Talia Sherman: Bridging Disciplines, Global Podcasting, and the Future of the Multi-Hyphenate

0:06 I had started out interviewing some teachers at my high school and just doing 1 episode all by myself. And then I started interviewing academics. I was already interviewing professors by the time I I'd finished high school. And so it just felt like, well, of course this will keep going. And then it just kept keep going. And then it kind of became my thing. And I've loved it, and it has been so intellectually rewarding. I mean, it's the greatest project effort for someone who loves to learn and for someone who's excited about showing others how great and cool this stuff is to know. I'm excited to be speaking with Talia Sherman, a current senior at Brown University studying linguistics and English with honors. She is an undergraduate fellow at the Kogit Institute for the Humanities.

0:54 In the spring of her senior year of high school, she founded Tomato Tomato, an interview based podcast on language streamed in over 90 countries and showcasing the voices of professors from many different universities. Tomato Tomato digs into interdisciplinary research, cutting edge theoretical questions, and sometimes linguistics journalism. Notable guests include Steven Pinker, Emily M Bender, Jonathan Rosa, and John De Niro. When not podcasting, reading literary theory, or doing economics research, Talia can be found backpacking or training Brown students to lead backpacking trips.

1:38 Talia, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Jessica. I'm really, really excited to be here. You and I met a couple years ago at the Cazadero Performing Arts Family Camp, which is a multi generational summer experience that brings together the arts, the outdoors and human connection. Very much an ampersand in what it does. And I know you have been going to Caz for many summers since you were a kid. How has Cazadero shaped you and your many interests? I have been going to Kaz since I was 6, and I think that it's kind of like asking me like how the place in which I grew up shaped you because it's such a constant, right? But I think that more specifically than just a city or environment or a state, the people that I've met at CAZ have been so influential and formative for me. And that even includes meeting people like you who I've met, you know, in my adult life.

2:43 But people that I met in like my very, very young childhood and then teen years and tween years, it's the people and, and I think the opportunity to be creative and make mistakes and try new things. So I love CAZ. So on this show we've had lots of folks who identify as Gen. X and Millennials and you are the 1st and not the last to represent Gen. ZI believe. I am so curious about how you think about your career being that it's ahead of you. What do you think is possible, especially in terms of multiple careers? So boomers and Gen. X and stuff, it's much more common that you're going to have like one job, right?

3:28 You finish college, you have one job and that's your career. And then with millennials especially, they have a billion jobs. You know, this gig economy. So you are an Uber driver and you play music and you write poetry and you might be in grad school at the same time. And then you might become a consultant. But then that's kind of like something that you do for a few years and then you might go to law school and you might have your career. There's just like so much more room for for multiple stops along your career journey for Gen. Z. I think we are comfortable with that idea of with that indeterminacy, right, and that instability. But I also think that I see it as an opportunity to do different things with my career. Like I don't, I don't foresee that I'm going to be like one thing for the rest of my life.

4:08 I think that there is going to be there going to be a few different stops along the journey. And I'm OK with that. And I think that it would be boring if I didn't have an interdisciplinary career or life and if I didn't wasn't able to work in multiple methods or modalities. So, yeah, yeah. I'm really excited, yeah. What informs your worldview about careers? I think there's a lot of anxiety about stumbling into a career or then a life that doesn't feel exciting or challenging. I definitely worry about not being able to I, I worry that I will attach to a work life balance, the idea of a work life balance because I don't like my work and I, and I think that life is life and work is not life. And I think that I'm really interested in having like a work life merge in situation.

5:12 So I think that I, I just, I think there's a lot of anxiety, but also I'm, I'm excited and I want autonomy over my career and hopefully I'll be able to have that. But I, I think I always want to really feel invested in the projects that I'm doing. And I want, I want to, want to do them and I want to be excited about them doing something like a podcast. It's like it, it feels like, it's like a part of me. And so it I I do not make any money off of it, but it feels very much like my job in some sense, or at least my side hustle right now. Yeah. How do you even think about these terms? Work, job, career, passion, side hustle? Are they somewhat interchangeable, or do some of them call to you more strongly?

6:01 Yeah, I, I would never refer to my podcast in all sincerity as a side hustle because I, it's not something that I do on the side to make money because I don't make money off of it. It is, I would say, more akin to a passion project, even though that sometimes also feels a little bit devaluing. I'm totally OK with the terms work. I'm OK with the term job, I'm OK with the term career. I just think that you might have multiple different jobs and you might have a career as a journalist, but your job might be being a waiter like that. That seems perfectly plausible to me. And so I call myself a podcaster, but that's not my job. Maybe it will be 1 day, but I think that my job right now is I'm a student and then I also podcast.

