“Project Hail Mary” with Ray Porter

Guaranteed human. [MUSIC PLAYING]

“Welcome back for the second season of earsaid,”

the audible and eye-heart audiobook club. I'm Cal Pen, host of Here We Go Again. For those of you just joining us, earsaid is the audiobook club for audiobook lovers, no physical media required. On each episode, I tackle a different audible title

with special guests from across the podcast world and beyond. We share what we heard, what we loved, and what we can't stop talking about. [MUSIC PLAYING] Last season, my co-host and Helmsen Eye

got into some incredible titles

from the full cast pride and prejudice to quest love, breaking down Mark Ronson's night people to the brand new Harry Potter audio production. This season, I'm flying solo, but don't worry. We've got an amazing lineup of guests and titles coming your way.

And I could not be more excited about the book we're kicking off with. It's one of those rare stories that will make you laugh, make you cry, and make you feel like you actually understood orbital mechanics.

Let's get into it.

“For our season, two premiere, we're going big, interstellar,”

in fact. We're talking about Andy Wears Project Hail Mary, which is also a massive blockbuster movie, starring Ryan Gosling, and out now. If you love the Martian, you'll love this,

as we're is doing what he does best.

This time, instead of being stranded on Mars,

our hero is stranded in another star system entirely. Instead of growing potatoes to survive, he's trying to save every living thing on Earth. And instead of being totally alone, he makes a friend and alien friend.

Here's the quick and dirty setup. Rylan Grace is not an astronaut or a Navy seal, but a middle school science teacher who wakes up from a coma on a spaceship called The Hail Mary. He has no memory of how he got there or what his name is.

His two crewmates are dead, and he slowly pieces together that he's been sent on a one-way mission to the Tau City Star System to find out why it's the only star in the neighborhood

that isn't being devoured by an alien micro-organism he's dubbed Astrophage. Our son is dying, Earth will freeze if we can't figure it out. And Rylan Grace is humanity's last hope. But the thing that makes this book truly special

it's not just a sci-fi survival story. It's a buddy comedy because Grace meets Rocky an alien engineer from a nearby planet who is there for the exact same reason. His star is dying too.

Rocky is brilliant, funny, brave, and communicates by emitting musical chords from somewhere inside his body. The two of them have to learn to talk to each other, build trust, and science their way out of an impossible situation.

Let me play you a taste of what this sounds like in the audio book. - Settled. He puts his claw against the divider. Fist my bump.

I laugh and put my knuckles against the zinnonite. Fist bump. It's just fist bump. Understand. - Joining me today is the man who has voiced Jack Cars,

the terminal list series, and Dennis E. Taylor's the Bob of Earth's audiobooks. His dark side in Zack Snyder's Justice League, and he is Rylan Grace and Rocky to millions of listeners, the actor and outstanding audiobook narrator, Ray Porter.

Ray Porter, welcome to Earsay. - It's a privilege to be here. I'm honored to have you on the show. - Thank you. - Thank you.

- Thank you. I really have to tell you that I feel like I know Rylan Grace personally. - Oh good. - I feel like Rocky is my friend.

- He is. - That is all you. - Thank you. - Sidebar, I looked, I did research right like you're supposed to do. You and I were on the same episode of ER.

No way. - Yes, dude. - Yes. - What did you play? What did you play?

- That was the first detective helping the doctor find her adoptive mother.

And it was like, there's like a three episode arc or whatever, but I'm like, oh, he did he art it. Oh my God, that episode, how weird.

“- I remember that was, I think my first TV gig”

where my line wasn't cut. - Oh nice. And I also remember because I didn't really know what I was doing and I remember the director being very stressed out a little bit difficult.

I was so terrified and I was only there for a few hours. I was just in that one scene, but it was so cool because I got to say that I was on ER. - Oh, I know. And the same thing for me where it was like,

I was only there for a short time, like three times. So it was like this weird three episode arc. But I mean, the difference between that obviously

You don't have time for anything, you know? - No, it's crazy.

“- It's a procedural and you know how to do it, right?”

So they move and a pace that-- - Exactly. - Yeah, you're not even really rehearsing anything. You're just doing it. - Also, I told somebody once guesting on a TV show

is like, okay, you just started dating somebody two weeks ago and they decide to bring you to their family reunion. - That's a great way to put it. - It's just, yeah, you don't know what you're supposed to do.

