You get promoted and promoted till a point where you are no longer doing what you enjoy.
And either you adjust to that or you figure out again this is not for me.
And that's actually Peter's principle which says that everybody gets promoted to their
level of incompetence. So you always get like promoted out of the thing that you do well
until you don't do it well anymore. Hello, welcome to Metacast. Metasode whatever episode seven of
Metacast. Metasode three. You know I'm laughing right now because we've just spent an hour recording
an episode about podcasting where we we didn't talk about podcasting at all like nada zero.
Well I guess I guess we mentioned the word podcast like 20 times as in like now we have to get back
to podcasting and then we ended up talking about like comic books and comic books, sci-fi, movies, TV,
authors, kids these days having no attention span. Yeah.
I said Arnab Deka, my co-host and I'm Ilya Bezilev, your other co-host.
Hello everybody.
It's all cool. Yeah, so we had like a one hour warm up for this episode. So I think what we will do
is now we'll talk about podcasting finally. No more Sandman and other stuff. And for those of you who
are listening to this, so still listening to this. But they just started this episode just started.
Yeah, you will surprise how many people drop off without like listening much. I know that with my
YouTube videos. But I guess yeah anyway. It's the attention span India. Yes. So I think what we'll
do is the is the episode we've just recorded. We'll publish it as a bonus episode. It will be the next
episode. So now as you if you're listening to this, you're warned that the next episode is going to be
about various topics that are not related to podcasting, but still very well, you know,
at least Arnab and I really enjoyed it a lot. And yeah, we'll just publish it.
It may not be the next episode because we may have a guest episode next, but whatever episode it is,
we'll put it in the beginning, right? I suggest we just publish it like off at the off cycle. Yeah,
I don't mess up the numbering. So okay, so our episodes come out on Wednesdays. I say let's publish
that bonus episode on Saturday. And if people listen to this on on on Wednesday or Thursday,
if you want to listen to something fun, that's a good episode for a weekend. It's very light and lots
of recommendations. Well, there is lots of stuff about sci fi there. So if you're really into like
Fifty Shades of Grey, and you don't like Dune or Isaac Asimov and other stuff, well, I guess don't
listen to it. All right. If you if you are somebody who likes either one of comics or sci fi or movies or
TV or books or audio books, listen to that episode. Or music? Music, yes. If you're a human, if you're a
life person who actually likes some art, you will enjoy it. Yes. It may turn out to be another one hour
about something. No, no, let's not do that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So today, actually, maybe we should do
this. Today is December 20th. That's when we recorded this. And earlier today, we recorded an
episode with Steph Colborne, who is the CEO and owner of Edit Audio, which is a full suite podcast
production company. So that's the episode that came out last week. I mean, last week when these
episodes come out. When you're listening. Yeah. Yeah. In February. Yeah. In February. So the
previous time we did this meta-sode, we waited for like a week or two weeks and we listened to the
recording. So we digested a lot of those insights over and over and over before recording the meta-sode.
But now we are doing it very raw. It's just been maybe 12 hours since we recorded the episode.
No, it's been 12 hours. And this time we haven't listened to what we talked about at all. So it's
literally the reflections from the episode. Yeah. I have a few notes that I want to start with.
Sure. So first of all, I had a terrible headache. Yesterday, actually yesterday you and I were chatting
until a very late hour. I went to bed at one. I was also doing some work afterwards and I woke up at
like 6:50 or so. And I had this terrible headache this morning. So when we recorded this episode,
I wasn't the best self. Also like Steph, we didn't meet her before. You were supposed to join five
minutes before it started. You joined later and she joined ahead of time. Before me, yes.
Before you, yes. Because basically you and I were supposed to like, you know, huddle for a few
minutes. So we kind of strategize about the interview. And then actually she joined before
you. And I'm like, I'm still doing my setup. It's like three minutes before we start the recording.
And yeah, the shape of it just pops up in the squad cast. And yeah, I have to like,
maintain this, you know, small talk and I have this headache. And generally, like, I'm being like,
very tense. And I felt the first few minutes were kind of awkward for me. Because I also like,
my experience to hearing Steph talk was at the PostLite podcast episode 300, where she was a guest.
Yeah, for context. PostLite is a great show by the PostLite Software Development Agency,
where two founders, Rich and Paul, talk about all sorts of different stuff, mainly about technology.
Really, really cool podcast. Love it a lot. Actually, I think we modeled some of our stuff after them.
Yeah, we can give them credit for that.
They definitely don't model after us. So it's the other way around.
Not yet. Not yet.
Yeah, but now Steph goes back and like, tells them what they need to model after us, right?
So yeah, she produced like over 200 of their episodes. So she knows them really, really well.
In that episode where she was a guest, they had that chemistry. And you know, when she was with us,
it was a different person. Not a different person. But it's like, we didn't have that same background,
that same personal connection. So we had to like, build that up. And I guess what was challenging for
me, unlike, let's say, Jack and Jonathan, I mean, I think we connected with them like right away,
just because, I don't know, maybe we have similar backgrounds. And I don't know, just some reason,
it was very, very easy to connect. Right.
With Steph, I mean, she's like easy going and all. But I felt a bit of that awkwardness for the first
maybe 10-15 minutes. Yeah.
Actually, I wonder how it will come out on the recording. Did you feel the same way?
I felt the same. Like when I joined, she was already there. And I think when we,
and we started the recording like within about five minutes too, I think, of me joining.
Yeah, because we had a hard stop. And we wanted to make sure that we make use of the time. Yeah.
Yeah. And I did feel that. And I think about half an hour into the episode, that's when I felt like,
okay, this is going very smooth now. Unfolding.
And then, then my stream started lagging and that became like a different problem altogether.
We'll probably talk about that too.
No, let's talk about that actually right now, because that was also a problem.
Because like, one of the things I have in my notes is that, you know, as I was editing the
Jake and Jonathan episode and also Brian's episode, I noticed how great you are, Arnab, at just like
maintaining the conversation. Just like saying things that, you know, aren't necessarily questions,
but just like comments and how that kind of maybe reinforces the point that people are saying.
And, and they're like, oh yeah. And they're like, they go on another tangent or something.
You are really good at that. You're a very good conversationalist, I guess.
So I was relying on you, especially that I had this terrible headache. And the, and your connection
was like, you know, it's like, you would say something and they would start talking about
something else. Like 10 seconds later, Arnab says something that's relevant to what was said,
like, you know, half a minute ago. It was so disruptive because, because of connection issues,
your video was pixelated and maybe because you had like a foot of snow in Vancouver.
So we had a major like snowstorm yesterday. It might be that, um, we also tested it out after
that session, right? Like it was still kind of that, but might have been my Mac. I haven't rebooted
my Mac in like maybe a month. I don't know. So my lesson is like, yeah, Apple is not the same
after Steve jobs passed away. Yeah. Uh, but anyway, I think my experience was like,
I was hearing your stuff, right. Coming from you and Steph, and then I would say something and you
would like almost talk over me. And then after a bit you would pause and like, it was very awkward.
