464. Why This “Weird Facts” Show Is Impossible to Stop Listening To

0:04 Good morning podcasting morning chat. Today is Monday, March 2nd, 2026, and today is our obsession worthy podcast show. We're going to be listening to No Such Thing as Fish. That's episode 621. And Jonathan Howard is going to lead us in a great discussion about what makes this obsession worthy and what we can learn from it. So if you listen live on Clubhouse, hit the share button, bottom left hand side of the screen and share. However, Clubhouse let you, if you want to join us live on the video, you can go to podcastmorningchat.com/join us. And for catching us via podcast, YouTube, LinkedIn, etcetera. Please share this episode with a fellow podcaster. Now give me about 30 seconds and we'll get things going. I just want to thank you for being here today. Well, well, good morning, everybody. Again, welcome to the podcasting morning Chat. Thank you so much for being here. I'm your host for today, Ralph Estep Junior filling in for Mark Ronic and Curry on stage with me, our producer Ashley Feller. We've got Jonathan Howard, BC

1:36 babbles, Dr. Faye, Matthew Bliss, Nick Naubach and Ty tutoring AKA Nikki. So we're going to get started today on an obsession worthy podcast. This is no, excuse me, no such thing as fish. Thank you, Jonathan. It's a great title. But Jonathan, I'm going to go ahead and turn over the reins to you, my friend, and you can take us down the road of no such thing as fish. Just kind of as a quick reminder, we do this as a way to look at other podcasts and see what we can take from them and use in our own podcast to make them a little bit better, a little bit more obsession worthy. And that's what we're doing today. We are taking a look at No Such Thing as a fish. I believe it was episode 621.

2:20 And it is no such thing as space, where space eggs, I believe is what we're talking about here, episode 621. But the concept of the show is that for smart and I lightly say weirdos, bring one really interesting fact to the conversation and it becomes a really entertaining kind of variety show of a conversation. The pace never flatlines. It's always, you know, 1 fact per person gives it a clear lane, and there's no confusion as to what's going to happen during the episode. And then every fact that's brought gets kind of poked, teased, upgraded, or there's like debate around it. So that creates some momentum.

3:02 Before we dive into the conversation that this podcast, I want to highlight some of the universal doorways that are used throughout the podcast. And these are things that everybody cares about, which is humans are absurd #1 all our systems are broken. So bureaucracy, history, science and language, you were confidently wrong. Which is another one of those fun universal doorways or this detail changes the entire picture. So those are kind of the four topic, you know, main ideas that they use throughout the podcast that we can all relate with. And Jonathan, I just want to interject something, you know, every week I I try to listen to the whole Obsession Worthy podcast. I mean, this one had me hooked from the beginning. It was just a really cool concept. I was trying to multitask and I had to stop multitasking because I want to hear what they're going to say. It was really engaging.

3:51 And that was the thing about this one. And I hope everybody gets a chance to listen to if they haven't listened to it already, because it is super engaging. And you're you're right about that doorway. And that was the coolest thing anyway. I didn't want to interrupt you right there mid thought Jonathan, but it was a really cool episode. Quite all right, I'm going to have to stop giving obsession worthy podcast because you keep having to stop doing your multitasking. So this episode there's a guest slot, He adds some novelty and some dynamic to it to the episode. There's a few topic lanes. One is supercomputers, cranes, silica gel, which I personally enjoyed. The silica gel one I found hilarious, but it really signals A curated fact menu, not random things happening. And the pacing is built in because the format cycles and it goes from banter to fact drop to a bunch of people rifting and then they pivot and repeat.

4:42 So the whole structure of this podcast really forces the momentum and keeps people going and listening. So we're going to do a quick three clip rundown today of what makes the podcast episode obsession worthy. I'll go through some of the obsession worthy things towards the end, but then we're going to do a slightly different thing inspired by this podcast. Let's start with the setup and the first insane fact for this podcast. Phones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in a particular order. Here we go, starting with fact #1 and that is James. OK, my fact this week is that when the father of supercomputing, Seymour Cray, got stuck on a problem, he would go into tunnels he built under his house and speak to elves. What kind of guy?

5:31 Yeah, so this is a guy called Seymour Cray. He built some of the first supercomputers. And according to one of his colleagues, who's John Roll Wagon, Craig said that when he got stuck in a problem, he'd go under there and the elves come with the solutions to his problems. Yeah, why it's certainly true is that he was brilliant at sort of getting a computer problem, going away, just thinking about it, and then getting the answer. Yeah, so it's an interesting story because it's sort of, he had such weird myths about him. Did he really talk to elves? Was he messing with his friend? There was a story that he built his own boat, and at the end of every year he would burn the boat and then he would build a new boat the next year because he loved building things and he loved creating a new thing.

6:14 On the blank page, I heard that he burned a boat just because he'd built a new one. It starts out with saying he would build supercomputers and talk to elves in the tunnels underneath his house. And the fact is that he was building the supercomputers, and that creates the structure of this podcast. And the elves in the tunnels is contributes to the chaos of what's happening during this clip. They didn't hook you with like supercomputer computing history because that would be boring. They really hooked you with this weird visual of a genius crawling into his tunnels under his house, talking to elves. And your brain is picturing this entire thing as we kind of highlight it. And that's what creates the obsession in this podcast is that unique visual that you're getting of a mad scientist kind of crawling into tunnels under his house, speaking with random little elves.

