Behind the Scenes at HowStuffWorks - Audio

having me. Yeah. Normally you are on the other side of a window in our our podcast to you, where a very fancy microphone hovers above your head, sort of like looking into a terrarium or something. Yeah, and you're wearing at least one set of headphones, if not to uh. And while I lost my earbud, so lately I've been having two full sets of headphones on at once and it looks kind of insane to people walking by. Is

a little crazy. And and while an episode recording within these walls, you are typically also editing another episode at the same time. It's true. So before we get too far into this, let our listeners know which shows do you edit and produce? Sure, so I do text stuff your other show Forward Thinking. I do stuff you missed in history class. I do stuff to blow your mind. I do stuff they don't want you to know, and I do car stuff. Am I missing anything? I think

that's everything? So so really, stuff you should know is the only one. Excuse me, stuff Mom never told you as well. So stuff you should know is like the only one you don't do, the only one I don't do. So so Jerry the Wonder Producer handle stuff you should know. Nole handles everything I do. Guest on Stuff you should know when Jerry's out though, And that's true, I've gotten some very kind shoutouts from the Stuff you should Know Army.

They they are They are nothing if not passionate. You know, they really appreciate the work that goes into these shows, as does the tech stuff. Audience were really appreciative of that. So, uh, why don't you walk us through what it's like to produce an episode on your your side of because I've talked extensively a couple of times about what it takes on my side to create an episode. So, whether it's a tech stuff or stuff Mom never told you or whatever,

what are the steps that are involved? I mean, we recently got some pretty great new digs are in our new office at Pont City Market, which you know involves for me a much more soundproof environment. We have like an actual studio space that's treated for sound um, both with acoustic tiles and also like in the construction they actually put in some sound dampening material. UM. So there is a window installed, and I'm on the other side of the window with a talkback mike, so I can

communicate with the folks that are doing the show. Um case we need to stop or talk about anything. But the most basic show involves more or less just recording everyone and then I record through UM several SM seven B sure microphones, which are actually the very popular for using in like studio work for recording bands. Michael Jackson used them exclusively on Thriller. It's like a really clean, great mike for recording close up and for getting kind

of like a really intimate sound. Um. It's what they call it dynamic microphone, whereas a condenser microphone picks things up much farther away. With the dynamic mic you tend to cut down on a lot of room noise and it's just a lot more of a direct kind of intimate sound. So radio in general tend to use dynamic mix in the SM seven is one of the most popular ones. So, yeah, the dynamic mics, and I've talked

about this before and tech stuff as well. It's the type where if you get off track of a mic from too far off in either direction, uh, it no longer picks up your your voice as well. And so so if you ever hear like a dramatic drop in someone's volume in a podcast, well, first of all, that rarely happens because we usually will catch it beforehand. But secondly, if it does happen, it's generally because a person who's talking has somehow like leaned too far over or as

otherwise they're no longer addressing the mic directly. Condenser mike's pick up things from all over. Like you were saying, I had um for a long time. I was using a condenser mike at home for whenever I had to record stuff at home. And I remember at the time my dogs, if they were running across the floor, you

could hear their their nails, their their claws clear. There are things like the air conditioning, just like room tone is amplified significantly, so with these dynamics, you know, as long as you're kind of up close to the mic, you're not going to get as much of that. And then there's also processing that I do after the fact that kind of cuts down some of that. But right, so, so what are you recording into? What? What is what

other equipment are you using the sides of the microphones. Yeah, we just got a kind of a new setup since

we moved into this new space, which is great. So all the mics are fed through like a cable snake, which is basically just like kind of a thicker cable that can incorporate several microphone lines into one and so that goes through the wall and then it feeds into an APPA g UM quartet, which is a four input UM what they call an audio interface UM a sound interface by the company APAGE, which has been around for a long time and is really known for having excellent

analog to digital converters because that that's what's going on when you're taking an analog signal from a mic and then you're plugging it into one of these devices and recording and digitally, it behooves you to have a really good conversion so that you're not losing anything in the process. UM. Then that is going into we use Adobe Audition, which is just a part of the Adobe Creative Suite UM to record and UM. Every every channel of audio goes

on its own independent track. So if we have a show like Foward Thinking, where there are three hosts, there are times where the levels may need to be adjusted independently of one another. So having them on their own separate track makes that possible, whereas if it was all recorded in one thing, then it would all be kind of mixed and you would not be able to actually make it. Ustman. It also means if one of us is making like some weird noise that we don't realize,

you could actually mute that on that track. Yeah. Uh. And speaking of weird noises, one of the things that we're gonna treat you guys to a little bit later is something that Noel has creatively done with some of the myriad of weird noises that have been produced into these microphones, uh normally unconsciously. And uh, well we'll get

to that a little bit later. All right. So the the microphones you've talked about, you've talked about the the processing, the conversion of that from analog to digital, uh, and using Adobe. So once something is recorded, What is your next step? UM, So I don't actually edit the shows on the machine, the computer that I record them on.

