Chuck Bryant and Josh Clark Talk About Stuff Kids Should Know

A podcast interview with Chuck Bryant and Josh Clark
The Children’s Book Review

Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant are the duo behind the award-winning tri-weekly podcast Stuff You Should Know. This episode of The Growing Readers Podcast reveals how they adapted their content for their kids’ book Stuff Kids Should Know, a fun fact-filled non-fiction book that ignites curiosity and captures the imaginations!

Get ready for an awe-inspiring non-fiction book packed with enthralling stories and mind-boggling information that will leave young readers wanting more. With fascinating insights, delightful illustrations, and riveting topics, this book takes readers on a journey of discovery, unlocking the magic of knowledge. Join Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant in exploring the world and discovering extraordinary things. Come along and see where this adventure takes you!

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Transcription:

Bianca Schulze

You. Well, hello, Chuck Bryant and Josh Clark. Welcome to The Growing Readers Podcast..

Chuck Bryant

Hi, thanks for having us.

Josh Clark

Yeah, thank you.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, an absolute pleasure. So, the podcast format is certainly not a new medium for you since you host one of the most downloaded award-winning podcasts in history. Amazing. So how has it felt to switch gears? And does it even feel like switching gears to write about and share your knowledge in book format for kids? And Chuck, why don’t you kick us off?

Chuck Bryant

Uh, well, I can say that it definitely feels like switching gears. Um, I’m probably speaking for both of us because, um, we used to write these articles that were the basis for the podcast episodes for years and years and years, and then we finally stopped writing those articles. We were a little bit out of practice, so switching gears to writing was definitely, even though we’re both writers by trade, initially, it was a bit of a, uh, um, jeez, I don’t know how to say it. Not a gut punch, but, uh, it was like, oh, boy, I’m a little rusty. So, uh, it was fun, but it was also definitely a change of pace.

Bianca Schulze

What about you, Josh?

Josh Clark

No, I couldn’t agree more with Chuck. I think I expected for, uh, both of us to be able to just kind of wade in a little more easily. But it’s a much different world. Writing for the web and then writing a book. Yes, they have writing in common, but there’s not many more things they have in common beyond that. But I’m really glad that we did it. Um, it was one of the cooler things I think I’ve ever done, and I think we’ve ever done together, too. We’ve had a bunch of side projects that we’ve done over the years, and writing this book was it felt like a real accomplishment. But also, it hit the best-seller list. It did everything that you could possibly hope your first book to do.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah. Amazing. Well, so now you’re doing Stuff Kids Should Know. And, uh, how is that different in terms of presenting a book, all the knowledge that you have, and presenting it in a book for adults, and then now doing this version for kids, what was the sidestep or sort of, uh, what did you have to think through in terms of presenting this information for kids?

Chuck Bryant

Uh, this is Chuck here. I’ll go ahead and jump in. Um, most of our stuff is pretty family-friendly in general. The podcast always has been, uh, as far as our language and how we talk about things. But there are definitely some topics that are more kid-friendly and adult friendly. And for the uh, transition to the kids’ book, we wanted to pull what worked for kids from the adult version of the book. Um, and then kidifying those a little bit and then kind of wholesale removing some of the chapters that um, it’s not like they were, it was anything tawdry, but uh like we had a chapter on uh, “Jack” Kevorkian, the Mercy Killer. Uh, which is a great topic, but not great for a kid’s book, necessarily. So, kind of just think through stuff like that, like what fits and what doesn’t.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah.

Josh Clark

We wanted our young readers to be able to sleep at night after reading our book.

Bianca Schulze

And as a parent, I appreciate that. Where did your thirst for knowledge even come from as kids? Were you nonfiction fans? Where do you think that this all originated from? And Josh, why don’t you answer first?

Josh Clark

As a kid, I was very much fiction, not nonfiction, as far as, um, my reading went. I read just a ton of stuff. Um, I used to love reading, and then I grew up a little bit, and I read less and less. I felt like the more they put on me in school to read, I had less time to read on my own, or I took less time to read on my own. And I made it like that all the way through college. And it wasn’t until after college or about around college that I think whatever innate curiosity I had in me just blossomed. And, um, I guess I’m kind of like a living testament that you can’t really predict how you’re going to turn out at a young age, necessarily.