7:05 And I pictured the elves in the tunnel speaking with him, so that creates a little bit of the obsession there. But definitely if anybody else has anything they want to share on this one, I got some other stuff, but I don't see the clubhouse room. Go ahead, Matthew, you have a comment to make. I've always enjoyed listening to these episodes for all the reasons you talk about, Jonathan. And then the key thing I think, to note from the clip, kind of practicalizing what you've managed to academically put in a really good sentence at the start, Jonathan, is that this is just the beginning of how their conversations progress. It's a little bit chaotic, but they like to tie amusing trivia facts to each other in a chain.

7:46 So it almost makes sense in terms of the progression. But the thing that you didn't mention is that the people who are the usual hosts for this, they're connected to a lot of other creators and comedians in the space who know lots of stuff. But these guys were the comedians who did the research for the TV show Qi in the UK for a long time. It was first hosted by Stephen Fry. And I can't remember the name of the host now, but that was a show where you had two competing sets of three panelists who were famous people who would just kind of go back and forth discussing facts and trivia. And no Such Thing as a Fish was a a place for the researchers who are comedians to kind of unpack even more facts that they get. And God, some of the facts that they talk about are really weird and interesting.

8:37 As you listen to further facts along, I'm sure you've got clips of it, Jonathan. You'll hear them start to back reference old facts as jokes and connecting the ideas together. Like you'll even hear they mentioned Seymour Cray here. But then they talk about cranes and you start to think, oh, maybe their prompt was just like a single word and they're like wrapping facts around it. It's a really well done show and I find it incredibly hilarious. In 5 minutes a lot happens. Like how is this supercomputer defined? How in the US we built a supercomputer made of 100 plus PlayStation Threes because it was cheaper. How the International Space Station cools itself and that the hometown of Jack Dawson is the same as the office of the supercomputer king was there. So it's kind of controlled chaos. In 5 minutes you get a whole lot of facts and it's really well done because it doesn't feel like complete chaos. It feels like it's flowing and you're getting interesting things and you feel a little bit just a little bit smarter having listened to do it.

9:42 And you're learning the whole time, which I think is one of the coolest things because, like I said, it took me away from what I was doing. And I had to listen to this because I was like, oh, this stuff I didn't even know. And to learn stuff you don't know, especially at 53 years old, is a really cool thing, dude. You know, I thought that was really cool. No. And the way they engaged it, you know, the way they just had this sort of banter between each other, sometimes it was hard to pick up. The dialect was a little bit complicated at times, catching the the accents were a little strong, but I managed to hang in there. So they lead with, you know, father supercomputing, which signals that it's a real topic, but they add in the elves, which signals fun. And that's the exact combo that makes this podcast super binge able because it's smart, but it's never too serious.

10:25 It's never self, you know, like, oh, we're better than all of you because we know more than you kind of a podcast. You actually makes it relatable, binge able and still smart. And then they're mid conversation about supercomputers and how they and you know how the International Space Station cools itself when Andy blurts out space sausage. So that's our next clip. Could we cook something with radiation in space and then that comes back to Earth? I guess so, yeah. I've just had an idea, that's all. I'm just going to write to Bezos after this. Andrew's space sausage. I'm drinking space sausage. Well, when space SpaceX is straight there, SpaceX. Oh.

11:07 My God, I don't want to deal with masking space sausage. You send the satellite up surrounded by a thick layer of meat, right? It's like a Scotch egg, giant Scotch egg. And as it cooks, it drops off and comes back to us when it's cooked. How does it not burn on reentry? We can. We'll solve this down the line. I'm asking for $100 million. So, right. Just bad dudes. Just quickly on Seymour Cray. He was born and eventually set up his offices in a place called Chippewa Falls in Wisconsin. And that is Chippewa Falls is where Jack from Titanic was actually born, although when it happened, the lake wasn't actually there. So Jack Titanic was born in Chippewa Falls. That's completely random fact that came out of that. So, but this is like smart friends kind of derailing into the absurdity.

12:03 And that gives you an instant understanding of the entire vibe of the show. If you listen to just this clip, you know exactly what the show is going to be like. There's going to be smart people talking about stuff, and there's going to be moments of absolute absurdity, which allows the listener to learn and laugh. But your brain remembers it because it's attached to this whole scene of, you know, a satellite going up, you know, wrapped in meat. It's an absurd visual, but you're going to remember it now. In the current era, especially on social media, you need to entertain to capture attention, and Fish is a perfect example of this. The way that they're entertaining but providing value and information that's useful is the perfect example of what we need to be doing on social media when we're trying to reach people.

