50th episode special: reviewing one year of the podcast, lessons learnt, and plans for the future

This is the 50th episode of this podcast and we're doing something a little different: Cody Kommers, PhD student, fellow podcaster, and one of the first guests of my podcast, interviewed me about the first year of my podcast: what did I learn, what went differently than expected, and what do I plan on changing in the future? We also discuss podcasting more generally and use Cody's experience in running his podcasts as a counterexample in our discussion.

Time stamps
0:00:05: Cody's introduction
0:01:37: Why did I start the podcast?
0:04:32: Expectation vs reality of running a podcast
0:12:05: Other podcasts I enjoy and that influenced me
0:26:50: What am I trying to do when I'm interviewing someone?
0:36:03: Who's the target audience for this podcast?
0:43:22: The podcast's format
0:47:19: How could I save time doing the podcast?
1:02:52: Distribution and marketing of podcasts
1:15:35: Focussing the scope of my topics
1:31:25: The future of this podcast

Podcast links

Cody's links

Ben's links


Other podcasts/interviewers mentioned (in order of mention):
This American Life: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/
Lex Fridman: https://www.youtube.com/c/lexfridman
Joe Rogan: https://open.spotify.com/show/4rOoJ6Egrf8K2IrywzwOMk
Tim Ferriss: https://tim.blog/podcast/
Sam Harris: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts
Oprah Winfrey: https://www.oprah.com/
Charlie Rose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJpyJeynU_E&list=PLf0rWsvaclOIfJaGY9xNGrh9lxLQgD2tL
Revisionist History: https://www.pushkin.fm/show/revisionist-history/
Opinion Science: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/
The Turnaround: https://maximumfun.org/podcasts/the-turnaround-with-jesse-thorn/
On Being: https://onbeing.org/
The Life Scientific: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015sqc7
Very Bad Wizards: https://www.verybadwizards.com/

  • [This is an automated transcript with many errors]

    Cody Kommers: [00:00:00] All right. Welcome back to the BJKS podcast. I am not your host, I am Cody Commerce. Uh, but I'm here with the host of the podcast, usually Benjamin Coopersmith. And, uh, Ben and I have done a couple episodes, uh, together for his show. Really enjoy talking to one another. And we're gonna do something a little bit different today.

    Uh, instead of him interviewing me or someone else, I will talk to him on this, the 50th show that he has produced. And we're gonna talk a little bit about what he's learned. What I've learned maybe will come up a little bit as well. Um, we'll talk about sort of his vision for the show in the future and what he'd like to do sort of in the second year.

    The second, uh, you know, sort of the next, the next version of it. And we'll talk about, you know, what PhD students can. Due to like the pros and cons and the strategies for them starting their own shows [00:01:00]and just all the things that, uh, we find interesting about doing podcasts along the way. So that's sort of the, the general idea, and I've got a little bit of a roadmap for us starting off with a few general questions and then moving sort of section by section through some of the key points that I think are worth talking about in this space of things.

    How does that sound today, Ben? 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Uh, it sounds great. Thank you, Cody. I mean, it, it seems like whenever you come on the show just gets about three times more professional than it is when I do it on my own with, with the guest. That was a very good introduction. 

    Cody Kommers: Awesome. Well, I've been looking forward to this conversation, so let's get into it.

    Um, like I said, there's a couple just sort of general questions that I wanna start off with and, you know, just framing generally how you thought about this show from the beginning and before and up until now. So the first thing I, I'm curious to sort of hear about is what were your goals when you were starting this podcast?

    How did you conceptualize what you're doing? That sort of thing? 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I dunno, I guess it was like, um, it was probably [00:02:00] a mixture of things to some extent. I've just always liked these kind of podcasts and I've listened to them since maybe 2013, 14, something like that. Um, so I, I guess I've just always thought it would be a really cool idea to do something like this and to be able to ask the questions yourself of people.

    At least whenever I listen to interviews, I was like, oh, why did he ask that question? Here's a much cooler question I would've thought of. But yeah, I guess that was part of it than, yeah, I mean, for me, the main thing was really that I wanted to talk to people about the science they do, and the, a lot of it was basically that you'd read a paper and then, okay, you have lots of questions, but you don't really know what to do with it.

    You might ask your supervisor, talk to some colleagues about it or something like that, but. Often you, at least when I read a paper, it just kind of ends there. Nothing happens with it. You have lots of questions you like answered. So I thought it would be really cool if I could just talk to the people who actually do the paper and, you know, every once in a while you can do because they give a talk, uh, somewhere where you are, or because you [00:03:00] happen to meet them in whatever function.

    But that's basically never the case, let's be honest. And so I just wanted to have a way to talk to the people at their work and maybe also, you know, meet new people. Um, I guess I started this. Right around the beginning of the pandemic, which was largely coincidental. But I guess that was a really good time point for starting it because I guess despite the pandemic, I still managed to meet, you know, like 30 people or something by now who I probably wouldn't have met otherwise.

    So I think it was this two parts of maybe some like slight networking and also just learning more about the papers I was already reading and books I was reading and that kind of stuff. Um, yeah. Yeah, 

    Cody Kommers: that makes a lot of sense. Let's sort of keep those, that question and your answer to it sort of in the, the background throughout this, this conversation.

    'cause I think that sort of frames a lot of what we're gonna talk about in terms of, well what should I produce? How much time should I spend producing it? That sort of stuff. Right? A lot of those questions I think [00:04:00]come back to, well, I don't know, what do you wanna get out of it? Um, like that, that, that sort of thing.

    So I think that's a good baseline for it. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I guess it's also slightly changed, um, because, you know, I've also then started doing some, as, you know, book discussions. 

    Cody Kommers: Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, and that kind of thing. And I guess that's not exactly part of the initial plan. Um, I guess it was more kind of slightly expanding what I was doing, but I guess it's still in the same vein of something I would've done anyway.

    And just trying to do that on a slightly more in-depth level and more detailed level. 

    Cody Kommers: Absolutely. So, a sort of related question, but a substantively different one is how has producing this show been different than, than what you expected? What was sort of like, how you imagined it going in versus how it actually has.

    A asked of you to, to participate in it. What is the sort of biggest delta there? 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: There's, there's the question you advised me to say when you were a guest on my show. 

    Cody Kommers: Yeah. I think, uh, I was, I 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: was wondering when that [00:05:00] was gonna come. 

    Cody Kommers: Yeah. Um, just for the context there, uh, for anyone who had listened to that, uh, one, it's this, this, um, question that I ripped off of Ira Glass, the, uh, famous podcaster slash radio host of this American Life.

    And he said the most useful, um, question that he's ever come across is, how did that turn out differently than, than you thought? Um, which is, you know, 'cause it gives both the story and a theory. It's sort of like, okay, here's what I thought was gonna happen based on my theory of the world. Here's what actually happened.

    And then I updated my theory of the world. However, the update that I have for you since, uh, that uh, uh, initial episode is that I listened to another interview with Hourglass recently. And it turns out he's never asked that question himself. Someone else told him that that was a useful question. He was like, yeah, that's a totally useful question.

    And he's never used it in his, uh, anyway. Okay. Uh, but, uh, I think it's, uh, it's still, yeah. Uh, the, there does a good behind, it still holds. So let's, let's, let's tear [00:06:00] your perspective on that. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Uh, I mean, I guess there's a bunch of things, right? The first is that as with most things in life, it takes more time than you think it will.

    Um, so I guess especially I didn't initially think the, the startup cost would be quite as high. I think I kind of thought like, okay, I'll have a few people who I will ask, you know, majorly friends and colleagues and that kinda stuff, and then I'll just start. But then I didn't realize basically in the week leading up to me.

    Saying I was gonna publish the first episode. I think I spent most of that week, you know, designing the logo, finding some way to upload it and changing the logo again because it was slight different formats and just all this kind of annoying small things that you just don't expect to happen. Um, but I guess, so podcasting like everything else does take twice as long as you think it will take.

    So that's one part. Um, to some extent, actually the initial format I had doesn't work as well as I thought it would. So initially my plan was really to say, okay, I've read the paper, obviously my guest who has written the paper, and I'm kind of [00:07:00] assuming the readers or the listeners have read the paper also.

    And then I'm gonna go kind of gonna ask the questions that you can't get just from reading the paper, kind of going beyond the paper. And I initially thought like, it would be really cool if I could just do that and get rid of all the, like, summarizing the paper, you know, like you've read the paper, you know what's in it.

    But then as I was doing that, more and more I read that just doesn't really work, um, because you. I mean, for one I realized, and that's, you know, my recent episode, I usually let let people summarize the paper for two minutes or something like that. Um, I realized that that's very useful as a reminder for me and the guests probably to just get into what we're talking about.

    Yeah, so I think it's, to some extent, I've, I've realized that this, like super technical, in depth things are actually number one, really hard to do, and number two, not that much fun to listen to. Um, so because of that in recent episode, I've tried to kind of not make it more mainstream. Um, this is still not science communication in that sense, but to make it more the kind of thing that [00:08:00] let's say you might present in front of a department rather than a one-on-one discussion about technical details.

    And that, that's, I think that's been really useful. And also, yeah, I hope more interesting and also less work. Uh, what else? Um. I guess finding guests has been very different than I expected. So I initially expected, I mean, you know, we talked about this when, when I interviewed you, I initially expected that 80% of the people would say no.

    I just thought basically, like, maybe even more I thought like everyone would say, no, leave me alone, you idiot. Um, or just ignore me. Um, but as it turns out, about half of the people say yes. Um, of those I find there's about 5% maybe of people who say yes and then nothing actually happens. But in general, roughly half the people who actually say yes that I ask.

    So that's really cool. Um, and encouraging also. And a lot of pe I've got a lot of feedback, positive feedback from guests who I've interviewed who said that they really liked that I was doing this and that [00:09:00] kind of stuff, which I thought I was just gonna be a nuisance for the guests. Basically. They're like, fine, I'll do it.

    But apparently a lot of people actually like this. Yeah, I guess those were probably like. The main three ones I can think of off the top of my head. 

    Cody Kommers: Yeah. So speaking of startup costs, I, which I agree is a huge, like there's a lot you have to do before that first episode comes out. Um, but is there anything you would've done differently before you start sort of in the lead up to it?

    Was there, you know, either in terms of, like you said, the sort of framings of those initial episodes or getting certain stuff right before the, is there anything you would've done differently like that? 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I guess one thing I would definitely do is to. Reduce the amounts of different things I'm doing. So I think in the, when I started off, I also, I guess inspired by people like Friedman and his podcast.

    I thought what would be really cool is if I have, you know, my podcast and I have it, I put it on YouTube. I don't, I only have audio, but I'll still put it on YouTube and I'll take like small clips of it and put that, you know, so that's a really great [00:10:00] way I think that people get to know about your podcast and that kind of stuff.

    And it's a really cool format. I think also if you have like five minutes, you can watch a clip rather than having to listen to the entire interview. And so that was kind of my initial plan. So I started putting the videos on YouTube and that kinda stuff. But then obviously no one watches a YouTube video.

    That's just sound. And that wasn't really the plan either, but, so basically, I think I still have the first five episodes on YouTube or something like that. But like no one looked at them basic, so I think I should have just scrapped that entire idea. Like you can start later on. But I think it's probably a good idea to start small and say, okay, I'm gonna have.

