7.5. Bonus Primesode: Enter Sandman, Isaac Asimov and Dogman

The other thing I think he does is he's normalizing a lot of things that you don't expect in super hit comic books. Like the squiggly lettering, or he just makes mistakes and cuts them and rewrites them. Just like what we do with our podcast, right? Yeah, exactly. But he shows the world, and especially kids, that it's okay, right? That's how you start.

Hey, this is a special bonus episode, because last time when we recorded the Metasode, we rambled for an extra hour, so we have this content that we decided to publish anyway. So before we get into that, let's explain what's happening. So our podcast, Metacast, is a podcast about podcasts. So we have two types of episodes right now.

The even ones, like episode number 2, 4, 6, and like 200 someday, those are with guests who are podcasters, or they are in the podcast field, and we interview them, understand their stories and stuff. And the odd episodes are our odd episodes. They're metasodes where we reflect on how the previous recording went, and just rumble about all things podcasting, and things related to audio, and everything in between.

However, last time, when we sat down to record episode number 7, which would have been a Metasode, it was very nice, like casual vibe between the two of us, and we started basically rambling about a lot of things, one of which was, this is episode number 7, so it's not really odd or even, it's a Prime-y-sode. Because it's a Prime number, Optimus, Amazon Prime. Yeah. Well, we are not related to Meta or Amazon, but yes, it was a Prime-y-sode.

So, and we had all that great content, well, I don't know about great, but we had content. So we decided, okay, why don't we release this as a bonus episode, a Prime-y-sode. So once in a while, we may have episodes like this, but again, just like our regular episodes and the Metasodes, we'll make it clear in the title that this is a bonus Prime-y-sode. Is it Bonus-y-sode, or Bonus Prime-y-sode? Or Primus? I don't know. Primus?

Yeah. In any case, please enjoy one hour of discussions about sci-fi, comics, Neil Gaiman, Asimov. Yeah. Dove Pilkey. Music. Dogman. Yes. And some really, really terrible guitar playing. So when I was editing this, I'm like, I can't just, well, the only reason why I record this intro is like, I listened to my guitar playing and I'm like, I cannot leave this without a comment. I just have to like apologize for our listeners for just how terrible that sounds.

I have not played for ages and I just pulled my guitar out randomly and I, yeah, it came out the way it came out. You're probably being humble, but we'll see. Anyway, listeners, enjoy. The episode comes next and whether you like it or not, please, yeah, leave us a review. We would love to see that. Yeah, with five stars. Of Ilya's guitar playing skills. Yeah, don't rate us on our guitar playing skills. I was being very generous when I said that my playing sucked. Anyway. All right.

Enjoy. Hey, everyone.

Welcome to Metasode, episode three, Metacast, episode seven. I'm sure nobody is confused. Yeah, it's Metacast, episode seven. We should just go with episode numbers from now on, I think. Don't you want to confuse people? Including us? Yes. Yeah, I really struggle to remember that. Like which, you know, which episode is Metasode, which one isn't? But when I was writing that intro sub stack, I realized that all of the interview episodes are even and all of the odd episodes are odd.

Right, right, right. So Metasode also ends with odd. So makes sense. Yes. Metasode. Yes. I mean, man, it's prime time for jokes, right? Yes. Not yet. Oh, well, episode seven. So totally prime time. Yes. Actually, so far, all of the odd episodes were prime numbers. Three, five, and seven. Three, five, seven. Yes. Yeah. We haven't gotten, we haven't hit big yet.

Yeah. And so for the people who are listening to this in February and are not getting what we're talking about yesterday, which was December 19th. Yeah. So we recorded this on December 20th.

And yesterday on December 19th, we sent out a first email newsletter post on sub stack, where we talked about, you know, why we do this, about the structure of the even podcasts, even numbered podcasts, being the interviews, the odd numbered being the metasodes, where Arnav and I just talk about our experience doing the podcast. And then there was a section there on prime numbers episodes. And yeah, we, we added a few dad jokes in there about prime numbers.

So by the way, about the dad jokes, I already got a bit of feedback from one of my friends and being a good friend, it was very honest feedback, I think. Okay. What he said is, I wouldn't call the puns like badass at puns. Some aren't that great, but they're pretty good. So, yeah. Well, the thing is, I wrote that you are badass at puns, but then all of the puns in the posts were my, my puns and I'm not, I'm not badass at puns.

No, no, he's not talking about, well, I actually don't know if he's talking about the puns in the post or puns from me in general. I should ask, clarify, get some more feedback, user research. Yeah, here's the thing about puns. I think what both you and I really enjoyed when we were both at Amazon, in our chat room, we would, you know, make those puns. The cool thing about chat was that actually you could think about what to say.

Yes. So, it's a lot harder to do it in real time and when you like speak, right? So, jokes might come out that would have best not come out, you know? Like, if I'm trying to come back with a pun real time while talking to somebody, it often ends up with me thinking about it for like five minutes, then coming up with something really good. But at that point, I'm like, okay, I don't want to bring this up anymore. The moment is gone. So, yeah.

There is a guy, his name is Yevgeny Grishkavets. He is like, so he is a Russian, I don't know what to call him. He's like an author. So, he goes on stage and he does like a two-hour monologue, which is, it kind of oscillates. It goes very deep and then it goes like very funny and he like juxtaposes things. It's really, really funny. And he, you know, leverages a lot of like cultural context to make things sound really, really funny. But not like in a comedy. Oh, not a stand-up comedy?

