I just realized how much I forgot to get out of tires. You have to be around other people all over time. Sometimes I just want to be three.
I got one myself. If you're going to office two, three times a week, you're having meetings or like talking to people by the end of the day. When you're sitting in that bus or train to come back home, you're like white south. Hello and welcome to the Metacast Behind the scenes podcast. I'm your host, Ilea Bestilif.
I'm Arnabdeca.
First things first, we're back. We haven't been on air for over a month at this point. Maybe for those who forgot who we were, let's remind them who we are.
Arna, what is the cool thing that you're working on?
We are building. At this point it feels weird to say building. It's pretty much built. There's a lot of things to add, but it's pretty usable. People are using it excitedly.
What is it? Oh, it's an app. It's a podcast app. I like any podcast app you've ever seen.
Yeah, it's called Metacast. If you are like someone I know who pinged me today, don't search for it in Apple App Store just yet because we are in Open Beta. You need to go to our website metacast.app.
Our shiny new all dark mode website. Oh my god, this website is so beautiful. So yeah, even if you are not in the market for the new podcast app, just go to the metacast.app website just to appreciate the beauty of the new website that our
big tour and slash contractor Jack built for us and we'll talk about that maybe in the next episode. We'll briefly talk about it in today's episode, but we'll actually have Jack on our show sometime soon in one of the upcoming episodes. Yes.
One thing that I think we could be doing better, more organically is talking about Metacast in the course of the recording so it's more like product placement.
And then place the podcast back in the app as ads. Great full circle. Before we drift too far, can you tell us what we're going to talk about today in this episode?
Yes, so this episode will be just a massive update on what we've been up to in the last one and a half months or so because you know, the things we're going on, I was sick for quite a while.
We were busy scoding quite a lot of things will give you an update and we met up all of us in Florida. So that was cool. We'll talk about all that today.
So I think it all started in early May. I think we published the last episode early March. You mean early March? Yes. Yeah. And then we get the rerun, but it doesn't count. We actually haven't recorded anything for almost two months now.
My wife was out and then my kid got sick and I got sick with him and then he got better, but I got sick again. And then it took me a while to recover also after my wife came back.
I was just so derailed on the physical front, but also I think I was just so stressed. Yeah, and we I think wanted to record something, but then you were coming to Florida.
We were like, okay, let's do it while you're in Florida, but when you were in Florida, we'll go, we don't have enough time for this. Let's focus on something that doesn't require in-person presence.
So we just kept postponing it and we kind of fell out of routine for recording a podcast. So I'm actually so happy now to be back.
Podcast recording feel almost therapeutic to me. I love them. You feel like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I'm back, baby.
Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yeah. I thought there's a door-nope Schwarzenegger. And for those of you who don't get the inside joke, so Arnold's name is pronounced as Dornob. That is the...
Even now, like when I play tennis, for example, that's when I meet the most strangers nowadays. Some people have a hard time like trying to hear or say my name.
So I kind of like take that easy way and say, okay, think Dornob and then now just cut that first part out. It's or not. It's exactly like that.
Yeah. For me, people often ask me to spell my name.
Your name is one of the easiest Russian names I've ever heard.
Yeah. But when people hear Illia, I don't know, maybe it's Florida. Maybe people don't travel much here.
People really struggle with the name for some reason. Maybe they've not heard it before, because they've not heard about Illia,
or the opening eye guy. So I was out of this circle and maybe they don't get much exposure to these names.
But sometimes they say, Elliot, and if it's like a coffee shop environment, I just like the applied gym, whatever they call me, because it takes a longer to spell my name than to say yes.
Right, right. Sometimes that does happen to me, like Arnold or something like that. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Exactly. Back to where we started this drift away from. So let's get back into the episode.
Yeah. So maybe let's work backwards from...
All right. Last week.
So for those of you who are just listening, Arnold just turned his back on everybody.
I'm working backwards.
All right.
Yeah. So when were you here for the offside? Was it last week, no, it was two weeks ago?
