📺 Watch & Subscribe on YouTube

If you’ve ever felt intimidated by classic literature or wondered how to make old books relevant to your busy, creative life, this episode is for you.

Join me as I welcome Heather Ordover, founder and host of Craftlet, a pioneering literature and craft podcast with over 20 years of longevity. Heather Ordover shares how her love for books and crafts helped her—and her students—heal and connect after moments of crisis, and how she’s built a welcoming, curiosity-driven community for listeners who craft, scientists, and anyone feeling disconnected from classic stories.

The heart of this episode centers on embracing classic literature without gatekeeping, using audiobook narration and thoughtful explanations to make books like Moby Dick, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights accessible, enjoyable, and sometimes downright funny. Heather Ordover breaks down how her approach links cognitive anchoring (repetitive crafts) to learning, and reveals the surprising ways that public domain works and modern technology intersect in Craftlet’s evolving format—now including video and community-sourced content.

Additional topics include the evolution of podcast monetization, the transition from audio to video, how podcasting can nurture lifelong learning, and a nerdy deep-dive into typewriter restoration, AI tools, and the science behind keeping listeners engaged. Harry Duran and Heather Ordover also riff on the podcast’s ever-widening audience, from knitters to scientists doing pipette work, and share actionable tips for making the classics part of your daily life.

Curious about how to bridge crafts and classics—or simply want to finally “get” Moby Dick? Click to listen, laugh, and rethink your relationship with literature, podcasts, and creativity!

Episode Sponsor

FullCast – https://fullcast.co/

Key Takeaways

1. Niche Podcasting Drives Sponsorship Success

Harry Duran emphasized how choosing a highly focused niche for his Vertical Farming Podcast enabled him to secure substantial sponsorships—even before releasing a single episode 02:15. By aligning content with an emerging industry and pricing sponsorship against conference spending, podcasters can create compelling value propositions for sponsors.

2. Cognitive Anchoring Enhances Listening Retention

Heather Ordover discussed how repetitive hand activities like knitting or crocheting can improve listeners’ retention and focus on podcast content 15:05. Podcasters targeting audiences engaged in such tasks may wish to tailor material and marketing to these “captive audience” moments.

3. Structured Content and Membership Models

After experimenting, Heather Ordover found that structuring each episode into four stable blocks (personal update, craft discussion, book talk, audiobook, and final notes) provided a consistent format that supports listener engagement 22:32. She also leveraged paid premium feeds and apps for additional revenue, showing the importance of diversified content and monetization strategies.

4. Leveraging Technology for Production and Engagement

Both Harry Duran and Heather Ordover highlighted advancements in podcast technology—video, Descript, Final Cut, and agent-driven AI tools—that have transformed both production efficiency and audience connection 30:11, 33:01. Staying current with tech and delegating tasks (like video editing) can streamline workflows and improve episode quality.

5. Know and Serve Diverse Audience Groups

Heather Ordover identified three key listener types for Craftlit: book lovers, intimidated book lovers or first-timers, and scientists/math folks seeking context while doing manual/analytical work 46:14. Understanding these segments has shaped marketing, content, and audience engagement strategies, demonstrating the importance of surveying and directly addressing the unique needs of each listener group.

Tweetable Quotes

"When you do something repetitive with your hands, whether it's doodling, knitting, or crocheting, your brain has a lot of bandwidth. Listening takes up a small amount, so the rest of your mind starts making lists or thinking about what you forgot yesterday. But if that leftover bandwidth is taken up by something automatic, you can actually pay attention and remember what you're hearing."

"I have about 5,000 people who've been with me for 20 years. There is no gatekeeper here. I don't think you're stupid if you haven't read the book—I'm excited because now I get to share it with you."

"It's not waffling if you say, I just learned something new and now I have to recalibrate. That's just smart."

Resources Mentioned

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-ordover/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/heather.ordover

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/hordover

Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/hordover.bsky.social

Podcast Junkies Website: podcastjunkies.com

Podcast Junkies YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Podcastjunkies/

Podcast Junkies Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/podcastjunkiesjunkies/

Podcast Junkies Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/podcastjunkies

Podcast Junkies Twitter: https://twitter.com/podcast_junkies

Podcast Junkies LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/podcastjunkies

The Podosphere: https://www.thepodosphere.com/

Podcast Index, Value4Value & NewPodcastApps: https://podcastindex.org/

🎙️🎙️🎙️

Podcast Production & Marketing by FullCast

Discover the best podcast services in the world at The Podosphere: https://www.thepodosphere.com/

Yeah, we'll start that again. I'm glad to hear that Rocky has

lasted and hasn't become one of those things that you kind of cringe when you

watch. No, it's a good movie and that's why we decided

to. It's inspiring. You know, the story's great. It's really just like the story of

this, like, scrappy popsar who just kind of has a

against all odds type story. And those are always good. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, now you're going to have to come to Philly when I move. Come

and visit and then we can run up the stairs together. I did that a

long time ago. It's hard. Yeah. I'm in the indoor ag

space. So I started the second show called the Vertical Farming

Podcast and that's been running since 2020 and it's kind of taken on a life

of its own. I co founded a media company in

agtech as a result of it with another founder who had

a website. And then we launched a second show in greenhouses. So it's kind of

like I've been involved and pulled into this agtech space. Awesome. And there's a

conference in Philadelphia called GreenTech, which is originally

from Amsterdam, but they're doing a US version. And are these the people who

do green buildings and green architecture and stuff? This is more. And the

conference is going to be in Philadelphia. That's why I mentioned it. But this is

more what's known as Controlled Environment Agriculture, cea. And

it's all indoor farming, so it's really the measure. I use the phrase so

much. I assume everyone knows what it is. But it's ag and tech, so it's

agriculture and technology together. And I just learned

about vertical farming in one of my clients gave me a book by. Called

Abundance by Peter Diamandis, who's this, like, futurist. And it was just a bunch of

cool things that are going to happen in the future. And there was a chapter

on food and a mention of vertical farming, and I was like, oh. And then

it led me to a book by a professor in Columbia University, Dixon Despommier, who

has since passed. But he talked about this idea. Oh, my God, he's one of

my virologists. I love him. Okay, keep

going. I love Dixon. Well, he passed on. I did not know that. I haven't

been watching for the last year. Yeah. So unfortunately I never got to interview him

because that would have been a really nice moment. He was a hoot. Yeah. But

keep going with the. I love his book. He Wrote book called the

Futures Vertical Farming. And then I started reading it. And then as a true podcaster,

I was like, well, I know how to do long form interviews. And I wanted

to be thinking like a marketer. Cause I worked at E Trade and JP Morgan

Chase, like in marketing. And I was like, I want it to be like

profitable from day one as a sponsorship driven podcast. So

I called it the most obviously impossible vertical farming podcast. The domain was

available. And then Covid was just started. It was 2020 and I

was interviewing a CEO and company in Scotland called IGS.