It sounded like it, okay, okay. More like a theatrical performance. Okay. With a lot of funny stuff in there. Right. But also a lot of deep stuff. So, one of the things that he was talking about is like how you like watch a movie with your friends. And it was like pre-internet era, right? Or like when the internet was very like early, not everybody had internet. And like you would watch a movie with your friends and everybody tries to remember the name of that actor.

And basically like halfway into the movie, everybody is occupied searching their minds for that actor's name. If you don't have Alexa next to you, basically. Which is basically like you didn't even have Wikipedia next to you. Like there were no smartphones or anything, right? Yeah. It's like back then. So, and then basically the half of the movie that you tried to watch is spoiled because you don't really watch the movie. You just, your mind is preoccupied.

And then five days later, it's like, oh, Brad Pitt, Brad Pitt, or something. But at that point, it's irrelevant. Right? I've had this so many times. Yeah. At least my latency is not five days. But it's still, the moment is gone by the time I think of a good like comeback. So, you know, you know how like stand-up comedians do these kind of like, almost like rap, but going at each other. Yeah. Like stand-up battles.

I'm amazed how they come up with that high quality comebacks like immediately. It's a skill. Yeah. But even if you like listen to any of the rap kind of battles, where they just like freestyle come up with rap. I mean, I'm doing some of that with my son. Yeah. Just to annoy him. It's like dad jokes, rap kind of thing. What I realized, what's very important is like rhyming things. And so you have to think, well, not think, you have to feel the rhyme.

And then whatever you say kind of sounds okay, as long as there is rhyme. And what I'm seeing with my son is that he doesn't feel that rhyme. So he would say things that would have been funny. But without the rhyme, they're like, yeah, they don't land very well. Next metasode, we should open with one of your raps. That would be fun. I'll open it with something else now.

Okay. All right. For listeners, because we don't do video, at least not right now. Ilya just pulled out his amazing guitar. And let's see. I thought you were going to like sing into it too. Like, scream your podcast. No comebacks. Grip your microphone tight. You see what I did here? There was no rhyme in there, right? Yeah. Grip your headphones tight. I guess that rhymes a little bit better. Yeah. Yeah. But still like not as good. So yeah, I'll have to think how to edit this.

Or not. Or not. Or not. Yeah. You know this song, right? Of course. It's Enter Sandman. Yeah. The December 19th post that you wrote, our very first post. You had a pun about this too in there. Yeah. Yeah. Enter Sandman.

But I wanted to talk about Sandman. Or the Sandman. The comic book and the audio. I don't even know what to call it. It's not an audio book. It's like a theatrical performance where you have multiple actors and music and all the sounds. Like, you know, somebody is walking and you hear all that. Yeah. It's almost like the soundtrack of a movie sort of thing.

Yeah. Yeah. So I would like to give some context because I think what I realized listening to some of the things that we haven't published yet, but we'll have published by the time people listen to this, is that we don't give enough context. So the context I want to give on the Sandman and just bear with me for a few minutes. So the Sandman is a masterpiece comic, like a series of comics that was produced from like late 80s through mid 90s or so by Neil Gaiman.

And for those of you who don't know who Neil Gaiman is, it's like you might have watched Good Omens or American Gods or The Sandman on Netflix or Coraline, which is an animated movie. He's just a kick-ass author, absolutely favorite author of mine.

He writes fantasy. So The Sandman was produced by DC Comics and he was working on that for probably like almost a decade and it's a masterpiece of storytelling, kind of the depth and how he mixes religion and cultures like, like Norse mythology with Christian religion and stuff. It's just so bizarre at times and you have to do some research. At least for me, it's so captivating that you have to like go and actually read about stuff like reread those comics.

There are 12, I think officially there are 12 and there are probably two or three more like extra books, like open compilations. I think they were published maybe like once a week or once a month or something, but now you can get the entire box set for like 250 bucks. And that's just a great story. And Sandman being one of the seven entities. So Sandman is Dream. He rules the realm of dreams. When you dream, Sandman comes to you, he enters, you know, enter Sandman.

So actually when Metallica wrote that song, that's when Sandman was popular. It was part of the American zeitgeist. So I suppose, I mean, I can't tell for sure, but I suppose them writing that song was influenced by Neil Gaiman's work on Sandman. And yeah, there's also like death and destiny and destruction. So all of them are, all of them start with a D. All the seven kind of brothers and sisters who rule different realms of, you know, the existence.

Wait, except Sandman, which starts with S. So he's Dream. The Sandman is just one of his names. He's also Lord Morpheus. He's another name. And he also has different names and different cultures because that whole story jumps between different places and times. It could go back like 10,000 years where he's named Kaikul. And it's like prehistoric, you know, times. But most of the action happens in like mid-90s where he wears like leather jacket and like a, like a t-shirt.

He looks, he looks like Dave Bowie in the comics. Long story short, the comics are great, but they're kind of irrelevant to the audio. But where it became relevant to the audio is last year, Audible, together with Neil Gaiman and the guy called Dirk Maggs, produced this kind of audio theatrical performance of the Sandman, which they release every six months or so in kind of an installment of like 15 hours or so in length. So far, they've released three and the fourth is still pending.

It will probably come out sometime in 2023. The way they created this is just absolutely mind-blowing. Audiobooks, you mean? The audio, yes. Yeah. If you listen to any of the BBC performances from like the 40s or the 50s, like the radio, radio theater, I think that's what they called it. They had like the Herbert Wells, The War of Worlds and The Time Machine. Yeah. Which has all these different- I remember that one, yeah. You remember that?