So I actually, um have a Dropbox account that I use, and so I take all of the files, the individual files, and then I export them to my drop box and then I can access that on my my laptop that I use, so I can edit when I'm in the officer them out and I bring them back into another

another instance of Adobe. But I use several um what they call audio plug ins on each track to kind of process and bring up the levels and normalize the levels so that no one's louder significantly louder than anybody else, and use what's called compression to kind of you set basically a compressor. You you set a threshold and you say, I, once the audio reaches this level, I want it to

be reduced a little bit. So that kind of is a good way of like making sure everything is sort of operating on the same volume so that something doesn't just pop out all of a sudden and as much

louder than something else. So you kind of have an instance of these compressors on every track, and you set a threshold, which is like the maximum volume, and once the audio reaches that level, it kind of like gently, you know, tones it down a little bit, so that like you kind of have an understanding of what the maximum is for everybody, right, yeah, so, uh that is really important with things like a speech like lots of lots of uh spoken word type stuff where you have

multiple users. Obviously, with music, it's one of those things that you try to to use in limited amounts because you don't want to. You don't want to. One of the things compression does is it reduces the distance between the softest and loudest moments. And and the more you compress, the more uh, the more say everything gets. Yeah, it's sort of this thing music, which I mean I also produced a lot of my own music um as well. Uh.

It's what they call the loudness wars. So like if you opened up an audio track and like put it into Adobe audition where you can actually see it as a wave form, nine times out of ten you're gonna see you know, a wave form typically has a peak and a valley, so like a maximum volume and a

minimum volume. But with modern music these days, you kind of tend to see it all is a big giant block because they've compressed it so much that there is no dynamics, so there's hardly any difference between the quietest parts and the loudest parts. With speech, it's more of like a like a band aid. You're kind of just using it to sort of like make sure nothing is unpleasant for someone who's listening to it on on different system. So it's like now, all of a sudden, someone screaming

in their ear. With music, it's obviously a different, different problem, right, So so with those wave forms when you're looking at that, I'm assuming, because I've noticed this with a lot of audio engineers, that you can look at a wave form and kind of get an idea of what was an intentional noise versus something that someone's just done accidentally without even having listened to it. Yet. I imagine that happens

fairly frequently, like particularly for small things. I know that I work on a podcast outside of work, and often I will be looking at the wave form and one of the first things I want to do is take out any annoying little things that would be distracting in the middle of someone talking um and like someone clicking on keys or something. And I can almost always tell immediately just by the size of the little blip in the way form that like, Yeah, I think I just

need to get rid of that. I don't even need to listen to it, because one, I already know it's to be this this noise, and too it kind of creeps me out. So I'm just gonna take that out. Yeah, I mean, like a lot of times, like a click or like a like a somebody slamming their fist down on a table or something, it just looks different visually

than like a natural speech pattern would look. So like us we call it kind of like a spike, so like sort of like a momentary spike in the wave form, which kind of just looks like a straight line, whereas you know, a natural pattern of speech where someone's talking and not really stopping, it looks a lot more rounded and kind of like you know, you can definitely tell

the difference between the two for sure. Well, then let me ask you this, Uh do you have anything set so that uh, like, are there any threshold set for for for noise where anything below a certain amount just

doesn't even get picked up? Yeah, that's that's called that's called a noise gate um, and it can be tricky, and I don't use it on everything, but on forward thinking where there's three mics, it just tends to um introduce this potential to introduce a lot more noise because you've got three open mics and people talking, there's there tends to be bleed on the other mics with what they call it when you hear the you know, the indirect sound of someone talking on one of the nearby mics,

on a mic that's not being used. And once you start getting a lot of that, you start getting issues with phase where you start things kind of start to sound a little swishy and weird kind of. So when you use a noise gate, you set a threshold on the low end um whereas the compression you set it more on the high end. So when something falls below a certain threshold, it just kills the channel, it kills the audio. But there's different like um little adjustments you

can do so it's not jarring. There's like an attack and a release. So like, for example, you wouldn't want the noise gate to kick in when I just get a little bit quieter. You would want to and even if it did, you would want it to do so kind of gently and not just be like super jarring and like make everything just dead silent. So there's different little parameters that you can mess with the kind of

make it a little more natural. So when you are in the editing mode, uh, typically I assume this involves you not just listening for when we mess up and go back and do something again. So you have to there's there's an art to clipping out anything where where

we've made a mistake and we've gone back. Not that I do that on tech stuff, but I've heard and some of the other podcasts that happens occasionally where uh, you have to go and take that part out and then you have to essentially have the bit that came right before and the bit that came after mesh togethers. So, so tell me about that process. Is it Is it easy? Is it is it? Does the software do a lot of the work? Is there any massaging you have to do?

It really doesn't do any of the work. Like what I do is so I'm looking at like what's called a multitrack view where you have you know, Jonathan's track here, Lawrence track underneath that, and then Joe's track there, and they're all lined up and so you can see when one person is talking and when another person starts, etcetera. UM, So what you have to do is you end up making like if I'm going to cut out a mistake or even just like a cough for like a sound

that happens. Maybe you are saying something and you kind of pause, and then maybe you didn't pick up with the very beginning of what you were saying. You just kind of like pick up with what you would have said next. So what I end up doing is I'll make a mark where I want the beginning of the edit to be. This isn't the software, it's just like a digital kind of a locator. So you make a little point and it shows it to you, so you can go back to that and be exactly on that spot.

