Welcome to Are you quizzing Me? I am Vineet Nair with my Co host Aditya Kashyap. This is a quizzing trivia podcast show. Join us as we dive deep into history, science, pop culture and so much more. Let's get quizzing. Welcome back to Are You Quizzing Me? The best podcast by two Indians who live in either Mumbai or Goa. That's very specific. I hope there is no other podcast which does exactly what we do and the hosts live in Mumbai and Goa. I Are you saying Modiji doesn't
live in Mumbai or Guwahati? Is that what you're saying? Does he do a podcast with one other person, though? Isn't his a solo affair? Oh, that's true. That's true, Much like many of his press conferences. But well, you know. I would not make such politically charged statements. And the king of politically charged statements is today. Our guest Hari Krishna is once again back with us because Vineet is taking a day off and HK kindly decided to step into his big big shoes.
So we have a special episode Are You quizzing me? Episode #59. And we are joined by Hari Krishna. Thank you once again HK for joining us. Please avoid any political statements which might get us cancelled. So the list of things to avoid are avoid offending any film directors for Arby's career sake. Avoid offending any political character for both our lives Sake I guess, at this point. So well, exactly. Exactly. Is there anything you'd like me to avoid HK? No, I think I would love.
We need to avoid falling sick so that I don't have to come in at some short notice. Please take care of the need of your health properly. That's all. I love it when an episode starts with the guest saying that I would like to not come. On this episode ever. Again, that always bodes well. We do wish we need the best of health and he should be around very soon again.
But today since it was a special episode anyways, we decided to do something special for this special episode and that was try out something we have not tried before. Audio questions Oh that is going to be exciting and hopefully that will work. Otherwise we will have to re record this HK and we will give you another short notice. In that case, since we are doing a special episode, I'm going to do away with the usual stuff that Vineet does, the audience
question and all of that. That'll come back once Maneed does so. What about the answer to the question you had asked at the end of last episode? I honestly forgot, no. Question it was, so I'm going to skip it for today and I'm going to answer it once Vineet comes back. Just Vineet privileges, guys. Just Vineet privileges. I don't get to hear RT crack those wonderful jokes. Only Vineet does. You do not want to see how the sausage is made.
HK, I'm sparing you as one of our regular listeners, I can't afford to lose you, so I will skip ahead to the actual questions. All right, very exciting. And the audio clips will be short. Hopefully we will not get a copyright strike. And let's start with the my first audio question, Where is this particular cheer from? So I'm playing what is basically a cheer or a call from a college, and I'm going to stop right before they mention the college's name.
Try to figure out if you know which college this chair is from. So in the audio clip I could hear Beaver and I could hear 3.1415, something like that. Was that right? Yes, that should ideally help you get to the answer, but because it is perhaps not the clearest on the audio, I'm just going to say the main parts again. So it starts with one person saying I'm a Beaver and the rest of the group responds with a you're a Beaver and there are a couple of lines.
And then it goes into E to the UDUDXE to the XDX cosine secant tangent sine 3.14159 integral radical MUDV slipstick slider rule. And that's where they mention the name of the college. Oh, that's cool. OK, OK. Do you know what college this is? I'm guessing the person they're. Referring to is Euler or no? I don't know if there's any specific connection to Euler in this college. It's just Beaver and mathematics basically. OK, MIT is my first guess that I can think of.
Perfect. It is the MIT Beaver. Beaver is the mascot for MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Do you want to tell me how did you crack it so? Quickly, the first school that came to Madrid thought of like taking math and engineering in the US was MIT. But also why Beaver is really interesting, like a story behind, like how they just Beavers. It is the official mascot because Beaver is considered the nature's engineer. That makes sense. That's what I say.
It was adopted on January 17, 1914 by a group of MIT alumni. The president of the college accepted it, and the Beaver has since been named Tim as MIT. Spelled backwards, Tim the Beaver is the mascot for MIT, and that's the lovely cheer. I love it because I heard it randomly and what caught my attention was just how nerdy it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They do go 3.14159 with respect for putting that in a song I know. And I'm making it work and it rhymed with trigonometry stuff,
agent and sign 3.1. And people say π is irrational. It is not. Well, both π and art is irrational. There is nothing rational about what we do here. Clearly. I loved it. Very cool. Cheer. All right, HK, that was my first audio question. Let's hear yours. Thank you for that delightful audio question to start us off. So my next four questions are all courtesy this quiz league they're taking part in. It's called B612 league and it's like again, a wonderful sort of online quiz league.