12:49 And Jonathan, that's. Part of everything. Matt has a comment he wanted to make. Go ahead, Matt. This is going to jump on top of the point you're making, Jonathan, but the other thing that I had in my mind that keeps engaging is that I think the that the listener can think of other facts that connect to the other facts that they're talking about. And it helps with the learning, not just the entertainment. They're incredibly funny to listen to, but remembering things that you know about the things they're talking about allows you to add your own kind of internal dialogue with them as you think about stuff. Like when they talked about using radiation to rapidly cool in the the satellite stuff. It reminded me of a book I read a little while ago from Neil Stephenson called 70s, where a portion of this book was about building an entire ring around planet Earth in a future where Earth was uninhabitable. And they do that as a way to super cool what is otherwise environments and stuff.

13:43 But yeah, the just connecting your own facts to what they talk about while you're listening is a part of it too, I think. This is creating like this inside joke, the space sausage joke, which Matt mentioned earlier is one of those things that it will come back a couple times during the podcast and possibly in future episodes. So it's creating this inside joke that makes the listeners feel like they're part of a club. And when you're part of a club, that creates binge behavior. So obsession worthy. Podcasts don't just deliver content, they actually deliver moments. Moments that people can resonate with and connect with. I think that's an important part. Now, silica gel, the little packets that are in your shoes can actually become a gemstone, A gemstone that Taylor Swift sings about in her most current album. And yes, I can actually bring everything back to Taylor Swift. So there we go.

14:33 But silicon gel can make OPA light, so we can play that third clip. And before you go there, I, I just want to say something about space sausage, man. It was like, that is a really cool thing. And they're talking about how they're going to get it from space and back and forth. And I'm thinking that is at that point I decide I'm going to go walk the dog because I'm going to get out of my office for a little bit and I'm out there walking. I'm talking about space sausage. And I'm looking up to the sky and saying, are we going to get to a point where we're cooking sausage in the sky and we're dropping it down to people on planet Earth? But all right, Jimmy, go ahead and hit #3 man. Go ahead. You just never know what will happen. But yeah, go ahead. You can make opals out of it, so the. Cars or the Stones the. Stones or the fruits?

15:16 The stones. Basically, Opal is made of silicon, but it's dehydrated and it's compressed by nature. But you can make opals in the lab by getting a load of silica gel, putting it in water, leaving it for weeks and weeks and months and months until it all sinks down and stacks itself perfectly. And then you remove all of the water and it's in a perfect lattice. And that's how you make lab made. Opals Wow, that's very cool. It's. The same material, basically. And in a different crystal structure. Precisely. Yeah. When you start zooming in enough like this, everything gets a bit weird, I find. Like this stuff. Silica gel was first created in the early 20th century by a researcher at Johns Hopkins University called Walter Patrick.

16:02 And he created it out of a material called water glass, which as far as I can tell is water soluble glass. OK, That's not very useful in, well, it's construction. Quite hard to have a glass. Silica gel. Now how many know what like silica gel, those little packets, those tiny little packets that come in your shoes, they actually have a purpose by the way, and that purpose is to keep the moisture out of your shoes and they. Silica apparently is incredibly good at doing this. We learned in this podcast because it has a ton of it's not absorption, it's adsorption because it's holding the water on the outside of the molecule. So there we go.

16:44 I've learned that also a new word. And Jonathan, like instantly I'm thinking, how many of these packets have I thrown away? And I need to start keeping these things because I'm thinking I could have one of those basement bins that we all have full of these silica packets. And I'm thinking, 'cause it's funny, the other night my wife just had surgery. I mentioned everybody. So I was cooking dinner. I am not domesticated. So I put the dinner on table. I had made raviolis. And all of a sudden I take my iPhone. I'm trying to take it on my pocket. It slings across the room, lands in the ravioli. And I'm thinking, what am I going to do? Now, this iPhone is covered with red sauce, and of course, initially I thought, I'm going to throw it in the sink and wash it down. I'm like, no, Ralph, it's an electronic. But then when I was listening to this episode, I'm like, that's what silica gel will be perfect for.

17:27 Again, I learned something new, Jonathan, and that was the coolest thing about this. And then the whole idea of this lattice spreading out this little packet of silica gel. I say the theater of the mind just went off during that part. It's definitely interesting and you know it's OK. So you're like Silva Gel, which says do not eat. So it's like the biggest villain in your shoe. It's toxic. It's gonna kill you, which it isn't. You could actually eat it, although they said don't, you probably don't want to. It's going to dry you up a little bit, but it is not going to kill you just by eating it. Although there might be other chemicals in there that might follow the label on the packet, as they said. But then they heat you with this like it can become a gemstone. And I don't know if you've seen Opals or Opalite because Opalite is the lab made version of Opals. You know, that's a pretty, OK, wait a minute. This is this little packet that looks like a scrap piece of paper in your shoe can actually become a gemstone. So that's like an obsession move there with an ordinary thing having an unexpected transformation which will instantly give the listener A dopamine hit like, oh, OK, wait a minute, this is kind of cool.

18:35 Jonathan, I just want to say as they're talking about the opals, I'm thinking, man, are you saying they're like, I can manufacture opals if I save these silica packets? You know, I'm thinking about the people who are like living in their parents basements and it's like, you know, this would be a really cool way to make some extra cash. Now they get into it. I think it sounds like it's going to take a while for that to happen because they're talking about months and years and all that sort of thing. But I thought that was really kind of a cool thing. And I see, Matt, did you want to comment? I see. Put something to chat. This is The Fear where you talk about being a fan of a podcast like this and why it's so obsession worthy and then it starts to slowly become the podcast that we're so obsessed with. I was musing in the chat that Australia is actually known for Opal mining, that the western part of Australia I think is predominantly where a lot of Opal mines have been created and it's where a lot of it is sourced. So I was wondering if it was possible that there's secret silica stores that have been compressed over the the large number of years that it's existed that just haven't been founded till now.

