen
Speaker 1: to every tech Stuff episode like it's or something. For
Speaker 1: today's episode, we're going to do something I should have
Speaker 1: covered hundreds of episodes ago. We're going to look at
Speaker 1: the how Stuff Works story. It's a little different from
Speaker 1: how How Stuff Works works. I think I have done
Speaker 1: that episode in the past, but this is more about
Speaker 1: the story of the company, and it's a complicated one.
Speaker 1: For multiple reasons. Now, one of those is that we
Speaker 1: have two very different branches of the company these days.
Speaker 1: We have the website how stuff works dot Com. That's
Speaker 1: the that's the business that hired me oh so many
Speaker 1: years ago. It's the home to thousands of articles about
Speaker 1: all sorts of topics. And then we have the podcast network,
Speaker 1: of which tech stuff is a part, along with other
Speaker 1: great shows like stuff you should Know, Stuff you missed
Speaker 1: in history class, and shows that aren't so great, like
Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to know That's for you,
Speaker 1: Ben Bolan Uh and more. Uh. We have those two
Speaker 1: different branches. And now, even though I got hired for
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot Com, I work for the podcast side.
Speaker 1: In this episode, I'm going to focus mainly on that
Speaker 1: website side of the business. We will later on chat
Speaker 1: with our us in louder Milk. She is the head
Speaker 1: of the editorial department here at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: and we'll learn all about the process of pitching and
Speaker 1: selecting and editing articles for the site, as well as
Speaker 1: how things have changed since she came on board, and
Speaker 1: we'll look at the company in general and how that's
Speaker 1: changed over the years. So actually we'll start with that.
Speaker 1: The history of how Stuff Works dates back to nineteen
Speaker 1: and that's when Marshall Brain and yes that is his
Speaker 1: real name, decided to launch a website that would host
Speaker 1: articles about how stuff works. Marshall Brain was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one and Santa Monica, California, and he attended
Speaker 1: a polytechnic institute over in New York, earned a bachelor's
Speaker 1: degree in electrical engineering, and then went on to earn
Speaker 1: his master's degree in computer science at North Carolina State
Speaker 1: University in Raleigh, North Carolina, and he became a computer
Speaker 1: science professor there. Between nineteen six and nine. Two and
Speaker 1: ninety two, he founded a software training and consulting company,
Speaker 1: and in he began publishing articles online on his new
Speaker 1: web page, which he dubbed how stuff Works. Early articles
Speaker 1: mostly focused on technology. How a car engine works is
Speaker 1: typically cited as the first article on the site. The
Speaker 1: truth is lost to antiquity or we just haven't been
Speaker 1: able to get a straight story to find out, but
Speaker 1: how a car engine works is typically the one we say, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's kind of the first real how stuff works article,
Speaker 1: But others that came out that same year would include
Speaker 1: how television works. How the radio spectrum works, how a
Speaker 1: thermis works, and Marshall Brain's site became popular and attracted
Speaker 1: lots of visitors, and in two thousand he decided he
Speaker 1: would hold around a venture capital funding in order to
Speaker 1: ramp up this website, because up to that point it
Speaker 1: had really been a hobby. He wasn't looking at it
Speaker 1: as a full business, but he saw the site grow
Speaker 1: and he formed a an entire business out of it.
Speaker 1: He hired on a staff, he set up a headquarters
Speaker 1: in Carry, North Carolina, but he did find it challenging
Speaker 1: to create a business that had an ongoing source of revenue.
Speaker 1: He wasn't able to really figure out that part out,
Speaker 1: or or at least get the backing of advertisers to
Speaker 1: really make a go of it, and by the end
Speaker 1: of two thousand one he had to cut back on
Speaker 1: about half of his company's staff. So while he had
Speaker 1: hired on a bunch of people after that first round
Speaker 1: of venture capital funding, that money didn't last forever and
Speaker 1: the revenue just hadn't come around yet, so he laid
Speaker 1: off about half the people he had had to hire.
Speaker 1: He couldn't get the advertising support he needed to keep
Speaker 1: the site going. He sought another round of venture funding,
Speaker 1: and in two thousand two, there's a private company that
Speaker 1: was called Convex that made an offer to buy How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works, and Brain accepted. The price was the princely
Speaker 1: sum of one million dollars. The Convex Group was an
Speaker 1: entertainment and investment company. It was founded by a guy
Speaker 1: named Jeff Arnold. Jeff Arnold started his career doing starting
Speaker 1: several other businesses, but really was known for beating the
Speaker 1: founder of a website called web Md. Just been terrifying
Speaker 1: people ever since. Whenever you have an ache, pain, or
Speaker 1: strange rash, you go to web Md and then you
Speaker 1: realize that you've got some sort of Venusian death cold
Speaker 1: or something. But he founded this company. It was wildly successful. However,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a runaway hit right out of the gate.
Speaker 1: Arnold actually left web md after the dot com crash
Speaker 1: that happened around two thousand, two thousand one, and he
Speaker 1: said that he just didn't feel like he could lead
Speaker 1: web m D through that that turmoil. He didn't have
Speaker 1: the experience to do it. So insteady win and created
Speaker 1: the Convex Group. Now, the Convex Group was a company,
Speaker 1: like I said, that invested in largely entertainment ventures, and
Speaker 1: they acquired several other entities, so they purchased other companies.
Speaker 1: One of those was a company called lid Rock. Do
Speaker 1: you remember lid Rock. If not, here's a quick refresher.
Speaker 1: Once upon a time, my dear listeners, there were movie
Speaker 1: theater chains in the United States in particular, but in
Speaker 1: other countries as well, that would include a c D
Speaker 1: that is, a compact disc. With certain drink purchases. The
Speaker 1: compact disc would fit into the lid of a gargantuan
Speaker 1: sized soft drink cup, which I'm sure was marketed as
Speaker 1: a small and the idea was that you would pop
Speaker 1: off the lid, take out the c D, and then
Speaker 1: you could discover new music, presumably by playing the CD.
Speaker 1: If you can just discover it by looking at one.
Speaker 1: Your eyes are lasers in your robot. We had some
Speaker 1: of these lid Rock lids around the office. When I
Speaker 1: first started at How Stuff Works, it wasn't subject of
Speaker 1: some jovial conversation at points in the editorial department. Now
Speaker 1: I joined How Stuff Works Come in two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: and that was when it was still owned by the
Speaker 1: Convex Group. So I have some interesting memories are of
Speaker 1: this time. I was actually part of the staff anyway,
Speaker 1: the Convex Group, but How Stuff Works with the goal
Speaker 1: of selling it for a profit further down the road.
Speaker 1: This was not a secret. It was not like it
Speaker 1: was coming as a shock to anyone. It was pretty
Speaker 1: much part of the deal when the Convex Group made
Speaker 1: the acquisition in two thousand two. It's just it took
Speaker 1: a few years to get to the point where they
Speaker 1: could sell it for a really good profit. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: the website grew. Now there wasn't time before I was
Speaker 1: hired where things seemed really interesting to me. Now I
Speaker 1: never got to experience this firsthand. I just got to
Speaker 1: hear about this time, this wondrous, magical, mythical time. Before
Speaker 1: I got hired on there used to be a branch
Speaker 1: of the How Stuff Works site called stuff Oh, And
Speaker 1: this was meant to cover more whimsical and lighthearted topics,
Speaker 1: largely entertainment related topics. How Stuff Works was thought to
Speaker 1: be more serious. It was going to explain stuff like
Speaker 1: refrigerators and computers and world finance, and STUFFO would answer
Speaker 1: really weird questions such as who would win in a fight?
Speaker 1: Superman or a Jedi. STUFFO existed from two thousand four
Speaker 1: to about two thousand six, and from what I heard,
Speaker 1: it was a lot of fun to work on, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't to last. By the time I was brought on,
Speaker 1: STUFFO was gone, and the the editorial staff of How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works itself had been through a really rough patch.
Speaker 1: All of the full time writers, except for one, we're gone.
Speaker 1: There's one remaining full time writer when I was brought on.
Speaker 1: That one full time staff writer was Tracy V. Wilson.