I remember being in my early twenties and being like, what am I going to do with my life? And, uh, I think I learned kind of along the way that it will work out one way or another. Your whole life is not going to fall apart. Uh, as you age, it usually does the opposite of that. So, um, nowadays, I read almost exclusively nonfiction, but it’s mostly for work, so I have to force myself to read fiction, which isn’t that hard. I think forcing myself makes it sound difficult. It’s a pleasure, but I don’t have as much time to do it as I like to. So, it’s kind of flip-flopped, actually.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah. Chuck, what about you?

Chuck Bryant

I was a fiction kid growing up as well, and, uh, in my adult life got more and more into memoirs and biographies and autobiographies, which I was not into as a kid. But, um, it’s been a while since I’ve dusted off a fiction, like a good novel, and I missed that. So, uh, I’ve also done the thing lately where I’ve never done in my life where I’m reading a bunch of books at once. I used to just get a book and read it through, then go to the next one. But I don’t know why. I’m not able to finish anything the past couple of years. And so, I’ve got six or seven books that I’m reading at once, which is not—I know a lot of people do it that way, but I don’t know why I did. I’m not enjoying it. I need to finish them and just kind of go back to the old way.

Bianca Schulze

I imagine that’s actually a hazard of what you do, Chuck and Josh, in terms of having so many different books; I imagine, especially with the podcast, you’re always trying to come up with different, uh, interesting topics to talk about. And so, you probably do end up going on different tangents.

Chuck Bryant

That may be it.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, I certainly suffer from the same issue. I think I also have about seven different books going right now, especially because I have a kiddo, uh, that’s going to be applying for college soon. I’ve got those kinds of books, so all that sort of stuff. Um, so that brings me to how you decide what you’re going to talk about on the podcast, and how you decide of all the topics that you’ve discussed since 2008, what you wanted to put in, Stuff Kids Should Know? Josh, let’s go with you.

Josh Clark

Yeah, this is Josh. Um, for the podcast, we just basically—it’ll either just come to us on a given week, um, I feel like talking about this, or I feel like researching this, or I found a cool article on this. Um, and that’s how we choose our topic. Each week. Each of us chooses one topic, and then if we record on two days, another one of us, uh, um, chooses another topic. Um, and it’s just as random as, um, something, uh, that popped up in life to something that’s on the news or whatever we’re interested in.

For the book, though, we definitely were more methodical and put a lot more thought into it. And I knew at least some of them were things that had been like in the podcast, um, list, but we’d never made a podcast out of them. There was something slightly different about these topics. And when we went to go select topics for the book, those very topics stood out, um, quite clearly. And then now that they’re in the book, uh, now I feel like, um, they’ve proven themselves that they can be Podcast topics now. Weirdly. Um, so, I mean, we’ll probably end up making podcasts of all these chapters, but for some reason, it felt like they needed to be in book form first. These particular topics.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah. Chuck, do you want to add anything there?

Chuck Bryant

No, I agree. I think we’ve done one. We did one semi-recently that was from the book. And, uh, I think that’s the first one we’ve tackled so far as a podcast. I, uh, can’t remember which one it was, but, uh, it’s probably a good idea to do one of those. It serves as a good promotional device as well, I guess.

Josh Clark

Yeah, totally.

Bianca Schulze

Absolutely. So, what’s your process once you decide on a topic? What’s your process for researching? And I guess more importantly, and obviously, this has become pretty important since the year 2016 is fact-checking. So, you do your research, and how do you fact-check?

Chuck Bryant

Well, uh, like I said earlier, we used to write all of these articles ourselves when um, we started out at the website HowStuffWorks.com, and that’s how the podcast was born. So, we had a good background of researching and writing about things back then. Um, we eventually, like we said, kind um, of got tired of writing those and, uh, eventually wised up and hired some freelance writers to help us out with that sort of same original base format that we use for the show. Because we don’t script anything, we just have the same body of research, uh, in front of us and just have a conversation about it and record it. It’s really that simple.

