Do they make babies? They don't make babies. They're more like friends. But like, if you meet an alien, how would you communicate? You communicate by uh uh uh uh uh uh uh. Hello and welcome to the Metacast Podcast episode 7 to the power of 2 or 49. And that's going to be a Dorky Nordy episode where we we being me, Elias Baislef, your host and my co-host. What's your name? Hello, Arnaf here. You found a way to plug it in finally.
I forgot to introduce ourselves. I'm going to be back. There is no way to re-record, right? So we are just doing it raw. Anyway, so today's topics are nothing to do with our business. We are going to conclude 2023 with talking about our most favorite books and podcasts and also a little bit about our favorite products of the year.
Yeah, we just wanted to make it light for ourselves but also kind of it's interesting to just draw a line and look back, you know, your goodreads, reading challenge and all this stuff and see what's been really exciting in the year. Because when I was looking back at like what books have been really good this year. I'm like, oh wow, these books, I even forgot I read them. So it was really nice to kind of reflect back. Right. And this episode is coming out on January 3rd, right?
I think so. Okay, so happy New Year! Yay! Merry Christmas if you celebrate. Yeah. All right, hope everybody had like a wonderful holiday season. Happy New Year. We also took a little bit of break or actually as we record we are going to take a little bit of break, but as you're listening we took a little bit of break already and we're back. Yeah, back to the future. So we are recording this on December 18th for the record. So we are about to take on our breaks.
So you are going to that piece of land that used to be floating in the middle of nowhere until it collided in the Eurasia. Yeah, millions of years ago, yes. Tenze millions of years ago, yeah. No more than that. We're being showing our ignorance in Geology now, but probably hundreds of millions at least.
Yeah. I did only heard about this like last week when I was looking at the child book about dinosaurs that showed panje and then as part of that thing it showed that India used to be like attached to I think Antarctica or Australia. Australia, yeah. Yeah. And then it kind of for a while, when jay was drifting apart and India was drifting on its own in the middle of nowhere together with Madagascar until it finally collided into Eurasia and I think you said hi Himalayan mountains were
formed at that time because of that. Yeah, and that's why they're still growing. And we were also saying like the same kind of thing in BC and Alberta. This area used to be in the middle of equatorial warm shallow ocean kind of thing. So and lots of life, the Cambian explosion of life was big part of that. And now you can see those fossils on top of the mountains in Banffits. Amazing, yeah. That's what I was telling you. You should go sometime. Kids would love it.
That's very cool. All right. So let's get started. Arna, let's start with our top three books for the year. What was your number three? Number three ministry of the future. I think we've talked about it a little bit in one of the earlier episodes but it's especially the climate right now. Climate as in the social climate around climate worsening and all that. So this book is amazing
that it's kind of like a snippet into our world 10 years 20 years 30 years in the future. And it's fiction but the beginning of every chapter it's like a page and a half of what's happening right now. And why does the author think that what he's kind of describing in that chapter is going to happen based on the current data and like everything that we have. So it's a pretty awesome book. Cool. Yeah. And you can go back and listen a few of our episodes where you talked about it.
I kind of find it hard to pick up my number three because I cheated on this part of the agenda a little bit because I actually grouped my favorites into three topics. And there are multiple books in each of those topics. First one I started with the meta point because I used to read like 50 books a year and then I would just go all down those books. I don't know if there was a good reason for this but we'll also get to that a bit later too when we talk about Duolingo. This year
I think I only read about 20 books or so but I was much more discreet in my consumption. I only read the books that I really wanted to read and I actually abandoned the books that I didn't feel like continuing. So everything that I read this year I really enjoyed because I didn't finish books for the sake of finishing. So I would say number three I'll start with fiction because fiction is kind of hard to categorize. So this year I finished the three-body problem trilogy. I read the three-body
problem a few years ago but then I read the second and third books this year. What is it? That's end and that's end is number three and a dark forest is number two. Yeah. So the reason why I really like those books and I don't want to give any spoilers is just how mind-bending they are. Did you really think we are alone in the universe? The author is very convincing. I think I even had a bit of nightmares after the last one. Yeah. The last one is... Well the name is giving it a bit
away. That's end. But yeah like seeing things that we love, destroy it and all that, I'm giving a bit of spoilers here and now. But not destroyed like in a Hollywood way, not like your bridges and highways falling apart. It's in a completely different way. Yes. Destroyed in a scientifically mind-bending way. I also hooked my son on the three-body trilogy. He read it in probably two weeks the whole series and he loved it. He actually even requested the fourth one from the library.