And I didn't realize that it was my stream slow because most of the talking, of course,
it's a guest episode. So it was Steph talking. So I didn't realize that it was me. I thought maybe
it's Steph who is receiving it. Uh, and then there's a lag on her side receiving my stream because you
were reacting to it faster, but that's probably because you were not talking much, right? You were
asking the questions and prompting her. Later on, I realized that, but I think it was almost like too
late to salvage at that point. Yeah. I tried to speak very little after that because it was becoming
very jarring. Yeah. Yeah. So that one might sound, uh, kind of a bit weird because like, yeah,
I was not in a good shape and yeah, you didn't have your internet connection.
Hmm. I am curious how much as we were recording, I had a thought that this episode would be really
hard to edit because of all the lag and all that. I don't know what the, you are the sound person in
here. So what do you think technically, like, is it going to create complexities?
No, I think everything is on its own separate track. And whenever you were saying something where,
where it was kind of disruptive, you know, because of the delays, basically everybody would stop.
Okay. And, um, and then like start over. So we will just have to cut out those entire pieces of,
I think, you know, so for people to understand what was going on, it's, it's like, imagine you're in
a zoom call with like 20 people and then three people start to talk at the same time. Yeah.
And then people like, Oh, you go ahead. No, no, you, you go ahead. And then all three of them again,
start talking at the same time. I have to plug in. There is an excellent YouTube video about this,
like conference calls. Uh, I don't remember what it was, but we led it to the show notes.
It was like spot on exactly what you're talking about. Hilarious.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I actually asked Steph a question about like, what do you do in those like moments when you meet
people who you don't know and, but you have to like hit record right away. Like, what do you do?
So she gave an advice that maybe you start with some rapid fire questions just to warm, warm it up. But then you
throw all of that content out. You basically don't keep it. Use it. Uh, you only keep the stuff where
the conversation, well, the other parties already can warm, or I guess you can have built some of that
connection. So, so yeah, uh, I'm actually really curious to hear now what the end result will sound
because actually I had this before when I was doing my, uh, other, the Russian podcast. I had this where
I felt like the connection maybe wasn't quite there or maybe the content was boring or I felt like,
you know, it might come out kind of as boring, but then I would edit and listen to it. And I'm like,
yeah, it actually sounds good. So we may also be overthinking this. Actually, one, one thing that,
um, maybe many people can relate to is like, imagine you doing the public speaking, uh, thing and public
speaking, it doesn't have to be like in front of a like thousand people at the conference, but sometimes,
you know, you just like in front of your team, maybe like 10 people, you have to say something like
present whatever. And, uh, maybe you don't feel confident and your, your entire body may be
shaking if you are not like comfortable with public speaking. And then you come out and you say, and
you feel nervous and you feel like shit, but then you watch the recording and it's actually okay.
Cause it doesn't come across, uh, like you were able to like control that. And then it makes you
more comfortable, like doing it the next time and next time and next time until it just becomes
naturally just like go out and talk because like all of this stuff that you've made up about,
like all these people are judging me or whatever, it's actually non-existent.
Right. I mean, to be fair, I didn't think it was bad. We'll see when it comes out,
but I think the conversation went pretty smooth, but it was kind of awkward in the beginning because we
hadn't warmed up and in the end, because there was a lot of like technical hiccups with the stream lagging.
Yeah. Yeah. I think also for us, uh, like the first episode we recorded with Brian, we actually had
a pre-call with him. So we had this opportunity to build the connection for the, for, you know,
for 30 minutes. And I think Jake and Jonathan actually, I think we chatted for maybe 10 minutes,
but they were like, their backgrounds are similar to ours. So it was like very easy to immediately jump in.
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Jake and I actually even worked at the same company. So yeah, it was very easy to connect.
Yeah. So, so yeah. I wonder what's, what's the lesson for us here for the next time we talk to
somebody who we don't know and maybe even somebody who we have not even heard before talk.
I think that I like the warmup questions, uh, like a set, set up questions a lot, um, and throwing it away.
But if something interesting comes up, maybe we make a note and add them into the episode.
Yeah. I'm terrible. Like small talk. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not so good either,
but I think we'll get better and better at it. Plus the guests that we bring on our podcasters
and they're, uh, they're seasoned podcasters so far, at least, and they are pretty good at small talk.
So, so there is one guest that I hope to schedule. So I will not disclose the names or anything,
but, uh, this guy was a product manager for a reputable microphone production,
microphone manufacturing company. And he launched, um, microphones that I have used before. So he is
not a podcaster, but he knows a lot about the technology and microphones and sound. So it would
be really cool to actually have him on the show and, uh, talk about all these different things that
matter, right? Sound wise. But when we talk to him, it's possible that for the first time we hear
like the voice, the manner of speech, we might hear it for the first time when we actually do the recording.
So, uh, yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll see how it goes, but yeah, we need to strategize more about like,
how do we warm up, uh, when, uh, yeah, like we don't know the person well enough.
Yeah. And most people I think do a pre-call, but, uh, we can't, these people are busy and we are doing like,
we are doing two, one episode a week now. So we, we are also like running short of time. So yeah.
Yeah. Metasodes are very easy to schedule. Yeah. Metasodes are easy to schedule, but it does take
time, like post-processing and everything. And we have started doing primisodes now too.
I won't bore you with the details of what, but those are like bonus episodes that we didn't end up
talking anything about podcast. So yeah, we should call the, we should call it the bonus primis out.
Yes. I like it. Sounds like a primis or like whatever, like a prime number dinosaur.
I don't know. Oh, it's a terrible joke. If my son heard, he would do a face palm at this point.
So, so another learning for me is restart my Mac before, before recording the episode. Yeah.
Yeah. Actually I had this thing also when I, so I unlocked my computer, I open all those windows
with my notes. And so by the way, the setup I have, I have, I have squad cast in half of my screen
where I'm looking at, uh, so I can see the video of the people like you and, and the guests. And on the
other half of the screen, I have my notes with like the plan of the things to ask about, uh, you know,
the talking points. Yeah. I do the same. Yeah. Yeah. So as, as I did that setup, my trackpad on my
Mac was lagging. I use an external, external trackpad and I was like, it doesn't feel good. Maybe I have
too many things open and my computer just lags. And I'm like, I hope it doesn't affect anything.
So I kind of started to freak out a little bit because it was almost time to do the recording and I
didn't have enough, uh, you know, time to do the restart also because I have to like open all
those windows and all. So yeah, I guess like lesson here is maybe get into your computer 15 minutes
before the recording. Just restart just in case. Yeah. Start fresh. Don't reopen all the windows
because I have stuff open like iZotope and Reaper and all that. To be honest, I think that was it.