19:38 But that's a that's another fact, hey. Something else to get you thinking. And that's the thing that I think this particular show does so well is it makes you and, and I'll, I'll use the term that Ralph uses. It made me talk back to them. And I think that we all can learn from that in our own content work if we can get our audience and our listeners to talk back to us. That's huge because that means you've really engaged with them when you when you find yourself wanting to talk back and say, yeah, but you forgot about this or oh, that's really cool to know. I think that's the thing, Jonathan, I'm sure you going to talk about that here when we get closer to the end. But like, that was a key take away for me, man, is what the point where we can get people to actually talk back to us?

20:19 That's enormous. The way that you get people to talk back to you is by understanding who you're creating your content for. And I think that's one thing that this podcast is really, really good at. They know who they're creating for. They understand that the people that are listening are going to kind of be weird nerds just like they are, and they're highlighting those things that are going to connect with those people so that it pulls them in. And that's a lesson that we can all learn. We all need to know who our audience is so that we can speak and create content that they're going to say, Oh my God, that's so me. Because when you get them to create that content that says, Oh my God, that's so me, that actually helps your content go much further because people see themselves in your content.

21:00 They're going to share it with their friends. It's going to become relatable for them. So understanding who your audience is, which this podcast does very, very well, helps you really on, you know, connect with those people that you want to connect with and not have the pod. It just kind of falls flat on, oh, OK, great. You know that makes obsession worthy is when you're speaking to your ideal audience. Hey, Jonathan, let me interrupt you for a second because I think about if we've got new content creators out there watching or listening to this right now and you just made a statement that IA 100% agree with, speak to your audience. Well, if I'm new to this, how do I know what my audience is? How do I determine who my audience is?

21:41 Because I think sometimes us veterans who've been doing this for a little while, we make an assumption that we know who our audience is. And I, and I think most of us probably do because we've met the people we we've been out there, we've been, you know, engaged with those people. But Jonathan, and I don't mean to put you on the spot, but this is a this is a thing we can talk about the whole, the whole group. And it looks like BC's got a comment too. It's like, how do you determine who that is? I mean, you can have an ideal in your mind, like here's who my audience is. And Nick, I see you want to comment as well. I'm going to go to BC and Nick, but how do you to determine who your audience is? Go ahead BC. I would say it depends a little bit on whether or not the show you want to create is something that is going to help you establish thought leadership or if it's simply a conversation that you're you think needs to be had.

22:24 If you're in a similar boat like yourself and myself, where you're establishing a thought leadership and you're establishing an opportunity for you to showcase what you know in a particular field, then you need to ask yourself, where would I find this kind of content? Where have I seen this content before? And that's likely going to be the good place where you'll find that audience to receive that thought leadership. But if it's more of like a, you know, where you got your God, what's it called? Not cold cases, but the mystery like murder, all that stuff, you know, it's more lifestyle stuff, more family oriented kind of things. So maybe Facebook, Instagram. I think it depends on what the function of the show was going to be. And that'll help determine what area you want to look for your audience in. Go ahead, Nick.

23:08 I really struggled with this when I created my show because I tried so hard to get hyper specific with my audience right out of the gate. And to your point, you don't really know your audience until you know your audience. So I think a big piece of this is you come up with like what you think your audience is, and you really hammer that audience with content, really speak to that audience. And through that is where I think you're going to start seeing people start poking out. You're kind of creating content on a little bit more broader scale. And then you look for different signals that say, hey, OK, that's my person, OK, that's my person.

23:51 OK, that's my person. And then you can really start narrowing down based on those little signals that you receive to say, OK, this is my target audience and this is the person that I need to be talking to, not the slightly broader view of what I thought my audience was. Yeah, I think that's a brilliant point, Nick. And let's go to Matt. No such thing as a fish, these guys, It's easy for us to make statements like make sure that you're delivering for the audience and that these guys do such a good job of it. What you have to remember is that they've been doing it for over 10 years at this point. They also entered the podcast game in what I think is sometimes colloquially known as Phase 2 of podcasting, which is kind of immediately post serial blowing up and podcasting becoming like a bit of a thing.

24:37 And the other thing to remember about this is that it's largely for entertainment as well as factual stuff. And I think entertainment podcasts, they hold a special space where if you are not entertained, you're not going to stay. In the same way that a kind of a comedian delivers something at a comedy club, they don't ask the audience what they'd like to hear. Most of the time there's a brand, a comedy that does that. That's a bit more audience bantery stuff, but you kind of have to bend and sway with what is entertaining for the audience that you have. But podcasting being different, people don't need to stay if they're not entertained. And I find it really interesting that there's a group of people here who didn't get hooked into it so much and I'd very much like to find out why. But I think these guys have a pre established audience, if only because they are unapologetically who they are in terms of an entertainment product. And the requirement isn't that they stay like BBC about you were talking about thought leadership. If they if the thought leadership that which they're trying to establish here is about finding ways to use radiation and lobbing sausages into space, it's not really quite in in the same frame.