And they end up bringing in a bunch of very delightful questions that are accessible even if you're not American, of hardcore quiz. And all of these four questions have a sort of tech theme to them in a sense. So these are all again courtesy the YouTube Anshuman Sharma and is essentially provided a recipe, or if you want to be more technical, an algorithm to create songs by any of these artists, and no disrespect intended, all in good fun.
So the first recipe slash algorithm is basically step one. Choose a topic like Heartbreak or Love or get inspired by a weekend song. Step 2. Write Punjabi lyrics that are kind of translated from a weekend song. Use Chad GBT Step three. Make retro beats that sound like you guessed it, a weekend sound. Step 46 like you just woke up with a ton of water. Tune of course. And Step 5. Don't forget to make an aesthetic music video.
Now you'll hear what something like this that has been created will sound like and you have to tell me which artist is being referenced right now. Now put it all together and that's it. You're done. So since I know you're a great quizzer, I'm not going to give you more than two guesses. There probably are a bunch of artists that come to mind, but there should be one who comes to mind more than any other. OK, interesting. I think this is AP Dillo. It is AP Dillo well.
Done. Not an original AP Dillo song. It has been exactly created by the algorithm that the YouTube does. It's all like. Oh, that is such a lovely hack to creating AP Dillo songs. Do you credit AP Dillo? He does do something very unique and very interesting and catchy. But you were like, it did sound like a couple of other Punjabi singers, rappers that I've heard of, but AP Dillo, a trendsetter. Here. Love that, OK? That was a fun question. Awesome. OK, so moving to my next
question. I'm going to play a piece of music, but let me give you some background before I do. This is a 1910 song by the vaudeville group The Leyton Brothers. The lyrics were by Ren Shields and became one of the first hit recordings in the United States through its 1911 recording by Arthur Collins. These names might not be familiar to most people. Obviously it is from the turn of the previous century.
It was a phenomenon back then. However, it led to something which is pretty much considered a pop culture landmark. An icon that continues to exist till date and in fact has been relevant very recently as well, has been in the news recently as well. So I'm going to play the music. Tell me even if you don't recognize what the music is, tell me what pop culture icon do we still remember it through? Here Goes? Down the Mississippi, steam the whip or wheel. Commanded by the pilot.
Mr. Steamboat Bill the owner gave him orders on the strict duty to try to beat the record of the Robert. He leaves. Just heat up your engine. Let the old smoke grow. Burn up all the cargo if you run out of coal. If we don't beat that record Billy Pole the mate, then we'll mail him a pair of Peter to the Golden game. I know this is the ship horns and also saying Steamboat will another go is I think is this like in Steamboat Willy the Mickey Mouse?
Is this kind of like a link to Mickey Mouse? And I mean the reason it's also the news now is because that particular clip has finally come into the public domain after what, 75 years or something or after like a numerous extensions. Oh yes, you have cracked that beautifully. I was wondering if I should remove the part which had the Steamboat Building, but I imagine you would have still cracked it.
It is Steamboat Willy, the iconic portrayal of the very original Mickey Mouse that was under trademark till earlier this year. I think in January of this year it went into public domain. And so anybody out there who wants to use Mickey Mouse, the original Steamboat really version, can today use it for their own creative purposes and whatever they want to do with it.
It is no longer a registered trademark with the Walt Disney Company and that's kind of cool, but let me give you a little bit more background. So Steamboat Bill like I mentioned, 1910 Song became one of the first hit recordings in the United States in 1911 by its recording through Arthur Collins. The song is an extended reference to a famed 1870 raced on the Mississippi River between 2 steamboats, and one of the steamboats was called Robert E Lee and the other one was Natchez.