Cause I had, uh, like a few, uh, no JS projects running with hot reloading open for like, I don't
know, a few weeks now. I had a couple of Android studio, uh, with like couple of mobile apps running
with simulators for a couple of weeks to Microsoft flight simulator. No, like, uh, iOS simulator and
Android simulator. Yeah. Microsoft flight simulator running. I don't think I would have been able to
record at all. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Remember how Jake and John were talking about how they tried to do.
Oh yeah. Mario Kart. Oh my God. That is a crazy idea. But if they had pulled it off,
that would have been an amazing episode. But we need to provide more context. Remember,
so they tried to do an episode where they play Mario Kart and record a podcast episode at the same time.
Yes. Uh, they didn't disclose the details, but they said it didn't work out quite well.
Yeah. I think it was supposed to be about the UX of Mario Kart.
Oh yeah. Yeah. That would have been a crazy cool episode if that had happened. So yeah. Anyway.
Yeah. It might've been actually better like Twitch stream. Yeah. So you also see the video. Yeah.
Actually I'm, I'm going to gift my son a Nintendo switch for, uh, for, yeah, for Christmas. So we just
like people listening to this like February 16th and they're like, what is going on? But yeah,
we're recording this in December. So yeah, I'm actually looking forward to playing some Mario
on Street Fighter on the console. Yeah. Uh, we love like when we got it, I think it was a couple of
years back. We used to play like the whole family, like me, my wife and my daughter. We used to play
it every night for like half an hour. Okay. Well, you have good self-control because I cannot play
a game for half an hour. No, I mean, we'll have to go to sleep and we'll have to take my daughter to
sleep. So there was a definite deadline, but I think we are about to start another episode about,
about stuff. Instead of getting into stuff, let's get back into Steph.
Yes. Into Steph. Yeah. So the thing I thought actually could be useful to talk about is, uh,
both in our episode and also in the post light, uh, episode 300, where she was a guest,
she mentioned, uh, the tool called iZotope. So it's spelled as I-Z-O or whatever, iZotope.
I-Z-O or Z-O if you're outside the U.S. If you like write iZotope. Yeah. Uh, but instead of S,
you replace it with a Z, like iZotope. Uh, but then it's like, like a small letter I and then like
capital Z or Zed. If you're in Europe and you're pedantic about how we in America say things.
Or Canada. Oh yeah. Can they also say Zed? Yes. Zed's dead baby. Zed's dead. Zed's the right way.
Zed's the right way. Oh. Zed's the right way. But that's, that's German, right? Yes.
So by the way, yeah. Our, our guest of our second episode, Brian McCullough, he wanted to become
Quentin Torantino. Yes. But unfortunately, Quentin Torantino was already there in existence.
Right. So Brian McCullough couldn't become him. He had to become Brian. So, but yeah,
but he was talking about, uh, we were talking about Pulp Fiction a little bit. So that Zed's dead baby.
That's a line from Pulp Fiction. Uh, and in any case, so going back to iZotope,
I think there's a suite of products that they have for, I think they call it the sound repair or audio
repair. Um, so apparently, you know, reading their website, people use it for like music, for
podcasting, for TV production, right? For, uh, movie production where you have some,
maybe some glitches in the background that you like, you don't want to reshoot the entire scene
for. Yeah. Actually. Yeah. Especially if you think about like movies or like news.
Wait, it does video also, or just the audio? No, no, but like, like, I guess when we produce a video,
you separate audio and video, you can edit the audio track separate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Make it better.
Right. The tool that she was talking about is called the iZotope RX. I think it's like repair effects
or something. I don't know if she, I don't know what RX stands for. I have a version nine and the most
current version is 10 right now. So RX 10 is the current version that you can buy. It costs $500. The one that I
have. And, uh, they have, I think a more expensive one that has more, more, more things, but I thought
we would just go through the things that RX nine has just, uh, to let people know a little bit more
about that and maybe upsell people on RX nine. I mean, we don't, we don't get paid for talking about
that. Uh, unfortunately, uh, but maybe fortunate because like if three people listen to this episode and
nobody buys it, you're like, okay. So it's not upsell. It's up recommend. Yeah. I recommend. Yeah. It's
just like a general recommendation. I really love that suite of tools. I think it's $500 very well, uh, spent. Uh,
uh, so the way it works, you can import an audio file into that program and then you, you can, uh,
do, you know, apply those, uh, repair filters and then you can export that file and then continue
editing that file elsewhere, like in pro tools or logic. And is this the tool that she mentioned that
you can apply the filter to a specific segment or does it apply to the whole?
That's a different tool. Yeah. That, uh, that was Amadeus. Uh, I haven't used it. Uh, yeah,
I'll need to take a look at it because I'm curious actually what she means there. And, uh, yeah,
I would like to do some more research and, but yeah, but as a job, I've used it before. So, uh,
I think it's cool to talk about it. So that's one way to use the tool. You import the audio file,
you apply the filters, you export, and then you edit it elsewhere. All of those effects,
all those filters are also available as what's called VST plugins. I don't know what VST stands
for. Just give me a sec. Virtual studio technology. Interesting. So it sounds like it's a, it's the name
of a company that produced this. Yeah. So VST was developed by a specific company in 1996. So I wonder
if it's one of those cases where, you know, in Russia, nobody calls photocopiers, photocopiers.
You know what they're called? No. Xerox. Xerox. Yes. Xerox. Yeah. So it's like a verb. So if you
want to copy a piece of paper, you Xerox that. Yes. So also nobody drives SUVs. Do you know what
they drive? Um, let me guess. Jeeps. Jeeps. Yes. That's true in India too. In fact, that reminds me
in Canada, the name for a couch, the one that you sit on, it's like something really insane. I'll pull it
up. Yeah. So also, also like the Scotch tape, it's just called the Scotch. And I had no idea why
until I moved to the U S and then I saw the Scotch brand on the shelves and I'm like, Oh,
so that's why Scotch tape is called, you know, it's called Scotch because I never used the Scotch tape
because I used whatever the local, you know, equivalence of that was. Right. So in Canada,
a couch, uh, guess what? It's called a Chesterfield. And the first time I heard it, I was like,
what? Yeah. Anyway, it's a brand name. So yeah. Got it. Yeah. Chesterfield does sound
like a brand name of some kind of like shoes or tea. So something from England.
Yeah. But it's like no way connected to, I guess, Jeep isn't really connected to a vehicle unless you
happen to know about it beforehand, which a lot of, most people would know about it.
Anyway. So coming back to iZotope, I was talking about the VST. So there's this technology called
the VST plugins. What you can do if you use a tool like Pro Tools or Logic or Reaper, you can apply
those VST plugins to the track. So what happens is, let's say you have your, your track, let's say your
voice with like raw, unprocessed form that we've recorded in Squadcast. And when we apply the filter,
actually, I think they call the effects. We apply the effect, let's call, let's use the correct
terminology. We apply the effect. Let's say the first thing I see here in iZotope is breath control.
