Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text Stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland, and this is the second
Speaker 1: of two episodes where I look at listener mail and
Speaker 1: answer a bunch of questions that don't quite merit a
Speaker 1: full episode. Their short answers and short questions. Uh. The
Speaker 1: answers tend to be pretty long because it's me. But
Speaker 1: if you guys have any questions you would like me
Speaker 1: to answer in a similar style show, just write me
Speaker 1: tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com. I'll repeat
Speaker 1: that again at the end of the episode. But let's
Speaker 1: get onto some of the questions that were sent into me.
Speaker 1: This one comes from Susan on Facebook, who says, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if this is something you can use, but
Speaker 1: it bugs the hell out of me. Why could you
Speaker 1: only post photos to Instagram from a mobile device? Most
Speaker 1: social media sites have web page access as well, but
Speaker 1: Instagram will only let you leave comments on their desktop interface.
Speaker 1: Why does Instagram maintain this lack of functionality? It makes
Speaker 1: it much harder for those of us in social media
Speaker 1: to schedule and work with Instagram as a platform. The
Speaker 1: answer I have for you now This is again kind
Speaker 1: of my opinion slash guests, because I don't work for Instagram,
Speaker 1: so I don't know the inside story, but I think
Speaker 1: it mainly has to do with Instagram positioning itself as
Speaker 1: a mobile photo sharing service. Now that means that it
Speaker 1: is trying to be the photo equivalent of something like Twitter,
Speaker 1: and a move it to the desktop world would mean
Speaker 1: that it would have to compete against lots and lots
Speaker 1: of other photo sharing uh and photo album software suites
Speaker 1: that are out there, and I don't think Instagram wants
Speaker 1: to compete in that market. They don't want to be
Speaker 1: up against things like Flicker or even Facebook, um that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. They would much prefer to have this
Speaker 1: other niche area really well defined. So creating an app
Speaker 1: that makes it easy to take pictures and apply filters
Speaker 1: and share it to a social net work is really
Speaker 1: really appealing in the mobile space. It's something that the
Speaker 1: easier it is to use and the more functionality it has,
Speaker 1: the more likely people are going to adopt it. So
Speaker 1: that's a lot easier than creating a very compelling service
Speaker 1: on the desktop. UM that's probably why they're going that way.
Speaker 1: It also makes it easier for them to work with
Speaker 1: other existing social media if it doesn't look like they
Speaker 1: are um hedging in on the perimeter of those other
Speaker 1: services like Facebook. So that's my guess. I think it
Speaker 1: makes it a big fish in a small pond as
Speaker 1: opposed to being a small fish in a big pond.
Speaker 1: But I do agree that for those of us who
Speaker 1: work in social media where we're trying to schedule things
Speaker 1: out and we're having to manage multiple social media UH platforms,
Speaker 1: it's really frustrating. Um I oversee Facebook and Google Plus
Speaker 1: and UH and Twitter and Tumbler, and every time you
Speaker 1: add one then you have a new suite of problems
Speaker 1: that come up as a manager, So it becomes a
Speaker 1: full time job just to manage the social media on
Speaker 1: top of creating the content that I do. So I
Speaker 1: understand the frustration from Christian on Facebook. Hey, tech stuff,
Speaker 1: I can't remember if I heard this from you guys
Speaker 1: or not. However I heard that all the new technology
Speaker 1: that comes out now, such as smartphones, for example, has
Speaker 1: already been long and invented. In other words, there's nothing
Speaker 1: really new, like warp drives or things like that. Everything
Speaker 1: that is sold to the public is basically just repackaged
Speaker 1: such as on the iPhone. They didn't just invent fingerprints
Speaker 1: scanners or touch screens or wireless tech. These things have
Speaker 1: been around forever. I didn't believe this at first and
Speaker 1: eventually started to agree. But now I'm questioning that again,
Speaker 1: and I'm really curious what tex Stuff would have to
Speaker 1: say about it. By the way, I love the podcast
Speaker 1: on Elon Musk and all his business ventures. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I talked about this in our last episode a little bit.
Speaker 1: The thing about inventions is again they are so it's
Speaker 1: a it's a work in progress. It's not a moment
Speaker 1: where someone comes up with something brand new that has
Speaker 1: never been seen before and that changes everything. It usually
Speaker 1: is an incremental improvement to some existing idea. It may
Speaker 1: be taking something that only existed in the world of
Speaker 1: ideas and making it a real thing that happens. That
Speaker 1: kind of happened with radio, for example. People had been
Speaker 1: working with different implementations of radio, but Marconi was the
Speaker 1: first one to really get one to work, especially transatlantic radio.
