Harvesting five million bushels of wheat and corn from Texas to Montana, outrunning hailstorms that decimate a year's income in 20 minutes, and running a multimillion-dollar convoy of equipment down the highway with Josh Beckley, a third-generation custom harvester from Kansas. Why do farmers outsource the harvesting of their own crops? And what happens when you drive a combine into a ditch?

WANT MORE EPISODE SUGGESTIONS? Grab our What It's Like To Be... "starter pack". It's a curated Spotify playlist with some essential episodes from our back catalogue.

GOT A COMMENT OR SUGGESTION? Email us at jobs@whatitslike.com

FOR SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES: Email us at partnerships@whatitslike.com

WANT TO BE ON THE SHOW? Leave us a voicemail at (919) 213-0456. We’ll ask you to answer two questions:

1. What’s a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know and what does it mean?

2. What’s a specific story you tell your friends that happened on the job? It could be funny, sad, anxiety-making, pride-inducing or otherwise.

We can’t respond to every message, but we do listen to all of them! We’ll follow up if it's a good fit.

Guiding grieving families through arrangement meetings, orchestrating meaningful memorial services within days, and preparing bodies for viewing with Heather Hill, a funeral director in North Carolina. What's different about doing makeup on a dead person? And what is it like to field a death call?

LINKS & REFERENCES

• Heather writes about her work on her website.
• She's a funeral director at Renaissance Funeral Home in Raleigh, North Carolina.
• "The Future is Female" - American Funeral Director on the surge of women graduating from mortuary school

WANT MORE EPISODE SUGGESTIONS? Grab our What It's Like To Be... "starter pack". It's a curated Spotify playlist with some essential episodes from our back catalogue.

GOT A COMMENT OR SUGGESTION? Email us at jobs@whatitslike.com

FOR SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES: Email us at partnerships@whatitslike.com

WANT TO BE ON THE SHOW? Leave us a voicemail at (919) 213-0456. We’ll ask you to answer two questions:

1. What’s a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know and what does it mean?

2. What’s a specific story you tell your friends that happened on the job? It could be funny, sad, anxiety-making, pride-inducing or otherwise.

We can’t respond to every message, but we do listen to all of them! We’ll follow up if it's a good fit.

Landing the Perseverance rover on Mars, working in clean rooms to minimize the microbial bug count, and slogging through hundreds of engineering trade-offs with Swati Mohan, an aerospace engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. What are the "seven minutes of terror"? And is there evidence of past life on Mars?

LINKS & REFERENCES:

• Watch Swati voice the landing of Perseverance in 2021.
• Swati's official NASA bio
• More about the Perseverance rover

Swati Mohan spoke with us in a personal capacity. The views expressed in this episode are her own and do not represent the views of NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or any other organization.

WANT MORE EPISODE SUGGESTIONS? Grab our What It's Like To Be... "starter pack". It's a curated Spotify playlist with some essential episodes from our back catalogue.

GOT A COMMENT OR SUGGESTION? Email us at jobs@whatitslike.com

FOR SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES: Email us at partnerships@whatitslike.com

WANT TO BE ON THE SHOW? Leave us a voicemail at (919) 213-0456. We’ll ask you to answer two questions:

1. What’s a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know and what does it mean?

2. What’s a specific story you tell your friends that happened on the job? It could be funny, sad, anxiety-making, pride-inducing or otherwise.

We can’t respond to every message, but we do listen to all of them! We’ll follow up if it's a good fit.

Defusing a crisis after an ambassador hinted at a preemptive strike on Russia, delivering demarches in multiple languages, and surviving the frantic evacuation of the Kabul embassy with John Johnson, a retired diplomat who spent more than twenty years in the US Foreign Service. Do diplomats still send "cables" in the 21st century? And what does "not/not" mean?

WANT MORE EPISODE SUGGESTIONS? Grab our What It's Like To Be... "starter pack". It's a curated Spotify playlist with some essential episodes from our back catalogue.

GOT A COMMENT OR SUGGESTION? Email us at jobs@whatitslike.com

FOR SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES: Email us at partnerships@whatitslike.com

WANT TO BE ON THE SHOW? Leave us a voicemail at (919) 213-0456. We’ll ask you to answer two questions:

1. What’s a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know and what does it mean?

2. What’s a specific story you tell your friends that happened on the job? It could be funny, sad, anxiety-making, pride-inducing or otherwise.

We can’t respond to every message, but we do listen to all of them! We’ll follow up if it's a good fit.