    The podcast and Twitter, right? So now I have the podcast in some sort of way of, uh, advertising it, you know, and that would've saved me like a few hours probably trying to set up the YouTube channel and converting it to video and all these kind of annoying things. Yeah, maybe that's the general thing to try and keep it simple because I guess I, I, I initially I looked at this like successful podcasts and thought, okay, I'm gonna do what they do, assuming, but obviously they [00:11:00] didn't start off delivering like the whole package.

    They started off a lot, a lot smaller. So yeah, I think probably focusing on just, I guess the, the whole Rito 80 20 thing, just focus on like the two, three things that really matter, which I guess would be having the podcast, having a Twitter and a logo. I think that's pretty much all you need. Um, well, no actually podcast name.

    I guess I chose them the least creative one imaginable. 

    Cody Kommers: But isn't there a, a difference between logistically what you need? Like literally what you need in terms of like an RSS feed and a logo and all this sort of, but for first the stuff that matters, right? Which is getting good guests on and having some sort of format that gets the most out of them and, and, and the questions.

    So I mean, there's two different ways of defining the small basis set of, of what matters, right? 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. I guess, I mean, I guess like everything red, you, you have to start somewhere and you'll figure out what doesn't work, um, or what does work, 

    Cody Kommers: but we'll, we'll get into lots of [00:12:00] what does work, what you would like to have work.

    Uh, so like, we'll, uh, we'll sort of set that aside for now, but you mentioned something else, uh, which is the first section, the sort of like big section that I wanna talk about, uh, which is, uh, other podcasts. So you mentioned Lex Friedman, uh, as someone you look up to and I wanna know what, which podcast do you listen to on a regular basis and who.

    Who as a host and, and what shows have, have influenced you? 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Hmm. Well, I mean this is of course the very lame answer, but I do listen regularly to your podcast, 

    Cody Kommers: which 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I very much 

    Cody Kommers: appreciate. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, that is, I mean, you know, that's literally why I interviewed you. Um, so I dunno, let's say I, I think nothing particularly unusual.

    I think it's the big interview based podcasts that do long form interview, so none of them really. So like 

    Cody Kommers: Joe Rogan, like what are, what are the examples of 

    this? 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I used to listen to him for. Yeah, so Joe Rogan, but I guess, well I haven't listened to single episodes since he switched to Spotify [00:13:00] and before then it just got quite a lot less.

    But there was a period when I listened a few of his, um, I think he is, despite all the memes and jokes about him, actually very good at what he does. Big surprise. The guy who's really successful, he is good at what he does. Um, uh, I think Tim Ferris is also very good. Um, 

    Cody Kommers: so let's, let's start to break this down.

    So yeah, those, those are a couple big people who have some of the most popular, probably the two 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: biggest interview ones almost, I'd say. Yeah. 

    Cody Kommers: Maybe you could also put someone like Sam Harris for us in our sort of, uh, interests. Yeah. In that 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I used to some. Yeah. I, 

    Cody Kommers: um, guess 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: let's, I guess I probably listen to most of those kind of big ones.

    Um, I think Rich Roll is actually very good. 

    Cody Kommers: So, so let's take whichever one of those you want and say, well, what, what did you, besides just saying, oh, they're very good at it, what specifically did you take from them? Or do you think you're good at, or do you try to emulate or do you think is the sort of key to their thing?

    Like, what's. Pick whichever one you, you, you want. Um, but I'd, I'd like to know like sort of that next level on what you, what you get out their concept. Mm-hmm.[00:14:00] 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: One thing is I have absolutely no idea. Uh, it seems like an obvious question I should have asked myself at some point. Um, I dunno, I mean, I guess there's, there's maybe two different ways to respond to this. First is before I started a podcast, and second is after I started a podcast, because I guess also definitely before I started a podcast.

    I mean, I liked listening to them because of the guests, but I don't think I really liked any of the interviews per se. Um, I think there were, there were some, for example, I mean, Tim Ferris just had lots of good guests on it, and I thought, you know, he's all right, whatever. Uh, but I didn't really care too much about him.

    Same for any of the other podcasts. Like, I never really listened to any of them really because of the podcast host or anything like that. It's basically just like who can get the, the guests that I find most interesting on the podcast. 

    Cody Kommers: Do you feel like there's a, a level of trust that you have with a particular, um, host?

    So for example, you might not like Tim Ferris as an individual or find him that compelling, but you trust him to ask the kind of questions, or is it literally just, oh, put the, [00:15:00] put the person, put the interesting person in front of him and, and, and do that? 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I mean, before I started a podcast, definitely. I think, like, you know, after I've done that, I've realized how good they are and I've paid more attention to what kind of questions they asked and that kinda stuff.

    But I think before then it was really like a non-reflective, just like, that's an interesting guest. I listen to it and if I like the conversation, then I'd listen to the end, otherwise I'd stop halfway through or whatever. I don't think, um, I guess, I mean, trust is maybe a slightly too strong word. I think you, you do have an expectation.

    For example, with Joe Rogan, I'd never listened to any of the comedian guests you have because they were always, or the fighter stuff. It was just always super boring. But now, yeah. To be honest, no. I, I think I've, I've gone through this very uncritically and unreflectively. I think I've just, I don't know.

    Do you, do you find that you really like, like certain interviews, something I somehow always find, I don't know. Like my mantra going in when doing this interview is like, every interview is annoying. It's, you are gonna be annoying too. I know. 

    Cody Kommers: Um, yeah. I [00:16:00] definitely, I definitely. I'm sympathetic to your position that like the best thing an interviewer can be is unobtrusive, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: like 

    Cody Kommers: a referee, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: basically.

    Yeah. 

    Cody Kommers: Yeah. And so, uh, I definitely have sort of tried to incorporate that into my own style by saying like, look, I'm gonna ask the question. I'm just gonna let the other person go on for as long as they want about it. 'cause 90% of the time when I'm listening to an interview, if the interviewer cuts the person off, no matter how well intentioned they may be, I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

    I was listening to that. I wanted to know where they were gonna take with that. I really don't give a shit what you have to say. I'm not here for you, I'm here for the other person. So on the one hand I get that. Um, but on the other hand, yeah, I do think that the different strategies they employ and the different kinds of questions they ask and what they're trying to do overall are really important.

    So one per one person. Uh, Alex, the, the person that I think is the single best interviewer, if you had to just pick one and say, who's the greatest interviewer of all time? That's easy. It's Oprah, because [00:17:00] at the end of the day, one of the big things that an interview is about is creating space, right? So the difference between a person just going on mic and spouting off about whatever versus an actual fully fledged interview is that the interviewer's job is to create the space.

    For the person to have the best opportunity to express what it is they want to express. And ain't no one out there who creates space like Oprah. That's what she does. So 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: just a brief question, what does she actually do? I know her name and I, to be fair, I mainly know her as someone who has pseudoscientific dangerous people on her show and promotes them.

    That's mainly what I know. But I'm sure she is done, hopefully something good. But I don't actually know what she, she has a TV show or something, right? She 

    Cody Kommers: had a TV show that was uh, one of the biggest daytime television talk shows. Um, I guess not technically a talk show. I don't know what the, what you call that sort of format, uh, of it.

    But one of the daytime, sort of like, there's a host and there's, you know, people come on, they talk to 'em, that sort of stuff. Uh, like [00:18:00] multimedia Empire, one of the richest women on the planet actually from all of her, uh, sort of stuff. And yeah, there's a bunch of stuff that, you know, for, for people like you maybe looked at and looked like, that's total bullshit, uh, in terms of the content.

    But at the end of the day, uh, she is able to get people to trust her and not, not audience members necessarily, like you and me, like I was talking about trust earlier, but trust in terms of, you know, famous people who have a lot to lose. And if they're gonna go on record of saying something, they want to have the most sympathetic audience possible and she's able to create that space where there's a high stakes.

    You know, revelation that's happening, whatever this person is sharing, whatever intimate personal details, they're, they're sharing. And, uh, she's going to simultaneously be able to sort of walk that line of probing like, well, like me and it, and the billion other people listening to this, we really wanna hear these details.

    So let's go into, let's, like, let's not shy away from it, but also the other people trust it. So she, she creates that space and at the end of the day, uh, I think what Joe Rogan [00:19:00] does is very similar. Um, so he's able to create, uh, quite a bit of good space, three and a half hours at a time for his, for his guests.

    And yeah, a lot of stuff that we sort of probably look at and be like, yeah, I'm not really, like, it's not really my thing. It's kind of, that's kind of kooky, whatever. But he is able to create space and he does so in a way that I think addresses basically what I, I what I think of when I think of as Joe Rogan is that he should be our.

    New psychological, cognitive, scientific definition of the median intelligence. So Joe Rogan is not overly intelligent. He's not overly stupid. He is literally the, if you line up every person on the planet from dumbest to smartest, Joe Rogan would be the exact middle person. And that's one of the reasons why he is able to, uh, have such a mainstream, uh, sort of, uh, sort of following, is [00:20:00] because he's able to create that space and occupy that exact middle of the ground.

    Totally attainable level of intelligence for everyone. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I mean, that's very fair because I guess he's, he does ask the dumb questions, but he, he can hold a conversation, right? He can talk about people. It's not just he ask the dumb question and doesn't get it. Oh, 

    Cody Kommers: yeah. No, he's not stupid. He's also not extremely smart.

    Um, it's literally in the middle and that's part of the, the key to it. So anyway, those, those are some of the things that I think about. Just 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: remembered one thing. Yeah. Um, whilst you mentioned Oprah, just because I guess maybe it's television. I hadn't thought of television interviews at all until you mentioned Oprah, but I think one person who I really liked as an interviewer and uh, I think he is, had some trouble with, uh, uh, with the Me Too movement, but Charlie Rose, I thought I always really liked his interviews and him 

    Cody Kommers: not familiar with them.

    Ally, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I really, he's a American. I don't know. He had this, like, I only saw it on YouTube or whatever, and people post like interviews that he did. And he basically had this like, it was really minimalistic. It was him a [00:21:00] guest or two, and then just this big table and behind them was just darkness, just blackness.

    So you literally just have these two people talking and I think he would ask probably smarter questions and really try and get something intelligent out of the guests. I mean, he has some. I like what I, he's actually one of the people where I remember him actually, I remember that the interview actually maybe brought something to the table because there was this one, I was just doing something random and I just put on some random episode.

    You did? And it was with some golf instructor or something like that. I can't remember who it was or exactly, but I just remember listening during this like. I'm really interested in golf now, just from listening to those two people. And I dunno exactly what it was about it. Maybe it was just, again, just a great guest.

    But I did realize like, oh yeah, this show is actually really making me listen to things that I might not listen to otherwise. And I guess that probably is the trust then that you talked about. They you trust, even if you maybe dunno the guest per se. 

    Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: You think they're gonna get good guests and [00:22:00] get them to say something interesting and, 

    Cody Kommers: and there's also a little bit of a, it's kind of like almost a familial relationship.

    Like it's sort of how, like with your family, like they constantly annoy you, but you also, like you need them, you love them, you do care about them at the end of the day, but that doesn't mean that you're not consistently sitting there being like, oh my God, can we just, right. So like, I think that, I think that your relationship as an audience member to interviewers is sort of the same way.

    That it's like, yeah, this guy's a dipshit, but like, you know, he's my dipshit. You know, like that, that sort of thing. You sort of, you sort of take, take that on. Um, I 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: think I also just, I think I learned like the most from the, is probably like stuff that just really annoyed me. For example, what I do, I, I basically take out any sound I make other than actual voice because there were a few episodes of whatever, I dunno which podcast where someone usually kept going like, Uhhuh.

    Yeah. 