Speaker 1: So these are ideas that come as the result of
Speaker 1: lots of work with lots of different people working on
Speaker 1: the predecessors to these inventions. So I certainly don't think
Speaker 1: we are at an era where we will no longer
Speaker 1: see new groundbreaking technology. It may be that we just
Speaker 1: witness it growing in small steps. But if you look
Speaker 1: at the technology of today and compare it to stuff
Speaker 1: from five years ago, it looks like a world of difference.
Speaker 1: I imagine that five years from now, the technology we
Speaker 1: have then will be even to the point where the
Speaker 1: stuff we we the bleeding edge stuff we have today
Speaker 1: looks primitive in comparison. Uh, it's hard to see during
Speaker 1: the present, right, we just see the the incremental changes.
Speaker 1: We don't see the big jumps. But those jumps are there,
Speaker 1: they're just hidden by all the little incriminal steps. So
Speaker 1: one thing I've learned is that you never ever predict
Speaker 1: that we've reached the end of innovation or the end
Speaker 1: of invention. People have done that throughout history. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the like the head of the patent off it's saying
Speaker 1: that everything worth inventing had been invented, and that was
Speaker 1: at the turn of the twentieth century. And certainly we've
Speaker 1: seen hundreds of world changing inventions come out as after
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds. So never never say never, never say that
Speaker 1: we're done with innovation and inventing. It may just be
Speaker 1: that the changes we see are so frequent and so
Speaker 1: small that we can't see the big steps that define
Speaker 1: different generations of products. So that's my answer for you. Next,
Speaker 1: Frank on Facebook says, how about a podcast on the
Speaker 1: media of the tech world? How does how do tech
Speaker 1: companies compete for media coverage? How do tech news sites
Speaker 1: choose which ones they want to talk about? With so
Speaker 1: many people wanting to make their own gizmas, how do
Speaker 1: they bring it to the big, bad world out there.
Speaker 1: So this is a little insider baseball. Technically, if you
Speaker 1: are a tech news site or a show and you're
Speaker 1: covering technology, you largely take your cues off what your
Speaker 1: audience wants to hear. So this isn't necessarily true for
Speaker 1: every single story you run, but you might see that
Speaker 1: perhaps your audience really loves Apple, for example. It's an
Speaker 1: easy example because generally it's true. It means that you
Speaker 1: would probably spend a little more time focusing on those
Speaker 1: stories than on other stories that might be interesting, but
Speaker 1: your audience doesn't flock to them. You don't want to
Speaker 1: put all your eggs in one basket, ever, You want
Speaker 1: to spread them out, but you you focus your attention
Speaker 1: based upon what your audience has told you they want
Speaker 1: to see. Now, if you have defined yourself as a
Speaker 1: company that specifically covers technology from one sector, like Android,
Speaker 1: then obviously you you're going to focus on that. You
Speaker 1: may end up mentioning other companies as they relate to Android,
Speaker 1: but that that defines your experience. As far as how
Speaker 1: you determine which stories to cover, A lot of that
Speaker 1: depends upon press releases. So tech companies send out press
Speaker 1: releases all the time. Sometimes they're embargoed, which means that
Speaker 1: you cannot release that information until an agreed upon time.
Speaker 1: The embargo will lift at a certain time, and at
Speaker 1: that point you can post your story about whatever it
Speaker 1: happens to be. If you violate an embargo, you run
Speaker 1: the risk of that company never are working with your
Speaker 1: outlet ever again. So if I'm a reporter and I
Speaker 1: get a press release that's under embargo that has an
Speaker 1: amazing story about a new product, then my it's my
Speaker 1: best interest to wait until the embargo is over before posting,
Speaker 1: so that way I don't burn that bridge. UH. Ask
Speaker 1: for how do companies get news out? They often will
Speaker 1: have a public relations department, or they will hire a
Speaker 1: PR firm to handle it for them, and what that
Speaker 1: department's job is is to take the stuff that the
Speaker 1: company is working on, create press releases about it that
Speaker 1: spin it in the most positive, exciting way possible, and
Speaker 1: then send that out to every single tech journalist they
Speaker 1: possibly can. I am on several of these email lists,
Speaker 1: even though I do not cover tech news. I don't
Speaker 1: have a daily tech news show, although that's a great
Speaker 1: idea someone should do one of those. Um it's a
Speaker 1: joke for my friend Tom Merritt. So since I don't
Speaker 1: cover it, it doesn't really apply to me. But I
Speaker 1: still am on a lot of these lists. I often
Speaker 1: will use those as inspiration for UH for podcast episodes
Speaker 1: down the line. But generally speaking, that's how you get
Speaker 1: the information about your gizmo to the big bad world.
