010 - Season Finale

The speaker talks about his interest in podcasting and his experience attending a podcasting class at the library. He describes the studio setup and the equipment used. The instructor is not very knowledgeable and struggles to answer his questions. Despite this, the speaker is impressed with the equipment and considers using the library's studio for recording his podcast. All right, John, how's it going today, man? It's surprisingly getting better, I would say. Today is getting a lot better. It's getting better. How about you? How have you been? You know, pretty good. Yeah. Pretty good. Yeah. I'm really enjoying this gig, if you will. You're not reading something, are you? No. Not at all. I just want to make sure you're genuine here, just so you know. Oh, absolutely genuine. No teleprompter for me. But you rehearsed it. I'm loving this. I'm loving the whole podcast thing. Yeah. It's a lot of fun. Me too. It's just you talking to you, I don't know, it's just a way to offload, I guess, what I've been feeling. Yeah. What my wife is tired of hearing me complain about, maybe. Yeah. You're not tired yet of it? No. You'll get there. No, I think the world needs more of this. More men need to just, you know, get together and just sort of sit down and talk. You know, you think about, you know, bars and what bars represented back in the golden days of exchange of knowledge and experiences. And I think it's relaxing. It's in our nature. So I'm happy that we created that little bar setting. I have my beer here as well. Oh, perfect. To complete the setting. It's that time. It's beer 30, as they say. Or it's five o'clock somewhere or whatever. Yeah. Nice. Well, that's fantastic. I mean, I got to tell you, I'm loving this so much, John, that I'm trying to learn more about it. Trying to learn more about the art or the science of podcasting. I figure, like, what better time than, you know, once you're starting to wrap up your first season of a new venture to actually learn how to figure out what you're doing, you know. But let me tell you a little story real quick. I went. So there's these things called libraries still. They have books in them. Yeah. Really, really big back in my younger days. I've heard that. Yeah. There are things still. My town, my city has a pretty nice library recently remodeled or moved to another facility. It's great. But apart from just the books, lots of stuff there. I mean, you can go check out DVDs if you had, say, a DVD player in your house. I don't happen to have one, I don't think. But anyway, those are there. Anyway, there's all kinds of other resources there. Right. So we've got this. It's essentially like a community access television picture, Wayne's World kind of productions there, you know. Anyway, they've got in the library, they've got a studio in there. But they do these classes for free for community service kind of stuff. And they were advertising a class yesterday that was introduction to podcasting. And I thought, well, I need an introduction to that. So I loaded up one of my kids in the car yesterday after dinner. And we drove over to the library. And I showed up for this scheduled introduction to podcasting class. Right. I walked up and there's a guy at the desk. And looking, I don't know, like maybe a guy who works at community access television. I'm stereotyping a bit. Pocket projector. Yeah. He's got the glasses with a little tape in the middle. Yes. Glass tape. In the front of his slacks. Sure. Oh, yeah. Nice enough guy. Yeah. Yeah. And I said, hello. Fine, sir. I didn't say that. You were wearing your top hat. Yes. Yes. Good day. I've come to the library. Spitting my cane, wearing a monocle. Frequently wear that out. Anyway, so I said, hey, I'm here for the podcast class. They doing that? Because I didn't see any other eager students standing around. I'm five or ten minutes before the scheduled start of the class. And he said, ooh, I'm covering for somebody tonight. Let me look at the schedule. And he pulls a three-ring binder out and flips through. And he says, oh, yeah, sure enough. They're doing the introduction to podcasting class tonight. Great. Well, I'm here for it. Where do I go? He said, well, it's not really like a class, per se. He said, but I can show you what I know about the machine. And I was just like, the machine? Like, what are we doing here? Hang on, hang on. So this guy, pocket protector, his white shirt, short sleeve, standing there. And he's there for somebody. He's not there. He doesn't work there, maybe. Well, I don't know. He's covering. Maybe he works there, but maybe he doesn't work this shift. I don't know. Or janitorial staff. But anyway, someone asked him to be there, and he's there. He doesn't know about this class. He looks through the schedule. And then he moves forward to become the teacher, I guess. Sure, yeah. Substitute. But