    Cody Kommers: Oh yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: And that just annoyed me so much. 

    Cody Kommers: Um, this is like something, something I learned from, from studying Malcolm [00:23:00]Gladwell is there's an interview that he gave where that was one of the things that he learned when he started doing his podcast, uh, revisionist history, was that when he was doing interviews for books, he would, you know, sort of as a conversational technique be like, uh, Uhhuh.

    Yeah. Okay. Yep. Through, throughout, which is a very normal thing to way to express that you're listening to somebody. And then he realized that when doing podcast audio, it ruined the, you know, audio dynamic. And that, like, he realized that was, that was a tip. And so for the most part, I am super conscious about.

    Uh, being just, just, you know, like be quiet while someone else is talking. Uh, so I, I don't have to take those out and it doesn't come across the other person's audio. If they tell a joke, uh, you'll hear me giggle in the background. Yeah. Uh, because otherwise they sound ridiculous having just told a punchline and there's no one, uh, there's no laugh track to it.

    So that's the exception. But yeah, that was something that I [00:24:00] was, I was aware of from, from the beginning that I've consciously tried to employ. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Although I will say, I do actually say it, I just take it out in the edit. Sure. Because I feel like it does encourage the person to keep talking and not just feel like, am I.

    Boring. 

    Cody Kommers: Do you have a problem with that? On, on podcasts? People keep talking. I'm pretty sure everyone keeps talking regardless of, of, but you can also do it visually, maybe. I dunno. That's right. Yeah, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: you could, but I just 

    Cody Kommers: say a, i, that's what I do is I, I like, you know, eyebrows up, eyes wide, um, you know, sort of like, yeah.

    Keep, keep going. But, um, here's a question. So since we've established that you listen to my podcast and that you find every podcast interviewer annoying to some extent or another, like what's, where is this 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: going? Yeah. 

    Cody Kommers: What's an example of something that, um, that annoys you about what I do or something that you think is a peculiar idiosyncrasy, something along those lines.

    What comes to mind? 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: So the, the. Thing that definitely came to mind very quickly, and it's not exactly about [00:25:00] you, but it's about your editing is that you don't take out stuff like, and that kind of stuff. For example, I, as I said before we started recording, I listened to Nicole Barbara's or whatever interviews, and she actually only did it three times, I think in the entire podcast, but twice in the first five minutes 

    Cody Kommers: I 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: see.

    Or something like that, which is, and that just annoys me to no end. 

    Cody Kommers: Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: And um, similarly, I guess, you know, there's always this question, how much do you take out and that kind of stuff and you, you are opting for basically completely natural As far as I can 

    Cody Kommers: tell. Yeah. I basically don't take anything out unless it really is some complete like rubbish.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. But like, so that's, so the, the kind of, and mouth noises and that kind of stuff, they are difficult to take out often, but it's quite clear that you don't even try to, at least that's what it seems like to me. Yeah. Um, that's something that annoys me. Um. 

    Cody Kommers: Tell me about me. What annoys you about me? 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Wait, uh, just to finish that point, second thing is, 

    Cody Kommers: yeah, let's 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: hear when you, uh, ask a question, there's always, especially you ask people like, where did you grow up?

    And then, uh, they answer. Then you say, ah, [00:26:00] okay. Hmm. Uh, yeah. So, uh, I think I, Cody, you could have just taken that out. Like, do I need to listen through that for the 20th time right now? Yeah. Um, yeah. Okay. So that was just the on the editing part. Um, how about you? I mean, nothing comes to mind right now.

    Immediately, I mean. I mean, I obviously disagree with some stuff you says, but that's not really annoying. That's just a difference of opinion. Yeah, I mean, like on the spot right now, I can't think of anything. If you want, I can let you know via email. 

    Cody Kommers: Let's 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: put a pin 

    Cody Kommers: in that. If once something comes up and if anything occurs to you over the next hour, then uh, feel free to to, to flag it and we'll, and, uh, we'll, we'll bring it back up.

    Um, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I'll try, I'll try and think of something that's too, there must be something annoying about you. I'm sure I could find it, 

    Cody Kommers: but yeah. So, uh, I guess, so we, we've sort of wade into the territory of the second sort of big thing that I want to talk about, and that's, that's interviewing, uh, and questions like [00:27:00] what are the goals of your interview and what do you think makes for a good interview and the style of interview that you want to do.

    So what are your, you know, setting aside who you're emulating and who you're taking it from. Sure. How do you conceptualize what you're trying to do in your interviews? 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I think some similar to what. You also said kind of just let your guests speak. I think I have, yeah. I have to admit, like maybe, maybe one problem with their podcast is that I don't think too much about this.

    I'm just curious about something that someone wrote or did and just try and get that out of it and kind of just, I think my, my, I'd say I'm, I'm trying to definitely be very open and just ask fairly open-ended questions. I mean, often open-ended, often very specific, but I think I try to just ask open questions and let the person speak and kind of see where it goes.

    I mean, I think this is really difficult because I do have a structure to what I want to talk about. And so there's this, you know, this weird balance between just letting the person [00:28:00] speak and going like, could you like naturally move more towards that direction that I want to get to? Um. I guess it's, it's fairly direct in the sense that I just try to ask the question I'm interested in and maybe provide some sort of additional ideas that may be relate to it and that make them think about it maybe in a slightly different way or something like that.

    I guess one thing that actually, that I did realize, um, that also goes back to your question about what was different than I expected is that initially I remember going in actually and thinking, okay, I should definitely try and not ask the questions that everyone else asks the guests. Right? I guess that's a very standard thing.

    You don't want to be the person who has an interview that you know could exist anywhere else, and you want to ask something unique and something get something new outta the guests. But then I realized after about 20 interviews or so that at least six or seven had said, this is the first interview I'm doing, or I've never done a podcast interview.

    Because for me it's literally, I, I read a paper and then I write to the author and say like, Hey, do you wanna talk [00:29:00] about this? So like often it's people who have no prior experience in terms of, or very little prior experience in terms of public speaking in general and into being interviewed, uh, specifically.

    So I think that's something where I also realized like, oh, I can. It's actually fine for me to do a fairly straightforward job in terms of you, I know the paper, I usually know it inside out. I've usually read at least one or two other papers of the person in preparation, and then we kind of just have a chat about it.

    Yeah. 

    Cody Kommers: So there's, there's a few things in there that I wanna, I would go a little deeper on. So the first one is that you mentioned something a little while ago, which is that you often have the experience of listening to these domain general, uh, you know, podcast hosts, and you have the experience of like, oh, you know, this would've been a better direction to take this.

    Why didn't they ask this question? Do you think that now having done 50 interviews, well, you know, 49, uh, uh, given that this is the reverse interview, uh, [00:30:00] do you feel that you have come through on that sort of like suspicion? Do you, do you feel like you had, like, have been able to attain that in the way you kind of imagined?

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I don't think so. I think I just realized how difficult it is to do interviews. Um, I guess it's, especially because, you know, these conversational ones seem like a conversation. It just seems really easy and natural, but once you actually do it, you realize, ah, shit, like, you know, I had, and the weird thing is like, sometimes it's actually, so for example, I, I would take one example.

    Um, one of the last ones I did with Michelle Hornberger, he's a really good guy. I had a great time talking to him and I really like the episode that came out of it. But somehow whilst I was recording, he had this like, uh, the way he often spoke is he'd, you know, talk about topic A that leads national topic B as soon as he arrived at topic B, he takes that the starting point, started talking about topic C and so on and so forth.

    So I find it really difficult to kind of say something and get kind of my direction that I want to get into there. But when I listen to it [00:31:00] afterwards in the edit, it's like. I should have just let him talk. Like I, it was, I could have just not said anything. It would've been perfectly fine, but somehow it seemed like, um, I had to, I felt like I had to guide this a bit more than I actually did.

    So I think I just, I think I still have just lots to learn in terms of how to do this. Um, yeah, I'm not sure I do a great job at it. I think, um, I just try and be as prepared as I can for each interview. And then, yeah, I find it, yeah, I mean, I find it very difficult also because I often have no idea who the people are.

    I'm going to talk to, you know, I get, I imagine at least for you, it's maybe you have a bit more information about the people, but there's some people that's literally just a, like university website. That's all I know about them and what they wrote in the paper. So I have no idea what they sound like, how they speak, any of this stuff.

    So I guess it is a very inspir, inspirational, uh, improvisational kind of thing of going, let's see how I can do this. And. Yeah, as I said, I'm [00:32:00] pretty sure I'm also one of the annoying interviewers. I don't think I've transcended that yet. 

    Cody Kommers: We're all the annoying interviewers. That's the good news. Uh, you know, uh, gosh, there's, um.

    You know who, if you hear that, you are gonna have to take that out later on. So 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I will, I'll like, I take this, like, it annoys me so much and that's why I spend so much time editing. 

    Cody Kommers: Um, I 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: should automate this. Also, there's programs for this. 

    Cody Kommers: The, um, so I, I had a guest on a couple episodes go named Andy Latrell, and he has a podcast among many other things.

    Uh, but his podcast is called Opinion Science. And I think if you want to hear a baseline high Ask quality podcast in terms of just like a well produced, well thought out, nice to listen to, well-edited, good in terms of the quality of the content, quality of the production, that sort of thing. That's a really, really solid podcast to listen to and sort of start to reverse engineer, [00:33:00] okay, what's happening here?

    And I don't, uh, do everything that he does and we don't have exactly the same. Kind of, uh, thing, but that's someone who I think does the, and it's specifically him talking to people who are also experts in. The, the same basic field, not always the same exact field, but the same sort of basic, you know, opinion science sort of content.

    And I think that's, you know, looking at people like Andy and then trying to reverse engineer the different, you know, things that they're doing, sort of like we're, we're talking about emulating, I think is a really helpful sort of exercise for a lot of these things. And then the other thing I wanna bring up is that Andy recommended a podcast, I think I've got it right here.

    It's, the name of it is called The Turnaround. And the guy who, who, uh, hosts it is, is Jesse Thor, who's evidently a dude. He's, he's, you know, he's got this whole, you know, media empire. Very successful as far as I can tell. And the idea of the [00:34:00] turnaround is that he takes people who are among the most famous interviewers in the US.

    EG Ira Glass. This is where I, I, I, I mentioned that Ira Glass thing earlier. This is where I, I, I listened to, uh, in this interview with him and he asked him about the nature of interview. And so, uh, uh, I was expecting, okay, great, let's go in, let's, you know, like, let's hear, because I love this sort of thing.

    I love thinking about interviewing and dissecting what's happening and that sort of stuff, and I just absolutely could not. Fucking listened to this podcast because I thought Jesse Thorn was such a grading, uh, interviewer. And I just thought like he got nothing. He got the be the top 15 interviewers in America together and got nothing from them.

    Um, and so in addition to figuring out what you like about, you know, Sam Harris and, uh, you know, for me, Krista Tippett is one of my favorite interviewers for podcasts on being, um, et cetera, et cetera. Um, [00:35:00]going in and saying, well, here's one that's not only just like, oh, I think this guy's kind of annoying, but I have fundamentally couldn't listen to this episode.

    And, uh, and, and, and that sort of thing, and trying to reverse engineer. I think these are all really great exercises to sort of unlock that deeper, what am I trying to do here and, and how can I improve on, on what am I on on, on what I'm trying to do? 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, it's, it's funny that. Like, I obviously, you know, knew that we were gonna talk about roughly the podcast and these kind of things, but as only as you were asking the questions, I guess I realized that I never thought too much about interviewing itself.