Robert E Lee, the Confederate General. The song mentions his name as well. So the other cultural impact that this song left was Steamboat Bill Junior, which is a 1928 silent comedy film starring Buster Keaton. It is one of Buster Keaton's more famous films. For those of you who might not know who Buster Keaton is, he was an American actor, comedian and director. He is best known for his silent film work and physical comedy was basically stick.
So yeah, this one song left a lasting cultural impact. The song was very famous on steamboats also for the longest time. This is the song that Mickey is humming in that trademark that Disney had been using for a couple of years now of him while he's tearing this team boat. All right. Well, Cracked HK, let's move on to your next audio question. From music that has a lasting cultural impact to I don't know how much cultural impact this music is going to have No shade again.
But here's the algorithm for music by. Which artists? Step one, decide how much you want to party. A lot or a lot? Lot. Write about the girl you want to party with. Play 2 chords, a basic dipchick Dipchick beat and brass inspired by DJ Snake. And the last step, Sing like you want to entry into a club, but you're also scared of your parents. And put it all together and that's it. You're done. Oh baby. Meri yatiya party. Major tiya too much party.
Party, party, party party Party Party Party, party. OK, this is, I believe, by YHS Yo-yo Honey Singh. No, it's not. Yo-yo Honey Singh. OK. Then it has to be Badshah. It is Badshah. Bonus points if you can tell me his original name before he took on the title. Of Badshah. Oh wow, I have no clue.
I have no clue. I thought his parents saw him and he looked like he's going to become a rapper one day, so they just called him Bacha. That's what the history books will say later, but I think the real fact is that his actual name is Aditya Pratik Singh Sisodia, so you can see why he had to change his. Name to Bacha. Hey, I'm sorry, what is this shade being thrown at the. I think that's a lovely name, but I get it.
I don't think you can make it in the rap industry with the name Aditya. I don't think anybody's going to take you seriously. MC Aditya. No, doesn't work. Yeah. All right. Next one is a clip that I'm going to play. And this is from an interview with Jimmy Fallon on his Tonight Show. The guest is a music producer, A musician himself, and he's talking about a very famous song and an inspiration that he found
which was used in the song. So when you're on a street corner in Australia, you press the button and then when it when the walk sign turns on, you hear this like rhythmic sound that I that I love. And so we recorded it and it sounds like this. It's got like it's it's got like a like a groove perfect. That's bizarre. All right. So you heard that piece of music and the person singing over it is Jimmy Fallon, so you can
ignore that. The music director and the musician I mentioned, his name is Phineas. He collaborated with a very famous singer-songwriter and used this sound as the high hats in that very famous song. Can you tell me which song this is? Did he collaborate the band or one person? With one person, I'll give you a little bit more context to the
song itself. Released in March 2019, it topped the US Billboard Hot 100 and multiple other international charts in the US. It ended the record-breaking 19 week run of Old Town Road and that's when the song came around. It received several other awards, including Record and Song of the Year at the Grammy Awards as well. So it won a Grammy too. OK, yeah, it sounds like, but that's probably Jimmy Fallon.
I'm maybe focusing too much on Jimmy Fallon then, because he he sounds like he's singing Uptown Funk. Oh, no, I would. Advise against listening to the Jimmy Fallon part of it. Just focus on the sound itself. The reason I chose this question is because when I saw this interview, and I think I saw only a clip of it, I was struck by how obvious it is. Once you think about it, and once you go back and listen to the song itself, that that is what the sound is. Those are the best slash worst
questions. But it is one of those questions that you would probably remember, Yes, also for you because I also feel like we encountered this in Singapore. So this is obviously an Australian thing. It happens at traffic stops and traffic signals in Australia when pedestrians are trying to cross the road in Australia. But I think this was there in some parts of Singapore as well.
So at least with me, it seemed to spark some sense of, oh, I've I've seen this or heard this before, so I assumed you might have as well, having lived in Singapore. So tell me if it is ringing any bells. Oh my God, I presume it's a pop sound. Yes, electropop, dance pop, trap pop. But basically. 2019 And it dethroned Old Town Rd.