Speaker 1: You hire somebody who can send that information out to
Speaker 1: all the different outlets that might be interested in your work,
Speaker 1: and then those outlets will take the ball and run
Speaker 1: from there. Next from Nate Langson on Twitter now. Nate
Speaker 1: Lanson is editor of Wired dot co dot uk UH
Speaker 1: and as a friend of mine, so full disclosure there.
Speaker 1: He says did you ever own a palm top computer.
Speaker 1: My personal favorite was the Scion Series three, which I adored.
Speaker 1: The three MX had a twenty eight Mega hurt CPU. Nate,
Speaker 1: I am sad to say I have never owned any
Speaker 1: sort of palm top computer. In fact, before I got
Speaker 1: a smartphone, I didn't really have any kind of mobile
Speaker 1: computer at all, unless you count the scientific calculator I
Speaker 1: had back when I was a senior in high school,
Speaker 1: which was programmable and you could make pictures on it,
Speaker 1: but that was pretty much the extent of it. So
Speaker 1: I was really slow to adopt cell phones in general.
Speaker 1: It was about a year or two after I graduated
Speaker 1: college before I finally got my first cell phone, and
Speaker 1: I graduated back in nine seven. So I've been pretty
Speaker 1: slow to adopt most technologies, which might come as a
Speaker 1: surprise since I host a technology show. But with the
Speaker 1: exception of smart watches, I tend to hold off. I
Speaker 1: don't jump on the bandwagon smart watches. I kind of
Speaker 1: have a watch problem. I mentioned it in the previous episode.
Speaker 1: I have a Pebble smart watch. I've got two other
Speaker 1: crowdfunded smart watches on the way, and I'm always on
Speaker 1: the lookout for other really nice smart watches. Usually what
Speaker 1: slows me down is I'll read the initial review and
Speaker 1: if I see that the battery life is terrible, then
Speaker 1: I'll skip it. But at any rate, I've only ever
Speaker 1: owned one tablet that was a Nexus seven Android tablet.
Speaker 1: I still have it, but I think I only use
Speaker 1: it to play Tiny Death Star because I'm still a
Speaker 1: Tiny Star Wars fan. I've had three smartphones, the G one,
Speaker 1: the G two, both by HTC, and the next is
Speaker 1: for those are all Android smartphones, so you can see
Speaker 1: what side I better my bread. I'm still rocking the
Speaker 1: Xbox three six and the p S three. I have
Speaker 1: not upgraded to a new console system. Um. I follow
Speaker 1: all the news about all these different devices that keep
Speaker 1: coming out. I'm well informed about them, but I tend
Speaker 1: to be very conservative and adopting them because I have
Speaker 1: very little spare time. And since I have very little
Speaker 1: spare time, there are actually games that are on a
Speaker 1: stack in front of my three sixty that I haven't
Speaker 1: even taken out of the shrink wrap yet that I
Speaker 1: need to play. I just finished Battle Block Theater. People.
Speaker 1: I am well behind the state of the art as
Speaker 1: far as games are concerned, so I tend to be
Speaker 1: a little slow to adopt these. I love the technologies,
Speaker 1: I just don't go out and grab them as soon
Speaker 1: as they come out. I did buy a brand new
Speaker 1: desktop computer that can run current generation PC games, and
Speaker 1: that's got me really excited, though to be fair, I've
Speaker 1: mostly used it to play Civilization five because again I'm
Speaker 1: well behind the curve. And finally, I've got a trilogy
Speaker 1: of questions from my good friend Ariel. Ariel and I
Speaker 1: have known each other for more than a decade, and
Speaker 1: we've done some comedy and some acting together, and we've
Speaker 1: got some podcast projects together. So full disclosure, I know
Speaker 1: her really well too, but she had some great questions
Speaker 1: because she's a fan of the show, So thank you
Speaker 1: very much, Ariel. And her first question was, how often
Speaker 1: do you come across a tech subject that is really
Speaker 1: hard to understand? What has been the most confusing tech
Speaker 1: to get a handle on? To talk about? All Right,
Speaker 1: so this happens frequently. I run into a lot of
Speaker 1: tech topics that are difficult for me to understand. I
Speaker 1: I do. I'm not an engineer, I'm not a computer scientist.