    I mean, there are like some specific things, but yeah, I guess, I dunno whether this is good or bad that I'm so, like, caught up in the material. I dunno whether that's a good or bad thing, but I just try and like, figure out the thing and go, like, how can we get from topic A to B? Yeah. Um, but yeah, it seems like just, yeah.

    Cody Kommers: So yeah, let's, let's set the inter, I think we've, we've, we've covered a lot of ground on the interviewing thing. I think there's some, you know, we've un [00:36:00] we've covered some good stuff and there's some stuff to think about in there. But let's go towards the material now. So the, the next thing that I want to talk about is, is the target audience.

    So in terms of the material, we've talked a little bit about what you're trying to do, what your goals are, you know, et cetera, that sort of stuff. Who do you think. Who do? Who do you envision that kind of content in its best case scenario? Appealing to? 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: So this is actually something that I have thought about recently.

    And initially I had like. It was definitely for academics, basically for people who've read the papers. But now I've, I've actually gotten it slightly, well, quite a bit broader. I'm basically assuming that the people listening to my podcast are probably junior researchers or master students, you know, master student, PhD student, that kind of level.

    Uh, maybe postdocs, it's, I find it, I mean, that's kind of, so basically I'm, I'm using that as kind of my, let's say those people should be able to follow the [00:37:00] conversation. Um, so I'm assuming, you know, we don't explain what a neuron is or anything like that on my podcast, even though, you know, it can be quite technical discussions.

    Um, but I'm kind of assuming that the people know the basics of science. They know the basic of the brain and psychology more or less. But the weird thing is, I mean, so this has been one of the really surprising things I've had. So, you know, I partly assume that it's master students, PhD students who listen to this because they probably have more time than especially senior postdocs, professors, that kind of stuff.

    But I have occasionally found out that there are professors listening to my podcast. And apparently even like professors are people too, 

    Cody Kommers: Ben. It's true. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. But you'd think they have like stuff to do. Like there was this, the craziest, this was actually relatively early on. Uh, this was like the coolest thing for me at the time when basically like some professor wrote a paper, another different professor tweeted about it, and then someone else responded to that saying, oh yeah, this reminds me of this.

    Uh, like a third professor responded saying like, [00:38:00] this reminds me of this podcast. And I was listening to where Paul Morino mentioned like this thing about modeling. It's like, what? Like, don't you have like, I dunno, students to something that's 

    Cody Kommers: funny. Uh, so there's, there's something that you've said a couple times that I want to take up and, and, and touch on.

    And that's that you're assuming, and you say this in, in, in front of all of your book podcasts as well. So you're assuming. The, you know, like the book, um, yeah, the book club ones. You, you stayed up front. Look, I'm assuming that you've read this by which I think you partially mean there are gonna be spoiler alerts.

    So if you don't wanna know what happens then, you know, like, uh, uh, but I think this assumption particularly pertaining to the scientific research paper stuff is the wrong one to take into it. Um, because like, I've got a psych archive paper up here. They tell you how much download downloads there are. So this is a paper that I found really interesting.

    See if I can get it up. Uh, I'm just picking, like, this is literally a [00:39:00] tab that's open and the downloads on this Preprint. I thought it was a really good paper. Really fascinating paper. Totally interesting to me. A hundred fifty nine, a hundred fifty nine downloads. So if we're taking that as a proxy for like the number of people, so at the end of the day, the, the set of people who are interested in what the paper said is going to be orders magnitude larger than the number of people who have read it.

    And I think that this is. Sort of trying to, I, for, for you personally, I can see why you would have the inclination that, well, okay. Maybe going through the summary, like that's, let's, like, let's turn the velocity, let's turn, let's turn the, let's turn the volume up a little bit and let's, let's. Let's get to the good stuff a little bit quicker and not go over the basic stuff.

    Um, and I think this is a, a pretty significant assumption and one that is always going to be a huge limitation on, you know, the, the, the kinds of people who are going to resonate with this concept. Because I think at the end of the [00:40:00] day, there are lots of people from undergraduates through professors that are interested in what papers say and having an audio format in which to consume them and to hear from the person who wrote the paper be be interviewed by someone who is knowledgeable about the area of research and the paper, and can ask elucidating questions about it.

    That there's a ton of people who, uh, um, and so I think that is, you know, the, the people who can do, you don't have to be like, oh, people who don't know what a neuron is. Great. Let's, let's try and branch out those. No, no, no, you don't need that. I think approximately you're, you're correct, but it needs to be the set of people who are potentially interested in what the paper have to say, not the people who have already read the paper, thought about it and, you know, seen it in their lab's own journal club, that, that, that sort of thing.

    I think that, to me, um, [00:41:00] seems more specifically like the, uh, the audience that you should have in mind. What do you think about that? 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I, I completely agree. I mean. So this is part of also what my, how my change, how my, this is also part of how my thinking changed about this, where now I do let people explain what the paper is and I ask some questions based off of that.

    And you don't have to have the right. So I think for my interviews, actually, I don't really do that anymore. Um, I think that has definitely changed. Um, for the, for the books I find it slightly difficult because in some sense, one reason also why I did that is because otherwise you have to really prepare to explain what the book is and like guide people through it.

    And that's a very different experience or I think that probably takes, yeah, it's so difficult. I mean, yeah. So I, as I said, I agree for the interviews, but for the books I find it so difficult because, for example, let's say when, when we did the BOL thing, right? Um, the BOL biography, I mean, I think that was actually pretty good.

    Kind of in between, um, step. I very much agree. 

    Cody Kommers: I very much agree 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: [00:42:00] because we didn't explain what the book was about. We didn't retell the book. Right. But we kind of, well, 

    Cody Kommers: you gave really good summaries of, of what happened, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: right, right. 

    Cody Kommers: Uh, chapter by chapter. And 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I wonder like how much you're gonna get from that if you have no idea what anything it is about, because it was like two sentences per.

    You know, the entire book in 40. 

    Cody Kommers: Anyway, let's set aside the book Yeah. Club thing as as, as a substantively different sort of 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. 

    Cody Kommers: Style of thing. And I think, yes, let's think about it and incorporate it overall, but specifically for the target audience thing, the bread and butter of your show. Uh, and maybe this is something that you wanna think about changing, uh, is like, oh, I wanted to, to focus more on the, the, the book club things.

    But I think the book club thing is sort of a side sort of thing, and yes, it's got its own parameters and, and it's relevant, but like, let's, let's focus on the, the bread and butter interviews, that sort of thing. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, yeah. Okay. So just the interviews. Um, yeah, as I said, I have changed that and I hope that I do make them more accessible now to anyone who basically has a master's, let's [00:43:00] say, in this, in this field, more or less.

    That is my hope. I mean, I do definitely still have some questions that are pretty specific. Maybe I should make a better job of introducing why the question is interesting. Yeah. I dunno how, how much this comes across or how would I do it, but I do definitely now try and I definitely don't assume that the people have read the paper anymore, let's put it that 

    Cody Kommers: way.

    Yeah. So, uh, we're gonna transition now into talking into specifics about the show format that you've been doing and also maybe what you've been thinking about for, for changes of what you, what you wanna do in the future. And so I guess I kind of have an, an idea that I'd like to put into the mixer of, of just like a thought for you to consider, which is that, so right now, the way that you're framing your shows is in terms of, here's my guest, you should come listen to this show primarily because.

    Here's this person and they're gonna talk about themselves, the re their research, uh, their, their most interesting papers, that sort of stuff [00:44:00] where it seems to me like what, uh, and, and, and at the end of the day, like the people that you're bringing on, like you said, they're not, you're not, this is not a public figure show where it's like, you know, I'm gonna have Jordan Peterson on, and it, you know, talked to him about whatever.

    Um, it's, I'm having serious researchers on and having serious research discussions. And so it seems to me like the crux of what's interesting about the show is not necessarily necessarily the people, but the papers themselves. And so pitching each show, by which I mean the sort of title and the framing of it as in like.

    Look, come listen to this show because we're gonna talk about this paper. And it got tweeted out by a bunch of people and they seem to find it really fascinating. And it sort of, you know, rethinks this one paradigm in the field. And I'm gonna, uh, uh, get, get the author on, on the line and we're gonna go over what happened in the paper.

    We're gonna talk about the pros and cons of it. We're gonna talk about what we did learn from it, what we did learn [00:45:00] from it. I'm gonna probe him on some technical points. We're gonna talk a little bit high level stuff, but having it be about the paper and saying, we're going to talk about this paper. And you're gonna hear from the author and he's, uh, that, uh, she's gonna be interviewed by a knowledgeable, uh, person with relevant, you know, expertise in something related to it.

    That seems to me like the core of what people would, uh, really get excited about with, with your show. And maybe it solves some of the other problems that will come up, sort of, um, you know, that, that we'll talk about of, you know, your vision going forward. But it, it would limit the amount of time that you talk to the them because instead of it being about their entire career and body of work, it's like, let's go in depth on this paper.

    And so it, uh, sort of puts a natural hour limit to it. If it's less than an hour, that's fine. If it's slightly more than an hour, that's fine too, but it probably will end up being close to that sort of like hour. Um, it gives you a natural hook for the, you know what, like people wanna know the content of papers and, uh, [00:46:00] they wanna hear it through the author at the end of the day.

    People like consuming audio content. They're way more, professors are way more likely to, you know, listen to 45 minutes of your hour long podcast with this person than they are to sit down and read the paper at the end of the day. And, uh, I think, you know, if you get the sort of topical scope of it in terms of, oh, here's the kind of people from this segment of cognitive science, uh, that I'm gonna have, have on, uh, that seems to me like you could get like that, that would be a, uh, a sort of like next level of tapping into what's fundamentally interesting about what you are doing and what you're trying to do.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. That, that makes a lot of sense. I think. I'm trying to find something interesting 'cause say, other than just agreeing, um, 

    Cody Kommers: well, let, let, let's, let's put that, that's fine. So let's, let me put that out there as like, here is after, you know, sort of thinking about it for a while, like I said, I was doing 10 days worth of prep to get, to get ready for this, this, um, that's, that's sort of what occurred to [00:47:00] me as, as a potential way of, of sort of getting to that core of, of what makes your show unique and what you can personally deliver.

    That's both true to what you want in terms of being like, like let's have serious conversations about serious research, but also appealing to the maximum number of, of people possible. But, so anyway, let's talk about some, um, some specific stuff and we can keep that sort of proposal in, in, in the ba the background here.

    So let's, let's talk about the, the format of the show. Um, your shows tend to be pretty long and you tend to be pretty scrupulous in how you edit them. And this leads to, as a result, you have to spend lots and lots of time producing each show. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Mm-hmm. 

    Cody Kommers: Uh, and there's sort of two considerations here. The quality of the content and the amount of time you need to create it.

    So what do you think about your, what are your current thoughts on how your, um, show is formatted? What are the things you like about it? What are the things that you think are the potential drawbacks? And, and, and, and [00:48:00] what do you think you could like shave off to sort of balance that quality versus, uh, time investment trade off?

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I think what the, the first thing that I am already changing, um, or at least I'm trying to change, is to make the episode shorter. That also in part, actually goes with what you mentioned before about making it specifically about a paper. I think what I'm doing now is more I'm maybe. Not, I'm not as explicit about it, but I guess I am kind of doing more like two papers about a person rather than Yeah, the entire career or whatever.

    So that's the obvious one, right? Like if it takes me three times as long to edit the episode than it takes to record it, then if I take out 20 minutes, then I say, you know, one and a half hours total, basically. 

