In ELLE.com’s monthly series Office Hours, we ask people in powerful positions to take us through their first jobs, worst jobs, and everything in between. This month, we spoke with Lulu Miller, the reporter and author behind some of radio’s most revered shows. After starting her career—and getting a journalism crash course—at WNYC’s inimitable Radiolab, Miller went on to launch NPR’s Invisibilia alongside This American Life’s Alix Spiegel; the two earned a Peabody nomination for the program in 2015. Miller is also known for her astounding off-kilter memoir, 2020’s bestselling Why Fish Don’t Exist, and her children’s book, Trucky Roads. Currently, she’s the co-host of Radiolab and the host of its made-for-kids spin-off, Terrestrials, and you can catch her doing live versions of both shows at New York City’s Little Island this week. Below, the former rugby player-slash-improv performer reveals the dream job she quit, the cold call that brought her to the mic, and the profound moment she discovered her own interviewing style.My first jobMy first job was working for Pine Ridge Builders. It was a small construction company owned by my best friend’s dad. When we were 15, the summer after our sophomore year, we worked for him, mostly hauling junk into the big dumpster. He taught us how to do some shingling. We helped with decks.I grew up in the Boston suburbs, and both my parents were professors. There was a degree to which my life was really bookish, and [this job] was this incredibly satisfying, but also really hard, summer of getting to use my hands to both take apart and make [things]. No stretch, I see radio as incredibly sculptural. Every single piece, I listen to it, I take it on a walk, and the minute I’m away from the computer, I can hear it in this way where I’m like, “Oh, the top—knock that off. This back end should be the front.” It suddenly becomes a physical puzzle.My worst jobIt’s really embarrassing. I was teaching creative writing at [the University of Virginia], and it should have been a dream job. I was so lucky to have it. But I find the work of engaging 15 brains in the moment, and having to stand up in front of them and not care about their approval, [to be difficult]. It made me see how hard that work is, and this wasn’t even a hard setting—these were nerdy college kids who wanted to take the class. But it required a set of skills I simply do not possess, and after the two years I had to do it, I put down my chalk and was like, “I don’t have what it takes.”Kristen Finn / Design Leah RomeroHow I fell love with writingI struggled sometimes with sadness and having a slightly chaotic house [growing up], and my dream was to spend my day escaping the world. I wrote tons of fiction stories as a kid. I’d lay down on my parents’ bed while they were out and just write, write, write. It felt like sledding—not knowing where it was going to go. I had so much control, and it was so quiet. But then I didn’t study English, because I didn’t want to pollute it with school; I wanted it to be my private thing.The unexpected way I started in radioMy first job out of college, I was working for a woodworker in his shop, and we had radio and WNYC on all the time. Radiolab was just starting as a show; I heard that and This American Life. It was making me laugh, it was making me feel, it was doing what I had always wanted stories to do, but even more viscerally. It was literally a calling; I can’t describe it any other way. So I reached out, and Radiolab said I could volunteer for a day. I learned how to do all the stuff that helps make the ship run. I got so lucky on timing, because no one really knew about the show yet. I got a job as their first producer, and I learned story by story. I listened to so many different reporters as they would interview people, and that was my journalism school. I watched how many ways there are to interview, so many different ways to open people up.When I realized I’d discovered my own interviewing styleWe did a show about the way music interacts with the brain and becomes hooky. I interviewed this guy Leo Rangell, who was 94 and had full-bodied musical hallucinations. He had been a psychoanalyst, so he started analyzing the songs, like, oh, this one was when my wife... I suddenly realized the songs were his companions, because everyone [in his life] was dying; he had to cross all the names off his address book. He was telling a story about a song, and I was like, “Oh, could you sing it?” Maybe that’s inappropriate to ask an old man, but he sang it, and he started crying. It felt like this intimate space where I was really talking to him like me, and he was really responding to me as me. And there was this profound emotional connection. It was very powerful.Kristen Finn / Design Leah RomeroWhat playing rugby taught me about myselfI went to a great college, and I swear the best learnings were on the rugby field. I was an outside center, and I would get the pass and run, and it was so exciting to tackle. It was so exciting to be a part of a team. Now on Terrestrials and Radiolab, the magic is literally in passing the script back and forth. Rugby created this zone to think about different strengths; the way you get the ball down is with collaboration. It helped me stay in my body and out of my head, and it helped me be proud of—instead of afraid of—my own strength. That’s really cheesy. I don’t think I’ve ever said that out loud, but it’s true.How college improv helped me as a journalistI was walking by the auditions, and they shouted, “Hey, we need more girls to audition.” I was in my pajamas in my dorm, and I was like, “Okay.” I didn’t overthink it. Especially in college, or in those early years when you’re out on your own, there can be a tendency to prove your worth and be a little lighthouse of eloquence or humor or whatever. But improv is all about listening and so is journalism. You show your worth by really tracking what someone else says and asking the next question. What you should do—in journalism, in social situations, in anything—is listen past where you’re bored. Then you could start to get to something interesting. Still, when I cold call someone, when I begin an interview, I feel like I’m going on that stage for an hour.On the history-making success of InvisibiliaIt was the first show on NPR that was hosted by two women. It freaked people out for real. So we didn’t know if it was a good idea. I remember one of the comments was like, “I might like this topic if you didn’t sound like you were talking about going shopping all the time.” Somebody sent me an image of McDonald’s french fries with mine and [my co-host] Alix [Spiegel]’s faces on it—vocal fries or whatever. I don’t even think I have vocal fry. I don’t even think vocal fry is real. I think it’s the emperor’s clothes that men invented to have a new way to hate on women.We just really wanted to explore all these different invisible things and feelings, which are often discounted but affect everything: behavior, economy, technology, politics. We wanted to tell these stories, and then we were very lucky with our timing. Invisibilia released six weeks after Serial finished, and people were like, “I want [another] podcast,” and there we were. Our first season got 50 million downloads, and we got immediately on hundreds of stations.Why working on Radiolab and Terrestrials feels particularly important right nowDoing science journalism in this moment where science is under attack has brought out a real sense of vitality and strength on the team. We’ve always cared deeply about what we do, but doing it right now, there’s this urgency and excitement; we know that we are still a place a lot of people come to for science reporting. And I’m so excited about the work that’s coming out this summer and fall. We’re taking some risks.This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.