I'm Cal Newport and this is Deep Questions, episode 185.

I'm here in my Deep Work HQ, along with my producer, Jesse.

We were just just rocking rolling here briefly.

There's some music, blaring, I would say, from the restaurant below, so we're really

feeling to groove.

I don't think it'll show up on a recording because of the heavy gating we have, but it's

going to give us a beat to bounce to.

They're having a good time down there.

They are.

They didn't invite us, but I'm glad they are having a good time.

This is a pretty eccentric studio we recorded in because we just had an audio engineer

out here last week, helping us get rid of this ringing that was picking up in the equipment.

It turned out that the building itself has a faulty ground.

If you don't properly ground the electrical system in a building, the wires become antennas.

This entire building is basically RF-emitting antennas or RF-gathering antennas.

Joe was able to take a, what do you call it, impedance booster and plug it onto our

mic cable and we could hear AM radio in our headsets because the wire on the mic was

acting as an antenna and the sound was coming in.

Our whole building is an antenna and there's techno music playing.

The third fun thing is, as it took Jesse a while to get used to this, weird smell Fridays,

like every once in a while, just weird smells come from the kitchen below and fill the studio.

I don't think in good conscious we could have former President Barack Obama come be interviewed

...