Anyway, so you and me? - I'm glad to see you again. - Yes, and I see you again, man, yeah. - Yeah, you're sorely, you've hardly changed. - Ah, well, thank you, that's a lie, but I'll take it.

This project was amazing.

Can you just briefly tell us how did project Hail Mary come to you with your reaction when you read the manuscript? - Well, audible reached out to me, like, hey, do you have time in your scheduler? Whatever you insist in reading this book,

I rarely say no, because I like to eat. Of course, I had known about Andy Weir

“through the Martian and Artemis, and was like, yes, please.”

Let me have a look at it. Now, I got enough of it, kind of to get an idea of like more or less what the voice of the book would be because the text is so good and so strong. - It's kind of an actor's dream to do that kind of a script.

It was like a hammock, I could just lie back in those words and the book just carried me. - Well, it's not just the words, I mean, maybe it's the elephant in the room. - It's quite a shaped alien in the room, not the elephant, maybe.

- Yes, Rocky. This character communicates in musical chords, he does. - As I was listening, was dying to ask you, whether you were involved in the sound design, how does that come together?

And I will just preface this by saying, I once did an episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," where I played a frat boy who turned into a caveman. - Nice. - And the director had us watch this movie called "Ring of Fire"

and study it linguistic, wow. Because the grunts that we had as caveman had to follow a specific linguistic pattern. And I was thinking of that in thinking about the musical chords and all the complexities of the book that you did in this one.

- Definitely, there's some books I've done worth the end of the day, I've been crouched around a rock going. But that's really kind of a sidebar. No, the audible had said if this particular character speaks in this way, you're going to see just musical notes

in the first part of the book.

We will take care of that later, which is better. I was glad that adults were handling the sound design. So I just honed, until the words started to come through. And then it was just, I played that character in the scene and they did the augmentation and the sounds and stuff around it.

- Okay, yeah. - But when you do it, I mean, one of the most striking things about your performances that Rocky feels completely real. - Thank you. - So like when you're creating emotional authenticity

for a character who's a dog-sized rock spider with no face and speaks and chords,

“I get the augmentation later, but how do you do that?”

- It's classic, you know this, man. Just classic acting, one, what does he want? What's he trying to do? You know, why would he speak in the way that he does necessarily?

And I understand that it's a linguistic augmentation

and so the phrasing will be strange, you know?

And there was a certain kind of staccato rhythm, a certain increase in pace when he's talking, and very matter of fact. I mean, this is incredibly smart character who has been through hell as we learn later in the book

and is excited, you know? And it's problem-solving, I thought about all the engineers I know. - Honestly, because he is too. But it really just came down to very simply

looking at the text and playing that scene. - Let's talk about grace. - Yeah. - Is not your typical action hero? - No.

- Science teacher, finds himself on an interstellar mission with amnesia, pacing together how to save the world and trying to figure out how he got there. - Right. - And let's just play a clip of grace calculating

the speed of sunspots across the local star to figure out where he is, a little hard science. I scribble some math on my arm. At this resolution, they're moving one millimeter, every 344.6 seconds.

To cross the entire 27 centimeters, it would take scribble scribble, just over 93,000 seconds. So it'll take that long for the cluster to cross the near side of the sun.

It'll take twice that long to get all the way around. So, 186,000 seconds, that's a little over two days. Over 10 times faster than the rotation should be. This star I'm looking at, it's not the sun. I'm in a different solar system.

- We are not a video podcast, but I, you and I can see each other, most of my tattoos are astronomy related. - Mate, I'm such an astronomy geek. - You've no, are you? - Yeah, yeah, oh my god.

- Yes, it's supposed to be in a very cool one.

It's vigilance, it's a Fourier transforms, right?

“- Right. - But, tragrothy, relativistic physics,”

Andy Weir does not dumb it down. - No, he certainly doesn't. - So you and I have the nerd part down for loving the science, but how do you make that stuff feel exciting,

rather than like a textbook? - Well, I'd had some practice. I've asked years ago a couple of publishers, I was like, I really love physics, I really love astronomy, and I'd love to narrate any titles that you may have.