6:42 Yes, a student who also podcasts and it's very impressive. You started Tomato Tomato in 2022, you were in your senior year of high school and you've now kept it going for four years. I know that you produce it yourself, you edit it yourself, and you also interview these really well known academics at the top of their game. You're showcasing their research theories, methodological designs and ideologies of different intellectual projects and disciplines. What have you learned about yourself through hosting and producing this podcast?

7:25 So much. I started Tomato Tomato when I was 18 in my senior year of high school like you mentioned, and I didn't know anything about interviewing academics. I didn't know much about professionalism. I didn't know anything actually about linguistics or, or about any of the other disciplines that I've. I've then gone in to interview people in in those fields. So I've learned so much about academia and A and a just about these disciplines in the process of doing the, the podcast. But I think that I've honed by skills of being an interviewer and listening. I think that I've gotten better at listening and about reflecting back to people what they've said. I've gotten better at being able to hear a pretty complicated idea that maybe wasn't formulated super cleanly and then reflecting it back to someone and making it a little bit cleaner and more accessible and more palatable. I've gotten a lot of confidence.

8:17 I think too, it takes a lot of confidence and I think some would say gall and some would say gumption and some would say nerve to be able to just cold e-mail people out of nowhere and ask them to, to be on the podcast. But it's not it's, it's not even that simple, right? It's not that I am like, yo, Jessica, want to come on? I make a pretty detailed argument. I show people that I've read their research. You know, I like to to think that I put in a decent effort and then I've learned a lot about myself in terms of like what's my research project process? Because from the moment that someone says, yes, I will be on your podcast to the moment that we actually get on a zoom call.

8:57 I read all of their work, basically all of their work. And I think about it and I think about it from their critics and I think about it from implications for interdisciplinarity. And I think about connections to other subfields. And then I come up with questions and I enter. So I've just I've learned a lot about how I work. I work pretty well without deadlines because I think that I am able to just keep a somewhat ish release schedule. So I've learned I, I think it's more that I've, I've gained a lot of skills and a lot of confidence and I've learned a lot from my mistakes because I've, I've learned to be my own critic, right? Because it's, this isn't an assignment that I turn in for a class where professor says, here's my feedback for you. This is where you could have expanded or this is where I didn't like this. I don't get that feedback.

9:41 So I have to provide that feedback. Tell me a little bit about how you started with the idea. So a lot of people have ideas for podcasts, and a lot of those ideas just kind of live out in the ether and don't ever make it. Or, you know, some podcasts have a few episodes and then they fizzle out. How did you really get this to start up and what has kept you going? It was a senior project actually, this was, I was doing an independent study on what became an independent study on sociolinguistics, although I didn't know the term sociolinguistics when I proposed this independent study. And then the podcast was the project for it was my senior project.

10:24 And it kept going because it did not feel inherently anchored in high school. I had started out interviewing some teachers at my high school and just doing 1 episode all by myself. And then I started interviewing academics. I was already interviewing professors by the time I I'd finished high school. And so it just felt like, well, of course this will keep going. And then it just kept keep going. And then it kind of became my thing and I've loved it and it has been so intellectually rewarding. I mean, it's the greatest project effort for someone who loves to learn and for someone that's just excited about about like showing others how great and cool this stuff is to know.

11:08 So it's, it's just a great project on all sides for me. And so it's, there's never, ever been a thought in my head like, oh, this shouldn't continue because naturally it's run its course or something. Sometimes I think, wow, this is a lot of work. And I don't know if I can keep doing this, that there's, there have definitely been times because as you said, right, I do all the editing myself. I do all the producing myself. And it's just a lot of time and a lot of work. And there have been like days where I've like broken down in tears because it's taken me like 6 hours to record, you know, a minute and 30 seconds of audio for an intro. And I'm like, I'm like, Oh my God, I'm failing and I'm gonna never do this again. But I I think I just love it too much to ever fully stop.

11:51 Let's take a moment to reflect on this question. What is something that you love to do that you can't imagine ever stopping? Are you an Ampersand? Looking for community inspiration and resources? Come join us in the cohort where we help you grow and scale your creative and professional aspirations. If you're looking for more dedicated support, ioffer executive coaching for business leaders, people managers, creatives, and of course, Ampersands. Find out more about the cohort and one-on-one Coaching at jessica1.com. Now, back to the show.

