WEBVTT 00:00:00.660 --> 00:00:04.220 - So this is episode number three of Metacast. 00:00:04.220 --> 00:00:06.640 - Yay, already. 00:00:06.640 --> 00:00:08.640 - Three, right? 00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:09.480 - Yeah. 00:00:09.480 --> 00:00:12.680 - And it's so funny because it's actually the fourth episode 00:00:12.680 --> 00:00:13.720 that we're recording. 00:00:13.720 --> 00:00:14.720 - Wait, what, how? 00:00:14.720 --> 00:00:17.200 - This is gonna be meta, right? 00:00:17.200 --> 00:00:22.200 So we just had a recording with Brian McCallum. 00:00:22.200 --> 00:00:23.440 - Yeah. 00:00:23.440 --> 00:00:25.560 - And also these guys, Jake and Jonathan. 00:00:25.560 --> 00:00:28.920 And we got some very good advice from them. 00:00:28.920 --> 00:00:31.880 They said like, do an episode every week. 00:00:31.880 --> 00:00:36.280 So that builds habit for people to like, listen to us talking. 00:00:36.280 --> 00:00:41.600 But sourcing guests for a weekly show, I think is a nightmare. 00:00:41.600 --> 00:00:44.280 And also we'll run out of our favorite podcasts 00:00:44.280 --> 00:00:46.680 if we do a weekly interview episode. 00:00:46.680 --> 00:00:51.640 So what we decided to try out is we will do an interview 00:00:51.640 --> 00:00:53.540 episode every other week. 00:00:53.540 --> 00:00:56.640 And in between, which is also every other week, 00:00:56.640 --> 00:01:04.000 we will do a meta episode or metasode where we will talk about 00:01:04.000 --> 00:01:07.040 how the process went for the past episode. 00:01:07.040 --> 00:01:11.080 Also what we learned, we are in the very unique moment in time 00:01:11.080 --> 00:01:14.320 right now for us, for, for me, for Ilya. 00:01:14.320 --> 00:01:17.080 I'm your host, by the way, and Arnab is my co-host. 00:01:17.080 --> 00:01:19.320 - Maybe we should have started with an intro, 00:01:19.320 --> 00:01:21.320 but we can get to the intro after this part. 00:01:21.320 --> 00:01:22.200 This is going well. 00:01:22.200 --> 00:01:24.760 - Yeah, that's, that's what's so meta about this. 00:01:24.760 --> 00:01:25.480 - Yeah. 00:01:25.480 --> 00:01:28.680 - Like we forgot to add an intro and screw it. 00:01:28.680 --> 00:01:30.680 Let's just go with the flow, right? 00:01:30.680 --> 00:01:33.960 But I guess lesson learned from this, which is right now, 00:01:33.960 --> 00:01:35.320 we need to have a checklist. 00:01:35.320 --> 00:01:41.560 And also for these episodes, I think it should be totally cool for us to go on all sorts of 00:01:41.560 --> 00:01:42.120 tangents. 00:01:42.120 --> 00:01:42.680 - Yeah. 00:01:42.680 --> 00:01:47.240 - I really like the Jake and Jonathan show, how they just go rumble about stuff. 00:01:47.240 --> 00:01:51.000 We will probably contain it to more podcasty things, 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:55.160 but there could be topics that are relevant to podcasting. 00:01:55.160 --> 00:01:57.720 Like talking about checklists, right? 00:01:57.720 --> 00:02:02.280 I don't know if you read the checklist manifesto book by Atul Gawande, have you? 00:02:02.280 --> 00:02:03.080 - Yeah, I have. 00:02:03.080 --> 00:02:06.520 - I actually haven't read it, but I know kind of the key premise there, 00:02:06.520 --> 00:02:10.680 which is like lots of people were dying from anesthesia back in the 60s, I think. 00:02:10.680 --> 00:02:16.760 And somebody looked at why do airplanes not crash? 00:02:16.760 --> 00:02:20.120 It's like a more complex undertaking. 00:02:20.120 --> 00:02:23.080 And then they realized that people use checklists. 00:02:23.080 --> 00:02:28.280 They started to use checklists in airplanes in the Second World War period, 00:02:28.280 --> 00:02:32.680 when they invented the B-52, whatever that bomber was with huge flying fortress. 00:02:32.680 --> 00:02:37.720 - It was pretty complicated to operate from start to finish, yeah. 00:02:37.720 --> 00:02:39.640 - I think the first airplane actually crashed. 00:02:39.640 --> 00:02:44.840 Pilots just got confused and they invented like checklists or started using checklists. 00:02:44.840 --> 00:02:47.320 So then anesthesiologists adopted checklists as well. 00:02:47.320 --> 00:02:52.920 And then the mortality rate from anesthesia reduced to like nearly zero. 00:02:53.080 --> 00:02:54.040 After that. 00:02:54.040 --> 00:02:58.120 So we should also use checklists for our show so that we should use 00:02:58.120 --> 00:03:02.040 the border mortality rate for our listeners. 00:03:02.040 --> 00:03:02.840 - Yeah. 00:03:02.840 --> 00:03:08.280 I mean, it's not just medical or the airline industry, right? 00:03:08.280 --> 00:03:09.240 It's everywhere now. 00:03:09.240 --> 00:03:14.200 Like in our jobs at Amazon and Google, we use checklists for pretty much 00:03:14.200 --> 00:03:16.760 anything that was critical. 00:03:16.760 --> 00:03:21.400 You're doing something in production, you write up everything, including like, 00:03:21.960 --> 00:03:23.560 what will you do if things go wrong? 00:03:23.560 --> 00:03:24.680 How can things go wrong? 00:03:24.680 --> 00:03:25.080 And all that. 00:03:25.080 --> 00:03:29.800 So of course, for our podcast, we don't need to go to all that, but we do need to write down. 00:03:29.800 --> 00:03:30.120 Okay. 00:03:30.120 --> 00:03:31.160 Start with an intro. 00:03:31.160 --> 00:03:33.320 - Right. 00:03:33.320 --> 00:03:33.480 Yeah. 00:03:33.480 --> 00:03:34.280 Start an intro. 00:03:34.280 --> 00:03:38.600 Finish with asking people what they sell on what platform. 00:03:38.600 --> 00:03:39.560 - All right. 00:03:39.560 --> 00:03:43.480 So let's do the intro now, five minutes into the episode. 00:03:43.480 --> 00:03:44.520 - Yeah. 00:03:44.520 --> 00:03:45.720 Let's do an intro. 00:03:45.720 --> 00:03:47.480 Why don't you start this time? 00:03:47.480 --> 00:03:48.040 - Sure. 00:03:48.040 --> 00:03:48.200 Yeah. 00:03:48.200 --> 00:03:50.040 Hello, listeners. 00:03:50.040 --> 00:03:52.680 So this is Metacast episode three. 00:03:52.680 --> 00:03:55.160 I'm your co-host, Arnab. 00:03:55.160 --> 00:03:56.600 And with me here is... 00:03:56.600 --> 00:03:59.080 - I'm your co-host, Ilya Bezdilov. 00:03:59.080 --> 00:04:01.960 And I'm so happy to... 00:04:01.960 --> 00:04:04.040 It sounds weird, right? 00:04:04.040 --> 00:04:06.920 Like, I wouldn't say I'm so happy to be talking to you, 00:04:06.920 --> 00:04:08.920 but I'm always happy to be talking to you, Arnab. 00:04:08.920 --> 00:04:09.400 - Right. 00:04:09.400 --> 00:04:11.880 - But I'm also happy if somebody is listening to this podcast. 00:04:11.880 --> 00:04:12.120 - Right. 00:04:12.120 --> 00:04:17.960 - So yeah, what we wanted to chat about in this episode is, 00:04:17.960 --> 00:04:20.040 you know, we've recorded the first two episodes. 00:04:20.040 --> 00:04:26.200 The first one was basically me talking about my experience of doing the other podcasts that I have. 00:04:26.200 --> 00:04:30.440 I mean, it was like Arnab and me talking, like there was a bit of intro of us both. 00:04:30.440 --> 00:04:35.960 - But that was like your experience with your podcast, which is in Russian. 00:04:35.960 --> 00:04:39.960 - Yeah. And then the second episode we did was with Brian McCullough. 00:04:39.960 --> 00:04:40.760 We did an interview. 