And you know the thing with science books, typically,

it always starts promising in the first chapter where it's like,

we're gonna make physics accessible, and by chapter two, you're like, fractionalizing the plong, clang, piano, and people are like forget it. - Yes. - And so how do you,

how do you continue to make it engaging, even when the science gets hard? And I have a number of non-fiction science titles, part of it is a personal enthusiasm for that stuff, and obviously in Project Hail Mary,

aside from grace being at his heart, a scientist, and a problem solver, there's a very real tangent benefit to him figuring this out. So that kind of underpinned all that stuff.

But the thing I love the most about grace too, is his general enthusiasm. I mean, he might be a reluctant hero, but he's a good guy. - Along lines on what you're saying,

did your feelings on grace change over the course of the recording? Do you approach narration differently

when it's in first person?

- I do, I mean, first person, and I've done a fair few first person books. I mean, it's basically a monologue, right? It's the internal monologue, it's obviously the interactions

and stuff like that, but narrating is wonderful, because you are in that role, for an extended period of time. It's possible to do that with third person, but it's a lot easier and more accessible when you're talking first.

- That makes sense. - Yeah. - Without getting into major spoilers? - Yes.

“- Is there a line or two that really stuck with you?”

- Several. Several. - There's a couple of exchanges. Obviously him trying to work out his identity, and he's beginning to get really disturbed

by Camus single man living alone in an apartment. I don't have kids, I like kids, I don't like where this is. Go, I'm a teacher, I'm a teacher, I'm a teacher, okay. Ooh, I mean, that's just comedy, it's just great. (laughing)

- Some of the exchanges was strat, and some of the exchanges with our stony friend later, there's so many things that I remember from the book and that stand out, and I kind of felt like when I was narrating, it was like, ooh,

this is gonna be special, great comic beads and just, yeah, and he's a terrific writer. Was there a passage that I'm asking this a bit selfishly? 'Cause I've done maybe, I think just two audiobooks, one of which was my own memoir, which should not count

for this question, but-- - But that must have been crazy narrating that. - I loved it because I could do all the voices, I knew I could get the intonation right when you write something, you know,

obviously a place differently in different people's heads. - Sure. - So I loved it, but there were passages in there that I, that were really challenging to get right because of that, was there a passage of passages in this

that were a particular challenge? - You know, there was a lot of, on the fly kind of going back and tweaking and adjusting and trying to figure it out. After a couple of decades of doing classical theater and obviously being an actor in LA

where a casting director had you an entirely new role and you've got four minutes to figure it out. (laughs) - I've gotten really adept at cold reading and I've had some narrators slight me because I don't do

the amount of prep that they do and I consider the work that I've done up to this point kind of prep.

I mean, my feeling has always been it doesn't matter

how you get there as long as when you get there

“the product is good and the best way for me to get there,”

the best way for me to suck less is to kind of read cold. So I did project Hail Mary basically as a cold read because this script was right there. It had all the information I needed and so I tried not to think too much about, I've got to get this right.

I mean, there was obviously things where I was like, that sucked and I'd go back and kind of like fix it. But really considering I just, I can't imagine doing my own memoir and narrating it. I have a cool remove because it's not me.

That must have been an amazing experience. - It was a very cool experience. - The harder part to me was writing it at my desk because there are parts of it that are funny, but I'm used to writing fiction.

I'm used to writing scripts. - Right. - I started writing a memoir. It was coming out super dark. So these chapters about like,

well, what was it like getting bullied in middle school? The way I tell it over a beer with friends is funny.

It was as if I was 14 again. - Oh.

“- And so my editor was like, you need to redo this”

because it's not the way you tell the story verbally. - Sure, we got to actually recording the audio book. I'm like, oh, this is, this is a real treat because I've gotten past the dark part of writing,

which was for me the first draft.

Wow. I want to talk about the strat. Eva's strat is one of the most fascinating characters in the book, really. She's been given absolute authority over every nation

on earth, the same humanity. She's ruthless about it. Here's a clip from the first meeting between Grace and Stratt. Great.

You, she said, you're going to do it. I stared blankly. She waved her hand in front of my face. Hello? You want me to look at the dots?

I said, yes. The whole world put you in charge of solving this problem and you came directly to a junior high school science teacher? Yes. I turned and walked out the door.

