The How This Works show

This week, Skipper chats with Piper Payne, an audio mastering engineer.

Currently based in Nashville, Tennessee, Piper starts off the episode with her professional introduction and then tells us "who she actually" is, including her being originally a Midwesterner, having three dogs, being an Aries, and her love of cheeseburgers.

We talk about how if she wasn't a mastering engineer, she might be in some form of construction or maybe a carpenter. We get into how she's a drummer, starting when she was a "shrimpy kid", her technical music studies at the University of Michigan and then her graduate work in Norway, and working under Bob Katz and Michael Romanowski. Then, Piper dives into how she calibrates her mastering console with sine tones and noise, how music is mastered from a high level, her growing up on young country, her love of top 40 pop music, how vinyl records are made (think waffles), how musicians get paid (in the past and more recently), and the potential of non-fungible tokens to help artists get paid for their work as well as keep better track and make decisions about their efforts to tour, promote, and construct release plans.

We also talk about some of the assumptions that people have about being a mastering engineer, how it's not alchemy.

Below is a snapshot of the record shelves Piper mentions on the show as something she built recently that she's proud of:

Stay tuned after the outro music to hear Skipper work out the right way to introduce Piper as an audio mastering engineer or a mastering engineer.

Special Guest: Piper Payne.

Links:

• Amplitude

Our planned episode with Piper Payne will be delayed this week, that's the bad news; the good news is that it'll be available next week. Plus, Skipper talks about how it came about that we're talking to Piper — a mastering engineer (hint: Selena Rosanbalm) — and previews the last two episodes of the season. The next new one will have Sarah Sudhoff and the last one with Skipper Chong Warson in the hot seat.

Thanks for understanding, be safe, have a good week, and stayed tuned.

This episode of How This Works addresses adult subject matters and contains adult language.

This week, Skipper chats with Kait Scalisi, a certified sex educator who founded Passion by Kait. They engage in a wide-ranging conversation that explores so many areas — including shame, communication, and how pleasure is really powerful as a healing force.

And there's so much under the surface as well, like how some people carry their disabilities in plain sight, the concept of accessible design, how she started doing this work, how with sex there's no such thing as "normal", a lightweight formula around how to talk about sex with your partner, her delight in the concept of verbal consent is showing up in romance novels, consent culture and the underlying sentiment to act first, apologize later, #notallmen, Resmaa Menakem on the notion of somatic abolitionism, and assumptions that Kait has had to work against as a sex educator.

Stay tuned after the outro music for a pause for sirens in Kait's New York City sound background, an ever present aural reminder of the big city. Skipper misses it.

Special Guest: Kait Scalisi.

Links:

• How to start a conversation about sex

This week, Skipper chats with Sally McRae, a pro runner for Nike and NordicTrack among others.

Based in Bend, Oregon, Sally starts off by talking about how she often gets mistaken for a bodybuilder, a cross fitter, and even a cage fighter. She also gets into many more details of her life, including growing up in a family of seven, playing soccer and starting to run because "she knew she had the speed" and then as a way to stay in shape and cross-train, running her first marathon, discovering ultrarunning, running Western States 100 in 2014 (as captured in the short film "Western Time" — linked below), the importance of crew in ultrarunning, and what she thinks is at the heart of the sentiment, "I'm not a runner, or I wasn't made for running, or running is stupid".

We also talk about some of the assumptions that people have about being a pro runner, the power of the community around running and ultrarunning, how running long distances with people can get past the polite and light social conversations, dispelling the common thinking that Skipper's name came from Gilligan's Island, why running is painful, needing to take care of yourself first and foremost, how on a 100 mile race that you will stir up something deep, and how some of the events locally and in the world might mirror some darker moments in our lives.

Stay tuned after the outro music to hear Sally's joy about relocating to the mountains with her family.

Special Guest: Sally McRae.

Links:

• Western States 100-mile endurance run

Today's episode features a conversation with two sisters — Kat Hantas and Nicole Emanuel — about 21Seeds, their company that makes all-natural, infused tequila.

They talk about what they did before starting the company — film work and corporate finance, respectively — when Kat's doctor instructed her to stop drinking fermented spirits like wine, beer, and sake to drink distilled spirits like blanco tequila instead.

And after eight years of infusing tequila in her kitchen, Kat enlisted her sister Nicole and their friend, Sarika Singh, to start 21Seeds — the name comes from two friends + one girlfriend with things that are all-natural, that grow from a seed — with a distillery in the town of Tequila in Jalisco, Mexico run and staffed by women whose hours coincide with school schedules, so the moms don’t have to pay for childcare. The sisters talk about the three tiers set up by the tied-house rule, why they didn't name the company Casamigas (a play on Casamigos), chill filtration (and how it removes aldehydes), keeping the heart but leaving out the head and tail when distilling alcohol, how you can go blind from moonshine (depending on the how and who's making it), and the differences between flavored and infused liquor.

This is an especially fun episode as both sisters keep it light while the conversation moves easily. Nicole and Kat debate which Constitutional amendment made alcohol illegal and which one repealed Prohibition, the dangers of home infusing tequila in a Brita, and how Oprah Winfrey — as a tequila fan and someone who infuses tequila herself — paid the product a high compliment in assuming it was freshly infused.

Stay tuned after the outro music to hear Skipper trip all over over the pronunciation of Kat's last name. So you all know, Hantas is pronounced like Pocahontas or haunting.

Special Guest: Kat Hantas and Nicole Emanuel.