You know, there's a different cast and it's like a shortened version because you don't have to say so much because you just hear sounds of like a door banging and you don't have to say like, he banged the door. Yeah. You just know that, right? Or you don't have to say like who said what because you can hear whose voice it is. So they did the same thing for The Sandman, but because it's modern, I guess, it's a lot better or a lot, I guess, more suitable to the taste of the modern people.

And here's the thing. The first two installments, I listened basically while doing other stuff like my AirPods while driving before going to bed. And I was also reading Sandman at the same time. I was like alternating between, well, I was like reading and listening and I was like looking at pictures. It kind of helped me construct the pictures in my head better.

And also like when I was reading the comics helped me put the voices to the pictures, which was, it's like watching a movie, but like imagine, you know, if you take a movie like Dune, for example, which is like what? It's three hours maybe, but the book is like 600 pages. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so obviously they have to omit like two thirds of the, of the content. So imagine this, uh, audio compilation plus the comics. It's like the book that's been fully filmed, right?

That's what it feels like. So what I, uh, realized when I was, when I recently purchased the third installment, which just came out, I was doing dishes and I was listening to them in my AirPods and I'm like, I just can't do that because. You need full attention. Yes. This thing is just so high quality. It's like, you know, reading and driving, you can't read and drive, right?

Well, I know some people, some people do that with like texts, but it's not a good idea to read like fiction and drive. And the same thing for this, at least audio novel, I guess that's what I would call it. So you're saying that it's not like much higher quality than our podcast. So you shouldn't casually listen to it. You should actually enjoy it fully.

Yes. So yeah, like I actually stopped listening to it when I was in dishes and then I, after I finished, I came to my backyard, I sat on the couch and I got my studio headphones, the same headphones I use for producing this podcast. And I started listening and I just got so immersed into the story. It's unbelievable. So it's just what I, I just wanted to say that there are some books, there are some songs, there are some podcasts, which, you know, ours isn't one of them.

Yet. Yet. Yeah. Well, I guess, except the Jake and Jonathan episode, that one you can probably sit and relax and enjoy. Yeah. Uh, that you just have to really enjoy, just like slow down life, uh, you know, sit down for an hour. Oh yeah. That's not the thing that I discovered there. Like chapters are about one hour long because the chapter encompasses kind of pretty significant story. It has like a beginning and the end and then it switches to something else in the next chapter.

It's like a mini book. Yeah. I guess it makes sense because they were produced as, as like comics once a month or like once every two weeks or whenever, whatever the frequency was. So I guess that's why like they have to be like self contained, you know? So yeah. Uh, like doing a production like that justice, I think is very important.

Now I just realized like I would, I used to listen to books like a two X, 1.5 X, but with this one, I think it has to be listened at a normal speed and some parts need to be re-listened.

Right. And like in full silence, full enjoyment with like nobody's tracking you. I don't know. I, I, it's been about like 15 minutes since I started talking about this. No, most podcasts and audio books, I do listen at like 1.5 X or something like that. Even podcasts, even podcast, like I, I turn, I use overcast right now and they have a setting for like automatic. You can provide a range and in that range, they'll automatically do that. And I set it to between 1.3 and 1.5.

Interesting. Because for podcasts, especially when people talk, I actually want to feel the, um, I want to feel the conversation. So I think, okay. So what ends up happening is for podcasts that I have heard a a lot of times and I know exactly kind of the format and how they speak. I tend to listen at a much faster pace because I know exactly how it feels like, but new ones. Yes, you're right. I mean, the app itself also the new ones. I do listen at one X or close to one X. Yeah.

But okay. So let me ask. So how did you land up on, I have so many questions and tangents now from your monologue about Sandman. And my performance of the Metallica, I hope for the suit for copyright infringement. I mean, if we do, we've made it big. Well, yes, let me, let me, let me just check one thing really quick. So James Hetfield net worth. Let's see how much he is worth. He is worth $300 million. You can see me for maybe like, I don't know, $20,000.

I mean, if they have sued us, we've made it big. So I would say that's a good problem. We will all over the news. Yeah. Yeah. The Streisand effect or like what Elon Musk tries to do every other day. Right. Anyway, so my questions about Sandman. So how did you land up on that? Were you trying to explain why that song is like very near and dear to you and you landed up on that or, or were you talking about the audio quality aspect of it?

I was just trying to show how bad I am at their articulating thoughts when I'm super excited about something. No, I think I was just so excited about this and I wanted to share this because audio books are related to audio. Well, I guess to podcasts because they're both audio, they're both information, they're both content that you consume to get information, to get some enjoyment, for pleasure.

And I just had this striking observation, I guess, for the first time in my life where it just wasn't about the content. It was about full immersion into audio. Right. That I never experienced before. And that's why I wanted to share about that. I have heard only one audio book like that, where they have a full cast of characters. Usually it's one narrator who's doing an excellent job portraying. By the way, you know who narrates the Sandman? Who? Neil Gaiman. The author himself.

So basically, all of the stuff that's not said by characters, he says himself. And he has such a great, mellow kind of voice. By the way, he narrates all of his books. So if you ever listen to any Neil Gaiman's books, you have to buy the one where he's a narrator and listen to that one ex. He is a great storyteller. And I'll shut up here. And I'll try to go back to that tangent. So I've heard only one audio book like that.