Speaker 1: Now she's a host of stuff you missed in history class.
Speaker 1: That might be where you're familiar with Tracy, But I
Speaker 1: had known Tracy from before I started How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I actually was a writer on a series of things
Speaker 1: that Tracy would also occasionally write for, and that's how
Speaker 1: we knew each other. So I applied to work for
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works in late two thousand six, got an
Speaker 1: interview in early two thousand seven, and was hired on
Speaker 1: February fifteen, two thousand seven. At that time, Tracy and
Speaker 1: I were the only two full time staff writers, with
Speaker 1: Julia Layton writing Questions of the Day, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: more about that in our interview. With Alison lower Milk,
Speaker 1: the managing editor of How Stuff Works in just a
Speaker 1: few moments. Now, a few months after I joined, the
Speaker 1: company began to reinvest in the editorial department. So it
Speaker 1: had gone through a dip where a lot of the
Speaker 1: people were either laid off or people left the job
Speaker 1: to go and do something else, and Tracy and I
Speaker 1: were the only two there. But they then switched where
Speaker 1: there was this reinvestment and the department began to grow
Speaker 1: and we started to hire new writers and editors. And
Speaker 1: some of those people are folks that you might be
Speaker 1: familiar with, such as Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant. They
Speaker 1: came in on that first wave. So I was here first.
Speaker 1: I want that noted these days, they do host stuff
Speaker 1: you should know, a podcast of some renown. I do
Speaker 1: not begrudge them their success. They're actually amazing. They are talented,
Speaker 1: they are funny, they're wicked smart, and so they are
Speaker 1: fantastic coworkers and great podcasters. Now, in October two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: this was less than a year after I had started
Speaker 1: at the company, we got the announcement that Discovery Communications,
Speaker 1: that is the company behind the Discovery Channel, the Science
Speaker 1: Channel TLC and More was going to buy How Stuff
Speaker 1: Works and then generally agreed upon estimate for the sales price,
Speaker 1: because these things are not always public, was two hundred
Speaker 1: fifty million dollars. That's a pretty nice profit for that
Speaker 1: million dollar investment that was made back in two thousand two.
Speaker 1: I mean, also explain what life was like back then
Speaker 1: for the writers of How Stuff Works. Not in general,
Speaker 1: I mean, two thousand seven wasn't that long ago. You
Speaker 1: could probably remember it yourself, But if you were a
Speaker 1: writer in two thousand seven, particularly when Tracy and I
Speaker 1: were writing, we would write one article every two weeks
Speaker 1: and we would just alternate. By the time Discovery was
Speaker 1: purchasing us, we had switched to writing an article every week,
Speaker 1: and we then had more writers and more editors, so
Speaker 1: we could actually publish more than one article every week.
Speaker 1: Because back in the day, if you went to House
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com and you looked at that front page,
Speaker 1: there would only be one new article every single week.
Speaker 1: If you went back the next day, there might be
Speaker 1: different articles listed on the home page, but they were
Speaker 1: all previously written, they weren't new. So this was a
Speaker 1: moment where we were transforming that where we were trying
Speaker 1: to generate an entire web page is worth or a
Speaker 1: tire landing pages worth of new content every week, which
Speaker 1: was a big challenge. It was it was ramping up
Speaker 1: quite a bit, and it put a lot of pressure
Speaker 1: on us as writers and editors. Now, How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: was intended to become a digital arm of Discovery Communications,
Speaker 1: and on the surface, it looked like it was going
Speaker 1: to be a really good fit because the content on
Speaker 1: Discovery was all about asking interesting questions and finding out
Speaker 1: the answers, which is, if you hadn't figured it out,
Speaker 1: what How Stuff Works is all about. Two And there
Speaker 1: were a lot of cool opportunities that popped up due
Speaker 1: to Discovery being the owner of the company. So sometimes
Speaker 1: people had an opportunity to write for a television show
Speaker 1: or even appear on one. And there were also some
Speaker 1: things that were perhaps a little less positive, but that's
Speaker 1: to be expected with any major change in the company.
Speaker 1: It's not unique to How Stuff Works. This was also,
Speaker 1: of course, during a time at Discovery when the channels
Speaker 1: began to create some content that met with let's say,
Speaker 1: mixed reactions, such as specials of Mermaids and Megaladon's that
Speaker 1: seemed to be documentaries but were in fact fiction that
Speaker 1: was a fun thing to live through and right for
Speaker 1: Under Discovery. How Stuff Works would also launch a new
Speaker 1: business podcasts now we're going to talk more about that
Speaker 1: in episode nine one. But the major podcasts that we
Speaker 1: launched back in two thousand and eight would be Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know, Stuff You Missed in History Class, which
Speaker 1: was originally called Factor Fiction, and of course Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: and Marshall Brain also launched a short form podcast called
Speaker 1: brain Stuff. From two thousand eight until two thousand fourteen,
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works was part of the Discovery Communications family,
Speaker 1: and we produced podcasts and videos on top of continuing
Speaker 1: to write articles about all sorts of topics. For a while,
Speaker 1: writers specialized in specific content categories, and I was asked
Speaker 1: and accepted uh to become deemed the head writer for
Speaker 1: computers and electronics because everyone else was scared of them.
Speaker 1: We're all a bunch of English Lit majors. But I
Speaker 1: argued that technology meant I had the easiest job of everybody,
Speaker 1: because here's a secret. Technology either works or it doesn't,
Speaker 1: so you just learn how it works and you explain
Speaker 1: it and you're done. Whereas if you're covering any of
Speaker 1: those fuzzy social things, it gets way more messy and complicated.
Speaker 1: Josh Chuck, Robert Lamb and uh WHRs truly became senior
Speaker 1: writers at that time, and we helped shape the editorial
Speaker 1: voice in the direction of the website. We experimented with
Speaker 1: creating new experiences, such as with Android and iOS apps,
Speaker 1: and we collaborate with other parts of the Discovery digital network.
Speaker 1: By Discoveries strategy for digital was changing, the company began
Speaker 1: to sell off or shut down various divisions within their
Speaker 1: digital network. It wasn't just how Stuff Works, it also
Speaker 1: was source Fed and others, and they decided to sell
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works. The company that bought How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: was called Blue Cora, and it paid a reported forty
Speaker 1: five million dollars for the site, which was obviously a
Speaker 1: huge drop in price and any two drop in price
Speaker 1: in fact from what Discovery had paid back in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight. So I'm going to be real here. It
Speaker 1: was not easy to go through this transition. For one thing,
Speaker 1: when you see the company you love and work for
Speaker 1: sell for so much less than what it was value
Speaker 1: just a few years earlier, that's hard to take and
Speaker 1: most of us had no idea what Blue Cora even did.
Speaker 1: Some of the still don't. What it did do, mainly
Speaker 1: is own other companies like Infospace. Infospace is one of
Speaker 1: those companies that has its own really complicated history, including
Speaker 1: a fairly shady past at one point, though the company
Speaker 1: of today does not resemble that older one at all.
Speaker 1: And maybe one day I'll do a full episode on
Speaker 1: the Infospace story, because it is interesting and it is tumultuous,
Speaker 1: and the company has emerged from that past and has
Speaker 1: done incredible work. How stuff Works was meant to complement Infospace,
Speaker 1: which focused on search business, so they would do search
Speaker 1: advertising and search optimization. How stuff Works would end up
Speaker 1: being a great pairing. That was the logic. How stuff
Speaker 1: Works would create content, Infospace would at leverage its expertise
Speaker 1: with search to help how stuff Works take advantage of
Speaker 1: that search power, and it would become a mutually beneficial relationship.
Speaker 1: But then Blue Cora began to focus more on financial
Speaker 1: services and less on Internet search. As the parent company's
Speaker 1: goals began to change, it became clear to the business
Speaker 1: owners that Infospace and with it, how stuff Works didn't
Speaker 1: really have a place at the table anymore. Now this
Speaker 1: is particularly interesting to me because Infospace created Blue Cora
Speaker 1: as a holding company. So Infospace created Blue Cora. Then
Speaker 1: eventually Blue Corus says, you know what, we don't need
Speaker 1: Infospace anymore. This is kind of similar to how Google
Speaker 1: created Alphabet to be a holding company, a parent company
Speaker 1: for all of the Google sub companies. And so Blue
Speaker 1: Cora began to look for a company that might want
Speaker 1: to purchase Infospace and also take How Stuff Works along
Speaker 1: for the ride. That company would be one called open Mail.