So we apply the breath control filter. And then, then I can turn some knobs and set it up such that
it lowers the volume of the breaths. So it detects when you breathe and then it lower, it lowers those
down. Then the next thing I might add is the bleed. That's next one on the list. So it's like,
if you're bleeding, I could help you with that. Using AI software, you know.
So when you have two microphones in the same room and two people are talking. So let's say if you and
I were sitting in the same room and I was talking, your mic will pick up my voice as well. And my mic
would pick your voice. And that's what it's called bleed over. Where, especially when maybe like,
I see something and you laugh, and then your laugh is now on my track. And what dbleed does is it
actually removes, I guess, the stuff that bleed over, I guess, bled over from your, from you into my mic.
So it kind of decouples.
So is this, is this a, is Isotope a machine learning based tool or how does it do it?
I think, yeah, I think it is. I think, I think it's machine learning based because some of those
plugins, you have to train them first. So you give them a small piece of, of audio and then you like
learn. So it kind of trains and then it uses, it picks the right settings for you.
Yeah. So then, then the next one is, so let's say I first apply breath control and apply dbleed. And then
maybe the next thing I apply is equalizer, which also could be a VST plugin, et cetera, et cetera. And
then that's how we create an effects chain that, um, like sequentially is applied to the track. So let's
say first we remove the breaths, then next thing, you know, we remove that bleeding from the track. And
then, and then, and then only to the output of that, we apply the EQ. So the, so the, the order,
the order matters. Yes. Like when I produced our first three episodes, before we handed off the
production to, um, to a sound engineer, uh, starting from the fourth episode, I think it had like five
or six effects on each of our tracks. And then they had another one on like the combined voice tracks.
And also there's also one on like the master, the master output. So yeah, we won't go into all of this.
Is there filters for like clicks and pops or? Yeah. So the next one in Azotope is this D click.
So that's where it removes the mouth clicks. And, uh, so yeah, I guess to our listeners,
listen to our first episode. We actually have an example of those mouth clicks. Yeah. Towards the
end of the episode. Yeah. It's so interesting clicks. Now, sometimes I, I listen to an episode,
I mean, not ours, somebody else's who don't have, you know, good production quality. Uh,
and then I hear those clicks and, uh, they aren't really super audible, but when you remove them,
it just thinks the thing starts to sound better. The next one is D clip. So clipping sound is like
when you have your volume to, I guess when you laugh and your gain is too high on the microphone,
your, uh, your kind of high frequencies kind of cut out. If you listen to the Jake and Jonathan episode,
when Jonathan loves his AirPods actually cut out, like the sound clips, and it's hard to explain it.
You have to hear it, but it's like, you don't hear the full thing. It's like, I don't know. Just imagine
talking very loudly to a microphone on a very loud volume and you start to see the distortion, uh,
coming out of it. The next one is D crackle. So it's like when, uh, actually D crackle, I don't
know how exactly it works. I'll just skip that. Then there is DS. Actually, I think in both your
speech and my speech, because English is not our native language. I think our S is, it sounds terrible,
but like, yeah, uh, the way we pronounce the word S. Uh, so the sound S isn't too terrible, but, uh,
I think for English speakers, maybe because they pronounce it differently, that S could be so, um,
it's like, it hurts ears, you know, ears when you hear the S sound. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
There's like, there's like too much of it. Uh, and it's like disruptive. Uh, it could like really hurt,
you know, it's not pleasant. So DS filter kind of makes it, um, it kind of, I guess, cuts out some
of that, uh, S sound makes it, uh, more pleasant to, to, to the ear. When you said DS, I thought it
removes fart sounds. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, every time I was saying like the S sound, uh, that's exactly what I was thinking
about. And I was trying to keep my cool and not to laugh. Hoping that listeners would, would get it.
But, uh, yeah, you helped. If, if anybody didn't get it, you made it obvious. Yes.
Yeah. S. All right. Yeah. You, you, you, you've, you've definitely learned your lessons from dog
man. Right. And if you don't know what we are talking about, wait for the next weekend and listen
to our bonus. Prime is out. Prime is out. Yes. Yes. So next one is S. Next one is D hum. And, uh,
hum being things like washing machine running in the, you know, in the next room, or like the AC hum,
air conditioning or like a fridge. So that stuff is like, when you're in the room, you just get used
to it so much. Yeah. You don't hear it. But like when you listen to your recording, you're like,
oh my God, it's like terrible. And then D hum, I think that's actually where it uses machine learning.
Yeah. The, I think it learns from the pauses because when you don't speak the hum,
what you hear is just the hum and noise, right? The room, room sound. Yeah. The room sound. Yeah.
The room tone. And then hum, hum is part of room tone and it can remove some of that from the,
from, from the, you know, where the voice is. The next one is Diplosive, which is again,
I think for us not being the native speakers, I think we don't pronounce
you know, like the native speakers do. Right. Actually, I was hearing to Brian,
I think it was Brian. I think his clauses were pretty loud. Right. And I'm like,
great that we have this filter. Right. Because actually I never had to use it with the Russian
speakers. Right. I guess we just pronounce, you know, peas differently. And also that's where you,
you need to use the pop filter. Like I'm having right now, like this kind of mesh in front of the
microphone. Oh, also on some mics, you have these foamy things that are like put on top of the mic.
You might've seen those. Yeah. So that they help kind of contain some of those plosive sounds,
but yeah, isotope RX helps to remove them further. Uh, then you have D-reverb, which is like, yeah,
if you have echo in the room, which actually my recording now has echo and, um, yeah,
we will apply D-reverb to make it sound less echoey. Uh, then there was a guitar D-noise,
I guess, which is for music. Um, that's pretty cool that like, so do you, in your experience,
I mean, you're pretty experienced with all this, would a new podcaster be able to just basically
pay $500, install this and start using it? Or do they need like deep knowledge of sound and all that?
No, I think, I think they can do it because, um, I mean, I guess I'll just, I'll just stop here.
I guess the other thing I mentioned, there is a voice D-noise filter where it actually learns what
your voice sounds like and it can filter out the noise in the background. Like I think the thing,
the use case for this is like, if there was like a reporter in the middle of a street, right. And there
is just a lot of noise going on. Or in the world cup. So yeah, like a world cup or something. Right.
So like if you have the hum, the noise is constant. Right. Kind of the noise has a constant profile,
but with the noise outside, your voice has a constant profile more or less, but the noise outside is
random. You have like a siren of a firetruck passing by and voice D-noise helps to filter that out,
make, make the voice stand out, uh, more. This is the D-fart one. Yes. Okay. Not the DS, but the D-noise.
Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And there's a bunch of stuff to hear like EQ and others. So coming back
to your question, this tool is so easy to use. I mean, I saw some videos of people doing like crazy
stuff. They would look at this, I think it's called the spectrogram, which is like this waveform that's
colored with all these different colors. And they look at this as if it was like a, like, like,
imagine like a Photoshop image, right? Right. Like, like a photograph, you open it in Photoshop,
and then there is like a scar or something on the face. Right. Right. And, and you want to kind of
retouch, is there, is the right word? Yeah. Like that, uh, part and use like a tool that makes it look
like, you know, the skin next to it. And then like, all of a sudden you have a person with no scar,
which is, uh, you know, uh, amazing. Right. That's what this tool allows to do. And I'm like,
I'm not doing this. Like if you're NPR, you probably would do that. But like for our stuff,
like I'm not spending hours and hours and hours using this tool to the full extent, but, but this
tool is worth its money, even if you don't use that. So things like breath control, it saves you time
on not having to cut those breaths manually. Uh, things like a mouth click, you just, you just
enabled and it just works. That's what I like, I like about it. Right. Uh, you don't even have to
play with settings really. Uh, and then D reverb, you just, basically the only knob I use is like,
how much do you, do you remove the echo? You can basically change the sensitivity of that. And then
you can hear like, if you remove it too much, the voice starts to sound unnatural. So you just,
you know, you just, you just play with it. So even just these three filters, they, they're worth,
uh, and also DS and Deplosive. Uh, I think those are really worth the 500 bucks.
Yeah. If you're native speakers. Yeah. I think this is the one I have asked you before too. I have a dog
who's very attached to me. Right. And when we record these sessions, I locked the door
and he's outside. He's not with me. Otherwise he's pretty much always right next to me.
And you would have seen him in like, when we meet, he's like,
So on my Instagram, uh, product hacks, why am I saying this again?
Breakfast product hacks.
Jake and Jonathan hacks. Yeah. Uh, yeah. I should just call it Jake and John. It will be easier. Uh,
yeah. Podcast hacks. I think that's what I called my Instagram. Uh, I should post a picture of
me and your dog because, because he also was very affectionate to me. Yes. But, uh, what happens is
he's always wants to be next to me. And when I record, he's outside and I keep him outside because
if I keep him inside, he'd want to go out once in a while to check on things. And you can't do that.
Keep opening it again and again. So I keep him outside. So he whines quite a lot when we're recording.
And I think these filters that you're using basically removes it because I've asked you
quite a few times, like I can hear him pretty loud sometimes. Like this morning he was whining because
there was nobody else in the house. And it was like, what's going on? Why is the door closed?
Why can't I come next to you? Yeah. And I think these filters definitely help in that.
I wish I could take the credit, but actually I didn't use those filters. What I do is I cut
out the pieces where you don't talk. Right. And I think a lot of the times when you're aware of
boomer whining or scratching or something is actually when you don't speak. Right. And I,
I do hear those and, but I just, as a, as a, as a rule, I cut out all of the silence where, you know,
when like I'm speaking and you're not speaking, I've cut out all of your silence. So, so that's why
those, you know, the dog doesn't make it to the record. Right. But when you talk and maybe he's
scratching or something, actually leave those in because it's just so painful to apply that filter to
that specific piece because you don't want to apply it to the whole thing because any kind of
operation is destructive by nature. It takes, you know, it reduces the quality. Yes. I was going to
talk about this because in the first episode, you talked about garbage in, garbage out. Yes.
In spite of all these tools at your disposal, I think the main thing is try to record,
actually listen to the first episodes. You, you go into depth about this, but essentially
the point is if you have garbage in your input, which is your raw recording, like there's noise
going on, AC going on, humidifier, whatever the heck going on. In spite of all these filters,
they will do their work in removing that, but they'll also reduce the final output quality
because they've removed so much stuff. So try to keep the input at a high quality level itself.
Yes. Yeah. Especially the denoise ones. Yes. Um, because I think, because they're very smart filters,
but they're not like crazy smart. So it's also, it's almost like it's easier to rely on your listeners
brain filtering out the noise because it will, uh, unless it's, unless it's super excessive, uh, then to use
those filters. You know, one way to think about that is I assume, you know, most of our listeners used
zoom and, uh, in the last couple of years, those zoom backgrounds became popular. Other tools have
it as well. Google meet has this thing where you can just like upload an image and have a background
of whatever. But what you see there is you can immediately see that this is a fake background
because that line between your face or the face of the person you're looking at and their background is
not kind of clear cut, you know? Yeah. It's not like it's neatly photoshopped. It's actually very crude
and it could like overlap. And there are some artifacts. It's a deep fake. Yeah. Like, like if you've
ever seen those recordings or like those meeting meetings, um, you know, it's kind of
Nah, I would rather look at, yeah, I would rather look at your curtains and, uh, like a cabinet in your
background than to look at that fake image that like constantly overlaps with your face and stuff.
But that's how I think about those destructive filters as well. Yeah. Sometimes it's better to just
keep it raw than to cut it out. Okay. So yeah, so that's so we are like 45 minutes into this one.
Yeah. We should talk about comics.
We need to talk about like, uh, uh, do you want to talk about some of your favorite moments or things
that you remembered out of the episode this morning?
So my really favorite moment that I thought was like absolutely mind-blowing. It's something that I posted
this morning on LinkedIn. Let me guess. Let me guess. Pedals. Pedals. Yes. Pedals. So yeah, she was like,
in case if you, you know, if you haven't listened to this episode, um, so Steph was talking about how
to do transcription of audio. So we assumed that, uh, when, then when audio is transcribed for a transcript
to be published, they will use some tool like Descript or there's plenty of software, I guess,
for transcription of, of audio in the text, and then they edit that. But apparently what they do is
actually faster for them to just listen to the audio and type it out. Right. Like in real time.
Uh, but you have to like go back, you know, like repeat certain parts because you know, you don't
necessarily, I don't think it's humanly possible to like type as transcribe one hour, one hour,
of audio like in real time without making mistakes. One of the persons on Steph's team connected pedals to
her computer. Well, I assume it's, I assume it's her. Her or they, yeah. Yeah. So they connected pedals
and, and if, uh, they, you know, tap on that pedal, it goes like 30 seconds back. Right. And like,
like rewinds 30 seconds back and like repeats that section that, uh, they want to listen to. And,
um, what I found so funny about, well, not funny, like, I don't know, exciting about that is like,
it's not keyboard. It's not keyboard shortcuts because actually, yeah, if you think about it,
the person who does the transcription, their hands are on the keyboard in the typing position. They want
to type text. You don't necessarily want to like distract yourself, like pressing the command key
and some, something else. You want to be able to use your other limb. Yeah. They're like sitting idle.
Yeah. When, when, when Steph was talking about that, uh, I actually thought it was cool. But now
that I put my hands on the keyboard, I realized that it's actually functionally more convenient.
Oh yeah. Like I have been thinking about that and I knew you would bring this up. And this was one of
my favorite moments too. Um, but I thought, so, so, uh, when you're doing deep work, right? When I'm
doing deep work, like I'm programming something or writing something, um, like deep, fake work,
deep, fake work.