And I think the fact that I can't remember which one it was kind of says it wasn't like as it didn't leave that kind of an impression on me as this one clearly did on you. But I still loved it, right? Like, I haven't heard too much work. Like, I think, like you said, BBC early work, like the War of the Worlds, that sort of stuff was popular and not too many audio books like that. And it probably takes a lot to kind of produce that kind of a thing. It's very expensive.

It must be pretty expensive. Okay. So one interesting thing you said, and this is about your like listening to it while reading the comics, because you wanted to put the faces next to it, I almost have the opposite kind of feel to it.

When I listen to an audio book, or even when I'm reading a book, I start to form mental images of these characters, right? And they kind of evolve along with the character. And it's pretty awesome. And I feel this is why I like audio books and books much more than like TV, because when I'm watching it in TV, I feel like a lot of my creative juices that goes into like figuring out how this character looks like, or how do they act and all that is just taken away.

And this is what ends up happening when I watch, especially I watch a TV show after I've read something. I find it very jarring because it doesn't match with my internal like visualization of that character. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I don't know where I stand on this spectrum. I think an interesting experience I had this year, I watched the Dune in the theater.

I think it was end of last year when it came out, because this is released in 2023, right? And we are not working in 2022. Yeah. So the Dune came out in 2021, the movie. And I watched it in theater. It's just a fabulous movie. I hadn't read the book before watching the movie. And then I recently read the book. I bought the hardcover and I like savored the book because it was so good.

That book is very dense in terms of like all these concepts and different terms and all these kind of races and different planets and all civilizations, all this stuff. I don't know how advanced you are, whether you're able to like reproduce a lot in your head. For me, I think the fact that I had watched the movie before was of great help because when they were talking about that, ah, what's the name? That witch that was using that Gom Jabara thing thing on. I've forgotten the name.

Yeah, I've forgotten the names. Yeah, they come complicated names. But I would have a flashback to that scene in the movie. It would help me put the things into perspective. And maybe because the movie is so good. I had no hard feelings about that. But what I realized after reading the book is that there is just so much stuff that's not being said in the movie.

Yeah. Yeah. When they talk about this jihad and all these, you know, these horses, people on horses and stuff, it doesn't make that much sense in the movie. To me, at least. It goes too fast. It goes too fast. And it's like, why do they show these like Mongol armies riding on horses or something? But then when you read the book, it's like he has these flashbacks that, not flashbacks, like flashbacks to the future, I guess. Yes. That something is going to happen like a holy war.

And it's not until I started reading the second book, Dune Messiah, that I'm just going to spoil it for everybody now, where some of those visions from the movie and from the first book, they actually came into reality. Actually, they are omitted from the story because like the second book starts from the thing that that's already happened. So like in between the books, those visions become reality, but you just never know them.

You find out like piecemeal what happened from the second book, which I haven't finished reading yet. I haven't read the second, the first book is one of my all time favorites. I think that along with Isaac Asimov, I love sci-fi. You know that obviously. For the record, you hooked me up on sci-fi by introducing me to Isaac Asimov, which I read. I read almost the entire foundation thing. I think I read like nine out of 15 books. So yeah, thanks to you for that.

Right. But yeah, the Dune first book is one of my favorites. I haven't read the second book. I didn't even know there was a second book. That didn't come out like long time back, right? I mean, the Dune was written in like the 60s. Yeah, I read it like 10 years ago, I think the first book, but the second book, was it there? I somehow never even came across it. No, I think, I think, I think Frank Herbert died like 20 years ago. So it must have. So is this like a fan fiction?

No, no, no. It's written by him. I think, I think it's a, it's a trilogy if I'm not mistaking. Oh, okay. Yeah. Maybe it's just not as popular. So the second book, I have a colleague who told me that of all of the Dune books, the second book is his favorite. And I was curious why. And he said, it's like a treatise on religion. And when I started reading that, I kind of get why he's saying that.

So it's almost like by reading that book, you can understand religion better, which is a very interesting way to think about sci-fi. Right. So I actually took, I read the books 10 years ago, the first book, and I watched a movie last year. I loved that book. So I took, I was super excited about the movie, right? And I took my daughter with me and she was nine at that time.

And so we went in, we watched the whole movie and it's kind of a, I don't know what I expected out of her watching that movie, but I showed her the trailers. It looked pretty cool. And I said, okay, let's go watch that movie. This is one of my favorite books. And we did, and we came out and I felt like it was too rushed. It was, if I remember, it was like a three hour long, very long movie. And it covers only half the book.

Yeah. And even then, I think a lot of the context that's in the books and the character building and all that is lost because you can't have that in a movie, like in three. I think the audio book is like 20 hours or so. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I came out with like, oh, this is so rushed. Like I wish they had made it into like two, three movies. Right. And then she came out with like, it was so boring until the very end. It was like, cause she could not relate to what was happening.

First of all, I think a lot of the topics and subtext is way more advanced than it's meant to be for a child. And second, she didn't have the same appreciation or awareness of these characters and all that. I hit. And so she was like, I had no idea what was happening for like first one and a half hours. So, yeah. So this is a good segue.

I have a to do in my notes for this. By the way, we are going to talk about podcasting as well. Yes. We have to, we have to, we have to let this, let this out first. So, so I have this item I want to talk about, which is to bitch about the younger generation and their short attention span. So, so my son is one year younger than your daughter. Actually, no, he's six months younger than your daughter. So he's 10 now. So we were watching Home Alone.

We were like, okay, so it's Christmas time. Let's. Which one? First one? The original one. Yeah. You know, let's, let's introduce him to the Home Alone. Like both me and my wife, we grew up. Like actually Macaulay Culkin, who plays the guy there, the Home Alone guy. He's, I think two or three years younger than, you know, than you and I. Yeah. He's like 42, 43 now. So like basically when he was playing that movie, I was just about the same age when I was watching it.

