Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - a holiday hello, and bison emoji audio you may enjoy

Episode Date: December 26, 2022

Hey folks -- happy holidays! Please enjoy this holiday hello, plus the first episode of a podcast miniseries Alex made in 2020. (and "Alex" = me, I'm the one writing this) Here's the website for the full 4-episode miniseries: https://www.bisonemojipodcast.com/ You can also find the episodes by searching "1 Way To Make An Emoji" in your podcast player. Have a safe and fantastic rest of 2022, and see you in 2023!

Oh, taping night, Alex is now recording. He is taping a holiday message for the Monday between Christmas and New Year's, sort of like he did last year. Thank you. Thank you. I can hear all of you applauding. Thank you very much. And hey, it's me, Alex. This is a holiday hello, and I'm very thankful to you because what an amazing year of getting to make secretly incredibly fascinating. Also, this is a short holiday message. It's followed by some audio that will be new to many of you, but not all of you. So that's why it's a long file in your player. But just a few minutes here. I want to say thank you so much and share about this year. Last year at this time, the Monday

between Christmas and New Year's, I tried something. I tried taking a week off. And that was the first time in the whole run of the podcast that a Monday did not bring a new episode, a new bonus show. That was really good and really healthy, I think. So I'm doing it again this Monday between Christmas and New Year's. I hope you're having a great December 26th, a boxing day to those in the UK. Anyway, this week, I want to say thank you, because listeners like you make this show a thing. And it's been a wonderful thing this particular year. This year, we hit 100 episodes of the show. We had a membership drive that made a lot of new stuff possible and a poster to celebrate 100 episodes. We did live episodes online. We did a live in-person show in Manhattan. And we did that with everybody coming through on COVID prevention and doing

it the right way. This is also a year when the podcast got written up in a lot of places by various press and, you know, big wigs and so on. The biggest wig was probably a physical Sunday paper of the New York Times. Had an article featuring the podcast. So that was just a treat. I got to hold newspapers that said it is a thing. It's also been particularly joyful talking to you folks about this show. I think this podcast creates conversations that are really unique, you know, especially when we do an episode topic that no other podcast would spend time on. And I mean no other podcast. And that's very top of mind because last week was a great example. The show was about ball bearings and I got to have excited conversations about ball bearings in my life. You folks are why I get to be in a weekly community

of people who are excited to feel wonder about ball bearings and toasters and cardboard and all the next things we're going to find out about. Rubber ducks are coming up, undersea cables are coming up. That's a great thing. And I also want to thank you all for being very kind, very warm, very joyful about the great parts of 2022 in my personal life. And, you know, number one on that list, definitely me getting married. I got to marry my wonderful now wife, Brenda. It's been really, really nice to have you folks cheerleading, that kind of thing, and being warm and being human and being great as those things happen. And so thank you for being part of those parts of my life, too. It's a nice thing. And I'm lucky in

terms of the kinds of people who check out what I do. I think it's a really great group, and I'm really fortunate there. Basically, I'm saying you're awesome, and I get to enjoy the warmth and the sunbeams of that, too. So thank you. I'm thrilled we got to do all that in 2022, and I am so looking forward to continuing to do it in 2023. Anyway, the real thing for you to enjoy here is one last thing I'm leaving you with, because not just a holiday message here, I also have some audio that a few of you have heard,

but I figure most people have not heard, and I figure why not share it? Why not highlight it? I have a podcast miniseries you might enjoy, and the rest of this audio file here is the first episode. Back in 2020, I had an amazing thing happen with emoji. I proposed a bison emoji. You know, Americans call it a buffalo a lot, but a bison. I proposed an emoji of a bison to the organization that is in charge of emoji, because it turns out there is one. They approved it. I proceeded to make a podcast miniseries about that experience, about bison, about life, and also about some really personal stuff that has gone on in my life. This miniseries, there's grief in it, there's loss in

