00:00.00 archpodnet All right? We're back with Dr Anna Goldfield for episode one nine of a life ruins podcast and we're about about to learn about the origins of the dirt podcast and something I've been super so fascinated about we first learned about the dirt. When we were coming up with a life in ruins and we were looking for titles for our podcast. We came up with a bunch and we're like looks yes well I mean like you guys had it first for a long longer period of time clearly but it was like you know all the clever ones we could come up with they were like already taken. 00:16.47 Anna Oh no, did we scoop you. 00:58.70 archpodnet And so we were like oh and so that's how we first learned at the jert and how I started listening to you and Amber was I started. Ah when we were doing the preliminary stuff for ruins like what's the archaeology content out there and yours was already a podcast that like out of all the ones that we listen to. Yours was the one that I personally connected with the most like I like that banter and the way that you guys run episodes. Um, and so like I listen to a lot of you guys as inspiration for how do we run ruins. Um, so how did you first get into podcasting. 01:27.45 Anna Oh thank you. 01:44.79 Anna I Think to go all the way all the way back to sort of acquiring the skill set um is my history with music because so I play a couple different instruments and in high school I. As my senior project I recorded an album of original songs. They're very goofy very embarrassing now. Um, but I so I learned how to record how to edit in I think it was pro tools at the time. But. 03:03.12 archpodnet This timeout were they archeology themed. Okay, okay, have you heard like ah have you heard of Hangover Trench Nas The stupid archeology album that I made for my public archeology class. It is. 02:55.50 Anna No, no, no, not at all. No this was this was still high school. It was just like no my feelings. Um. 03:14.37 Anna No oh my God no. 03:42.58 archpodnet Super embarrassing super bad but being clo me and David made a baner called ah clovis paradise said it's a parody of a kingsters paradise. 03:35.90 Anna Oh yeah, that's amazing. Um, ah no, that's okay and that has reminded me that that I promised flint Dibble who is the son of harold dibble and we're friends. 04:07.35 archpodnet Anyways, it did me to interrupt it like please carry on. 04:09.61 Anna In real life and on Twitter but I promised him on Twitter that if I reached 2000 twitter followers I would do some sort of parody or original song about archeology. So that's a challenge to your listeners. Go go find me on Twitter and follow me. Um, and I'll I'll do that I promise. Um, but. 04:50.88 archpodnet Yeah, yeah. 04:49.43 Anna That meant that I knew how I already sort of had the the background skills to to edit audio stuff. Um, and so fast forward to 2017 I had just finished my ph d and I had. I was on the job market which is a nice way of saying unemployed and I was living in California and with my partner and Amber came to visit me just as sort of a so we Amber and I met in undergrad. Um, she was a year behind me. Um. We took a lot of classes together. We worked in the same dining hall together. So we were very close friends in undergrad and we stayed close friends afterwards and she had come to visit me in California and during that visit we sort of joked like ah we could start a podcast and her original idea was that. She would make me watch the film 10000 bc and then just sort of I would get angry about it because it's a very bad movie. Um, and then we realized that that wasn't really a sustainable model but a couple months after that after the kind of. That joke was getting kicked around so I was on the job. Market Amber had ah at that point left her graduate program at Berkeley and and was also on the job market and we so we were both in this position of like lots of skills. No job right? We were both like you know, very intelligent educated people who. Really had this drive to to learn and to want to learn about the things that excite us but really nowhere to to put that that energy and know where to put that those skills and so we actually started talking about hey what if we really did start a podcast. And so we did what I imagine that you guys did at first was we we looked around at the available content and we talked a lot about what we wanted people to walk away from our show with what we wanted the tone of our show to be what we wanted sort of the mission of our show to be and. The things that we landed on sort of the the strongest was first of all that there was a lot of archeology content out there that was very by experts for experts. There was a lot of like really inside baseball stuff that if you were a new listener starting out. With no archeology background or maybe just a real interest in archeology. You'd done a lot of reading or something like that. Even then you wouldn't necessarily feel like you were listening to something that was accessible to you. You were listening to somebody talk about Crm and total stations and. 10:22.37 Anna Using a lot of jargon and not necessarily breaking down some of the bigger concepts that are sort of baked into an archaeological education. So if you have taken archeology classes. There are some sort of foundational things that you learn and then from that point on you don't really have to. Relearn them. But for somebody coming in fresh those concepts still need to be broken down and so that was one of the things that we said First of all, we want this show to be accessible to someone coming in with no background whatsoever. We want to use storytelling to um. To get a cup to accomplish a couple things one to to engage people. Um like humans are wired to understand the world through narrative we construct our own narratives were the protagonists of those narratives and um, we understand other people's lives through narrative. And so to engage people storytelling is is sort of the best way to do that for us and also to really kind of um reintroduce people into the past because a lot of times I think when people consider the past they think of static. Images or moments or or eras these things that seem very kind of distant and almost clinical but these were you know any any people living in the past were real people with lives and thoughts and emotions and. The same kinds of fears or experiences that that