Because I watched, I watched maybe like three or four years after it came out. So, so yeah, I was about the same age as he was when he was playing this and I just liked it so much. And my son is about the same age now, a little bit older. So he was watching it and he's like, can I just watch Minecraft stuff instead? Okay. Let's just like go play Minecraft Dungeons. Okay. Let's just go read. I'm like, I'm like, why? And he's like, it's just boring.

And I'm watching this and I realized now that if I didn't have this emotional connection to the movie, I would find it boring because there's just so much buildup in there. And it also looks kind of cheesy and finicky how they do stuff there. But then the last like 10 or 15 minutes where he makes all these traps and all these criminals like fall on them. By the way, this is just so exaggerated and stupid, like what they do there. But it's funny, I guess, by certain measures of funniness.

And then he really enjoyed it, like last 15 minutes. But I think if that whole movie was 15 minutes or like a TikTok thing, he would have probably enjoyed it a lot more. And the same thing goes, like I had him start to read Tolkien's hobby. Yeah. And he read the first like three or four chapters and he's like, nothing is happening. Well, to be fair, this might be like sacrilege to a lot of people. But when I read those books the first time, I thought they were super long.

I had the same kind of reaction. I think after getting into it enough, then you start to like connect with the characters and all that and you start enjoying it. I think the point I want to make about that generation, right? It's not just about the short attention span. It's just that... Impatience. Lack of impatience, like lack of desire to do the work. Yeah. Like instant gratification. Like, I mean, that's true in our generation already.

Yeah. But it's like kind of supercharged in the next generation. Sorry, by the way, to set the record correct, because I don't want to get this wrong. If Macaulay Culkin is like 42, 43, then we are not two, three years older than him. Right. I got it wrong. Yeah, younger than him. Two, three years younger than him. That's right. Just to set the record right, this is important stuff. Yes. Yeah, because I'm actually not in my 40s yet. Yes. Exactly. I'm like, what?

Well, I just turned 39. So, yeah. Cool. Okay. So, but the thing about that, doing the work. If a book has like 600,000 reviews on Goodreads, right? Like, there is something about it. I'm making the number up, but Hobbit probably has like hundreds of thousands of star ratings and it's all like four and a half stars or something. There is something about it. So, like, if you read the first few chapters and you still don't get it, just keep going. Something will come out.

It's possible that it's just not your cup of tea, but he likes reading all the fantasy, like Wings of Fire and all that modern stuff, which actually I read with him. Actually, it feels like an action movie. Like, you start, you like read that, like in the middle of the first chapter, you know, shit starts to happen and like stories unfold. Maybe that's why kids like those series so much.

Because like there isn't much different in Wings of Fire, you know, these kids books, which I won't even go into what they're about, like dragons and stuff. I haven't read any of those. I just read like the first few chapters. I would say it's probably like two steps lower quality than Tolkien's stuff. Right. Lord of the Rings. But it unfolds faster. But it's more action-packed. Yes, it's shorter. Yeah. No, I think that that's true.

I would say if he didn't like the first one, I have a bit of a similar feeling, to be honest. Like, I like the third Home Alone movie the most because there was a lot more strategy and planning of the traps and then the unfolding of everything. It lasted for like an hour. Whereas in the first couple of movies, it was the whole unpacking of what's happening and the payoff is like almost towards the last 15, 20 minutes. I think I know what's going on.

The movie Home Alone came out in 1991, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, something like that. Like 30 years ago, there was no competition. Basically, you would sit in front of your TV in the evening, like look at that. I don't know actually what was happening in the U.S. I was in, what do you call it, like early school in Russia. Yeah, actually, yeah, it was still U.S.S.R. I guess it was about to become Russia.

And so we would get this weekly newspaper that had all of the, like the schedule, the programming schedule. Listing. For like whatever, like the two channels that we had. I remember my uncle and I, because he was into movies, we would sit with the highlighter marker and highlight the things that we wanted to watch. And then, yeah, like let's say 9 p.m., you like go back home from, you know, from outside and you sit in front of a TV and you watch that Home Alone thing.

Because the alternative. Yeah, with the ads and everything in between. Yeah, with the ads and all that. Because the alternative was like to read a book or, I don't know, go talk to someone or go to bed, right? Yeah, there wasn't even anything to pull, to distract yourself. Like you sit in front of the TV. There is, I mean, you can talk to the person who sits next to you. That's the only thing you can distract yourself with.

Whereas now, you like, you pull your phone and then don't get to start on YouTube shorts because like you can just like get lost yourself for like an hour by just like watching a 30-second short. Yeah, and you start from like tennis and you end up in, I don't know, deep sea diving or whatever. Yeah, it's all interesting. But like after the fact, it's like, what? Yeah. Wait, wait. And then you wonder what happened. Wait, it's midnight? Yeah.

But the on-demand media, it's insane how in like 10, 15 years, it has completely changed the experience and what people expect out of media, right? Like my daughter, I've told her so many times that this is how we used to watch TV, that things come on at a certain time. Even recording wasn't there early on, right? Like you watch it at that time or you don't watch it, you wait for a rerun. And you figure out when the rerun is. She can't understand that concept. That, what?