I know you read it. He said it was fan fiction. It's not as good. I don't have an intention to read it but he's like yeah I just want to check it out. So yeah we'll see. That's one of the books I didn't finish. But yeah three-body is like exceptional. I think I read it a couple of years back maybe the first time then I reread it once and this year I went through it again. Yeah it's amazing. Yeah. So what's your number two? Number two would be going with the science fiction team, Project
Hail Mary. This is from Andy Weir from the Martian. He had a couple more books after that. So the Martian and then there was like Artemis. Artemis I didn't enjoy it quite as much but oh my god Project Hail Mary is amazing and this is exactly the kind of science fiction that I love. What's the till they are? What is it about? There's a group of people who have to go out on a mission. I'll try not to give you spoilers about why they have to go and all but they go and then he finds out
that he's kind of alone at some point. The other two people have passed away for whatever reason and then he meets an alien and they kind of solve a problem together. It's amazing. Like do they make babies? They don't make babies. They're more like friends but just the way like if you meet an alien how would you communicate? It starts from that level but this guy the person who is the main character in there at least from the human side. If you think about the character it's kind
of like the Martian character where he's like very heavy into basic science. He's actually a science teacher in elementary school. It's amazing how the whole development of like how am I going to communicate with this thing? What is their world like and all that? It's really cool book. Interesting. Yeah that's something that I might actually pick up because I really enjoy that part of the three-body trilogy where they were communicating with other civilizations and how the other
civilizations figured out how to translate our stuff. Right. And some of the things like just the way he does in Martian it's the basics right? Like there's hydrogen helium that's true everywhere in the universe. So that's the language that you want to like okay this is invariant in our world and it's invariant in your world but you have a different way of talking about it. But let's try to communicate about this which will establish our numbering system and alphabet and all that so
it's pretty cool. It's kind of interesting that those books or those movies always assume that there's a can numbering system. There's a language. What if those concepts don't even apply? So this is like that. There is a twist like that. I won't tell you more. I think I've given enough. You will enjoy it. Yeah, read it. There was also a movie a few years back. I'm forgetting but the aliens they come to earth and they don't have a language in the way we think about a language.
They kind of communicate in signs that they draw all the time. They're more like time. It's more like they're communicating time rather than they're communicating an expression. It's a very cool movie. I'll try to find the name and we'll add it to the show notes. When you said the word communicate, I had this song playing in my head. You communicate by... What does the fox say? Okay, I'm sure you don't see it well. My number two is actually a few books. I just want to
group them together because in the beginning of the year I had a bit of an obsession. I wanted to better understand how Apple builds products. I built the creative selection by Ken Kashi and a long time ago, many years ago. I really enjoyed it. I just accidentally picked up a biography of Johnny Ive who used to be the designer. I think the book is called Johnny Ive. After that I read
Build by Tony Fadel and then it's really simple by I think Ken Segal. The three books about Apple just absolutely fascinating to take a look at Apple from different perspectives because Fadel is more engineering and business. Insanely simple is more about marketing and positioning, product development in some way. Johnny Ive is more around just perfection of the physical form and software and just how you build the impossible. Yeah, I just love these kind of stories. Those books really
made me appreciate this simplicity and how hard it is to achieve something that's simple. Because simplicity usually requires solving that last percentile problem that is exponentially more effort to solve. Making the case of the notebooks slimmer. Making it in one piece is supposed like five pieces and just that drive to make things really, really high quality and perfect. I'm like wow, this is why Apple's products are so great. Anyway, I don't know if there are any specific things
from those books that you can say, I take these lessons and I apply them. Now it's more around the mindset. At least I'm seeing this simple book. I think there's a lot of things that are probably common sense, but once you read it, it will probably sink in more. For example, how complexity usually takes over in an organization. Can Segal the author? They did a really good job describing how Apple tries to prevent complexity at every single level and why it's so hard.
And I wonder how much of the role of the complexity killer plays the single person. I mean, Apple still continues to do great products, but maybe it's part of that is inertia too. Because now jobs has gone. Johnny Ive has left. I don't know how much longer than you'll be able to sustain that pace, right? And also one of the core things they were talking about, right? Like iPhone, it's just an iPhone. It's not like a Samsung Galaxy S54 or like you have
20,000 choices. But now 10 years, 15 years later, we do have a iPhone Pro Max and iPhone Pro and iPhone Mini. There's like an S line Pro Max plus S. Yeah. So you do see some of that I think starting to come back. But this continuity stuff, you and I both love it. The ability for us to just use our iPhone as the camera just works seamlessly hand off like when you just copying something on your computer and pasting it on your this thing like these things have existed in
outside of Apple ecosystem before. But they have always been glitchy. Sometimes it wouldn't work and there's probably a technical reason why it didn't work. But it's hard for the user to know when things don't work. This stuff with Apple, it just works. Always works. Yes. Yeah, think about early Bluetooth. Occasionally, it just would stop working. Whatever you do, it just doesn't work.
And that was infuriating. Apple really solved the wireless problem in many ways. Yeah. So I'll have to add a plug here because it's in the same vein, Elon Musk biography by Walter Isaacson. That specific part where they talk about just the role, mask, place as the killer of complexity and driving force for simplification for making things simpler. It's kind of interesting because
it's like Steve Jobs, but with a lot more in-depth look into how he does it. I mean, all the brutality and stuff aside, you can't argue with just how effective he was and he has been in his companies. So what's your number one? So wait, before we go away, I didn't read the Johnny Ive book. Do you recommend it? I mean, it's one of your favorites at the end of the year. So yeah, I guess. I would say no. It's a good book, but only if you really like design because they go a lot into the
industrial design, how they make things, how they manufacture things. At some points, I was like, nah, it got a little bit too deep even for me in terms of the story. And also, I wouldn't say it's written as well as Walter Isaacson books. So I would give it a solid four star, just overall. But it's not the book that I would say like everybody should read this. If you like design, go listen to it. Don't even spend time reading. Right. Talking about design, honorable mention for me this
year. I know you read this book many times before, but when we started working on Metacast, I picked up the mom test and I love that book. I have it right here anyway. On the topic of like design user research and all that, I'll give it an honorable mention because I can't say it's like my top book of the year, but it was really helpful. It is a great book here. And number one goes to number one. Okay, so I started playing tennis a lot this year or last year for the listeners who