It was, yeah, it's almost two weeks ago, no, April 10th or so. Yeah.
So we really value being removed and working remotely, everybody in their own then working on their own time, and you'll be their own family, kids and all that in between.
But every now and then we do want to meet up. And I think last time Arnold and I met was in...
August.
When you came over here to Vancouver?
Yeah. It was a beautiful Vancouver. You took into Vancouver Island. It was absolutely gorgeous.
Great time. We also launched our close beta back then when I was there.
And you met with a lot of people here who were all interested in your life and everything.
So it was pretty interesting. Yeah.
It was fascinating. I think we have an episode on this where I should release into this because that will sure to bring nice memories.
That's one of the reasons why we're doing this podcast is so we can bring up the memories when we need them.
So yeah, but Jenny started in October. Jenny's our senior engineer. We never met her in person after we started the company.
We worked together for a long time.
Ilya, Jenny and I worked together between 2018 and 2020. I think all three of us worked together.
But I worked with Jenny before and after that too.
And I worked with you before, but not with Jenny at the same time.
So we work in person for quite a bit together. So it's not like we're strangers.
But I think stars align such that Jenny was here for a school break.
And I was here because I live here. And Arnab was like, yeah, why don't I jump on a plane and just come over and visit you both while we are in the same place, right?
Yeah. So we spent I think you came on Wednesday evening.
The flight was delayed as it so often happens nowadays.
And instead of reaching at 5.30 pm, I think I was supposed to reach there at 10.30 or so.
Yeah, at least the flight reached that night.
And which fabulous luxury airline was it?
That was American Airlines. I'm even forgetting the name now probably for a good reason.
Oh, it wasn't the experience?
No. Spirit was the one I took out from Miami to fly to New York.
That actually went super smooth before time. It was way better than the American Airlines experience.
And you had to pay almost like the price of the ticket fare for the bag.
The reason I chose spirit for this short flight from Miami to New York short by my standards because I'm flying from the west coast like this is a long flight usually, right?
So Miami to New York is I think about two and a half hours. It was anyway.
So that was $75, which is like the cheapest flight ticket you could probably find.
But when I was checking in, I found out that I'm not checking in bags. I'm not taking check bags.
I'm just bringing my backpack and one small bag with me cabin luggage.
But I had to pay for those. It was like $85, which is $10 more than the flight cost.
So I was still in good spirit because it was on time.
You deserve spirits on board?
Oh, no, that's not that kind of airline.
It's not a free spirit airline.
Maybe it's actually a free spirit because I think spirit airlines could use as a face of capitalism.
You pay for everything. Yes, kind of just purging, I think.
Anyway, so Thursday we worked together all three of us Friday.
It was just two of us and then Saturday we had fun and Sunday morning you flew to New York.
So yeah, let's just give some context. It was just three days for the thing that we had.
But we fixed one of the most perplexing issues that we have been having because we could not reproduce it.
Yeah, so we had a problem where the phone was heating up while listening.
So it first it was happening on iOS, which we noticed because we are using iOS.
But then one of our users reported on Android and actually then another user also piled up.
He's like, oh, it's heating up on my phone as well. And then genuinely just the two.
And battery is draining.
I think we fixed it on iOS. I think it was a very quick fix, right?
But on Android, we couldn't find a way to reproduce it properly.
Or like, couldn't isolate it, couldn't profile it. We just didn't know what was going on.
We were like, how do we launch this? But also like we don't know how to fix it.
I almost felt helpless in some ways. And I just let you guys figure it out.
When all three of us were here, well, I would say rather the two of you were here.
And you just started discussing it on the couch in the living room.
And then the thing we didn't have an hour or so, you had to have a lot of this.
And then you tested it and we sent it to a user and it was all solved.
So I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about the actual underlying issue in the terms that humans can understand.
Let's not go too deep, but basically a library that we are using to play the audio back using the OS's native mechanisms.
It had a feature enabled by default, which is generally a good feature.