we might have they they felt excitement. They felt grief. They felt happiness. They felt you know all all these human emotions and we wanted to emphasize that that was a part of life in the past as well. just just Put put humans back into the past and so we we planned for about three months and then recorded the first 3 episodes of the dirt and released them on July first Twenty eighteen and so we did we. There was a lot of research into like the actual practical aspects of this There's a lot of googling of like how to import sound as mpthree you know, like all the little thing there's a lot of ah, almost breaking down into hysterics because. Something wasn't working and then it turned out like the thing wasn't plugged in the right, you know it was like a lot of a lot of that kind of stuff. But once we had all of those little issues ironed out. Um, we recorded our first 3 episodes. The sound is really bad. 15:36.10 Anna Like if you go listen to the dirt by all means listen to the first 3 episodes but know that we were recording with tiny little dinky mics and we didn't really know what we were doing yet. We didn't have kind of the flow of the show down yet and so um. 16:14.66 archpodnet Right? And I think we tell our audience like go back and listen to the first 5 by all means but like so those same things like we didn't know what we were doing. We were too much like having fanboy moments over the people we had on. 16:19.51 Anna Yep. 16:44.56 archpodnet Rather than like engaging with them in a serious manner over their content like the first episode was like 1 of our favorite at the time ph d candidates at Wyoming and we're like do you remember when you first Met O Spencer and it was just like there was no point to that episode. We're like. 16:29.11 Anna Yeah, oh for sure. 16:51.49 Anna Do you know we love you. 17:14.90 archpodnet It's like oh dude, please tell us we really want your attention and it's just like oh God it's just so cringe you when you listen to those original episodes and we tell folks all the time like. 17:11.33 Anna Yeah, sure listen to him but know that it gets better. 17:35.98 archpodnet Yeah, like listen to maybe episode 20 or something like you know, listen to the first one and then like move on maybe a ah ah page or 2 and then once we figure our mojo. 17:26.25 Anna Sure, absolutely yeah, like if you want it here an episode that sounds like we're yelling down an elementary school hallway absolutely episodes like 1 through 5 those are for you. But then we got real microphones and. Ah, sort of figured our stuff out. But yeah, one of the things is that as and we're not ah as much of an interview based show as a life in ruins. We do have occasional guests on. But um, we are still learning how to be better interviewers. So it's it's been really cool to see how you guys have evolved as as interviewers and how kind of your technique. Has changed and and usually like you you found your hit your stride It's really awesome. Um, yeah, but but yeah, so we um, we started the show and really kind of depended on our own social networks to get it out there because. 19:09.00 archpodnet Ah, thank you I. 19:21.31 Anna And getting it on at like as a podcast getting it onto the Apple Podcasts app and stuff isn't actually that difficult sort of any dum dum with a microphone can do that. But um, yeah, so we we got it out there and we started out with a list of like 1 of the first things that we did as we were planning. Was to brainstorm topics and so we ended up having an initial list of 50 or so topics that we just were like these are things that sound cool like it. It was a mix of things that we were already knowledgeable about things that interested us news stories we had seen recently? um. Things that we were super interested in like as kids recommendations from other archeology friends things like that and so we we had a list of episodes and we ah being still unemployed. Ah we had lots of time to produce those episodes and so. Um, that is what we did and it really it was a slow kind of a slow burn but it really started to take off and then it especially took off after we joined the archeology podcast network because there was already sort of ah a big old audience built into that. 22:05.94 archpodnet So what was that push to get you guys on the apn because you guys were solo and and you guys are also I believe the only podcast on the apn that still edits their own show. So you're still doing that. 22:19.85 Anna I'm very I have a a little bit of a control issue. Um, but I really like I mean yes, editing is quite a bit of work. Especially now that I do actually have a 9 to 5 job. But um I really like being the one that builds the story. Because at this point Amber and I have been doing this for so long and we're so kind of in sync and also we've known each other for more than fifteen years now and so we're so kind of accustomed to each other that I'm able to kind of piece together the story and the flow of the episode the way that I know that. We both kind of want it to go and I am not sure that anyone else would be able to do that. That said I have a lot of respect for the apn and all of the production stuff that happens there I just am really reluctant to. Ah, relinquish editorial control and that's more of a me problem but the the image I actually honestly don't remember where I first heard about the apn it must have been like maybe someone listened to our show and said hey why aren't you on the archeology podcast network um, but I do remember that I met um. Chris Chris ah Webster at the there's sort of what is he he's just like the the producer. The the Ceo of apn. Um I met him at the so the conference that what the annual meeting of the um. But as a society for California archeology because I had gone to promote the dirt and that was kind of a fiasco on his own for other reasons but I had gone to promote the dirt by myself because amber at the time was living in West Virginia and so um yeah so I had gone to to promote the dirt and I guess it was just like in the in the exhibitors hall I was walking around and Chris was there um, promoting the apn and so I we. Got to talking and he offered you know he said if you ever want to join the network. You know here are the benefits and he gave me a card and I went and talked it over with Amber and we decided that it would be a good idea because for 1 thing again, there was already this this large. Audience built in but then also it would mean that we would not have to host our own audio and that was an aspect of the show that at the time before we had a Patreon that supported the show was pretty costly. 