    Cody Kommers: Is that what you'd estimate it to be? Is about three x whatever the 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: probably, I mean, so editing, I mean also including the description of the podcast, which are 

    Cody Kommers: also long in, in what you do, you, you give a lot of.

    Uh, you give a big 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: description I put and everything. Yeah. Um, so I mean, sometimes it [00:49:00] probably would only take two and a half times as long, but I'd probably get lost sometimes and like, oh, that looks like an interesting paper while I'm like trying to find the thing we were referencing. Um, but yeah, I would probably say it takes me three times as long to edit the thing as it takes to record it, 

    Cody Kommers: which that, that, that's huge.

    Like, that is, that is a limiting factor in your ability to do this show while doing a PhD. Like to me, this is almost the number one consideration for people cons, like PhD students specifically who are considering starting a podcast is you need to have a really strong estimate upfront is how much of, how much time it's going to take you per week to produce the kind of episode that you.

    Plan on producing. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. 

    Cody Kommers: And so I think like that to me is the biggest metric of your ability to continue to do this. You know, do you have that amount of time to give the, the, the show what you need while doing all the other stuff you actually have to do. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: So the, I find this really [00:50:00] difficult because I completely agree that probably no one cares.

    I mean, to be fair, I think I am also, I think I'm slightly over editing it probably now. I think I, I would imagine that sometimes maybe would've been better to keep a little bit more pauses in or erms in. 

    Cody Kommers: And to your point, I'll admit to under editing, uh, at the, at the present moment. Uh, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: yeah. Yeah. So I think I will actually, I think if I do that a bit more consistently, like editing a bit less out, then it probably, you know, that will, like just two and a half times already takes that quite a bit.

    Right. Um, I think I, it's always gonna take at least one and a half times the length because I ha I have to listen through the thing. Yeah. Um, but sorry, what were we talking about? 

    Cody Kommers: What do you need to do? How can you be more efficient in terms of getting more of what you want with, with less time investment or like the sort of maximum quality with, uh, whatever the, the minimal, you know, what, what are some steps towards efficiency that you think you could do in your next phase?

    So 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: for me, actually first I, before kind of answering, I think I'd like to just have a [00:51:00] slight discussion about something, because this is kind of a, something I feel like I have only one answer to, but you probably have a different response to this. And for me, the idea is okay if I, let's say, uh, whatever, right?

    So I mean, I can try and automate that, right? I can definitely do that. And I have to remind myself not to take that out in the edit, otherwise no one will get what I'm talking about. Um, but you know, I, okay, I can automate that probably to some extent with some software, but the kind of idea I have there is I.

    It takes me maybe five seconds, 10 seconds to six, something like that out, and it saves every listener half a second or whatever, right? I mean, this is just one example. A better example is maybe the, um, if someone says that and has a break, it take me, it takes me five, 10 seconds, six, take it out. It saves the listener a second or two.

    So basically, if I have more than like 10 listeners, I've already made a net gain on the time [00:52:00] spent on this thing. So I feel like if I want to have actually lots of people listening to this, it would be almost well rude basically to waste their time by having just an um, in there and a pause after that that doesn't aid the flow of the conversation in any way.

    That's kind of been my approach to the whole thing to say like, if I have just basically anyone listening to this, it's a net gain for everyone. I dunno whether I'm taking too much like. Too much on my back there, basically. But that's 

    Cody Kommers: kind of, I do like your, it's utilitarian mindset. I think that that's, that like I, I'll always applaud that.

    Um, and adding up the utility for you versus this. Yeah. Okay. Okay. But I'm, I'm not sure that's, quote, time wasted is necessarily the right metric to think about that. So here, here's another, here's another way of thinking about it, is that, so I mentioned an interviewer named Krista Tippett who has a podcast called On Being.

    And [00:53:00] one of the things that I've learned from Krista Tippett who, like, it's much her, what she's trying to do is much more about the personal side of things, which is similar to, you know, like what I talk about on my show. That's the personal side of the intellectual journey, as opposed to like, okay, let's just talk content and, and scientific material and that sort of stuff.

    But one thing that she does that at first I thought was bad was that she, when she's asking a question. She does this thing that I'm kind of doing now, which is kind, she kind of works her way around it. She sort of has some like uhs and like, well, it's kind of like this, but it's also kind of like that.

    And in initially when I was listening to her, it was like, well, that's bad. It's bad to say, um, it's bad to leave unnecessary space. And you know, like it sort of has this awkwardness to it. But no, actually, uh, when I thought about it, I realized that what she was doing was she's controlling the pace of what's happening and she is, I.

    Doing what we were talking about with, uh, the sort [00:54:00] of core capacity interviewing, which is she's creating space. Um, because when someone just really laid something very bare and personal out there, you need something to kind of break that up. And also when you're asking people personal questions, you don't really know what they're gonna say to.

    You need sort of like, you need some hedging in there to give a little bit. Like I could ask the question in this very short period of time, or I could kind of give a bunch of stuff, uh, to it. So that's an example where if you're editing that show and someone gives a really long pause before they answer, that's actually crucial to what they're trying to, um, say.

    So there was actually this one specific interview that she does with Mary Catherine Bateson, rest in Peace. She died about a year ago, the daughter of, um, famous anthropologist, Margaret Mead. Um, and, uh, whatever Gregory, um, Gregory Bateson and, um, Mary Catherine Bates, huge fucking badass in her old rights.

    And, uh, but she was hella old at the [00:55:00] time, this interview. And so every time Krista Tippett would ask a question, um, there would be like a. Fucking 32nd pause. No, not that big, but it like, it felt like there was just like enough time to, for God to create the earth. Yeah. In between the end of question. But that was an important part of Mary Catherine Bates, uh, process.

    And when Krista or the editor interrupted that space, because normally you wouldn't want that. I was like, well, no, no, I actually, I feel like the authenticity has been violated. And then we contrast that with lots of well produced shows. For example, um, of Life Scientific by BBC four, uh, with Jim, forget his last name because I don't really listen to that show.

    Yeah. Ah, clearly. Um, uh, great show and, uh, has a large listenership, and those are always exactly 30 minutes or whatever it is. And there are these, you know, uh, quick question, you know, sort of direct answer, quick question, sort of direct answer. And so that's a very different thing that, that, uh, so it all comes back to [00:56:00] what are your goals?

    Who are you trying to appeal to as the audience, and what does that kind of content look like? And so to me, the answers to those questions. Answer the, what is the appropriate level of editing and what you're trying to, uh, get out of it. What should you leave in, what should you take out? How do you find that balance, to me, always comes back to those sort of core questions, you know?

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. I think that's maybe also why, for me, it makes more sense to take stuff out because I don't, sometimes there are some personal things in there, but not that much. I do try and keep interesting or useful pauses in there. So for example, if someone, if I ask a question, they really wanna think about it, then I will, you know, I won't like cut to like them answering immediately, but there's, so, yeah, I agree with you.

    I think because of that, maybe in mind it's a bit more necessary, but the, actually the main reason I think why it takes me so long to edit the podcast, and this is something that maybe you have a way around this, I don't [00:57:00] know. The problem is, as I said, lots of my guests have no experience public speaking, and they have no experience in listening to themselves.

    So I have literally have episodes where I have a two hour episode and I take s out, and then it's 1 45 where people will, I'm not joking. There are episodes that would be borderline unlistenable to if I like, the people say interesting things, but they just have ticks that they aren't aware of because they've never been interviewed.

    Yeah. So there's, I have genuinely multiple episodes where I took up five to 10 minutes of them just having untrained public speaking basically. And yeah, I mean, those are, those are the ones that kill me. Two hour ones the way I take out 50 minutes is rough one. 

    Cody Kommers: So it, it's, it seems to me that maybe, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: sorry, just briefly my, so my question kind of slightly was to you was then.

    In part this is because the guests I have are people you would not hear about otherwise, which I think is in part maybe a selling point. Something really cool about my podcast because [00:58:00] I agree. Actually the ones that did the best, my episodes are often those with people who have never been interviewed.

    And I think that's a really cool thing. But it also means on the flip side that those take longer to edit. You know, if I get, I'm assuming for example with Stephen Pinker, for example, it would take less to edit because he's more precise in his speech and I'm assuming, uh, uses less filler words or fewer filler words he would probably say.

    Um, but do you see what I mean? Like there's a kind of conflict here. Yeah. 

    Cody Kommers: Yeah. Yeah. It seems to, I could just 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: invite professors, but Yeah. 

    Cody Kommers: No, no, no. I think, I think that it's, it's, it's more than just that. I think it's a core question about the identity of your show. This whole, yeah. How should I edit it is, like I said, it's like you have to be really clear on the, the objectives and the identity questions in order to be able to answer them.

    And so here's just, you know, kind of maybe here's a take on it. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

    Cody Kommers: For you to consider is that you're. [00:59:00] Kind of doing a, uh, so I painted two bookends with the on being style of episode versus the life scientific, and you're kind of straddling a strange both world that I think might not be, that might be suboptimal, which is that you are kind of giving the space that, you know, Krista Tippa would in, in on being with the kind of almost the promise or, or something like that of the, the life scientific format that like really what you should be doing instead of worrying about taking out ums is you should be taking out passages, uh, and say, well, look, this person said some interesting things.

    They also said a lot of not interesting things. It's not their fault. They, they, they are a researcher and this is how researchers work and when you interview with them. And so having, ah, here is the 30 minutes, here is the hour of the most interesting den high density things they said. And. Pasting that together in a coherent [01:00:00] way rather than taking out the small sort of ticks and those, those sort of things.

    That could be potentially the, the way to do it, rather than if you're gonna spend three hours editing an episode, that seems to me like what you want to be doing rather than worrying about the the small sort. Because, you know, like, honestly, uh, having listened to, uh, some of your episodes, some of the things that peop the people say on there are not super fascinating and could, uh, uh, like 

    yeah, 

    Cody Kommers: like they could, they could be cut.

    Like, honestly, I think some things, some people say on there, and this is true of, of every show, I'm sure, um, like all podcasts could be cut and the, the like, literally, you know, just removed from face of the Earth, we'd all, but, um, but, uh, but in, no, I like, but so like, as a different way of conceptualizing the editing process, like, look, I'm gonna find the hours worth of the most interesting things, um, they said, and I'm gonna con, um, uh, take those and put them together rather than just taking out the sort of the [01:01:00] ticks, that sort of thing.

    And I think when you combine that with the EPIs, the, the, the paper forward focus, maybe that's, you know, then, then you start to get really like, okay, we're, we're bringing the scope into the most interesting topic. The highest sort of density of interestingness in the topic. And then we're going to um, say, ah, we're gonna aim for 45 minutes.

    We're gonna aim for whatever. And say like, okay, I'm gonna try and find approximately 45 minutes, um, of that. So that cuts down on the editing time, it increases in two ways, the density of interestingness, uh, and that sort of thing. So that's just like a way of conceptualizing a potential, you know, a another, another potential way of, of doing things.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: A quick question about that. Do you think that's gonna take less time? Because I found like sometimes I had to take out parts, like for whatever reason, because someone said, can you take that out afterwards or something? And I found that takes more time than actually that takes a, because then you really have to like know what's in your episode.

    Cody Kommers: Yeah. Yeah. [01:02:00] So that I, I agree with that. Um, and that's, again, it's about the management sort of thing. But if you're, if you're constraining the original conversation to an hour and you are also bringing down the topic space to something that is more reliably interesting, then I don't think you need to do very much, um, cutting it down.