Speaker 1: When I went to school, I went to school studying
Speaker 1: English literature with a focus on medieval English lit, so
Speaker 1: we're talking Chaucer and things of that nature. But I've
Speaker 1: always loved technology and I've always been interested in it,
Speaker 1: and I would follow along from my layman's perspective, and
Speaker 1: I began to educate myself that way. So I'm largely
Speaker 1: self taught when it comes to the ins and outs
Speaker 1: of technology, and I do a lot of research. So
Speaker 1: while I may not understand a subject when I first
Speaker 1: start looking into it, I do my best to absolutely
Speaker 1: understand it the best of my ability before I podcast
Speaker 1: on it. And if I don't feel comfortable about it,
Speaker 1: then I won't do a podcast, because I think that
Speaker 1: that does more harm than good to do a really
Speaker 1: crappy podcast that misrepresents a technology, or a company or
Speaker 1: a personality. Uh. And I hope that I have managed
Speaker 1: to do that throughout tech stuff. I'm sure there are
Speaker 1: one or two episodes that are maybe borderline because they're
Speaker 1: a little um, you know, they were based on things
Speaker 1: that I felt I had a good understanding of, and
Speaker 1: I might have been mistaken at any rate. I think
Speaker 1: that the hardest episodes have been those that deal with
Speaker 1: quantum physics, because when I went to school, I studied physics,
Speaker 1: I studied chemistry, has staid biology, but I never got
Speaker 1: into quantum physics in college. I've read an awful lot
Speaker 1: about them. I've read books on the leading thinkers, both
Speaker 1: the early thinkers of quantum physics and current thinkers, but
Speaker 1: it's still a largely mysterious world to me. So any
Speaker 1: of the UH concepts that involve quantum physics, and there
Speaker 1: are a lot of them in technology, are really tough
Speaker 1: and require a lot more work on my side to
Speaker 1: get a good understanding before I feel comfortable enough explaining
Speaker 1: how they worked to an audience. For example, let's look
Speaker 1: at microprocessors. Transistors on microprocessors are on the nanoscale, which
Speaker 1: means that quantum effects come into play. UH. So this
Speaker 1: is something that we come into contact with all the time.
Speaker 1: If you have a computer, you or a smartphone or
Speaker 1: mobile device of some sort, you have a processor in
Speaker 1: there that's got elements that are so small that quantum
Speaker 1: effects have to be taken into consideration. So it's not
Speaker 1: like it's unusual for me to have to talk about
Speaker 1: this sort of stuff. So I have to spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time understanding the fundamentals and then building on
Speaker 1: that before I feel comfortable talking about them. Pretty much
Speaker 1: the hardest subject of them all for me is optical computers,
Speaker 1: so anything that has to do with photons. Photons, of course,
Speaker 1: are the the fundamental particle of light. They are massless.
Speaker 1: They have a relative relativistic mass, which means that when
Speaker 1: you are using them in relativistic equations, you factor in
Speaker 1: a mass. But in in actual physical reality we would
Speaker 1: say they are massless. Uh. They behave in weird ways.
Speaker 1: They can interact in weird ways or not interact in
Speaker 1: weird ways. And every time I do anything that has
Speaker 1: to do with optics and and it's getting down to
Speaker 1: that photon level description, it requires hours of extra research
Speaker 1: on my part um. I find it really rewarding. I
Speaker 1: love learning stuff, so I'm not complaining. Don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: I actually really enjoy doing this kind of thing, but
Speaker 1: it is a lot of work. Next, Ariel has another question.
Speaker 1: She says, what episode are you most proud of and
Speaker 1: do you feel what do you feel most passionately about.
Speaker 1: I love all my episodes. They're like children. I can't
Speaker 1: pick between them, but I particularly love the episodes where
Speaker 1: we explain how something actually works, as in the physical
Speaker 1: workings of a piece of technology. I find that really satisfying.
Speaker 1: For one thing, if you're explaining how something actually works,
Speaker 1: there's a beginning, middle, and end. Uh it is it
Speaker 1: is there, there parameters you work inside. It's not an
Speaker 1: open ended question, so it makes it really easy to
Speaker 1: focus on specifically what you need to explain. It also
Speaker 1: comes with a challenge because how do you explain how
Speaker 1: something works in an audio format where you don't have
Speaker 1: the benefit of visual aids. That means that I have
Speaker 1: to come up with interesting ways to explain concepts that
Speaker 1: might not really be easy to imagine without some examples
Speaker 1: or metaphors, that kind of thing. So I really enjoy
Speaker 1: that that challenge. And uh also, because it isn't open ended,
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about fuzzy stuff around the edges.