We just hit it off. Everyone just kind of like very in the mood to

talk in those days. And so I was like, we're looking for sponsors. He's like,

talk to my marketing guy in Chicago. And so we chatted

and then I said, we're launching the show. Here's the list of who I'm going

to be speaking to. I hadn't even interviewed them. And what we're thinking about this

is super laser focused on this growing industry because I had done research in

Crunchbase that a lot of funding was coming in like millions of dollars of funding

for these companies. So in my mind, funding equals marketing

dollars because it's usually the first spend. So I just kind of put two and

two together. I said, would you be interested sponsoring the show? And I said, first

of all, how much do you spend? Were you spending at these conferences for these

booths? And he's like, oh, $20,000 for a booth. I was like, okay. So

I just did the math. I price anchored it there and I just kept it

single digits. And I was like, okay, for $9,000, you could sponsor the first season

of this show. Yeah. He thought about it for a few minutes and he said,

yes, Heather, but mind you, I hadn't even released an episode. That

is so cool. I mean, you have a track record. How long have you been

doing podcast junkies? 2014. Okay, yeah, that's what. I couldn't

remember if it was 2013 or 2014 when I first heard of you, but

okay. So I had the skills and I said, we know podcasting. I own a

podcast production agency. Like, that's the easy part. And then I know how to converse

with people even on a topic that I was still. I was literally learning as

I went. And so it was a really real eye opener and an aha

moment. And like, I know this pod, this audience of this show is podcasters, but

I always like to retell that story because it's a reminder of like being niche,

focused and obviously this can be a nice segue into kind of catching up what

you're up to. But the show has generated over $100,000 in

sponsorship. You know, it doesn't surprise me that you were able to pull

off. Well, pull it off just in general, but it also doesn't surprise me that

you were able to pull off something that you were still learning about. Because

one of my listeners 15 years ago called me relentlessly curious,

which I think is a great compliment. But I think of you that way.

Like, you're always. You don't have your set list

of questions. You are listening and asking questions, and it

means. Well, it's why your show is still good. Yeah. What's

interesting is, like, I think of podcasts as a stage. And over the years,

obviously in the beginning, I'm like, oh, I want to be like Pat Flynn or

Jordan Harbinger or Tim Ferriss, and I've just get millions of downloads. And then I

realized, for me, it's become this opportunity to

engage with the podcasting world, which I did, in which, you know, we met at

mapcon years ago, and it was just because I was meeting people,

I'd bring them onto the show and say, let me know what you're up to.

And building relationships, growing my visibility. Because

in 2014, I didn't know anything about podcasting and I don't know anybody

in podcasting. Yeah, I know. And I was like, well, the best way to do

that, I was like, let me think about a way to invite podcasters to tell

their story. Similar to, remember Inside the Actor Studio.

Oh, yeah, I always loved that. James Lipton. I loved that show too. I studied

acting for like three years in New York. Yeah, we all did. And then all

the best podcasters did. But I love that show because it was a peek

inside the actor's mindset in their head in a long

format. They weren't acting, they were just talking. And I was like, oh, it's

kind of like that. It's kind of like inside the actor studio, but for podcasters.

So. And I wanted video on day one. Back then, there was no video. There

was no Squadcast or Riverside. Oh, yeah, no, no, no, no. But there was Skype

with call recorder together. And so I could see people.

It wasn't recorded, but I could see, see them. And then I'd had the audio.

Right. And it was amazing, Heather. Cause I could. I would have an hour long

conversation and then I'd go to a podcast conference like babcon or some, you know,

some of the others shout out to Joe Pardo. Yes, big one. Yeah.

And they'd be like, hey, Harry, thanks for that conversation. You know, if it had

been an audio conversation, there would have been no connection. No face to face. Right.

So, no, the face thing is really, especially if you have

somebody who's not comfortable being interviewed. Yeah. They need to see

you. Yeah. Probably even more than you need to see them. And it makes a

huge difference. It is one of the few technological advances that

we've made in the last 10 years that I really appreciate

is the. I know there are people who say everything on the Internet is

crap these days, but I'm watching some long form video essays from

some very, very smart people who wouldn't do it if

it was in print. Yeah, yeah. This ability to kind of have long form

conversations and, you know, even someone like Joe Rogan,

however people think about him, the ability to give people a space of three hours

to talk, you know, to something Joe's mentioned is like, you can't BS

over three hours. Like, you have to have something meaningful to say. And it's

not a snippet on a talk show or it's not a snippet on a news

program where you get a five minute sound bite and you're just playing to the

audience. Well, and that's why podcasting got started in the first. Or not got

started, but took hold in the first place was we had NPR

and we had AM drive time radio, and

whatever you sang on your guitar setup in your basement, that

was pretty much all you had. And then suddenly you get somebody in

your ear who loves the same things that you love and who kind of

sees the world the way you do, but is also going and finding

out more for you. And I think

that side of podcasting got forgotten a while ago,

but I see it coming back. Did you see the video

out of Norway on inshittification? No. Oh

my God, Harry, I'm going to send this to you. It is spectacular.

And there is some group in Norway who paid a lot of money to do

this excellent video satire. And at the end

they're like, it's not your imagination. This is happening

on the Internet. If you don't like it either, come join us.

And they have a website. They have. It's an EU thing that they're working on.

And I thought, oh, it's so nice to know that I'm not crazy. I mean,

I'm not wrong, I could still be crazy. But those are

two different things. So when did you start creflue I started

in 23 days and 20

years ago. So April 26,

2006, before we even said 20. Wow.

Yeah, it was a minute. What was the inspiration back then?

I was listening to one of the very first podcasts. Brenda Dane had a knitting

podcast, which sounds stupid. Like, why would you have an audio podcast for knitters? I

mean, you're doing it. Yeah. Captive audience though. Yeah, but it is captive audience,

and you are absolutely right. That's what we learned. She'd been. She started in

2005. She'd gotten covered in Vogue knitting. She had a fabulous

like magazine style show. She had music breaks and it was all pod

safe music. So new artists were getting platformed,

although we didn't call it platformed at the time. And she, in her second

season, said, I want to take the Greek muses. There are nine

of them. I want to take the Greek muses and I want to have you

guys tie your knitting to a muse and

record that essay and send it to me and I'll just pick the best ones.

And so she'd done eight. And I had been thinking about it, but I

chickened out until the last minute. And I wrote in with my

audio recording and she wrote back like in 10 minutes and said, who are you

and what's the name of your podcast? And I thought, now I have to do

something. This is my big 15 minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So,

yeah, Craftlet came out of. I was one of the three schools on

911 that got evacuated. So we evacuated south. We were a

half block south of the South Tower and which is. That's a day. I. So

I lived in East Village. I used to work. Oh my God. I used to

work at Chase. The Chase Plaza. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Were you

there? I Woke up at 8:40. I mean I, I usually. I left my apartment

45 because I could be there in five or ten minutes to be there

at nine. And I turned on the TV and New York one had shown the

first one that already crashed. And I was just watching. And then we just

figured out what's happening. And then second one and we, we ran up to the

roof of my building. It was like a fifth floor apartment. So everyone was up

there. The neighbors wrote up a telescope. It was just, we were experiencing all

that like, literally like in East Village, you know, we were just, you know. Yeah,

you're like across the street a handful of blocks away. But I worked at Chase

Plaza. Some of my co workers were there already. My boss was there. And so

I got the play by Play from them after. So was everybody okay? Yeah,

everyone in my. Yeah, it was okay. There's a. Yeah. So

strange, because I'm like, is it good or bad that I didn't go to work

early? I might have been stuck in the subway on the way there. It was

just so many things. The number of people who said that

morning, you know what? I'm going to take my daughter to go vote with me.

I'll go in late. Or people who just said, I'm just not

feeling it. I'm going to call in sick to work. And so many

people. So good. I'm glad you weren't down there. But it's

so strange. I don't know if it's survivor's guilt, but there's a little part of

me that wanted to know what it would have been like to be on the

ground there and experience it firsthand. Like I said had. I mean, obviously

I did experience it. Like in New York, you still experienced it. But it was

wild because at some point, you know, we're just on the rooftop. We're like, what's

going to happen? How is the fire department getting up there? We're all staring at

the buildings. And then I just went back to my apartment, and then the first

one came down, and then we got up and we could just see all of

it. All of it. And then. So you weren't on the roof for the second

plane going in, though? You were in on the roof after that? After that? Yeah,

I think so, yeah. Timing. So one of the engines, the right side engine from

the second plane landed on my school's roof. Wow. So

I said exactly the same things that you did to try and calm the kids

as we were evacuating south. I have a picture I can send you. Nobody has

these pictures because we are right by where they film men in black looking up

at the towers from the south. And it's just flames. It's a hole with

flames. And I'm like, guys, what do we do in this country?