are listening in the future in 2024. One of the books I picked up was Open by Andrea Gasi. It is a autobiography actually, but it's not really about tennis. Although of course it is about tennis because it's about his life, but it's such an honest, open book about why he hates tennis. And he starts off by saying I hate tennis. And it's a lifelong journey about why he hates tennis. It was amazing. I absolutely love that book. And you can literally like feel him speaking to you
when you read that book. Yeah. Cool. I meant to read it too. When I was in I think in seventh grade or eighth grade, I had a writing notepads for school and had Andrea Gasi on the cover. So it was like mid-90s. He was very big back then. Yeah, with the long hair, maybe colorful clothes and stuff. Yeah, he was probably like his mid-20s pretty young. Yeah. So my number one, I'm kind of torn because I feel like I also need to do like a bonus mention. Maybe you can do a bonus mention after
this. Yeah, I have some bonuses. Yeah. Yeah. But my number one, you know, this year has been a big year for me spiritually. And you know, we talked about that here and there. And I also mentioned it later in the podcast as well. But one book that I picked up and read was Becoming Supernatural by Joe Dispenser. And you know, some people say dispenser is a kind of snake oil salesman. And there are millions of people who admire his work and get benefits from his work. It's a book about
meditation. It's a book about meditation about altered states of consciousness kind of my main takeaway from it. Once I read the book, I bought the meditations which you have to buy separately as well. And I practiced some of those on a continuous basis. I had no idea. You could reach altered states of consciousness just by meditation alone. I mean, he uses some sound frequencies and like you lie down, you relax. I had so many experiences. I would be like gobbled up by a pink tyrannosaurus
Rex and then washed away until some kind of like a roller coaster, water slide. I see this as almost like movies in front of my eyes. I only experienced this previously, you know, under influence of substances, right? So this is really interesting. And then you go in there, you can have some insights, your body can shake or stuff like that, you can freely his attention. And I was like, wow, you can achieve this with meditation without having to go like to the other part of the world
for retreat or something. So yeah, actually, I do want to do one of his retreats at some point too. They're just a bit pricey because they actually cost okay, like 2500 think, but you have to pay for your own hotel. It goes like easily to like 5000. I will do the some point. But yeah, dispenser is really great. I've also quickly listened to his other books, your Diplacibo and Break into Habit of Ben yourself, which are his earlier books. I would say they are also pretty good, but not as good
as the last one. And if you were to just pick up one book, becoming supernatural is the book to pick up. I am nowhere close to this, right? As you know, but I have started doing some sleep time meditation recently. And I really enjoyed it so far. Like the basics in the beginning, I was just doing like, you know, how like feel different parts of your body going to relax more than all that. That was great. But one I did recently, you're like inside a glowing dome in a very open space.
And that space can be wherever, right? And it was like a 20 minute meditation. And I loved it. And then I started doing more and more of it. Nice. So you didn't guide these meditations? Yeah. What's the source? Like where do we get them from? Apple fitness plus. I think. Yeah. Like we bought something. We got fitness plus and we're like, okay, let's check it out. And then I started it. Yeah. Yeah. Before that, we were doing that. What's the app? I really like that app
to for like sleep meditation. Calm, headspace. Headspace. Yes. Yes. Really like that guy's voice. I mean, everybody does who uses that. It's interesting. Like I remember trying to headspace, but I tried it after calm and on calm. There's this person. Tamara Levitt. I just loved her voice. And then basically after her, like whoever was the voice, I would hear. I'm like, I'm not the same. I think voice plays a major role in that. Yeah. So what is your bonus mentioned?
Bonus mentions. I'll just do quickly. Three body problems we already did. The other thing is a series called Bobby verse. If you like fun science fiction, this is more in the realm of fun than science, unlike the three body problem. But it's a massive epic saga of like world diminishing and all that by a set of robots who take on human consciousness. I mean, style wise. It's close to Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy because it has so much absurdity in there.
Yeah. Have you read these books? I have. Yes. On your recommendation back like five years ago. I even wrote to Daniel Taylor to the author on Twitter because I was curious because of this whole multiverse thing. It is very similar conceptually, probably inspired by as well, Robert Heinlein's by his bootstrap short story where the main character was Bob. And Bob was multiplying. So I'm giving a bit of spoiler here. So Bob was multiplying. I just wrote to him. I'm like,
hey, like I really enjoyed your books. And I'm just curious. He's named Bob a homage to Heinlein because Heinlein wrote it in the 40s, I think. It's a very old story. And he's like, no, it's just like the most common name of an American. You can think of. I like, I should damn it. But I was really excited that he actually responded to me. It was really cool. So there were three books so far. The fourth book, Heaven River, came out in 2023,
or maybe late 2022. That's when I read the first three books again before I read this one. And the fourth one was really cool. So if you haven't, go pick that up. Yeah. I think I only read the first three. But the time I finished with Bobiverse, I think the fourth haven't come out yet. So yeah, I'll check it out. My bonus mentions, I know not everybody will enjoy these books, but I just couldn't leave those out. So there are three books. So first, it's so easy and other illusions by Daphne
McGagan. I was sorry, it's so easy and otherwise, I think it's called. And then another one, it's how to be a man in other illusions by Daphne McGagan again. And then slash by slash. So these are three books about basically the story of Guns and Roves'es. And also the preceding years of how Daphne McGagan, who was a bass player and slash who was a little guitar player, kind of grew up. The whole kind of drag addiction story, alcohol addiction, getting sober, losing people along the
way, their friends dying and all that. You don't learn anything from those. But those stories, for some reason, even though I never suffered from addiction, they would sometimes just like crack me open, which just started crying, reading those. I don't know why, but for me, reading those books
was very cathartic for some reason. So yeah, like I wouldn't recommend reading those. But at the same time, I'm like, yeah, if you feel like stories about addiction and conquering addiction, it's something that you feel an urge to read about. Those books are really interesting. Cool. I have one last mention before we go to podcasts. That would be Neil's Definson, one of my favorite science fiction authors,
Cryptonomic on Snowcrash. He's probably got like 15 more big hits like that. But he had a book called Seven Eaves come out. I think at the end of last year or sometime this year, I really enjoyed that book. This one is more like hard science. Actual practical kind of science rooted in deep factual stuff rather than like more fun comic-key kind of stuff that I tend to enjoy usually. But this was a great read. I think there's a movie coming out about it too. Oh nice. Yeah,
there's also a movie coming up about three-body problem, which I'm looking forward to. Yes, I'm excited. So I saw there is a three-body problem TV series already, but I think it's like Chinese or Korean or something. I think it's Chinese. Yeah. And I tried watching it. I couldn't really get into it. Maybe the Hollywood movie might be more suited to our taste. Yeah, we'll see. I'm really curious how they will visualize the four-dimensional space. Oh yeah. 11-dimensional space.