he's not just handing out worksheets. I mean, he's like, let's do this. This is the reception area, right, still? Oh, yeah. There's a desk. But he says, yeah, I'll show you what I know about the machine. And he said, I need to go to the bathroom. And he got up and walked away. Oh, man. And he just disappeared. And I said, where the hell did he go? And my kid walks up at this point, and he's showing me some book he found or something. And then the guy comes back. He's presumably with washed hands, hopefully, and says, okay, are you taking the class? Or is the other little guy? And I was like, my son? My son had walked away at that point. And I said, no, it's me. I'm here for the class. He said, oh, okay, great. Let's go. So we walked back into this room, back in the back. And I'm with this guy. And it's a small room. It's got two computers in it and, you know, a mixing board with lights and sliders, you know, as you might see in a radio station or something like that. So it's an actual studio. Actual studio. Got it. A mic on a boom. That's kind of cool. And headphones. And he said, yeah, this is the – and he introduced our listeners who are into podcasting. I'm sure we'll know. I did a little Googling. I don't know if his name is Roadcaster 2 or something like that. A neat piece of hardware, right? And so he starts showing me this thing. He said, it's fantastic. Check it out. You can put in this. You can do four people. And it hooks to the phone and this. And you can have callers call in. And he said, and look at this. It does robot voices. And he puts a headset on. I put a headset on. He pushes a button and he starts talking and he sounds like a robot. And I said, oh, that's fantastic. He's like, all right. And it does this. And he pushed another button and he sounded like a, I don't know, like a low voice or something. These funny sound effects that my kid might have been entertained by. And he kept going. So he kind of went through all this. Look at this one. It echoes. How long has – how much time is this? This went on. Well, this is in the very beginning of the class. And those are air quotes for those not watching on the non-existent YouTube feed here. So I'm impressed by the hardware because I like techie stuff. I like toys, like adult toys. And I thought, I've got to buy one of these. And he said, oh, you know, it's whatever, $600 or whatever, but you can use it for free. That's a deal. Hard to beat that price. And so he kind of goes through, show me this whole thing. And he's like 60% knowledgeable about this, right? Yeah. This is great for his first day, you know. Yeah, yeah. But the 40% that was missing, I mean, was key. Because then I ask a few questions. Like I said, oh, well, I'm using such-and-such software program at home and this mic. Oh, yeah, I don't know. And he's sort of looking around the computer. And I said, oh, there it is down there. I can see the icon for this application that I'm using. Oh, yeah, here it is. So he opened it up. And I said, oh, how do I get all the different channels to show up in here? You know, I have a friend that I'm recording this podcast with, and I'd like us to do separate channels. I'd like to do it. And he was baffled. I wasn't trying to trick him. Yeah. I was asking a valid question. Well, I don't think it does it, you know. You didn't turn around and give like a high-five to your son at that moment. My son, he was out looking for books. And so this gentleman I was working with here, very nice guy, but, you know, he made up an answer. You know how you can tell when people make up an answer. Oh, well, it doesn't do that because of the prefabrication in the articulators, you know, resistor. And I was like, oh, that's something. I don't think it's true, but I said, oh, it's something. And boy, it was about four minutes of reading the manual on my phone last night when I got home, and I figured out exactly how to do the thing I was asking the poor guy to do. But apparently he hadn't read the manual. Anyway, so now I'm torn, right? Do I go use this wonderful facility and record this podcast for posterity there, or do I do it from the comfort of my own home? That story has so many, so many different ways, so many places I can pick and choose with questions. You know, obviously, you know, this ancient institution that you went to, the library, you went to the library. And in the dungeons of the library, there's this really hip sort of recording studio that they have sort of laid out. And, yeah, that's incredible that your library has access to that sort of equipment. And it's funny, no one's using it. No one's aware of it outside of people who pass this Wayne's World. He told me the schedule's fairly open. Yeah. He's like, you just reserve it. We got a lot of space on the schedule. And I said, you don't say. But, yeah, apparently I could just