Because I yeah, the the I feel like it's probably a trap to just think of the familiarity because it's going to be like one of the special that's only obvious in hindsight. So I'm just going to try to see if I can go ahead the other way. I don't know if this helps, but it was the Record of the Year and Song of the Year at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards. Was not there Dua Lipa solo artist? Again, this is not Taylor Swift it. Isn't Taylor Swift? It's.
Completely drawing a blank. I know how it feels. Let me see if I can give you another hint. OK, so I'm just going to tell you a little bit of a summary as to what the song speaks about. Let me see if that gets you to the answer. In the lyrics, the singer taunts a lover for being a terrible person. As the song progresses, she suggests that she's tougher than him, singing in a nonchalant, self effacing murmur.
According to reviewers, the song also discusses themes such as misandry, gloating, sarcasm, and naughtiness. During the track's half spoken chorus, the singer elaborates on a relationship with fellow men and women, rejecting their expectations of her. And very iconically, this song is also divided into two halves. The 1st is at a faster 135 beats per minute and the latter is slow at 60 beats per minute. Tell me if you're able to crack where this song is from.
The other song I. Think of is, but I know there's one other stuff is this song, like, you know that ABCDENJ is that. No, no. Maybe the wrong time. Oh Lord. OK. One last hint. HK I'm going to tell you who the artist is. Tell me what the song is. OK, the artist is. Billie. Eilish. OK, no, I won't be able to guess. I don't listen to Billy. I list that much at all, so I
have zero idea. I'm pretty sure you have heard of this song, if not actually heard the song, but yeah, it might not be your most familiar song. I heard it quite a bit because it became a pretty popular dance track in 2019 and I encountered it a fair bit in my dance journey back then. So I'm going to tell you what the song is. It is bad guy. Never heard of it. Yeah, Here's the audio clip from the interview where it continues. That's wait, that happens in Australia.
That's that's just every time you cross the street in Australia. You hear that? Wow. All right, so then you use that for the song Bad Guy. Yeah. The thing people think are high hats and Bad guy is actually just that. Duh. Here's the. Here's the. That is insane. That is insane. Wonderful. OK, back to me. Back to question three or four in the set I have again. Going back to YouTube, Anshuman Sharma. Here's the recipe for a song by which artist?
Step one, write a romantic song with an Urdu word like Arzoo or Tanhai or ashiqui? Step 2. Create a melody inspired by sad Indian classical music. Step three, add contemporary dipchik beats and very fast tabla. You put it all together and you get this artist. I have a feeling where they can guess this even without hearing the music. I presume you might be able to honestly with it. I'm trying to figure out who could it be.
The Dupchik beats threw me off because if not for that I could have taken some guesses, but the beats part threw me. OK, here. Put it all together and that's it. You're done. Oh man, is this Himesh Reshammiya that we are listening to? The man, the myth, The legend himself. Yes indeed. The algorithmified Himesh Reshammiya no. No, no, you don't know who is the algorithm and who is the man. OK, like please don't say.
Algorithm indeed, indeed. No, I was thinking somebody a lot more recent, but Himesh is timeless. Himesh has been around for as long as I can remember now, and I remember being a big fan of Himesh when his music first came out. It was just one of those catchy tunes. And you know, you can make fun of these people, you can parody them. But there's just something so iconic about just singing when the nasal tone and drawing that little thing that it it just
sticks with you. You can't help but remember the songs. I I feel it. Yeah, definitely. OK. So my last question is, I think the one that is probably going to get a copyright strike, but I'm going to risk it. Here's the audio clip from a famous song. I'm going to give you a little more context after your further song. Now that you've heard that piece of music, I'm assuming you don't already know who the artist is or what the name of the song is. I can guess.
My guess is it's Justin Timberlake, but that's what sounds very similar to, but I don't know that the answer. Oh, perfect. Yes, it is a Justin Timberlake song. It is a 2003 song. OK, what? Iconic ad campaign was this song associated to, and the name of the song would basically give you what ad campaign it was. Did it sound familiar to any ad Jingle that you might have heard? When? Was the ad campaign, was it same time as A? Song. Or was it much later? Around the same time, Pretty
much the same time. OK. OK, let me give you a little bit more context. So this song was written as a Jingle for this famous company based on a pre-existing German campaign. Timberlake was paid $6 million to sing the Jingle. Despite this, he has since regretted the deal.