Um, but as far as fact-checking, we’ve kind of learned over the years a few tricks. In fact, we even did a podcast episode about that. Um, and I know one thing that we always, uh, like it’s easy to find red flags, uh, once you know they’re out there. And one red flag that we found over the years was if you see the exact same thing worded the exact same way in many different places, your instinct may be, oh well, that’s got to be true, when a lot of times that’s not true, necessarily. And other people have just copied and pasted and gotten lazy. So those kind of serve as red flags to investigate and fact-check a little further.

Josh Clark

When we’re researching for the podcast, um, if you just closely read articles and something stands out to you, like doesn’t sound right, or wow, that’s astounding, that’s usually a signal to go double check, find another source or two to back that up. And a lot of times, it is just simply that astounding. Um, and a lot of other times, it’s clearly just wrong. Um, and you find that you’ve just stumbled on this thing that the entire internet thinks is true, and you just realized is not true. And now we get to go out and tell everybody in podcast land that something they believe is, uh, true, is actually false. That’s a really fun thing to do.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, actually, something I admire about that I’ve noticed in both your podcast and in, um, Stuff Kids Should Know, is that when there is maybe a break in the facts, you infuse humor and make light of the fact that you’re possibly stretching a truth here or trying to fill in the gap. And I love that you use humor there. And I just imagine, obviously, today is the first day I’ve ever met you virtually. Ah, I just imagine that maybe this is just a natural attribute of your personalities to add the humor. I mean, it seems to come naturally.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah, I think so. When asked to describe the show to, um, people I meet, I always say that, well, it’s an educational show. Men, I always like to add those, but it’s also funny. And I usually get kind of a puzzled look, and I’m like, well, it’s not a comedy podcast per se, but, uh, we like to bring our little side stories and our anecdotes and make it fun. And I think that it ultimately makes it a little more accessible too.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah. Josh, do you want to add anything?

Josh Clark

I was going to say; I’m sure that clears it up for everybody when you explain it like that.

Chuck Bryant

Exactly.

Josh Clark

Yeah. Um, we just both kind of see the humor in most things. Um, just about everything has something funny about it if you look closely enough. And I can’t imagine us doing the podcast just straight and humorless; I don’t think we could do it. And I think if we did do it, it would freak our listeners out. So maybe we should try it like some April Fools or something.

Chuck Bryant

That would be pretty funny.

Bianca Schulze

I’m not quoting verbatim here, but, uh, in the author notes of Stuff Kids Should Know, you said that even the most random stuff is interconnected. And I’m wondering if anyone wants to elaborate on that. Chuck, do you want to elaborate on that? That even the most random things can be interconnected.

Chuck Bryant

HM, I may let Josh handle that because I think that was actually his line. But I will say that we, uh, do find that the world seems to be getting a little smaller. Like, the more episodes over 15 years that we do, we find ourselves saying a lot more, oh, wait, we also talked about this thing and that show, uh, or a person like, boy, this guy, this lady keeps popping up all over the place, whether it’s a psychologist or some sort of scientist or something. So that’s always fun.

Josh Clark

Yeah. Pliny the Elder, we found, pops up a lot. The very famous historian from, ah, Rome, um, and then Galen, this physician who we figured out probably knew Pliny, which just blew our minds, but yeah, ah, we’ll be doing a podcast episode, and sometimes it’s like section to section, we’ve done an episode on those things. So, it is neat to see how everything is interconnected. And it’s kind of taught us that even if you can’t see it, we still know it’s there. That somehow, some way, everything is connected.

We just did an episode on large language models; AI chat Bots and the reason they know so much stuff is because they’ve figured out connections, um, that we’ve not necessarily made yet. Um, and I think just in kind of understanding how they work, it just goes to prove that point even further, that everything’s connected in ways that we can’t necessarily detect. And I just think that’s a really neat way to look at the universe. It’s not like we came up with it. I’m pretty sure, uh, Buddhists have believed that for quite a while before us. But, um, it’s cool to discover that by doing nonfiction research rather than spirituality.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, there’s a picture book author that’s here, uh, in Colorado, where I am. Her name is Beth Anderson, and she talks a lot, uh, when she’s creating her nonfiction books about mining for the heart of the story. And so, it would be one thing for you guys to spill out a bunch of facts, right? That’s interesting. But there has to be a level of story to these facts to engage the listener and, in the case of your book, to engage the reader. So, do you have any secrets for once you settle on your topics for, as Beth would say, mining for the hot of the story?