Like I'm trying not to go too much into that weeds of what exactly it was and all because I think explaining HTTP tunneling and all that will.
I think I can take a stab at this. It had a feature that was attempting to make our app more secure in the way that it doesn't necessarily have to be more secure.
Yeah, it doesn't really apply to our like a podcast app.
Yeah, there are probably other use cases where it makes sense for us. It didn't.
But it was doing all this extra work and it was causing the phone to hit up and all that.
So I think we were sort of lucky that we actually don't need that feature and we just started off.
Yeah, and stop this HTTP proxying tunneling through whatever.
I think our battery usage went down. I'm trying to remember one third or we were just a mega scientific benchmark.
Yes. With timers and whatnot on multiple phones streaming downloaded. Yes.
Yeah, we were like basically starting something to play for like 20 minutes and then measuring on the timer and just seeing the system battery information.
How much battery was consumed? Well, I guess it was scientific in terms of like we were making measurements.
But also the other things could have been happening at the same time too.
But what we noticed is the battery usage went down by half and it was also at the same level as Spotify and YouTube music, which we used as benchmark.
And there was no difference to the temperature like if you touch the phone because before that you could definitely feel that it was warming up.
Even though we could never see the kind of draining or heat that our users were reporting, you could feel that it's getting lukewarm.
That's our relationship with Android as users right lukewarm.
But yes, we never thought of Android being super hot, but they made us feel this way because they were hot to the touch.
So we made them cool again.
It's pretty t-shirt rather I guess hats, right like those trump hats, but replace America with Android.
Yeah, just wanted to close that saying that I don't think this is something we would have figured out as quickly if we were not putting the same kind of energy all together at the same time.
Because we had known about this issue for like two, three weeks at this point, right?
I think it's more like two, three months at this point.
But I think the person who reported to us, he said, okay, I can't use the app anymore because it's just going insane hot and it's draining the battery.
They stopped using it a few weeks before this I think.
So we knew, okay, this is a pressing issue. We need to fix it.
But I think just something about being in person, talking about it all through running all these experiments with timers and all.
I think clicked the problem and the solution, yeah, was great.
Another thing we did was to go through our subscriptions tech.
So we are using revenue cut to implement subscriptions, subscriptions being monthly or annual subscriptions that people pay to use the app, which currently they don't in open beta.
But we are setting this up right now as we go.
The setup is pretty convoluted because you have to set up your plans and whatever subscriptions they even use different terminology Apple versus Google slightly different terminology, slightly different structure.
You have to set up those products, you have to set up things like free trials, the discounts, all of that stuff.
They're all very separate and unique quirks in the UI of both tools, I would say.
And I would say actually for this particular thing, I like Google's UI more than Apple's.
Once you understand it, it's not as complicated. First time it's just overwhelming.
Because you have to understand the terminology. If you create something with certain ID, you cannot reuse the same ID later.
So if you make a mistake, you have to use a different ID later on.
I don't know, it's just a complicated process. So which I was figuring out on my own.
And when you guys came here, basically, we set in the living room couch, projected using awesome airplay technology to a very big screen.
Basically, like in the meeting room, looking at the screen together, which was pretty nice.
Yeah, we walked through all of the Apple setup, Google setup, revenue cut setup.
I think we were able to immediately fix, basically our app had an interface with the revenue cut.
And things weren't coming out there, coming up. And then we modified the data on the revenue cut side or Apple side.
And then it started working. It's something that we could have done individually, but it was more fun to do in the meeting room.
I think before this, we had also set up some of this individually already, but the difference is, without this in person hangout and discussing and seeing all these things to you, it was clear where and how the pricing is set in Apple and in Google and how that's connected to revenue cut.
To me, it was clear how do we call revenue cut APIs and which APIs we call, why do we need to call what and what information we'll see and how do we present to the user.
But I was completely in the blind about where is all this actually configured and you and Jenny didn't know about what are we actually using to show and run the subscriptions and all.
I think this is one of the most critical parts of that in some ways, like it's the part that we'll ensure that we're able to charge for subscriptions.