Links:

• 21Seeds

This week, Skipper chats with Laura Sicola, a leadership communication and influence expert, speaker, author of "Speaking to Influence: Mastering Your Leadership Voice" (bookshop link), a coach, and host of the podcast, "Speaking to Influence: Communication Secrets of the C-Suite". But this conversation isn't just for managers or people in the C-suite, it's for anyone who wants to hear yes a bit more in their lives. As Laura says, this subject matter is every bit as "relevant with your coworkers, boss, employee, colleague, client, vendor, or otherwise, as it is with people in your personal life. And it is — whether it's with your spouse, significant other, your children, your neighbors, your friends, and co parishioners at church, temple, mosque, wherever you go, or religious house".

We talk about so many things, including her work sitting at the intersection of how language works — or what Laura refers to as the math of language — cognitive processing and language, and social filters; how non-native languages to young kids can feel like a superpower, how some people listen like others wait for the right moment to jump into a double dutch jump rope session, bosses versus leaders, manipulation versus influence, myth-busting one of the most misquoted statistic in communications research, how we all have a prismatic voice, and how authenticity is absolutely essential in how we use our voice.

Stay tuned after the outro music for a quick levels check, a peek behind the scenes.

Special Guest: Laura Sicola.

Links:

• "Speaking to Influence" by Laura Sicola

Today's episode features time with Cassandra Carlopio, a meditation/sleep consultant currently collaborating with The Breathe Institute and trained as a clinical psychologist on the Gold Coast of Australia. We talk about the importance of sleep, address some of the falacies associated with meditation, and she graciously leads us through a short guided meditation.

We also talk about how she loves the mountains and beach equally, her newfound love of kite boarding, about the role of the nervous system and sleep, about how there's very little communication "between the field of sleep medicine and the field of psychology and the field of meditation", in the role that meditation can play in helping people sleep at night, traffic in Los Angeles, the notion of using virtual reality to help with sleep issues, and how gifting someone with sleep issues "Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker may not be the right kind of present.

Stay tuned after the outro music to hear Skipper stumble through the pronunciation of Cassandra's name, something that he does with every guest on the show.

Special Guest: Cassandra Carlopio.

Links:

• Surfer Today answers the question, What is kiteboarding?

Ben Falk chats with Skipper on this episode of How This Works from his farm/home/homstead in Vermont about permaculture and sustainability. We start with Ben in utero at the base of El Capitan in California, visiting national parks with his family (instead of going to Disneyland), rock climbing, and then doing backcountry trips which formed his foundational relationship with his work now.

We also talk about the difference between design being focused on sustainability and regeneration, how important context is to solving design problems, about the importance of a designer living with or inside their work, the fact that people move 11.7 times in their life (as written in his book "The Resilient Farm and Homestead"), and how Ben's able to grow rice on terraced flats in the Northwestern U.S.

We chat about the wood stove that provides heat for Ben and his family versus a thermostat-driven heat system or even a voice user interface like Alexa and how manual a process it is.

Stay tuned after the outro music for a clip and flubbed first take of the show's intro.

This episode was edited and mastered by Troy Lococo.

Special Guest: Ben Falk.

Links:

• Todd Ecological - Dr. John Todd from University of Vermont

In today's show, Kacie Lett Gordon deconstructs the notion of having it all in our current times — she's working through that for herself with a number of other women on her podcast Fuck it All.

We start out by talking about being a bit nervous about being on a podcast as a guest and a podcast as a host, external and internal roles, the difference between honesty and authenticity, and how different people get their energy in different ways (she gets hers with alone time while her husband gets it from being around people).

We reach into many topics during this show, including how Kacie's mom was and is a role model for her, being a mother herself, how while she felt like she theoretically had it all she felt miserable (probably as a result of late-onset postpartum depression), the double standard of calling a woman bossy versus praising a man for the same behavior, good coffee in contrast to easy coffee, the importance of the mug, the power of curiosity, and, in her words, where part of the narrative of being a woman is "if you don't dislike yourself a little bit, then you're not humble."

There's a ton of books that we talk about — non-fiction and fiction. You can find those in the show notes. We also talk about a mutual friend Jen Dary and her So Now You're a Manager program from Plucky.

Stay tuned after the outro music to hear Kacie wonder, Who am I?

This episode was edited and mastered by Troy Lococo.

Special Guest: Kacie Lett Gordon.

Links:

• Fuck It All

This episode's subtitle should be, So many movies, so little time.

We start in Chris' childhood where he describes sneaking into his parents' room to watch Hitchcock's "Psycho" around the age of five, making short films in high school with his friends including a zombie sequel to "Xanadu" (which became a cult college favorite), feeling underwater after "Another Day in Paradise", leaving Los Angeles (and writing) before beginning to approach his work "like a job", "Disturbia" as a mix of Hitchcock's "Rear Window" and a John Hughes movie, "Happy Death Day" and "Happy Death Day 2U" as mash-ups of "Groundhog Day" with horror tropes, writing his most recent movie "Freaky" with Michael Kennedy, working on the adaptation of "My Best Friend's Exorcism" by Grady Hendrix, and signing up to help reboot the "Paranormal Activity" franchise.

But it's not just movies — though there are a ton of movies that we talk about — it's also about how all horror films aren't all about slash, blood, and gore. Chris talked about one of his aims to use the "genre as a Trojan horse" and how he's going to "smuggle much weightier themes inside of a movie that just looks cute and fun and scary", citing "Get Out". We also get into how 'best of' lists or a list of favorites can be problematic, how there are so many films to choose from. Chris also talks about how he discovered his authentic voice, not taking criticism personally, and focusing on being a better listener which has improved his life as a husband, a father, and made him infinitely happier with his solo and collaborative work.

Stay tuned after the outro music to hear Skipper say, "I see" — which kicks off Siri and reaks some frustration. This is a good reminder that voice user interfaces (voice UI) are always listening. And we're talking about you — Siri, Alexa, Cortana, etc.

This episode was edited and mastered by Troy Lococo.

Special Guest: Chris Landon.

Links:

• The Science Behind How We Taste