00:04:40.760 --> 00:04:44.920 Brian McCullough is the host of Tech Meme Right Home, 00:04:44.920 --> 00:04:48.440 which is the daily show that runs down news from tech industry. 00:04:48.440 --> 00:04:51.240 And he is also the author of the internet history podcast, 00:04:51.240 --> 00:04:57.960 which is my all time favorite 500 hour audio book about how the internet happened. 00:04:57.960 --> 00:04:59.240 - And the book too. 00:04:59.240 --> 00:05:00.680 - Yeah. And he also wrote the book with the same name. 00:05:00.680 --> 00:05:03.000 So these were really cool episodes. 00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:04.200 We also recorded the third episode, 00:05:04.840 --> 00:05:08.200 but this is so meta. Let's not talk about the third episode yet, 00:05:08.200 --> 00:05:10.680 because this is the episode about the first two episodes. 00:05:10.680 --> 00:05:13.640 And then we do another recording to talk about the third one. 00:05:13.640 --> 00:05:15.800 - We won't go into the third one, but I think 00:05:15.800 --> 00:05:20.600 this thing was heavily influenced by the third episode. 00:05:20.600 --> 00:05:21.560 - Let's pretend it wasn't. 00:05:21.560 --> 00:05:26.360 - We won't go into the details of the third episode, right? 00:05:26.360 --> 00:05:32.040 But the one quick thing I would say is the style of the Jake and Jonathan episode, 00:05:32.040 --> 00:05:39.880 as well as the recording our chat with them that was so fresh and natural and like basically just flowing that we 00:05:39.880 --> 00:05:45.560 thought, yeah, we can actually do these weekly things reflecting, right? 00:05:45.560 --> 00:05:49.160 Like these will be our own reflections on what's going on. 00:05:49.160 --> 00:05:51.800 How is it going? What's not going well and all that? 00:05:51.800 --> 00:05:52.520 Yeah. 00:05:52.520 --> 00:05:55.320 - Yeah. And I also feel like we have that chemistry. 00:05:55.320 --> 00:05:59.960 In case if you haven't listened to the first episode or if you forgot that very important detail, 00:05:59.960 --> 00:06:04.600 Arnab and I worked at Amazon for five years. 00:06:04.600 --> 00:06:06.760 We started working in 2015. 00:06:06.760 --> 00:06:08.760 I mean, you started in the opposite a little bit earlier than me. 00:06:08.760 --> 00:06:09.080 - Yeah. 00:06:09.080 --> 00:06:10.520 - Actually a long time earlier than me. 00:06:10.520 --> 00:06:10.840 - Yeah. 00:06:10.840 --> 00:06:15.400 - But I think the first week my manager was like, meet Arnab. 00:06:15.400 --> 00:06:16.280 He's awesome. 00:06:16.280 --> 00:06:20.120 He has like, you know, similar ideas to yours and stuff. 00:06:20.120 --> 00:06:24.680 So we met the first week and then we worked basically nonstop for five years together. 00:06:24.680 --> 00:06:30.120 We were sitting next to each other, like talking, going on hikes, talking about podcasts. 00:06:30.120 --> 00:06:31.320 So yeah, let's see how it goes. 00:06:31.320 --> 00:06:36.280 And I actually feel like it will be fun to listen to both of us talk, 00:06:36.280 --> 00:06:39.720 especially as we get more comfortable with, you know, podcasting. 00:06:39.720 --> 00:06:48.120 - I think like from the first episode itself, there has been a sea change already, right? 00:06:48.120 --> 00:06:52.840 Like I wouldn't have been comfortable just speaking without, like we haven't even written 00:06:52.840 --> 00:06:57.240 down what we're going to talk about today, except maybe you have a few 10 bullet points. 00:06:57.240 --> 00:06:58.360 - Well, I have. 00:06:58.360 --> 00:07:01.560 - I caught you off guard. 00:07:01.560 --> 00:07:02.520 - Gotcha. 00:07:02.520 --> 00:07:06.440 - I have four lines that I've written down. 00:07:06.440 --> 00:07:10.360 But yeah, I mean, I wouldn't have been comfortable doing that. 00:07:10.360 --> 00:07:14.360 And yeah, I think the chemistry is definitely there. 00:07:14.360 --> 00:07:20.360 We haven't even started putting in our dad jokes yet, so it'll only get better from here. 00:07:20.360 --> 00:07:26.760 - You had a dad joke with the word "meta" a couple of days ago, which I didn't get for like a 00:07:26.760 --> 00:07:27.960 minute. What was it? Do you remember it? 00:07:27.960 --> 00:07:35.800 - I think you were saying something about recording it. And I said, it doesn't matter anymore. 00:07:35.800 --> 00:07:37.560 - It doesn't matter. 00:07:37.560 --> 00:07:37.960 - Yeah. 00:07:37.960 --> 00:07:39.960 - It doesn't matter. 00:07:39.960 --> 00:07:43.800 Yeah. So we have to say that we are not affiliated with "meta". 00:07:43.800 --> 00:07:43.960 - Yes. 00:07:43.960 --> 00:07:45.480 - We are the good guys. 00:07:45.480 --> 00:07:51.960 - And I think this also came up in our third episode, which is a good thing, right? 00:07:51.960 --> 00:07:56.600 Like we had not, we thought about that name. Actually, do you want to talk about the names we 00:07:56.600 --> 00:07:58.120 considered and all that? 00:07:58.120 --> 00:08:02.520 - So actually one thing I want to talk about before we start, and it's something that I think it was 00:08:02.520 --> 00:08:09.160 Brian, actually. Yeah. That's one of the learnings that I got from Brian's episode is there might be a 00:08:09.160 --> 00:08:14.040 bit of echo coming from me right now. And I don't know what sound quality actually will be. 00:08:14.040 --> 00:08:18.440 I'm using a Blue Yeti mic. I usually use another mic and I'm also sitting in my office. I usually 00:08:18.440 --> 00:08:24.120 do it in the closet. And I bought this thing, I forgot how it's called, but it's like a foamy 00:08:24.120 --> 00:08:30.520 thing around my mic that I'm trying to use to suppress the echo, but I still hear a lot of echo in my ears. 00:08:30.520 --> 00:08:37.160 So we'll see how it goes. One thing I just wanted to really quickly mention is the concept of room 00:08:37.160 --> 00:08:38.520 tone. Have you heard of it? 00:08:38.520 --> 00:08:45.080 - No, I haven't. Just as you're getting into that, right? Like essentially all the three episodes so 00:08:45.080 --> 00:08:48.840 far, uh, you may have seen some pictures already. If not- 00:08:48.840 --> 00:08:52.600 - Arnab, two episodes. We pretend we haven't recorded the first one. 00:08:52.600 --> 00:08:54.120 - Oh, that's the fourth one. 00:08:54.120 --> 00:09:00.440 - Well, this is the fourth one we're recording, but it'll be produced or published the third one. 00:09:00.440 --> 00:09:00.600 Yeah. 00:09:00.600 --> 00:09:01.720 - Right. Yeah. 00:09:02.600 --> 00:09:09.400 - Take it with a grain of salt or like margin of air, whatever. The episodes that we have recorded 00:09:09.400 --> 00:09:15.960 so far, we've both been sitting in our like closets and surrounded by clothes. And Ilya talked about 00:09:15.960 --> 00:09:22.600 this in the first episode a little bit where the, all the clothes absorb a lot of the sound so it 00:09:22.600 --> 00:09:29.080 doesn't reverberate and cause the echo. Uh, so we finally decided, uh, we saw that other people who were 00:09:29.080 --> 00:09:35.880 coming to their, our guests were basically, well, one person was using AirPods, right? 00:09:35.880 --> 00:09:41.400 - Yeah. And my first episode, I was like, never have to use AirPods. And here it is, uh, Jonathan 00:09:41.400 --> 00:09:44.280 Courtney is hitting his AirPods and he's like, I'm too lazy for this. 00:09:44.280 --> 00:09:49.800 - And I think none of them were in like their recording studios and all that too, 00:09:49.800 --> 00:09:52.360 but the sound quality seemed pretty good. So- 00:09:52.360 --> 00:09:53.640 - Except the AirPods. 