And then I'll make another mark for the end, and then you just cut out what's in between those. But what I end up having to do is like if there's a sound like an S sound or a c H sound that starts it, to make it more natural, I'll try to keep the original starting sound and then

edit that into the pick up. Whereas you might have made that S or c H sound again, I'll use the original one and then kind of like cross fade just slightly, which means you take the two bits and you combine them together, but you make it where the beginning of one fades into the next one, so there's

no like audio artifact or glitch sound or anything. So so there's a possibility that if you've listened to enough How Stuff Works episodes, you've heard a word where the beginning pronunciation of that word happened minutes before before the rest of that word is spoken. And it sounds weird, but it really does kind of make it a little more naturally because it's like, you know, folks that do these shows and How Stuff Works, they do so many shows, and it's like I try to do anything that I can.

They do so much research, anything that I can to make them not have to repeat themselves too much, you know, so rather than like have people go back and say a whole paragraph for a whole sentence again, I try to just let it ride and do what I can to kind of like join it together and make it work. And sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it's there's it just didn't doesn't line up, and I will maybe have to ask someone to come in and give me another word or

something right. But typically people don't make too many mistakes. And you know, it's some shows are different than others, like tech stuff. I mean, very few edits in tech stuff, most of it that's been that's been sort of the history of tech stuff. In fact, way back in the day, when Chris and I were doing shows, very often the show that went up was unedited in the sense that nothing we we never stopped went back and fixed things.

If we misstated something or mispronounced something, we corrected it within the context of the show and kept going. But the longer that we've done these, the more of those little bits that we've gone back and fixed. It's funny because having being in the position I'm in where I have guest hosts all the time, I get the chance to see every the way people deal with that. Right. Some people are just like, I'm sorry, hang on a second, and then they'll go back into it. Some people will

actually market with a beep. Uh. One person in particular, Mr Mr Mr Ben Bolan, he is like religious about that too. He'll forget to do it and then he'll stop himself and go back and do the beep. And I think that is a legacy stuff. You know, Yeah, Josh does it too. Josh doesn't too. Um yeah, because I've I've had Josh in the studio before and he's

done a beep before. Uh Me, I don't make mistakes, so I just keep going, Well, it's fun too, because I mean it's it's it's actually really helpful because the beep not only does it jar you out of your editing stupor where you're like, Okay, here's the thing that I need to listen to, it also visually shows up, like we were talking about earlier, as something that's like sort of an anomaly. You start to recognize the beat because it's usually quiet just before and and then there's

a little bit of quiet after it. So you've got this little isolated word and you know, oh there's there's something. Uh, let me go check on the recording real quickly, sure this is this is real time, real time checking. Nol's probably gonna be cutting all this out, but I'm going to just keep on whispering because he's actually checking to make sure it's recording, and I'm guessing it is. Are

you good? Probably keep that that that's that just shows you know, like, like, well, is the thing is that we don't have anyone sitting on the other side of the window right now because you're in here. So so we're kind of stuck this way and we could have probably asked somebody, but everybody is super slams Friday. Yeah it's a Friday too. Yeah on Friday. You don't want to ask anyone to do any extra work, right, It's

it's tough enough that we're here. So uh, let me ask you this, out of all the ones that you do, uh Like, uh, I don't want to call anyone out, so I'm not going to ask you whose shows need the most edits? But is it generally the same across the boarder? Are some of them a little more heavy

than others? You know? It kind of averages out, I think, But yeah, there's definitely a few shows that involve a little bit more massaging, you know, because like I said, I mean, there's a lot of research that goes into this stuff, and you just can't really expect people to get it perfectly the first time. And these aren't people aren't like reading scripts either. They're right, they've got note

that they've made and bullet points and stuff. So it's really easy to like realize that you could have said something a little bit better because and and and like the medium allows that, like you know, you're not you're not live streaming, so you're not held to it, So why not make it the best that it can be? And I don't think there's anything dishonest about that. No,

I don't think so either. I think ultimately we're trying to create and entertaining an informative podcasts and in that effort, I think it's perfectly cromulent that we take those measures when you use that word, yeah, well, I you know. And again, it's one of those things where I don't have any problem with that. Whenever I work with anybody who does it in that way, it's actually kind of interesting to think, Oh, I have an opportunity to try and get my point across more succinctly, which is my

biggest problem. I'm a wordy guy. Uh And clearly that's another issue I can because by being wordy you over complicate things. Case in point, right now, all right, so we've gotten through the point. You've you've gone through, you've done the edits, you've sage some stuff, you've removed any extraneous noises you've you've taken out any mistakes at that point, typically do you do anything else before you send it

on for for the various hosts to QA and episode. Well, I mean in the same way that I have these plug ins on the individual tracks, I also have a with a mastering I guess you could call it a plug in on the main bus, which is the master tracks. So it's like you've got these individual tracks and they're all feeding into another like final master volume. So it's the equivalent of like the one knob on your stereo.

You're turning that all the way down. It's turning down everything that's coming in, whether it's coming through your CD or your you know, phono jack or whatever. So that's like a master volume master fader in like audio terms.

