Sean Rameswaram

Sean Rameswaram is the host of Vox’s Today, Explained. Follow him on Twitter.

I have a small panic attack every time I think about how stressful it must be to produce this show every day. I worked for a show that put out one episode every other week and it was insane! How do you do it? How do you deal with the stress?
Being prepared helps a lot. I don’t think of the show in day-to-day terms. Instead, I think of the week. How’s this week going to start? (That’s a Sunday thought.) What comes in the middle? (That’s a Monday thought.) How will it end? (That’s a Wednesday thought.) Let’s have all sorts of different guests. Let’s make people laugh and cry. Let’s tell the most important stories—ones we haven’t told before. (Those are everyday thoughts. Except Saturdays. On Saturdays I try not to think.)

In 400 episodes, what was the one that almost didn't happen?
Allow me to share with you a secret about our very first episode. It’s called “Six Easy Steps to Nuclear War.” We had that episode produced in advance of launching. We made it back in the drafting days when we were chasing visions, assembling furniture, and trying to figure out what exactly our show was. We all knew it would be great to kick things off with this episode about the seemingly outdated protocol for launching a nuclear weapon in the United States, but why? It’s a daily news show and it didn’t look like the United States’ nuclear weapons were going to be in the news on our launch day. 

But then something sort of serendipitous happened. The night before our show was set to debut, there was breaking news about how fragile the country’s nuclear launch protocol was. Seriously! There was breaking news about the exact content of our planned pilot. We shifted the scripting at the top of the episode around and the rest is history. 

What's been the most enjoyable thing about making the show, so far?
You’d think the toughest days are those when the news breaks at noon and we have precious few hours to throw a show together (we try to post by four in the afternoon). But those are actually the most exciting and — believe it or not — fun days at Today, Explained. What makes them great, other than the all the free adrenaline going around, is the collaboration. You can’t make something worth a whit in such a short amount of time unless everyone is giving it their all — from the guest to the producers to the interns. Teamwork makes the dream work. Then we hit publish and move on to the next one.

How do you see the show changing in the future?
More episodes about the election. 

What are you most excited about when it comes to the future of podcasting?
Podcasting is still in its early stages. If you compare podcasts to film, we might still be in the silent era. What’s color going to look like? What about 3D? I’m excited to see (and hear) where people take our young medium. I can’t wait for the world to discover the next Jad Abumrad. Maybe she’s already making stuff and I just need to find some damn time to listen.