It has been credited as being written by multiple artists including Pharrell Williams, and was produced by The Neptunes, which is an American songwriting and production duo composed of Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo. It was released as a single on November 20th, 2003. Became a charted in a few European countries, reaching the top 20 in Greece, Ireland and the Netherlands. But the ad campaign is pretty much global, and the company isn't European.
But the inspiration for the ad is from somewhere in Germany. Yeah. So it's a company, a global company. They paid just to be like a bomb to make this ad campaign. See the thing with ad chickens, It's very annoying. They're memorable, but like they're not memorable enough that sometimes you don't remember the company. There is no way that you don't remember this ad campaign, the tune, and the company. Damn. OK and 2003.
So for context, I was like 10 years old when this came out, OK Was it a product targeted at me at 10 year old or no? Yes, this product was targeted at you. Let me also tell you what the name of the German ad campaign was. OK, ich Lib S ich liebe S OK, my German obviously sucks. Just gonna spell it out ICHLIEBES. OK, so. It looks like or it loves like something like that I presume. I love. I love you. I guess, OK. I'm Is it the McDonald's? I'm Is it that one? Is that it?
I'm loving it. Actually, I love it. Would have been a better translation. I'm loving it. Ad campaign was first conceived in Germany under the McDonald's Germany branch, and they loved the Jingle so much they wanted to create an English version of it. They hired Justin Timberlake to sing it and I'm loving it as an actual Justin Timberlake single from 2003. It is not one of his best works. I have heard the song multiple Times Now. At this point it is annoying at. Best but.
The song itself, will created the iconic. I'm loving it at campaign, so you got that perfectly. Moving on to very cultured question and this, I'm going to ask you to guess this without the audio. I'm fairly certain you can guess this without the audio, so I'm going to try to challenge Abby a little bit. So this is again another algorithm slash recipe for to regain the song by which artist. So step one, pick a relatable topic like heartbreak or proposals.
Step 2 Pick a fancy Urdu word like Zulfi or rahe or palke. Step three, play simple twin turn chords. Pretend you're about to cry and sing. Step four, play any acoustic instrument for the fields with acoustic drums too. No bass. OK, what is the music you said? What is the chord that you mentioned? Simple Tun Tun chords. Pretend you're about to cry and say yeah, Tun Tun, That's what it says. OK, because I haven't heard the music yet, I'm just going to try to guess what this could be.
Is it by any chance Pratik Kuhad? Just the description. Is enough but. Please play the music for everyone's benefit. Put it all together and that's it. You're done. And this is not his original song, by the way. This is just a random song created using this algorithm, so it makes it, I think, doubly funny to to think that you could place it in one of his works as well. But. It is very apparent and it is. I'm surprised it's not an original because it sounds actually all of the songs that
we have played so far. This is a genius. Who is the person again? Anshuman Sharma. YouTube, Anshuman Sharma. OK, well, that is I guess the part of our pop culture recommendation of the day. Go check out Anshuman Sharma's YouTube video channel. I guess this is the end of the audio questions and that brings us to the end of the episode as well. So thank you HK. That was a really fun episode. I am keeping my fingers crossed that we do not get a copyright
strike. If Anshuman is upset that we use his music, let us know. Anshuman, reach out to us. We'll invite you as a guest on this podcast and you can hopefully get some publicity out of it. But thank you so much SK for stepping in at the very last minute and we are hoping Vineet recovers quickly. Regardless, you should keep going back for such fun episodes. Is there any pop culture recommendation you'd like to share today? I'll just open it up to you since you are here as a guest.
Tell us any movie, music, a book you read, a lot I know, so share that. Or or honestly, YouTube videos, Instagram, anything. Well, I recently watched this movie. I don't know whether it's still screening in theaters, but if you can, please do check it out. It's called Anatomy for Fall. I don't know whether it's been mentioned already on the show, but wonderful, wonderful movie. It really leaves you thinking a lot once you're done.