25:51 Entertainment and stuff that makes people laugh has its own little separate category to the regressive mean of advice that we usually give to podcasts. And I think sometimes the audience just gets attracted to that kind of thing. It's not really an answer, or really it's just an alternative perspective on the way to think about these kinds of podcasts. Now let's not forget there are two sides to organics, right? There's the part of us where we ourselves try to pre establish where we think the audience is and therefore where to start investing our time and promotion. But then there's the part of it where we try to establish the digital footprint of our platform to where we we draw people in, where we establish ourselves as solution oriented or as hitting certain keywords or are discussing certain phrases that people are going to be looking for when they hop onto a search engine and trying to gauge from there, OK, where are they coming from? Am I seeing any numbers?

26:49 If so, are they on mobile web? Are they coming from a social media posts? Are they coming from the search engine Where? And then I think from there, optimizing is a really big part of that. Go ahead, Nikki. I know you had a comment and Jonathan, I want to go back to you for the takeaways because I know you've got something cool here for the the middle end of the show today. So go ahead, Nikki. For me, the question isn't about who the audience is, it's about who's engaging with the content. And that's how I figure out who the audience is. Because if I try to figure it out beforehand, I'm going to get lost in the sauce. But if I start posting, I start sharing my podcast out. I start start, you know, putting holes out there, you know, all different kinds of things. And I see that certain people are engaging. Maybe it's more women, maybe it's more men, maybe it's people of a certain demographic or generation. And then I know who my audience, but as far as engaging the audience, I'm still playing around with that too. And I really like to use the markers, the chapter markers in Buzzbrow.

27:47 So if a guest has a particularly, I don't know, controversial opinion, I can post a link to a poll to ask the listeners, you know, what they thought of the opinion. And then, you know, ask them to choose between different answer choices and whatnot. And then I also like to do lots and lots of teasers in my Facebook group before the episode airs to get that audience engagement up. And so there's, I'm thinking in terms of like beginning, middle and, and how can I engage them throughout the entire process before the podcast comes out, during the podcast when they might click on the markers and then at the very end as well. Nikki, I think that was a brilliant observation just shared because I think that is so much on point. And Nikki, I'm actually one of your Facebook friends.

28:28 So I see the stuff you put out and it it definitely engages me. And I think it's really wise what you said about see who reacts, see what the feedback you get. So thank you for sharing that, Nikki. But I think that was a very, very good point. Jonathan, I want to go back to you because I want you to give us our your takeaways and then I want to get into our special treat for today. I'm going to get to the takeaways I quickly want to mention when it comes to finding your audience. Well, one, you're going to join my unforgettable impact collective and, and we're going to walk walk you through that. But if you don't want to do that, one of the things that I really highlight and we do is you make a a guess, your best guess based on what engagement you're getting. And you find 3 of the people that you think you're going to be really actually going to be appealing to. You're going to find those three people. And then you're going to actually find in your audience who those three people are.

29:17 And you're going to sit down and interview them and find out what they're looking for. Because that's going to give you real insight into who is listening. Who do you want to talk to? A quick tip that I picked up at Podcast Movement last year is put once a month, put 1/2 hour on your schedule where you're going to talk to a listener, any listener, and let your listeners show up for that. And actually, you know, let you know what they like, what they don't like, what what they're doing. And I know Sid did something like this as he was re redoing his podcast this past few months. It's definitely something that can actually work. That is a great idea and I think it's something a lot of people don't think about is build that into your calendar, build that as part of your system to go and engage with people in your audience and ask them about what you're talking about.

30:04 So thank you, Jonathan. That's a great point. And I'm going to push back on that a little bit because I think right now when it comes to entertainment, even though this is an entertainment podcast, we all need to take a little bit away from it because all of our content needs to entertain our audience in some way because that's what people are looking for. They come home from work, they're looking for something to listen to, looking for something on social media. They're looking for something that is going to entertain them, make them laugh, make them forget about their day. They're not necessarily looking for lessons. They're not necessarily looking for for what, you know, what they can learn. They're looking for something that they can be entertained by. So I think all of us need to take a little bit of that away from these entertainment podcasts and figure out ways that we can entertain our audience.

30:48 Even if we are running businesses, we don't have to be 100% super. This is who I am, this is my business I run. You can actually be entertaining. Matt wants to comment on that. Just to say that there was a little back and forth with me and Nick in the chat in the in the clubhouse where that to that point, Nick mentioned that they're coming from the entertainment, but they get the bonus of learning something at the same time. And I remarked that while it is entertaining to stay, if people aren't entertained, they're not going to stay for just the facts. So to what you're saying there, The entertainment is a big part of like any podcast, but I think in this one primarily, if you don't find their back and forth funny or intelligible at times, then you're probably not going to stay for to just hear what the facts are and just get the information.