Wiring a neighborhood back to life after a tornado, coveting the work of helicopter linemen in Faraday suits, and surviving the collapse of a rotten utility pole with Elden Rivas, a journeyman lineman in Houston, Texas. What is the one sound on the crew radio that stops every lineman cold? And why does a squirrel on a transformer mean easy money?

WANT MORE EPISODE SUGGESTIONS? Grab our What It's Like To Be... "starter pack". It's a curated Spotify playlist with some essential episodes from our back catalogue.

GOT A COMMENT OR SUGGESTION? Email us at jobs@whatitslike.com

FOR SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES: Email us at partnerships@whatitslike.com

WANT TO BE ON THE SHOW? Leave us a voicemail at (919) 213-0456. We’ll ask you to answer two questions:

1. What’s a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know and what does it mean?

2. What’s a specific story you tell your friends that happened on the job? It could be funny, sad, anxiety-making, pride-inducing or otherwise.

We can’t respond to every message, but we do listen to all of them! We’ll follow up if it's a good fit.

Suspending the licenses of unsafe restaurant operators, hunting down the origins of foodborne illness outbreaks, and eliciting truthful answers from anxious managers with Justin Dwyer, a health inspector in Peoria, Illinois. What happens when a restaurant locks the door on an inspector? And why should you never wash your Thanksgiving turkey?

LINKS & REFERENCES

• Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen by Dan Heath. You can find the audiobook at Audible, Spotify, and Apple Books.
• The Poison Squad by Deborah Blum
• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
• USDA: To Wash Or Not to Wash Your Turkey

WANT MORE EPISODE SUGGESTIONS? Grab our What It's Like To Be... "starter pack". It's a curated Spotify playlist with some essential episodes from our back catalogue.

GOT A COMMENT OR SUGGESTION? Email us at jobs@whatitslike.com

FOR SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES: Email us at partnerships@whatitslike.com

WANT TO BE ON THE SHOW? Leave us a voicemail at (919) 213-0456. We’ll ask you to answer two questions:

1. What’s a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know and what does it mean?

2. What’s a specific story you tell your friends that happened on the job? It could be funny, sad, anxiety-making, pride-inducing or otherwise.

We can’t respond to every message, but we do listen to all of them! We’ll follow up if it's a good fit.

Hurtling down an ice track at nearly 100mph, perfecting the practice of visualization, and shaving off hundredths of a second with Kaillie Humphries, an Olympic bobsledder. What's the most feared track in the world? And how do athletes practice when there's no ice in the summer?

This episode originally aired on December 17th, 2024.

WANT MORE EPISODE SUGGESTIONS? Grab our What It's Like To Be... "starter pack". It's a curated Spotify playlist with some essential episodes from our back catalogue.

GOT A COMMENT OR SUGGESTION? Email us at jobs@whatitslike.com

FOR SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES: Email us at partnerships@whatitslike.com

WANT TO BE ON THE SHOW? Leave us a voicemail at (919) 213-0456. We’ll ask you to answer two questions:

1. What’s a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know and what does it mean?

2. What’s a specific story you tell your friends that happened on the job? It could be funny, sad, anxiety-making, pride-inducing or otherwise.

We can’t respond to every message, but we do listen to all of them! We’ll follow up if it's a good fit.

Negotiating cases in which neither spouse wants custody of the cat, setting clients' expectations about what's legally possible (versus what feels "right"), and finding hope in people's ability to bounce back from dark times with Lucy Stewart-Gould, a divorce lawyer in London. What simple question can break open a deadlocked settlement? And what's a "jurisdiction race"?

IF YOU LIKE THIS EPISODE: Check out what it's like to be a criminal defense attorney, a forensic accountant, or a couples therapist.

WANT MORE EPISODE SUGGESTIONS? Grab our What It's Like To Be... "starter pack". It's a curated Spotify playlist with some essential episodes from our back catalogue.

GOT A COMMENT OR SUGGESTION? Email us at jobs@whatitslike.com

FOR SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES: Email us at partnerships@whatitslike.com

WANT TO BE ON THE SHOW? Leave us a voicemail at (919) 213-0456. We’ll ask you to answer two questions:

1. What’s a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know and what does it mean?

2. What’s a specific story you tell your friends that happened on the job? It could be funny, sad, anxiety-making, pride-inducing or otherwise.

We can’t respond to every message, but we do listen to all of them! We’ll follow up if it's a good fit.