it, especially the last episode. There's some heavy stuff. So be aware of that as you get into it. Anyway, this miniseries, very different from Secretly Incredibly Fascinating, and I'm not substituting it for a regular episode. I just figured, you know, a lot of times I reference the bison emoji, either verbally or digitally, and people ask me what I am talking about or why I am bringing up a random emoji because they haven't heard the miniseries or they just don't know this part of my life. So I'm excited to share the first episode of it here with you. It's called One Way to Make an Emoji. If you follow the links or search for that title, it's one number one way to make an emoji. Or go to bisonemojipodcast.com. There's all kinds of different ways to find it. And, you know, I'm excited to share it with you. I think

it's a wonderful piece of audio all around, and I'm really proud of what we put together there. And, you know, glad to share more of myself if you want to know more. New episodes of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating return next week and every week after that of 2023 and beyond. Thank you again, and I'm wishing you the very best for this final chunk of 2022. Hi, I'm Alex Schmidt. This podcast is called One Way to Make an Emoji. This podcast is called One Way to Make an Emoji. It's a story about how I created the Bison Emoji, a new emoji coming to your phone and every other device on earth later this year, 2020. Here's how that happened and why that happened, because it's a bigger story than you might

think. Yeah, so welcome. This is a four-episode podcast. It is about me, Alex Schmidt, hello, creating the bison emoji. I'm doing this because I think I have something useful to share with you. Something about how to be alive. And it's something very private.

I wouldn't otherwise be comfortable sharing it, but I'm going to share it anyway because I think this is that important. In order to share that one thing with you, we are going to take a journey, okay? And it's a journey with lots of parts. Some of them may seem kind of unrelated to each other at first, but stick with me. This is going somewhere, and it's going everywhere. In these four episodes, just four podcast episodes, we are going to explore the roots of emoji, quantum science, American history, digital language, meatpacking, teen girl speak, European history, Native America, hoax super volcanoes, accidental movie stars,

the size and scope of our legacies as human beings, Victorian flowers, freak lightning, artisanal unicorns, particle accelerators, Midwestern salad culture, and bison fun facts. And that's all springing from one story. A story told with many sound effects. And a series of plot twists. The plot twist will have that sound effect, okay? Okay, we all know, great. Anyway, here's the story of me creating the bison emoji, and it's a story that starts at Fermilab. You've probably never heard of Fermilab, I'm guessing. Its full name is the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

It's named for 20th century physicist Enrico Fermi. And Fermilab is in Batavia, Illinois, a town in the Chicagoland region about 40 minutes drive west of the city. Hundreds of particle physicists work there full, using Fermilab to do experiments with particle accelerators. Giant, underground particle accelerators. Do you know what particle accelerators are? Like, they're these huge machines that smash subatomic particles together so they can see what happens? You've probably heard of the Large Hadron Collider, the giant Swiss particle accelerator first booted up in 2008. Before the Europeans built that, the Tevatron at Fermilab in America was the world's biggest particle accelerator.

And it's still big. Then and now, Fermilab physicists use the Tevatron to make incredible discoveries. Like in 1995, they discovered the top quark, a discovery that paved the way for the future discovery of the Higgs boson. In the year 2000, Fermilab discovered the first ever evidence of the tau neutrino. Hey, and on top of all those Fermilab achievements, there are countless other things that I also do not understand. I have googled them. I have listed them. I don't totally know what they are. Like, what are quarks? I know they are subatomic particles. They're super, super small particles. According to a 2016 piece in The Guardian, a quark's radius is less than