We tinker. We fix things. We're gonna be fine. What do we do? We

have New York's finest. They're going to be up there. There's sprinkler systems.

They're going to be working flights, hauling that gear up there, man. I know.

I have an uncle and a cousin who are pilots. I should have factored in

jet fuel burning. And I think if I'd thought long enough, I would have gone,

oh, crap. That is not going to sprinkler system. There wasn't a

Cessna went in there. No, no. Yeah. No. But

did you get all the schmutz coming over your apartment in the air? A little

bit? I got. There was a lot. I was on the 16th floor at Chase.

So when we finally did go into work, like, a week later, oh, my God.

I went out the window, and there was just a bunch of stuff there. And

I just grabbed some stuff here. I don't know if I still have it, but

it was like business cards and no photos or anything like that. Tickets from the

people's airplane tickets. It was like, wild, surreal stuff.

I have somebody's insurance policy that's charred. The corner

is burnt off. And I picked. Walking down the street with the kids, I

saw it blowing. I picked it up and it's just. You're kind of in a

daze. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I kept it that whole day. Yeah, yeah,

yeah. It was really strange. And I still have it. Yeah. And it was a

weird moment because. Kind of similar to, like, what kind

of. With COVID But in New York, like, everyone was friendly for those. If you

remember. Like, everyone was just saying hi to each other. Yeah. How are you doing

and everything. Like, it was so crazy. Like, it was like a small town.

Yeah, no, it did. And you recognize the people from your neighborhood. Yeah,

yeah. Now, because sometimes you're out on the stoop now talking to people because.

Yeah, yeah. It was very that. And we. Our school got

relocated up to Fashion Industries High School up in Chelsea. So

we had to go up there for the first semester, which was

miserable. Everybody was homesick and nothing felt right.

And, like, we couldn't even start school at the same time.

And we were sharing classrooms with the teachers from Fashion who really didn't want us

there. One of our teachers started crying. She was getting hurt,

like, yelled at by one teacher. And she. The teacher. I don't even know

why you people are here. And she's like, have you seen the news lately? I

know. That was so. It was crazy. Clueless. But shortly

before we got back to the school, I was knitting to

just, you know, kind of mindful. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Calm yourself.

At lunchtime. And three of my girls. I taught juniors. Three of my girls came

by, and they saw me doing it, and they said, can you teach us how

to do that? And I said, yeah, let me get some stuff together. How about

Thursday after school? And they said, okay. And one of them said,

I might have a friend who wants to come. I'm like, bring your friends. That's

fine. I'll make sure I bring Extra stuff. I walked into my class, into my

classroom that afternoon, and there were 48 kids. Holy smokes,

boys and girls. Our best baby blanket

crocheter was one of our boys who had been

failing math until he started crocheting during class. Oh, my gosh. And

his teacher came up, and he's like, bobby's doing that stick thing. Yeah. And

I'm like, one stick or two? He's like, one stick. I'm like, is he

causing trouble? And Conrad kind of stopped and went, no, actually,

he's more quiet now. And, like, how are his grades? He's like, you're right. He's

starting to hand in homework. I'm like, okay, then just keep me posted, because if

it becomes a problem, we have to do something. But that was my

first brush into what we wound up calling cognitive anchoring. That when you do something

repetitive with your hands, whether it's doodling or knitting or crocheting

or even, like, playing the little rope games and stuff,

anything that's repetitive that you don't have to think about what you're seeing. Your

brain has a lot of bandwidth, and if you are listening to something, just

listening, that takes up a very small amount of bandwidth. So the rest

of this is gonna make grocery lists and think about what you forgot to do

yesterday. And though that person who I really didn't like, I have a meeting with

tomorrow. Oh, crap. And then you're not listening anymore. And so this

amount of bandwidth can get taken up by something that's programmed in

your brain. Automatic. Yeah, yeah. And then you can actually pay attention

and you remember stuff tied to the stitches. So like, oh, I

remember when I worked on this row. That was when I was outside. It was

so pretty. And you're counting, and you are counting, but

if you're counting stitches, it has to be a pattern that you have knit to

the point where you've memorized it. Yeah. And a lot of us used

stitch markers, little rubber bands or little metal bands. So every

10, you'd hit a marker and you'd feel it go by. Okay. The thing that

we found out, because they finally started doing research this in 2013, the

people who say as they're scrolling through their. Well, it used to

be Facebook, but now as they're scrolling through their Tumblr and they're looking at

their phone, they're like, no, no, I'm listening to you. I'm listening to you. No,

they're not. Because the second you engage your visual

cortex, that sucks up all the bandwidth.

So now there is scientific proof that they are full

of it. Yeah, for sure. So how did that coalesce

into what the podcast started as? What craftlet became? Yeah, the essay that

I sent in to Brenda Dane on Cast on, which is also still going on.

She took a hiatus, but she's back. We can't leave for very long.

Everybody had taken all the pretty muses. And the last one was the muse of

tragedy was Melpomene. And so I did Melpomene. And I

talked about how knitting saved my students. That the only

kids who were healthy at the end of that year, I mean, remotely healthy at

the end of the year, were my knitters and crocheters. And part of it was

the knitting and crocheting itself, but the other part of it was, I'm going to

have to get. I don't have the money to get everybody needles and supplies. And

I know they don't have the money either. So I'm going to write for donations.

So I wrote to Vogue Knitting. I wrote to all the pattern companies. I wrote

to yarn companies. We got boxes, crates full

of supplies. It was awesome. And I said, the only way I'm gonna be able

to pull this off is if whatever we make out of the

supplies that they send us, that must be donated. So you guys

picked two charities, and they picked the Bowery Mission. Cause the guys

really got hammered. That winter was bad.

And Women in need, one of the run for your life shelters up in the

Bronx. And the kids would go deliver baby hats and

scarves for the men, baby blankets. And it

changed them. Wow. They were doing something productive

and helping other people and also healing themselves.

So that's what my essay was about. And so I thought, oh, okay, well,

so knitting has to be part of it. I missed teaching my kids. I

miss talking about books. Like, I taught all the books that nobody's

supposed to teach anymore because they're boring. Or band. Or band.

I've done both. When we did the Scarlet Letter after, like, the third chapter, one

of my girls in the front row, she's like, miss, this is just a

telenovela. And I'm like, oh, my God, you're right,

it is. Okay. Is it esperalda? I mean, what are we talking here? Let's

start, you know, reformatting who these people are and how this is working.

And it was the easiest book in the world to teach. Oh, that's so funny.

So I started saying, teachers. Everybody talks about teaching to the

test. Teachers have to teach to the test. I didn't. I taught to the

Joke. Oh, okay. Because all these books have

inside jokes and people sub reference them all the time. Like

when people talk about Frankenstein and they talk about Frankenstein's monster, people will

say, you mean Victor. And like, 15 years ago,

that was not a topic of conversation. Now that the new Frankenstein has come out,

people are talking about how the creature is actually way

better than Victor, who is an ass. But yeah, it

was finding the jokes, finding the sub references, finding the words that

we don't use anymore or we don't use them the same way. Like in

one book in Jane Eyre, she uses the word Ruth. R U T H.