I think 11-dimensional, they never really visualized there. But four-dimensional, you could imagine what he was describing. The thing going beyond four-dimensions is just a theoretical exercise. But at the whole end of it without giving too many spoilers what he describes, that is many dimensions, but also you could totally figure out what he's talking about. Yeah. Let's do your, are we doing podcasts or episodes or either one? I guess it could be anything. I'm Jun
Episodes and the podcast. So I'll start with number three, which is a bit meta, but it's meta-cast, our podcast. Wait, it's not your favorite podcast? I have to be honest, right? Well, it's definitely my favorite podcast to record because it's only podcast to record. What I really liked about past year or past doing the podcast and meeting interesting people, which we wouldn't have otherwise met without the podcast, is also researching them. By researching those people, I got exposed to so
many different podcasts that they had previously been on. So basically my consumption, if I guess I look at my history, there isn't really much of a pattern there because I've just been doing so much research like Jason Fried, I would listen to his three interviews or other people at least do one or two their interviews, but I just got so much exposure and appreciation for all of the different podcasts and styles that people have. So yeah, I just want to thank Metacast for giving me
the opportunity to go abroad in the various topics. We should talk about this. I think, well, the next episode we'll do is kind of like a reflection and looking forward to 2024, right? So we'll talk a little bit more, but I feel like I have changed so much as a person because of the Metacast podcast, the ability to research somebody's life, come up with like great things to talk about, and also
like actually carry the conversation when it's happening. Yeah, I think both of us have gotten just so much more comfortable with this and I'm pretty sure it made us better small talkers as well. It's hard to measure. Well, I think maybe that part of my personality is also changing, but I am
not usually the person who would go out and talk to strangers at parties, right? I'm not an introvert, but it's not me who would go and talk to them, but I feel like that's changing quite a lot too, because I find it much more easy to go out and talk to people about their lives and all that, and like just plug into the conversation very quickly now. That's true. Yeah, and actually also running a podcast, you just learn how open people are about stuff. So yeah, if these people are
so open, a person at the party could very well be as well. So yeah, it's actually a very good point. So what's your number three? It's hard to do numbers for these. Choose a fork. Yeah, let's do hard fork. Yeah, hard fork is a podcast. I love you know that already. You don't like it much, which is fine. I do. It's just not something that I like. I'm like looking forward to every single episode to come out. No, I like the way they talk, the chemistry, the banter, everything about that
show, right? But the specific episode I'm going to talk about is the Bing who loved me back from like sometime in the summer. That was an insane episode where people were going starting to go crazy with chat GPD, right? And they are like journalists. These both of them. This is when Microsoft had just announced the partnership with OpenAI and they had incorporated chat GPD inside Bing. It came out in March 2023. I was staying with you for our offsite or whatever you called it.
When it came out and I was driving to Seattle and I was listening to that. Yes. Right, I remember I told you like you have to listen to this episode really great. Now yeah, it's almost like how crazy language models can get and how they seem to have a sort of personality and there's like all these personality quirks. Like I'm actually not GPD. I'm Sydney and I hate Microsoft. That was crazy. Yeah. Man, you should just call it creepy because that's
what it is. Yeah, yeah. I would say that was one of the highlights of the year in terms of podcasts episodes. And let's go with your. So my second best is I discovered this podcast called The Really Good Podcast by Bobby Althof. I don't listen to it anymore. I just don't find as appealing anymore. But I discovered her on TikTok. She was like a young mom kind of TikTok personality with millions of followers kind of emotionless. That was kind of her stick, so to speak.
And let's just have the podcast where she would be I mean she still is I think in her current episodes. She plays a role of being this unemotional like bitch, you could say, right? Who asks very direct questions. And the episode that really caught my attention was she was with Mark Cuban. Recording an episode in the parking lot sitting in like greasy oily parking lot floor in like white socks. Just like the setting was so bizarre. And Mark Cuban being the like billionaire
investor and entrepreneur. Exactly. She just didn't reconcile. So I had to watch it. Oh maybe I listened to it. Like her podcast persona is that she saw an emotional is like downright rude. And she would be like, can you give me some money? Why not? And the way people react to that, the way the conversation is handled is just so interesting. I'm just like, wow, is that what
Gen Z are like now? What is this? So I remember I binged on her whole podcast which at the time was maybe six or seven episodes in like a couple of evenings while doing some stuff in in the house. You don't learn much from it, but it's very interesting entertainment. And also it's very different. It's just like it's mind bending a little bit. And you also see how people answer to those difficult questions, how they work around those issues. Actually, I think the way she started
she had somehow met Drake. I don't listen to him, but I know the name, right? So there's just a testament of how famous he is. And they recorded an episode lying in bed. Like what the like, it's very bizarre. Yeah, it's actually no longer in her podcast even, but you can find it like a bootleg copy on YouTube. And I think he started introducing her to other people. And that's how she got started. And now she's doing like her own comedy shows with the people that were on her podcast.