00:09:53.640 --> 00:09:58.440 - Except the AirPods. Yeah. The AirPods were pretty, yeah. Disrupting. But based on that, 00:09:58.440 --> 00:10:05.080 we decided, okay, let's try graduating from our closets so we can like actually sit on chairs and 00:10:05.080 --> 00:10:11.560 use our computers, uh, while we record. So this is, uh, us. Yeah. So, okay. You were going to talk 00:10:11.560 --> 00:10:16.200 about a very important, uh, concept when I budged in with this. 00:10:16.200 --> 00:10:22.520 - Yeah. Some people are obsessed about room tone. So what room tone is, is like when nobody's talking, 00:10:22.520 --> 00:10:23.320 when there's silence. 00:10:23.320 --> 00:10:32.680 In that silence, there was some tone coming from the room. Like I'm in Florida. Actually, 00:10:32.680 --> 00:10:38.360 there could be some lawnmowers outside of my, uh, my window, or there could be like an airplane flying 00:10:38.360 --> 00:10:43.240 by or some like ambient noise from the fan. - Right. 00:10:43.240 --> 00:10:45.080 - Or just whatever. - Heaters. 00:10:45.080 --> 00:10:50.440 - Some kind of like tone coming from the room. So some people obsess about the room tone so much when they 00:10:51.160 --> 00:10:56.040 cut stuff out and they have to leave a pause, they actually have that room tone. Basically they take, 00:10:56.040 --> 00:11:00.200 like, they record, uh, a silent part. - Hmm. They fill it in. 00:11:00.200 --> 00:11:05.240 - And then they replicate it in those, uh, uh, pauses. Which probably makes sense if you listen 00:11:05.240 --> 00:11:11.400 to a podcast in whatever, like Sennheiser, you know, headphones that cost like a thousand bucks or 00:11:11.400 --> 00:11:17.400 something, uh, like in the absolutely quiet space. But if you listen to stuff in the car or in your 00:11:17.400 --> 00:11:25.240 airports or like while doing dishes, I don't think it matters. Um, however, I don't know why I started 00:11:25.240 --> 00:11:35.480 this, uh, maybe because I wanted to mention Metallica. Uh, Metallica. Uh, so I watched their masterclass and, uh, 00:11:35.480 --> 00:11:41.160 and they were talking about the room tone. They did, I think they said they did like 20 takes of the room 00:11:41.160 --> 00:11:47.400 tone for one of their songs, uh, where they had like a pause so that, uh, you know, it sounds great. 00:11:47.400 --> 00:11:52.840 - I think, I mean, for music, it probably makes sense, right? Cause you are listening with those 00:11:52.840 --> 00:11:58.200 high quality headphones, or at least a big part of their listeners are. For podcasts, it's probably 00:11:58.200 --> 00:12:05.640 more like casual listening. So, um, um, yeah, it's fine. Plus, um, you were talking about like your 00:12:05.640 --> 00:12:10.040 room. The one thing that you and I were talking about just before recording, maybe we should just 00:12:10.040 --> 00:12:14.840 catch up with that is you are using a blue Yeti microphone. I'm using one too. 00:12:15.480 --> 00:12:17.160 And this is the thing that you recommended to me. 00:12:17.160 --> 00:12:19.000 - You want to shame me again for this, right? 00:12:19.000 --> 00:12:25.240 - No, no, no. I already did that in the first episode. Uh, but no, I think this is a pretty 00:12:25.240 --> 00:12:34.520 cost effective frugal, frugal microphone. Like I didn't have to spend $400 and listeners probably 00:12:34.520 --> 00:12:39.480 already know, but I don't have a job right now, right? I left my job and working on something else 00:12:39.480 --> 00:12:45.320 on the side. So, uh, all of these things matter to me. But what we found out is that 00:12:45.480 --> 00:12:50.760 we're using the same microphone and same kind of equipment essentially, right? Like same MacBooks 00:12:50.760 --> 00:12:57.400 and all that. But, uh, there is almost no echo from my room, but there is some echo from Ilya's room. 00:12:57.400 --> 00:13:03.960 And that's probably because of the shape and volume of the room itself that's causing it. 00:13:03.960 --> 00:13:12.920 - Yeah. So my room is very spacious. It has very high ceilings. It's 24 meters. I'm too lazy to 00:13:12.920 --> 00:13:18.840 convert this into feet. It's pretty high. Uh, and, uh, I also don't have any carpets or any 00:13:19.640 --> 00:13:25.560 pictures on the wall or any curtains. It's basically a box made of reflecting material. 00:13:25.560 --> 00:13:26.040 - Right. 00:13:26.040 --> 00:13:32.200 - Uh, and that's why I'm using this, uh, foamy thing. Let's, let's see how it sounds. Uh, I'll, 00:13:32.200 --> 00:13:36.840 I'll do kind of my, uh, you know, homework next time. Like this time I just wasn't, it wasn't a rush. 00:13:36.840 --> 00:13:43.080 And also usually I use my other mic, SM58, Shure SM58, which is a vocal mic. I forgot if we talked 00:13:43.080 --> 00:13:45.560 about that last time. - We did it in the first episode. 00:13:45.560 --> 00:13:52.440 - Did we? So that mic is like a proper cardio mic that doesn't, uh, pick up, uh, a lot of stuff 00:13:52.440 --> 00:13:58.920 outside of the like immediate vicinity of like you talking to, to the mic. Uh, it's used in concerts. 00:13:58.920 --> 00:14:05.160 So like, that's why you have like 60,000 people singing to, you know, a meta Lika song. And, uh, 00:14:05.160 --> 00:14:10.120 and the mic doesn't actually pick it up, uh, because it only picks up the voice of the singer. 00:14:10.120 --> 00:14:16.440 - By the way, we, we should not be worried about like MetaCast, the name reflecting on Meta. I mean, 00:14:16.440 --> 00:14:21.960 if we do that Metallica should be really worried because they come off as like licking Meta. 00:14:21.960 --> 00:14:26.520 - Yeah. - Meta licking. Do you remember Napster? 00:14:26.520 --> 00:14:36.200 - Yeah. - So for those listeners who are, uh, less old farty or less geeky, um, Napster was a thing 00:14:36.200 --> 00:14:40.040 for sharing MP3 files, music files back in, I think late nineties. 00:14:40.040 --> 00:14:40.600 - Yeah. 00:14:40.600 --> 00:14:46.440 - Where essentially you could install the Napster app on your computer and, uh, tell it, 00:14:46.440 --> 00:14:50.360 this is the folder with my music. And then, uh, other people could download the music from your 00:14:50.360 --> 00:14:54.840 computer when you were online. And then, you know, you could download music from other people. 00:14:54.840 --> 00:14:59.080 And that's how I downloaded a lot of stuff being like in the remote part of Russia and East Tiberia. 00:14:59.080 --> 00:15:02.680 Uh, that was my access to music. Uh, obviously it was all pirated. 00:15:02.680 --> 00:15:06.680 - This is like before, before torrents. - Yeah. Probably Napster inspired torrents. 00:15:06.680 --> 00:15:12.760 - You said nineties. I think that was accurate in the U S, uh, in India, when I was growing up, 00:15:12.760 --> 00:15:15.160 this was going on well into the two thousands. 00:15:15.160 --> 00:15:16.440 - Yeah. - Yeah. 00:15:16.440 --> 00:15:20.680 - I think I was using it in the nineties, uh, like the dial up, it was, it was also very expensive. 00:15:20.680 --> 00:15:21.080 - Yeah. 00:15:21.080 --> 00:15:27.880 - But my, my, um, desire to listen to music was so high. Uh, actually I still have one of those 00:15:28.520 --> 00:15:35.400 MP3s. I downloaded it. It's available on Spotify and everything now. Uh, but it's so dear to my heart. 