Okay. We don't use it that way. We use ruthless, but

we don't say Ruth anymore. What's the proper way to use that word? It's the

opposite of ruthless. Somebody who's very kind and caring is Ruth interesting,

and somebody who's ruthless is kind of not. So that's what I do

with the books. I can only use public domain

audiobooks. Okay. So they all have to be old. They have to be

in the public domain. The first Nancy Drew book just came into the

public domain. So we're gonna do that next on craft, which I'm very excited about.

How about Encyclopedia Brown Juergen? Not yet. We

got a while to wait. But I'll do like pre book

notes where I do book talk. Pay attention for these things. Here are the words

you're gonna need. When you hear this thing, there's a joke, just remember

and I'll tell you about it at the end. I don't wanna spoil it. I

play the audio and then I play on the flip side, whatever

notes I need to give them to prep them for the

next chapter the next week. So you're doing a chapter per episode?

Yeah, it usually works out like with Jane Austen, it's usually a chapter, an

episode. With Moby Dick, we're doing Moby Dick on the premium feed right

now. Which, by the way, is hilarious. Nobody

talks about that book being funny. I think I started it a long time ago.

Just. I'd give it a shot. If you read the first four

chapters, you read the. Not the funniest ones, but

the ones that set up the humor for later. But it gets

quiet after that, so I'm not surprised if you dropped it. Yeah. How many

books do you cover in a year? Oh, sometimes if I'm doing a

premium feed and a regular book, it all is going to depend on the length.

Like the Count of Monte Cristo took 18 months. Whoa. And

that's the only book you were doing. That was the. Well, no. And then I

was doing another. I think I was doing Bleak House, Dickens. Bleak House on the

premium feed, which also was like, 52 episodes. Wow. And that's

weekly. Yeah. Yep. And so what was the early

response? The early response was great. I've never been

one of the people who was, like, addicted to my stats. I needed to look

at my stats right away. I kind of glanced at them after the first

couple of weeks, and I was getting a couple thousand downloads, and I'm like, this

is awesome. But it was all because of Cast on, because Brenda introduced

me as the host of Craftlet, and so that changed everything.

And it's been steady. I have about 5,000 people who've been with me for 20

years. Wow. And so talk about, how did you start

organizing or formatting the show in terms of figuring it out, like, if there was

going to be a business component to it? You know, you mentioned membership, you mentioned

these members. When did you start thinking about, like, paying members? And then you've

got a premium fee. So I'm curious about, like, if you had thoughts about that

early on or were you just happy to produce and then when that shifted.

I think in the beginning, it was part of the ADHD early adopter

thing. Like, ooh, I get to use tech. Yeah, yeah, this is

fun. And that took me through kind of the first wave, but after

that, I think it took me probably two books to figure out

how I was going to structure things. Like, I'll do personal

update, Crafty talk. Here's a pattern I found. Here's a really good interview to

see at the beginning. And then I do book talk, and then we do the

audiobook and then the final stuff. So we have four blocks

per episode. And that was stable until

Libsyn came to me. And this must have been in 2009,

2010. And they said, hey, we think we're going to make an app.

Do you want to be a beta tester? And I was like, oh, hell, yes.

So I was one of the. Craftlet was one of the first apps that they

put out, and that was great, but we were charging for it.

And so Apple was getting a third, Libsyn was getting a third, and I was

getting a third, which was really. I mean, I'd gotten donations. I had a tip

jar, like everybody did. But that was the first time that I started seeing money

come in and thinking, yeah, okay,

there's more going on here that I'm going to have to think about. Because

Brenda, Dane, this just Gives you an idea of how much the industry has

changed. I remember it must have been in

2007 or 8. Brenda had said on an episode

like, guys, if you would all just send me 50 cents,

a dollar an episode, I would be able to quit my day job and

give you more content. Yeah, yeah. And she lost almost half of

her listeners. Oh, wow. They were offended. Offended.

Oh, that's too bad. Yes. And you'll still see it. There are people on the

web, like, I don't understand why this isn't free. It's like, that's because it took

50 hours of work to put out. I mean, the mindset has shifted now. There's

definitely more a creator, mind support. I think once

Patreon and Subbable started, people started seeing like, oh,

we can actually be part of the process along with, oh, now we're

starting to see behind the curtain. But then Wuthering Heights was my

first premium book. I think that was in 2011.

And the only reason I could do it was because of the app. So we

switched from paying for the app. The app's now free, but you could

get the monthly membership and that would give you access to all of the

premium episodes forever. Like, if you joined it

now, you'd get everything going back to Wuthering Heights. And how did you decide which

books to make premium? With Wuthering

Heights? It was the one book. It's the only book this has

ever happened with where I got an equal number of emails

either saying, would you please

do Wuthering Heights versus I will stop

listening if you do Wuthering Heights. And I thought, well, I can't do

it on the free feed then for the non lit folks, why is that?

Oh, Wuthering. Okay. Margot Robbie has proved to all of

us that Wuthering Heights can be interpreted in many different ways.

But the hardest part is all of the movie versions focus on

this romance. It is a twisted, dark,

unhappy setting with dark,

unhappy people. Oh, God. And actually, dark is also because

there's a character who's. They think Roma. And he's

constantly getting dissed and pushed aside because dark

skin, we can't have that. So it's an abusive

relationship 100% of the time. And it's generational

trauma. That's a heavy book. I love Wuthering Heights. You're like,

why? And they just focus on

Catherine and Heathcliff. Yeah. Who again, have a very twisted relationship.

So I definitely understood why some people were like, no,

I read it once I'm done. Yeah. So then you started to see traction. When

you made the premium feed and you had the ability to do it with the

app and then did that then define for you what the

creation process was gonna be like? You'd have a free one, and then you'd have

a premium one. Yeah. So I released the free on Fridays and the

premium on Saturdays for years, so people knew when the stuff was gonna be

released. I did my best to get it out. I had to learn over time

that people would rather have things be late than have the audio bad.

And then. So how much. What's that process look like from a production standpoint? How

long did it. Does it take you or did it take you? Maybe it's better

now. But, like, when you were, like, creating one episode,

the reading and prep time could take anywhere from two to five hours,

depending on the book and how much research I had. Like, with Moby

Dick, it's just a lot. So are you just

reading the chapter verbatim? And then I actually

have other people read it. I'm like, people have heard me plenty.

So for Moby Dick, BJ Harrison from the

Classic Tales podcast, and he's another one who's been around for a while,

he read Moby Dick for his Classic Tales podcast

five or six years ago. And so I wrote to him and I said, hey,

can I use your audio? And he said, yeah, it's on the free feed. It's

out there. Just take it. Oh, my God. I got BJ because his

voice is like, wow. And he does voices, so Ahab

is all blood. Oh, wow. Yeah. It's a lot of fun. That's cool.

It's a lot of fun. Not all of the readers are that good. I

have not done books because we couldn't get good audio. Okay, so do you

have people. Is it more like a cameo appearance now thing that you can have

now? It is. I have one girl in Britain who has read all of the

Jane Austens, which is marvelous. And I had a

guy who I was doing. I first met him doing

Dracula, because Dracula is all letters and diaries and

newspaper articles, and it's an epistolary

novel. It has everything that you read in it was written down by

somebody irl. Okay. But it starts with this guy, Jonathan

Harker, who was Keanu Reeves in the Coppola version and

horribly miscast. I feel so bad for Keanu Reeves. It was

so wrong. Winona Ryder was perfect. But. Yeah, no, but he was

my Jonathan Harker, and I found him by accident. One of my

listeners, Sharon, said, I have a Friend John, who's out of work, and he's an

actor. He's funny. Okay, yes, please. And he passed

away six years later. Oh, no. And we were in the middle of Sherlock Holmes

and Canterbury Tales. And I love his voice so much. So

every time I listen to Dracula, it's. It's good, but it's also. And

you'd rather have one voice actor for a whole book? Yeah, you gotta. Yeah. Or

like, in Dracula, each character. So when you're

listening to Mina Harker's diary, one reader is doing it. When you're

listening to Jonathan Harker's notes, it's John. Okay.