And we talked a lot about various failure scenarios, fraud scenarios and all that.
This is nowhere in the realm of Amazon and Google scales, but at least in our scale, like we talked about a lot of various scenarios that this could go wrong.
That was pretty cool. I think that would have taken a lot of time remote if we were trying to do that.
I don't think we did much else that day. We ate together twice.
We had lunch at home and then we went for a couple of beers and food in the evening, just three of us.
We pretty much set up the web, oh, we didn't launch the website until the Monday after, but we had pretty much working at that point.
And I was working on setting up a blog post, which will launch soon in the next few weeks, I think.
So yeah, it was very nice, very productive time together, but also very unproductive time.
It's interesting. I had so much realization there because like when I was visiting you, it was just two of us.
I feel like there is less overhead when it's just two people. When you have three people, it just starts to feel more like actually working as a team.
I don't know, there's something different about it. When it's just one person, you just say like, oh, I don't feel like working now.
And you just retreat to your room or whatever. But also I was visiting you. So you had other things to do.
But I think the two of you came to my house. So it's not like everybody can just go off and do something else.
We sort of are supposed to be with you together and doing something, right?
And maybe also for me as a host, maybe I've also felt you know, some kind of obligation.
So I think that there is a difference in, for example, you or Jenny coming here and us working versus us coming to your place and working or us going to Jenny's place and working there because as the host, you have other things like your life is not on pause at that moment.
Like your kids are there, you're cooking and your whatever dishes, everything else is going on versus for me and for Jenny.
Jenny was there for one day. I was there for like three days. There was nothing else to do. So I was like waking up working and basically like sometimes read a book or something and then go to sleep.
So there was literally nothing else to do for me. So I really enjoyed it. For example, here, there's always things to do here outside of work.
And I think about the dynamic, I liked it that the three of us were together. So when we're discussing something, there's always new kinds of questions or topics we would go on attention on.
And I felt like this is really cool, but also we can't continue like that forever because we'll get nothing done.
And it's like in office, I mean, you can just hang out, it's still get paid right? I had very, I wouldn't say mixed feelings. I really loved the working in person, but I also realized that the ratio should be maybe 90 to 10, 90% you work on your own with occasional things.
And then 10% would be good. Like if we were living in the same city, for example, it would be nice to meet maybe four day every two weeks, which would be like one or 10 days, 9 to 10.
Right now, given we live in like different countries and like spread out across the globe, I feel like maybe twice a year at max is the practically what we could do. And that's good enough actually.
But ideally, maybe once a quarter or so, that would be nice.
And I just realized how much I forgot just how tired someone could be to be around other people all over the time.
And again, I don't mean it in a bad way. It's just a different kind of environment. Also, I haven't been working with people like that for four years at this point after COVID, right?
I traveled to the Google's office for a few days, a few times. And I remember being tired there, but actually I didn't attribute it to working with people. I attribute it to just like a travel and jet lag and dehydration.
And there's a bunch of things piled up together when you travel. But now I was at home. And I just realized actually sometimes I just want to retreat.
I automatically myself. Yeah. I think many of our listeners would probably feel this or at least know it themselves. Like if you're going to office two, three times a week and you're having meetings or like talking to people by the end of the day, when you're sitting in that bus or train to come back home, you're like wiped out.
Yeah. Right. And you could just go home and like do nothing for the next two hours. That is a real thing, right? Like the commute and you're thinking and you're talking to people the whole time, it takes a lot of energy out of you.
I was contrasting that with how our days go nowadays, where we have maybe one sort twice a week, some meetings and stuff like that, recordings, things like that. Well, not in the last month, but usually.
But other than that, we're like on our own working, talking through like pull requests or code reviews or slack once in a while. And I almost never seem to get tired at the end of the day. Like at night, I'm like, oh, I still want to do this.
And I'm also excited because it's my own personal work at this point. But I'm excited to like just keep going and going. Actually, I agree with you. I think I only get really tired from working when I do maybe like, I guess podcast work is probably the most tiresome thing.