00:15:35.400 --> 00:15:39.480 I just have it somewhere like old hard drive just because it's, I don't know, there's something 00:15:39.480 --> 00:15:45.000 about that file, um, that, uh, really makes me feel kind of, you know, nostalgic. But the point 00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:51.640 about Metallica though, is that they sued Napster and Napster shut down because of them. I will never forgive. 00:15:51.640 --> 00:15:59.640 - I remember the dial up speeds and downloading lots of music that way where, um, you have to also look 00:15:59.640 --> 00:16:04.920 for a good source, right? So Napster would show you like how many people are connected to this, uh, 00:16:04.920 --> 00:16:11.800 host and how many people are downloading. And you want to pick something that has a good history, but not 00:16:11.800 --> 00:16:18.280 like 25 people connected to the same, same computer essentially at the same time, right? So you do a little 00:16:18.280 --> 00:16:24.200 bit of research and then start the download. And then at least in my case with my slow internet, 00:16:24.200 --> 00:16:30.440 it's like basically go to bed and next day, wake up and see if it completed. Napster was pretty cool 00:16:30.440 --> 00:16:36.760 in a way that it would also like figure out that it got interrupted and like start the download again 00:16:36.760 --> 00:16:43.160 or restart from the beginning. Uh, yeah, it was fun days. So I had many uncomfortable discussions with my 00:16:43.160 --> 00:16:51.400 parents about the bills though. Yeah. Yeah. The internet bills were fun. Uh, me too. Why I brought 00:16:51.400 --> 00:16:59.640 that up is, so this is like, imagine downloading one song one night, right? So you're compiling your 00:16:59.640 --> 00:17:07.560 collection like that way slowly over time. So when I went to, uh, engineering school, like college, 00:17:07.560 --> 00:17:13.080 we call it or university, as you would call it here in North America. Uh, the first thing was like, 00:17:13.080 --> 00:17:20.040 once I got a computer, we took out the hard disk, put it in somebody else, like a college senior, 00:17:20.040 --> 00:17:27.240 uh, their computer attached it there and like transferred over their whole music, uh, collection. 00:17:27.240 --> 00:17:33.560 And this is how like it all, uh, spread all over the campus, probably viruses and all that too, but 00:17:33.560 --> 00:17:40.360 that's how music was, uh, transferred. And this is before like land and all that, uh, that we set up. 00:17:40.360 --> 00:17:47.720 Yeah. And not only music, actually, um, I'll say it implicitly. So if you want to listen to the 00:17:47.720 --> 00:17:56.280 internet history podcast, one of my all time favorites of that show is the history of internet porn and how 00:17:56.280 --> 00:18:03.960 it helped, uh, develop the technology, uh, with like streaming and, uh, storage and cloud for all we 00:18:03.960 --> 00:18:13.080 have, we should thank porn. To be fair, right. It's not just those things. The, the internet porn industry 00:18:13.800 --> 00:18:19.800 has been kind of the trendsetter for a lot of technical innovation. Like from what I remember, 00:18:19.800 --> 00:18:25.000 I don't have anything like research right now, but from what I remember credit, the, the wide 00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:32.520 usage of credit cards online is due to that. The other big one was some of the early like encryption 00:18:32.520 --> 00:18:38.200 technology and all that is also like there. It also, also definitely came from the defense industry, 00:18:38.200 --> 00:18:41.160 but a lot of the early usage and popularity was 00:18:41.160 --> 00:18:44.920 - maybe they're also watching a lot of it in the defense, uh, bunkers. 00:18:44.920 --> 00:18:53.720 - All right. Hey, so we don't have too much longer. Let's chat about our first two episodes, 00:18:53.720 --> 00:18:56.920 maybe and the reflections and stuff. - Yeah. Let's chat about the first one, actually. 00:18:56.920 --> 00:18:58.680 - Sure. - I wanted to ask you that question. 00:18:58.680 --> 00:19:02.520 Actually, I already asked you that question. You already gave me your breakdown, but I would like 00:19:02.520 --> 00:19:09.560 to listen to it again on the record. It was your very first ever recording of, of a podcast, 00:19:09.560 --> 00:19:15.880 of your voice, like long, long form. Uh, how did it feel afterwards? Like listening to it? 00:19:15.880 --> 00:19:23.080 - Yeah. So surprisingly, so we did a few, few passes with the raw recordings and then I listened to it 00:19:23.080 --> 00:19:29.960 after the post-production again too. Right? So I'd say you told me that the first time you heard your 00:19:29.960 --> 00:19:35.320 voice, it was very weird. Right? And when in the past I have done like conference talks and all, 00:19:35.320 --> 00:19:40.520 and then they would put it up on YouTube and I found it very weird. Like, is that how I sound? 00:19:40.520 --> 00:19:46.360 That's so weird. Like, yeah, it's almost bad. But this time, surprisingly, maybe it was the 00:19:46.360 --> 00:19:53.640 the equipment or something like that. The raw audio quality itself was like pretty normal. And I 00:19:53.640 --> 00:20:01.800 felt like, yeah, this, this kind of jives with my mental image of how I sound and it works well, 00:20:01.800 --> 00:20:06.520 but whatever magic you did with the post-production after that, I mean, it sounds amazing. 00:20:06.520 --> 00:20:13.960 I removed all the mouth clicks. Yes. Mouth clicks. And also, I think you probably use some 00:20:13.960 --> 00:20:21.560 equalizers and, uh, things like that or? Yeah. Yeah. I think for me, the sound itself is like, 00:20:21.560 --> 00:20:28.840 it doesn't matter as much. Uh, like even if I listen to my voice in AirPods or, uh, we like post-produced 00:20:28.840 --> 00:20:34.840 audio in the beginning, it was really hard to listen to that. Uh, I just like, didn't like the, uh, you know, 00:20:34.840 --> 00:20:40.520 the, the timber, the tone of my voice, and also like the pattern of how I speak. So, um, 00:20:40.520 --> 00:20:46.680 what I found actually interesting with this particular podcast, with our first episode is that 00:20:46.680 --> 00:20:53.480 I was always, you know, I've been speaking English for a long time, right? So I learned it in school 00:20:53.480 --> 00:20:57.880 and I've been working outside of Russia for most of my life. So I was speaking English, 00:20:57.880 --> 00:21:02.280 even though I speak Russian at home all the time with my family, but I always had this thing that 00:21:03.240 --> 00:21:09.000 my accent. It's like, uh, I tried to work on it, uh, tried to sound more like a native speaker, 00:21:09.000 --> 00:21:15.320 but I don't. And I think what the podcasting helped me do in the last, you know, month or so, 00:21:15.320 --> 00:21:22.520 as we were doing this, I came to terms to the accent and it's like, I don't know, it doesn't sound too 00:21:22.520 --> 00:21:28.840 bad. I guess if the content is good, uh, I need to speak slower though. Uh, but otherwise, um, I think 00:21:29.560 --> 00:21:33.640 it's, it's okay. So it actually helps me. It's almost like therapeutic, you know, I like listening to my 00:21:33.640 --> 00:21:40.360 voice, uh, in English. It helps me accept myself more on the topic of accents. I think we've talked 00:21:40.360 --> 00:21:49.240 about this in the way back. There are some podcasts with like two co-hosts where I have a hard time 00:21:49.240 --> 00:21:54.200 distinguishing who's speaking, right? Because they're both, we are not that podcast. 