Chuck Bryant

That’s a great question. We get people that write in a lot and ask for tips. Uh, people that are starting their own new shows and stuff like that. And, uh, I was just emailing with, um, a gentleman last week, and one of the things I told him was, whatever you’re talking about, try and find a story in there somehow because it’s more engaging and it’s not so complicated when you just think of it in terms of a, uh, traditional three-act kind of structure.

It actually helps with the way commercial breaks work in podcasts. There are two in the middle, and so it’s sort of set up in a three-part format anyway. And so, if you can just kind of structure it traditionally like a beginning, middle, and end, like I learned when I was studying journalism in college, right down to Shakespeare, that sort of basic beginning, middle, end thing. Uh, even if it’s something super sciencey. And there’s usually a history to it. So, we try to work in order of a timeline, uh, starting at the beginning, and it seems to fall in place story-wise that way.

Josh Clark

Yeah, I think that adds a storytelling aspect to our podcast. Even though it’s nonfiction, we’re still, in a weird way, telling the story of that nonfiction thing, that real thing. The only other thing I would add to that is I think we found that if you stumble across a question in research, you don’t just walk past it. You go find an answer to that question. And along the way, you’ll probably turn up a couple more questions. So, you follow those to their conclusion, uh, and they’ll lead you to even more stuff. And if you start doing that, you start to realize you’re kind of circling back here and there to different places. And after hours of research, you’ve just kind of uncovered the whole thing as it is, um, just by answering questions and not walking past them and taking things for granted.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, that’s great. Well, I want to sort of have a little fun here, and I want to work our way through the table of contents. So, I’m going to read the name of a chapter and it’s subheading, and I want you to share the first thing that pops into your mind. And it can either be about the specific topic, or it could be something that, maybe while you were writing this particular chapter, that pops into your mind. So, anything just quick, fun, whatever comes to your mind. So, the first chapter, chapter one, is Mr. Potato Head: America’s Toy. Josh?

Josh Clark

Uh, that Mr. Potato Head actually used to be a potato. Like, it was you’re going to say that the eyes and the mouth and the nose that came in the box, and your parents gave you the potato to stick them on, which seems like a bad idea, really, if you stop and think about it.

Chuck Bryant

That’s what I would have said. I knew you were going to say that. That’s the fact of that chapter, for sure.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah. And do either of you own the classic Potato Head or the Doth Tater?

Chuck Bryant

I have an almost eight-year-old daughter, so she has a potato head somewhere, although we may have regifted that to a younger neighbor or something by now. But, yeah, we had the classic.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, we had the classic and the Darth Tater.

All right. Chapter two: How to get lost and seven ways to stay that way. Chuck?

Chuck Bryant

Um, how to get lost, I believe, and Josh will probably have to help me out with this one, but, um, there was something about the human; this was a while ago, so apologies, but there was something about the human instinct. Is it basically wrong from the start, Josh, where your instinct is to head in a certain direction, and that’s probably wrong. I don’t remember. What was it?

Josh Clark

Yeah, I think there’s, like, yes, absolutely. No one does what you’re supposed to do, which is stay put and let people find you. I think the fascinating thing about it is that people do they lose their minds in predictable ways. And I think there was, like, seven different ways in the chapter. Like, they’ll try to follow a direction or follow, like, uh, a stream or something like that. And apparently, there’s been, uh, cases, uh, where people are lost in the woods, and they’re so focused on following the stream or the North Star, whatever, they’ll walk through people’s backyards and just keep going, rather than running to that house and saying, please help me, I’m lost in the woods. Um, that was a really interesting chapter, too, that was based on a paper we just turned up years back that just kind of got added to the list, and we pulled it out for the book.

Bianca Schulze

Yes. So, chapter Three: Demolition Derbies. Why we love to watch things go boom. Who wants to go?

Josh Clark

I’ll go. I have a personal one. Uh, my mom was an Er nurse when I was growing up, and she worked with a guy named Rosie, a big man, big, like, teddy bear of a man. Um, and he was a demolition derby driver. Like, a real live demolition derby. He would get in cars and drive them until they were too wrecked to drive any further, and he may or may not have won. I never got to see one in real life, but just knowing somebody who did that, I think, probably added some weird layer to my life that I’m not fully aware of.

