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.
This isn’t a self-help show or a career coaching podcast. How to Be Anything is for the job-curious, the creatively restless, and anyone who likes eavesdropping on someone else’s weird path through life. It brings a literary, documentary sensibility to work and identity.
The show is created and hosted by journalist Emily McCrary, and it blends deep curiosity and narrative storytelling to explore the stories that go beyond job titles.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Update frequency
- every 4 days
- Average duration
- 18 minutes
- Episodes
- 13
- Years Active
- 2025
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…
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 t…
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 zucch…
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 nothi…
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. …
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, whe…
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 cl…
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 leisu…
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 …
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 c…
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 h…
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 …
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 u…