Speaker 1: And yeah, this is really is a crazy complicated story.
Speaker 1: I know because I lived through all of this. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Open Mail LLC was a data management and marketing technology
Speaker 1: company which purchased both Infospace and How Stuff Works for
Speaker 1: forty five million dollars, which also stung because now the
Speaker 1: company that was purchased two years previously for forty five
Speaker 1: million dollars was being sold with another much larger company
Speaker 1: for a combined price of forty five million dollars. Open
Speaker 1: Mail would later rebrand itself into System one, and in August,
Speaker 1: System One announced it was going to spin off How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works as an independent company, and that's where we
Speaker 1: are now. In that time, Conald Burne has been my
Speaker 1: boss twice. He joined how stuff Works in two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: a few months after I started, and he headed up
Speaker 1: the company for several years until Discovery sold how stuff
Speaker 1: Works to Blue Cora, and then we parted ways. Then,
Speaker 1: as how stuff Works became an independent company in sen
Speaker 1: he returned and now he's the boss again. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting. Now I've got a whole lot more
Speaker 1: to say about how stuff Works the company, but first
Speaker 1: you guessed it. Let's take a quick break to thank
Speaker 1: our sponsor. All Right, we're back now, I'd like to
Speaker 1: switch over to an interview I did earlier with Alison Loudermilk,
Speaker 1: be managing editor of how stuff Works, to talk about
Speaker 1: the voice of the site and how things have changed
Speaker 1: over the years. I am joined in the studio by
Speaker 1: Alison louder Milk, the managing editor over at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Allison, I invited you here so that
Speaker 1: we could talk about the experience of working for how
Speaker 1: stuff Works, as well as the uh, the sort of
Speaker 1: stuff you do as managing editor, and kind of how
Speaker 1: the site itself has changed a little bit over time.
Speaker 1: We try to keep a consistent voice for the the website,
Speaker 1: so that we can have that sort of throughput, but
Speaker 1: it's uh, there are little things around the edges that change.
Speaker 1: So first off, how would you describe how stuff works
Speaker 1: as voice to somebody if you were telling them and
Speaker 1: they had never visited the website, and you said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's a reference site. It's got tons
Speaker 1: of information about all sorts of topics. How would you
Speaker 1: describe the tone or the voice of the site, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: That's a great question and it's something we think about
Speaker 1: a lot on the editorial team. UM. I think the
Speaker 1: most important thing to recognize about the folks who are
Speaker 1: here editing and writing for House to Works is that
Speaker 1: we are a curious bunch, and so we let our
Speaker 1: innate wonder of the world really drive what we're talking about. UM.
Speaker 1: We are always curious and we are always trying to
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of something. UM, and that can
Speaker 1: drive the conversation. Let's take let's take what's going on
Speaker 1: in the world today. There's a lot of political things.
Speaker 1: House to Works is not, always, has not traditionally been
Speaker 1: a political site, but we will try to find the story,
Speaker 1: the explainer behind the politics, like how does that process work?
Speaker 1: Does a president have to live in the White House,
Speaker 1: things like that. UM, So we're always trying to look
Speaker 1: for the bigger picture of something that's happening behind the news.
Speaker 1: We started out very science and technically focused. Our big article,
Speaker 1: as I'm smiling right here and I'm waiting for you
Speaker 1: to recognize, it is how car engines work. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's the big one. That's the gendery how stuff works, biggie.
Speaker 1: And we've gone on to do thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: articles since then, and what does remain consistent over all
Speaker 1: of those articles is the curiosity and it's it's it
Speaker 1: shouldn't be superficial. We strive to never be superficial, but
Speaker 1: rather we're trying to get underneath and dig I mean,
Speaker 1: are there scientific forces at work? What is the theory?
Speaker 1: What are what is the research out there? Um that
Speaker 1: has you know, investigated the topic at hand. We try
Speaker 1: to go for primary sources. We are factual. We try
Speaker 1: as much as we can to be unbiased, but of
Speaker 1: course we're coming from a certain point of view. So
Speaker 1: there is so much you can do on that front. Well,
Speaker 1: and I like to describe it sort of as you know,
Speaker 1: you're chatting with a super smart friend of yours at
Speaker 1: like a restaurant or something, or you know, some casual environment,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't come across necessarily professorial. Right, It's not
Speaker 1: like a lecture. It's it's not dry like a typical
Speaker 1: reference book would be. But it's also not as flippant
Speaker 1: as some other sites might be. There's a there's a
Speaker 1: middle ground there. So and I'm not trying to dismiss
Speaker 1: or or talk trash about sites that are more uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they add more humor into their their work.
Speaker 1: I think there is value in that. That's just not
Speaker 1: the voice of how stuff works. There's a little bit,
Speaker 1: but it's not like and this is the setup for
Speaker 1: a jokey joke, and now we'll throw in a factor
Speaker 1: to uh. There's some delicate line in between. That's the
Speaker 1: way I always felt that, you know, you wanted to
Speaker 1: feel like the article is taking you and treating you
Speaker 1: as an equal as the reader. Right, Like we're not
Speaker 1: talking down to anybody, We're not trying to uh to
Speaker 1: come across as we're We are the Great Oracle, and
Speaker 1: you shall kneel before us, and we will bestow our
Speaker 1: wisdom and knowledge upon you, and you will be better
Speaker 1: for it, but still less than us and go away.
Speaker 1: Now that's not the way we wanted to have how
Speaker 1: stuff works come across. And uh So it was always
Speaker 1: a challenge for me as a writer two find the
Speaker 1: elements in an assignment that got me interested, you know,
Speaker 1: engage that that sense of curiosity you were talking about,
Speaker 1: and would therefore energize me to write the whole piece.
Speaker 1: And sometimes, actually more frequently than not, the ones that
Speaker 1: I found more inspiring were topics that I initially thought
Speaker 1: were going to be terrible, like what can you give
Speaker 1: us an example? I mean, let's see, let I'll think
Speaker 1: about that. Gosh, I wrote so many and it's been
Speaker 1: so long since I've written any but like I wrote
Speaker 1: some about cloud computing when cloud computing was still a
Speaker 1: buzz term that not very many people understood, and I
Speaker 1: was worried that it was just going to be super
Speaker 1: dry and really technical and that there wouldn't be anything
Speaker 1: interesting about it. And the more I learned about the
Speaker 1: more I thought, this is actually pretty fascinating. The a
Speaker 1: this architecture works, the whole concept of it, the fact
Speaker 1: that we call it a cloud, but really you're information
Speaker 1: is still living on a computer in fact it's living
Speaker 1: on several computers. Typically if you have redundancy built in.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go into that. I've done full
Speaker 1: episodes about it, but I found it very interesting, whereas
Speaker 1: there would be other ones that maybe I thought going
Speaker 1: into it, oh, I can't wait to write about this,
Speaker 1: and then maybe two pages into the article, I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be harder than I imagine, because even
Speaker 1: though I was excited at the beginning, when I start
Speaker 1: looking into it, either there is a lack of compelling
Speaker 1: information out there for you to write a sizeable article,
Speaker 1: or you just haven't found the right the right entry point.