    But yes, thinking about the parameters of all that sort of stuff in terms of time management and time allocation, I think is crucial. Uh, but I do think maybe if you get the scope of the initial conversation correct, then the editing becomes, uh, a nice to have, or you can sort of then say, ah, here's what I'm willing to dedicate to it.

    Uh, and, and, and that sort of thing, you know? 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, I have to think about that. Yeah. 

    Cody Kommers: So, uh, here's something that you, you mentioned that you are kind of interested to, to think a little bit more about. And, [01:03:00] uh, the way that I conceptualize this is what I call distribution. And this, this is different than the quality and the content of the show itself, but it's how it gets out there into the world.

    And so, from my point of view, I spend a lot of time sort of studying entrepreneurs, I guess you could call them, uh, because I think it's a very high performance field, uh, as opposed to PhD students who in general, I would say are a field where it, like we just, we, we simply aren't. It's not part of our cultural norms, our social norms to cultivate sort of like high performance sort of routines and that sort of stuff, uh, and optimal environments.

    We PhD students live in a very suboptimal sort of, um, you know, professional milieu. Setting that aside anyway, uh, one thing I see a lot of these people say is that distribution matters in, in many ways, more than product. And so I think as scientists, we kind of are trained to think, well, if the quality is good enough, then it'll get out there eventually.

    And I think, you know, for science, yeah, sure, maybe, and, uh, and I think it does, but [01:04:00] you know, potentially quite slowly. Um, but when you start to really look at what performs well in your field, and, and, and by that I mean not just, you know, like scientifically, which I, I do think this is. True for, but also podcasts and whatever, whatever content you're trying to produce, content in the broadest sense, uh, it is not, not, not necessarily the highest quality stuff that comes to the forefront, but the, the stuff that, that's a part of the best sort of distribution system and the marketing and the flashiness and the stickiness, the shareability and you know, whatever, however, you know, whatever the different things in there.

    So, uh, and this is something that I struggle with a lot. It's something I have a lot of thoughts about. It's something that a lot of things that I want to do, but things that I find that I don't usually have the time to do and all that sort of stuff. So how do you currently think about the distribution for your show and.

    Would you like to see? Uh, yeah. How do, how do you sort of envision it going forward? 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Uh, by distribution you mean more than marketing advertising or whatever you wanna call it? Exactly. Rather than like how I get it to a [01:05:00] repository. 

    Cody Kommers: Yeah. Not the literal logistics of, yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Okay. 

    Cody Kommers: Um, oh, I got it to Spotify, but like, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: yeah.

    Yeah. 

    Cody Kommers: Well, let's say there's, uh, a hundred people for whom this show is potentially of, you know, introduced my target market. How do I make sure all of those a hundred people, um, have an opportunity to en engage with the show initially? 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: So far, I've basically only done one thing, and that's, I tweet about it and I include the Twitter handle of the person, uh, in the show.

    And that actually works fairly right. I'd say the only problem is, again, I have lots of guests who don't have any online presence at all, so then I have lots of guests. Yeah. I've, I once had a month where I think I have four episodes of one person had a Twitter account or something, so then obviously, you know, no one listens to those episodes.

    Um, but yeah, so that's something that basically I so far have done fairly little on. I have noticed though, a bit of a network effect, I feel like, because now for, so, especially recently, I've had a lot of episodes on [01:06:00]special navigation, grid sales, play sales, that kinda stuff. And those actually are starting to do disproportionately well.

    And I think the reason is that by now you can, I, I, you know, I can say like, Hey, here's like five other episodes on this topic I have. And then so often now previous guests, we are like, oh, that person is now on the podcast and we're very tweeted. So that's actually working pretty well. Um, but it doesn't really work.

    For like standalone episodes or something like that. So, I mean to, yeah, the first initial answer to your, to your question is that's pretty much what I do, but I realized that there are, there's probably more to do. I mean, I, I recently made a Reddit account. I haven't done anything with it yet. In principle, that should be a community that would be really interested in this.

    Uh, but I dunno, that's, that's something I, I kind of wanna try out, um, for the next, I dunno, maybe from the next year or something onwards. But yeah, I dunno, to be fair, I don't really know what exactly one can do. That's kind of part of my problem also. [01:07:00] Sure. I could like, because you know, I have no social media other than like Twitter accounts with 20 followers.

    So I have, you know. It's not like I could, sure, I could start a TikTok account and get famous there, but, right. Like that's not really the odd option here. 

    Cody Kommers: It's not really authentic in your, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: yeah. Yeah. And it's also more work than anything else, so, yeah. Yeah. To be fair, I don't really know what the options are.

    Twitter is an easy one. That seems to work to some extent, but yeah. What, what are you thinking about? Because. I know you have Twitter too, I guess, your newsletter, but is that 

    Cody Kommers: it? So I, I struggle with distribution for my show because that's the first thing that I cut when I, when I have less time to dedicate to it.

    And right now in this, you know, sort of last few months I have been, I'm in this sort of like final step of like wrapping up my PhD. Like I'll be finished with, um, so it's December one right now. I'll be finished with [01:08:00] writing at my empirical chapters by the end of the year. Um, so I'm just like, and then I'll be like, way ahead of schedule and then starting January one I'll be able to rededicate, uh, you know, the majority of my time to, okay, how do I build my various like platforms, that sort of stuff.

    And that's really gonna be a more distribution focused time for me. But I'll admit like I. Uh, that's the first thing that, that gets cut for me and, um, that, you know, I don't even tweet out, uh, uh, most of my episodes these days. Um, and at the end of the day right now, what I'm trying to do is more just get to that a hundred episode mark.

    I'm at like 74 as of this week, and so that's kind of just what I'm focusing on is I, so I sort of know what the show's about right now, how it works and, you know, I want to get on as many famous psychology people as I can while I'm still a graduate student. And then once I sort of stop being a graduate student and start doing other things and, and whatever, I think my perspective's gonna change a little [01:09:00] bit.

    But anyway, that's just the sort of phase that I'm in and it's a not necessarily distribution focused phase, however, I do think distribution is. Very important in terms of getting your show to as many people in your audience of potential listeners, uh, as, as possible. So part of it has to do with, okay, who's that?

    Who's that target audience? And you know, we sort of talked about that for you earlier, which is, you know, one way that we we talked about was masters and onwards, people who are, have interest in the specific papers that, uh, you are covering. And so that gives us a pretty clear idea of, of they are. And so here's one really simple thing that you could do that I think, um, it's not, you know, it's not the end all be all, but it's something that makes a lot of sense, which is that you can contact the social media coordinators, the, the communication coordinators of the people in the department of the person that you interviewed, right?

    Because if you interview a postdoc [01:10:00] in, you know, Oxford Experimental Psychology, then you can reach out to the. Social media coordinator and be like, yo, I just interviewed this person about their recent research. Uh, they're a member of your department and you've got a newsletter, you've got a Twitter, you've got, uh, your media section of your website.

    And it's not like that's a gazillion people who like read the, you know, like newsletter. But it definitely a, a, a large number of people in your target audience. And that social media coordinator, I can tell you from experience is fucking thrilled to have someone reach out to them with like, oh, here's some content for you so their ass doesn't have to do it, uh, on, on their own.

    Uh, so that's something that's a pretty easy thing to do, to find that person to send 'em a quick message. You know, be like, Hey, I had this person on podcast. They're part of your thing. Would you, uh, be willing to share this when you get a chance on whatever, you know, channels you think are appropriate?

    That's something that you can do that definitely is going to [01:11:00] direct to your target. Target audience. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I never thought about that. That's, I mean, I have thought sometimes of, I, I, especially when the guest didn't have Twitter, I've considered including like, the university in the handle or whatever. But yeah, I never considered actually like contacting someone and saying like, Hey, 

    Cody Kommers: can I help you?

    Good 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: job. Basically 

    Cody Kommers: like the the social media coordinators Yeah. They write back to you, right? Is we for Rebecca 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: X? 

    Cody Kommers: She, yeah, I think so. From 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: MIT there or 

    Cody Kommers: something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think, um, VCS is because I, I've had a bunch of MIT brain and cognitive science, uh, people on there, so, um, but again, it's, it's something that's, uh, I do inconsistently and so it, it would be an ideal.

    Um, but, but no, I think you, you had talked about it with, uh, with Lex Friedman the top of the episode. Is that like, it's not a mystery, the main, the main things that people do to sort of introduce new people to the show, it's, if you have video, video is just so much more shareable than audio. Well, YouTube, YouTube has a 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: [01:12:00] recommendation algorithm that.

    Doesn't exist for podcasting. 

    Cody Kommers: People come across YouTube videos much more easily than they come across, um, a audio. So even if your thing doesn't make sense as a YouTube video, you know, having video on there. But again, it's a bunch of work and it's like, you know, it's sort of like, well, not a lot of people are launch in this start off with, and, you know, so I think that's a nice to have.

    And, uh, I, I've, I've seen some people go really hard on saying, saying be like, yo, if you want your podcast to grow, you need to be video first. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I've heard that too. 

    Cody Kommers: I don't know. Um, it's probably, well, that's a 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: different product. Yeah. 

    Cody Kommers: So there's that, and then there's um, the basically little, little clips that you were mentioning that are, you know, anywhere from 30 seconds to five minutes long.

    I've done those at various times, and you can, you know, some times people don't care about it. Something, sometimes they do get shared if it's a, if it's a clip. Clip clip that resonates or person shares it. I found just 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: briefly, I found that so much more work than I thought it would be. Yeah. I did that once when I thought like, oh, I can do like an audio ex, [01:13:00] except on Twitter.

    Like that would be a good thing. Right? 

    Cody Kommers: A hundred percent. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: And then, God, that was a lot of work. Yeah. Just getting like a 32nd, one minute clip on there. And then I showed it to someone and it was like, that was a weird clip. It was like, oh, 

    Cody Kommers: and you gotta have the text on there and you gotta have the, uh, you know, if it's just audio only, it's not gonna work.

    It's gotta have, gotta have the subtitles and you gotta pick the second. It has to work outta context. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. 

    Cody Kommers: It's really d and yeah. Uh, you know, whatever. So all of these, that's the problem with distribution is that all of these things are yet another layer on there that you have to dedicate time to. If you already spent three hours editing the fucking episode, you're not gonna wanna, you know, spend the time to do all of the, the stuff on top of it.

    And the other thing that we haven't talked about yet, but I think is, is. Crucial to a lot of this stuff is that a lot of these things require different mindsets. They require wearing different hats, right? So when you're conducting an episode versus when you're [01:14:00] editing it versus when you're producing it, versus when you're listening to it, these are all very different mindsets.

    And the distribute, and the, the biggest discrepancy in terms of the sort of like backend of things for me is that production versus distribution change in mindset. 'cause all of the editing, like, you know, as, as, as the host, you're and, and slash editor you are in your mind be like, okay, this is a good section.

    I'm gonna have take an um, out this section isn't quite as like whatever. All of that sort of monologue is sort of naturally running. Through your head in there. And yes, there's a difference between editing for sound and editing for content and that sort of stuff, but you can start to put those things together.

    Thinking about the, the content itself versus the distribution of it is a totally different mindset. And you can want the show to be as high quality as you, as as possible, but then like, not be bothered to, to do the, the distribution stuff that we're talking about, which is all fairly straightforward and fairly obvious.

