Tower climbers risk their lives to keep your phone signal working—and most people don’t even know the job exists. In this episode, climber Brendon King shares what it’s really like to scale a steel tower swaying like a spaghetti noodle, nap in a harness suspended 300 feet in the air, and discover cell antennas hiding in fake cactuses and church steeples. It’s dangerous, breathtaking work that powers nearly everything we do.

See pictures of our guests and get a behind-the-scenes look at the podcast on our Substack at howtobeanything.com.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When an aspiring journalist took a day job as a butler for Philadelphia’s ultra-rich, he found himself serving Michelin-star meals, running dry cleaning, and accidentally spiking the water with zucchini. In this bonus episode, Max Ufberg shares the strange, funny, and sometimes uncomfortable realities of working behind the scenes for the one percent. The experience gave him an education in class and work. Today, he’s a senior editor at Fast Company, but he still remembers what it felt like to answer the bell.

We're a bootstrapped, indie podcast, so please text a friend and share your favorite episode. Every download helps. Don't forget to rate and review and tell us what you really think. Those go a long way too. 

To learn more about the show and our guests, visit howtobeanything.com

Find us on Instagram: instagram.com/howtobeanything

See pictures of our guests and get a behind-the-scenes look at the podcast on our Substack at howtobeanything.com.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of How to Be Anything, forensic artist Melissa Cooper takes us inside the delicate, high-stakes work of sketching criminals, missing persons, and the unidentified—sometimes from nothing more than a witness’s memory or a bare skull. She shares how she balances compassion with precision, guiding people through painful recollections to capture the face they’ll never forget. From age progressions to postmortem reconstructions, Melissa reveals the surprising mix of artistry, psychology, and science that powers her work. Plus, hear the story of a single sketch that helped catch a suspect within days.

We're a bootstrapped, indie podcast, so please text a friend and share your favorite episode. Every download helps. Don't forget to rate and review and tell us what you really think. Those go a long way too. 

Find us on Substack: howtobeanything.com

And on Instagram: instagram.com/howtobeanything/

See pictures of our guests and get a behind-the-scenes look at the podcast on our Substack at howtobeanything.com.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To celebrate the launch of How to Be Anything, we threw a party, complete with cake, drinks, and a telephone where guests could call in their funniest, cringiest, and most unforgettable job stories. In this bonus episode, you'll hear everything from a woman trying to make a call on her shoe, being trapped in a junk truck with a SoundCloud rapper, to the world’s most committed Panera brownie fan. It’s hilarious, heartfelt, and a reminder that every job—no matter how ordinary—comes with a story worth telling.

We're a bootstrapped, indie podcast, so please text a friend and share your favorite episode. Every download helps. Don't forget to rate and review and tell us what you really think. Those go a long way too. 

See photos from the HTBA launch party at howtobeanything.com/p/my-friends-a-rapper

Find us on Instagram: instagram.com/howtobeanything/

See pictures of our guests and get a behind-the-scenes look at the podcast on our Substack at howtobeanything.com.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most of the universe is made of something we can’t see, detect, or even describe in much detail. In this episode, we go from the depths of a gold mine in South Dakota to the far reaches of space, where experiments are underway to catch a glimpse of the universe’s most elusive ingredient: dark matter. Along the way, astrophysicist Dan Hooper recalls the moment he stumbled across a strange anomaly in NASA data—one that might just be evidence of dark matter itself. It’s a journey to the cutting edge of physics, where the biggest mysteries may be hidden in plain sight.

We're a bootstrapped, indie podcast, so please text a friend and share your favorite episode. Every download helps. Don't forget to rate and review and tell us what you really think. Those go a long way too. 

To learn more about dark matter and the experiments searching for it, visit howtobeanything.com/p/washing-through-a-sea-of-wimps-the

Find us on Instagram: instagram.com/howtobeanything/

See pictures of our guests and get a behind-the-scenes look at the podcast on our Substack at howtobeanything.com.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does it take to make the sound of someone walking through a tunnel made of flesh or leaping into the mouth of a shark? For Dutch Foley artist Ronnie Van der Veer, it might involve wet chamois cloths, antique bullets, or a pool rigged to sound like a plane crash. In this episode of How to Be Anything, Ronnie pulls back the curtain on the invisible craft of making movies feel real, one squish, tap, and creak at a time.