Okay. Okay. So when I'm doing like programming or writing something, I almost always have music, uh,
playing. Right. And it's almost kind of like an ambient noise kind of music that I don't really pay
attention to the music, but it helps me focus. Uh, sometimes the music is like very jarring.
Either I'm too familiar with it or it doesn't jive with me at all. And I feel like I skip it or go back.
I really love that play it again, even without knowing what was playing. Right. And I think for
these kinds of things, it's so jarring to have to like go out of the thing that you're in the
programming editor or the word document or whatever you're writing in and go into like YouTube music
or Spotify or whatever the heck you use, click there. And I, I have actually like a system of
scripts that uses like Alfred that does this for me, like hotkeys built. Right. But even that,
I, I feel like I'm using my hands while I'm already typing and it would be so cool to have like a set
of paddles below me, uh, with my feet that is sitting or sitting idle feet are kind of like they're,
they're idle. It would be so cool to actually do those auxiliary things with your feet that don't really,
I don't care about that as much. And I wonder if there are devices like that, that you could just
connect to your computer. Yeah. I'm really curious if it's something like, you know, stock or, uh, you
know, they built something using, you know, other kind of parts. Yeah. We should, we should actually
research that and see what's there, but I'm going to take you on a tangent right now. Yes. Because
like speaking about pedals, as a guitar player, you know, I have pedals and pedals are basically like
effects. So, so we were just talking about the effects chain. So when you play a musical instrument,
uh, especially the guitar, the electric guitar, so between your guitar and your amplifier that plays
the sound, usually there is a set of effects that you put in there, like a distortion effect that makes
your like guitar scream, you know, uh, or like, or like the reverb, you know, in, in audio, we want to
remove, uh, any, uh, reverberation, any echo, but when you play the guitar, you want, you want to add
some reverb. So it sounds more kind of more lively. So then you have those little pedals that, uh,
you put, uh, in your effects chain. Here's where I'm going with this. Um, so I have this, um,
effects processor, which has like 50 knobs and like four pedals and stuff, and it can do like 300
different things. Okay. Uh, like they, they, they sound decent. Like it's not, it's not bad. It's a
boss M E 100. I think that's what it's called. It's a host cost like $300 or so. And then I have this
amplifier that I used in our bonus episode that can do just one thing. It can play like clean guitar
sound, uh, with like no effects. It costs 750 bucks. Like the point I want to make here,
like when I got this amplifier, I'm like, Oh my God, this is so good. Like I know what I paid 750
bucks for. Right. Um, so there's this concept of like, I guess, Swiss army knife tools and single
purpose tools. Yeah. So this amplifier is a single purpose thing that can do just one thing like best
in class. Right. Right. And there are the Swiss army knives, uh, that, uh, you know, it's those knives
with like a bunch of blades, like none of these blades are good enough for anything except for like
little things you want to do. Basically like it, it, this army knife is good at saving space, but it's
not really saving you money maybe, but it's not good at like anything. It's convenience over like
sophisticated. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So, and so the other moment, uh, that was kind of memorable
for me in the, um, in the episode, uh, I asked Steph about Descript. I don't know why I keep coming
back to Descript. Oh, this was in mine too. Yeah. Because I, I have, I have a bit, I guess I have
a bit of a, I love Descript. Affection. Yeah. Uh, yeah. I have a lot of affection for Descript.
At the same time, I can't quite figure out why I can't do everything in Descript. And I think
now I'm starting to get it. I think Descript tries to be a Swiss army knife. Uh, so Descript is a tool
where it can transcribe the text for you. You can, uh, like edit the text. And when you edit
the text, it edits the audio, but then it also has all of the effects chain. Uh, so in theory,
you can produce your entire episode using just Descript alone. But what Descript is really good
at is actually moving text around. So you move text around and it moves audio around. Actually,
I would say I would give it four stars because it's sometimes doesn't do a great job, but it does
a decent enough job with moving text around. It saves you a lot of time. But when it comes to like,
if you want to add music, maybe it's easy, I don't know, but like I tried to learn it. Uh, and at some
point I just gave up. I went back to my digital audio workstation. Right. And did what I, and did what I
knew how to do. So they kind of, I think they changed the paradigm a little bit. And, uh, I don't know,
I don't know. So the thing is for me, Descript is like a bit of a Swiss army knife
that has one blade that's, that's sort of pretty good, but then all of the other blades, I'm like,
yeah, I don't know if I, if I really want to use them. I would rather instead of using, let's say,
built-in compressor in, uh, in Descript. Yeah. Yeah. I would rather choose one of the hundreds of
compressor VST plugins that I can use with, with, uh, you know, in Reaper or Pro Tools. Right.
So it's like those digital audio workstation and, uh, Steph is using Logic. I'm using Reaper.
Lots of people use Pro Tools. By the way, I checked prices. Pro Tools cost 200 bucks a year.
Logic costs 200 bucks just as a one-off cost. Okay. And, um, Reaper that I use costs 60 bucks
as a one-off cost for, uh, like home lessons, uh, which, which is very affordable. And the most of
those plugins are free. So they actually built as platforms. So basically Reaper itself or Logic or
Pro Tools, they do some basic things very well. They, you know, you can cut the audio, you can move
things around, uh, they, they, they orchestrate your workflow, but then they rely on those thousands of,
uh, software developers to create, uh, those plugins, like, like, like,
you know, Logic or Pro Tools, they can never be good at, uh, like building the best compressor
and the best deep breath and the best DS and the best, and all, and all of that. Instead,
they built the great platform that other developers can plug into. So it's like an open ecosystem of
sorts, whereas Descript is like a closed tool, more likely Apple approach. And I think they will get
there, but it will probably take maybe another year or two or three. I don't know. I'm actually looking
forward to them. You know, I guess I keep, uh, defending Descript even though I don't myself
use it as much because we want Andrew Mason in our podcast. Yeah. At this point, I think you'll get
angry after listing all of our, yeah, anyway. Yeah. Andrew Mason or like anybody in the marketing
department of Descript, if you're listening to this, uh, yeah. Yeah. We love Descript. Yeah. Let's,
let's, let's talk, let's talk about it. We will be nice. You know, it is, I'll be nice.
They got a 50 million funding, I think, series A. So like you said, I, I do think they'll get better
too. To me, it just sounds like right now it's not sophisticated enough for like professionals to use.
Yeah. Um, and maybe anything other than that transcribe and moving words around part,
the rest of the things are probably not like professional ready. That's why,
because we talked to two sound engineer people and both of them, like we're not impressed with that at
all. Yeah. But both of them actually said that they still use it. Yes. One of them said they use it for,
like communication with clients because it's easy to leave comments and also it's easy to move text
around. Yeah. And I think Steph said that they use it for transcriptions. They do a raw transcribe,
but they also manually transcribe the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess it's like a helper
tool as opposed to the main tool. Yeah. And actually maybe, maybe this is where like,
like Andrew, I'm giving you an idea, uh, just like let, you know, other developers, I guess, support VST
plugins in, in there and make it look more like a dog or actually what I guess I would really appreciate.