You're lying in pain or a combination of the two. I have to get going now. This is not optional. She said to my back, it seems optional to me.

I waved goodbye. Yeah. It was an optional. (laughs)

“She feels like a fun character to breathe life into.”

She's so much fun.

So fun playing that character, unbelievable.

Yeah, and did you see the movie? I have not seen the movie yet. Sunderholler from the moment she entered frame. I was like, oh my God, she nailed it. That's a good strat.

I mean, cool. It was crazy. But yeah, so much fun to play that character. The relationship between Grace and Rocky is really the heart of this book.

They have to invent a shared language from scratch. This was one of those things that made me think about the caveman thing that I mentioned when I did the movie. I was like, oh, okay.

I'm talking numbers, scientific concepts, and then eventually emotions. There's this beautiful moment where Rocky says, you are a friend now, and Grace puts his hand against the divider wall.

Did recording those scenes of connection affect you personally at all? Absolutely. Absolutely. How so?

Well, by that point, I had given myself over so fully to the script, you know, and just was letting the story call me along and feeling all the fields, you know, as I went through. Yeah.

And I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog and my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections. And it's like, okay, yo, yo, is this indulgent?

I need to step back. And I really thought about it. I was like, no, at this point, it would be good trading the trust, the author and the listener have

until in this story, if I don't, go through it. So I'm not, you can kneeling it up or anything like that. But there's places in this book that deeply emotionally affected me, and I left it on the mic 'cause it served the story.

That's great. So yeah, people will say, like, oh my God, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah, dude, me too. (laughs)

Isn't that a cool feeling when you're recording something? The best. There's a cartoon I did for a couple of seasons, called Mirror Royal Detective for Disney Plus. And I mean, it's a kid's cartoon, right?

And it's really fun, and most of it is very wholesome, but there were a couple of episodes where like, I mean, it's just me in a dark room

with a mic basically watching this animation.

And it like got me, like some of these lines, the way that they came out, I was really feeling them. That's exactly it. I wasn't expecting that. It was a really fun, cool experience.

So it sounds like you had that with this. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of the talk to you about this 'cause as an actor, you totally get it. Oh yeah.

“And that's what it was, is I narrated the book,”

but it was an acting job, like every book I get, it's, you know, you're acting. Yes. So you've defined these characters for millions of people, but like you mentioned,

project Hail Mary has also been adapted to a major motion picture, which is out now. Without giving anything a way to those of us who have not seen the movie yet. Yes.

Can we talk about your cameo? (laughs) Yes. Yeah, how did that come about it? They called me the book and the audiobook

was apparently very, very important to them as they were making the movie. And I had met with a DTSU at San Diego Comic-Con when we did a panel about the book. And just the feeling I got from him at that point,

I did not know Lord and Miller, and I didn't know anybody else connected with it, but when I walked into that studio at Sony to record my cameo, I mean, these guys, their heart is so much in the right place,

and I knew immediately that they were connected to the story in the right way. And with Ryan at the helm, and he had had that thing since it was a manuscript, wanting to make it, they got it, they got it.

And having seen the movie now three times, it's absolutely wonderful. You know, my movie question was gonna be,

I've done book adaptations as films before. Yeah. And a lot of people were, "Oh, the book was better than the movie." Oh, no, the movie was better than the book.

How do you feel about this movie version?

“I mean, you've seen it three times, you must love it.”

No, I only go to see my name in the credits. I don't care about the story, I'll let that sleep. (laughing) No, I loved it. You know, there's no way you know this.

There's no way that a movie in two hours or two and a half hours is going to be able to encapsulate. Project Hill Mary was a 14 hour audiobook.

So it's never going to have absolutely everything you've got.

In the book, the best you can try to do is tell the story as best you can within those constraints. This adaptation is right up there with some of the best adaptations I've seen. And as a standalone, I mean, it's marvelous.

Anybody who's not read the book or listened to it had to plug. They're going to walk away very please in very satisfied with the story as someone who did know the book. Going in, I loved it. You know, yeah, there's some stuff that's not there.

That's in the book. There's maybe some things that are there that weren't in the book. But it works. Yeah. We're going to take a quick break and look right back

with more ear say. Ray, we're going to do a few quick fire questions now when a segment we're calling plot twists. The Hail Mary is stocked with every piece of software ever copyrighted.