And so what I have on that is an equalizer, which is you know, it divides um the sound up into different frequencies, and I kind of do what's called a high pass, which is where you take um a It's like a filter that's sort of cuts out some of the low low low frequencies up to a certain threshold, and like a lot of times that's where a lot of the noise lives. So to kind of like do that to the final mix. It just sort of gives you a little bit of a cleaner, you know, sound

with without anything that you're not gonna hear anyway. We're not doing like drum and bass music or like you know, anything with like super poundy low base. So there's no point in even having it in there because it just kind of muddles things up, especially people listening to it on earbuds and on different different devices in their car and things like that. And then I'll have like what's called up it's called a sonic maximizer, which is sort

of like a compressor, but it's a little different. But again, you set a threshold and it's sort of like raises the minimum volume of everything up to a certain point, and if the maximum volume exceeds the threshold that you set, it kind of brings it down. So it really is like a compressor, but it's I've always been a little uncertain about what the difference is because it certainly operates

like a compressor. But it's called the sonic maximizer, and it's something that you would put like on a final product for like a song, if you were making it so that it kind of like gets as loud as it can be without being too loud or too quiet, right, And at that point, uh, you typically send us a notice us being the various hosts where you have stored the the now edited file and give us the opportunity to listen to it to make sure there's nothing else

on there that we might want to have addressed, Like maybe there's a point that someone made and we don't feel very strongly about it, or maybe once in a while we'll have one of those moments where we start a sentence, go back and start again, and we have to say, oh, well, we just need to get this one little bit chopped out. Yeah. I mean, you know, I added so many shows, and I, like you say,

I definitely multitask a lot. And you know I and I often edit these shows at double speed just so that I can like grind my way through as many of them as I possibly can. And you know, if if something is said and then said again really fast without like leaving a pause where it kind of like you know, make you realize, okay, this needs to come out. Yeah,

I definitely miss things from time to time. But that's why we have this q A process and it's always been in place before I was even here, because, like I said, it's just such a volume of stuff that we do. Yeah, and it's you know, it's one of those things that's good for all all parts. I mean, like you said, you're doing so much. Like so, how many uh, on a typical day when you are recording episodes? How many different shows are you recording? Usually? Is it

to the max? No? Like, so record shows Tuesday through Thursday, and then we do pick ups kind of on Friday, we're doing right, some somebody missed something, and so we on Tuesdays I'll do too. On Wednesday's I do too, and on Thursday's I do three. And those are those are shows within those shows you typically and multiple episodes were great? Yeah, two to three Yeah, because tech stuff we tend to record too. Sometimes I'll do three if

I'm feeling mesochistic. And all of our shows except for um stuff, they don't want you to know because it's sort of paired with the video show that both of the hosts are pretty deeply involved with. They only do one episode a week, with everybody else does two episodes a week. So not only are you recording all these but you're also having to listen to them, edit them,

and then publish them. Um. One thing we haven't really talked about that is, you know, I mean I love all the shows, and I you know, there's a certain tedium that goes into like editing all this stuff. So sometimes I need things to kind of break the tedium, which is usually comes in the form of like doing kind of custom music cues for different shows or like uh, like sound effects or like fully kind of work and

things like that. And so it doesn't happen all the time, but when it does, I tend to really like, you know, have a good time with it. Yeah, And that's one of those things that you know, we used to do that fairly frequently on tech stuff. We had a couple of different things that we'd like to do, Like back in the day when I would yell out listener mail, we had a whole sound effect of a classon But

you know, these were things that were gathered, non produced, right. Uh. And whereas you're talking about actually creating things, not just curating but actually making them. You know, you're you're a musician and an audio engineer, so you tend to make these things. I have resisted the temptation to to pepper

the episodes with such things. But yeah, it's something I'm certainly interested in having a little more soundscaping in the episodes when when it's warranted, when we've had some fun, you know, me and you doing some of these more soundscaped episodes. Again, a lot of it has to do with just like bandwidth of like what are you capable of producing in a week with all the shows that you do, all the shows that I do. But like,

so far we've done two for tech stuff. We've done the SMR episode with Heather Feather, which you know was a little bit lighter on the sound design, but it was a lot of just pulling clips off YouTube and kind of like sewing it all together with like a narration and then the interview bits, which is really fun.

But then my favorite one, which is obviously um a little heavier on this stuff, is the Negative Land episode where we kind of produced it more like a almost like a radio ad piece or like an NPR style, you know, that really has a kind of a rhythm and a flow to it, right, you know, a combination of sound effects and music clips and interview clips with with Mark Hustler, from Negative Land and a lot of his music that all of which he owns and gave us,

you know, full exclusive rights to use, which is can be a problem as well because we obviously have to get permission to share stuff. You can't just really nearly take whatever we want. Yeah, there's some podcasts out there that kind of fly under the radar and they do

this stuff. But the bigger you get, the more you have to be cognizant of that so much so that that even when you're you know, we like to be extra cautious just to avoid any problems, Like we don't want to have an experience where we have to take something down. For one thing, it's the Internet. Once it goes up, you know, it lives there some so it's going to be living someplace forever. Um. So we we

tend to be very careful about that. And it's it's awesome having you know, we have several people in the in the office who are musically inclined. They are musicians of of some sort or another, and many of them write music. So having that kind of opportunity to lean on folks and say, you know, I realized this is asking a lot, but if we could you know, start making something custom for us that is is unique, um, as opposed to going out and finding something would that

be possible? So uh, I would say, don't be surprised if a certain show's theme song changes eventually, because we've talked about it, um. But I mean, it's obviously a matter of time and and and energy as well. But one of the things I wanted to mention, um, apart from your work here and also that you're a musician, is the fact that I alluded to it earlier, you found very interesting uses for some of the more quirky

noises that have popped up in the past. And I remember you had a look of intense glee on your face when you were first playing for me a track that was sort of a percussive track that was comply made up of various mouth sounds and other noises that you had pulled from episodes, from all the stuff you edit and had produced into a music track. Like I said,