Like you can't watch it? Yeah. Yeah. It's such a, and it's a short amount of time if we're speaking about the history of like media and television, like within 10 years or so, it has completely changed, maybe 15 years. Yeah. And I think the same happened to music as well. Yeah. Like you would use, I used to go to the music store and either buy a CD or like rent a CD and then go back home, like rip it into MP3s, then you can rent another one, et cetera. Same with VHS tapes.

Yeah. And now it's just so much abundance that surprisingly, actually, I ended up listening to exactly the same music because just there is so much music that I don't know what to choose from. Right. Maybe the same with podcasts, actually. So let's get back to podcasting. I have one more quick tangent and question for you before we head back into podcast.

Yeah. Yeah. You've got 10 minutes. Okay. All right. So Sandman, you've told me about this before and I've always wanted to read it, but I'm not a big like comics person. I think I've only read Asterix and Tintin and some Indian comics. Those are like my favorites. Other than that, I haven't read much. So Sandman, the Netflix series, is that like good? Yes, shit. Okay. It's a piece of crap. Netflix keeps throwing it on my face like every time I open the app, but okay. Got it.

So, but here's the thing. I'm, I guess, semi-joking here. So the Sandman on Netflix, they took, I think, the first three or four books and they condensed them into six one-hour-long episodes. Okay. That emit so much depth from the real thing. The cool thing about the audio is that no single word is emitted. Okay. It's full length. So an extra narration is added to make, to help you make more sense because there are no pictures.

Right. Whereas the Netflix thing is like dumbed down version that has also a bunch of action. To be fair though, I think starting from episode three or four, it starts to get better. I think maybe, maybe that build up is a little bit too slow. Also, I didn't like the cast. Okay. I think the cast, maybe because also I was already so used to the voices in the audible narration that I was like, that doesn't sound like Sandman.

No. The voices and maybe also the characters built up in your head. Also, the images from the comics, right? Yes. Because I think the thing that they did is they changed the genders and races of some of the characters. Yeah. Which I guess I wouldn't have paid attention to if I didn't know that they were different in the original thing and also in the audible interpretation. Right. So some of those characters are not important.

Some of those characters are more important, but like for me, I had this jarring experience of trying to reconcile things, but somebody at work, he said that he watched the Sandman and he's like, so good. I'm like looking forward to the second season. He never read the comics. He never listened to the audible thing. Right. So I'm curious actually, if you watch the Netflix series, what would your reaction would be? Because you might, you might actually like it. You might like it.

Yeah. I'll try it out. Yeah. So, well, since you started this, comics, I always thought comics were for like little kids because that's what I read as like little kid. I didn't read any of the serious comics. I read whatever, like simple stuff. You know, stuff like Garfield kind of thing. Yeah. It's like kiddie, kiddie stuff. So I never really took comics seriously until I watched Neil Gaiman's Masterclass on masterclass.com.

And there was one chapter, like 20 minutes or so on how he made comics. He was talking about how he came up with a kind of a storyline, how the storyline interacts with the pictures and how even the location on the page and the size of those frames, I forgot what they call them, like the frames, how they are different. And it had this example where he shows that like you have to turn the page to find out what's next.

Yeah. And if you, and if you don't, like if you put it like on the previous page, it would like destroy the effect, right? So it has to be like, you know, put it, put in a certain order in a certain size and all. And also the art of it, like back in the 30 years ago, like there's one person who does the sketches, the other person does like the, like inking. Then the other person does the coloring, the other person does the, the lettering.

And I was watching this, actually I watched that, I think two times. I couldn't believe my eyes that it's like an art form. Yeah. Like comics is an art form. During that time, I got the first Sandman book and I read it and I'm like, oh my God, it's just something else. Because you notice all of those details in there. Yeah. I noticed all of those details. Yes. And also the story itself. It took me a year to go through the entire collection of, of Sandman.

Actually, I didn't buy them. I got them from the library, which I think Neil Gaiman is rich now. Unlike Jake, Jake, I like Jake now, right? Buy sprint, buy make time. Don't know what I'm talking about. Listen to episode four. So, but actually it's about Christmas time. I hope my wife gifts me the box set of the Sandman. I told her I wanted actually so that it would be a test of our marriage. Right. To see if she heard me.

Well, a few years ago, my sister gave me the box set of all the Asterix comics. Those are my most favorite comics. I don't even know what they are. Oh man, you should read them. They're set in 50 BC. So at the height of the Roman Empire, when they're like, basically they have taken over all of France, which was Gaul at that time, right? And there's these, this small village of Gauls that are holding out against like big camps of Romans surrounding them, legionnaires.

And it's because they have magic potion that gives them like superhuman strength, right? And it's hilarious. It's been, I don't know, maybe 60, 70 years since they were written. They still hold good to this day. It's really good. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. There are some kiddie stuff like Calvin and Hobbes that my son has a full box set, which I sometimes read with him. This is so good. I would argue Calvin and Hobbes is not just kiddie stuff.

There's a lot of deep stuff in there that you continue to enjoy as you become an adult. So, you know, this guy called Daft Pilkey.

Yeah. He is the author of Dog Man. Yeah. For those of you who don't have little children or who don't live in, you know, in the U.S. or Canada. So, Dog Man is a half dog, half man. Policeman. Policeman. Yeah. Police dog. So, basically, there was like a policeman with a police dog. And then there was like an explosion in which the head of the policeman dies, but his body survives and the head of the dog survives, but the body dies and the stitches.

So, we got this character which is... Wait, wait, wait. Our episode just became explicit, by the way. Oh, yes. Yeah. We'll have to mark it because there's scenes of violence. Yes. Graphic violence. So, yeah, we have this funny-looking character which is like body of a man in police uniform and the head of the dog, which is very smart. He can't talk because he is a dog and he always judges squirrels, but he's like super smart and all.