Speaker 1: And one of the ways we try to prepare ourselves
Speaker 1: when we're getting ready to start an article, as we
Speaker 1: send out an initial approach, which is, yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: fun process that Jonathan Strickland is infamous for ignoring of
Speaker 1: the initial approach, though, that's typically where we create a
Speaker 1: list of questions we feel the article should answer. Most
Speaker 1: of the time, sometimes it's something else like it maybe
Speaker 1: like we've got this idea for a list of really
Speaker 1: important examples of a particular category. There's one that went
Speaker 1: around just recently. They got a lot of feedback and uh,
Speaker 1: and in that case, it just ends up being people listing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I could, right, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: the one I'm talking about right now. Where it was
Speaker 1: it was it was musicals that are that we're particularly
Speaker 1: important for the art form of musical theater, right, and
Speaker 1: so people started. It's more activity than I've seen in
Speaker 1: quite a while. And honestly, and I actually engaged in
Speaker 1: this one. I argue that The Fantastics should be on
Speaker 1: that list because it was the longest running off Broadway
Speaker 1: musical of all time, and therefore it deserves a place
Speaker 1: on that list. Also, Jerry Orbach was in that and
Speaker 1: he's amazing. So that sort of thing. You get those
Speaker 1: initial approaches. But most of the time, our initial approaches
Speaker 1: are questions that we think the article should answer. And
Speaker 1: I love that process because it shows it shows kind
Speaker 1: of how everyone thinks based upon the questions they tend
Speaker 1: to submit. So let me give you a classic Tracy
Speaker 1: submission C V. Wilson, where the co hosts of Stuffy
Speaker 1: miss in history class. She I believe now is the
Speaker 1: most senior of all How Stuff Works employees. I think
Speaker 1: that she's got She's been here the longest of everybody. Um,
Speaker 1: and she was when I joined, one of the the
Speaker 1: only other staff writer on staff, the only two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can find a ton of our articles still on
Speaker 1: the site, anything from how dinosaurs work to all sorts
Speaker 1: of staff I remember she was working on silly string
Speaker 1: when I first started, and I remember magnets almost broke
Speaker 1: her brain how magnets work almost broke I'm let's be fair.
Speaker 1: The insane clown posse. He couldn't figure it out. But Tracy,
Speaker 1: she sat down, she finally, you know, she was able
Speaker 1: to suss it out at the end, and so that
Speaker 1: article does exist. But something that Tracy is is very
Speaker 1: much known for is if you have any sort of
Speaker 1: article that has any sort of remotely scientific aspect to it,
Speaker 1: she will submit the question of what are the physics
Speaker 1: that guide this or what is the science behind this?
Speaker 1: Like if the questions if none of the questions that
Speaker 1: are on the list already, because usually, as a writer
Speaker 1: or editor, come up with a list of them and
Speaker 1: you submit it to everybody else and then you say,
Speaker 1: what else am I not thinking of? If you have
Speaker 1: not included that science based aspect, don't worry, She'll she'll
Speaker 1: definitely submit that that's kind of her go to I
Speaker 1: have one that's stuck in my head um And I
Speaker 1: think maybe even Chuck Chuck Bryant made the joke when
Speaker 1: it went out and it was about kayaking and we
Speaker 1: were going to write how kayaking works, and I think
Speaker 1: he chokingly submitted to the initial approach email threat what
Speaker 1: you'll forget about the science of kayaking? Like ha ha,
Speaker 1: And sure enough there's Tracy chumming in on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean fluid dynamics, right, I mean, come on, that's
Speaker 1: an important part of physics. So yeah, it's it's we
Speaker 1: joke about it a little bit because there is this
Speaker 1: sort of culture here at how stuff works that you
Speaker 1: know you you when you're immersed in it, you begin
Speaker 1: to really get a sense of of what is important
Speaker 1: to each person based upon the kind of questions that
Speaker 1: they typically will submit. Not all of them are falling
Speaker 1: into exactly the same category. It's not like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: here comes the pop culture question from so and so
Speaker 1: because they're the pop culture person. It's not quite that specific,
Speaker 1: but it is kind of funny to see those sort
Speaker 1: of submissions. I think the big thing about how staff
Speaker 1: works is that we trust the readers to understand any subject.
Speaker 1: We think that we are able to explain it, and
Speaker 1: we think readers should be able. Um. We think about
Speaker 1: our readers are smart enough, um to understand it too,
Speaker 1: And I mean that can be everything from particle accelerators
Speaker 1: to kayaking, like we're just talking about. We put the
Speaker 1: onus on the writers and the editors to explain the
Speaker 1: subject in a way that people can appreciate. And I
Speaker 1: think that I think that everybody should be able to
Speaker 1: ask questions about the world and have him answered. And
Speaker 1: that's really what we're about, right right, And we we
Speaker 1: don't want as writers or editors to walk away from
Speaker 1: an article with a question unanswered if in fact, there
Speaker 1: is an answer for that question, because that means someone
Speaker 1: out there is going to ask it and the article
Speaker 1: didn't answer it, and that means that we failed on
Speaker 1: our part in this In this process, this is a
Speaker 1: relationship that we've built with our audience, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we try our best to make sure that we are
Speaker 1: we have a representative list of questions that we think
Speaker 1: this article needs to answer. Sometimes that does fall through,
Speaker 1: but we also will go back and will edit articles
Speaker 1: and include more information, uh, in order to address that
Speaker 1: when it's when it's appropriate. So it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's an interesting relationship. And speaking of those, I want
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about your relationship with the company.
Speaker 1: When did you start at How Stuff Works? I started
Speaker 1: in January two eight, and I started with a whole
Speaker 1: group of people. Um, Kristin Conner, she was formerly the
Speaker 1: host of stuff Mom never told you, Molly Edmonds, they
Speaker 1: were the original too on that. Amanda Arnold, she was
Speaker 1: an editor a long time for The Adventure, A really
Speaker 1: great soul. Um. Also Jennifer Horton, she was for a
Speaker 1: little bit. She had a shorter stay with How Staff Works.
Speaker 1: And I'm trying to remember who else there was somebody
Speaker 1: else there's six of us, was there? It would have
Speaker 1: been Toothman? She was later right, Jessica to Ja Toothman,
Speaker 1: one of our in house writers. Yeah. So to give
Speaker 1: you an idea of how long I've been with the company,
Speaker 1: I started when my daughter was seven months old and
Speaker 1: I am now still with the company and she is ten. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I had been with How Stuff Works for a
Speaker 1: little less than a year when you came on, and uh,
Speaker 1: I was just thinking, who are these up starts coming?
Speaker 1: In on coming in on my playground. Gosh darn it. No,
Speaker 1: I was excited because again, like when I started, it
Speaker 1: was just two staff writers, Tracy and myself, and that
Speaker 1: was it in fact when I started. So when I
Speaker 1: started How Stuff Works, we had one article, one full
Speaker 1: length article go up every week, which meant that we
Speaker 1: each Tracy and I had two weeks to research right, submit,
Speaker 1: rewrite and any article and then it would go up,
Speaker 1: you know that following like the Friday, and then two
Speaker 1: weeks later the next one that we would write would
Speaker 1: go up on that Friday and two weeks. So we alternated.
Speaker 1: Tracy would have one week, I would have another week.
Speaker 1: But having two weeks to research, right and refine an
Speaker 1: article was amazing. It was a huge amount of time.
Speaker 1: And there's uh, there's a joking law. It's kind of like, um,
Speaker 1: you know how you you have all these different supposed
Speaker 1: rules that kind of guide the universe, but really it's
Speaker 1: just us kind of making stuff up. One of those
Speaker 1: says that the amount of work you have will fill
Speaker 1: up whatever time it is that you have available to it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter how short or long the time is.
Speaker 1: It's it could be the exact same amount of work
Speaker 1: or the same output. But if you have two weeks
Speaker 1: to do it, it'll take two weeks to get it done.
Speaker 1: If you have forty five minutes to do it, it'll
Speaker 1: take forty five minutes to get it done. Ah, we
Speaker 1: had two weeks to write an article, and it was
Speaker 1: a single article per person. We also had another person
Speaker 1: who is writing questions of the day, which were super short,
Speaker 1: as we're one page, typically Julia Layton, who would write
Speaker 1: one page articles that would try and answer a basic
Speaker 1: but interesting question, and that actually has been a throughput
Speaker 1: for how stuff works as well. We've had that kind
Speaker 1: of approach of we've got this question that we just
Speaker 1: want to know the answer to. Let's assign that to
Speaker 1: someone and find out what the answer is because that's
Speaker 1: kind of a cool thing. And we've done that in podcasts,
Speaker 1: we've done that in articles, we've done in blog posts.