Bianca Schulze

All right, chapter four, and I’m definitely going with Chuck on this one. Facial hair, the long and short of it.

Chuck Bryant

Uh, yeah, this one was interesting because, uh, facial hair isn’t one of those things where, uh, I believe, evolutionarily speaking, I know it can kind of keep your face warm, but I don’t think there was, like, the hugest benefit, uh, and it kind of came around more just for style. Isn’t that right, Josh?

Josh Clark

Yeah, I think it makes no sense, evolutionarily.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah. And just also being amazed at all of the different kinds of funny names over the years, uh, like the Soul Patch and the Van Dyke, and, uh, they all have fun names.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah. You can tell me if I’m wrong, but I believe your style is the Chuckers.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah, I guess so. It’s getting a little bit long now that I’m seeing it on the Zoom. I’ve been keeping it shorter lately.

Bianca Schulze

All right, chapter five: Back Masking: When recording backward is moving forward.

Chuck Bryant

You got that one, Josh.

Josh Clark

That one I always associate with Judas Priest because they were the ones who were sued for it. Um, but I just remember that from our childhood, that was just one of those things you always carried with you, um, part of that weird part of the early 80s where parents were just out of their minds scared for their children’s safety, which was, like, the polar opposite of what they’d all been like ten years before. So, it was an interesting time to live through that because I was right at that age where my parents were like, you’re never listening to Judas Priest ever in your life. Um, because of that whole backmasking scandal, which apparently turned out to not be at all true whatsoever, it wasn’t until they started accusing people of backmasking that people started backmasking, which is pretty neat.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah, I remember, too; for me, that chapter was once, uh, like Josh was saying, bands started sort of messing with, uh, the PMRC, which is the Parents Music Resource Center, which led the charge on stuff like backmasking and, uh, labeling, uh, music as parental, uh, advisories and stuff like that. So, they started messing with them. And the band that led the charge more than any other, uh, was ELO, which was very surprising. The Electric Light Orchestra.

Bianca Schulze

Sorry. Go ahead, Josh. You go.

Josh Clark

For your listeners who don’t remember or don’t know what backmasking is, where you record something on a record so that when you play it backwards, it says something usually subliminal and usually, uh, evil.

Chuck Bryant

Right? Like a hidden Satanic message or something, even though they never were.

Bianca Schulze

All right, chapter six, Aging.

Chuck Bryant

Josh is gonna have to take this one. I’m aging, so I don’t remember.

Josh Clark

Uh, the thing that sticks out to me is that they’re actually making progress on, uh, not only halting aging but actually reversing it in mice, um, which is pretty hopeful, actually. This isn’t something that they’re going to be messing around with 100 years from now. They might have it within 20 or 50 years on humans where we just don’t have to age any longer; we’ll still die. But the whole premise of aging is that, um, it’s actually, um, a disorder, a condition that has to do with actually moving forward in time. But what we think of as aging is, like, just wrong. We don’t have to do that. We don’t have to have a stoop. We don’t have to, um, have our bones turn brittle. And the researchers working on that right now are trying to make it so we don’t do that. I guess we just are running at age 110 and just drop dead or something.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah. I will say I’m going to move on to the next chapter, but before I do that particular chapter, chapter Six on Aging, I think, was the one that, um, blew my mind the most in terms of the readiness of that science and where they actually are with that right now. It blew my mind. And then, of course, I think you put a dollar amount that gets spent on antiaging things at the moment. I was like, that is a crazy amount of money that people spend on that. Well, chapter seven, The pet rock: The savior of 1975 or the dumbest toy of the best decade.

Chuck Bryant

That one was fun. I mean, we have quite a few podcast episodes that we’ve done over the years about either kind, uh, of fads or fad toys or just or, uh, sometimes just, um, like cultural iconic, uh, cultural, uh, toys like slinkies and things like that that are still around Mr. Potato Head. But Pet Rocks was definitely one of those where, uh, it’s a place in time that something like that happens, and it’s often inexplicable, ah, why people would in masse buy something like a pet rock, um, and usually fats like that go away kind of as quickly as they enter the scene. But, um, they make a lot of money in that year or so that those things are popular. So, it’s always astounding to see how much money people would spend on a rock.