    It doesn't, it's not like you need this revolutionary idea about what to do, it's just that, well, are you going to take the time [01:15:00] to do the videos? Are you gonna take the time to do the clips? Uh, you know, how many people are you gonna contact to try and send it out? And then their newsletter, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I mean, it's, I, it takes so much time. I mean, I. Actually, do you know that Lex Friedman, he had his entire thing, the, the, the in-person interviews, the editing, um, the videos, the clips, he did all of that for like the first 120 episodes himself. Like I have absolutely no idea, idea how he did that. That's yeah, that's so much work.

    Especially he has like three hour ones, right? It's ridiculous. Um, but, uh, one point, uh, maybe last point from me on this topic that I can think about is, I think for me, I think what I'm kind of experimenting with, or not even experimenting with, but I actually find more interesting to do in the future is also to be slightly more, to focus my podcast around a few themes.

    Because right now it's kind of neuroscience, psychology, whatever. Um, but I've realized, for example, with spatial navigation, right? Like I've taken two or three modules in my [01:16:00] masters that were vaguely related or closely related to this. I kind of know the papers, I know the background, I know the history of the field, right?

    So for me, for example, doing an interview there with someone who has a new paper. So much less work than if I read something that I just came across for the first time and I don't really know what it's about. And I've noticed, for example, one really interesting thing is, so I dunno how it's what it's like for you, but for me, and I think most creative outputs, let's say you have this exponential decay in terms of downloads, right?

    Like in first, when it comes out, first day you get most of your downloads and then it just falls off exponentially after that. Interestingly with Kate Jeffrey, who, uh, is someone who works in space navigation and was one of my episode 15 or something like that. I have a U-shape right now, like my last few.

    It's, I've literally had as many downloads in the last month, half a year after I had the first one. Um, and I think that's because I had four guests, three guests on a roughly similar topic. So. Yeah, and I, I realized like it's actually [01:17:00] easier to do. It's probably more fun to do because I'm not jumping around topic completely every week.

    Um, and it seems like people also like it also like it because they can see like, oh yeah, you know, you're kind of, I guess when you're listening to something the first time, you're also testing out the podcast in general. So my hope is kind of that I'm building like a small library on like this special navigation cognitive maps thing, and then I'll do a few others, maybe more related to my actual PhD work and kind of see how that goes.

    Cody Kommers: I. Super to support that. Like this is something I put in my notes for you, is that one thing to consider is tightening down the scope of what you're doing as opposed to having it be this, like the, like the set of all potential cognitive scientific topics. Um, which, you know, yeah. The, the, like a, like what you're saying about the space navigation thing a hundred percent.

    I think that tightening it down to a pretty narrow scope and say like, Hey, look, we're gonna talk technically about those, these things and go in in depth on [01:18:00] that. That's the perfect intersection of a level of technicality that you, you want to do. And also people go, oh, right, here's this other person and here's this other paper.

    That sort of thing that seems to me like a sweet spot is tightening in the, the, the topical scope of that. Um, and you can sort of figure out the distribution that you wanna have. On that, like the statistical distribution where it's like, well, for the next 20 episodes, 80% of them are gonna be on a, a sort of, you know, relatively narrowly defined topic and then 20% are gonna be whatever sounds interesting to me.

    And so having a, a clear focus that when someone finds you, your show who's interested in that thing, they're like, oh shit, look at all these other episodes, great, I'm gonna listen to all of 'em. Um, but then there's also for your own interest and for other people, just sort of that expansion thing. And then, you know, or over time, like you're not gonna do spatial navigation from now until forever.

    So like saying, okay, here is sort of for the near future, I'm gonna sort of focus in on this topic and then I'm gonna shift to, to that [01:19:00] next. Um, I think that's a really, really good, you know, sort of to uh, to tighten it on that scope like that. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. And also, yeah, also, it's so much. I guess I also, to go back to your first question or whatever question, like I, I also underestimated how much like mental time you spend thinking about the upcoming interview.

    And if, you know, you're doing one or two interviews a week and you, um, it's just a completely different topic every time. It's just such a jump in terms of, 

    Cody Kommers: do you, do you spend a lot of, do, do you have a lot of like that mental lead time like that? 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, quite a lot. Okay. I guess you don't, 

    Cody Kommers: I don't, I don't think that I do.

    I don't know. I definitely think about, I definitely think, oh, I'm gonna talk to this person. What do I think is gonna be interested? But I really, I start thinking about the episode 30 minutes beforehand unless I'm reading something of theirs, because we're gonna discuss it specifically. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. No, I have usually my, my notes scripted out a few days before.

    I mean, often also not, but that's at least the goal, 

    Cody Kommers: right? [01:20:00] Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, yeah. No, and for me it's the kind of whole thing of that's just thinking about this topic and. Yeah. 

    Cody Kommers: Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: It's, it's taking up more of my life than it probably 

    Cody Kommers: should, but you need to actually know shit going in, whereas I don't necessarily have the feedback.

    Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I mean, the first 10 minutes of your que of your interview is like, where did you grow up? 

    Cody Kommers: Yeah. Um, which could have been a, it, there's plenty of Canada answers for what's most annoying about Cody. I'm sure we could have a whole podcast and just coming up with those, but, um, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: it wasn't even a, by the way, that wasn't even a, like, part of the, what's annoying about your criticism?

    It's just a very, I, I feel like to some extent you have to maybe be a bit more spontaneous because it's more like, wh what do you pick up on it there? 

    Cody Kommers: Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, 

    Cody Kommers: part, part of what I'm doing in the first 15 minutes of, uh, an episode is I'm listening or 15 minutes of an interview, is I'm listening to. What is this person able to give me?

    Because a lot of academics, you'd be like, tell me about your personal life. And it's just fucking boring. They just don't have anything interesting to say about it. [01:21:00] And some people can only do theories and philosophies. Some people can tell great anecdotes, some people. And so you're trying to feel out what is the, what is the thing this person is, is best at giving that if I ask them questions that are sort of tailored towards that for the next 45 minutes, that they're going to give me the best of themselves, because that's constantly what I'm asking is how do I get the best out of this person?

    And in that first 10, 15 minutes assessing what it is they're most comfortable talking about and the style in which they're comfortable talking about it, and then making sure my questions are tailored throughout like that, that's a lot of what I'm doing in the first 15 minutes of an interview. But anyway, scope is something that I struggle with because, you know, I have on potentially far too wide of a scope, like some of my favorite people that I have on.

    So I mean, I, I have lots of sort of core cognitive scientists and psychology people and everything, and I think that's recognizably what my core is. But then, like, some of my favorites are like, you know, [01:22:00] my interview with the English professor, uh, Luke Menand, uh, and it's like no one else who listens to the podcast knows that.

    I mean, he's super famous. He's a New Yorker writer. He's like, like the most famous. Cultural critic in America, um, like as from an academic perspective. But if you're a psychologist, you don't fucking know that. Um, you just don't. Um, it does. Uh, so, so, yeah. Uh, I struggle thinking like, should I have another sociologist on, even though I don't know anything about sociology, or should I like go back to my core bread and butter psychology people?

    I, I struggle with that. That's a good question. To be honest, 

    to 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: honest. I almost find the nons psychologist the most interesting on your podcast. If I'd have to like spontaneously say, like, the episodes I remember the most, there would be probably the one with Luminant, then the one with Mark Gran. 

    Cody Kommers: Mm-hmm.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I dunno what his name is, but there was a guy who wrote a biography. If it's South American writer 

    Cody Kommers: Ben Moser, the South American writer was Clarice Spector. And then later on he wrote a Pulitzer primary screening biography on [01:23:00] um, Susan son. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Right, right. Yeah. So I like read like that one. And I guess those three are those one that immediately popped to mind.

    Not your core thing, but actually can I ask you a question that's, that's, uh, I wonder what your answer to this is because I was kind of thinking about like how feasible it is to do a kind of show long term. And I thought mine is basically infinitely right. I just need a few papers that someone's written and I can interview them.

    And I have several guests where I know they're gonna do something. Who's gonna come out the next year and I might talk to them again. That kind of thing. Right. Super easy. And then I was thinking about your podcast. So at some, at some point I thought like you're kind of going, usually, at least at the beginning, I guess it's slightly changed recently, but you're kind of going for the big names in psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, that kind of thing.

    And it seems to me like at some point, I dunno what that point is, but there's only a limited amount of people you can ask kind of about their career to. So at some point I was wondering like, have you kind of dug yourself a slight hole whereby like there's, or not dug a hole, but like created a a [01:24:00] a format that's gonna exist for 150 episodes and then you've kind of run through them?

    Cody Kommers: You know, this is something that I'm actually dealing with at the present moment and I sort of alluded to it, uh, a little bit previously, which is that I'm like, okay, it makes sense to interview psychologists about their careers. Famous, famous psychologist about the careers specifically while I'm a PhD student, because I'm asking them largely about their sort of early career sort of PhD like era experiences and that sort of thing.

    Um, and yeah, like part of. Like I, I've, I've gone through waves of, of, of different things, uh, of different feelings about how I invite people on. But certainly my initial strategy was to invite on my heroes. And, um, I don't know if like, big name academics are such a limited, you know, like thing that like, okay, well I'll eventually round those, but certainly the people who like it occurs to me.

    To sort of like have a sort of romanticized image of and be like, oh my God, wow. If they were on the [01:25:00]show, and those are the people that I started to sort of run out and now I need to be more creative on like who? Yeah. And there is, uh, like I go back and forth and like all the different ways to think about this, but at the end of the day, because I sort of set out as my task, well, I'm going to talk to a large number of cognitive science psychology, neuroscience people, um, about their sort of personal trajectories in doing their research.

    I'm going to essentially finish that project to like some degree of, of ness and I recently put together a list of like, okay, over the next six months. Here are the, like, I just literally went through every school, every psychology program of like every sort of major university in the US and in uk just to have a bounded set and be like, okay, I'm just gonna go through the names of all the psychologists, but I either personally find their work really interesting or objectively, uh, quite famous and like the, the appropriate person to kind of like talk to, uh, about this, this, this sort of thing.

    So I recently made that list [01:26:00] and part of what I want to transition to in the future is. I'm, I'm just like, I'm, it's a question that I'm asking myself, how is that changing with where I'm at personally? Um, and coming to the sort of nuit of graduate school. And I also find myself being less and less interested in the stories of scientists because I've hit a lot of the same thing.

    I'm sort of, I sort of like, I sort of get the idea. It's like there's less and less stuff that's surprising me about it. I still value individual stories, but it's gonna have to at some point transcend the stories of scientists. Um, specifically. And I also have started toying with being more content focused.

    I've been listening to a lot of the Ezra Klein show recently. He doesn't give a shit about people's personal backgrounds. Ezra Klein, he is so good at being, you know, sort of having incisive content based. He's, as far as I can tell, if people I listen to, he's the master of incisive content based, um, sort of conversations.

    And that's an, that's an infinite sort of [01:27:00] pool to, to draw from. Uh, but you know, someone for example, like Tim Ferris, uh, that is someone who is like, I'm gonna look at high performers. I'm gonna ask them how they do high performance in their specific thing. And so that is, you could see an easy pivot, you know, in both domain and the sort of style from.

    What I'm doing to something like that. So there's a number of different ways that I'm conceptualizing it, but it's certainly something, it's influx that I'm trying to finish the project that I, I started and sort of cap that off and then figure out, uh, how I want to transcend that later on. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, makes sense.

    Uh, I have one, uh, guest suggestion. Uh, let's hear it. Which, uh, I've always wondered when I saw his name, I thought like this would be someone for K maybe, but he's probably too old. Albert Bandura, he's like 104 years old or something. Like, he published papers at like 39 or something like that. Like, he's like one of the most cited psychologists ever.