I gotta break up the tediums somehow, so keep myself entertained. Yeah, I basically like every time, you know, I don't always do it, but you know, if there's like a odd vocal tick or like a like a click like kind of like a kind of sound which happens when people are catching their breath or swallowing or things like that. And again, like these mics, people are right up on them.

So these sounds are really in your face, very like clear and from Yeah, probably something that unless you unless that's your a s m R trigger, you probably don't want to hear it, yeah, exactly. But like from a music production standpoint and like us like sampling and like electronic music is what I kind of like have been

into lately. Um, these sounds are so high fi like on their own if you just isolate them and you don't even think about what the sources like you there have been times where someone will bang on the table or someone will you know, clear their throat or make like one of these little vocal ticks and when you when you when I'm editing them before I delete it, I will literally highlight it and then export it into a folder that I keep on Dropbox that I call blips.

And it's just I've got like probably sixty or seventy files in there now, all of which range in length from one second to you know, maybe ten seconds. For like an interesting loop that I might make of like a good throat clear or something, and then I take it into I use Ableton Live, which is a little bit more of an in depth program than audition. It's more made for like looping and making electronic music and stuff.

And so I'll bring all these sounds in and put them like on a drum machine, uh patch or whatever where I can trigger them on like a MIDI keyboard, and then I like, so, you know, instead of there being a snare sound, it might be someone clearing their throat, or instead of a kick drum sound, it might be that banging on the table. And then you can actually go in and shape them and repitch them and flip them backwards. You can do anything you can imagine with them.

And um, so this is kind of what what was created with that. Well, how about we listen to a really quick uh comparison. I would like to hear, you know, sort of that that early track that you played for me way back on me and Lauren and Joe, because it was at a forward thinking recording where you played it and it might have even been and was that the old office? I think, yeah, But why don't we

listen to that? And then let's listen to something that where you've you've gone even a step further and kind of made sort of, uh, like a full fully fledged song out of something. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So the first one there was, like you said, just sort of when I was experimenting with this and this kind of like you know, finding different uses for these sounds, because again I wasn't trying to make it sound gross or like

off putting or anything. I literally just was fascinated by how cool these sounds could be on their own, and then especially when you combine ten or fifteen of them and like have them occupied different like rhythmic spaces or whatever. But then the second one was a little bump bumper. You guys that forward thinking asked me to make where you know, you're always saying we'll see this technology in twenty to forty years and say it so much that

it was like, we need a little little theme. So, you know, the vocal there is me just talking into my computer speakers, and then I made it into like a vocode or patch on en ableton. But all of the percussion sounds are those mouth sound but again I don't feel like they come off that way. I feel like it just sounds like kind of like an interesting you know, polyrhythmic texture of like writ of sound, rather than like, oh, this is a jokey kind of thing.

I don't think that. That's not what I'm intending to do at all, but it comes across as I'm sure most people would wonder, like, well, how did he how did he make that noise? Like how how did that sound? Well? How is that created? And uh, you know it goes. It harkens back to our discussion with Hustler over a negative land, this idea of found sounds and finding new ways to uh to incorporate interesting sounds in into a

new work of art. Very similar to that, and uh and kind of I would I would call it like a descendant of that same sort of thing, except instead of going for full phrases or even full words, you're finding individual elements of sound and putting them together. It's much more micro and like what I'm what I'm doing. Because I continue to do this, I'm basically developing like a palette of these sounds. And it's the more I mess with it, you know, I don't try to get

like a bunch of the same kind of sounds. But if something pops out at me and then I'll grab it and put it in my folder and then like add it to my my sound banks or whatever. And yeah, it's a lot of fun. And you know, this is one of the rare job where I can like do this kind of stuff and you know, have a real job where I edit podcasts and you know, get to come on and talk on podcasts and make music for him and also get to do this fun kind of

nerdy stuff on the side. So so pretty lucky. Yeah, the fact that you've the fact that you've covered so many and and granted, I'm sure a lot of the time when you're editing what you're specifically listening out for our our obvious mistakes, but assuming that, I assume that at least occasionally you can actually have a moment to enjoy what what the various podcasts are talking about. Are there any particular subjects that podcasts have covered that you

found really interesting and learned a lot? I mean, I feel like I learned stuff all the time. Um, It's it's just one of these things where it's just so much. It's just like this wealth of information, especially when you break it out into the different shows and the different

brands that we do. Um, I think stuff that stuff I've never told you always really really interesting topics, and um, I feel like, you know, everything that tech stuff covers is always really great and gives me kind of like a new appreciation for something that maybe I haven't heard of, like a new technology, like the power wall, for example. That's really well, that was on fourth thing. That was