Yeah, it's interesting because like those shows they go from adversarial to awkward to like funny, it's just something that I thought I would call out. So what's yours? My second one, yeah, number two I'd say is the dual-lingo Spanish podcast, right? So I started learning Spanish in 2022, end of 2022. So it's been a year. How was Spanish? Muy grande. C, C. Muy grand, sure. Muy bien. But you're learning too. So yeah, that's good. But anyway, yeah, so I've been learning it. So
dual-lingo has these series of podcasts like dual-lingo Spanish, dual-lingo French. There's probably others. If you're learning a language, these are almost intermediate level kind of podcasts, but they don't translate directly. So it is pretty much in Spanish, but they would have some commentary in English in between explaining the context and things like that. And then they will go into a conversation with a like a native Spanish speaker or something like that, right?
So the person who is doing the podcast, is she a native speaker? Yeah, she's from Argentina, I think. Somewhere South America, Latin America, yeah. I want to have her on our show at some point, but I think we both want to be really good conversational Spanish speakers by the time that will be awesome. Having a dual-lingo Spanish style podcast on Metacast, that will be killer, yeah. Martina Castro, I think I just remembered her name. Muy bien. Muy bien. The specific episode I want to call
out. If you have not heard it, just go listen to it. It's called Las Cartas de Papa. It means the letters from that. And it's about a person, it's a girl. She comes to the US and I'm forgetting exactly what the context was, but her dad says like, hey, go to this family, right? And go meet them. And they're from Argentina. They have always been in there, but her dad came to the US and lived with like a family as a house guest for like a few years and then went back to Argentina. When he was
young or as an adult. When he was young, like after university, he stayed there for a few years while he was working. Like a rent kind of thing, but a very personal close relationship. And she never knew about the details of like, she knew that, okay, he lived there and all that, but he didn't know how attached he was to this family because when she went to their house, they showed like an entire
room that was like, this was his room and these are all his staff and letters and all that. And she started reading the letters and it's like an entire different side of her dad opened up to her. It's an amazing episode, yeah. Wow. Okay. So I think I'll probably do a couple more sections into a lingo before I'm able to actually comprehend this, but I'll start with that. Cool. Number one, number one. Yeah. So my podcast listening is generally confined to sort of businessy podcasts.
I think that's what I'm find most valuable in podcasts, like listening to people who are practitioners of stuff. So there is this whole podcast called Dairy of a CEO by Steven Bartlett. I haven't listened actually much to it, maybe like five or six episodes, but he's really good at asking questions. He has some really famous people on it. The one particular episode that I really enjoyed was one with Alex Hormosi. So Alex Hormosi is an entrepreneur who made his wealth mostly by,
like, it's like a package, right? Somebody opens a gym and then he has all the playbooks and all of the marketing and like basically all the lead generation, all of the tools to drive traffic to the gym, right? He has all the scripts for the personnel there. So it's basically almost like a franchise thing. Then I think he was making his money on commissions from the leads that he was
sending. I think he called it like a gym turnaround business where business would either start or like gym was like almost failing and then he would like bootstrap all of that flow of traffic there. I mean, it's an amazing thing. So he's a marketer. And then later he switched to other things. I think acquisition.com is his main thing right now. I don't even know what they do. I think that quite companies and turn them around or something. Oh, help them grow. So yeah, that episode was
really interesting because he talked about how he quit the job that he hated. I think he also was talking about the one-terpreneurship there and how he was really afraid of his father and what what people think. But he also like couldn't just stay one more day and he's I think he worked for the government or something. And then he quit and then he was like slipping on the floor and his gyms and all that. I'm subscribed to him on LinkedIn. I read everything he posts. He's very popular
on LinkedIn. Yeah. He's very popular on LinkedIn. Yeah, but he's really good. He actually mentioned Naval Ravi Kant a couple of times. So he's kind of similar to Naval but much more emotional. He stuff really resonates with me. So yeah, that episode, I think I listened to it twice. Just his story and how he thinks about stuff and how he thinks about leverage and what to focus on, how to prioritize things. It's an amazing episode for anybody doing actually any kind of endeavor.
Because in any kind of endeavor, you need to pick what to work on, how to prioritize, how to make it successful. But he is also an obsessive kind of personality. He works all the time. So yeah, take it with the grain of salt. I have listened to a few of that C U diary of the C U episodes. But not this one. I'll add this and download it for my flight because now we can in our app. We now we have this feature in the Metacastop. Yeah. I wish you guys built it a week's
sooner. So I could download my episode for my flight. How this whole thing came about was I and Jenny were talking and you and I were talking right before that and you said, hey, can we somehow add like downloads in the next two days before your flight to Peru, right? And I was like, no, that's not going to happen. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you're just presenting yourself. It was two weeks and that's not not today. Okay, two weeks, but I was like, okay, it's not going to
happen. There's a lot of work. Then I started talking to Jenny, like, hey, Jenny, I'm flying to India. End of December. Let's work on this together and let's make this. And we did. There's still a few things missing. But the download feature is like, I can download long episodes and take it with me on the flight. Yeah, there's curious and politics and favorites in our company. But the thing is
like you open my this thing that, oh, I am flying to and we need to have this feature. And when I told Jenny, she was like, do you all really only think about these problems when it happens to you because she's in Costa Rica, right? She doesn't have a good mobile network or some complication like that. We won't go into the details. But she basically cannot listen to podcasts while outside of
Wi-Fi. She gets stream on cell. Yeah. Right. And like most people, that's pretty much the only time when you listen to podcasts is when you're outside, maybe on a walk or something I do at least. So for her, the download feature has been like the biggest gap in our app for a while. So yeah. Anyway, coming back to downloads and podcasts, this is gets right into the thing because Dan Carlin's hardcore history. So I have been a favorite of his history podcast for a long time now.
