HTDE: Motivation, Secret Messages, and Stealing Your Thunder

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

NPR

Comedy, Leisure, Other Games

4.6 • 35.7K Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2025

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week: Filmmaker Alice Wu shares a clever trick to help you finally finish that thing you’ve been working on, why teenagers are taking over the comments sections of old podcast episodes, and the origins of the phrase “steal your thunder”. Plus we continue in our quest to be your out of office emergency contact.

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How To Do Everything is hosted by Mike Danforth and Ian Chillag. It is produced by Heena Srivastava and Schuyler Swenson. Technical direction from Lorna White.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
0:05.4	RWJF is a national philanthropy, working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right.
0:12.1	Learn more at RWJF.org.
0:15.6	Hey, it's Peter. Coming up, we have another episode of How to Do Everything made by wait, wait,
0:20.3	producers, Mike Danforth, and Ian Chil Everything made by wait, wait, wait producers,
0:22.3	Mike Danforth, and Ian Chilog.
0:27.8	Now, this week, filmmaker Alice Wu will explain a clever trick that helped her finally finish her screenplay, plus why teenagers are taking over the comment sections of old NPR
0:33.7	podcast episodes to hang out.
0:36.7	Once again, everybody,
0:37.9	how to do everything will not live in this feed forever.
0:40.9	So be sure to get out of here and follow them at their own feed.
0:44.8	Frankly, I'm just tired of them taking up space around here.
0:48.8	Take it away.
0:49.8	Mike and Ian.
0:51.5	Who doesn't have problems with motivation?
0:54.3	Not us. Not me. Nobody. Nobody doesn't have problems with motivation? Not us.
0:55.0	Not me.
0:55.6	Nobody.
0:56.2	Nobody doesn't have problems with motivation.
0:58.9	Alice Wu, the filmmaker behind the movie's saving face and the half of it, was really stuck when
1:06.4	she was trying to write a script.
1:08.0	And she came up with a way to finally make herself do it. I thought, you know, I should write my second film. I then proceeded to spend like six months, like lying on the floor of my office, staring at the ceiling, being like, why am I so terrible? Why is everything so terrible? I'd, like, write a sentence. I'd delete it. I knew I had to get over that hump. And so I then thought,
	...

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