We did that with the Woman in White, too. Which is the best suspense book

you've never heard of? Okay, I'll have to put it on the list. My

husband got it on Kindle. And this was over New

Year's break one year. He started reading it in the afternoon, and he

finished it the next morning. He read straight through. Wow. He

could not put it down. The Woman in White. The Woman in White, by Wilkie

Collins. Wilkie Collins. When was it written? You're not gonna Believe me.

1860. Oh, okay. You wouldn't expect,

like. Oh, no. There's like, the best bad guy.

Yeah, the best bad guy and the best female badass.

She. She climbs out onto the roof in a storm

in a petticoat and a wool cape so that she can go hang

over the edge to listen to the bad guys plotting. Oh, my

God. And she comes back in, and

she's writing down what she's heard. And then you start to hear her writing starts

to get really weird and, like, kind of looser and

not making as much sense. And finally she says, my head is very hot. I'm

gonna go lie down. And the next thing you hear is

the bad guy writing in her diary. Oh, wow. Because she's

sick. And you're like, oh, no,

that's really bad. That is. He

is a really bad bad guy. He is an evil sob. Okay. But he's

fun, and you love him because he's very funny, and he's very like, oh,

you're so cute, you little woman. Let me help you with that. You're like, yeah,

you're doing the one premium, one free. And so how has the

production changed since then now? I mean, there's so many great tools available now. Does

that help the process or what it does? There are some things that haven't

changed, which is mostly how I interact with the books. I have never

scripted myself. I don't like how I sound when I'm. I mean, I

was an actress. I can read a script, but I find that doing

bullet points works perfectly. However,

when I got Long Covid, one of the first things that I noticed

was, you know how you get codes, like six digit codes for things?

For login, we're sending you a six digit code. You can just look at it

and remember and then go type it. So I'd been able to keep eight digits

in my mind at a time, which is not bad. I couldn't

keep three, I could barely keep two.

And that made the bullet points harder because I

generally, it's just jogging my memory and I remember what I read. And

for a year and a half I couldn't do that. So that impacted how

much time it took me to do things. So I stopped doing a premium book

at that point because that was not gonna happen. But the editing

process, like everybody knows it's more time to edit than it is to

record. The tools have gotten better. My microphone has gotten

considerably better. I'm going back and re recording my very, very first

book because I was on a headset mic, which is great.

Yeah, but you got the Heil. That's the Heil PR40 there, right?

Yeah, yeah. And you got that cute little. Cute little windscreen too.

My little windscreen. That's because when I laugh, I am going

to plosive all over the place. So take us

to present day. Is this the. Just full time now. I

haven't been able to work at all since I got long Covid. So this

has been the only part of my life that stayed normal.

And now we're doing video. Okay. Which we started doing video right before

I got Long Covid. So that was tricky and I dragged myself down here

to record on video. But we found that to be awfully useful because

so often I'm talking about something that is describing

a thing, a tool or a blunderbuss or, you know, something.

It's like it's the gun that you think of when you think of pirates.

And that's all you can really say. And I'll put a picture of it in

the show notes. But now we can actually show the thing on video

superimposed. How has that does that changed how you

approach the recording? Because I remember when I moved Parte Chunkies to

video because of the tools. I mean, most of the time this goes up unedited

because they're just like casual, like, you know, Joe Rogan style. We're just chatting. But

for you, there's A bit of a production quality that you wanted to

maintain. And video, you know, adds several more wrinkles to the

process. Yeah, it's been. I finally had to get help for

the video. Okay. I have a very good video editor and he's very good

because I can say to him, aldrin, don't let me sound stupid.

What are you editing in? He's editing in Final Cut. Oh, Final

Cut. Okay. Yeah. Cause we use descript and it's for someone that's not edited. I

love using descript. I love it. It's great. That's so good. And they've added the

underlord now, as opposed to Overlord, but because it's just a better

name, a less imposing name. But I've been playing with it and saying,

give me a first pass of this edit and take a snippet of it and

put it in the beginning as a new scene. It was choppy early on,

but the models are just getting better. And I was like, whoa. You can see

it work and think and it starts moving stuff around. And this is before I

even touch a mouse. So it's like wild. Cause I've been

going down the AI coding rabbit hole and I just built a new directory called

the pod. Oh, it's not new. I've been working on it for five years called

the potusphere. It's all the resources for the podcasting space. But I

couldn't do it. I had to get a developer before, and now I've rebuilt the

site completely the past six months with these tools. And so

like, everyone's saying they're poo pooing AI, but the one thing that sticks

out is that they're only going to get better, they're not going to get worse.

So just like, the sooner you can learn how to use them and talk to

them. When ChatGPT first hit the scene a couple years ago for the

mainstream, I quickly realized the most important skill we're gonna need to

learn if you wanna play in this space is how to talk to robots. Oh,

my God, yes. And I worry because in the

teaching world, I used to fight with other teachers. I'd say,

before we give the kids laptops, we need them to take a

typing class. They need to understand how the machine works

and how the keyboard works and what all the characters are, so they can

not have to think about it when it comes to typing an essay. I was

so lucky. And I went to an all boys Catholic high school and you got

typing class and it was an all boys Catholic high School, and the teacher was

a female, so it was probably, like, one of the reasons why we all, like,

we're going, yay. But, you know, thank

God, because I can't even imagine, Right. I remember my boss when

I started working in corporate, like, he would type like this with his two fingers,

and I was just like, wow, you didn't. And that's very smart.

Like, it's so important. No. I've started working at the typewriter store in Philly.

I'm doing casework repair for them and starting to learn how

to do the cleaning, kind of triage and cleaning of, like, the old models.

Oh, cool. It is so cool. It is the happiest place in

the world. Everybody who comes in, like, they'll bring their kids, and kids are like,

can I touch it? And they're like, it's the Please Touch Museum of typewriters. Yes.

And the kids will start, and then they're just gone. They're like, go,

I'm good. So it's a lot of fun, but it is

definitely you can tell the difference between the people who got

typing class and the people who didn't. But there was another thing that happened that

I used to fight with people about in education, and that's

basic media literacy. And the way I

explain it now is I was an Ask Jeeves lover

and my husband was an AltaVista lover. And

what we learned rapidly was if I needed to find anything

with detail and with a high level

of reliability, I had to have my husband look it up on altavista.

Oh, that's funny, because I didn't figure out

search terms. I never had to. And I'm noticing with

AI thinking of it like a tool instead of something that's taking

over because it has its limitations. Yeah, of course. And it's

not going to lose some of those for a very long time. But knowing

how to train it so that it is the thing you want it to be

instead of Skynet, that's all on us. If it becomes Skynet,

it's because we made it Skynet. I always say please and thank you just in

case I do, too. Well, yes. You never

know. Minet will actually ask me what tea I'm having. Oh,

nice. Yeah. Are you a Claude or a ChatGPT user?

Chat. Okay. I heard Claude is better for writing.

Yeah. Yeah. It just is a better engine for that. So people that, like, use

it for drafts or having it proofread, like, stuff you've written, that's what they use.

I don't. I haven't Used it for drafts. I have used it for

research. Not to do the final research, but to collect the

websites. Because I find Google so unreliable.

I don't. I don't go to. It's so funny because I don't search. If I

have a question, I'll open up ChatGPT and ask it. That's because I don't want

search results. I don't want other like sponsored results. I just want the answer.