00:21:54.200 --> 00:22:01.480 We are not that podcast. And I think this is a positive, right? Like it's your voice and my voice 00:22:01.480 --> 00:22:06.760 and the accents are very unique, especially in the podcast realm where you don't have too many like 00:22:06.760 --> 00:22:14.360 Indians or Russian, Eastern European, uh, people in that space. And it's, I want to say mostly American 00:22:14.360 --> 00:22:22.120 sounding, uh, voices on most podcasts right now, at least the ones that I hear. And I actually like it. 00:22:22.120 --> 00:22:28.600 I think this is a positive of this podcast and it also probably, or hopefully inspires other people 00:22:28.600 --> 00:22:35.320 to jump in. Even if you're like accent or whatever is not natural or American or whatever. I'm doing air 00:22:35.320 --> 00:22:42.600 quotes and I didn't say, but yeah. It's a good point. Actually. I was talking to a friend. He's from 00:22:42.600 --> 00:22:51.080 Belarus. Uh, so he speaks Russian too. And he's doing videos on YouTube where he talks about the system 00:22:51.080 --> 00:22:56.920 design, like interview prep kind of questions for engineers. And his channel is pretty popular. He's 00:22:56.920 --> 00:23:02.600 like in, I think in tens of thousands of years for his videos. And he was doing a course and I was 00:23:02.600 --> 00:23:09.320 talking to him. I'm like, how do you feel talking in English? He also has a strong accent. And he's like, 00:23:09.320 --> 00:23:15.080 he actually told me, I guess, exactly what I told you. He also helped me overcome that because he said 00:23:15.080 --> 00:23:21.800 that people like my content and, uh, they just stopped noticing the accent. And some people actually 00:23:21.800 --> 00:23:29.000 wrote to him that they even like his accent. Right. That's a unique flavor. It might be a bit of a 00:23:29.000 --> 00:23:34.840 thing in the beginning. As you listen to a new show, maybe the accent puts you off right in the beginning. 00:23:34.840 --> 00:23:40.360 But if you listen to a few episodes, you get used to it, then you start actually enjoying it because 00:23:40.360 --> 00:23:45.240 of the uniqueness it brings. Yeah. So I just have to say this because these episodes will be a bit 00:23:45.240 --> 00:23:50.600 random. Uh, so we used to live in, uh, actually both of us used to live in, in the Seattle metro area. 00:23:50.600 --> 00:23:56.600 Yeah. Um, so just before I moved from there, we lived in Kirkland and I was going to grab a pizza 00:23:56.600 --> 00:24:01.320 from a place, uh, like once a week, probably. And there was this woman there. Her name was, 00:24:01.320 --> 00:24:08.520 oh man, whatever, uh, her name, uh, every time she would see my name, uh, she's like, 00:24:08.520 --> 00:24:15.960 Ilya Kuryakin. You don't know what it is, right? No. No. Okay. So I had the boss, uh, back like 10, 00:24:15.960 --> 00:24:22.520 15 years ago. He was from Wales. Uh, age of my parents. Okay. So apparently back in the 70s or 80s, 00:24:22.520 --> 00:24:28.760 there was a show, uh, where there was a Russian spy called Ilya Kuryakin. Okay. So, uh, for probably 00:24:28.760 --> 00:24:34.840 like three years of my career, uh, that I worked for this guy for Lyndon, um, he would just call me 00:24:34.840 --> 00:24:41.240 Kuryakin. So it was so much in there like that they hear Ilya and they immediately think about like 00:24:41.240 --> 00:24:46.200 Kuryakin. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. And there was like Kuryakin, like with like very strong, thick Russian 00:24:46.200 --> 00:24:52.280 accent. Um, yeah. Anyway, it's a bit of a tangent. Oh, one thing I wanted to, to ask you, 00:24:52.520 --> 00:24:59.720 uh, about, uh, which you told me and I laughed a lot about. Remember when I sent you the fully 00:24:59.720 --> 00:25:06.040 produced episode? Yeah. And you turn it on in your car where you had your parents, your wife and your 00:25:06.040 --> 00:25:13.320 daughter. Yeah. Tell us what happened. We should have recorded these episodes right then and there, 00:25:13.320 --> 00:25:18.360 but I'm trying to recollect. Yeah. I was just like laughing my ass off. No, I'll try to recollect, 00:25:18.360 --> 00:25:24.360 but you fill in if I've forgotten anything. And so, yeah, we were going on a long drive somewhere, 00:25:24.360 --> 00:25:29.960 um, about like a four hour drive. So I thought, okay, Hey, why don't I put this on and we can all 00:25:29.960 --> 00:25:35.400 listen to it and you all can give me feedback about how it sounds and all that. We listened to about 20 00:25:35.400 --> 00:25:41.240 minutes of it. And I think my wife was like, wow, this sounds really good. And I, I felt so too, 00:25:41.240 --> 00:25:46.200 right. The post-produced one with all the music and everything sounds really good, uh, professional. 00:25:46.200 --> 00:25:52.600 And she was like, yeah, it sounds really good. And she was getting the topic too. Right. Uh, 00:25:52.600 --> 00:25:57.400 but I think my, that's because we know how to explain things really well, right? Yes, 00:25:57.400 --> 00:26:05.720 exactly. And then, um, my parents, I think where, oh yeah, my dad was like, I didn't understand 00:26:05.720 --> 00:26:13.240 anything. And I think my daughter was already reading a book right in the backseat. And then I 00:26:13.240 --> 00:26:18.840 asked her, uh, like, Hey, how's it going? What did you think? And she was like, I don't know. I was 00:26:18.840 --> 00:26:25.320 reading a book or something like that. Yeah. Did you remember, did I maybe say something else or 00:26:25.320 --> 00:26:30.120 it's been a month or so? The first time you told the story, it was funnier, but I'll take this one 00:26:30.120 --> 00:26:35.560 too. Yeah. Because I think that time, the first time it was so fresh, uh, so fresh. It was so good. 00:26:35.560 --> 00:26:43.160 Yeah. I had a kind of similar experience to kind of bootstrap all of the podcasting platforms. 00:26:43.160 --> 00:26:48.680 I created a teaser episode. I took about three or five minutes of the content, added some music 00:26:48.680 --> 00:26:55.160 and I listened to it many times. I thought it sounded good. Uh, I sent it to Arnab. He was like, 00:26:55.160 --> 00:26:59.240 it's probably a bit too long. I'm like, what are you talking about? It's like really cool. 00:26:59.240 --> 00:27:05.400 Uh, and then I, um, so we also go somewhere. Uh, it wasn't a long drive, but here in Florida, 00:27:05.400 --> 00:27:10.520 everything is, uh, ends up to be a long drive. Right. So I turned on that teaser episode. 00:27:10.520 --> 00:27:15.000 Um, just wanted to get some feedback from my wife. Not the best idea. 00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:15.960 Yeah. 00:27:15.960 --> 00:27:22.920 She's, she's very direct. Okay. So, and, uh, so I turned it on and she's like, yeah, it's like, 00:27:22.920 --> 00:27:27.640 why do you just keep talking like two minutes ago? 00:27:27.640 --> 00:27:36.360 And actually let's do this. I'll, I'll insert the whole teaser episode at the end of this episode. 