And that's what this other sound engineer said, uh, the one that's not Steph, um,
Jace. Jace. Yes. Or Brian. I forgot. Owen. Yeah. If you don't know what we are talking about,
listen to episode four. So anyway, so yeah, we talked to Jason and, um, he said that it would
be really cool to have the transcription in Pro Tools. So basically it's almost like,
give me the, give me the technological capabilities of this script, but let me use them in another
user interface. Right. So, so this could be an actually an API that provides, yeah, that provides
those things like as a plugin, which obviously will not look as sexy, but I would definitely be using it
a lot more if it actually did what, uh, what we just said. Right. Okay. We got to start, I think,
winding down. We're about an hour. Yeah. It's almost midnight here. Yes. I have, um, I, I,
I want to bring up one. So I had these two, two, uh, the pedal and the script, the two other,
I'll quickly mention them. One was not really tied to Steph, uh, or edit audio, but they have original
podcasts and one of their podcasts is called well adjusting. And I listened to an episode of it that
I immediately shared with Ilya. Right. It's, it's the promotion mentality and culture that you see at
pretty much any corporate. Right. And I love that episode because they talked to a person who kind of
did not want to get promoted. She was very happy at her job, but she was facing his job as an assistant,
as an executive assistant. Yes. Yeah. But she was implicitly as well as explicitly pressured to like
from get promoted, work towards being an SVP someday and whatnot. Right. And it's, it's her story as well
as a lot of like, I think, takeaways, uh, about the culture and all that, and how you're perceived to be
like, if you don't want to get promoted, how you're perceived to be lazy. Uh, whereas in fact,
you really enjoy your job, but you don't want to get promoted because you don't want to change your job.
So yeah. Actually, I remember when I first started at Amazon, uh, I was in an internship back in 2014,
I think. Uh, so there was like a panel of people talking to us about career. So there was this guy who
had been at Amazon for a few years and he said that I just want to keep doing my job for as long as like,
I'm allowed to. Yeah. Because I want to like go deep and all that. And I was looking at it there.
Like I was like, I was just over 30, I guess at the time. And I'm like, not ambitious enough.
Like what are you talking about? Like you got to like do different things and like grow and like
get the promotion and all that. Uh, now in that respect, I'm like people should just do what they
want to do. Yeah. And especially I think the promotion thing, I listened for the first few
minutes of that episode. Yeah. Where I really like how she was saying that she told her boss that she
doesn't want to get the promotion. Like she just find where she is. Yeah. She finds meaning like
doing other things in life, like some art and stuff. And it, it would seem to land with her boss,
but then he would like come back like a week later and like start the same thing all over.
Like you're, you're really good at your job. Let's start thinking about your next step.
Exactly. Right. So, but I think the important thing she mentioned there is that she used to have a boss
for many years that she really liked and who was really like getting her, but then the boss changed
and that's when all of that began. So it's like, you know, sometimes you have people you really connect
with and then, uh, yeah, like as a manager and you don't feel like they're your manager. Right. But then
somebody else comes in and, and you're like, yeah, their life becomes miserable. Yeah.
I'm, I'm curious if your experience is similar to mine and as well as listeners, right? Like whoever
is listening still. Thank you for listening, by the way. You can, you can respond to Arnab's
question by maybe tagging him in Twitter or, or like direct message. Twitter, Mastodon, email.
Yeah. You'll find all our contacts. Or my Instagram. Yep. So yeah. Whoever you like more,
let's just like write to him and I, or if you like both of us, write it, write it,
hello@metacastpodcast.com and both of us will get it. Say hello. So the one thing that I always felt
there were a lot of, over my 12 years at Amazon, there were a lot of career talks that I went to
and I gave some too, right? There was an almost implicit association of career with promotions and
very few people I think got it, uh, that it's not the same thing. And I wonder if your kind of experience
was similar, uh, as well as listeners. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's also this misperception that
like managing people or managing more people means promotion. Right. Um, I think what I learned, uh,
specifically working at Amazon is that actually there is a different career track where you can continue
being, you know, craftsman, uh, like being a software engineer or designer or a product manager where you
actually don't have people reporting to you, but you still, you still get promoted to the next level.
And, um, you know, you have more responsibilities and stuff, uh, you get paid more. But I think where
this inevitably leads is you do less and less of your craft and more and more of direct or in or
indirect people management. Yes. Right. Because like you start to coach people, you like don't do the
work, but you negotiate that two teams run in the same direction and they try to run in different
directions because of there are certain personalities on those teams who like drive them a certain way.
Or there was like somebody toxic on the team and you, as you be like maybe the most senior person,
you like help coach them. And it just becomes like, just for me, at least like when I left Amazon,
I was a principal, like, like, just like you when you left Amazon. Um, I remember like, I'll say this
on the record, I guess I don't care. So it was August 2019, I believe. Uh, we were in the meeting room
with like, actually you weren't there. I guess you weren't the principal yet. Uh, so, uh, yeah, we were
sitting there with like 20 or so people like talking about the strategy for next year and all that for
that for two days, like eight hours in a day. Right. And I was just bored out of my mind because like,
you know, you, you and I were, we were working on specific like chat bot thing, but the rest of the
org organization where we worked, it was responsible for a lot of other things. And that's those things,
they didn't interest me at all. Right. Like, like zero, I had zero interest in them. So basically
like thinking about those things were draining for me. Right. But as a principal, you were expected to
be interested in all of that and show initiative and influence in all of them. I was promoted two
months before that. Right. To, to, to principal. And then all of a sudden now I have all these
expectations and I'm like, okay, so now I'm principal. Now I have to do all these things.
And I was just bored out of my mind. I was literally falling asleep. I was like struggling
to keep my eyes open. You know, obviously, you know, I didn't contribute much. I probably was a
liability for that group as opposed to like an asset. And, you know, one of the other principals who
got promoted a couple of years before us, you know, both of us know him. He came to me afterwards
and he said that, I mean, we are good friends. And he said like, dude, like you have to like up your
game. Like now your principal, like you have to be engaged in this stuff. And that was the beginning
of the end for me. Cause I'm like, yeah, that's, it's just not what I wanted. It's not. I, yeah.