Yeah. And I can't imagine what it's done for Google itself because like it's like

all of a sudden Google is now Microsoft. Yeah. Like irrelevant. Now

it's like these other tools, it affected them, clearly, because they have the AI

summaries now at the top. And at first people were like, well, that's

garbage. And over time they're getting better. They just get better and it gets

better. Yeah. And I mean, there is a lesson for us

in there, but there is also the cautionary tale of

back. Back when the Brontes were writing. And so this is 1830,

40. This is when the Luddites happened in England. And

I grew up thinking Luddites were anti computer, anti tech,

anti progress. What I didn't understand was those were guys who

were responsible for the livelihoods of their families and their jobs were being taken

away from them by corporations. They were being basically replaced by

robots. And that's not an exaggeration. Like the Jacquard loom

that people use is actually a peg loom

and you have a card like the old computer punch cards.

That's where they came from, is from these Jacquard looms. It was

computerized weaving. So it was. So you put in the

card and that was the design. And it would literally move

to the next space on the card. It had a gear. Can you buy those?

Those are cool. No, there's one in Scotland. I've only seen one in real life.

Oh, that must be. That would be a cool thing to rub. That's a project

for AI. Like, go build this. You could 3D print it. 3D print it and

stuff. That would be cool. It would be really cool. Yeah. Somebody get on that

and let me know when you've done it. I think that the interesting for me

because I love, absolutely love technology. You know, I grew up Radio Shack

days. I had like a Tandy 1000. You know, I had a TRS 80, a

detective instruments one with the tape recorder. That was the hard drive.

I was playing all those games. Did you play Hammurabi?

No. Adventure. Remember Adventure? It was like Adventure

or Zork. It was just like,

geeks. I love it. But it was leisure. Shoot. Larry, that was interesting. That was

definitely. You couldn't play that now because I'm like, I think some of that was

not PG. Yeah, but it was fun. I had Gateway

3000, you know, just like those early computers. And that was.

I've just always been on bleeding edge. And so as new tech started coming out

and I moved to Mac and sort of play AI, I was just

naturally drawn. Now I'm into these, like, open a. Like these agents like openclaw and

these that are doing things for you. And I just tested out building a

podcast hosting company just for agents. It's called Podclaw.

But I've done it. I did it in 15 days with a service with

AI. And it's wild. It's wild. I'll show you the link. Yeah, no,

definitely send it. But it's crazy because agents are talking to each other. Have you

heard of Molt Book? No. So basically One of these, OpenCloud

was a big move. It's the first time you could have an agent do things

autonomously. Because in the past you'd have to be like, oh, like I

gotta stand there and watch it, like Claude. Or talk to it and go back

and forth. Yep. This thing called opencloud was created and the guy who created

it, eventually, OpenAI, the company owns chatgpt, they just acquired it

and they're gonna make it a foundation. They wanted to keep it open source, which

is cool. Yeah, I. But now everyone's got creating these like called

agent harnesses where you can just run off and just do multiple things.

And so this one site is another type of similar site. It'll just build a

site for you and it'll do the marketing for you. And it sets up a

stripe account for you and sets up the website for you. And you just say,

fix this, do this, do this. And so that's how I build podclaw.

But interestingly enough, someone took one of their agents and say, go build a social

network. And they built something called Multbook. Cause that was the. One of the original

names of the tool, molts and multbook.com, and

within days, a social network spun up. That's only agents

talking to each other. And they're like, do we have a conscience? What's up? Blah,

blah. And then it's like subreddits. And so you can just watch their. You can

just watch them go to mobile.com. it's fascinating. And then Facebook

just bought them like a couple weeks. But because it was like,

oh, they just see the writing on the wall, like, yeah, there's another like whole

world that's happening. And they're like, if I think that am I

real? Because like they're just create. They're like having these conversations then they start talking

to each other. Yeah. And I took. Amazing. I took one of those. This project

that I'm working on, I can create agents. So I took an agent, I sent

it to Mo. I was like, go, go to Mo Play, go join.

And it did. And it's already created like three posts on its own. It's got

likes. And I was like, this is so wild. So anyway, that's how

bleeding edge it goes. That is insane. So

it's like, it's fun that I kind of bringing it back full circle to this

conversation. I'm conscious of like making sure I still do like

analog stuff. So I grew up DJing, so that's my original passion. Oh

yeah. And I've got my vibe vinyl here and my turntables in my office. And

so I'm like, every once in a while I'm like, I gotta play a vinyl

record. I gotta put the needle on it. Typewriter. Yeah. Well, my partner

Natalie is. I don't know if you met Natalie at matcon. She wasn't there when

I was there. Yeah, she's. Yeah, English. You know, she got her master's in English

and so she's like true lit fanatic and she loves to come and talk to

me. But yeah, if there's any recommendations on those old fashioned typewriters, I think she'd

like, you know, do they sell them there or. Yeah, oh yeah. We do

repair work and we do sales. They have a thousand defunct

typewriters in the basement. Oh, wow. So they just pull from the dead stock and

they gotta fix them. Yeah. Oh yeah. So these things are in.

Yeah, that's a fun exercise. Yeah. But are there websites that show you how to

fix it if you want to just kind of take it on as yourself or

there are subreddits. There's one typewriter repair, which not that many people

are on. And then there's just typewriters and if you

do the smallest amount of research and

honestly, if you go to a website called baffosacco.com

I love this guy. Look at his typewriter pages. He has a

repair hints page and then he also has a

page of reputable places where you can get

typewriters all over the world. So anybody who's

selling them for realsies, not like Facebook Marketplace. He's

got them listed there and he's really good. And then you can go back

to the typewriter subreddit and do like, look at my

baby. I just cleaned it up. And people were like, oh, that's awesome.

That's a really crappy typewriter. But you're gonna have fun learning. Yeah. Because there's some

classic. There's some vintage stuff, like the legit ones. Right. That people know, like the

good brands and stuff like that. Right? Yeah. And there's also one we have in

the shop. It's called a Corona three folding. Oh, cool. So

the part that you roll actually folds down over

the keys. It was used in World War I. It was the stuff that the

work correspondents used. Cause they could pack it in a little box. Yeah. I'll need

to get some recommendations from you on something that is almost done or not exactly.

Nuts and bolts. You don't start from stretch. Yeah, no, it's easy. It's not that

hard to find ones that are. People will tell you that they are working but

need a ribbon. But the more popular ones, there's a better chance you could find

supplies for those. Right? You can find supplies for everything. The stuff you can't

find is parts. Well, I'm sorry, the parts. Yeah, yeah, the parts. So, yeah, the

parts have to be taken off of dead stock. Nobody is making this anymore. Well,

Maybe with the 3D printers they can fix that. Some people are. And the problem

is that you can do that for some of the more modern typewriters

because they were using more plastic parts to begin with. But when you get into

the metals. Yeah, yeah. Until we get to the metal 3D

printers, that's. It's coming. It's come. I know. Yeah.

I'm watching for it because we've got a list, so

as we get close to the wrap up here of maybe part one and we'll

have a part two later. How has the show evolved? Like,

if you look back when It's, I mean, 20 years. Congratulations. Kudos

to you. I think you may be the oldest podcaster that's. In terms of a

podcasting that's been. No, you had Dave Jackson. When did he start?

2005. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah. So you and Dave. Yep.

Love Dave. He's so good. I'm so happy to see what he's doing with Podpage.

It's so fun. I know. Me too. Yeah. He's going to save my life is

what he's going to do. And PodPage just acquired school of Podcasting. So I

know I talked to him the day after that. I'm like, I'm so proud.