And he licks his the police head like crazy licks. Yeah. Yeah. And he does all sorts of crazy stuff. Yeah. And there are the characters like Pity, the evil cat. Yeah. That feels like robots that try to conquer the world. All the kind of typical superhero kind of stuff, but with lots and lots of poop and pee jokes. Yeah. It's just like unbelievable. I mean, I love them too, to be honest, yes. Yeah. There's also Captain Underpants, right?

Yes. That people might have heard about because there is an animated movie. It's also by Dove Pilkey. But I read all of the Dogmen. Actually, I read all of the Dogmen and Captain Underpants and Super Diaper Baby and whatever the other one is. We have to get them pre-release now. Like that's the one thing that my daughter knows what date it's coming out like two months before.

Yeah. You see, like even girls read that because like as I was reading this, I was like, probably only boys would enjoy this. I'm like stereotyping right now. But it's all like poop jokes. Yeah, apparently everyone would enjoy that. Yeah. But the thing is, as I'm reading this, like when my son was like really into Dogmen, he was maybe like seven. And he could read, but we would read together. I would read to him before bed.

I would laugh my ass off at like adult references he puts in there, which my son just doesn't get, I can't come up with an example right now, but it's like he doesn't get it at all. And I read this and I'm like, oh my God, this is so good because it's like so disguised in between the lines, you know? And that's, I think the cool part, right? Kids can laugh about the poop jokes, but parents appreciate the other side, not just the poop jokes.

And Dov Pilkey, this guy, he's just so good at that. I went to back when I was working at Amazon a few years back. I mean, I was working there till this year or last 2022, but a few years back, there was a bring your kid to work day. I took her there and Dov Pilkey was there. He's so inspiring, like not just to kids, to anybody. Like he had a pretty difficult childhood and schooling and all that. He has ADHD or dyslexia or something like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And his teachers were like pretty much harassing him. He's got a lot of failures with his comics before landing up with like a hit, right? It's really inspiring how he tells that story. And the amazing part was he told this story while drawing up that story as a cartoon for us who were present at that session, like live. And it was so good. It was so, so good.

The other thing I think he does is he's normalizing a lot of like things that you don't expect in super hit comic books, like the squiggly lettering, or he just makes mistakes and cuts them and rewrites them. Just like what we do with our podcast, right? Yeah, exactly. But he shows the world and especially kids that it's okay, right? That's how you start. Yeah. And it's okay to make those mistakes. So yeah, I really like that. Yeah, that's, that's actually a very good point.

And I'll find that episode that I listened to. Like he, he gave, he doesn't give many interviews, I believe. Right. Um, and I found like back whenever I was like in the dog man, like five years ago, three years ago, I found an interview of his where he talks about his process and his childhood and ADHD and living in the cave or not living a cave, he goes to, to a cave in Japan, like, like he goes, yeah, he goes into that cave and like draws that stuff in there.

I think he has to take a kayak or something to go into that cave because it's accessible through water only. It was just so fascinating to hear all that. So I'll find that episode, I'll link the show notes. Yeah. Yeah, please. I haven't heard that too. That'll be fun. Yeah. That was very, very, very insightful for me. So speaking of that, Amazon's Meet the Author series where they like invited the authors where employees could go and like, listen to fish balls.

Yeah. Fish balls, they were called. Okay. Yeah, I've only been to one, I think, because I would only look at familiar names and then I think folks like Neil Gaiman would be like oversubscribed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody knows him. So I was at one by Chuck Palahniuk, who wrote The Fight Club. Oh, okay. The Fight Club. Yeah, the movie that's based on his novel, The Fight Club. Okay. And he has other good stuff that I read like as a teenager.

And I remember listening to him and he was just so weird. The way he was like talking about things and all that violence that he is putting into his books and The Fight Club comic book just came out, which by the way, I read, I didn't like it, but it's not the point. I remember that sitting in the room and then they, like, it's a huge hall with maybe like two or 300 people in there and he's on the stage and they open the floor for questions.

And I remember like, you know, I went to the mic, I was in the line, maybe two or three people in front of me. And then there are people at the other mic. So I was maybe standing for 10 to 15 minutes to ask my question. Yeah. He was talking about when you like, you really sort of fucked up and how the darkness comes out in the, kind of in the art and that kind of the darkness helps you create the art. If I'm not mistaken, that's what he was talking about.

And my question was about like, how do you not let the darkness consume you and destroy you? Because that's exactly what I was doing with my music. I was writing a lot of music at the time that even now, if I listen to it, it kind of gets me down, you know, but it was therapeutic at the time. So yeah. And I was staying there just about to ask the question.

And I remember I was just all shaking because, you know, I felt like, oh my God, this is like Chad Palahniuk, like, and he's like, he's watching me and somehow I managed to ask that question and he gave me, I forgot what his, what, what his answer was. Yeah. He answered to me. And I just remember that moment of like, he's just a normal person who can talk to like mere mortals. And I think that changed my perspective about like celebrities and stuff.

Hey, I had one more thing on this movie, comic, TV thing.

Yeah. Let's make it the last thing. Yeah. So you said, I should watch the Sandman and see how it goes. Did you happen to catch, there's a foundation TV series that came on Apple TV. Did you, did you see that? Oh, I had no idea. So similar to what you said, I, I, I didn't get hooked into it. I watched it. I gave it like about five episodes and then I gave up after that because it changes. Just to give context, right?

