Here’s A Podcast About Cool Jobs

It’s called “Hey, Cool Job!”

Here’s something nice to listen to while you do the dishes or fold the laundry or grocery shop: a podcast called “Hey, cool job!” all about cool jobs and the people that have them. Hosted by writer and general Very Interesting Person Mary H.K. Choi, it’s a podcast about people who have arguably cool jobs and how they got them. Cannabis growers! Porn stars! Writers! All of these are cool jobs, the kind of jobs you’d love to ask about if you encountered these folks in the wild but gerenally don’t because youi’re polite.

It’s great if you’re a nosy person, prone to asking strangers how they ended up in their line of work. It’s also great if you’re into the nitty gritty of how people think about the choices they make with what they decide to do for work. Cool jobs are really just jobs — no big deal. Everyone has one. Asking someone how they got their job at a cocktail party feels invasive and slightly rude; opening a discussion about the path they took to reach their destination is the better and arguably more interesting onversation to have.

The most interesting part to me is the process — how they got there, what they think about their industry and what it takes to do the kind of work that they do. Cool jobs like the ones Choi covers in her podcast are mystifying because of the veil of mystery surrounding how the people with the jobs actually got there. There’s no real traditional career path to becoming a porn publisher or a partner at Y-Combinator; the notion of a “tradition” as it relates to career is mostly dead. People do what they need to do for money and hopefully, they like what they end up doing at least half the time.

Here’s an episode about cannabis growers.

Here’s a super-interesting episode with a Japanese porn publisher and translator. You’re going to learn a lot here. I certainly did.

All I want to do now is listen to podcasts about people with occupations more interesting and varied than mine! Are there others out there? Share them with me!

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