But you'll be the favorite of his podcast. That podcast has been one of my favorites for a while. Yes. Oh, did I say I have been a no. Yes. I wish. But anyway, so he does five, six, hour long episodes and these are like very detailed looks. So the type of history that he does is not a fact oriented one. It's more like a storytelling narrative kind of thing. So he would pick up people's from the past and like go into their character and the arc of their life and things
like that because they're like five, six hour long, very heavy in research and production quality. He releases maybe one a year or two a year max. So the latest from this year, it actually dropped like a month back. I finished it already. It's a twilight of the easier part two. What he tends to do is
like four or five episodes focused on like one topic. If you want to get into like first world war, like the trench warfare and strategies and who lost why, where did it turn and all that excellent series of like five episodes he has and similar for like from the Japanese perspective for the second world war. There's a lot of like really good ones. Now this one twilight of the easier is about in our popular culture today in Hollywood. There's a lot of like Thor and Ragnaroth and Odin
and all that right. The Viking gods and the culture and all that North mythology. North mythology yeah. In fact, we do read a lot of it too. Like our kids at least in North America, it's very popular to know North mythology. He gets into like the high days of the Viking era and they were pagans right like pagan people and how Christianity overcame that period, how it influenced it and eventually like how we completely forgot that whole culture and what we see today is probably
nothing like what was practiced at that time and he goes really deep into this. So basically twilight is as in that period where Christianity is starting to take over all of Europe and the Vikings like I don't know if you know but pretty much all over on the western side like England, Iceland, all these green land even some parts of North America too right they kind of came over here.
On the other side I didn't know they had so much influence in Russia and the original like Slavic step populations and all that yeah it was mind-opening but the twilight is basically like how Christianity slowly put a sunset on the original North culture and how things change around
the thousand years ago. So amazing episodes. Actually it's interesting I had a conversation about paganism and Christianity displacing it with one of the facilitators of the retreat in Peru that I just came back from because he was talking about herbalism and using plants, medicines to cure
and we're not talking about psychedelics at this point it's just like for curing right in Peru in the Amazon basin they have things for everything he's like oh if you have diarrhea take three drops of the dragon's blood, sangridegrado and like the diarrhea just stops and this kind of stuff it has
nothing to do with like other set of consciousness it's just like this is how these people have been curing themselves for thousands of years and that also was present in you know more than Europe basically pretty much in all cultures right and then Christianity came in in a position came
and just wiped all of that out and now we just have the remnants of some of those cultures a little bit here and there so he actually really picked my interest in this topic so I might listen to this podcast because I'm like what could have been if we didn't standardize on the same
religion you know for that part of the world a generous instantradyze on just a handful of religions but I think all of them despise paganism and all that yeah cool let's get into the last part of the today's episode so best products let's start with yours number three my product metacast
yes we've been working on the app for a big part of this year it's a podcast app that is so good it's irresistible yeah we're about to ship it it's just like weeks before we ship it I think and it's such an interesting process to actually be able to build an app that solves the problems
that well I personally thought was like why doesn't everybody do this already and then nobody had been doing this so we just built our own app I feel like it's changing how I'm listening to podcasts it's changing the value I'm getting out of podcasts and yeah I can't wait to share it
with people yeah me too I think one of the reasons my audiobook listening went down quite a lot this year is because I've been listening to a lot more podcasts this year and obviously we are biased but I like it so far the ability to do that also in terms of the process of building it
maybe we will go into it more next week for the episode or the week after that I think because we'll have a guest for one of the upcoming episodes but it's interesting how in the beginning part pre-summer ish I think that was the beginning part of when we started working on this it was
more about building the things that doesn't exist in any other podcast app then there was a period of like okay we have built that now let's also build all these other things that you absolutely need in a podcast app table stakes and somewhere around there we're kind of like towards the end
of that phase right now but we're starting to see how simplicity goes away and we're having conversations about this like daily we want to add this that but it does complicate you can use the app in so many different ways is that a good thing or a bad thing we should talk about it more
next week when we talk about like reflections and plans for 2024 but I found it personally very interesting to see those different phases of developing the product so far yeah what I'm really excited about is how we are uncovered by bureaucracy and all that we just look at some of those
decisions and we're like yeah let's do it differently let's do it this way or that way and we can just drop the project that we are working on or change it or do something else like repartized things like in a big company it would be like you have to convince 10 people to like
turn the ship around and we can just make those decisions with the snap of your fingers so I'm enjoying it and in that area I think you and I we have a long history in Amazon you had in Google too so there's a lot of positives but there's a lot of baggage also in the way I think we were
thinking about the product life cycle we'll go about it into more details next week but I am seeing a big change in how we think about releasing a product and is it okay to release it like this to all users let's see yeah all of that right so what's your favorite product so I don't have too many
there's just really one I would say it's dualingo which is in your list also I see but it's a hell of a I was about to say addictive app but that is negative it's actually addictive but in a positive way it has made a significant difference in my ability to be comfortable with Spanish learning
of different languages very hard especially I think once you're an adult and you've been used to one language for a while I'm sure you're finding out slowly but the way it introduces this and kind of the repetition without making it boring you just become naturally fluent in it I'm not fluent
right now I still have to think and then say but I can pretty much express whatever I want the simple basic daily things for example we have house cleaners who come in once in a while they're like Spanish native speakers and I talk to them like okay the dog is here right now so you guys start