Speaker 1: But things have changed since then when you joined. By
Speaker 1: then it had already changed a little bit. Sure, people
Speaker 1: were really excited because we have a Discovery acquisition had
Speaker 1: been announced and shortly thereafter I was completed, So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of excitement around that. Yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of trepidation but also excitement because suddenly we were going
Speaker 1: to be part of a much larger media company. We
Speaker 1: weren't entirely certain how that was going to play out,
Speaker 1: but it ended up being really an interesting experience. And
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, everyone says, oh, I used the
Speaker 1: word interesting, and that could be neither good or bad.
Speaker 1: Both happened. I mean, there were good things with the
Speaker 1: Discovery relationship. There were things that were not so good,
Speaker 1: depending upon where in the hierarchy you were right. So
Speaker 1: one of the examples of something that might have been
Speaker 1: a little frustrating was that we would occasionally get requests
Speaker 1: to write or record information about some related Discovery topic,
Speaker 1: and that put the challenge on us to find a
Speaker 1: way to do it where it didn't just come across
Speaker 1: as an advertisement for a Discovery show. And uh, sometimes
Speaker 1: that was not so hard, because Discovery covers a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff that is very much aligned with the sort
Speaker 1: of things that how Stuff works covers. Sometimes it was
Speaker 1: more challenging where you really the request was, well, it's
Speaker 1: essentially gonna be this is gonna be about the show.
Speaker 1: There's not much I can do about it other than
Speaker 1: to make sure I do the best job I possibly
Speaker 1: can creating this piece of content so that it serves
Speaker 1: both the site and Discovery properly. Uh, and that's always delicate.
Speaker 1: I assumed that, Uh, you know, you came in right
Speaker 1: at the beginning of that relationship. I'm sure there were
Speaker 1: times during it that were more challenging than others. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Robert and I are worked on this show, produced pieces
Speaker 1: for the this awesome series called Life and it was
Speaker 1: adaptation of the Attenborough BBC serious that they've done and
Speaker 1: it was a lot of fun and he got to
Speaker 1: interview some of the directors and main characters involved, and
Speaker 1: it was super interesting stuff which is all about it
Speaker 1: very very close to you how stuff works. Core just
Speaker 1: questions about animals and how the world works and the
Speaker 1: ecosystem and the you know, the inner workings. It was.
Speaker 1: It was very fun. We enjoyed it a lot. That
Speaker 1: was great. There were other times where and I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to speak frankly here because it's my show,
Speaker 1: but there were other times that we're probably a little
Speaker 1: more of a head scratcher, at least for me, things
Speaker 1: like walking into a meeting and another conference call is
Speaker 1: still kind of going on. But it wasn't being concluded,
Speaker 1: and so we had this weird kind of mixture of
Speaker 1: people inside the room, and I remember hearing an actual
Speaker 1: conversation about the ramifications of John and Kate divorcing, uh
Speaker 1: for the whole John and Kate plus eight show, and
Speaker 1: hearing executives talking about how that was going to affect
Speaker 1: business deals, and it just that's when it hit me.
Speaker 1: I thought, I don't I don't want to be in
Speaker 1: this room right now. I want to get out of
Speaker 1: this room and now I will come back when this
Speaker 1: conversation is over, because it didn't have anything to do
Speaker 1: with me, that was not part of what I was
Speaker 1: working on at all. But it was one of those
Speaker 1: little reminders that sometimes these relationships have downsides from a
Speaker 1: from a writer's perspective, if you like. Again, we were
Speaker 1: all trying to serve how stuff works first and also
Speaker 1: serve Discovery because Discovery owned how stuff works at the time,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't always an easy thing to do. Uh.
Speaker 1: I remember Julie Douglas of Stuff of Life and just
Speaker 1: a really all around great producer right now. She I
Speaker 1: remember hearing her in the Cube over interviewing Michelle Dugger,
Speaker 1: and that was always interesting. Yeah, yeah, we had some uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we we had some little rough spots there.
Speaker 1: We also, oh uh, I mean, there's no secret that
Speaker 1: the way the web works is through web advertising. And
Speaker 1: we had some really big deals with various manufacturers companies
Speaker 1: that were wanting to advertise on how stuff works, and
Speaker 1: they were very very good, big deals, but early on
Speaker 1: we had not really created the strategy for how to
Speaker 1: do that in a way that was responsible so that
Speaker 1: we wouldn't h end up alienating our own user base,
Speaker 1: our own audience. So there were some some tough learning
Speaker 1: curves there. Yeah, it was the dawna of sponsored content
Speaker 1: for how staff Wricks and a lot of other people
Speaker 1: had started doing it, and how to do it right
Speaker 1: and exactly what you're saying, how to balance editorial calendar
Speaker 1: so that we are serving a lot of different stakeholder needs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you didn't want to have a moment where someone
Speaker 1: visits the website and it's just absolutely dominated by a
Speaker 1: single topic, because then you start thinking, we do not
Speaker 1: think my thatch And I was thinking about towing, I
Speaker 1: wasn't I wasn't necessarily going to say it, but as
Speaker 1: how towing works, oh man, I had to write maybe
Speaker 1: eight or nine articles about towing and um. Again, this
Speaker 1: was one of those things where we had made a
Speaker 1: promise to an advertiser. I mean, it was all it
Speaker 1: all made sense on paper. The problem was in actual
Speaker 1: practice it became very challenging to do because you realize, well,
Speaker 1: if we go down this road too far, it starts
Speaker 1: becoming like a content farm where we're just churning out
Speaker 1: like low quality content in order to meet a demand
Speaker 1: from an advertiser, but that in turn is not going
Speaker 1: to necessarily be much value to our readers. We never,
Speaker 1: I never felt like we actually went down that way.
Speaker 1: I never think so either. I think we did some
Speaker 1: high quality to articles. I mean, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: funny to say, but I mean like we took that seriously.
Speaker 1: We did. We did not want to have an article
Speaker 1: go out that we did not feel proud of, even
Speaker 1: in challenging circumstances where you're thinking, like, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't want to write the same article five times. But this,
Speaker 1: this topic is very similar to the one I just finished.
Speaker 1: It was it made a challenge as a writer to
Speaker 1: create an article that would be just as compelling, or
Speaker 1: just as interesting, or just as informative certainly just as
Speaker 1: accurate as all the others it was. You know, we
Speaker 1: after that, we got a lot better at figuring out
Speaker 1: how to present these packages so that we could serve
Speaker 1: all of the customers, if you will, uh, the way
Speaker 1: they needed to be, so that we can make sure
Speaker 1: that we were delivering information that our readers were going
Speaker 1: to find interesting, that they would find helpful, that we
Speaker 1: were going to create opportunities for the advertisers to be
Speaker 1: able to show their ads against something that they were
Speaker 1: comfortable with, that they were you know, proud of, and
Speaker 1: and something that we felt again didn't betray the spirit
Speaker 1: and voice of how stuff works. And so it took
Speaker 1: a little while, like I said, was a rocky start.
Speaker 1: But shortly after that there were certain certain big topics
Speaker 1: that for a while you didn't want to say out
Speaker 1: loud in the house Stuff Works office. Towing would be
Speaker 1: one of them. Skin clean cleansers was another. Right, Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I I wrote one. I'll tell let me tell an
Speaker 1: embarrassing story about myself with writing. So Jonathan sometimes has
Speaker 1: reading comprehension pension issues. It turns out, especially an email
Speaker 1: because there was a list of assignments that went out. Actually,
Speaker 1: I think this was in a spreadsheet. There's a list
Speaker 1: of assignments that went out about skin cleansers, and there
Speaker 1: were two very very very similar article titles. One was
Speaker 1: about skin cleansers and one was about a very much
Speaker 1: related topic, but it wasn't skin cleansers. It was some
Speaker 1: other skincare type of product. But both of them were
Speaker 1: supposed to be five top five gluten freeing about free
Speaker 1: back then. Oh yeah, So I got first of all,
Speaker 1: multiple multiple issues I had with the article. But but one,
Speaker 1: the one that I made the mistake on I'll get
Speaker 1: that all the way is I wrote the wrong article.
