Episode 50: We Hit Fifty!

Transcript

Well, 50 episodes. I listened to a podcast years ago that was celebrating, I forget if it was their 50th or their 100th episode or something like that, some milestone. And they made the point of, it seems really arbitrary to just celebrate some random round number. I suppose from a cynical point of view, I agree with that.
However, as human beings, we like things in sets of 3, 5, 10, you know, that sort of thing. So 50 episodes, not nothing. So I want to take this episode to talk about two things.
One, some of the plans or hopes or whatever you want to call them for where this podcast, where I'd like to take this podcast in the future here. And then secondly, I have some follow-up items. I listen to the episodes of this show more or less as they release. And I do that for a couple of reasons.
The main reason I do it is to make sure that A, the show came out all right and that there is no quality issues. And also over time, are there, you know, vocal quality sorts of things that I'd like to change or shift or think aren't the best or whatever.
So I, but in, in that time, I also, as I go through, I noticed that some, in some of the episodes, maybe I say something that I think maybe I didn't represent quite correctly, or maybe I have a follow-up item, like some point that I probably should have made on that show that I didn't or whatever.
Or maybe things have changed since then. I don't know. So I'm going to go through a couple follow-up things as well. And that'll be our, our 50th here.
So first of all, moving forward, first of all, I'd very much like to keep this show. I am, what I'm happy about, I'm happy about the general length and variety in episodes.
I like this sort of anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes timeframe. I think that's a nice timeframe for what I'm doing here.
Not all podcasts that I listen to fall into like a short form, right? I, for a podcast, a 10 to 20 minute is really considered a pretty short form podcast.
Many of the shows I listen to are, you know, an hour. Some of them are two hours. Sometimes, sometimes they border on three hours.
And I think that's great, especially when you have a regular set of co-hosts who, who regularly can play off of one another. You're not just listening to one person the whole time and whatever.
So I think for a single voice podcast like this, this is sort of the right length. So, so I'm happy with that choice. I wasn't a hundred percent sure on it going into it.
But I also wasn't sure initially if I was going to try to really keep things. My initial call shot was like 10 minutes.
And sometimes I just ended up talking longer than that. And it goes 12, 14. There's a couple episodes that are almost 20.
And I think that's okay. I don't think that, I don't have a problem with that. So I don't really need to like artificially constrain myself at 10.
But when I do sit down to podcast, I, my, my editor, the thing that I'm recording into, it, it is automatically set up to show me where the 10 minute mark is just so I have some concept of how long I've been talking.
So anyway, happy with that piece of things from a editing standpoint. Um, there is still some like voice stuff that I'm trying to figure out when I used to edit podcasts quite a while, many years ago, I had a slightly different studio setup, different plugins, all that kind of stuff.
And I haven't done it in a while. So I'm still trying to lock in and tune in on just the right settings, but hopefully, you know, for everybody, it sounds all right. You can hear it good and all that kind of stuff.
Moving forward, I would, the main change or not change, but the main thing I would like to explore a bit is more either, depending on how you want to think about them, either guest shows or interview style shows.
Like where I bring somebody else in and talk with them. I don't want to turn this into a strictly guest and interview style show, but I would like to have some other voices in here along the way, particularly given the type of topics that I, I tend to gravitate to and tend to enjoy talking about.
There are many, you know, the whole point of the show, if you go back and listen to episode 30, which is where I decided to talk about what this podcast is about.
The whole point of this show is just to bring up and explore topics that I find interesting, mostly just to show, I don't know, show where my worldview comes from.
Because I find it, I find it interesting to hear other people's interests and experiences and what, what they find interesting and not everybody is the same on those things and that should be okay.
Right. And we should be able to just, you know, the world's become so opinionated and so bifurcated on everything.
And it's nice to just have things that are interesting and maybe broaden your horizons a bit and maybe by me sharing some things that maybe help other people think about some stuff that they've never thought of before, maybe in turn, they will then share with other people or share with me or whatever things that I've never thought about before or that they've never thought about before.
And I think that's a healthy way to just spread worldview.