31:40 It's always a Gray line. It's never one way or the other, but that's the great thing about podcasting. And I agree, you got to figure out what works for you and what your audience actually likes, what they're entertained by, what they're not entertained by. So in order to get them to stick around for you. So I guess let's hit the takeaways and then we'll get to our fun little end part here. So the first take away is the show is a format. It's not a topic. So they can talk about supercomputers, cranes, silica gel, and women in science in the same hour. Because the glue isn't the subject, the glue is the format of the show. So if your podcast feels random, you don't need a tighter niche, you need a tighter format. Something that's going to help you actually keep it and make it feel like one piece of content, not multiple random things going on.

32:31 I agree with you. So if you find that it's random, how do you make that determination of what format would work? Because I think what you just said is brilliant. But how do we say to the new person or the the person's been around for a little while? How do you find that format that works? Do you go copy someone else's format? Do you, do you ask your audience what, what do you think, Jonathan, the best way to get to that format that works? So I would, there's a few things I would do. I would try a few different formats, take inspiration from other podcasts and see what is going to work for you. So if there's something that you want to do, something you kind of feel like or something that you have, that's a completely different idea, but it sort of fits into something you've seen, heard or otherwise, then take that and see if you can make it work for you. And then try a few different things as we're doing. And I believe that all content, whether it's a podcast or a piece of, you know, post you're putting out there is experimental.

33:27 So try it and see if it works and judge based on what your audience gives you feedback on. What did they did? They love it. Did they listen to a whole bunch? Did they not listen to a whole bunch? I have one of my episodes of my podcast got 500 downloads. One, I have most of the other things around it and I have a couple that have a hundred, a couple that have. So I go back to that one that has 500 downloads and I see, what's the format of this? What did I do differently? How can I repeat that? Because it's my best performing piece of content. So test some different things, see what works, ask your audience, listen to other podcasts and get inspiration from those. Another thing, John, that I just want to interject though, if you're going to test, do a test that's not one episode because I think so many people go out there and they try, oh, let me try this format this week.

34:13 Let me try this. You're going to drive your audience crazy doing that. I think you've got to think about, for example, I do one of my shows is a Daily Show. When I want to test the format change in a Daily Show, I'm doing it for 30 days because I want to see what does it do in 30 days. If you've got a weekly show, you might need to test it longer than that because you need time for this thing to sort of to cook and you know, to to to play what it like we talked about the silica do over time. I think I do the same thing because I think so many content creators, they change formats and they don't get instant feedback and they're like, oh, something's not working. You got to let it simmer a little bit. Jonathan, do you, do you tend to agree with me on that? I tend to agree. And it's one of those things, if somebody's posting for me, if somebody's posting five days a week, then yes, they're going to have to post for 30 to 60 days before we know if it's working or not.

35:00 If you're posting three days a week, you got to post up to 90 days to know if it's working. So you got to give yourself time. The more times you test something, the more data points you get, the better guess you can make. And it's still going to be a guess because we're just looking and we're putting out content. Our audiences are fickle. We're fickle. You know, it is a lot when you're dealing with people. It's a lot of testing and a lot of figuring out what might be the best. Let's hit the next one, which is of the obsession worthiness of a podcast. It lives in a lot of the aha moments. Every winning segment has like a moment. Your brain goes, OK, wait, what? And then, oh, I get it.

35:42 And that's what you're looking for. Don't just share the interesting info, but build up to that aha moment, that moment that's oh, oh, wow, I get that. Or that's cool. You know, that's what you're looking to get with from people. And that comes from understanding your audience, but also being able to tell a story that gets people and brings them along on the ride with you. So that's my second take away. I think I have 4. I think specific numbers beat vague amazement. And I didn't have any good clips of this actually. And I realized this after I made this obsession worthy thing. But they use a lot of specific numbers and that's because it makes you kind of envision what's happening.

36:24 So you know, whether it's 800 men, 140 horses, 204 cranes, the coin flip analogy that they used in the supercomputers, all of that was very specific. People remember when you give them a number they can picture. So whether it's 112 or a million, they still remember when you they give them that pic, that number that can be pictured. So specifics are really important when you're want to create something that people remember and come back to. And then finally, the real secret sauce on this podcast, it's not the facts, it's not the craziness, it's the social chemistry. It's that they're all kind of the same people. They get along, they're interrupting each other, they're escalating the jokes that they're telling. And there's like a reward for listeners who are paying attention.

37:13 So your podcast becomes binge able when it feels like a hangout, not a lecture. Now I have a quick question about this, but does anybody remember which obsession worthy podcast I first said that about? It's very different from this one, so it might have to do with the Kelsey brothers. I was going to say, are you going to want a bit of Taylor Swift in there or what? Yeah, no, I wasn't even trying to. It was the Kelsey Brothers. It was their podcast, but where they create this hangout for their audience. It's not a lecture. It's just a place to hang out and listen and talk to talk about sports. And that is where this podcast also works out because it's a place where you can hang out and listen to interesting facts and not feel like you're being lectured. 2 very different ones. Same take away from both of them though. Great takeaways, by the way, Jonathan. I think we all can learn from those things because as we look to refine our craft, we look for ways to do things better. Those are all excellent takeaways. I like to, oh, wait a minute, moment again, I go back to you're talking to the screen, you're talking to your phone, you're talking to where you're listening to that. So, great observations, Jonathan. So do we want to get into our No Such Thing as a podcast? I think we got to do that, Jonathan, I think. I think it's time to do that my friend all. Right.