27:49.55 Anna Um, we we hosted stuff on Soundcloud and and so like reducing that cost having the apn automatically push episodes out to all these platforms that we weren't necessarily on before um and and getting us out to a whole new audience of listeners were really big perks. But also we wanted to join the sort of the cast of of podcasts on on the apn felt like a good fit. 28:54.00 archpodnet It fair enough. Well what are do you have any favorite episodes that you guys have recorded because how many episodes do you guys have now. 28:50.59 Anna Um, we are currently on episode one eighty nine Eight getting really close to two hundred either one eighty nine or eighty eight just came out I should know this but but yes, um. 29:27.22 archpodnet Okay. 29:27.41 Anna Favorite episode I have so I have favorite episodes for different reasons. There are episodes that I'm extremely proud of for sort of intellectual reasons or because of their content and then there are episodes that I I really like because they're funny and dumb and so episode number 42 um, is always one that I recommend it is about um well it is inspired by the news story that came out right around the time that we wrote the episode about the exhumation of revolutionary american revolutionary war soldier Kasimir Pulaski who was apparently a hero of the revolutionary war he was killed in battle. Um, and he may have been intersex and so his remains were exhumed not for the reason of proving that he was or wasn't interested. Intersex it was. It was something else I think they wanted to move the remains or they were changing the monument where he was buried something like that again, this was episode 42 and that's like one hundred and forty episodes ago so but the media coverage just like the regular media. not even like the archeology journal coverage of this was not great the way that that it was treated like the definition of intersex often wasn't used correctly or it was like was this man really a woman like that's not what intersex means. So. 32:37.86 archpodnet I she's. 32:25.65 Anna We didn't I know or we did an episode um talking about that that issue but then also kind of breaking down how um archeologists like specifically osteologists can tell the difference between um. Biologically male and female and also like what intersex is and how that might present archeologically and how it is not a foolproof science like sexing a skeleton is not foolproof. There are indicators that show that an individual is more likely to have been male or female but like that's it's not a sure thing. And also we can't know unless we are told through through material objects or through writing how an individual identifies like people's thoughts and feelings don't fossilize so we're left with the skeleton and that is only helpful up to a point. So we use that episode to kind of dissect that issue no pun intended and kind of really um, bring to light some other kind of related stories that had to do with sexuality and and ah gender expression and identity and things like that. So. That's that's an episode that I'm I'm very proud of. For its content. Um an episode that I am I just very fond of because it's so silly is our fish people episode. Um and that came about as again much like the dirt podcast itself came came up as a joke that stuck and. We were having Amber and I were having kind of a production meeting and we were brainstorming episode topics and I was trying to remember the name of a site that was really interesting to me because of these particular statues that look like kind of anthropomorphized fish and what I see. Was what I thought what I said was what about that site with the fish people and obviously Amber didn't know what I was talking about because that's a really silly thing to say and I tried to describe it and then I looked up the site. It's it's ah dollni vistanitza I think in Croatia Serbia czech republic oh no, um, but so that I mean. She just wrote fish people in the editorial document and then was like well I guess we're doing it and it ended up being a really fun episode like we really did talk about that site with the with the statues of just they if you look them up. They just look like I don't know if you combined. Ah, sort of um, a man with like a hadock It's just like these very mournful expressions very like sort of fishy little mouths and look. They're just like going. Oh no, um, very funny but it ended up being a cool episode and then my favorite part was ah. 38:00.61 Anna I I got sort of musically inspired and at the end just as a little bonus Easter Egg I made a track of um, just like a fully harmonized chorus. Ah little little song about fish people. Um, just as a little little fun Easter egg for the listener and so. I Don't know if Proud is the word I'd use for that one but I'm just very very fond of that episode. Um because it was so much fun and we've also you know we've done other episodes that that I've really enjoyed um one that I I liked was Um. We did an episode on Otsi the Iceman um because you know it's it took us a long time to get there because it's a subject that's sort of been endlessly covered but it was It was a really fun episode to do nonetheless and I think I think we still did a reasonably good job of keeping it archaeological but also. 39:32.16 archpodnet Here. 39:52.78 Anna It's like the coldest of cold cases. The 5000 year old sorry 7000 year old Marer. So it am again? Yep, we should did. 40:17.42 archpodnet Um I love how in the episode title because it's like oh my god that you guys put oom las on top of the o it was great. So and and just for our audience episode 1 one sevens fish people and episode one fifty four is oh my god it's see the ice man. 40:23.81 Anna Oh thank you Thank you for doing the work for me. 40:51.16 archpodnet Of course that's what I'm here for you're here to relax and just chat. 40:41.95 Anna Oh this is I don't have to edit this one and this is so good. 41:03.98 archpodnet I beet so and with that we'll be right back with ah Dr Anna Goldfield and we're going to hit up segment 3 right after these sweet sweet menac is by our producer and co-founder of the Apn chris webster.