Bianca Schulze

All right, chapter eight: Donuts: The History of America’s snack food.

Josh Clark

This is far and away my favorite chapter. This is a labor of love. Um, when we were working on this, um, uh, but the thing that stands out to me that just kind of like a quick and dirty fact is that doughnut D-O-N-U-T is actually a contraction of doughnut. D-O-U-G-H-N-U-T. Um, they shortened it so that bakers could put it on their windows. So technically, there should be an apostrophe after dough, which would be hilarious.

Bianca Schulze

Yes, exactly. And my question before we move on to the next chapter is, I want to know, and I’ll start with you, Chuck. Are you a yeasty or a cakey?

Chuck Bryant

Uh, boy, I don’t eat a lot of donuts, even though I love them. Uh, because it’s—just can’t keep doing that your whole life. I like both a lot. I love a good cake donut, though.

Bianca Schulze

What about you, Josh?

Josh Clark

I alternate between the two, one after the other.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah, it’s a good move.

Bianca Schulze

I’m a yeast doughnut all the way. Cake’s fine. Cake is fine, but the yeast donuts are my favorite.

Josh Clark

I was going to say, well, then, of course, you know that the Krispy Kreme Original glazed is far and away the best yeast stone I’d ever created.

Bianca Schulze

Yes, absolutely. Chapter Nine: The Jersey Devil: Who is the monster of the pine barons?

Chuck Bryant

Uh, I lived in New Jersey for a while, and that’s where I first heard about the legend of the Jersey Devil. This one was kind of fun, and it’s another one I think we’ve done a few podcast episodes about sort of famous legends like that. Uh, whether it’s the Yeti or Sasquatch or, uh, Loch Ness Monster—I know we covered —and all of them I sort of loop together. It’s just sort of fun that people, uh, in history have had enough time to sort of create these legends of, uh, beware of the woods over there because of blank, this ghoul, or whatever. Um, so I just think it’s kind of fun. It’s usually, like, fun for kids to make up these campfire stories or not make up, but kind of keep telling, keep these stories alive around the campfire. And that’s definitely the case with the Jersey Devil.

Bianca Schulze

All right, chapter ten: Trillionaires: Are they possible? And who will it be?

Josh Clark

Um, the thing that stood out to me was that, um, we figured out that Vladimir Putin is probably the richest person in the world by far, but he’s so good at hiding his money that no one knows that really, um, you have to be a pretty big foreign policy wonk to be familiar, um, with that fact. But, um, the other thing about it is that he’s apparently stolen basically all of it and just hidden it around the world. So, kind of reveals a little bit of international intrigue just lying right beneath the surface.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah. The fact I loved from that chapter, and please, somebody’s going to have to fact-check that. I’m remembering it, uh, correctly, was that the average family to become a trillionaire? I think it was something like it would take them 16 million years of just earning their average income to become a trillionaire. So clearly, it isn’t going to happen for the average American family unless we go back to chapter six and work on, ah, the aging.

Chuck Bryant

That’s right.

Bianca Schulze

I see random things interconnected. Um, let’s see. Chapter eleven: The Scotland Yard Crime Museum: Nothing to see here.

Chuck Bryant

What was it that they had there, Josh? That was so, I mean, they have so many interesting things there, but I remember there being one, uh, in their collection. One thing that was really just fascinating. Was it Jack the Ripper related?

Josh Clark

Yeah, I, um, can’t remember what they have of his, but they do, they have something of, from I think they might have the actual what’s called the Dear Boss letter, which is allegedly a letter written by Jack the Ripper to, I think, one of the cops chasing him, or to the press, I’m not sure. And that’s just, like, the tip of the iceberg. But the worst part about it is you have to be a, uh, member, um, of law enforcement to get in. They don’t let the general public in. They have this amazing crime museum, and the rest of us can’t see it, which drives me crazy.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, that actually comes across in the chapter, which I love that you and, like, hint we want to come in, and we want to see what’s in there.

All right. Chapter 12. Well Witching: The Ancient Art of Guessing with a Stick.