Anyway, so I, I would like to get some people on this show.
I have had some folks reach out so far, which is great.
Um, I actually, at the time that I'm recording this, I have recorded or I have a recording coming up with a guest.
So there will be at least one in the near future after this episode, but I would like to do.
Some more of that.
Um, you know, if I could get to a place where maybe once every two weeks I had a guest or something just as a random kind of metric to look at, that would be a, I think a comfortable place for me.
That'd be, that'd be fun.
So that's probably the big thing that I'm hoping to do moving forward.
Um, I would like to promote the show a little more.
I've been kind of leaning on just natural organic promotion for the most part.
I really haven't done a whole lot to push it out in front of people other than just the occasional like LinkedIn post or mentioning it to someone that exists or whatever.
But I haven't really gone out of my way to really push it.
Maybe I'll do a bit more of that if I, you know, but that's not necessarily a goal, just something that is always flowing around in my head.
Another thing that I have thought about doing that, I don't know if I'll ever get around to this one or not, but it would be fun to take certain small clips of the audio from this show.
And I kind of have a vision of like pairing it up with short, maybe animations or something and turning them into like YouTube shorts or reels or like, you know, those short form video kind of things.
This would be mostly teaser style kind of stuff that maybe, you know, puts maybe an interesting passage or thought out there.
Largely promotional, right?
Like it would, it would be the goal of it would be to then get, you know, viewers to come back and listen to the show.
I don't know if I'll ever actually get around to this piece or not, but it is something that's been kind of flowing around in my head.
So other than that, you know, one other thing I want to mention for listeners, first of all, thank you all for listening to begin with.
Also, I do try to vary the topics.
Like when I'm recording, sometimes I'll record out of order and I'll jump around a little bit.
And for instance, I don't want to just have like six shows on AI all in a row, right?
So if I'm going to talk about AI, let's be honest, we're all inundated with AI stuff.
I do think and work quite a bit with AI these days.
Like I have opinions there, but I don't want it to just be every show.
This is not an AI show.
So I try to space them out, you know, maybe an AI topic every six or seven episodes or whatever, not necessarily right on the mark, but I just, I try to space them out.
I try to do like reviews of stuff back to back to back to back.
Occasionally, I do like reviewing a thing.
No one's paying me to do it, but you know, it's still, it's a, sometimes an interesting topic just to say, here's a thing I use or a thing I found or whatever.
Again, I don't want them to be back to back to back.
So I do try to vary things and make it so that there's a cadence to it all.
So it's not just back to back, the same thing all the time.
So I just wanted to mention that, but I do thank everyone who does listen to this show.
You know, if you ever want to come in on and chat or, you know, have a topic you find interesting or anything, don't hesitate to reach out.
There's a contact page on the website, which if you've never been there, it's LMC for late morning coffee, lmc.fm.
Again, I never publicized that, but it's there.
So that's some of the stuff moving forward.
Now, a couple of follow-up items.
I'm going to list the episodes and try to remember, because I take notes on like, oh, I want to follow up on this thing, but I'm not always 100% sure.
I just need to make sure I remember what I was going to talk about here.
So first episode I want to talk about, episode 38.
This was an episode that I talked about sort of, well, it started initially as an episode about some of foundational statistical topics.
But what ended up being instead is really talking about how you can kind of discern that maybe a news media or whatever, or a social media thing is misrepresenting research.
So sort of my core point in this is that if you ever hear something say, the study proves that your ears should sort of perk up and you should kind of have your bullshit meter going, because that's not a good phrasing.
If you want to hear more about that, check out the episode.
But what I realized through the show, because I kept saying like, oh, a better phrasing would be, you know, this study lends support to, which is very wordy.
There's a bunch of ways you hear this, right?
And it's kind of a spectrum.
Like there's, there's, when people say results prove, that's really not a great way to say it.
Now, if you go out of your way to say the study lends support to, that's probably a great way to say it, but it's very wordy.
There's two sort of in the middle of the spectrum somewhere.
You sometimes hear results show or studies show.
I would say that leans more to the not great side of things.