Not recording because it's just a lot of this manual, minial tasks where you like create a page, you write notes, you create an episode, you like upload the file. All these things. I just feel like, can somebody else do this for me please?
I mean, the eventually we will pay someone to do it. But for now, I'm doing this and it doesn't even take this much time. Maybe takes two or three hours total. But it just drains the hell out of me. Maybe just because I don't like doing it.
I feel like podcast recording for some reason takes a lot of energy. I love it. And I'm completely like in the moment, like right now, I'm smiling and I'm enjoying it. But I know once we are done, I'll be like, oh my God, I feel like I can't focus on other things after that. At least for a few hours.
Yeah.
Right. So just to close this off before you took off from Florida, what amazing wildlife did you see in the Everglades National Park? Yeah, we went on a night alligator cruise on one of those airboats. I think there are some Hollywood movies where you go on those kind of boats.
So for people who don't know what an airboat is, it's basically, it's just like regular boat with a fan tattooed in the back. And I don't know about this particular boat, but I remember the first time I took this tour, they were talking actually about the boat itself.
That boat had two, if I'm not mistaken, 650 horsepower Rolls Royce fans, basically engines, right? Like propellers, it's crazy powerful. It goes really, really fast. It's very loud. But it doesn't have water in the water.
There's nothing moving under water so that it doesn't hurt the wildlife and also it doesn't get stuck in the grass. Florida, like that area that we were in South Florida, that's swampy kind of area. There isn't enough bottom in there. It's not deep enough to let a conventional boat with that kind of structure to let actually go there.
So as a assimilated Florigen, I'm going to take offense now because, yeah, people call the Everglades as swamp, but it is actually a river. It is, I think, like, largest square meters river or something.
Oh, yeah, yeah, no, I've heard about it. But you know what I mean? Like, there's grass all around. There isn't much depth to it.
Did you say it was like two feet or something? It's like half a meter deep. It's very shallow.
Yeah, I think he said one and a half meters or something.
They don't talk meters here. Okay, so maybe one and a half feet. Yeah, it was very shallow.
And actually, all the water that we drink, all the water that you drink when you came here came from that swamp.
I don't mean swamp in a bad way. I mean, that's the kind of ecological ecosystem.
I know, it's just like if you talk to a person who is from San Francisco, if you call their city Frisco, they get offended.
Oh, they do? I didn't know that. Good to know.
They could be, you know, they could be offended by you call it the National Park as swamp.
Not the kind of swamp with ogres, but with alligators. Super cool. Yeah.
And I think going there at night was even cooler because it was so silent.
It was like beautiful stars. I was pointing out to your son and your son.
You were a lot of the constellations and the stars and all that. So we were talking about that. He did. I had no idea. He knows that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, like the Great Bear and the Orion, the belt and all that. It was beautiful.
And silent, you could hear all the cicadas, frogs, ginormous frogs. Like you couldn't see the frogs,
but the sound they were making, you know, they're okay. This is like a bull frog big one.
The only thing you could not hear there is crocodiles because they're not crocodiles in every place.
Yeah, but alligators, they're also there so silent. Actually, they don't make any noises unless they are in the grass.
And the grass makes noise, not the alligator.
And some of the alligators were pretty curious about the boat, too.
So they would like come in to take a look about what's going on. Is there some food in there?
But thankfully nobody like launched into it. Yeah. Yeah.
So I flew out on Saturday and on Monday or Tuesday we launched our website.
That was pretty cool.
We talked in one of the previous episodes that back in October, I want to say, October November.
A person named Jack sent us a very thoughtful email. He's like, hey, I'm graduating from, I think it's Purdue University.
We did degree in design, HLG, I actually forgot what it was.
Yeah, human computer interfacing something in that area, yeah, HCI.
So he's like, yeah, can I do some work for you for free? And we were like, sure.
Come on board, do some work for us for free. So he did some design work for us for the app.
But then we also did a small contract with him to build our first version of the website.