Speaker 1: You can just give the specific facts of how the
Speaker 1: technology works and then maybe spend some time about why
Speaker 1: it's important. I always think that's a good thing too,
Speaker 1: And in fact, that's really what I'm most passionate about
Speaker 1: is the social impact of technology. That's it really gets
Speaker 1: me fired up, and that can be anything from enabling
Speaker 1: people to communicate during times of duress or turmoil, like
Speaker 1: what we saw with the Arab Spring, or how social
Speaker 1: problems can be reflected in the technological sphere, like things
Speaker 1: like racism and misogyny. I mean, these are serious issues
Speaker 1: and it's we see it both just out in the
Speaker 1: world old in general and within the world of technology,
Speaker 1: whether it's uh, you know, people using devices for raising
Speaker 1: awareness or using technology to try and suppress people from
Speaker 1: being able to express themselves. These are big, big issues,
Speaker 1: and technology plays a very fundamental role in these issues.
Speaker 1: So a lot of times the big story isn't about
Speaker 1: the tech. The tech is one piece that fits inside it.
Speaker 1: But I find that the tech is an interesting point
Speaker 1: of access to get into these conversations. And I do
Speaker 1: expect in the future to have episodes really looking at
Speaker 1: some ways that technology and social issues have have have
Speaker 1: worked together or have clashed, particularly over the last couple
Speaker 1: of years. So I hope that my listeners will really
Speaker 1: enjoy those episodes because I think it's a really important
Speaker 1: part of what technology is doing today. At any rate,
Speaker 1: I love talking about all this kind of stuff. Like
Speaker 1: I've said, I love learning, So when someone gives me
Speaker 1: a request about something, I don't know much about that.
Speaker 1: I get really passionate about because it means I get
Speaker 1: to learn stuff, and really I learned something new every
Speaker 1: single week here at How Stuff Works, and it's one
Speaker 1: of the benefits of the job. It's one of the
Speaker 1: hardest things about the job. And Ariel's final question was
Speaker 1: you used to be a writer for How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: What was it like transitioning from writing to podcasting, Which
Speaker 1: is a great question because I don't know if everyone
Speaker 1: out there is aware of this transformation. Um So, back
Speaker 1: in the day, people used to say, well, what's it
Speaker 1: like being a podcaster as your job and my response was,
Speaker 1: I podcasting is not my job. My job is a
Speaker 1: writer for How Stuff Works. I also podcast on top
Speaker 1: of being a writer for How Stuff Works, And for
Speaker 1: the first six years of my career here at how
Speaker 1: staff Works, that was the truth. That was what my
Speaker 1: job was. I wrote articles that got published to the website,
Speaker 1: and on top of that, I would record episodes of
Speaker 1: tech stuff, primarily UH and then occasionally do other things.
Speaker 1: But then about two years ago, things changed and I
Speaker 1: became a podcaster and video host and I haven't written
Speaker 1: a full article for the website in two years. I've
Speaker 1: done some updates, but I haven't written a how blank
Speaker 1: works article in two years, and it's a big change.
Speaker 1: So to understand how big a change it is, I
Speaker 1: thought it'd be fun to kind of go through what
Speaker 1: my schedule would have been like way back in the day.
Speaker 1: So when I was a writer, my week both began
Speaker 1: and ended on a Friday. It would end in the
Speaker 1: sense that I would turn in a work assignment. Usually
Speaker 1: there'll be two articles, normally one long article and one
Speaker 1: shorter article would be due each week, so Friday was
Speaker 1: the day I would turn them in, but it was
Speaker 1: also the day I would get my new assignment. So
Speaker 1: originally I had two weeks to research and write an
Speaker 1: article based on that assignment grant Atually that narrowed down
Speaker 1: to one week, So I would get a assignment on
Speaker 1: Friday and it would be due the following Friday, which
Speaker 1: sounds like it might be harsh to cut down the
Speaker 1: preparation time in half, but it turns out Parkinson's law
Speaker 1: is mostly right. So Parkinson's law is kind of a joke.