Strop basically told the entire intellectual property industry to shove it. If you were stuck on a spaceship for four years,

“what apps games or media would you absolutely need?”

This is desert island discs. Oh, God. What apps? Probably language apps. I mean, I could use the time to learn different languages

even though I might never have a pair of actually

speaking them with someone else. A music creation apps. You know, keep words guitars. That kind of thing. Just keep the mind engaged astronomy apps, obviously,

because I'm going to look out for window. Yes. God books. I'd want all of them. I'd want every book, every book possible on any subject.

And then I think with the exception of Nickelback, I'd like all the music available. Perfect. Perfect end to the answer. All right, Grace's classroom had a Jacob's ladder, specimen jars, and a solar system mobile on the ceiling.

He did lightning rounds where kids answered questions for bean bags they could trade for prizes. Who's your favorite teacher growing up and what made them memorable? Oh, boy.

I'd have to say, Mrs. Duncan, my sixth grade English teacher because she also ran the drama club. And that was when I had kind of an awakening. That's very cool. Isn't that cool?

It's the extracurricular sometimes that will link us back to the favorite teacher. If you had a look at my permanent record

that they always warned us about where we were coming up,

you would see that I was an excellent extracurricular student. OK, good. Well, I'd look. There's a reason we're both actors, by the way. My answer to that first question is, I would have definitely

need the calculator app because I can barely do math. Oh, and if I'm in space and presumably we'll need math. Yeah, you might need to use math in space.

“Yeah, OK, can I add the calculator app as well then?”

Yes, yes, of course. Of course, OK, all right. OK, along those lines, Grace eats nothing but awful commoslory for years. If you had to eat one food for the rest of your life,

what would it be? OK, it probably would be British. I'm a big fan of a Sunday roast and a sausage roll. A pastie. Yeah, bacon baps.

I mean, it's all horrible for you. I would probably live in space for about two and a half years. But God, I love it. It's terrible. I love me some British food, I really do.

Add the red wine to the Sunday roast, if you're eating that every day for E. E. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. Also, my first like proper meal in England, when I live there for a couple of years,

when we did Justice League and I went to get street food. And I think I had the quintessential British street food. It was jerk chicken wrapped in nava. It was in non-bredal. Oh, so good.

Oh, my God. Oh, my Lord. So good. Yeah, geez. Grace says holy moly as his go-to exclamation and then immediately questions, what kind of weirdo he is.

What's your go-to exclamation that you'd be embarrassed for an alien to hear? Starts with the letter F. (laughing) I'm not as proprietary with my languages,

graces in the book. Okay. And then I'd have to like to explain. You know, there'd be like a whole biological power point presentation to the alien understand why I used an F word and a C word.

(laughing)

on the board with a number next to it every time

you said the word like. If you didn't actually mean that something was like something and he did this because he wanted us to be articulate in an audition in the like little interview there. I said like in the little interview portion

before you're actually reading. And then one of the offsuits of that conversation was whether people use profanity because they lack vocabulary or because it accentuates the thing that they're trying to communicate.

“I think both are true depending on the scenario.”

It depends. But you just described a scenario in which you'd have to explain that. That's exactly right. You'd have to tune to an alien intelligence. You'd have to explain all of it.

I mean, I'm a big fan of precision of choices within speaking. You know, and doing something like enumerating every time you say like when you don't mean lying or whatever. Yes. I quite admire that.

One more computer. Yes. On the Hail Mary keeps asking grace what's your name. He can't remember.

And at first he can barely even speak.

This guy maybe needed to do some vocal warm-ups as a voice actor. Sure. What are some of your best vocal warm-ups? It really depends on the day. It depends on what my sonnuses are doing.

And you know this, where like some days you'll wake up in your voices here or in the middle of your forehead or it's in your chest. And you just kind of work according to that way. Weirdly enough, I learned this years ago. I worked at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

And they have an outdoor theater that's 12 hundred seats. This was before we were marked. And so you had to make sure the dude and Rose Z could hear you as well as the guy in row A.

“And I remember one night my voice was really, really raggedy.”

And I was pounding water. And my good friend Jonathan, who was an opera singer, came over to me and was like what the hell are you doing? I was like I'm hydrating man. What are you talking about?