And I remember like, I also had this thing where, you know, that, uh, the chat bot that we were working
on, you know, we were the kind of the founders of, of that whole product. And so I was there for like
day zero, you were there, I guess from day 0.5. Yeah. Uh, just like, yeah. Yeah. I guess you joined
before the first line of code was written. Yeah. So, and, um, I felt that sense of obligation to
my team, uh, including you that, you know, that I can't just like quit. Yeah. You know, like I have
to like keep pushing these because like, that's what we started. And I remember like, I was talking
to a few people and I was saying, just like, I don't know what to do because I just can't do it
anymore. Right. And, um, yeah, it was surprising how they were like, yeah, like just do what's best
for you. And yeah. Yeah. Eventually I left. Yeah. But it also kind of shows that part of the corporate
world where everybody's replaceable. Yeah. I, I had a long time. Like I, I talked maybe like
at least four months, maybe six months before I left that, Hey, I'm going to leave, let's figure
it out and all that. And I also felt being like one of the first people in that area. Right. And
there's like 60 people or so working in that area now. So I felt kind of like almost guilt, uh,
leaving that space, but I think what I felt. Yeah. Yeah. But eventually I think you're right. Like
nobody's, everything goes on, right? Like the product that I've been working on last two years,
that's like about to launch, I think soon. So yeah, I think there will definitely be things that are
missed. And I know that we missed a lot of things right after you left. We were like, oh, if Ilya was
here, he would have known what to do here or there. And I think those things will come,
but organizations are built in a way to minimize the effect of like a single person. So I think it'll
go well. They box you in. So you are like a cog, right? Like more replaceable. And then like those
promotions, you just get the bigger box. In organizations, essentially what ends up
happening, this is like my experience. So only one data point is you get promoted and promoted
until a point where you are no longer doing what you enjoy. And either you adjust to that and you're
okay with that, or you figure out, okay, this is not for me anymore.
And that's actually the Peter's principle, which is the foundation for the Dilbert's principle,
which says that everybody gets promoted to their level of incompetence.
Basically, you get promoted to the point where you no longer kind of enjoy or like a good at what you're
expected to do. So you don't get promoted further. So you always get like promoted out of the thing
that you do well until you don't do it well anymore.
Yeah. And then I think Dilbert's principle. I forgot. Actually, let me quickly look it up.
Okay. So Dilbert's principle says that people get consistently promoted to management. Incompetent
people get promoted to the management. So they kind of get out of the production workflow.
Right. Contributor. Yeah. Yeah. So I forgot how exactly it ties to Peter's principle because on the
surface, it doesn't seem like they're related. But I remember reading the book by Scott Adams,
the Dilbert principle, where it actually goes into detail of that. So yeah. But you said you had two
things you want to talk about.
Well, the other one, okay, let's do like 30 seconds on it because I have to go, was I really,
so you remember I asked her about you lived and worked in Yukon because I was fascinated by it,
right? I have always wanted to go to Yukon. It's almost seems like in the old days,
it was the ultimate frontier, right?
And I always confuse Yukon and Yucatan. So Yukon is like in the North Pole almost.
Almost. Almost. Yeah. It's kind of like east of Alaska, right? And north of BC and Yucatan.
This is like almost Russia.
Yeah. Well, Russia is west of Alaska.
Oh, west. Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I keep confusing west and east.
Right. Cool. And Yucatan is in Mexico, but yeah.
Right. That's where that thing fell that killed all the dinosaurs.
All the dinosaurs. Yes. The place that she lived, I looked it up on Google maps later on. She said she
really enjoyed it, right? In the summers and all. It's a really tiny, and this is almost like the
furthest away northwestern town in Yukon. So Yukon is already pretty isolated and it's a huge province.
And this is like the northwest corner of Yukon. So I was really fascinated by that because I want to go
there one day and like kind of see how life is and all that.
So it's like if you get appendicitis, well, you're doomed because like they would have to
evacuate with the jet. Probably. But this being like North America, I think they would figure out
how to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I was really, my son has one of those national geographic
books with like, you know, weird stuff. Oh, actually, no, that was a book about national parks in the US.
Yeah. So apparently there is a national park in Alaska. That's almost like the size of Texas or
something. It's like gigantic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there are no roads there. It's basically like
like you can only enter that park by by feet. And something happens, essentially, like you get eaten
by wildlife. That's what happens like there.
Yeah. So there's a really good book if you're interested in this. There's a guy, it's a true story.
He went into the wild. Yes. The wild. Chris McCandless. I really enjoyed that book.
There's also a movie where this guy like he lives in this like trailer or something.
Yeah. And then and then, yeah, we won't spoil, but he eventually gets like bad things happen.
Yes. But it's a true story. And it became so famous that the bus, the school bus that he lived in
inside that national park became like a tourist spot. And they eventually had to remove the bus
from there because a lot of people were going just to see the bus. Oh, OK. Anyway, it's a good
for the wrong reasons. Yeah. Good movie, too. But again, just like every other movie adaptation,
it loses a lot of things that's in the book. So, yeah. Yeah, I think this is a good way to end this
this episode, because in the next episode that we record before this episode, I guess, long story
short, the next episode will be a bonus episode where we talk about movies and the adaptations of books
to movies. Don't miss that in a few days. And so, Arna, where can people find us?
We have a website, metacastpodcast.com. That's where you'll find all the links, but let's call
them out, too. So there's a newsletter in there, newsletter.metacastpodcast.com. And then you and
I both have our Twitters and Instagrams. You just started your podcast hacks, not breakfast product
hacks. Breakfast hacks. Yes. And I'm generally OR90B everywhere in the socials. That's a cool way of
saying or not. Or at least I like to pretend so. Which for me, immortals means just scroll to the
link in the show notes and click on it. Yes. Don't try to spell it. Because I can never spell it. Yes.
I thought you do this so that people can find you. No, I like it. And also because there's a really
famous or infamous person called Arna from the same place that I'm in. And they tend to take up
all the socials before I do, except GitHub. I got that one. Cool. Yeah. Please subscribe. Give us
five stars. If you haven't, if you already have, ask somebody else to give us five stars. So it keeps
multiplying. Yeah.
Because it helps us, you know, get more popular and it bolsters our ego, you know, and all this stuff.
But it also gives us, I guess. But I think more importantly, when somebody searches for Metacast
in Apple or other app, we don't show up as like the sixth or seventh one in there. We show up as the
first or second in there. Yeah, exactly. And also, I guess, don't hesitate to write to us. Yes.
We would love to chat and, you know, discuss topics and all. Hello@metacast.com.
Hello@metacastpodcast.com. Yeah. Actually, I wanted to buy metacast.com. Yeah. And the price I was
called it was 20,000 bucks. Yeah. And I offered them like, okay, so like, would you go for a thousand
bucks? I think they said something like they could give me like a 10% discount or something. Right.
So we'll just wait till like our value exceeds so much that they quote us a million dollars.
Right. Yeah. Maybe we should add like, buy me a coffee link. And then once our listenership goes to
like the millions, we can easily pay 20,000 bucks. Yes. So yeah. But for that, you have to give us the
five-star review so that the, the listenership keeps growing. Right. All right. It was an awesome
episode. Thank you, Ilya. Thank you for listening, listeners. And good night, good day, wherever you
are. And good night, extreme good night, almost good morning to India.