fourth Thingking, Yeah, the same same sort of thing. Like, yeah, very much like the forward thinking and tech stuff I've argued, and quite a bit, especially the podcasts, are are very closely related. Forward Thinking obviously in many ways has a

broader scope because it's anything that's that's future oriented. But it's just cool to like pull an item out of the news that I'm like interested in, and I you know, it's so easy, especially when I'm working on a computer all day, to like see headlines on Facebook or whatever and then like you know, oh, I'm gonna bookmark that maybe I'll read the article eventually, and then I never do, but sometimes I don't because I'm already getting this in depth,

you know, like version and of this headline from so many of the podcasts that I added, So you know, it's pretty pretty interesting, and then occasionally our podcast will all gravitate towards a similar topic. Over over a certain span of time, you get to hear the same sort of stuff from different perspectives. Actually, today's forward thinking is on the M Drive and today's stuff they Don't Want you to Know is also on the M Drive And I edited both of those, um like in the last

couple of days. So it's kind of interesting to hear two different sides of it, and a kind of conspiracy angle in one from more of the pure texts, Yeah, exactly does this thing work? And if so, how and why doesn't anyone agree on that? Yeah? Uh, In that case, it was because the M Drive was in the news, and that's what prompted both of those shows too record. But that's you know, it's really kind of it is

funny when that happens. We've also had that happened with other stuff like asteroid mining and a couple of other topics, where all the different shows, or at least three or four of the shows would all kind of cover it within the same couple of months. So people listen to all the house stuff work shows, they just they probably just thought we're all pitching the same ideas in our big room. We are all working very independently of each

other for our various shows. Um, so let me ask you this, Uh, you know, do you have any plans for any of the shows that are going Like I know that you've worked very closely with me to try and come up with interesting ways to keep tech stuff relevant, to keep finding new fun ways to produce the show. Because obviously I I have the only show right now there's a single host show. Um, have you worked with all the other shows in similar to a similar extent?

I mean it really just depends. Like sometimes the format just really works because I mean a lot of our shows are just sort of a traditional it's like a couple of people sitting down and having a conversation. It's almost like extraneous to like get too crazy with any kind of like sound effects and bumper cues and stuff

like that. But then when you when you're doing more of a solo show, there are opportunities where you're like bringing an interview subjects where it's fun to kind of like bring in different sound and bring in different clips and kind of add a little more context beyond just

a conversation. But these shows have been around for so long that there's this like legacy involved of like you know, just like let's just have this sit down, no nonsense conversation about a topic and let's just like you know, unpack it. And so sometimes it's just adding too much, too many bells and whistles to it. It It was almost almost takes away from the kind of like thing that

people are used to. And I think that's fine. But then there are certain shows that we are talking about kind of expanding and doing more of like a news almost like an audio magazine kind of version of and don't want to give anything away, but like you know, not but keeping keep an air out then because that

sounds really exciting. And uh, also, since you mentioned the fact that occasionally I do interviews, I think it might be cool to explain to people how things are different if we have a remote person recording with us, and you know, I've done uh interviews with like Tom Merritt or with Heather Feather that sort of stuff, So explain

how that's a little bit different. Yeah, I mean ideally in those situations, um, you do what's called a tape sink that's sort of like a news term and what that refers to is is like, Okay, so you're on your end and maybe you're talking to this person via Skype, maybe you're talking to them on the phone. We actually have a phone system where you can pipe in phone audio to the headphone system here and then whatever Jonathan says and Mike goes down the phone line to the

person that's listening. So I am recording Jonathan's voice on this end and getting kind of a crappy sounding phone version of the person on the other hand. But ideally what they would do is record their end in a higher quality set up with a microphone and like they're a digital recorder or a computer, and a lot of the folks that Jonathan works with our podcasters and so they kind of tend to have a little set up at home. So what they'll do is they'll record their end.

I'll record Jonathan's end, and then after the session wraps, they will send Jonathan Ormy the higher quality audio file and then I will take it into audition and just sync up the too. So a lot of times I just have to do that by ear um, just kind of like move the audio into place until I can

tell that the timing is right. Um. Sometimes we'll do a sync thing where we have them have both sides to do a clap or something like that, and then you can line up that that sharp line the clap makes and then you know that's where it starts, which is a technique they use. And you know, doing sound sync for for film and video production, sure, where you have the clapboard and you say what the scene is, you do the clap that allows the uh, the editors

to match up the the audio track with the video track. Uh. Yeah, I've had to do that many times. And I'll tend to record whatever the phone or Skype audio is as well in case, for whatever reason, the main recording on the guests and doesn't work, which we have had happened, and then we'll revert back to using the guype audio or the phone audio and it's not as great, but it still is fine most of the time, you know. So now we all know that occasionally technology g goes

a straight and uh. And it's particularly difficult if you are editing one show on one machine and recording a show on another machine, uh, to notice if something has gone wrong? Have there been I know the answer to this, at least for my case. Have there been any cases where UH an episode has either like there's been a corrupt file or for some reason the things stopped recording

what happens? Then, yeah, there was, I mean there was one occasion I know you're referring to, were like maybe like a twelve thirteen minutes of an episode one of the mics wasn't recording for four thinking. And that's the situation that's pretty specific to that show, because again it's like three different mics, and sometimes most of our shows we just have the tist have the two mics, And