Foundation is the book series by Isaac Asimov about that civilization tens of thousands years from now where they live on different planets. I mean, all these people live on different planets and they search for earth for their origin. Yeah. Where, where, where everybody comes from. It's a fascinating book series, like I think 13 or 15 books in total. So, oh yeah, there's probably more than, so what ended up happening is he wrote foundation.

Then he wrote foundation and earth and a few other books. And then later, like this is over a period of 30 years. He writes a book that gets connected to this timeline somewhere, sometimes in the future, sometimes in the past. But you read like all of his books and they're sort of the robot series and the foundation series. There's a lot of like different series, right? They just connect all of them. Yeah. I mean, this is like my Iliad or my Bible or whatever.

I thought you said my Iliad. You know what I found really jarring about the Isimov's books is like there are two ways to read the books. You can either read in the chronology as he wrote them, which will be like you will jump in between series. Or you could read them by like the timeline of the time in the book itself, right? Where it's like you read the first of foundations and you read, you know, I guess you start with the robot and you read the empire, then you read the foundation.

Yeah. So what that's how I read them. And what I found jarring there is that, let's say you read the book that was written in whatever, 1968 or something, where he was still a young man. And then you read the next book, which was written maybe like 20 years from there, where he is like more of an adult. And there's just so much more sex in there. I don't know if you noticed that. For me, it was just so jarring because like the language was so different.

It felt almost like it's a different author because like you read one book and there is like absolutely no sex in there. And then the next one, it's like there's just so much details that you're like, well, I can't hear from sci-fi. That's with Fifty Shades of Grey. I do remember like some of the robot series towards the end. There was a lot of it. Yeah. Yeah. I actually read them in the published order. And then by that time I was already like, I loved it.

So I went back and read it in the chronological order. Yeah. It's awesome. By the way, if anybody who's listening, if you have never heard SMOF. Still listening. Yeah, still listening. If you haven't read SMOF, I'd say go check out the short story called Nightfall. That was my introduction to SMOF. And that was like- Oh my God, it's so good. Mind-bendingly, yeah. It's only like 20 pages or so. It's like 20 pages, yeah.

Yeah. And another one that's really good, it's called The End of Eternity. End of Eternity, yeah. That's about time travel. Also maybe 20 pages long. Yeah. Also kind of mind-bending, the time travel paradoxes. And then once you get hooked, then like the robot series and everything, yeah, you'll get hooked into it. Yeah. Okay, coming back to this, Foundation TV series. Do give it a watch and let me know how you like it, because I'm interested.

Like you're interested in hearing like Sandman, how would I take it? Yeah. All right, so let's do this.

Let's finish the recording now. Publish this as a bonus episode. Yes. Yeah, and I guess we'll still need to, you know, we still need to close this with, if you're still listening to this, and if you enjoyed it or, you know, didn't enjoy it, but for whatever reason is still listening, please send us a note. Actually, I just created an Instagram account. It's product, or not product, the Breakfast Club. Podcast Hacks. Yeah, Podcast Hacks. Product Hacks. Yeah, Podcast Hacks.

So, yeah, you can just send me a direct message. I guess, unless by the time you publish this, I have like 100,000 followers. I'll read and respond. Or, you know, like tag us on Twitter. Arnav is mostly like the Twitter guy. If Twitter still exists by the time this is published. If not, I'm on Mastodon also. Yeah, on Mastodon. Then also our sub stack, I think there is a way to leave comments there. And also you can write us at hello at metacastpodcast.com. And please subscribe.

Give us five stars. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you're still listening, it's been like almost close to an hour, then you're clearly like, this is five stars for you. Exactly, right? But also it's like, if you buy something on Amazon, right? If you enjoy it, just leave it a five star. If you don't enjoy it, just return it. And, right? So, in this case, well, just unsubscribe instead of giving us a one star review, please. No, no. I think keep listening, even if it's, yeah.

I think if you're still here, like, give us two five star ratings. Ask your mom to give us a five star rating, too. And the rest of your family, too. Create a fake account and give us a five star rating from that account as well. Right. But I am actually genuinely interested in hearing from people, if anybody is listening again, about this episode, because we had a pretty clear plan, right? Initially, we started with, we'll have a biweekly podcast of a guest podcaster coming in there.

Then we changed it to, okay, let's do it weekly. We'll still have the biweekly podcaster come in as a guest. And every other week, we'll do a meta-sode where we're talking about our reflections on that episode. And we'll call that meta-sode. And now, I think this one was, like, we didn't talk about podcasting at all. This is not a meta-sode. This is not a guest episode. I think this might be one of those prime episodes, Ilya. Oh, I love that.

Yeah. So, like, a year later, our podcast is due to Jacob and Jonathan. Yeah. Path Dependence is what it's about. But I am seriously interested in hearing, if people seriously like things like this, where we discuss whatever the heck comes up, we would love to chat more about this sort of stuff.

We also talked about, Ilya, I think, about doing some sort of live, like a Twitch stream or something like that, where we can have audience asking us questions or offering their opinions right there. That would be pretty cool. Yeah. It's basically like we publish a sub stack. And two days later, we have three likes. Yes. One of which is mine. The other one is Arnab's. Yeah. And the third one, I think it's one of your friends.

I mean, we haven't sent it to anybody other than our friends. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so, yeah, I guess we have to stop the recording now. And I actually enjoyed this one. Yeah. I love this one. It was awesome. Yeah. This one was very good. Okay, cool. Till later.