But then the one I didn't bring up on the, on, on that episode at all that I think is a good phrasing and it's definitely less verbose is the study suggests or the study or results suggest.
So that word suggest, I think is probably the most short form way that I think is a good phrasing that keeps things honest and actually represents what research does.
And again, if you haven't listened to the episode, if you haven't listened to the episode, if you haven't listened to the episode at all, episode 38, go, go check that one out.
Another follow-up item from episode 11.
This was a review of an app called Macrofactor, which was used for, it's used for like calorie and macronutrient tracking.
Largely targeted towards, you know, gym goers and fitness people.
The follow-up item here is that on that episode, I talked about how the AI was pretty terrible.
From what I understand, it has gotten better and now you can just take a picture of your food and it'll like, you know, try to calculate the calories and things like that.
So, I don't know how good it is because this is my second follow-up item.
At the time, I've been using it quite frequently.
I've kind of backed off from it.
I just don't really feel the need for these trackers and I've talked about that on other episodes as well.
But if you're looking for a calorie and macro tracker, Macrofactor is really good.
And from what I understand, it got some great AI upgrades in one of the latest updates.
So, I just wanted to say that that has changed since I recorded that episode.
Recent episode, episode 48.
I talked, I reviewed and sort of talked about this card game, Star Wars Unlimited.
One thing I didn't say on that episode that I really should have.
Because one of the things that has kind of gotten me into and kept me in this game.
We also play this game with our kids.
And I wanted to, and they like it a lot.
That's not the reason that I like it just because they like it kind of thing.
That's not my point.
But I did want to mention that if you are a hobby gamer kind of person and you have kids and like you used to like playing Magic or whatever, I will say that Star Wars Unlimited is a way more accessible game for kids than Magic is.
Having taught my kids both games, I can very much attest to this.
The barrier to entry to trying to teach a new player Magic these days is crazy.
There's just so much there and so many years of history and whatever else, baggage, that comes along with it.
Not only is Star Wars Unlimited a much more modern game, which was part of the point of the episode, but it's also very, very accessible to children.
So, if you're looking for something to play with kids, that's just something I didn't mention on the show.
That has been a really great thing about that game.
And finally, episode 34, which had to do with essentially things that you find kind of difficult.
The episode in this case was about, I used sort of reaching out to old friends or old colleagues that you haven't talked to in a while as sort of an example of something that can be challenging for people.
Challenging for me, maybe.
You know, hard to kind of work up the courage sometimes to do it or the wherewithal to do it.
And one of the things, so sort of the point that I was making on that episode was it gets easier to do this the more times you do it because it becomes kind of a practiced thing.
So, if you're trying to do like some sort of reach out to a colleague and see if they want to grab lunch thing, it's going to be pretty hard the first time.
And the second time it will be a little less hard and the third time a little less hard and so on and so forth.
And part of my point was because it becomes practiced.
It becomes something that now you've practiced doing it and you have some go-to lines and you don't have to think so much about it.
And one of the phrases that I didn't use during that episode that I should have is that this sort of approach to things is a great form of cognitive offloading.
Part of the reason that it's so daunting to do this sort of thing for a person is that it takes so much brain power to do it that first time.
You have to really think about what you're writing and, you know, what are they going to say and all this kind of stuff, right?
The more times you do it, the more it just becomes almost habitual, almost easier, you know?
And that was sort of the point of the whole thing.
But the phrase that I didn't use or the term I didn't use that I should have was that this is sort of a useful and clever form for cognitive offloading.
So, if you want to check that episode out, that's 34.
So, I'm sure there were many other points along the way that I did or didn't make during these episodes, 50 episodes, that I probably should have.
But those were the four that sort of jumped out to me after listening over time.
So, again, I want to thank everyone for listening to this show.
I'm having a lot of fun with it.
I really enjoyed doing it.
I hope you enjoy listening.
If you ever want to talk about something or think that something would be, you know, a great fit or just want to chat about whatever, feel free to reach out.
LMC.FM.
There's a contact page there.
You can get a hold of me there.
Thank you so much.
And here's another 50.