Chuck Bryant

This is the one that we did a podcast episode on recently, right there in front of my face. Um, yeah, we turned this into a podcast episode, and well Witching, or, uh, using, uh, a divining rod, people, uh, have been doing it forever, and it’s one of those things where it seems like it shouldn’t be a real thing and it’s just a bunch of hooey, but it also seems to work. Uh, but then naysayers will say, yeah, but there’s water underground everywhere, so if you walk around long enough, you’re bound to hit water if you dig, um, deep enough. But also, we learn there are modern, um, utility companies that they will, instead of hiring out very expensive, um, uh, people and equipment to really find the water, they sometimes will pay someone, whatever, $20 an hour to go out with their divining rod and see if they can find water on a property. And, uh, you and I are paying for that as part of your water bill sometimes.

Bianca Schulze

So fun. So, let’s go into Chapter 13: Dog Smells: Canine, Sense, and Sensibility.

Josh Clark

Um, the little, um, behind-the-scenes fact for me is there’s an illustration of a dog wearing Frito’s bags. That’s my dog. Momo is the model for that illustration.

Chuck Bryant

I love that for the Frito toes.

Bianca Schulze

I never, um, actually knew that that was a thing that dogs’ paws can smell like Fritos. But the second I read it, I was like, yeah, of course, they smell like Fritos.

Chuck Bryant

It’s a bacteria, right, that ends up just sort of smelling like corn chips.

Josh Clark

Yeah. And it’s not harmful or anything like that. It just has a weird smell.

Bianca Schulze

And it’s like the perfect kind of fun fact chapter that kids love. So, chapter 14: and this is the closing chapter, Child prodigies, precocious mimics, or tiny geniuses?

Chuck Bryant

The, uh, one thing that stood out to me about this one that, uh, it’s just sort of an obvious thing that I never really thought about, but child prodigies are child prodigies because they’re so much further ahead than their peers, but when they grow up, they have peers. So, it’s an interesting transition. And that’s why you’ve seen a lot of sorts, um, of troubled child prodigies later in life, because they go from literally being peerless to having, um, peers. Like when they go to college at 14, then all the other people are as smart as they are, but, um, they’re in their late teens or 20s. So, it’s an emotional transition that, uh, can be rough to navigate, I think.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, absolutely. All right, so I want to know, and we’ll go with you first, Josh. What’s your favorite part of the book? And this could be a favorite chapter, just a favorite line, a favorite kind of feature that’s in the book. So what’s a highlight for you?

Josh Clark

Um, one of my favorite things is in the Getting Lost chapter, there’s a footnote where it talks about it references something in the text about, um, how you should paint a tree to mark your way as you’re kind of navigating through the woods. If you’re going to lose your mind and not stay put anyway, at least try to try to mark these trees. And then, in the footnote, it explains exactly how you should mark the tree with exactly a perfect square using fluorescent day glow paint. Um, and if the square is a little off-plumb, then you want to tear that bark off and move on to the next tree and start again.

And it’s just this weird dry instruction set of instructions that, if you stop and think about it, they’re just totally nuts. And that was the whole point. And if you look at the footnote under that footnote, it says that, uh, only I thought that this footnote was funny. And I had to fight every stage of the book to keep that footnote in there. And it finally made it through to the final publication. But I still laugh at that footnote when I go back and read it.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, I love the footnotes. The footnotes just add so much extra humor. And I feel as though the majority of kids in any book that they’re reading, particularly a textbook for school, will likely always just forgo reading the footnotes. But I think that your book will teach them the importance of the footnotes because often, there’s these little nuggets of gold in there that just enhance the whole experience. So, I love the footnotes in your book. Chuck, what’s a highlight for you?

Chuck Bryant

Uh, well, um, I loved the illustrations. Um, the writing of the book was fun, but like Josh said, it’s tough when you’re working with editors and revisions and everything, so it was a bit of a slog. One of the really fun parts—because it wasn’t on us—was simply working with the design team and laying out the book and what it would look like and feel like. Uh, and our illustrator, Carly Monardo. Um, we got a big list of people, uh, to choose from and to look through, and that was a really fun part.