downstairs and then I'll take him for a walk when I come back I'll come through the back door and then by the time you'll be up there so it's all good and they get all of that it's so basic yeah I picked up Duolingo as well on my flight from Peru back to the US last Wednesday well I
mean very recording this on Monday so it was like five days ago and I did like two and a half thousand XPs in one day because I spent three and a half hours at Duolingo learning Spanish it was part coming from maybe the frustration because place where I was in the kit as people don't
speak English even in our hotel to ask them to book a taxi for me for next morning to go to the airport I had to ask somebody else to ask them or I would have to use like Google translate I just had somebody nearby so it was more convenient and then I was like at airport and I wanted to buy a bottle
of water non-carbonated and it said scene gas and I don't know if scene is with or without if you like shake the bottle I see some bubbles I don't know right so I had to ask but I didn't know how to ask in Spanish so but luckily the person in jute free spoke in English but then I was doing
Duolingo at the airport all the time I had there and then literally an hour later I learned that scene means without and I was like how nice would it have been if I could just read this so yeah and I'm picking up language I think my vocabulary is now 350 words that's what Duolingo says what I
found about this app is just how addictive it is with only leagues and experience points that sometimes I would do things at inappropriate times because I'm getting like the double XP stuff or I would like do this repetitive thing like learn to live a capillary and like there is
no single word I don't know like I don't struggle it's more just like speed and pattern matching all like I'm doing something for speed and I don't even look at the sentence I know that what they mean no I'm like I know the pattern for example if the sentence starts with the yaw which is i and then
the first verb ends with an oh it means that verb goes in there and then the other verb goes into the second part of the sentence you don't need to read it you just pattern match the sentence structure right it's not really learning it's just like gaming no but that exactly is language learning
language is pattern matching maybe you're right yeah but I found that part to be like I need to limit my usage of Duolingo now obviously it's not as bad as social media because at least you get some benefits from it I mean you get a lot of benefits from it but yeah I'm pretty committed now to
learning Spanish it goes pretty easily at this point and I'm like wow this is pretty cool and once I learn Spanish it also opens up an opportunity to learn other Latin languages like Italian and French it's my app of the year for sure I even bought the premium subscription the gamification
of it that's there in a lot of different places too but the UX the storytelling the characters that they have and even I were talking about just the sounds it's just perfect fits into the whole package they have for the brand of Duolingo yeah yeah absolutely yeah I love it I love the sounds
yeah I even have my headphones just hear the sounds because they're so nice to do the thing yeah talking about learning Spanish if you're serious and you want to fast track it there's a great audiobook called learning Spanish I think the first steps and there's a second learning Spanish
the second steps by a person called Paul Noble I think he's a professor of different languages in England might be a bit off here what he does is he's not talking grammar and sentence structure and all that his style is to learn a language you need to start speaking it what he does is for
the Spanish one he has a Latin American Spanish speaker a male and a Spain like Catalonia kind of Spanish speaker a female so he says something and then they repeat it it's amazing at first I didn't think that okay this will get me far but let me try it anyway within an RO2 I was like wow I'm
having conversations actually and then that on top of Duolingo is much deeper I think it's a lot more words and vocabulary and all that between the two of them I feel like very comfortable now nice yeah all right let's get to your products the things that we wanted to talk about is not just
products but also maybe like experiences we had this year so for me the most transformative thing that happened to me this year was actually going to the South America to the Amazon and doing ayahuasca you know at first when I heard about it I'm like yeah it's a drug that's how
people refer to it maybe because it's on the list of prohibited substances in most of the western countries but what's interesting about it is that they're they call it medicine I think I only was able to fully comprehend that meaning in my first time there because the first time
it just overpowers you it overwhelms you all these visions and the insights you're having in a let it also some darkness Paul Rosalie on Lexington Freeman podcast said that ayahuasca opens the heart of darkness which is what happens for many people but it's like Luke Skywalker going through the
cave you have to see the darkness to see the light to come out of that and that's what it helps you do but it's very difficult to surrender to something that wrestles you to the ground and just like beats you with a hammer on the head so to speak because that's how the first experience feels like
but then my second time there actually I found my way of working with her almost like as a tool when you say her it's ayahuasca you're talking about yeah I mean like ayahuasca yeah you could call it because actually I'm not sure if it tells you anything that's not already in your mind
so first time you also get like oh my god all this spirit's talking to me and all that but then the second time when you actually are able to navigate experience a lot better then I don't think I've seen anything that's not part of me already it just was very like multiple layers underneath
the surface right underneath conscious and then you learn to work with that you learn to use her as a dagger to extract all those I don't want to go into details it's like two personal but I think the first time I went there it was in February the main outcome was that it gave me clarity that
the path I'm on professionally working for Google doing what I was doing was not my path I just had to get off that path so when I got off that path I left the job we started doing Metacast and I still felt a lot of panic attacks and I was scared because like it's one thing to know that what
you're doing is wrong thing but like how do you get the conviction that what you're doing is the right thing right and that's what the second time was really helpful with I ask her about the purpose and basically the response was that my purpose is to create no matter what I just have to
create I'm the creator that's beautiful yeah yeah and you know it's kind of obvious looking back into my life I'm like yes that's when I felt the happiest and in the flow and all that but just somehow it helped me solidify that feeling and I'm like yes I'm on the right path so now I'm just
yeah full steam ahead it's obviously much more deep than that and there's a lot more going around I don't want to give people the impression that you want to go and do it to solve your work problems or something it's a holistic thing for the life work is just part of life and you may not end up