00:27:36.920 --> 00:27:42.440 So people, people can listen to it and, uh, and maybe actually tell us if it's, uh, too long. 00:27:42.440 --> 00:27:47.480 I think it is because after I listened to it after maybe a month, I'm like, this is way too long. 00:27:47.480 --> 00:27:49.800 It was about five, six minutes, right? 00:27:49.800 --> 00:27:54.440 Yeah, it was. Yeah. Uh, it should have been like two minutes, but I thought we had so much good content. 00:27:54.440 --> 00:27:58.600 I just couldn't resist it. It's like bad product management, right? You just want to stuff your, 00:27:58.600 --> 00:28:06.120 um, your stuff with features. Uh, and that becomes like a bloatware. So we had a bloat cast, um, 00:28:06.120 --> 00:28:12.840 bloat zone. Yeah. So yeah. So she basically, she said it was too long. My son was like, 00:28:12.840 --> 00:28:16.920 can I just like turn the volume down? I want to read my book. Same. Yeah. 00:28:16.920 --> 00:28:21.320 We have kids about the same age and, uh, yeah, they like reading on the backseat. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 00:28:21.320 --> 00:28:27.000 Yeah. So couple of things that you mentioned that might be interesting to new podcasters. 00:28:27.000 --> 00:28:33.960 One is bootstrapping all the podcast platforms. Can you tell us about that? Like how long it takes? 00:28:33.960 --> 00:28:38.440 Why do you have to do it that way? Yeah. I think, I think I actually, I mentioned this in the first 00:28:38.440 --> 00:28:47.800 episode as well, but I'll, um, repeat. It takes time for your RSS feed of your podcast to be discovered 00:28:47.800 --> 00:28:54.600 by podcasting platforms. And I think there was also approval process potentially on some of the platforms. 00:28:55.400 --> 00:29:00.200 I use anchor.fm to be, you know, as a, as a hosting platform. 00:29:00.200 --> 00:29:08.200 And then I added our feed to Apple podcasts and Google podcasts. Spotify picks it up automatically. 00:29:08.200 --> 00:29:15.480 Um, the, uh, thing I want to kind of optimize for is when I did my first podcast, 00:29:16.360 --> 00:29:23.000 I published an episode and it appeared on Apple podcasts and Spotify. And I'm like, Hey, like, listen to it, 00:29:23.000 --> 00:29:29.080 um, to my audience in Instagram. And they're like, wait, it's not in cast box. Like, wait, 00:29:29.080 --> 00:29:32.280 it's not in the index music. Wait, it's not in Google podcasts. And I'm like, shit. 00:29:32.280 --> 00:29:36.840 And it took probably about two weeks for the first episode to finally appear everywhere. 00:29:37.320 --> 00:29:43.880 Um, and it was super annoying, um, because people use different kinds of phones. They use different kinds 00:29:43.880 --> 00:29:51.240 of apps. Um, so it's harder to kind of advertise when, uh, it's not, you know, warm, it's not oiled. 00:29:52.360 --> 00:29:58.840 But the cool thing about the subsequent episodes is, you know, second, third, fourth is that they 00:29:58.840 --> 00:30:05.960 appear on those platforms within 24 hours or so. So I would usually publish it. And then, um, yeah, 00:30:05.960 --> 00:30:10.520 like I publish it in the evening, my time and the next morning it will, it will already be almost 00:30:10.520 --> 00:30:17.800 everywhere and I'll, uh, announce it. So, so yeah, that's something to keep in mind. And we were thinking 00:30:17.800 --> 00:30:22.280 whether we should publish the first episode or do like a teaser. And I thought it would be 00:30:22.280 --> 00:30:24.520 a better idea to do like a, I think it's called trailer. 00:30:24.520 --> 00:30:28.120 Apple podcasts, Spotify, everything shows it as a trailer. 00:30:28.120 --> 00:30:33.800 Now, in retrospect, like I could have done a shorter trailer and I just don't feel ambitious 00:30:33.800 --> 00:30:39.880 enough to redo it. I'll just probably, uh, just remove it, publish the first episode whenever 00:30:39.880 --> 00:30:45.240 we are ready to publish, which will be in January. I mean, which was in January, um, because you're 00:30:45.240 --> 00:30:47.400 listening to this probably in end of January. 00:30:47.400 --> 00:30:51.960 This time too, I was looking at all these, like, when does it appear in 00:30:52.200 --> 00:30:56.600 Spotify and Google and all that, it took at least good two, three days to appear everywhere. 00:30:56.600 --> 00:31:03.080 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's exactly why I wanted to, to address that. Um, so also when 00:31:03.080 --> 00:31:12.440 we published our, um, Brian episode a week ago, um, so we're hopefully reposted this because he, 00:31:12.440 --> 00:31:17.960 yeah, he, he's told, he told us that he will, uh, advertise it. Uh, and when people do that, 00:31:17.960 --> 00:31:19.480 you really want it to be on all platforms. 00:31:19.480 --> 00:31:25.960 Yeah. And I think one important thing, uh, about anchor FM that you touched upon. So we won't go 00:31:25.960 --> 00:31:31.800 into details now, but you don't want it to manage everything for you. You just want it to be the 00:31:31.800 --> 00:31:36.440 proxy for the RSS feed. If you don't know what I'm talking about and you want to hear more, 00:31:36.440 --> 00:31:41.240 listen to the first episode. He, Ilya goes into details in there and that's very important. 00:31:41.240 --> 00:31:44.760 If you ever want to take it out from anchor at some point in the future. 00:31:44.760 --> 00:31:50.120 Yeah. Actually, if you listen to us rambling up to this point and you haven't listened to the first 00:31:50.120 --> 00:31:56.680 episode, uh, well, yeah, go listen. You will like it. Yeah. Uh, it's cool. It's called actually, 00:31:56.680 --> 00:32:01.320 actually, we don't have a name for that episode yet. I think I initially wanted to name it a dirty 00:32:01.320 --> 00:32:10.120 secrets of clean sound kind of, uh, doing that joke, dirty and clean. Um, actually, I don't know what 00:32:10.120 --> 00:32:15.560 we'll name it. We need to figure out. I know these guys, Jake and Jonathan, they do these catchy names 00:32:16.200 --> 00:32:23.480 like clickbaity, but I think our podcast is more informational. So I mean, they do clickbaity, 00:32:23.480 --> 00:32:30.760 catchy names, but you almost never know what's going to happen in that episode because of that. 00:32:30.760 --> 00:32:37.640 Right. Like, so for example, when you showed me their podcast about a year back, I think I looked at 00:32:37.640 --> 00:32:43.160 the episodes and I'm not going to listen to like all 200 immediately. Right. But I wanted to catch up on, 00:32:43.160 --> 00:32:48.200 oh, let me look through some of these episodes and see what they're about. And there was one about like 00:32:48.200 --> 00:32:53.800 why Spotify UX sucks or something like that. Right. And I said, oh, this will be interesting. Let me go 00:32:53.800 --> 00:33:00.120 listen to it. There was like maybe three minutes talking about Spotify in that hour long episode. 00:33:00.120 --> 00:33:06.440 And it was completely about something else, which I really enjoyed their show. And this is like 00:33:07.320 --> 00:33:14.280 typical to how they produce their shows. So I finally got around to understanding, okay, this is how it goes. 00:33:14.280 --> 00:33:18.360 I can't really use the episode titles for understanding what it's going to be about. 