We're a bootstrapped, indie podcast, so please text a friend and share your favorite episode. Every download helps. Don't forget to rate and review and tell us what you really think. Those go a long way too. 

Find us on Substack: howtobeanything.com

And on Instagram: instagram.com/howtobeanything/

NOTE: In this episode, I incorrectly name the director of the film The Girl. The movie is directed by Lukas Dhont. Victor Polster is the actor/dancer who stars.

See pictures of our guests and get a behind-the-scenes look at the podcast on our Substack at howtobeanything.com.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For puppetry artist Heidi Rugg, performing puppet shows isn’t just play: it’s storytelling, sculpture, design, voice acting, and engineering rolled into one. In this episode, Heidi shares how a leisurely walk sparked a 25-year career writing, building, performing, and traveling. We talk about the art and grit behind her work, what it means to be bad at something before you're good, and why puppets are more common (and more powerful) than you might think.

We're a bootstrapped, indie podcast, so please text a friend and share your favorite episode. Every download helps. Don't forget to rate and review and tell us what you really think. Those go a long way too. 

Find us on Substack: howtobeanything.com

And on Instagram: instagram.com/howtobeanything/

See pictures of our guests and get a behind-the-scenes look at the podcast on our Substack at howtobeanything.com.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Meet Brie Hayden, a former studio artist at Madame Tussauds who shampooed wax heads, inserted individual eyelashes, and turned a melted celebrity into a Halloween zombie. In this bonus episode, Brie shares surreal stories from her time inside the museum and explains how that experience launched her full-time career as a hyper-realist artist. It’s a behind-the-scenes look at one of the strangest (and coolest) jobs you never knew existed.

We're a bootstrapped, indie podcast, so please text a friend and share your favorite episode. Every download helps. Don't forget to rate and review and tell us what you really think. Those go a long way too. 

Find us on Substack: https://www.howtobeanything.com

Find us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/howtobeanything/

See pictures of our guests and get a behind-the-scenes look at the podcast on our Substack at howtobeanything.com.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Skye Smith has one of the rarest jobs in the world: they’re the lorekeeper for Dimension 20, a hit actual-play Dungeons & Dragons show on Dropout TV. In this episode, Skye explains what D&D is, how collaborative storytelling works, and what it’s like to keep track of every single character, snack, and magical tree across multiple seasons. We talk about improvisation, creativity under constraint, and how Skye’s love of story led them from working as a production assistant to building their dream job from scratch. If you’ve ever wondered how a sprawling fantasy epic gets made—or how a cockroach named Marty ends up in Madison Square Garden—this one’s for you.

We're a bootstrapped, indie podcast, so please text a friend and share your favorite episode. Every download helps. Don't forget to rate and review and tell us what you really think. Those go a long way too. 

Find us on Substack: https://www.howtobeanything.com

And on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/howtobeanything/

See pictures of our guests and get a behind-the-scenes look at the podcast on our Substack at howtobeanything.com.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, we meet Paddy Fanning, one of the world’s top sheepdog trainers. Paddy travels the globe—Norway, South Africa, Canada, Spain, and beyond—training dogs and judging competitions, but his journey started with a cowboy job in Canada and a dusty copy of Think Harmony with Horses. He shares how Ray Hunt’s philosophy of working with animals shaped not only how he trains dogs, but how he rebuilt his life after giving up drinking. It’s a story about instinct, trust, and the partnership between man and dog.

We're a bootstrapped, indie podcast, so please text a friend and share your favorite episode. Every download helps. Don't forget to rate and review and tell us what you really think. Those go a long way too. 

Hear outtakes from this episode at: https://www.howtobeanything.com/p/irish-hillsides-and-south-african

Find us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/howtobeanything/

See pictures of our guests and get a behind-the-scenes look at the podcast on our Substack at howtobeanything.com.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.