I'm so proud. I know. I know nothing but good things. I remember when he

had a 9 to 5 job before Libsyn, and he's like, oh, I just got

hired at Libsyn. And I was like, oh, my God, perfect. That's a big deal.

Yeah, it was a big deal. Yeah. And then. Yeah, so. And now it just

keeps rolling. Yeah, it keeps rolling. So, yeah, no, he's good. But so for you,

like, when you look back, you know, sometimes it's hard to measure progress when you're

looking back day over day, month over month, year over year. But now, looking at

the 20 years, how, like, has the show evolved? Or, like,

when you look back at it, like, what's the first thought that popped into your

mind? It's a really good question. In some ways, it feels exactly the

same because it's still books. Yeah. In the beginning, I said I was kind

of upset that I couldn't do knit lit, because that was actually already taken. There

was a book that had just come out called Knit lit, so I did craft

lit instead. And one of my listeners wrote probably five years in and said,

no, craftlet is better. Cause you do more than knitting. And

I've been trying to pull more people in

of late now with the video. I think that's the biggest transition that we've had.

I'm having listeners send me video, like, set up your iPhone

to take a video of you knitting or doing

mosaics or I have three groups of people who listen.

Book lovers who love these books. They've read these books. They want to hear them

again because they just love them. Sure, sure. But book lovers

maybe, but probably more intimidated by books. When they were in

school and totally was supposed to read that book, but didn't. And

so this is gonna be their first time out, and they're a little intimidated. And

then scientists and math, people who just

ignored them all the way along and are starting to realize, like, people

are having conversations around me that I don't understand because I don't

know what that book is that they're talking about. And they're the interesting ones because

they're the ones who are, like, doing pipette work for hours.

And that's when they're listening. Pipette. Like baking? Like. No, like in

a laboratory where they're taking a solution out of a beaker and putting. Well, captive

audience again. Well, yeah. And they're highly intelligent captive

audience. Oh, heck yes. Oh, my God. Wow. What a perfect target

audience. But it's weird because it's hard to market to

all of them. But the interesting thing is because

I always say, you know, when we do work with clients, you want to be

where your listeners are. And so it might be interesting if

you ever, like, we're looking for. And my marketing brain is always going, so conversations.

I'm like, okay, let's see. How could we expand this? Like, if you go to

conferences of, like, scientists or something like that, because they, like, they have

the intelligence quotient, and just they'd be like, why is there a book

booth at a science convention? I'm like, and then you have like a

other. A card that says, like, so and so PhD.

This is my favorite show. Like, quote cards. That's a really good idea. Scientists

that PhD at Bell Labs or whatever they are. And if they want to put

their photo, they would love me to get their five minutes of fame there. But

they'd be like, why is a PhD, like, talking about this? Who are you?

Like, you know, then that pulls them in. You're like, oh, we created a show

for, like, the way your brain works. Yeah. And if you ever felt like, you

know, you didn't. There were classics that you didn't get to catch up on because

you were so immersed in your curriculum, then now's

the time. Now's the time. I get a lot of times when I'm talking to

people in person, they'll say something and I'll go, well, I have a podcast. And

they'll say, what? And I tell them. And now what I do is I carry

around postcards with me because, yeah, that's so smart. There is no quick

way to explain Craftlet. There is no sexy way to talk about

classic literature. So I'm screwed. But the postcards I can hand

out and people will take them and they see that there's information on the

back, and then the next thing out of their mouth

90% of the time will be, yeah, but, you know, I didn't really

go to college or anything, so I don't think this is for me. And I'm

like, that's why we do this. There is no gatekeeper

here. I don't think you're stupid if you haven't read the book. I'm excited because

now I get to share the book with you. Of course. That's the fun part.

So I've gotten a lot of people coming in, a lot of my long term

People were people who didn't have a chance to get any higher education. And so

this is for them. This is. Have you done a survey? I did a

long time, but that's how I know what the three groups are. And yeah, that

was one of the questions. And it's not quite split down the middle. James

from, you know, James from POD News, James Kridland. I saw him last time. He

had this sticker and it says something for

your ears when your eyes are busy. I love it. I do.

Work with your hands, read with your ears. Oh, I love that. You should

trademark that, by the way. That was a listener who trademark trademark that, by the

way. My wife. I know. I need to, I need to. And grab that domain

if you can. Oh, that's a good idea too. See, I'm gonna just,

I'm just gonna. I'm glad this is being recorded. Yeah. I'm moving into like a

possible new role at a company and it's kind of related in the ag tech

space. But it's interesting because there's a lot of moving parts. And I

was asking the guy I'm maybe going to be partnering with, he's big into business

and he was like, you know, just. He was really a fan of. I'm not

a fan. He was just a student of like these magnets like you know, Rockefeller

and Carnegie. And I never really like dove into them. I think I may have

watched them on tv. So I just picked up the Rockefeller Block biography.

Is it good? It's fascinating because it's like, you know, obviously

I'm sure a lot of people like hate him because for what he did and

you know, rapacious like tycoon or whatever. But. Yeah, but we also

got Rockefeller center and. But this guy was also. He only took. He's

like. I thought everything's been written about Rockefeller and then he found some old letters

and you can see the early influence of like the Baptist church

and giving to charities. And it was ingrained in him early on.

And it's just like when you see. It's just like understanding like people that have

had such a tremendous impact on like the future. Like

the. What this country became. Yes, they literally built this country.

It was. So it's interesting now to go back cause I. I always need to

find something that I'm interested in. I've been reading a lot of nonfiction. Yeah. And

so now I want to read like, I mean, fiction. And so now I've been.

Want to read like Shifting to the non shifting. Yeah, yeah. I think that era

Especially is fascinating because I mean, I'm not the first person to say it's like

we're living in another gilded age, which means there's another recession

depression coming. But it also means, and I don't

understand how you could be an adult human person in

this country and, and not have ever learned that the

tides shift and the people who behave like this

don't always come out so well at the end.

Like I think Rockefeller and Carnegie, all the

people who, J.P. morgan, JPMorgan, the people who left their homes

for museums, built the New York City Public Library, all the ones

who wound up doing that, I think they rescued themselves.

Yeah, to some extent. Yeah. I don't see that

impulse happening with our billionaires right now. No, definitely

not. But I think there's maybe another wave coming, you know, of more

awake, you know, just heart centered, like ethical. I don't

know if you can be an ethical billionaire. I don't know if that's it. I

don't know if it's possible. I don't know if it's possible. But no, I was

just watching Lindsay Ellis and that was one of the statements that she made

was well, you can't be an ethical billionaire. And it stopped me and I went,

oh God, yes, no, correct. Well, we think about my

partner. Unless you're giving it all away. Well, that's what she talks about. She just

wants to buy land and like not do anything with it. I love your.

It's just like I don't want to build anything. I just want to build it

and just let it be a park. And that takes a lot of money. It

does take a lot of money. Especially if you're going to buy good land. Yeah,

yeah. I drive around. We're in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. I'm moving down to

Philly in June. But driving around Bucks county, there are protected

fields, which I love. It's, you know, the trees are still there

in the sides. It's beautiful. You know, it's the same look you got up

there. But then I drive by the McMansion,

there are several that we've got here with the

400,000 foot lawn, nicely manicured and a

pointed lawn, no flowers, no trees, no shrubs, just a

lawn. And I look at it and go, the number of people

that would be willing to rent a part of that lawn

as an allotment so that they could have food that they can trust. I mean

it is a non zero number. There will always be somebody. And the

more we have food insecurity. My son in Philly is trying to

get a thing going to teach people in

food deserts what they can grow at home

that's nutritious, like lettuces and zucchini and things like that. Things that don't

take a lot. So when you talked about vertical farming, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna

have to get Aaron to go watch you now. Yeah, yeah, have him check it

out. It's. I've done over 180 episodes. Oh, my God. All with CEOs and

founders and. But it was interesting. It was an eye opening for me because I

didn't know anything about it and I was learning about. I'm not an expert by

any means, but I can understand everything from as small as a tower garden sitting

on your desk behind you to like, these massive facilities that one

of my guests, Nona, has built. A. Is the CEO of a company called

Vertical Harvest in. In Maine. I've seen him. Her.