so I think what was happened. What happened was one the third mic was set to the same input as one of the other two mics, and I didn't catch it until about ten minutes into the recording. And that's obviously my dada. Well yeah, but and and but we as podcasters make mistakes too. I'm not trying to call you out, no, no, no no, I think I think a

more interesting example is UM. In our old office, we had an issue where we shared a space with UM an ad uh AD Agency or add UM department from a large multinational UM let's say, UH television network content content providers. Sure, and so they were on one side of the office and we were on the other side

of the office. And for whatever reason, the thermostat for the audio studio in this kind of makeshift call center space that we were crammed into for a while, UM, was in somebody's office on the other side of the space, and we didn't we didn't have control over it, and so what was happening. And it took forever for them to even realize this was happening. And and your desk was in that particular studient. It was just in that studio. So I was just in there all the time. UM.

So it would get really really hot and really really nasty. UM. And it one point the computer that we were recording on in there got so hot that it shut itself down mid at the very end of a session, and the file didn't write whatever data it needed to write to the end of that recording to make a complete file a package that you can like read on a computer.

So um, with the help of one of the smartest people I know, Casey Pegram, who is a videographer for us stuff you should know and brain stuff and what the stuff, and it's just an overall genius of a dude. Um. He's also he's also taken many of the production photos for a lot of our shows. Yeah, really talented, very

very cool guy. I'm very talented. He figured out how to like convert this file into like hex, like you take a hex editor, which actually like parses the file into visual data, which like if you looked at it will make your head spin. It's like if you let's say, he took an audio file and dropped it into like a word a word processor. That's this is the kind of stuff you'd get where it's like, oh, these crazy exs and squares and and they're just staring the matrix,

staring into the matrix. And he figured out like that there was this line of code that like was missing from the end of the file. That is what it needed to like actually like be readable by you know, the software that we use. And he figured out some program that like kind of reparted the file and added that back in and we were able to save it after this like disastrous you know shut down from overheating computer. Right. Yeah, so once in a while, we you know, technical issues happen. Uh,

it's rare, it's really really rare. And once in a while, there'll be a mistake either. I mean, you know, we podcasters have made them. We've I've had to come in and re record a segment when we realized that something we had said was not um not accurate, or was

a misrepresentation lot we had. Essentially, what it boils down to is, more often than not, it stems from a misunderstanding where we think we've got to handle on something, and then the more we think about, the more we realize, you know, I had assumed something that turns out not to be true. So more often than not, I've had to rerecord something because of something we podcasters have done.

It's pretty rare when I have to, Or you'll get the q A back in and listening to it with a little bit of distance from having done the research and having like had to grind it out and come right in and record it, you start to realize that doesn't sound quite right, and then you kind of like go back and check yourself and then oh, and then you have to figure out how many times did I

say this thing? No, there was, yeah, there was one point where I remember, and it may have even been the one where we had to re record because of Joe's mike. But there was one where we realized that we didn't want to have to record the whole show again. What we wanted to do was record the first half of the show and leave the second half alone, because it is a lot of work for everybody to come in and do the show once, to have to do it twice is it's it's tough, right, It's just it.

It starts to hit on your psyche, right. And I remember that we sat down and we were like, Okay, did we make any jokes in the second half that we have to set up in the first half because we do so many callbacks, right, And I'm pretty sure that was an episode where we were thinking, all right, what was the joke we made in the second half where we're going to have to make sure that we have the building blocks for that joke in the first half. And there's nothing that will kill a joke faster than

having to recreate it. Yeah, because it was it was something that happened organically. We don't write our jokes down most of the time. We don't write our jokes down. Once a while, our notes will have a joke in it and we're like, okay, this is too good to not say we gotta we gotta add it. Um, most of the time we don't have our jokes written down. We just end up spontaneously coming up with it. So having to recreate spontaneity in a in a in a controlled and planned way is it just does not feel

right when you're doing what. Yeah, but the cool thing Nol is that with your work most I don't think people would be able to tell, you know, it's only the people who have gone through it that are even able to realize it. I try and try to do a great job. So Yeah, there's a ton of different shows you can listen to that that have Noel's work on them. And obviously we're going to continue working on new ways to soundscape at and some stuff. Maybe maybe come up with a couple of other little clever um

motifs or whatever things that I'm really looking forward to. Obviously, it will be dependent upon Noel's spare time, of which there is precious little. But speaking of spare time, before we before we wrap up, I just wanted to say, Um, you were part of a fun little spare time curricular thing that that I did with some of the other podcasters here. That's totally How Stuff Works related. But it was like a lovecraft Ian radio horror drama. And Jonathan

got to play a little part. Yeah. It was about a waiter who tries to serve some drinks and that's the whole, the whole thing that two lines I knew. Yeah, but that's an example of like, Okay, so I've got all this stuff that I do for work and then to like add in another audio project that involved me staying up like from like ten pm to like eight am on a Sunday to like knock this thing out. And I'm super proud of it. And you know, did

Ben right that wrote it? And Ben wrote it and and it started a lot of the people from How Stuff Works doing various roles and honestly, like it was something. When I heard about it, I thought, oh, it's a shame that didn't know about that earlier. That would have been fun to be part of that. And then at the last minute, I think someone fell through and you needed a person to just record a couple of lines. I was happy to jump in. Now you have to know to like I mean, it was like a deadline

was approaching. We were just trying to knock this thing on everyone even to get it done. It was such a stretch for everyone. But I'm not going to name drop it too hard. But check out the Atlanta Fringe Festival audio components if you guys, they're interested, and you can probably figure out which one it is. Yeah, and uh, radio drama is one of those things that has a special place in my heart. For the long time I was.