38:29 So I asked people to bring facts. Now I have kind of a set up for the facts and then we can talk about it just like happens in the podcast. So the fact you get 2 sentences kind of give you a fact, the receipt, which is the supporting detail, a number, a name, a real example, and then the flip, which is why it matters or what it changes. So that's kind of how they framed their facts as they built them in. You get about 90 seconds to share that for those of you that have facts, and then the group will get 2 minutes to challenge it, clarify it, add a related example, find a funny angle or brand it because we need a, you know, space sausage moment here or space egg moment here so we can name it.

39:11 So I believe Ralph, you and Matt at least have facts. I've got one if we want to go first, I'm happy to do that. So here's a fascinating fact. The word podcast almost wasn't the word. Early names like audio, blogging, webcasting, and even blog casting were floating around until journalist Ben Hammersley casually blended iPod and broadcast in 2004. Article for The Guardian, basically as a throwaway suggestion. And here's the thing that's ironic about it. You never need an iPad to listen. Or iPod to listen. And the device faded, but the medium exploded. So that was my my fun fact for today. So anybody want to comment on my podcasting fact? This is why it's hard, and I think that no such thing as a fish make it look easy, that they probably do a bit of pre prep with what the facts are so that they can do some research and stuff.

40:03 It's kind of hard to think of where your brain would go as a response to kind of keep the conversation moving. And the other thing is they record in person, which makes it super easy to check themselves and their body language and all that kind of thing. But if I was going to respond to that, I'd say. Well, the ipod's pretty much dead, isn't it, in terms of a pod product? But podcast might be carrying the colloquial reality of what might be misattributed to Steve Jobs. As someone who invented the podcast, that tends to be what I think about when people trying to define what podcast is or where it came from. It's just funny if you think about it, like if the original device was called something besides an iPod, we could have some kind of crazy name for it.

40:47 But I think Apple, you know, brilliant in that beginning that people just kind of stuck to it. Like, you know, people call the refrigerator the Frigidaire in the in the copiers, A Xerox machine. I think it just kind of stuck to it. But but Matt, I want to say something about what you just said. And as I was listening to the episode we we highlighted today, I was thinking the same thing. They've got to do some prep work on this because the things they brought to that were brilliant and it was things that they had to have planned out ahead of time. Jonathan, I don't know if you have any background information on that, but it would seem like that is part of what makes that work. It is definitely something that work makes it work. And I did a little bit of background on some of your things, but the immediate thing that popped into my head when you said podcast was Coca-Cola and you said Frigidaire.

41:31 But to me it was Coca-Cola because that's what I grew up calling soda is Coca-Cola. And that was the immediate connection to podcast that be it became something that it, it really isn't because I mean, Coca-Cola is just Coca-Cola, not actually all soda pop as some people call it. I don't know who calls it pop, but you know, some people in weird places do, which would be another random tangent that we could go down on that one. But they definitely do a little research ahead of time and I think it's valuable to do a little bit of research when you're talking about it. I'm. Going to take your tangent because I grew up on the East Coast here in Delaware. I went to University of Nebraska my freshman year in college and I walk into a grocery store and I'm checking out and the late and I had a case of sodas on there.

42:18 Of course, I call them sodas from the East Coast and she says, you want me to put your pop in the car? I'm like, are you going to strike me or something like that? I thought she was going to come across again. Hit me. The word pop was just this colloquial thing when in the Midwest. It's a thing, Jonathan. But you're right. I, I think Coke is a great example of that. I think that's a very important point. So I guess the take away for all of us is let's figure out that word so we can always be branded with it. I think that'd be a very cool thing. I'm going to raise your pop and go to Jimmy's because I went to school in Boston and they called Sprinkles Jimmy's up there and I was real confused, real, real confused when they asked if I wanted Jimmy's on my ice cream. What? What the No, I don't want a Jimmy on my ice cream, thank you very much.

42:59 I think specificity with naming the drinks is very important culturally. My parents had the experience being Australian. They visited London at some point and they went to a pub and they didn't want a beer or anything. They'd just come off the flight. They asked for a lemonade and what they got instead was what the English call a bitter lemon, which is essentially what you'd probably call a hard lemonade. In America, it's more of a the bitter lemony kind of lemonade, whereas in Australia you ask for a lemonade and it's just like a, you know, a Sprite or a A7 up as they call it over here. Yeah, drinks and branding. I think cross culturally we're never going to entirely figure that out. There we go in the conversation.

43:44 Are we doing the thing? You're doing the thing, you're doing the thing. We got a little help there, but we're doing the thing. And I think that, you know, that's how it works and that you can figure out a way that you make it work even as a segment in your podcast as something you end with or entertain in some way like we're doing here. You never know what what'll come of it. Matt, I think you had a fact you wanted to share also. Matt, do you want to go ahead and share your fact now? My fact is that at the end of 2020, someone created a podcast about silence. Now, where this kind of fits in, it's called 5 Minutes of Silence. The author of it, who I believe is an audio engineer to some degree, Oliver Seuss, who lives in Zurich in Switzerland.