Speaker 1: I wrote one that Josh Clark had been assigned he
Speaker 1: got because we there were two articles, like I said,
Speaker 1: that had very similar titles. I grabbed Josh's and Josh
Speaker 1: also wrote Josh is as Josh should have done. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so we actually had two top five gluten free
Speaker 1: skin cleanser articles come out, and the one I was
Speaker 1: supposed to write, which was also a gluten free skincare thing,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't cleansers. I can't remember what it was.
Speaker 1: I never wrote. They just decided not to have me
Speaker 1: write that one, probably because my page zero, which is
Speaker 1: our our landing page, our first page, as people would
Speaker 1: see if they went to The article explained why a
Speaker 1: gluten free skin cleanser was totally not necessary in the
Speaker 1: first place, because you don't absorb gluten through the skin.
Speaker 1: You can, it's the molecules are too big. You have
Speaker 1: to ingest it. So unless you're eating your skin cleanser,
Speaker 1: the issues you have with gluten would not be a
Speaker 1: problem with these products. Therefore, the list is superfluous, and
Speaker 1: I have a feeling that that attitude probably meant that
Speaker 1: they didn't want me to write the real article later.
Speaker 1: And is that batch of articles the ones that gave
Speaker 1: your skin it's current rosy glow? Oh yeah. That that
Speaker 1: and just the fact that I'm I'm practicing My plan
Speaker 1: is that when I'm I'm ready to retire, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: segue into being Santa Claus. So I want to make
Speaker 1: sure I have those rosy cheeks going when I get there.
Speaker 1: So it's just it's it's a gradual I don't want
Speaker 1: it to be a shocking transformation. So I'm planning ahead
Speaker 1: now and we're just gonna very gradually get there. But
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be a really off Santa Claus because I'm
Speaker 1: also you know, working hard. Um, So tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit about like how you've seen the site kind
Speaker 1: of change since you started. Obviously we've gone through different
Speaker 1: corporate owners and that has been a big part of it.
Speaker 1: But just your your experience as being an editor, how
Speaker 1: is that evolved over the years. Well, the mode of
Speaker 1: storytelling has changed. I think that's a really important thing
Speaker 1: to note. Just as other publishers have embraced different forms
Speaker 1: of telling the story, we have as well. I think
Speaker 1: we're truly multimedia now. And most importantly is podcasts. Back
Speaker 1: in the day we had we started podcasts. Jerry was
Speaker 1: here and the original stuff you history class with Candice
Speaker 1: and before and stuff you should know, and that all started.
Speaker 1: I mean that was a long time ago. And the
Speaker 1: video guys were always here I should say video team. Um,
Speaker 1: they were always here doing wacky stuff. I remember Tyler,
Speaker 1: one of our producers now and now an audio engineer. Correct,
Speaker 1: he remember him walking around in that green suit in
Speaker 1: the office. Oh yeah, we had him in the green
Speaker 1: man suit. Yeah. We did this thing where it was
Speaker 1: the invisible man does something and so we would shoot
Speaker 1: Tyler against a green screen key him out entirely, and
Speaker 1: then you have an invisible man thing. But once in
Speaker 1: a while you just walk around the office. There's Tyler
Speaker 1: in the green man suit going around. Yeah. So we've
Speaker 1: had a couple more avenues of storytelling open up, and
Speaker 1: my job as an editor is to figure out what
Speaker 1: the best experience is, what should draw what what is
Speaker 1: the story, and what's the best way to tell it,
Speaker 1: Who is the best person to tell it, who's the
Speaker 1: best editor? When? When should I go out? How much
Speaker 1: space do we need to give this topic to breathe?
Speaker 1: Should it be short? Do we need to get this
Speaker 1: out today because we really needed to be part of
Speaker 1: the conversation or do we need to give it a
Speaker 1: little bit more time and space and and thought, Um,
Speaker 1: when you were talking before, Jonathan about how you had
Speaker 1: about two to write that article. There is very much
Speaker 1: a conversation going on right now about a return to
Speaker 1: slow journalism, if you will, that the pace of articles
Speaker 1: is too fast, and that we should be more careful
Speaker 1: and just pay articles they're proper do in terms of
Speaker 1: time and space and word count and sources and all
Speaker 1: of that stuff. So, in a weird way, a lot
Speaker 1: of these things have come full circle. It's still about
Speaker 1: the story and it's just about the best way to
Speaker 1: tell it um and staying true to the how Stuff
Speaker 1: works for us, those are really the important things. So
Speaker 1: I mean, right now, you know we can embed a podcast. Hey,
Speaker 1: we're doing something about artificial intelligence. Great. I know a
Speaker 1: guy who has covered article sal intelligence a lot. I'm
Speaker 1: going to grab a podcast here, and I think if
Speaker 1: somebody is interested in listening to a little bit about it,
Speaker 1: like great, they'll be able to read it, They'll be
Speaker 1: able to hear it whatever way they learn best. They
Speaker 1: will be able to get information about this topic that
Speaker 1: is relevant to their lives. One, And to your point
Speaker 1: about the slow journalism thing, like when we when I started,
Speaker 1: the goal for How Stuff Works was that we were
Speaker 1: every piece of content we were creating apart from the
Speaker 1: well even questions of the day. Really, they were all
Speaker 1: supposed to be evergreen, right. These were all topics that
Speaker 1: would be something that someone three or four years from
Speaker 1: now would go back and be able to read and
Speaker 1: it would be just as relevant to them. Obviously, once
Speaker 1: they made me the the head writer for the Technology Channels,
Speaker 1: I realized how impossible a task that is for technology
Speaker 1: because things just changed so quickly. If you want any proof,
Speaker 1: go back and read any of the computer articles on
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com and just look at the
Speaker 1: little technical specs that I get that get thrown out
Speaker 1: as examples because you'll sit there and if you start
Speaker 1: seeing processor speeds listed in the mega hurts instead of
Speaker 1: the giga hurts, you're like, wow, when was this article written? Like, well,
Speaker 1: probably more than a decade ago. Um, But I mean
Speaker 1: the foundation of the article is still absolutely accurate. It's
Speaker 1: just that the details have changed because the the scale
Speaker 1: of technology has changed so much. But uh, that was
Speaker 1: sort of the goal, right. We wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: that the articles we were writing were things that weren't
Speaker 1: so mercurial that by the time we are ready to
Speaker 1: submit an article, the facts of the matter had already changed,
Speaker 1: therefore necessitating a revisit to what we had just written. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then we've gone through phases like we did House Stuff
Speaker 1: Works Now. For a while, where we were it was
Speaker 1: much more rapid turnaround. It wasn't quite breaking news. We
Speaker 1: weren't We weren't investigative journalists or anything like that. We're
Speaker 1: giving more context two things that we're in you know,
Speaker 1: kind of in the conversation in the news very much
Speaker 1: the way tech Stuff Daily is. If if any of
Speaker 1: my listeners have listened to Text Stuff Daily, that's kind
Speaker 1: of a tech Stuff version of that same idea, where
Speaker 1: we take things that are kind of being talked about
Speaker 1: and give more context around it, but it's not in
Speaker 1: itself a breaking news show. That was that we're just
Speaker 1: not set up for that. That's not the way we work.
Speaker 1: We don't are no, our publishing tools wouldn't support it.
Speaker 1: You are. Publishing tools aren't meant to support that. Our
Speaker 1: editorial process is not meant to do that. So seeing
Speaker 1: this return kind of to the slow journalism, I think
Speaker 1: that that whether that happens or not, I think that
Speaker 1: that certainly plays more to the strengths of what we
Speaker 1: built this company around. Um. Not that I think that
Speaker 1: there's no value in giving context to breaking stories. I
Speaker 1: think there is, but it just it's just, uh, it's
Speaker 1: more challenging based on the tools that we have at
Speaker 1: our disposal than the kind of traditional I'm going to
Speaker 1: really break down how X works and and really understand
Speaker 1: it at a fundamental level and then explain it. Um,
Speaker 1: do you remember what it was like interviewing for House
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. When you first came in, I very much do. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is funny. It was right around so I came
Speaker 1: on in January two thous eight. As I said before,
Speaker 1: so my interviews, I kind of just sent in my
Speaker 1: resume on a whim. I applied for the writer position,
Speaker 1: and I had just finished my master's at U g
Speaker 1: A and communicating mass Communications, and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll try to try my hand at this writer thing.