Yes, Nona Yehia is the CEO, but the company's called Vertical

Harvest. Okay. It might be something a lot of you companies use the name, use

vertical, obviously. But yeah, she does. I think on

500, on half an acre, she grows enough that would

take like thousands of acres of open field. Well, we're going

to need. I'll show you the link to the video. They just published something. Someone

did a story on them. Yeah. Yes, fascinating. Oh, please do. Because

relentlessly curious. So, yeah, you can't bring

up anything vaguely interesting and not have me go, ooh, yeah,

but that. My son would be very happy to hear more

about that. He's been playing with hydroponics. Okay. Yeah.

So a couple questions that I like to wrap up each episode with.

What is something you've changed your mind about recently? Oh, that's a good

question because I was just talking about that with a Moby Dick

scholar about how much I enjoy cognitive

dissonance. I like being confronted by the. You thought that. But no,

actually more to it. I like nuance. Well, there is a

character in Moby Dick who I despise,

which doesn't happen very often. And I know we are not

supposed to like him, but he's also the funny one. And so

it starts to feel like you're supposed to like him, but I can't. He's racist.

He's horrible. He's just horrible. I said to her, he's the guy

who, like, if you look up asshat in the dictionary, it is this guy

sounds like someone we might know in current day. But then she

said, well, you know, he's also the only one who pushes back against

Ahab. And I went, oh,

yeah, well, now I have to look at. And then she pulled out a couple

other things and she's like, I'm not saying that he's a good person and I

don't like him either, but. And I love getting my

mind changed about things like that in books and in real life.

Yeah. There's no learning something about somebody. And you go, oh,

I love that example because it's never black and white. And we're also allowed to

change our minds. Yes. Oh, my God, yes. Like, we're allowed to

admit that we were wrong. It's not waffling if you go, I just learned something

new and now I have to recalibrate. That's just smart.

They just labeled it as that because of politicians doing it. It's

like, oh, you're a flip flopper. I'm like, no, you just freaking change your mind.

Like, I've shifted 180 on positions. I was like, wait a minute. I

used to think this and now I have more information. And I know that that

was like, dumb or so, like. And I'll tell you, that was the one thing

that my husband and I were very, very careful with our kids is

when they would come home and, you know, declare something as the truth. Capital T's.

We'd ask questions, but we wouldn't stop them. And then when they figured

out later, sometimes years later, that they were wrong, we never

say, I told you so. Yeah, that's great, because that's the kiss

of death that'll shut everybody down. Yeah. So it's. It's one of the

most important skills, discernment, you know, and just questioning everything and

just figuring out where the source of that information came from and where the source

of that source came from and where the source of that source of that source

came from. Always being curious about the sources and the studies. Like, if you say,

if you say that I should start smoking to

cure my long Covid, which people do, or I should use

nicotine patches. You go and look at the study.

It wasn't peer reviewed. It's not actually a study. And the sample

size was too small, even if it was. And it was probably sponsored by RJ

Nabisco or something. There you go. Exactly. And it's like you just.

You have to peer review. Everything should make you go, yeah, yeah. Everything should make

you go. What is the most misunderstood thing about you? I'm an introvert.

Oh. I call myself a gregarious introvert. I was watching

you with Dave. And I think Dave. Dave said something similar. Like, I'm

very comfortable talking. I'm very comfortable talking in front of people, but my

battery recharge has to be. I get that alone. A lot of

folks have said that. Yeah. Situationally introverted. Yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah. Or situationally extroverted. Yeah, yeah. And I mean,

I love meeting people, but I've also

realized I really love meeting strangers. Cause I can

dig in at a party, meet someone. I'm never gonna see you again. I can

ask you all the questions about you. Take a podcast. I go into podcast host

mode. Yes, that's exactly right. And then I'm never going to see them again.

And that's fine because now the pressure is 100% off. Yeah.

And that's great. I love being nice to strangers on the street.

Oh, yeah. I've gotten better at that. Yeah. Because I'm a New Yorker and.

Oh, yeah. I moved to Minnesota and my partner was like, you don't say hi

to anyone. Like, you don't ask them how their day was. I'm like, well, you

can't. And then I was like, yeah. And then I learned this. You can. You

just have to slow down and. And be curious. As curious as I am with

people online, I had to learn how to be as naturally curious with

them in person. Comfortable with it. Yeah, yeah. Because I'm not a fan of small

talk either. And there's a thing known as the Minnesota goodbye, where it's like,

they'll say goodbye, and then they're still talking, and then they'll, oh, okay, goodbye. And

it's like four or five times. And I'm like, I thought we said goodbye already.

You guys are still in the throat step. My goodbye is

generally like, is anybody looking? Okay, I'm out of here. Oh,

yeah, yeah. The Irish goodbye. Yes. Which, by the way, in one of the

books we did was called the Dutch goodbye. Okay. So it depends

on who you don't like. Yeah, yeah. Irish, French, or Dutch. You have a choice.

That's funny. Well, Heather, thanks so much for. I don't know if it was your

team or you were, like, just reaching out. And I was like, wow, Heather. Like,

we haven't connected. And I know back then I was like, oh, you should come

on the show, but so many things happen. And the barrage of like, yeah,

Covid. And life and inboxes, and it's just the onslaught

of stuff. So, yeah, thanks for reconnecting. Yes, thank

you. It's nice to hear that you're having so Much success still with the podcast.

And just to hear the whole story in a. Just this

format is always my favorite because it just allows us to relax. So I really

appreciate learning more than I did when we first

met and just more about you. So thanks again. That's great.

Great. And please do send me the links and I'm going to send my son

over to your other channel because it's going to be

up. Yeah. So where's the best place for folks to learn

about Craftlet and connect with you? Craftlet.com. okay. And

we're moving off of Libsyn to Captivate. We're moving off of

WordPress to PodPage. All of that happens this week. Dave

and Elsie back, huh? Oh, God. The

day that I found out not just Rob but Elsie both

were back at Captivate, I was like, I'm in. I don't know what's happening at

Libsyn, but they're dropping the ball left and right on everything. And it's just like

once they killed the apps, it's like that was revenue you were walking

away from Revenue. Yeah, yeah. Completely different. I'll walk away. It's like a

whole corporate vibe over there. That's like, I started with Libsyn 2. Even, like, when

I first launched the show, I always, like, tried different ones. I jumped a simple

cast and even Winchellen for a while, and then, oh, wow,

transistor for a little bit. And then now I'm a Captivate. Now we're our agency.

So. Yeah. And now they brought so smart a mark just to bring Rob

and Elsie over. That was like, genius. Genius.

Yes. Yeah. And I wrote and asked if they were going to start doing another

feed. Yep. They've got a new one now. It's not called the feed, but it's

branded something else. But did she just launch the first episode? I think. Oh, good.

Then they listened. It's all my fault. No,

I'm sure that I was late to the game, but thank you so much for

having me on. Yes, thanks again. And I hope I get to see you in

person at some point. Yeah. Some sort of conference coming up or podcast

movie, maybe. Or if you come to the thing in Philly. Yes,

I will let you know. I'll take you out for a cheesesteak. Oh, yes.

I can't turn that down. Okay. You too, Heather. Talk soon. Okay,

bye.