43 billion billionths of a centimeter. And there's no way to wrap your head around that. of a centimeter, and there's no way to wrap your head around that. You can hear someone say it, but you can't process it. But anyway, Fermilab has underground particle accelerators, but when I was a kid I only cared about what was on top of the accelerators, because on top of the accelerators was a prairie. Why is there a prairie on top of particle accelerators? What kind of Midwest Starfleet Academy is this place, you might ask, even though it's more of a Midwest Dexter's laboratory, but with adults. Here's the story. Fermilab broke ground on its first particle accelerator in December of 1969. They were led by a physicist named Dr. Robert R. Wilson. And Robert R. Wilson had no particular plans for the land on top of the accelerators until he got approached by a

biologist named Dr. Robert F. Betts. And you would assume Robert R. Wilson and Robert F. Betts are getting together for a meeting of the Roberts with Initials Club, but no, it turns out Robert R. W. and Robbie F. B. are talking prairies. Dr. Betts wanted to recreate Illinois prairie. A prairie is a low-maintenance, drought-resistant, erosion-preventing ecosystem. ecosystem. It's a perfect habitat for local birds and reptiles and insects and butterflies, and one prairie can preserve and revitalize its entire region. The only trouble is most prairies get ripped up to build subdivisions. Fermilab's accelerator land cannot be a subdivision. You cannot, like, dig plumbing and stuff into a particle accelerator down there, so Betts tells Wilson that that makes this perfect prairie restoration territory.

And Betts' prairie idea only has one catch. The catch is prairie restoration takes forever. And Betts is honest about it. Betts the biologist tells Wilson the physicist that this prairie restoration will take 40 years. Four zero. And then something great happens, because according to all the sources, when Betts asked Wilson if he was up for 40 years of watching grass grow, Wilson replied with a great line, quote,

If that's the case, we should start this afternoon. So thanks to two crazy Roberts, we start to have particle accelerators with prairies on top of them. Okay, follow so far? And by the way, prairies used to blanket North America. The land that's now the U.S. state of Illinois once contained 22 million acres of tall grass prairie. 22 million acres is more than 16 million football fields worth of land. And can you guess how much of that prairie is left today? Approximately less than 0.01%. Less than 0.01%. Less than 0.01%, and there is no way to wrap your head around that. You can hear someone say it, but you can't process it. You certainly can't see how one

particle accelerator land loops worth of additional prairie could possibly make a difference. But, because of two crazy Roberts, neither of whom lived another 40 years, those 40 years of prairie labor happened. And slightly more than 40 years later, a young boy enters our story, and his name is Alex Schmidt. Yeah, Alex Schmidt from the start of the show. How about that? I grew up in Chicagoland, about a 15 minute drive from Fermilab. And from time to time, we would drive around the Tevatron's Outer Ring Road, because you could just do that, it's free. And dad would stop the car. And we look both ways before we got out. And then we'd go watch the grasses rustle, and the birds flit around. And the butterflies do that floaty

nonsense thing that butterflies seem to like to do for some reason. What is that thing? They're just kind of there. Anyway, I was also a boy with sun-sensitive eyes and computer games back home and a general disinterest in, you know, effort and doing stuff. I am not proud to say it, but I had no real interest in staring at tall grass, you know, no matter how many crazy Roberts it took to put it there. And then we'd see bison. Because there were bison in that prairie at Fermilab. And when we saw bison, I wanted to stay. I wanted to stay and watch them move around. I wanted to stay and watch those big brown bison humps just kind of drift through the tall grass,

like fun, hairy ships. And we'd look for the biggest bison and look for the baby bison and look forward to the next time we'd stare at the grass. And the story keeps moving from there, because next, two weird things happen. We'll follow the second thing for the rest of the episode. Both things happened after I moved away from Chicagoland to go to college in Syracuse, New York, and then live in California, and then New York City, and then California again,

and then North Carolina. And as I did all that, two weird things happened. Thing number one, I started receiving photos of the Fermilab bison. From time to time, I'd open my email account and there in my inbox would be another photo somebody sent me of Fermilab bison. Plot twist! And just hang on to that plot twist. It'll come back in episode four. We want to focus on weird thing number two now. Weird thing number two the whole rest of the episode. now. Weird thing number two, the whole rest of the episode. Weird thing number two is that for maybe the first time ever, my partner Brenda and I jointly listened to a podcast. My partner Brenda is a person I love talking to. Also, she has excellent taste in music. So I think when driving, we had pretty much always done music and talking, and that's what we do. And I think we'd never made the decision to hear a podcast together. But it's a