He was not for your voice. I said yeah, he goes wrong. You're stripping your chords. Go get a coke. Go get some juice.

You need that layer of mucus. I'm like you're out of your mind that I tried it anyway. Sound is around. Totally fixed me. Wow.

Yeah, it's kind of counterintuitive to thinking. But yeah, I also found randomly butter scotch is great for your voice if your voice is feeling right. You can be like a butter scotch candy? Yes.

If your voice is feeling raggedy have some butter scotch and for some reason, it works. So it really kind of depends on the day. I mean, it's a moving instrument.

“So you have to kind of, it responds to weather and stuff like that.”

I'm a guitar player. You know, there are days where it's like the guitar just does not want to talk to you because it's humid or hot or whatever, same thing with the voice. That's very cool. I'm glad I know that because usually my vocal warmups are around diction because I'm

mumble and the reason I know I'm mumble is that I have a, she's still a very dear friend my old neighbor who's about to be 105 years old and she's with it and she's a retired actor. And she, on occasion when she's watched an episode of something I've done on TV, she will say, you mustn't mumble, you mumble all the time.

No wonder you haven't done a play. You just nobody would be able to understand. I'm like, oh my God, this is so embarrassing, but I know that you're right. So I've most of my stuff is like the red leather yellow leather or I see a sheet of sheet I slit and on the chest and she ties it because I just need to remember to announce

he ate my words. But now I know the butter scotch trick. I am a mother, fescent plucker. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Doing that with school kids, like acting student kids because we would get high school

groups coming up and we would do tongue twisters and I would always do at the end.

I am a mother, fescent plucker and watch these kids like twisting inside to not say the wrong thing in front of their teachers. It was great. Yeah. Borderline statistic, but yeah, it was great.

I will sing often times, you know, I'll like find something and just whale and sing just to get it like moving, the articulators are important. But again, after doing like almost 20 years and making sure that the guy who doesn't want to be there sat next to his wife on the back row of the theater gets as much as symboline as the guy who paid for the front row's seat, I feel pretty solid with the articulators.

But the problem with me is when I do film or TV, I have to shut down that stuff and make it smaller for the camera. It's, that's been a real challenge. I don't know what I'm thinking about that, I guess, because like my friend said, I have not done a play in quite a long time and I need to need to learn my projection voice.

Okay. Last question before we go, what are you listening to or reading right now and what's next on your list? I'm in the middle of kind of an English folk horror book called "Withered Hill", mostly for research.

I'm in the process of writing a novel right now and there's elements from that and I've got like five or six books on the go all the time anyway. Well, Ray Porter, it was so excellent having you on ear save. Thank you for being a member of our club. You can listen to Project Hail Mary by Andy Weer narrated by the incomparable and formerly

Thank you for having me. Pleasure. Thanks, Ray.

Man, what a conversation.

“I hope you all could tell how fun this book is and how much Ray Porter's performance really”

elevates it. If you haven't listened to it yet, this is your sign. Go, now you will not regret it.

As for his cameo, if you go see the movie, listen very carefully when grace is toggling

through options for Rocky's computer voice. That's all I'll say.

“For fans of the movie, the audiobook is a great way to keep living in the story.”

On our next episode, we'll be diving into Stephen King's The Body, the novella, which was adapted into the excellent 1986 film, Stand By Me. This new audiobook is narrated by Stand By Me, co-star Will Wheaton, who will also be my guest. I'm super excited about this, you don't want to miss it.

“If you had fun with us today, consider following the show wherever you listen and share”

it with that one person in your life who keeps saying they don't have time to read, that's the beauty of audiobooks you don't have to. And of course, a big thank you to our friends at Audible. Don't forget, you can listen to what we're listening to on the Audible app or at audible.com.

New members can sign up for a free 30-day audible trial and your first audiobook is free.

Visit audible.com/earsay. Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audio Book Club is a production of iHeart's Ruby Studio. I'm your host, Cal Pen. Our executive producer is Matt Schilts, with theme music and post production by Marcus Bagalla. Our talent coordinator is Ellison Pepper. For Ruby Studio, our managing EP is Matt Romano and our EP of post production is Matt Stillow.

Until next time, thanks for listening. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.