I’m really into design and visual aesthetics in my personal life, and so, uh, I had a really good time working, uh, with Carly. She was awesome, and the illustrations are great and really enhanced the book a lot. So that was the most fun part for me, I think.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, I love, um, the little mic icon that denotes where when you’re talking about something, there is an actual podcast episode. So, if kids want to go explore a topic more, they can go and listen. And again, that brings us back to the random interconnectedness. That podcast topic may be separate from what the chapter is about, but there’s more information to delve deeper into these different aspects. So, um, I loved that feature as well. Well, is there anything that you feel we haven’t covered that you want listeners to know about the book?

Chuck Bryant

Uh, I don’t think so. I mean, thank you. This was such a thorough, uh, thoughtful, uh, interview. This has been the best one yet.

Bianca Schulze

Oh, yeah.

Josh Clark

Thank you, Bianca.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, you’re really welcome. So, I just want to close out. I would love to know when a, uh, kid is done reading Stuff Kids Should Know; what do you hope they’ve taken away? And Josh, uh, let’s go with you.

Josh Clark

Um, a desire to learn more. Um, if kids read our book and go pick up other books because they want to, like, we kind of got in there somehow. We got to them. We kind of taught them that there’s a lot of neat stuff to learn in the world. And I can’t imagine doing anything better with the book than that.

Bianca Schulze

Chuck, do you want to add anything?

Chuck Bryant

I totally agree. It’s sort of the, um, philosophy of the show is always that we hope it acts as a springboard, rather than being kind of the final word on anything, uh, that we give you just enough to get your curiosity going to where you, uh, search for a little bit more. And like Josh said, one question leads to another, and track down those answers and just stay curious.

Bianca Schulze

Absolutely. Well, I never want to play against either of you in a game of Trivial Pursuit. I have always been terrible at Trivial Pursuit. I will happily continue listening to your podcast, Stuff You Should Know, and I’m so glad that it has inspired you to want to make the everyday world extraordinary for kids, getting them to dig deeper into the whys and the hows. And I think fueling curious kids with the unique wonders of the world can only ever lead to good things. So, thank you so much for writing Stuff Kids Should Know. And thank you so much for being on The Growing Readers Podcast today.

Chuck Bryant

Thank you.

Josh Clark

Thank you for having us.

The transcription has been lightly edited for readability.

About the Book

Publisher’s Book Summary: WARNING: Contents of this book are cooler than they appear.

From the masterminds responsible for the beloved, award-winning podcast, Stuff You Should Know, comes a gut-busting and brain-bursting nonfiction book for young readers.

You know the deal. There’s Language Arts, Math, Science and History. You have the color-coded folders and notebooks; you know the material. The classic subjects. But why isn’t there a Stuff That Knocks Your Socks Off class, or Random Facts To Rock Your World?

Well, luckily, with Stuff Kids Should Know, an incomplete compendium of only the most interesting topics, you will find fascinating stories and facts that will melt your mind! From demolition derbies to Mr. Potato Head to the history of facial hair, this book is full of funny, surprising information that sparks curiosity and reveals the magic of knowledge.

For Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant, the founders of the massively popular podcast Stuff You Should Know, the everyday world can be extraordinary when you dig a little deeper into the “whys” and the “hows”. With plenty of clever insights, silly illustrations, and an array of topics, this book digs deeper into stuff we all wish we knew more about. After all, who thought a rock would be a good idea for a pet? Well, let’s find out…

Buy the Book

Show Notes

Resources:

You can listen to the Stuff You Should Know podcast on iHeart Radio.

Discussion Topics:

Chuck and Josh discuss:

•  How they adapted their podcast content for their kids’ book
• Their love of nonfiction and how they became interested in learning
• Choosing topics for their podcast and how they selected topics for their book
• Researching and writing and relying on a body of research to have a conversation
• Tricks for fact-checking over the years, such as investigating red flags and finding multiple sources to back up claims
• Infusing humor into the show and finding humor in most things
• That everything is interconnected in some way
• Finding a story in whatever they’re talking about
• Their approach to researching and writing nonfiction emphasizes the importance of following questions and not taking things for granted
• A glimpse at each of the chapters of the book

Thank you for listening to the Growing Readers Podcast episode: Chuck Bryant and Josh Clark Talk About Stuff Kids Should Know. For the latest episodes from The Growing Readers Podcast, Follow Now on Spotify.