00:33:18.360 --> 00:33:24.360 All right. So we have about five minutes and I think we've gone through maybe half of my list. 00:33:24.360 --> 00:33:24.600 Yeah. 00:33:25.240 --> 00:33:32.200 And we can talk about that in our next meta episode. Actually, I was worried we will run out of topics for this 00:33:32.200 --> 00:33:36.920 one, but we haven't. Well, because we don't have enough time because I have to run to a meeting now. 00:33:36.920 --> 00:33:42.280 One thing I wanted to quickly mention is when we record the first episode, 00:33:43.080 --> 00:33:49.320 I was mentioning Descript, the tool for like transcribing audio and editing is as text. But 00:33:49.320 --> 00:33:54.440 actually I didn't, I hadn't used Descript by the time we were recording it. So I used Descript to edit 00:33:54.440 --> 00:34:00.600 the first episode and also the episode with Brian. I think it's a great tool. I probably barely use 00:34:00.600 --> 00:34:06.040 10% of its functionality. To be honest, I, you know, for those of you who haven't, 00:34:06.040 --> 00:34:09.640 who don't know what I'm talking about, like Descript, you import your audio files in it 00:34:10.520 --> 00:34:16.200 and it shows you the text transcription, like a document. And underneath you have the standard 00:34:16.200 --> 00:34:21.800 waveform of the audio and you can edit either. You can just cut words from the text or you can cut 00:34:21.800 --> 00:34:28.280 out audio, just like you would do in any audio editor. And the cool thing though, is that in that 00:34:28.280 --> 00:34:35.560 waveform on top of it, it actually shows the text. It assists you in editing the audio. So for example, 00:34:35.560 --> 00:34:41.960 I see that there is like an um, and I can just remove that part of the waveform without listening 00:34:41.960 --> 00:34:48.840 to it. Like in a word processing tool? No, no. Like, like in the audio editor, but because it has 00:34:48.840 --> 00:34:54.920 these hints above, basically I do just like I would just what I would do in audio editor, but the text 00:34:54.920 --> 00:35:00.120 helps me be more efficient. Okay. And that's what I found. Like I actually don't use the word processor 00:35:00.120 --> 00:35:05.000 functionality of Descript. Oh, okay. Interesting. Yeah. Because actually remember Brian mentioned 00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:10.680 that he has stutter? Yeah. And uh, he does. I didn't notice it as much as we were talking, 00:35:10.680 --> 00:35:18.360 but as I was doing the production, it happens quite a bit and then cutting it out sometimes can be 00:35:18.360 --> 00:35:23.640 challenging because audio kind of overlaps. And then when you do it in the text processor, 00:35:23.640 --> 00:35:31.320 it creates this kind of clipping sounds like, uh, between the audio segments. So I actually have to 00:35:31.320 --> 00:35:38.440 resort to editing audio instead of using kind of their flagship feature. So I guess I have mixed 00:35:38.440 --> 00:35:43.560 feelings about Descript at this point. I'm super positive, I feel like super helpful. Uh, but I feel 00:35:43.560 --> 00:35:52.600 like it would have been a lot helpful for me if my audio editor like Reaper that I'm using had the 00:35:52.600 --> 00:35:58.360 functionality to transcribe the text and put it as an overlay on top of the waveform. Yeah. Then we 00:35:58.360 --> 00:36:03.880 could be doing it even more efficiently because Reaper is a lot faster when it comes to like user 00:36:03.880 --> 00:36:10.840 interface. Right. The one thing that about Descript that appeals to me is, well, I haven't used it like 00:36:10.840 --> 00:36:16.360 you, but you can actually edit the text like you're doing in a word processor. Right. And it'll 00:36:16.360 --> 00:36:21.720 automatically do that to the audio. I don't know how well it works, but it looks super cool. 00:36:21.720 --> 00:36:27.880 You can even like, if you want to insert a word or something like that, it looks like you can just 00:36:27.880 --> 00:36:35.000 type that in and Descript will automatically generate a natural sounding filler word for that 00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:40.680 using your voice and tone around that speech. I don't know how well it works. Uh, but yeah. 00:36:40.680 --> 00:36:49.000 I came across an Instagram ad a couple of days ago that says let bots write blog posts for you 10x 00:36:49.000 --> 00:36:54.120 faster. And I think somebody on our show, I think it was Brian, uh, who mentioned that those auto 00:36:54.120 --> 00:36:59.240 generated, uh, blog posts. I hate them, man. You know, they're just annoying. Yeah. So imagine 00:36:59.240 --> 00:37:03.800 you have the bot generate the text for you and then you paste it in the Descript and then you have a 00:37:03.800 --> 00:37:06.200 auto generated podcast. Podcast. Oh, shit. 00:37:06.200 --> 00:37:12.760 And then, and then you use another bot to auto generate music for you. And then, and then you end 00:37:12.760 --> 00:37:19.720 up producing this artificial thing that people like, but like, where is art in it? Like, where's the, 00:37:19.720 --> 00:37:20.440 where's that human? 00:37:20.440 --> 00:37:28.440 The blog posts auto generated. The thing is it's so formulaic and repetitive that it gets boring very 00:37:28.440 --> 00:37:29.000 quickly. 00:37:29.000 --> 00:37:31.240 Yeah. I bet. Yeah. We have to wrap it up. 00:37:31.240 --> 00:37:37.960 I actually really like doing this without, uh, any agenda and things like that. And I think we have 00:37:37.960 --> 00:37:40.440 quite a few things to talk about still. 00:37:40.440 --> 00:37:42.120 I could have gone for another hour. 00:37:42.120 --> 00:37:49.320 Yeah. Easily. Easily. Okay. So what I'll say is that, uh, next episode is going to be with 00:37:49.320 --> 00:37:56.120 Jake Knapp and, uh, Jonathan Courtney of the Jake and Jonathan product, product breakfast club fame. 00:37:56.120 --> 00:38:02.760 They are absolutely amazing. I'm almost predicting that it will be one of our most, uh, enjoyable 00:38:02.760 --> 00:38:07.800 episodes like for a long time, just because of the chemistry that, uh, these guys have. 00:38:07.800 --> 00:38:13.080 So yeah. Uh, listen to that next week. Uh, actually we need to decide which day we publish it on, 00:38:13.080 --> 00:38:16.280 but listen to it next to whatever day we said to publish our podcast. 00:38:16.280 --> 00:38:21.640 Yeah. And I think the, the interesting thing about that episode was that 00:38:21.640 --> 00:38:25.960 they didn't have time to do an intro call with us, right? So we jumped straight into the 00:38:25.960 --> 00:38:30.120 recording and it was so enjoyable, maybe because of it. 00:38:30.120 --> 00:38:33.560 Probably because of it. Yeah. Yeah. I guess we have to say goodbye, right? 00:38:33.560 --> 00:38:34.840 Yeah. All right. 00:38:36.840 --> 00:38:42.040 Hit subscribe if you haven't yet. Yes. And leave comments. Uh, if you have feedback for us, 00:38:42.040 --> 00:38:44.360 let us know. Yeah. All of the good stuff. 00:38:44.360 --> 00:38:50.600 Yeah. You can contact us using the contact details in the show notes, which we don't know 00:38:50.600 --> 00:38:54.840 what they are yet, but by the time we release this episode, they will be in there. 