44:29 He only created 3 episodes, but each episode was designed to record 5 minutes of silence in different spaces. He records it in his washing machine. He goes out in the snow on on a Friday night and records 5 minutes of silence there. But he also has an episode where he records the silence in an anechoic chamber. And I think that's the most interesting fact that I can find actual facts and figures about. Now, if you don't know, an anechoic chamber is built to be the most silent a room can be, and there are varying levels of success that companies have when they create these chambers. But to give you an idea, the typical anechoic chamber has a noise floor of -12 decibels -12 decibels. Whereas if you go to noiseawareness.org, they provide what common noise levels are for what we consider normally quiet spaces.

45:30 And a quiet office or a library is generally 40 decibels of ambient noise. So the anechoic chamber being as quiet as it is. And the funniest thing that I imagined as part of this is that it's so quiet that if you sit in there and listen, you can hear your body doing its digestive bodily things because it's because it's the only noise that's created inside this room. But I thought it was interesting, as podcasters that generally hate silence, that this bloke had a crack at creating a podcast where he records silence. I got to challenge this dude.

46:12 How do you record silence? To me, that's that. That very nature doesn't make sense to me. So this is the interesting part, right? The, I was thinking about it as I was trying to listen to it and silence these days is so anti podcast, anti listening experience that it may even be difficult for you to tell when you listen to this podcast if you're actually getting the silence. Because any platform, any device and any headphones you listen through, it may just be gating and not letting any of the sound through at all. It may be adjusting the file for the silence. So really, I think there's an element of trust here that we believe that he's going into the snow on a Friday evening with his recording equipment and recording five hours, 5 minutes of silence in that space. But that's why this podcast is interesting. And Jonathan, you step in at any point with this because I know it rankled you a little bit.

47:13 It's called 5 minutes of silence, but every episode is about 11:50 minutes 19. Minutes, the one that you just described, 19 minutes. But it provides a bit of context, right? And that's why the silence isn't about the silence. It's probably about the trust, so Oliver needs to set up a bit of the space for you to believe that he's there. And in the snow episode, while he's describing the experience of a quiet field of snow in late year Zurich, he records himself stepping through the snow as he describes moving to the space so that you know that he's there. There's an element of trust in the silence, and of course it shows us that not all silences are created equal.

47:58 Yeah, I'm going to say that he would have built more trust with me if it was actually 5 minutes long and if he recorded more than three episodes. I'm just saying I'd appreciate it more if he did that. I mean, you got to build that trust up over time. There is also another podcast called 5 Minutes of Silence that is distributed on Apple Podcasts, and that is actually 5 Minutes of Silence. There's nothing else going on in those. All right, come on, guys. Now, Seriously. 5 minutes of silence. There's nothing going on it. That's not an episode. That's silence. You can't put a A-frame around silence. What? What in the world are we talking about here? Hey, I'd like to step in for a second if that's OK. No, go ahead, jump right in.

48:39 Good morning. Good morning. After just experiencing 43 inches of snow here in Rhode Island, I will tell you, I was just thinking about the fact that when we get snow like that and the plows can't come down the road, there is something to be said about the silence when it snows. You can't really explain it unless you experience it. And then I thought of on YouTube, that fake, you know, kind of fireplace that people watch and that's got millions and millions of views. So who knows, you know? But I have to say, capturing that silence during and after a snowstorm, it's really hard to explain if you've never experienced it, but it's pretty cool. We had the same thing here.

49:29 I live on a farm and after that last snowstorm we have cows here on the farm and it was perfectly silent. And one of the cows decide to let out one of these moods that just echoed across the pastures. And you're absolutely right. Meg is. I hope I'm saying Meg, right. Yeah. It's amazing thing. I mean, until somebody explores that, it's really hard. But did anybody else have a quick fact they wanted to share before we close out for today? When I can close out with that won't lead to a discussion, but that I think is super interesting. Well, go, go ahead, Matt. Lay us on the Super interesting fact. So my original fact that I was going to bring here before the silence one which I thought was a bit more accessible, is that when we hear, our ear canals are filled with tiny little hairs growing through specific kind of cells.

50:18 And the presence of those hairs is important for us to be able to hear in the 1st place. So it's not just the the rat, a tat against our ear canal and our eardrum that's creating the noise, but these hairs need to be present as well. And when you're in very loud environments like concerts and stuff like that, the cells that generate these hairs get damaged. But there are some avenues of supplementing with magnesium in specific ways. Disclaimer, I'm not a doctor and if you're looking for medical advice you should definitely seek advice from your doctor on this one. But that supplementing magnesium creates A neuroprotective layer to preserve those cells so you can preserve your hearing for later use.

51:00 Matt, thank you for sharing that today. Listen, I'm going to close it out for dad. I just want to remind everybody that tomorrow we're going to be talking about content editing. So make sure you join us again tomorrow on podcasting, morning chat. And whatever you do today, have a great day and enjoy some silence. Jonathan, thank you so much for bringing us Obsession Worthy and everybody have a great day today.