couple years ago, we're on a road trip, and I'm driving us through this weird stretch between San Diego and LA. And she's got the phone cord thingy, and she's flipping through her phone, and she says, hey, there's a new 99% Invisible. This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. 99% Invisible is an amazing podcast about design with an amazing voiced host. I'm very jealous. And Brenda puts it on and we're listening together. And amazing voice host says, hey, we're thrown into a whole nother show we're featuring. It's called Welcome to Macintosh. This is Welcome to Macintosh, a tiny show about a big fruit company. I'm your host, Mark Bramhill. And it's a show about Apple and the community around it and the history of it, but they're

featuring a special episode because it's about emoji. The host of Welcome to Macintosh created an emoji. And pretty soon me and Brenda are stopping and starting the show to talk about it in wonder. To our amazement, we are learning anyone can propose an emoji. So Brenda and Mark Bramhill, this podcast host, kind of co-sent me on this journey. I decided to tell Mark Bramhill all about that. And apparently I am not the first. Do people often come to you with what I'm coming to you with? Like, thank you for the inspiration kind of thing. I'm curious if I'm the first one or one of thousands or, you know, I don't know.

You're not the first one. You're certainly not the first person to come to me with an idea for an emoji or saying that they want to create an emoji. I've gotten that a lot of times. And some people have gone through and submitted. I've had at least a couple people who have gotten something through. some college students in Western Washington State who were in like an intro media studies, kind of like digital media class. And one of their assignments was from a professor who had heard my podcast and thought, this is so cool, assigned it as a thing for them to listen to, and then had the students write up, if not formal pitches to Unicode, at least a sort of mock proposal of what would be a good emoji? Why would it fill a gap or whatever?

How would it be used or whatever. And thinking about these things, I heard from the student asking some questions and I reached out to the professor just being like, oh, this is so cool to hear about this and wound up Skyping into one of their classes or whatever and hearing some student ideas and answering questions. And it was just really surreal to be in that position. It's like, I definitely don't feel like I should be the esteemed guest of a course there, you know. But it was very fun. I think you're one of the first people reaching out to be like, hey, I got a new emoji in because I heard this thing. I've not heard that too many times. It's a tough bar to clear.

So congratulations. Oh, thank you so much. It's a very interesting thing because I feel like probably everyone who's ever tried to pitch one of these has imposter syndrome about it. And you eased mine quite a bit because you talk on the podcast about having it, and then you go ahead and do it anyway and pitch it to them in person and everything. It seems like it's such a new thing that we all feel a little crazy that we can even do it. Yeah, I mean, it's something where the whole idea of them, the Unicode Consortium as gatekeepers of this is still relatively new to them, too. I mean, they've been, as gatekeepers of this is still relatively new to them too. I mean, they've been, you know, making decisions about text and language and all of these things for quite some time, but they're still learning how to best handle stuff around emoji. And, you know, the process has changed

a little bit, at least since I went through the whole thing enough that, you know, I have to, when people, when people reach out to me asking for advice, I actually have to go brush up on, you know, what are the latest guidelines? What, what have they updated? Just because some of the things, you know, they've, they've learned there's some places where more information would be helpful or certain types of data or evidence aren't as good as predictors for how useful an emoji would be. And, you know, those refinements to the process are really encouraging to see and nice to see that this is the same way that we're trying to figure out how to propose emoji. Then, you know, they're learning the best way to judge them and make the system the

best it can be. And why is the Unicode Consortium, a name that sounds more and more like a convention for robots the more I say it, why is the Unicode Consortium in charge of new emojis? Well, the answer comes from the origin story of all emojis, which I'm guessing you Emoji began in 1998 in Japan, and it's a very specific birth. A graphic designer named Shigetaka Kurita created the first emoji set. He drew 176 emoji characters. They are the basis of the set we use today, and he drew them for a Japanese cell phone carrier named NTT Dokomo. Because the people at NTT Dokomo wanted more people to send more text messages.