He actually did the code and in the design, obviously, the website was more or less really a couple of weeks ago.
And we just needed a few final tweaks, kind of switch over the DNS and all that.
Yeah, and we launched it last week.
And we will also have Jack on the podcast to talk about his experience.
Actually, I'm curious, but his experience isn't in turn working with us.
What is the stack that we chose for the website?
So we chose next JS and we decided to put it on versatile.
Next JS is, if people have heard about React, then next JS is an evolution from there.
You could say you could do server components like React server components and all that.
And on versatile, it all just works point and click style.
You don't have to configure anything manually and all that.
So chose to go with the simplest thing possible.
Yeah, I really like you just push the commit and you get the message from versatile that it's deployed to preview within.
I think usually it happens within a minute seconds, maybe seconds.
Yeah, probably takes longer to view it to Slack.
You can check out the website, the preview in a different website authenticated.
It's pretty cool.
Yeah, then you like approve the PR and it's like live within seconds. I love it.
It was also very easy to port over the DNS records.
I really enjoyed the experience.
Changing the DNS records usually involves some disruption because there's some propagation time.
This time, I remember I had a split window with two tabs open.
I was on the left hand and Google domains on the right hand.
And I changed the IP address in the DNS record, A record in Google domains.
It's safe.
And then within a few seconds, versatile updated.
I'm like, wow.
And it said, okay, all the configuration is great.
Yeah, it was so quick. I really loved it.
And we are playing what? 20 bucks per month for it.
So yeah, I think it's fine.
Yeah, and we'll also do a blog.
We'll have a blog on the website.
There is a blog that we want to have a blog is SEO, such as engine marketing, because we want to drive traffic to our app, build some credibility.
And yeah, on the blog, we're going to be publishing some stuff about podcasting, some of our behind the scenes things we'll go onto the blog as well.
Maybe Arna will write up some engineering posts about things that we've done, some cool stuff.
So yeah, I mean, we'll be doing some keyword research and make it sure that actually it's interesting to people, people actually search for that.
But we need to have a home for that that's wholly owned by us, where we can tweak all of the HTML tags and meta tags and all that that search engines, i.e. Google value.
And yeah, we could get some more organic reach for meta cast.
Yeah, once we set it up, maybe we'll talk about it in a future episode about how it works and all that.
Yeah.
Today is the deadline to apply for YC. This is the third time we're applying.
So we've got to finish that off and send it off.
We are getting very efficient with applying it YC.
Whenever I hear efficient, I always think of fish in the sea.
Is that from Dr. Sous also?
I don't know.
I think I'll record it from you.
Or maybe like dev, pelkey.
Like when you say efficiency, I hear a fish in the sea.
Okay, a death pill can be dog man.
No, I think there is no P or P there.
So I'm not sure if it's a death pill.
No, no, it's efficient. It will be more appropriate for that pill.
All right, so maybe we're very lasting because we don't only take a minute or so.
We also filed our taxes, which I procrastinated quite a bit on.
We filed them over February, maybe early March.
So it was also way before the April 15 deadline.
But we could have done it even sooner.
We paid $1800 to a tax-prepared professional to file taxes for us, which basically has $500 of expenses or so, maybe 700.
Maybe 1000. And 1800 is just on the US side, right?
Just on the US side.
Technically, the thing that you use to own your stocks and can, it's not part of the company.
That was actually very simple.
Like $300 one form.
I mean, the two relevant four connect and founders like you, in terms of an average of the US-based company, so they would just do the US taxes, unless they own subsidiaries in other countries.
So just to be clear, what you own is not a subsidiary of Metacast.
It's an entity that owns part of Metacast.
So yeah, it was $1800 to file.
Have we talked about that in the podcast, by the way?
I think we did, yeah.
Yeah, because that was quite a lot of figuring out how to set that up.
Maybe we could do actually educated right up on that on our blog.
Because I remember you and I had a hard time trying to figure out what's the right way to set this up.