Speaker 1: It's a tongue in cheek law, and it says that
Speaker 1: work expands so as to fill the time available for
Speaker 1: its completion. So, in other words, if you are given
Speaker 1: a task and you're told you have five minutes to
Speaker 1: complete this, and it would take a reasonable person five
Speaker 1: minutes to complete it, and you you do the job,
Speaker 1: it takes you five minutes to do the job. But
Speaker 1: if you're told you have two hours to complete this,
Speaker 1: the work that you could complete in five minutes magically expands,
Speaker 1: so it takes the full two hours before you're finished. Again,
Speaker 1: it's a tongue in cheak joke, but it turns out
Speaker 1: to be kind of true because my time was cut
Speaker 1: in half, but I was still turning in articles every
Speaker 1: week instead of every two weeks. In fact, I was
Speaker 1: turning in twice as many, so it was um it
Speaker 1: was really hectic because I also had podcasts on top
Speaker 1: of that. At the time, I was also recording podcasts
Speaker 1: on Friday morning, so Friday was a big day for me.
Speaker 1: It was when I would turn in old assignments, get
Speaker 1: new assignments, and record text stuff. I would get into
Speaker 1: the office at seven am and by nine am or
Speaker 1: nine thirty we would go into the studio and record,
Speaker 1: and then my Friday's were really pretty jam packed. Today
Speaker 1: things are different, uh, now I primarily research episodes for
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. I researched episodes for Forward Thinking UH, and
Speaker 1: then I record all of those. So that's four podcasts
Speaker 1: typically per week. I did UH five this week, but
Speaker 1: that's unusual, So normally it's four episodes per week. I
Speaker 1: record twice on Tuesdays and twice on Thursdays, and then
Speaker 1: on top of that, I might have to do a
Speaker 1: video for the brain Stuff series, which if you guys
Speaker 1: haven't checked out, you should definitely go look at brain
Speaker 1: Stuff brain stuff show dot com or go to YouTube
Speaker 1: and search for brain Stuff. The shows there are great.
Speaker 1: I'm just one host. A lot of the other How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works hosts are also on that show and we
Speaker 1: rotate through, so check that out. I might shoot episodes
Speaker 1: for how stuff Works YouTube channel, so if you haven't
Speaker 1: checked that out in a while, you should go look
Speaker 1: at that because there are a lot of different videos
Speaker 1: coming up from again the hosts of How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: that cover all sorts of topics. So if you're interested
Speaker 1: in that kind of thing, you should check that out. UH.
Speaker 1: This is a lot of work. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: a lot of research, it's a lot of recording. The
Speaker 1: nice thing is that. For the Brain Stuff shows, for
Speaker 1: the most part, those episodes are written by someone else,
Speaker 1: which makes my job so much easier. I just have
Speaker 1: to get in front of the camera and say what
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to say. But for Forward Thinking and for
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff, both the video series for Forward Thinking and
Speaker 1: the audio I do a lot of the writing, I
Speaker 1: do the recording, um, and for all of Tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm doing the writing and recording. So a full week
Speaker 1: is mostly made up of lots of research. Also scheduling,
Speaker 1: because now that I don't have a regular co host,
Speaker 1: I have to figure out how to fill up my
Speaker 1: recording times, and a lot of the fellow How Stuff
Speaker 1: Works hosts have been very kind to volunteer their time
Speaker 1: and sit in as guest hosts. You're going to hear
Speaker 1: more of them in the future. UM. I have plans
Speaker 1: for people from Stuffy miss In History, Class, Stuff Mob
Speaker 1: Never Told You, and even Stuff You Should Know joining
Speaker 1: me in the studio for various topics, So keep an
Speaker 1: ear out for that. But that, of course, scheduling takes
Speaker 1: up a lot of time too. I have to coordinate
Speaker 1: my schedule or the studio availability with whomever is agreeing
Speaker 1: to be on my show. That also applies to people
Speaker 1: who are outside of How Stuff Works. I've got several
Speaker 1: people who have given me attentative agreement to be on
Speaker 1: the show, but I have to schedule all those folks
Speaker 1: out That takes a lot of time too. So the
Speaker 1: job is very different from what it was when I
Speaker 1: accepted it eight years ago, but it's still incredibly rewarding
Speaker 1: and incredibly challenging. Those two things go hand in hand,
Speaker 1: I find, so I very much enjoy it, but it
Speaker 1: is a totally different world. So thank you so much,
Speaker 1: Ariel for those questions that are fantastic. Um, I look
Speaker 1: forward to getting more questions from you guys out there.
Speaker 1: If you ever have anything that, uh you feel it's
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