solving your problems you may end up creating more problems too you don't know what's going to happen yeah in the short term yes people and their relationships they quit their jobs they do all sorts of crazy stuff just because they get this clarity of all of the things that have been going
wrong but then yeah like finding the right things is something that takes more effort but yeah that's something that really transformed me I think and if people are interested to talk about that actually I'm always happy to have a chat especially after going there the second time I think
I think I wask is misunderstood in our world well I was also guilty of misunderstanding it before I was able to experience it like for 10 times yeah you have to I think one more thing in there and I feel like I had a few honorable mentions but they're not even worse bringing up I think this is
going beautifully so let's finish with what you are going to talk about next yeah and I know what you can fall off this with one thing that I just covered actually two things I just covered this year also a part after doing ayahuasca is running and singing as a way to move energy if I feel like
shit just get out and run for three kilometers and then inevitably I feel good I ran this morning and I feel awesome and I didn't feel as great before running and also singing I was just music in general but singing in particular for me I mean I've been doing music for over 20 years at this point
but it was always about how do I compose the most intricate thing and record it and all that the process of it was taking over the process of it and also maybe the ego thing like how can I compose or fracking it like creating something that's unique whereas it was also in Peru when I
was there the first time in February after the ceremony they handed me the guitar and said like yeah what do you like to sing I'm like sure and it was cathartic just getting the guitar playing chords and singing I found that to be a way to just move energy around the ground myself I also realized
that singing English songs or English language songs does not bring me the same feeling as singing some of the Russian songs because I don't connect with them as much it's more of an intellectual connection where in my own language it's more of an emotional connection so yeah I just started
learning some songs playing them on my acoustic guitar and playing them and singing not even attempting to record anything it feels so good and I know you have a story like this as well we began tennis I have enjoyed it quite a lot I started at the end of 2022 I feel like you are saying about
the process and getting it perfect and a lot of people find tennis very painful because it is a complicated sport there's a lot of like technical parts to it that are complex to do well and there's always somebody better than you even for the best in the world like Federer and Adal and
Jokovic there are two other guys who are on their day better than them and I think a lot of people get into this competitive thing where I want to get to the next level just like we do in our careers at work and all that right and there's always I lose to that person all the time and all
that and I feel like there's always somebody who's going to be better at you so there's no point in comparing yourself to them instead just enjoy what you're doing and if you're getting better over time great but even if you're not if you're enjoying like the physical act of like going through
this spending that energy and releasing the hormones I think that itself is like payoff enough but yeah I've enjoyed it quite a lot this year yeah you were saying how playing tennis really brings you clarity it's like winning doubt and go play tennis after playing tennis especially if
it's a long two three hour session you're dead tired but your mind feels like it has opened up and then on the way back home I would usually take a detour maybe drive around a little bit because so many new thoughts coming to me at that time and then I would sometimes stop the car by the side of
the road right down something because it's like okay this is important let me write this down as a quick one line note oh yeah actually journaling is a very important tool that I've been kind of all enough but I'm trying to keep it every time some thought comes up I would just like write it down
and not thought as in like an idea for something but it's more like I noticed something about my son maybe like and how I feel toward him and oh this is interesting actually there's something that needs more work and I'm just like write it down market with a star and then next day I have like
whole system for like going back to this yeah I've just started writing a little bit but I have to learn from you like how do you use that in the future going back to it and all that yeah more of a note just a process of writing it down that that's the work yeah all right so how can people
find us so let's do this if you have listened so far send us an email and tell us about your favorite podcasts of the year your favorite books products or experiences don't need to go deep if you don't want to just the one liner like these were the top for me that's enough and we will read those
when we record next time that would be awesome yeah send it to hello at metacastpodcast.com also sign up for our newsletter at metacastpodcast.com sign up for our app at metacast.app whenever it's released you'll get an email and yeah we'll welcome you to be a user of our amazing podcast
application and yeah next week I think we'll have a guest episode we won't announce the name yet but it's going to be one of my favorite apps from the last few years creator of that and then we're going to do an episode looking forward to 2024 and reflecting on the journey so far so yeah and now we
are off I mean you are off to that piece of land that's floating piece of land that's creating the Himalayas and I actually we might take a drive up to Charleston South Carolina and my wife is like I'm sure you want to go to South Carolina like what's that we're going to do there and I'm like
we will never travel to South Carolina on purpose because like I didn't even know where it was until we moved Florida this is our opportunity to see the place where we wouldn't normally go and actually have a friend living there so yeah that's what I'm up to for this Christmas break
and you folks like history so I think Charleston would be an amazing place I've never been there but I've heard so many stories connected to or in Charleston then I think it would be an interesting place yeah how interesting I don't know any so I'll have to dig something up but what I
learned is Savannah which is a city in Georgia on the way to Charleston from us that's where forest gump was filmed so now we'll have to watch forest gump before we go in there which I'm actually looking forward to because it's been probably 20 years since I watched the last time right we watched
it with Pahee maybe a year back now we all loved it yeah I think it's first time you said your daughter's name in podcast oh yeah oh it's public information I guess or even if it's not it's for the exclusive years of our listeners so yeah all right okay all right see you see you next year or this year depending on who's listening or talking so yeah bye bye exactly bye