Oh my god, when we were researching this, there was so little information.
So actually, I think that we should write this up.
And like Canadian-American founders working together, it's pretty common.
Yeah. So also we looked at a startup called Fondo, which could do your taxes at our income level.
I think we made like $300 or so last year, mostly from book sales and maybe buy me a coffee.
Maybe a couple of t-shirts, yeah.
It was simple like that.
So Fondo would do it for $1450.
I think it was promotional price.
And it seemed fine, but I got confused by their interface.
And I think I sent an email and it... I think they responded, but not right away.
I'm like, hmm, first time I'm doing this.
I would rather work with the person.
So we paid $350 more and went to a professional with three decades of experience.
And so that was the 1800 is the federal US filing for the company?
It is a federal filing for the US corporate taxes.
And I also had to pay, well, we had to pay $100 to file a report in the state of Florida, because that's where we have operations, meaning that I'm based here.
Right. And nothing in Delaware directly.
Oh, we also had to pay the Delaware franchise tax, which was $450 or $350, I forgot the number.
So we paid about $2,500 in taxes and fees.
It's not even taxes. It's just fees.
And there is no taxes, right?
Like, we didn't actually pay any taxes.
Yeah, because we haven't made anything.
We spent more than we made, so there are no taxes, right?
And we didn't have any payroll this year.
So if we had payroll, we would also have to deal with all of that.
Medicaid, Medicare, all of that stuff, which we would have to pay for a payroll system, which I checked, cost, Gusto, it's like the most popular one.
Costs 40 bucks per month plus $9 per every employee.
So which for us would be $60.
We would be paying you differently because you're in Canada.
I don't know if it goes through payroll, but we would have to have some separate thing for that to eventually we should create a manual for how to run a company, especially once you start paying money and maybe dividends, yeah, we should do that.
All right, so we've already done longer than we wanted.
Let's finish this really quick with what are you listening and reading on up these days?
So I watched the Netflix 3-Body Problem series, loved it so much, then I got my wife and daughter to watch it as well and some friends, everybody's loving it so far.
And we finished it within like a couple of days.
So then I thought, okay, it's been a while since the third or four time I read these books, so why don't I go do that again?
So I'm about 60% of the way into the second book right now.
This is a three-body series, this is a three-book series.
So I'm about halfway there.
I watched Dune 2 and I was like, okay, I got to read those books again.
So started that, I'm about 60% into the first book, but that one actually for a change after a long time, I'm actually reading it on a Kindle.
I usually can't read much.
I'm more of an audio book-sky-no-person, so that one I'm reading.
And just today, I will say it's actually a podcast, but like you said, on LinkedIn, it feels more like an audio book.
The acquired podcast, Microsoft episode came out today.
It's like four and a half hours, so I'm excited about that too.
I just started it.
Was Metacast able to transcribe it?
Yes. Nice. And beautifully, so great, yeah.
So Metacast.app is where you can download the app.
You can go to search, find the acquired podcast.
And Microsoft episode will be at the top, just hit play and enjoy.
And yeah, you can use the transcript.
You don't want to find anything, because it's like a book, you just want to listen to it.
But if you find something interesting, you can make highlights and share parts of that episode.
Yeah, so just like you, I've been watching some sci-fi.
My son and I have been watching Star Wars.
After he read the three-body problem, he got really into sci-fi a lot more.
We watched six movies of Star Wars.
We were watching them in order they were released.
And yesterday we watched half of Rogue One.
And we are going to finish it today.
Oh, Rogue One is my favorite, I think, Star Wars movie.
I mean plot-wise, I prefer the original ones.
And also the episode three, I think, where Anakin becomes Darth Vader.
That's probably my favorite episode plot-wise, but cinematic-wise.
The suspense-wise, Rogue One is great.
Rogue One is so integral to the whole Star Wars story.
But it's also completely separate, a standalone story of its own.
The casting is amazing, I think, the acting.
And everything is amazing, I loved it.
Yeah, because there is the weird lack of transition between episode three and episode four, where did they get the Death Star plans?