Remember 90s text messaging when it cost a dime? Oh boy, how do any of us have money left? Anyway, NTT Dokomo assigned 176 separate code points to those 176 emoji to add them to NTT DoCoMo assigned 176 separate code points to those 176 emoji to add them to NTT DoCoMo phone keyboards. What are code points? Great technical question. Code points are brief strings of code. Each letter, number, punctuation, or emoji has its own code point. Digital devices read those code points in order to understand what is being typed. The Unicode Consortium, not a robot convention, they are organizing those code points into a big directory.

That directory is called the Unicode Standard. All the world's tech companies program their devices to use that standard for the code points for characters, so everything matches all over the world. So that is very helpful and normal and good work they're doing. But emoji were created outside the Unicode Consortium's Unicode standard. That one guy, Shigetaka Kurita, developed them for one company, and they were a hit. So then other competing Japanese cell phone carriers rolled out their own emoji keyboards, but the other companies did not bother to make sure their own code points

for their own emoji image sets matched up. This put Japanese folks in a situation where they could try to text a smiley face emoji, but their friend with a different cell phone carrier could receive that code point as a frowny face emoji, or a middle finger emoji, but their friend with a different cell phone carrier could receive that code point as a frowny face emoji, or a middle finger emoji, or an eggplant emoji. And we all know what the eggplant emoji means. Anyway, eventually the Unicode Consortium stepped in. The Unicode Consortium added standardized emoji code points to their Unicode standard in 2010. And shortly after that happened, Apple added emoji support to iPhones, and emoji conquered the world. Unicode continues to manage the emoji keyboard. They add new emoji every year. If you want to

propose one, you need to meet their exacting proposal requirements. To propose the bison emoji, I drafted and submitted a 17-page proposal document. 17 pages of text, science, culture, history, charts, graphs, screenshots, a piece of sample art that I commissioned, all with super-specific document formatting, because the Unicode Consortium calls the emoji shots. And that's something that Mark Bramhill taught me about by investigating it personally. Your proposal is dated October 2016. And then in your podcast, you describe doing the live pitch of it to Unicode in person in November of 2016. How much longer was it to get it approved? And when did you kind of start putting it together? It actually, the whole thing started with just calling Jeremy Burge in the summer of 2016. Quick context there. Jeremy Burge is the founder of the website Emojipedia

and the creator of the World Emoji Day holiday. World Emoji Day falls on July 17th because that is the date displayed in Apple's art for the calendar emoji. And, you know, at this point, I wasn't planning on proposing an emoji. I actually, like, I think I was maybe kind of aware of this was a thing that people could do. But I never thought of it as a thing of, like, I, a regular person, could do. And just talking to him and I kind of had this realization. It's like, oh, wait, no, then this is this is a thing I could do. And just talking to him and I kind of had this realization, it's like, oh, wait, no, then this is this is a thing I could do. This is I could have an emoji. And so it was just like, okay, I want suddenly I had so many more questions for him. From just like I was

calling because I wanted to do some kind of story about emoji because I thought they were weird and cool. And I was curious about it. And I was just kind of doing it emoji because I thought they were weird and cool and I was curious about it. And I was just kind of doing an interview just to explore like what kind of story is there in this and realized it's like, oh, this is the story. This is what I can do. And basically just asked him like, what would be the best thing to propose? Like you are on this board and you can't tell me what outstanding proposals there are, but you can also say, you know, this one, this one might be good because you have a good sense of what would be approved and what would be a good use of time or whatever that no one has already taken up the cause. And so he told me that someone meditating or doing yoga would be a good one. I had never done yoga before.