Speaker 1: And Tracy saw my resume and she gave me a
Speaker 1: shout and she said, hey, why don't you why don't
Speaker 1: you try out for the editor position, which, thank you, Tracy,
Speaker 1: that proved to be a really good move, Thank you,
Speaker 1: Tracy V. Wilson Um. And so I came in and
Speaker 1: I was right before the holidays, and I interviewed. I
Speaker 1: interviewed with Katie, who used to be our old health editor. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and she was the one who originally coined me a
Speaker 1: loud she. I interviewed with Connell. I interviewed with Tracy.
Speaker 1: I remember sitting in Connell's office and this is sort
Speaker 1: of embarrassing and also not and and like talking to
Speaker 1: him across this big desk and he was the class
Speaker 1: at Corner office, and I was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get your job someday. And I kind of did, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you kind of did. It's funny because Connal was part
Speaker 1: of the company for a long time, then he was not,
Speaker 1: and now he is again. Sure is he's sending up
Speaker 1: that fantastic podcast we've got going on. Yep, yep. So
Speaker 1: it's great hearing that story. I remember when I came
Speaker 1: on it was very similar, although different people. Connell had
Speaker 1: not yet joined the company when I when I was hired. Um,
Speaker 1: but you know, thinking back on that now, I remember
Speaker 1: sitting down and having this discussion and then I think
Speaker 1: the thing that maybe sealed the deal for me. It's
Speaker 1: hard to say because obviously I wasn't in on those conversations,
Speaker 1: was that I said, listen, if you guys don't hire me,
Speaker 1: and this is kind of what I do anyway, Like
Speaker 1: I like to learn things and then I like to
Speaker 1: talk about the stuff I learned with people, and then
Speaker 1: you like to talk. Yeah. I know it really comes
Speaker 1: through as a shock, uh, the guy who has all
Speaker 1: the solo podcast stuff shows, But yeah, I I said, like,
Speaker 1: this is what I love to do. And if I
Speaker 1: were hired here, I get to do it for a living.
Speaker 1: And that's fortunately how it worked out. It's the job
Speaker 1: for me changed dramatically over the years. There was originally,
Speaker 1: like I said, I had two weeks to research and
Speaker 1: write an article. Eventually that got knocked down to one
Speaker 1: week to research and write an article. Then it became
Speaker 1: one week to research, write an article and a companion article.
Speaker 1: You never had to find the pictures. You never had
Speaker 1: to upload it editor ever. No, once Chris became my editor, Yes,
Speaker 1: but I had other editors before Chris, because I had
Speaker 1: Candice and I had Shannah, and uh yeah, I had
Speaker 1: I had editors where I had to find all that stuff.
Speaker 1: Once I got Chris, Yes, I was on Easy Street.
Speaker 1: Ye were he were hooked up by Chris. Chris Chris Palette.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you all right, you guys who have
Speaker 1: listened to this show for a long time, you know
Speaker 1: who Chris Palette is. He was my original co host.
Speaker 1: Chris Pallette as an editor was a writer's dream come true.
Speaker 1: Because I would submit a draft to Chris. He would
Speaker 1: do all the work to get all the images. He
Speaker 1: would write the captions for the images, he would do
Speaker 1: all the edits himself, like if there were any problems
Speaker 1: with the article, yo, he'd solve it. And I only
Speaker 1: occasionally would get an article back where he would have
Speaker 1: a question like, hey, could you explain this a bit more? Like?
Speaker 1: That was so rare. It was essentially I would hand
Speaker 1: it off to him and I was done. I could
Speaker 1: go on to the next thing. Um, I'm not just
Speaker 1: saying this because I'm on your show. Your copy is
Speaker 1: generally pretty clean. I will say that as an editor.
Speaker 1: That's that's good to know. I still occasionally have trouble
Speaker 1: with passive voice. I got really good at knocking passive
Speaker 1: voice out of my writing for a really long time,
Speaker 1: but then I went for a good stretch without writing,
Speaker 1: and then passive voice crept back in. Uh So, what
Speaker 1: what excites you about working at? How stuff works? Like
Speaker 1: when you think about your job, what is it? What's
Speaker 1: the stuff that brings you great joy? The people here
Speaker 1: really working with the team I do and in the topics. Um,
Speaker 1: When we first moved to the Atlanta area early two thousands,
Speaker 1: I moved with my then fiance and he was taking
Speaker 1: a job at CDC, and I had a lot of
Speaker 1: respect for CDC and really thought I would go into
Speaker 1: health communications, and sort of my dream job was to
Speaker 1: work at the Centers for Disease Control in some sort
Speaker 1: of communication role. And I have since come to realize
Speaker 1: that how stuff works is a very unique place to work,
Speaker 1: and that you never know what we're going to be
Speaker 1: talking about. It has made my life and my world
Speaker 1: perspective so much bigger than it was. I think honestly,
Speaker 1: it's helped me be a better parent. It makes me
Speaker 1: ask questions about things, and my kids, like I will
Speaker 1: constantly ask them things about, well, how does that work?
Speaker 1: I mean, all of my friends tease me if they're like,
Speaker 1: how does that work? Alis, And I mean we all
Speaker 1: get that question for all of our peeps. Oh yeah, No,
Speaker 1: whenever we have any kind of technical glitch here at
Speaker 1: the office, like let's say the the internet connection goes down,
Speaker 1: then immediately you know you're going to get lots of
Speaker 1: people making jokes about how we should be able to
Speaker 1: fix everything. Uh, sometimes things are outside of our control.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you have to really chase down where a problem is.
Speaker 1: But ultimately you also have to remember we spend intense
Speaker 1: amount of time researching and writing and editing these things,
Speaker 1: and then we have to turn around and do something
Speaker 1: totally different, another completely different topic, sometimes sometimes radically different topic.
Speaker 1: And you can only hold on to so much information
Speaker 1: for so long before you are starting to overwrite old
Speaker 1: Like people will talk to me about an article I
Speaker 1: wrote back in like two thousand ten, Li said, though
Speaker 1: that data is gone if I held onto any of it.
Speaker 1: It's just through the fact that I never got around
Speaker 1: to overwriting that particular little sector of my brain. Uh.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like you say, the people here are great.
Speaker 1: We've had some amazing folks work here something many of
Speaker 1: them still working here. But like, throughout the years, we've
Speaker 1: had a lot of talented writers and editors and illustrators
Speaker 1: and podcasters and videographers, like, just so many amazing people,
Speaker 1: some of whom still work in this building, just not
Speaker 1: at this company. We run into some of them occasionally
Speaker 1: because they work right down the hall. It's just kind
Speaker 1: of cool and we'll reminisce. So, yeah, it's it's great
Speaker 1: to have you on to kind of have this personal
Speaker 1: touch with how stuff works. You know. The whole episodes
Speaker 1: nine hundred and one, I wanted to make sure kind
Speaker 1: of gave a feel for what this this entire experiences
Speaker 1: like for us on this side, you know, the people
Speaker 1: who are working so hard to try and create really
Speaker 1: interesting content based on things that we personally find fascinating
Speaker 1: and and that covers the entire spectrum of the human experience,
Speaker 1: from the cosmological to the microscopic too, you know, fashion
Speaker 1: to finance, all of that is fascinating. And for those
Speaker 1: of you out there who have never gone to How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com, I'm sure there's some of you
Speaker 1: who have only experienced this through the podcast, I urge
Speaker 1: you to go to how Stuff Works dot com and
Speaker 1: you know, poke around a bit, see some read some articles,
Speaker 1: check out some stuff that you're interested in. Do you
Speaker 1: do you, Alison? I hate to spring this on you.