00:38:54.840 --> 00:38:59.400 So that's the thing about audio. Like you can say things that you will then later regret. 00:38:59.400 --> 00:39:04.520 Maybe that's why the script helps because then you could just type the email address and it's 00:39:04.520 --> 00:39:09.720 going to pronounce with my voice, but yeah. Anyway, um, nice seeing you on up. Talk to you later. 00:39:09.720 --> 00:39:20.360 Talk to you later. Bye. 00:39:20.360 --> 00:39:31.960 And here comes the bonus, the teaser, the lovely teaser, the six minute teaser or whatever, how long 00:39:31.960 --> 00:39:39.880 it is that everybody thought it was too long, but we kept it anyway. Enjoy. 00:39:39.880 --> 00:39:46.520 Hi, everyone. Thanks for tuning into our podcast. That's the very first episode of Metacast. 00:39:46.520 --> 00:39:52.040 It's a podcast for podcasters about all things podcasting. That's why we call it the Metacast. 00:39:52.040 --> 00:39:57.240 We think this podcast will be interesting to aspiring podcasters and also current podcasters and 00:39:57.240 --> 00:40:05.960 everybody who is a fan of podcasts. My name is Ilya Bezdelev. I'm a fan of all things audio, 00:40:05.960 --> 00:40:10.760 podcasting, audio production, audio books, music, you name it. Outside of this podcast, 00:40:10.760 --> 00:40:17.880 I work as a product manager at Google maps. I'm also a hobby musician and I host another podcast 00:40:17.880 --> 00:40:23.720 about people and technology. And the cohost of Metacast is Arnab, my longtime friend and a former 00:40:23.720 --> 00:40:30.680 colleague. Hello everybody. Until this summer, I was working with AWS and then recently I left my job 00:40:30.680 --> 00:40:37.080 and I'm experimenting with a few things. One of those things is around podcasting. So I thought, 00:40:37.080 --> 00:40:42.280 hey, why don't I jump right into the podcasting space by trying to co-host a podcast? 00:40:42.280 --> 00:40:53.160 I started my other podcast about a year ago and, you know, I hit quite a few challenges and it wasn't 00:40:53.160 --> 00:40:58.280 easy. So I can totally empathize with people who are sitting now listening to this and maybe scared 00:40:58.280 --> 00:41:03.000 to start the podcast or don't know where to begin or think they don't have the skills or don't like 00:41:03.000 --> 00:41:10.360 their voice. We are going to talk about all of that today. Yeah. And this is more or less the format 00:41:10.360 --> 00:41:16.040 that we'll be following for our future episodes too, where we'll have a guest, maybe your favorite 00:41:16.040 --> 00:41:21.720 podcaster, and we'll learn about their story and the tips and tricks and stuff they use. 00:41:25.720 --> 00:41:32.600 One of the things in the podcast that's very, very important is the pace of speech. If you shorten 00:41:32.600 --> 00:41:38.600 poses too much, the speech starts to sound unnatural. It's more efficient, but it's not very effective, 00:41:38.600 --> 00:41:38.920 right? 00:41:38.920 --> 00:41:48.600 Yeah. When you asked me to get this mic and I put it on, I was surprised to hear the amount of 00:41:48.600 --> 00:41:54.120 background noise that it picks up. If there's a washing machine going on in the basement, which is 00:41:54.120 --> 00:41:59.800 two floors below here, it still picks up the background noise from there. It's crazy. Yeah. 00:41:59.800 --> 00:42:04.040 Dude, if you have a fluorescent light, it pickups the light noise. 00:42:04.040 --> 00:42:13.080 He invited me as a guest on his podcast and I'm like, I don't know. And then we recorded it. I 00:42:13.080 --> 00:42:18.840 listened to the result and I'm like, okay, actually my voice sounds fine. It's just fine. Well, the trick 00:42:18.840 --> 00:42:23.640 there was that they edited it quite heavily, but listening to that gave me a lot of confidence that 00:42:23.640 --> 00:42:28.680 even if I don't like my voice, even if I don't like my pattern of speech, that actually can be 00:42:28.680 --> 00:42:32.840 adjusted with post-production. And also it's not as terrible. 00:42:36.520 --> 00:42:43.560 The thing is when you speak, you hear yourself speak through the inner ear as well as the outer ear. 00:42:43.560 --> 00:42:49.480 So there is some transmission of vibrations going on inside your skull and stuff. And when you listen 00:42:49.480 --> 00:42:56.600 to yourself on the recording, you listen with your outer ear only. And that's why it objectively sounds 00:42:56.600 --> 00:43:01.720 different because you listen to it through a different listening device, so to say. 00:43:01.720 --> 00:43:09.880 I guess some of the things that I dread if I record an episode with someone and it's really, 00:43:09.880 --> 00:43:15.800 really bad, like how do you go back to the guest and say, well, you know what, your story wasn't really 00:43:15.800 --> 00:43:16.200 exciting. 00:43:16.200 --> 00:43:24.760 Listening to your own thing for hours and hours again and again to improve it. But I guess that's how you 00:43:24.760 --> 00:43:26.680 get used to it and get better at it too. 00:43:26.680 --> 00:43:31.720 I guess one important thing to accept, that's how everybody hears your voice. Everybody. 00:43:31.720 --> 00:43:38.680 My guests though, they recorded on their phones in a sock. 00:43:38.680 --> 00:43:43.240 The iPhone has a pretty decent microphone. 00:43:43.240 --> 00:43:48.360 I actually had a situation where I had to leave the whole thing I wanted to cut 00:43:48.360 --> 00:43:52.760 because there was like path dependence where later content depended on the previous content. 00:43:52.760 --> 00:43:56.440 So we can't remove clam chowder from this episode now. That's what you're saying. 00:43:56.440 --> 00:43:57.160 I don't think we can. 00:43:57.160 --> 00:44:06.120 And now I'll play an audio clip of just the mouth clicks that were removed from the previous few 00:44:06.120 --> 00:44:08.280 sentences. 00:44:08.280 --> 00:44:26.520 Now hearing you talk about what you do for post-production, it seems like they did not do 00:44:26.520 --> 00:44:31.800 anything. They would just basically upload it. So they would say things like, oh, let me take a sip of 00:44:31.800 --> 00:44:36.600 coffee and then actually take the sip of the coffee with the slurp sound and all that. 00:44:36.600 --> 00:44:44.520 One of those principles was the experience should feel like fun for everybody. Fun and enjoyable. 00:44:44.520 --> 00:44:49.160 For me in first place, because I don't want to be unhappy doing this podcast. Then for my guests, 00:44:49.160 --> 00:44:53.000 I wanted to be the highlight of their day. I want them to finish the recording and be excited for the 00:44:53.000 --> 00:44:57.240 rest of the day, right? Energized. And then I also wanted to be fun to the listener. I want them to take 00:44:57.240 --> 00:45:01.160 something useful, but I also want them to just be delighted by the experience they get. 00:45:01.160 --> 00:45:09.240 One thing I would have done differently now is probably I would have published a teaser episode 00:45:09.240 --> 00:45:13.560 just to kind of oil the machine, so to speak, so that all the accounts get approved. 00:45:13.560 --> 00:45:25.240 And that's exactly what we've just done. Please subscribe. Stay tuned. The podcast is coming soon. 00:45:27.240 --> 00:45:29.240 Bye. 00:45:57.240 --> 00:45:59.240 Bye.