This was not a thing that was really deeply important to me. But it was like, okay, I know that a lot of people do care about this. This seems like it'll be fun. I'll learn a lot. And then started doing some research and just kind of casually putting that together, really focused on that in September, submitted it in October, and then went to the in-person quarterly meeting for Unicode the day before the 2016 election. Oh, it's a busy week. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah. I very distinctly remember interviewing someone for the story on election day, someone who was more critical of emoji and thinks that they're kind of silly. He doesn't use them himself. And he was saying how today our country is going to make a very important decision. And we're here talking about one of the least important things that we could be thinking about or whatever. And it's just like, ha ha, that's so funny. And then, you know, everything since then has happened. I had submitted right before the last quarterly meeting of the year before they had all the emoji. And then anyone who submitted after that deadline was going to be in the next year's kind of school of emoji, the next graduating class.

And so I had the most accelerated timeline possible of submitting, getting it approved and then being in the next released set. Did they encourage you to go to San Jose and make your case Or was that just something you thought would be fun? So it was something that wasn't presented in the, I sent them the proposal and like, they emailed back being like, this is great. Do you want to come to San Jose? That wasn't how it went. But what it was, I interviewed one of the people who's on that committee, Jenny Aitley. interviewed one of the people who's on that committee, Jenny Aitley. I interviewed her and essentially while I was writing the, like had a draft of my proposal and had her walk me through like, okay, tell me everything I'm doing wrong here. What looks bad about this? What would you improve? And she thought what I was doing was interesting and was just like, you know, actually

then this meeting that it would be considered at once you do submit this is on this day in California. And if you want, then you can come and do this. It's a thing that you can like kind of request to do. And it doesn't, I don't think it particularly helps or hurts your chances, but it was still fun to go and do that. And it was the same time that Jenny was putting on this kind of like EmojiCon, which was this conference of emoji thing. All the people who I might want to talk to were going to be there. And so it's like, you know, this is a fun little thing. I can do all the interviews in person rather than remotely that I want to be doing for this project. And I get this kind of weird, unique experience that I wouldn't otherwise get. So that was a lot of fun. You can't turn that down, you know? I'm curious how much you've gotten to know like the emoji community, right? Because it seems like, especially with that trip, you've got Unicode, which I assume is a massive headquarters in some giant building, like in a cartoon. But then also there's like the emoji community meeting in this,

what I feel like would almost be a Comic-Con sort of vibe. That's not too far off. Yeah. It's not too far off? Cool. Good. Well, the Comic-Con thing is. Oh, yeah. So Unicode actually doesn't have a headquarters. They don't have any sort of building because it's just made up of people who have other full-time jobs working at Apple and Google and Microsoft and all these

places. But for their meetings, then they rotate between the different companies' headquarters. So when I went and presented, it was being held at an IBM campus in San Jose. I like to imagine it as, you know, in Super Friends, there would be the evil guys where it's a skull in a swamp, and that's their building. I really wanted it to be like the smiley face just in some location. I would love that. But unfortunately unfortunately it is not that cool. It is more, it's a free conference room in a regular building. In real life, yes. In real life, it's just a conference room that wasn't being used at Microsoft or at Adobe. And then in terms of Unicode being in charge of this,

there's also that way where people who use Slack can just create their own emoji in a custom fashion and there's other things like that. How excited are you about that avenue for people to just generate something, even if it's not a canonical keyboard one? Oh, and I think that's great. And I love that that exists within those platforms. I've used those to make my own custom emojis, whether that's of like, if you want to reference something that's extremely specific to the group that that's on there, like, that doesn't need to be an emoji, or it could be based on like a picture of someone's cat, like that, you know, it could be It can be anything and be so unique and specific to you. I think many times when someone wants a very specific emoji, then those are, if anything, better than what you're going to get from Unicode. It can say something that just inherently isn't going to be universal. It's also very fun to imagine somebody going all the way to Unicode with like

the emoji of Robbie, you know, look at Robbie, my friend. It's just funny to me. Oh, yeah. And so and yeah, Robbie is doing this little dance. And there's music notes around it. Yeah, that's not gonna pass. No one. There's like three people in the world who are going to use that. And that's great that you can make that with almost no effort. Well, and then you are the creator of Person in Lotus Position. And I'm curious how often you use it. I use it definitely. And I'll use it sometimes in like signatures or things like that for signing off on some emails or whatever, like depending on who

