How to Be Anything
How to Be Anything is a documentary-style podcast that profiles people with unusual, surprising, and wildly specific jobs. From puppeteers to tower climbers to scientists who search for dark matter, each episode explores how people end up in jobs no one tells you about in school. The show is created and hosted by journalist Emily McCrary, blending deep curiosity and narrative storytelling to explore the stories that go beyond job titles.
Episodes
Bonus: I Used to Be A Weed Courier
Laney spent two years cycling across New York City as a courier, delivering weed and gummies straight to people’s doors. Along the way, she met eccentric characters: a man with a hallway full of newspapers, a woman with a house full of disco balls, and a musician diagnosed with Parkinson's who used weed to play his instruments. The job was exhausting, risky, sometimes scary, but also filled with s
10. How to Teach Dogs to Find Cancer
On September 11, Dr. Cindy Otto cared for the search-and-rescue dogs working the pile at Ground Zero—an experience that changed the course of her career. Today, she leads the Penn Vet Working Dog Center, where dogs are trained to climb ladders, sniff out explosives, and even detect cancer in humans (and dogs!). In this episode, Dr. Otto shares how dogs learn to separate the “signal from the noise”
9. How to Be a Doctor in the Arctic Circle
What does it take to be the only doctor in a remote Arctic village, where polar bears roam and lab results arrive by plane—if the weather allows? In this episode, Dr. Jen Pond shares her journey from practicing medicine in a mud hut in India to working at the world’s highest ER at Everest Base Camp, and now serving an Inuit community in Nunavut. She reflects on the extremes of remote medicine, the
8. How to Be a Tower Climber
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 powe
Bonus: I Used to Be a Corporate Butler
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 a
7. How to Be a Forensic Artist
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
Bonus: "My Friend's a Rapper!" (HTBA Listeners Tell Their Stories)
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 f
6. How to Search for Dark Matter Underground and in Space
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 i
5. How to Be a Foley Sound Artist
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 squ
4. How to Be a Puppetry Artist
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
Bonus: I Used to Be an Artist at Madame Tussauds
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 (a
3. How to Be a Dungeons & Dragons Lorekeeper
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
2. How to Be a Sheepdog Trainer
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 do
1. How to Be a Death Doula
Erin Bishop was building a successful consulting business when a close friend was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She brought him into her home and cared for him as he died, and what she saw changed her life. In this episode, Erin explains what a death doula does and what a good death can look like. We also explore death cafes, legacy projects, and how death can shape the way we live.We're a boots
Coming Soon: How to Be Anything
How to Be Anything is a documentary-style podcast that profiles people with unusual, surprising, and wildly specific jobs. From puppeteers to tower climbers to scientists who search for dark matter underground and in space, each episode explores how people end up in jobs no one tells you about in school—and what it’s like to build a life doing something most of us have never heard of.The show is c
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