Also in terms of like how to some degree kind of relatable some of the core struggles in the movie are. And also kind of it's a very, very, very introspective look at like what relationships are about and how it appears to the outside world as well. Beautifully acted, beautifully directed, kind of very simple setup in the sense, but
wonderful movie. Yeah, I'd mentioned this, I believe in one of the previous episodes, but yeah, a double recommendation is all you need to make sure that you go check it out. Any other book you order, Anything you're reading right now that you think is worth
sharing with everyone? I'm not fully through this book yet, but if you've heard me come on this podcast or before, I'm not going to mention again, but this is wonderful podcast that I'm a big fan of. I know Aditya is a big fan of as well called 99% Invisible. So Roman Mars, who's the showrunner of 19% visible, he's doing a book read through of this book called The Power Broker. It's a massive book. It's like probably a little intimidating in terms of it's like around 1500 pages and
whatnot. Feels like it's you're reading an epic and the story, right? And it's a story of this one man called Robert Moses who was responsible for shaping how New York appears. And I think it's a wonderful book. Like, I've only been to New York once. I don't think I even saw anything that Robert Moses had particularly done. But I think it's a wonderful book to look at how New York in the 50s, sixties was. And you can draw a lot of parallels to how cities in India are right now.
And you also kind of are left with the question of do we want or need a Robert Moses like character. There's a lot of recent surveys that show that Indians are amongst the ones who are most likely to believe that like an authoritarian government is going to help them get better or do better and whatnot. That book kind of challenges a little bit of what are the costs of having a person like that?
Because Robert Versus was many things, but he was also a very strong individual and he kind of bulldoze through everyone around him to get his vision on the board. And the vision that is that still persists now many years later. And this book is kind of a journey of that. Yeah, I guess we all need to realize that the better dictator was inside of us all along. It was the friendship we made along the way.
That was the British. No, all all opinions mentioned on this podcast are entirely of the guest. We do not take any responsibility for whatever I've said. I actually, I'm glad you gave that recommendation because I've also not read the book, but I have been listening to the episodes and I think they have done their second episode or the first official episode and they did a sort of a prologue kind of thing with Conan O'Brien of all people, who is also a big fan of Power Broker.
The first episode where they discussed chapter one also featured Robert Caro. Yeah. The author, yeah. OK, great. I would let you go, except I also know that you are aficionado of music clearly, as the episode also suggests. So I'm going to ask you if you have any music recommendations. Any artists that you think we should listen to, You follow a bunch of Indian classical musicians, so any artists that we should all listen to. I think they've been.
In the news a little recently. Also, I think they want the Grammy kind of really recently, but if you haven't heard, you should check out Shakti. Basically the greats of many different kind of musical talents. Zakir Hussain, you have Shankar Mahadevan. You have John McLaughlin, who's a very famous kind of jazz guitarist. And you have Selva Ganesh, I think, who's the son of Vikram, another famous Katham player. And think Ganesh of Ganesh Kumaresh, if I'm not mistaken,
who are famous violist. It's kind of Indian power group. They have a great performance on NPR Tiny Disk, which was good, which I really enjoyed. Apart from that, I've been in that sort of space of like, you know, listening to jazz and whatnot. And so Snarky Puppy was another amazing band that I recently started hearing. American jazz rock band, you can call them. OK, lovely. It is a bit embarrassing that NPR and Grammy was how I found out about this Indian
collective. Because given the names and the stature of all of those musicians, I should have encountered it before. But I'm glad I found them now. I also heard it recently. The NPR episode especially, was really great. Tiny Desk, Right. That is a Tiny Desk. Yeah. A. Tiny Desk, yes. Check it out on YouTube. The only recommendation I have is a movie which I watched last night and I have been thinking about it continuously since then. It is Lapata Ladies, Kiran Rao's film.
It has come out very recently, so do check it out. It is one of the best films I have seen in a long, long time. So go check out Lapatha Ladies and all of the recommendations that HK gave. And that brings us to the end of the episode. Thank you so much for sticking around. We'll see you next week. Thanks, HK.