Speaker 1: Do you have a favorite article? I have a lot
Speaker 1: of favorites. Yeah. Um, Honestly, I'm going to say that
Speaker 1: this article that Eve's Jeff Cote and editor and now
Speaker 1: she's moved to the podcast side wrote she edited and
Speaker 1: Ed grab who's a long time writer and he he
Speaker 1: wrote it and it's on how nepotism works and got
Speaker 1: his nephew to write that nice one. Um. I thought
Speaker 1: it was just classic how staff works in that I
Speaker 1: thought the topic would be pretty straightforward nepotism kind of
Speaker 1: a bad thing. And then ed got into really the
Speaker 1: history of nepotism and how you know, you have these
Speaker 1: forces that are opposing you have um, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of you have non nepotism and you have nepotism. You
Speaker 1: have a smooth transition to power that's occurring if you're
Speaker 1: passing power to say, your son, and you sort of
Speaker 1: have this eroding faith in the public and the public
Speaker 1: institutions if you get nepotism to heavy. But anyway, the
Speaker 1: whole point of the story is that this article really
Speaker 1: did more than just a superficial treatment. He got in
Speaker 1: there and he talked about it, and he talked about
Speaker 1: the popes. Actually it sprang from the Latin for nephew
Speaker 1: because the popes wanted to have some way to recognize
Speaker 1: their illegitimate sons, and so they used to pass on
Speaker 1: prime positions within the church to uh to their to
Speaker 1: the people, right to their to their their their sons
Speaker 1: that they could not actually publicly acknowledge because one of
Speaker 1: the things about being pope, you know, I'm not supposed
Speaker 1: to have a whole parcel of kids, at least not
Speaker 1: later on in the in in Catholicism. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1: I mean, like I said, there and try and think
Speaker 1: about my favorites, like I there's there's one that I
Speaker 1: have a favorite because of how frequently Connal would reference it,
Speaker 1: because I just think it was funny that that was
Speaker 1: his go to article to reference whenever he talked about
Speaker 1: like an article about something cool, which was quantum suicide.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah he did. He talked about condum suicide all
Speaker 1: the time. Quantum suicide was like the phrase from Connal
Speaker 1: like if you want to something like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: we write cool articles like you know, quantum suicide, Connell.
Speaker 1: You know, We've got like a thousand other articles on
Speaker 1: the site. But yes, Josh did a great job with
Speaker 1: quantum suicide. I don't want to take anything away. It's
Speaker 1: really great. But from my own personal favorite, I wrote
Speaker 1: so many that I really loved and yeah I do,
Speaker 1: I do, but but not as frequently. But I'll go
Speaker 1: to a classic one, like there were ones about the
Speaker 1: Necronomicon and Cathulhu that I had a lot of fun writing.
Speaker 1: But the one that I think is my favorite out
Speaker 1: of all of them, and it was one I had
Speaker 1: to fight for, was how Area fifty one works, and uh,
Speaker 1: the reason I had to fight for it was not
Speaker 1: because of the topic. That was that was a sign
Speaker 1: to me we had decided we wanted to do it.
Speaker 1: I wrote it, but I included so many different sections
Speaker 1: that were outside of just the base, the Groom Lake
Speaker 1: base part of that discussion. I included things about the
Speaker 1: community around it and the various conspiracy theories that popped
Speaker 1: up around it, and the culture around Area fifty one,
Speaker 1: And to me that was also just as fascinating as
Speaker 1: all the top secret stuff. And I got a little
Speaker 1: bit of a pushback originally because they said, well, this
Speaker 1: is a much longer article than what we typically will Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I said, but I really feel like if you
Speaker 1: don't put that in there, it's not really about how
Speaker 1: Area fifty one works, because to me, it's a bigger
Speaker 1: story than just the mechanics of running a top secret
Speaker 1: research and development airbase. And eventually they I don't know
Speaker 1: if my arguments convinced them or they just felt that
Speaker 1: it was going to be too much work to cut
Speaker 1: it down, so they published it. Pretty much. The whole
Speaker 1: article the way I wrote it got published and it's
Speaker 1: still up there at how how stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: So if you want to read a classic Jonathan Strickland article,
Speaker 1: it's how Area fifty one works, and uh still one
Speaker 1: of the most. Like. I actually like that kind of
Speaker 1: relationship to between writers and editors, where you together your
Speaker 1: goal is to create the best article possible. Sometimes that
Speaker 1: means pushing back. Sometimes the editors are absolute right, and
Speaker 1: I mean there were times where they made decisions and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I'm so mad, and then like
Speaker 1: three weeks later, I know that was the right call. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then sometimes the writers are able to justify their
Speaker 1: choices and that's great too. So it's been a fantastic experience.
Speaker 1: It's also been great having you here than for having me. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I very much appreciate your time. Alison Lowermolke, the managing
Speaker 1: editor of how Stuff Works dot com. Every time you
Speaker 1: go and you read something amazing, just remember that somewhere
Speaker 1: Alison was yelling at somebody to write it. I want
Speaker 1: to thank Allison again for her time, and I want
Speaker 1: to finish up this section of the show with a
Speaker 1: few more thoughts. How Stuff Works is truly an incredible
Speaker 1: place to work. I learned something new every week, and
Speaker 1: then I have the honor of sharing that with a
Speaker 1: wider audience, and I take that very seriously. It is
Speaker 1: fun one, but it's also something that I think is
Speaker 1: really important to keep in mind that this is a responsibility.
Speaker 1: Anything that lets us engage our curiosity is something I
Speaker 1: feel should be encouraged. And like Allison said, it really
Speaker 1: working here trains you to be a critical thinker, which
Speaker 1: is a skill that I think has a lot of
Speaker 1: utility outside of just writing articles. I also think it's
Speaker 1: important to point out that while the site has been
Speaker 1: through numerous major changes of ownership and with different directives
Speaker 1: and different goals, we always tried to create the most reliable,
Speaker 1: informative and entertaining articles, podcasts, and videos that we can manage.
Speaker 1: I know I speak for everyone when I say we
Speaker 1: take this very seriously, and it goes well beyond the
Speaker 1: editorial staff. So that's where I have my experience, obviously
Speaker 1: in the editorial department, but we also have folks and
Speaker 1: sales and marketing and web development, and they're constantly working
Speaker 1: to improve the company in various ways, and I would
Speaker 1: not be able to do what I do without all
Speaker 1: of those people. In our next episode, we're gonna revisit
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works, but we're gonna do it with an
Speaker 1: eye on the podcast side of the business. I'll be
Speaker 1: joined by Josh Clark of Stuff you Should Know Fame
Speaker 1: to talk about his experiences in the podcast world as well,
Speaker 1: so you do not want to miss that episode. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening, and for those of you who have been
Speaker 1: with me for all nine hundred episodes so far, a
Speaker 1: huge thanks to you guys. You've had to listen to
Speaker 1: more Jonathan Strickland than any sane person should ever endure.
Speaker 1: But seriously, you guys mean the world to me. I'm
Speaker 1: extremely thankful for your support. I'm looking forward to recording
Speaker 1: nine hundred more. I'm not going anywhere, so get that
Speaker 1: thought out of your heads now. If you have any
Speaker 1: suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, maybe there's a
Speaker 1: technological subject you feel I have overlooked for long enough
Speaker 1: and gosh darn it, I need to fix that. You
Speaker 1: should let me know in a nice way, preferably, and
Speaker 1: you can do that via email. The address for the
Speaker 1: show is tech Stuff at how stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle for the show at both of those is
Speaker 1: tech Stuff hs W. We've got an Instagram account now,
Speaker 1: and we've got an amazing person named Crystal who is
Speaker 1: she's the steward of that Instagram and she's she's kicking
Speaker 1: technological but folks, So if you don't subscribe to the
Speaker 1: Instagram account for tech stuff, you need to go do that. Also,
Speaker 1: remember I live stream these typically not today, but usually
Speaker 1: and you can catch the live stream of tech stuff
Speaker 1: at twitch dot tv slash tech stuff, and you can
Speaker 1: be part of the audience and even chatting the chat room,
Speaker 1: and maybe the person who has been quietly sitting in
Speaker 1: this room this entire time, the moderator for the Twitch
Speaker 1: live stream chat will be there to greet you or
Speaker 1: kick you out if you're a jerk, because Cat's awesome
Speaker 1: and guys, I will talk to you again. Release soon
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
Speaker 1: that how stuff works dot Com