it's with. I'll definitely use it as a sort of like symbolizing calm or Zen or whatever. I really should meditate more just because I think that would help with anxiety a little bit. You know, I'm not using it a ton myself, but I see it used a lot. I get sent it a lot. My favorite is, you know, I will get sent photos whenever like a celebrity has used the yoga emoji. I'll immediately get like at least one or two people sending me a screenshot. And that's just so delightful to see every single time. That's awesome. to see every single time. That's awesome.

Is it important? No, but like it's something where it's like it's fun and it's nice that whoever is using it has this thing that allows them to get the message they want exactly to that allows someone to get exactly the message they wanted to across to people. And that's really fun. Yeah. It's like you're a collaborator on what they're writing almost, right? Yeah. That's very cool. Yeah. No, it's I mean, it's really special to get to And that's really fun. Yeah. It's like you're a collaborator on what they're writing almost, right? Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, I mean, it's really special to get to see that. It's good to talk to anybody else who's done this. Cause I don't know who else to grab. But yeah, I look

forward to, you know, I look forward to my yoga emoji getting to be on the same, on the prairies with your bison. So this is so sweet. Seems like a very peaceful, a peaceful scene, you know, meditating in the prairie. There's something really fun about just how kind of like silly and absurd all of this is. It, you know, it feels like there's both a lot of drama in all of it, but that at the end of the day, the stakes are very, very low. And that's high drama, low stakes. Yeah, it's low and global.

I love it. It's. Is there anything else you want to share about just the overall emoji experience you had or what's going on with the one you made? Um, I'm not sure exactly. I'm trying to think if there's anything else, but I guess one question I have for you is how did, how did you, how did you pick to do a bison? What, what drew you to this?

Let me tell you something. If you are lucky enough to interview a skilled interviewer, you know, such as Mark Bramhill, your interviewer interviewee might pitch you the perfect question. That question drives the rest of this show. Because there are three big reasons I bothered to propose an emoji in the first place. Those three reasons are the three remaining episodes of this podcast miniseries, because we keep it tight, and here they are. Reason number one, emoji are worthwhile, all on their own.

Reason number two, bison are incredible, all on their own. Reason number two, bison are incredible, all on their own. And reason number three, well, not to hit you with too much of a plot twist. You gotta listen all the way to the end for that one. that one. This has been part one of a four-part podcast miniseries. That miniseries is called One Way to Make an Emoji. It's a podcast by me, Alex Schmidt, but I am not a musician. The music on this episode is listed in the episode description and in the show notes at buysanemojipodcast.com. I want to give particular thanks to Pottington Bear for this show's intro outro song. It's entitled Disco Chic, and it's used under Creative Commons license from his Sound of Picture production library, which is amazing. Learn more and hear more at soundofpicture.com.

Additional engineering on this episode by Mark Bramhill and by Annette Ronhell. Many thanks to my guest, Mark Bramhill. Please go out and hear his brilliant audio storytelling at markbramhill.com. He has a lot to share with you beyond the person in lotus position emoji. Links for that, as well as sources for the science and history and crazy Roberts in today's episode are in the episode show notes at bison emoji podcast.com. By the way, I said anyone can pitch an emoji. So this episode's show notes link off to Unicode's instructions for emoji proposals. Also Mark's proposal and my proposal. So you can see examples and there is a link to the email address bison emoji podcast at gmail.com, I am opening that up to your how-to questions.

My feedback may be slow, misspelled, or otherwise frustrating, but since you bothered to hear this show, I will bother to help you. Now, please subscribe to this podcast's feed so I can give you a heads up when the bison emoji is available on devices worldwide. All the regular episodes of this show are available right now, so go ahead and pull the next episode up in your podcast player. And thanks again for listening to this one.