12:39 Besides the ampersand of student and content creator, you also call yourself both a nerd and outdoors enthusiast. So on the one hand, you've worked as an RA in economics and AI without ever even having taken an Econ or CS class, and on the other hand you've done things like leading A5 day backpacking trip for fellow students in the White Mountains. How do you think nature and the great outdoors helps you with the more academic in your head world and vice versa? I might push back on it a little bit and just say that like it's I don't even think about it as like the outdoors are super influential in Hawaii. A person, I think of it as leading a trip for other students in the outdoors requires a lot of training and a lot of whether or not you have the confidence, acting like you have the confidence to take a bunch of students into the outdoors and not only get them to survive and thrive, etcetera, but also have a really great time bond and make lasting memories.

13:48 So the outdoors is, it's just, that's just the place that facilitates all that kind of human connection. I just see the outdoors as so powerful. It the, the, the ability of the outdoors to facilitate human connection is incredibly powerful and I'm in awe of it at all times. As a student, I just think a lot about bridging connections because I think that sometimes, like when you're leading people in a group or when you're trying to get to know other people, just being able to bridge the connection, right, to say to someone, oh, you're interested in this. Oh, I know someone that's interested in that too. Or, oh, you know, you're really interested in modal logic that has implications for, you know, formal semantics. It's just all kinds of rich in connections. It really is.

14:29 And so something I just, I love about being groups of people in the outdoors is like, you're not, you've done technology, you don't have all kinds of things to distract you and you just get to know each other. And the way that you get to know each other is finding commonalities. And that's exactly the way that a lot of scholarship works. It's finding commonalities, finding isomorphisms, finding commonalities in your methodology, right? Refining the methodology so that it applies to your discipline or doesn't. And so I have never actually made the connection between the outdoors and my studies before, but thank you for bringing that to my attention because that's awesome. But yeah, I love the outdoors. I think it's a great place to be and it's a great place for like, nerds to kind of hang out. I think that there's a lot of really cool stuff. Like, I am not a very, I'm not someone that like studied knots as a kid or something, but I've definitely been outside with a lot of kids who go to brown and have studied knots forever and they're still fascinated by like the movement of clouds and, and, and like plant ecology.

15:27 And that's just so not on my radar. Like, I am not a natural scientist or I don't think of myself as a natural scientist or a hard scientist, But I think that getting exposed to all that kind of that kind of perspective in the outdoors is really valuable. I have had the honor of being in very artistic settings with you, and I know that you are an avid singer. You're very enthusiastic about performing and improv. You're also a very talented writer. What do you think ties together all of these interests? Determination is probably the first thing like a desire to be good at those things. I really desire to be good at writing and I always desire to be good at writing.

16:08 And when people say like, Oh, you're a good writer, I'm like, thanks. But I did like this was a lot of time and effort. Like I did not wake up good at writing. It takes a lot of work. So like I think with the podcast as well, like you're reporting out, it just takes a lot of work and time. And I'm happy to put in that investment. I truly am right. It's like it's the joy of a lifetime to get to do that. But, but I'm not by any, by any means naturally gifted writer in terms of of singing or dancing. I think it's, it's partly a desire to be good at those things. I mean, I think that there's a little bit more of that like natural inclination to do something. But I love the expressivity of those things. I love how dancing is kind of like a language and there are like different kinds of languages. And this dance is a different language than that dance. But if you meet someone and you know one language and they know the other, but maybe there's like a commonalities between them, then you can start talking to each other. It's great with singing, like physiologically I just think it's like a powerful way to relieve stress, get emotions out.

17:09 Singing with other people is also really joyful. So I, I find that cool, but I don't do as much singing or dancing in my life these days. I think I do much more writing, which is a more solitary activity. And I think that currently in the discourse, we think of writing as kind of a self exploration exercise. And it can be, but not always. But I guess like I want to, I would be worried if I felt like I was only doing self exploration exploration. I think it's really important to dance with other people and sing with other people and write within four other people. Like I, I, I'm cognizant of the fact that I, the podcast is really a very solitary effort besides my interviewees. So I try to get other like community with other people as much as I can.

18:01 Yeah, community is a theme that's come up again and again, and I'm curious how you think about your podcast as creating a community. When I hear from people that enjoy my podcast or have listened to 1 to 20 episodes, it's really touching and it feels like such a huge honor that like someone would want to listen to my podcast. I mean, still like I'm kind of shocked when I see my streaming numbers. I'm like, how right, It's great. So there's that community. But I think also as as the podcast has gone on, I know that some of my episodes have been put on class syllabi and assigned to students.

18:42 And that's really cool because it facilitates like something within the already created class community, like when an anthropology class is to listen to one of my episodes and then they have to come in and talk about it. That's kind of cool. And so I, I like that. I also think it's great when a person that's like an an interviewee that's been on my podcast will will talk about like the various other things that they do to be an intellectual community with other people, whether that's podcasting or not, You know, podcasting is not at all the only medium through which people get together or create community and talk about these topics. So I think that my podcast is is not the community in the sense that I like live stream it and people are, you know, commenting while I'm live streaming the podcast. Like it's, it's not that kind of community, but I love, I love, love, love.