I was a member of the board of the Atlanta Radio Theater Company, and I also wrote several pieces and performed in several pieces of theirs. So actually, if you go, this is a non how stuff works podcast plug. But if you go and check out the A r t C podcast, that's the Atlanta Radio Theater Company podcast. They collect a bunch of their various live performances, uh, and

they put it out as a podcast. And if you listen, if you do a search for my name, you'll see that I've done quite a few with them way back in the day. I haven't recorded with them for a few years now, but some of the stuff I've written also shows up there. So yeah, it's pretty pretty funny, weird and goofy stuff. So a lot of science fiction, fantacy and horror for those guys. Uh and well and also you you are you? How many bands do you play in right now? Are just one? Or is it

to um play? Both of them are kind of based out of Atlanta and at Georgia. One of us called Brothers and the other one is called blue Blood and we're actually doing our record release show tonight in Atlanta at the earl Um. It's by the time you hear this, it is too late, but it would have been you

would have you would have loved to have been. Yeah, but that's awesome, you know, and I love the fact that we can kind of get a glimpse into some of the stuff that the folks here at how Stuff Works are doing outside of their jobs, because you know, it's it's it speaks to the sort of people who work here that many of us are working in a very creative industry and either we are creative in the sense that we're the ones writing and then maybe talking

about whatever content, or we're editing and shaping that content producing it as well, because there is I think there are very specific duties for an editor versus a producer, and you have to do both and a publisher, so there's multiple ones there. Uh, you know the fact that we all have this as our jobs and then many of us outside of work continue to do that stuff in other ways. I think it says a lot about the type of people who work here, which is pretty awesome.

And uh and I mean pretty much everybody you've ever heard on a podcast it falls into that category somewhere. So uh nol, thank you so much for staying down and talking with us. Do you have any any for people who are maybe trying to go out there and do a podcast, you know they're working with whatever software? Maybe it's Audacity because it's it's a free piece of software. Man, It's it's it's it's easy because there's so many really

inexpensive little audio interfaces you can get. Or even if you just have a computer that has like an eighth inch microphone jack, you can get a pretty decent minke and just get like a transformer with a turnaround cable. It'll turn your XLR into like the right plug to go into your laptop. But I mean, if you look online, there are so many like between maybe fifty two seventy five dollar audio interfaces that will take an XLR microphone connection, which is what you know, higher pro mis use um.

And then yeah, I mean, a garage band works great. A lot of Mark Marin uses garage band to record. The WTF podcast is one of the most popular podcasts on iTunes and tons of people use it. And there's even like a podcast exporting option where you can do all the metadata for the MP three and all that stuff. Um. And then, like you said, Audacity is great. It's totally free, it works fantastic, and it's just there's it's it's it's

pretty much wide open. You know, you just just you can get a decent microphone for maybe less than a hundred bucks and then you know, just get started. Yeah, there's there are a ton of hosting sites out there too. I mean, obviously we have the benefit of working with a major company, but SoundCloud, I mean you can just put your all your stuff on SoundCloud. You can do it there. Anybody can contribute something to iTunes. I mean,

there's tons of like sledgling podcasts on iTunes. I do uh I use I personally use libs in for one of my podcasts as a hosting service, but you could also use things like archive Done Work. They have a hosting service that's free. So there are a lot of a lot of different places out there if you want to try your hand at this kind of thing, and uh, and kind of get an idea of what what Noel goes through whenever he has to has to fix a podcast.

I've I've gotten obsessed when I do mine. I have to have to learn to let go because I get obsessed with things like sure, let me take out all the us. I mean, just just one last thing. The podcasting landscape in general is so wide open right now because I mean, obviously there's a lot of established brands and stuff that people may know about, but in general, people the idea of podcasting is that there's just something

for everybody. So it's like, you know, while it may seem like oversaturated, there's always room for some new way to do something or some new way to talk about something. And a big part of what turns people onto podcasts that they can just find random things and just have a good time exploring and finding new things. So I would never be discouraged by like, oh, there's too much stuff out there. It's always I would always encourage people. I'm like, I would say, think about something you are

really excited about. Really passionate about, and you'd love to talk about this stuff, whatever that might be. It doesn't doesn't matter what the subject is, but you just really like talking about You could have endless conversations that should be your podcast subject, because chances are there are other people out there in the world who are just as passionate as you are and will find that podcast interesting.

The danger, I would say, is trying to figure out where the demand is and then trying to create a podcast to meet that demand, because unless it's something you're already interested in, it turns into real hard work, real fast.

So no, thank you again, And guys, if you have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, whether it is another guest that I should have on the show, a guest host who should sit here and talk with me about something technical, or a subject itself, let me know, Send me an email that addresses tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook, Twitter,

or Tumblr. The handle at all three of those is tech Stuff h s W. And I'll talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics at how stuff works dot com.