So we've been bingeing on that.
And unlike you, well, I actually like you, I've always been an audiobook person, but more recently, somehow, I just don't find listening to audiobooks appealing, because what I realize, I miss a lot of detail when I listen.
So I think for the last year or so, I haven't listened to any audiobooks, only read books.
I like listening to podcasts, I like the live conversation.
But the reading I prefer, especially books like Dune, where there is a lot of weird words in terminology, and a lot of things you don't understand there.
I prefer the slow mode of reading.
Yeah, you mean like the Gom Jabber and the Quizzats,
Haderak, and me? Yes. For me, it's easier to make that connection visually when I see Gom Jabber and Page 30 and Page 450.
My visual memory, I think, is better than my audio memory.
And also, as a side note, of course, I picked up the audiobook for Dune first, but I didn't like it at all.
You know, it's like a theatrical production, so it's like multiple characters, and they're very dramatized kind of reading.
And I didn't like it at all, so I'm enjoying the book much more.
I tried Dune in the regular non-traumatization version.
For me, it was just overwhelming in terms of details.
I can't just listen to it while driving, or while doing something in the house.
This kind of books, you know, in my opinion for me personally, I have to have the intent to really like immerse myself in it.
So, but I thought it was just sci-fi.
I just started reading this book called Revolutionary Road.
Have you heard of it? Or maybe you watched the movie?
I have heard of it, yeah.
So, there was a movie from maybe early 2000s, with another DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, again.
There's like a couple in mid-50s, living in the Connecticut, Suburbia.
And it's like a weird family story kind of thing, a relationship story.
I never really read this kind of books, but because I watched the movie many years ago and I liked it, and I came across the book somebody mentioned it, and I'm like, okay, maybe I should read it.
It's a page journal, I just can't stop it.
But then I also got the audiobook, and I tried to listen to it, so I could switch back and forth.
And what I realized, even this kind of fairly simple plot, like no complications in terms of theorems and all that, I still feel like there's just so much psychology and stuff going on in a relationship that I do tend to miss the detail.
So, I listened about half a chapter, half the third chapter, when I switched.
And I'm like, no, it's just not working.
So, I got the audiobook back, and yeah, I'm just reading the paperbook now.
That's interesting, because it's the opposite way for me.
I feel like my brain grasps a lot more when I'm listening.
And when I'm reading, even if I'm fully focused, I read very fast, I think maybe that's why.
Whereas in audio, I always listen to it at 1.x, 1.0.
Whereas when I'm reading, I skip over a lot of things if I find it boring, I'll like, quickly skip over things like that.
So, I see.
So, the last thing I can conclude with like recommendations, is a re-cruelbin, who is a legendary music producer.
He has a podcast called Tetra Grammaton.
Well, good luck, thanks for spelling it.
You could just search for re-cruelbin.
So, he has some very interesting R.T. people on his show.
But also, actually not just R.T.
So, I listened to a few episodes, one with Edward Norton, an actor.
The other one that I'm finishing now is John Kabadzin, who is a meditation teacher.
He started like a meditation practice in late 70s, I think.
So, he was one of the first who do it actually in the States.
He is about 18 now.
So, his book, wherever you go, there you are, is the book from where I learned that such a thing as meditation even exists as somebody recommended to me 10 years ago.
It's a very interesting, because re-cruelbin, he himself, is a very philosophical-ish thinker.
He's very much spiritual.
So, I really love these discussions.
Yeah, so, I'm enjoying those interviews now, which are also very long.
Great.
We'll see you soon.
Now that our travels are done, actually, oh, one of the other things since we haven't recorded.
I was out for 10 days in Mexico.
You were sick before that.
Then I came to Florida, so that's why the whole gap.
Now, I think we'll start to get into the regular rhythm of every couple of weeks, the Metacast behind the scenes podcast.
Yes, every other week on Wednesdays at 3.03 a.m. Eastern.
All right.
Ciao. See you next time.
Bye.