19:31 And I'm so humbled every time someone tells me that they've learned something or that they've enjoyed an episode. It sounds like it's been a great resource for a lot of folks. On a more practical level, how do you think about your life as both a student and creator in terms of your time and energy? And you alluded to this earlier, like sometimes it can take a really long time. It can. It can take a really long time. I think that I would love it if I could be less disheartened by how. How long it takes me to do certain things, I think, you know, because like, writing a paper in the grand scheme of things doesn't actually take that long in comparison to doing a podcast episode. And I think that that's why podcasting often feels like such a solitary effort, because the interview is what, like an hour and a half or something?

20:28 Sometimes longer, sometimes shorter hours and hours and hours of audio editing and prepping for the interview and writing the questions and then producing it. Like there's just the time that I've spent on Zoom with other person, it's completely dwarfed for the time I spend actually producing the episode. And so practically, I think that I just tricked myself into thinking that these aren't different things. Like this is a part of my studies. Like this is enriching who I am as a student and I think are so of course I should do this. And it's not all miserable at all at all. Like sometimes I think it's so fun to just sit down and edit audio for a couple hours. It's like calming. It's can be kind of therapeutic and cathartic, like you just get something perfect. But it also can be really hard to figure out what the right thing to say is.

21:14 And I worry about people judging me and I worry that I'm missing the point. I, I worry about all these things like I, I think I worry a lot. I'm realizing that now. And so I, I just, I think I just try to trick myself into thinking that like these things mutually reinforce each other and it's going to be fine. Maybe it's not a trick and maybe this is true, right? And you're already living this integrated life between work life, identity, all of these things. One goal we have with this podcast is to Co create the Ampersand Manifesto principles for leading a multi passionate life. What are some principles that you live by? Being a nerd and intellectual is a really big part of me and it's something that I'm proud of and it's something that I want to maintain.

22:03 But like it just does matter. And, and, and I think that like I kind of go crazy if I like don't, if I'm not like learning new things sometimes. So I just try to like always keep things fresh. So I don't know, by the time this comes out, I may have already interviewed him, but currently I'm on track to interview actually a physicist next week. Never interviewed A physicist. Like that's totally out of the picture so far, but like, why not? And it'll compare it later. Why this physicist didn't for what reasons? But I, I just, it's like I, I cannot, I can't ever stay too comfortable. So I have to keep like pushing the boundary of what the podcast is about. Or is it was it used to be on socio linguistics said if it was on linguistics, now it's on language.

22:44 Now it's sort of just kind of interview based. And I interview academics like there's just just think that like there has, there are very few things that I don't find interesting. If I can find like some pathway in it, there's like some window where I'm like, I see something that I've done that's similar to what they're doing in that house. I'm going to go inside the house. A lot of metaphors going on here, so I apologize, but I just try to like challenge myself. Talia, it's been so wonderful talking with you folks. You can learn more about Talia at taliasherman.com and find Tomato Tomato wherever you get your podcasts.

23:26 If you liked this show, share it with your friends and fellow Ampersands, and make sure to hit the follow button to be notified when new episodes drop. It would mean the world to us if you took two minutes to rate and review the show. Just go to the main show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and look for the stars. I had a chance to listen back on my conversation with Talia and I wanted to share a few reflections. One, I felt so seen at the beginning of the interview when Talia said that millennials, quote, have a million jobs. For better or for worse, I was chuckling on the inside. I think back to how many of my peers and I were raised with the belief that you can grow up to be and do anything. And I think for some of us high achievers, we took that to mean you should be and do everything.

24:27 And now we're unlearning the harmful parts of that while harnessing the go getter attitude that helps to make things possible. 2 I am so inspired by how Talia started her podcast as a senior in high school for her senior project. I think at that point I was working in an OfficeMax. Suffice to say, technology and accessible tools have changed the world. They've made it possible for really anyone, at any age, to explore their curiosity and create something of their own. All you need is a device, Internet connection, and some headphones and the will to keep going. The barrier to entry is as low as it's ever been for aspiring creators. 3 I love how Talia talks about her podcast as the absolute best project for someone who loves to learn. A couple years ago, I had a moment of deep reflection around this podcast, which I'd also classify as a passion project and as work.

25:41 My question was around value. What is the value? What I discovered was that beyond the value I know this podcast brings to listeners and to our guests, the value for me personally is that this podcast makes me a better coach and a better human being, more well-rounded, more curious, more present. And I'm so grateful for it.