    And he's been working for like 70 years or something like that. And um, 

    Cody Kommers: so I just pulled [01:28:00] up, I emailed him on, uh, August 18th, uh, 2020, and I sent my letter and he said, uh, dear Cody, I cannot say no to charming letter. Let's find a mutually convenient time for the podcast. One regards, Albert Bandura. And then, uh, I emailed him back on August 25th.

    Uh, which was the day that he emailed me. And then November 15th, and then, sorry, this 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: year or last year? 

    Cody Kommers: That's November 15th, 2020. And then March 1st of this year, 2022. So I emailed him back, uh, follow it, trying to follow up on it and never got around it, which is fair for the AFO mentioned reason of being like a hundred whatever years old.

    Um, but I came close. But unfortunately, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: you know what's funny, as you were typing, I th you know, as you were searching your email, I thought like, does he not know who Albert Bandura is? Is he such a Google scholar? Like who this guy 

    Cody Kommers: is? Exactly. Oh yeah. Albert Band. I love his work. Yeah. Super interesting.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, that's just the person. I have no idea what he would sound like [01:29:00] these days. I mean, if you're that old Jesus. But it must be super interesting to see like how. I mean his, yeah, he has like a very big perspective on, 

    Cody Kommers: the oldest person I had on was a guy named, uh, bill Leba, who's a linguist.

    And essentially, well, so that, that's why I love this guy. So basically you could make an argument that he is the second most influential linguist of the 20th century after Noam Chomsky. But, um, uh, Noam Chomsky is, you know, an order of magnitude more influential than him and, um, Cho Chomsky ideas of dominated linguistics over the 20th century, and even to some extent to this day, the less so.

    But Bill of is essentially the anti Chomsky. So Chomsky studied language without actually ever listening to what anyone ever said. You have colorless green ideas, sleep furiously, right? That's the classic Chomsky utterance. No, before Chomsky ever fucking said that sentence. Right? Um, whereas Bill Levo took entirely different [01:30:00] approach to, to language by focusing in on like really, really listening to intimate, uh, like the sort of intimate details of how people actually speak and constructed his language.

    So his sort of sort of linguistic space off of that. But anyway. Massively influential, um, linguist and I talked to him when he was like, he was like 98 or something like that, and the guy was still writing stuff and it was still solid. He couldn't talk really. Uh, and he couldn't keep coherent threads of conversation going.

    So I ended up heavily editing that episode to be me narrating what I find interesting about the chap interspersed with his. Um, so that was one of my more heavily edited episodes. But, uh, yeah, he was, you know, close, you go on and on One, I think he's turned 101 of, he still is still alive and kicking. He just accepted a big, um, basically one of the biggest, um, prizes in social science recently.

    The Tuckett Parsons Prize. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: [01:31:00] Yeah, but I asked one guy who was like 85 or something and he didn't ever responded. And I dunno really whether 

    Cody Kommers: they don't use email octogenarians, non arians, they don't use, they, like if I were not user, I sure as hell wouldn't be sitting there waiting for some, you know, uh, PhD student to email me.

    Uh, so I might 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: call the department or something He has has like emeritus, but yeah, 

    Cody Kommers: send him a letter. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, exactly. What's his physical address 

    Cody Kommers: anyway, um, let's, let's start to, to wrap this up and, uh, I guess my sort of final sort of thing here is that we've talked quite a bit about what you've done, how you sort of thought about it before you did it, you know, what you learned as you were doing it, and sort of some ways of potential, you know, uh.

    How to conceptualize in the future. Is there anything else in terms of that sort of future sort of perspective, forward-looking? Um, you know, sort of, is there anything in there in that space of things that you still wanna talk about or sort of [01:32:00] summarize or anything comes to mind that we haven't sort of talked about on that front?

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Hmm. Not that I can think of right now. I think, yeah, I think that the main things we've, we've kind of covered, especially like the time commitment and the framing of the podcast, and I think some of the stuff you said I already think about and probably incorporate slash already planned to. Um, 

    Cody Kommers: yeah, no, it sounds, it sounds like a lot of this, a lot of the stuff that sort of occurred to me had also occurred to you, but, but yeah, I think the, yeah, the sort of maybe, maybe even like, like have episode titles be like, here is the paper if you, if you're interested in this paper or even the title of the paper.

    Come listen to this episode as opposed to this author that you may or may not have, have ever heard of or, or have 'em both on there, but feature the paper as in like, this is why you should come listen to this episode. So they come for that and then they stay for like, okay, here is a knowledgeable, technically savvy, thoughtful person interviewing the author.

    And for any paper that I'm potentially interested in that [01:33:00] I see on this guy's show, I'll come back and listen to that. I can see that being, oh yeah, next level, really good stuff. And solving a lot of the problems that we were talking about, like the, the scope of the length of episodes and, you know, getting some of those network effects that we were talking about by dialing in the scope of the topical, you know, sort of space that you're, you're, you're talking about and everything like that, and making it so there's less necessity for editing and all that sort of stuff.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's funny, whilst you were saying it, I thought like, yeah, I don't really wanna do one paper. I'll probably do two papers for episode. But then I thought like, no, just, just try it. Just try 

    Cody Kommers: it. I heard that in the way that you were talking about it, that you refuse to acknow. Like when you were, when you were, when you were paraphrasing what I was saying, you were like, yeah, I could do the thing where it's like two papers.

    I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not, that isn't what I said. Say 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: that. Okay. 

    Cody Kommers: That is not what I said. Um, if you listen back, you would no point acknowledged the possibility of doing the one paper thing. I, which is fine. I mean, you're a glutton for punishment. That's why you started a podcast in the [01:34:00] first place.

    But, um, no, but as 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: you were saying it now, I was thinking, yeah, just try it. They just give it two, three episodes and see what happens. And I guess I will, 

    Cody Kommers: I I could see that if you can, if you can stomach it, I could see that working, uh, quite, quite well. Um, but, uh, I, I'll leave you with one last. One last, uh, uh, small idea, which is I do think you should slap a bit of music on there and a short intro to who the person is or something.

    Um, uh, I think you should, I think the, the jump in straight into it, uh, I think you need more to go on. I know part of your theory is that people will learn about this person during the episode, but I think that just like, you know, if you already are in love with the guest. Then fine, that works. But given that your guests are mostly people who, like, people aren't necessarily gonna know that, well, unless they're a part of that field, then you really need to give me even 30 seconds on, well, why, why are you interested in this person?

    Why should I be interested in this person? Who are they? What have [01:35:00] they done? And that at least gives me something to go on. Like, I'll, I'll bear with you then for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever it's gonna be, uh, based off of, based off of that, you know. Um, so I do think you don't have to go full Andy Latrell, here's my, you know, sort of super shiny podcast, bouncy music, uh, uh, super produced sort of thing.

    But I think you need to slap a little something on there up front. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: How do I find good music? Because I feel like there's all your music is a right. I actually really like the last, your, your outro, I think is the best part of your music. Um, I think the first one is slightly too in your face. 

    Cody Kommers: Hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: It's like dumb, like, oh Jesus Christ.

    Um, but. But it's pretty good, actually. But yeah, I find like most, pretty much every podcast music I've listened to is really cringe-worthy and bad. I dunno why I don't think I've ever listened to, 

    Cody Kommers: but it's like, it's like the host. Every host is annoying. You still gotta have a host. Um, [01:36:00] so I, I think it's just one of those, uh, uh, you know, so something to think about.

    Um, uh, no, I've been, I mean, I've been thinking about this. It doesn't have to be a lot. Listen to Sam Harris's things. There's like, it's like two chords. There's a, there's, there's, it's a single cadence. It's, it's, it's just one chord that leads into another 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Wait. Not anymore though, right? It used 

    Cody Kommers: to, he changes music a bunch.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Now it's like some weird, I, the first time I, I mean, I haven't listened to this podcast in like, half a year now or something, but I remember it was this like really minimal kind of thing. And then suddenly he changed it to some sort of like rock thing where I thought at first 

    Cody Kommers: that was short lived. That was, uh, that hap I don't remember what happened, was totally 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: bad.

    Cody Kommers: And, and everyone wrote in to, to say how much they hated it, and then he changed it, uh, back. Oh, you did? But it back okay's. But that's an example of like, it's, it's, it's literally, it might, it might not even be like a full ca it might even just be like a single ominous cord. Um, but, uh, I think something, something like that, it doesn't have to be like, you know, like a whole, uh, you know, sort of, uh, whatever, like the guys from [01:37:00] It's very bad wizards, um, which is a, a big, uh, relatively, you know, well listened to social science podcast.

    So I, before 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I'm just, I'm just, I was just laughing because when I asked, talked to Dan Quintana, I asked like what he listens to and he said, Ezra Klein and very, what's it called again? I keep forgetting. Very bad, very bad wizard. With two of the three he mentioned. 

    Cody Kommers: A hundred percent. Um, so these guys, uh, and they've been in the podcast game for 10 years and they, uh, the, the guy's name, he's, he's my homie.

    I can't remember his name at the moment though. But he creates the. A novel look at this, a novel like Beat Track for every episode, uh, every two weeks. Um, is that a good idea though? Like it's terrible idea Me 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: ability, right. 

    Cody Kommers: Is, uh, a terrible, terrible idea. Um, but, uh, yeah, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: but no, I mean, yeah. 

    Cody Kommers: But he started doing it, so he had to continue doing it.

    Um, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: but uh, yeah, no, I mean, I definitely know what you mean. I mean, I've, I've made [01:38:00] in like, you know, obviously a very explicit choice to not do what anyone else is doing. Um, and to some extent, often people do things because there's a reason, because it's a good reason to do it. Um, and I have been thinking about adding like an introduction or something, but 

    Cody Kommers: let's just say put it on your list of things to reevaluate.

    Um, yeah, yeah, I think, I think I can see what you're going for and that it's, it's about getting down to the, the, it's the same part of your inclination where that we wanna skip the summary and go straight to the technical details. It's that same inclination to like, let's strip away the bullshit. Let's just get to the good stuff so I can see where you came up with it.

    I think you need to reevaluate it. Um, see 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: what you're doing. It's not working. 

    Cody Kommers: So, uh, on that, on that note, uh, okay. Thank you. Thank you for coming on your own podcast today. Thank, thank you. Um, it's always a good time to talk. It's great to be on my own podcast. It's fun to, it's fun to talk about tricks of the trade and all this sort of stuff.

    So, um, uh, I really enjoyed this and I, I am excited to see [01:39:00] what you end up implementing, uh, from what we talked about, because I think there's some good ideas in here and I think there's some, some next level stuff to, uh, uncover in, in, you know, your, your whatever your next phase is, you know? 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Thank you.

    And I mean, I think it's similar for yours. I guess it's gonna be interesting to see you finishing your thing and what's gonna come after that. 

    Cody Kommers: Yeah, yeah. I'm excited. Uh, like I, I've, like I said, I've been dialing in on the PhD stuff and I've also been doing a lot of behind the scenes writing stuff. Uh, so not the newsletter, not, you know, sort of publishing individual freelance stuff, but those are both coming to their conclusion sort of at the end of this calendar year.

    And then. Um, it'll be about, okay, let's, uh, let's get back to right now, like I said, just keep producing episodes sort of in the way I've been doing. And now it's like, okay, well let's, let's revisit that and really try and take it to the next level. Uh, so I'm, I'm looking forward to seeing what comes that as well.