reserve it. They have other stuff, too. I mean, there's a whole like a TV production sort of thing. You could do your own show there, I guess. Yeah, I like that. Wayne's World, maybe. I think that would be good. I think we should redo Wayne's World. Yeah, I like that for you. I mean, yeah, I think it would give a nice sort of overall experience. Yeah, I mean, I like it. Because, you know, you already know the lingo like, you know, levels. Levels? To record. And you're using it in an appropriate way. And I think, yeah, go for it. I'm just going to say one more little thing. And this is kind of a veiled threat, John. I just want you to be on your toes. Because he did show me one thing. I mean, there was the robot voice, which not very helpful. Oh, yeah. There was like the anonymous voice, not very helpful. But he did show, like, oh, hey, you can do this. And you tweak it a little bit one way or the other. And it actually sounds real, but it sounds like someone else. And he did it. He made a little tweak. And it sounded exactly like another human, but not him. Like maybe like more of a woman's voice. And then a very low voice. But realistic. It didn't sound fake. And it's doing it live in this thing. But he pointed out that were I not happy with my co-host, I could just do the whole thing myself. And still have a co-host. But it would just be me. I could just push a, well, John, what do you think about such and such? And I push the button. Well, I don't know about that. That's my Mickey Mouse voice. I mean, it's the tiniest similarity to my voice. Love it. Yeah, it sounds just like you. And so it's not a threat, but it's kind of a threat. Don't screw this up. Because I don't need you, frankly. I mean, I could just do the whole thing. That's just the way that life is going these days. We have generative AI and machine learning. And it's so good that you could just, you know, just sit at home and play with yourself. Yeah. Absolutely. I'm blushing. John, I'm blushing at the implication. You know, I took up a lot of time for that story. I am thrilled. I'm very excited about what's going on here. I don't know. I don't feel like there's an opportunity. I mean, we can't transition now because there's more questions to be answered. Okay. We're just going to keep going? I think it's fine. Let's do it. This is the holiday episode, right? That's right. This is where if I were in the library, I would push the button that makes jingle bell noises. And I could sort of imitate a caller with like a funny voice or like a normal voice. We really love your show. Keep it going. Keep up the good work. And that's right. You can have people, this thing, it plugs into your, it connects to your phone over Bluetooth. You can have people call in. And it was fascinating. I mean, I'm a walking commercial for this device that I don't own, that I used for free. But yeah, you tie it to your phone and it actually, it figures out the whole thing where like it will record the audio coming in from the caller. Yeah. But then the caller hears the audio of everybody who's plugged into this board. Like, let's say you've got, let's say we're doing a show with, well, two of us sitting in a room. We're plugged into this board and then we have a caller call in. Well, we want the caller to hear us conversing with he or she or whatever. Yeah. Him or her. Oh, they don't have to. Yeah. And, you know, we're conversing with that person. And, but we would just hear their side. You know, which wouldn't work if you just stuck your phone on speakerphone or something like that. Yeah. Anyway, the thought they put into this was, was pretty fantastic. Yeah. I mean, imagine doing that by yourself. That's why you always need me, buddy. That's right. I do what AI can't do. Well, either, either doing it by myself or I wanted, I wanted, you know, four guests in a room so I could be adjusting the sliders. Yeah. Like a, I don't know. Yeah. People are recording music. But then. They're laying down some tracks for their new album or whatever. Yeah. And there's a guy in the room who's doing the thing. Obviously, I don't know what I'm talking about. I don't know if that's clear. No, I, yeah. I mean, like your hand gestures definitely will, will convey over, over the audio. Sure. Oh, yeah. Yeah. For those who can't see, I'm adjusting the things with my fingers. Yeah. Yeah. A little mime thing happening. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, I mean, I think that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a beautiful vision for yourself and becoming the guy behind the chair, the guy in the chair. But I don't know if the guy in the chair can actually be the guy on the mic. So you'll, there'll be a code of crossword roads where, you know, you'll have to figure out, you have 10 people around the room, international summit, and you're like on the. Yeah. I mean, you can be the guy behind the curtain. Yeah. But I, but I want to be, I want to be the hands-on host. Is that a thing? I bet that's a thing. I bet that's a new term. We're going to start that new term. I love that. Hands-on host. I'm thinking of, what's the, what's the European duo techno band with the mouth hat? Like you could just have like a, you'd be like a DJ at a wild party. Yeah. And just kind of like one head, one headphone off the head into the mic. Oh, I don't. Yeah. That's not cool enough to DJ. No, but that, that. But I feel like. Oh yeah. That, that's, that's symbolic, symbolic to like what, what it would be like. You'll be like the, the talk of the podcast world. You know, did you see what he did with the levels in that last call? Yeah. He's a hashtag hands-on host. Yeah. That is great. Hands-on host. Yeah. I love it. Get your sunglasses. If this, if we hit a thousand subscribers, I don't know how many subscribers we're going to hit before I go buy one of these things. Call in now. I know. Call in now. Oh my gosh. How many subscribers would you need to, what, to like, to further engage, I guess, in. I don't know. It's just, I just, I'm making an arbitrary number to allow myself to go make this purchase that I don't need to make. Yeah. Oh, you're, you're going to end up buying the equipment to have at home. Well, I don't want to drive to the library. It's like four miles away. Oh, you got to drive. You got to drive. You got to, you got to, because if you don't use it, then it's going to go away. And then the future, you know, when they go to the library and they go into these archives, these deep cavernous, you know, archives, and they, they ask, sir, do you have a podcasting equipment? The RJ7200. Ye olde, ye olde podcasting. The guy, the guy with the pocket protector and the glasses comes out and he's like, well, she followed me this way. Come, come back into the archives. Opens a hermetically sealed door. They did have like a, some old stuff up front. My kid was looking at this. I'm not, I'm not an AV guy, but I think it was like for old 16 millimeter, like movie film or whatever, you know, where it was actually a strip of, a strip of film, right? That they would run through this, this little machine where it projected the image up on this little screen here. So you could go through and do the splicing and all that when you actually literally had to cut the film and tape it together and all that stuff. My kid was fascinated looking at this thing. I think it was more of just a historical display, but nevertheless. Right next to the CTV, you know, come, come to our, our hot live technology. Check it out. Yeah. Beta max. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I, I, I, I would, I don't know, I think a thousand. How much did it cost? That kind of equipment? Cause that sounds serious. Remarkably inexpensive. Okay. I think it was around like a $600 mark, which seemed very reasonable. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's just the thing. There's no, you know, mics or headphones or you can buy all the nice accoutrement that goes along with it or whatever. But, uh, but, you know, I was like, it'd be fun. You have a little table in here and you get the, I'm looking at all the marketing photos when I browsed it on the website. I had trouble sleeping last night. So I was looking that on my phone, which you're not supposed to do when you can't sleep. Anyway, uh, looking through it and, you know, there's four diverse folks sitting at a table with, you know, the mics coming out, Asian guy, African American woman, you know, geeky white dude with glasses or some, some sort of thing that, that, that, you know, creates a little bit more, uh, wheelchair. Um, yeah, but, uh, yeah, it was, they were sitting around the table discussing something relevant to society. I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. Couldn't have been nearly as important as this conversation. Oh yeah. How to record a conversation. Yeah. I mean, I would love to talk about that, that, that room again. You're like, it's, you're, it's flowing all sorts of things and it's only really 30 minutes, but, uh, yeah. Well, we're teasing. I mean, this is where, can you believe that we're at the end of the first season? I mean, this is it. This is what I think it's like eight. This is episode eight. Yeah. John did that, did that, that podcasting equipment have like a little, like a little fanfare like I hit the applause button. I tapped the, while he was talking, he robot voiced and I pushed the button that went, it was like studio applause. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I mean, no, I think, uh, I think that we should get that device. So we could just right at this moment, this is where we need the applause for, for all the, the, the hard work and effort that's gone into this whole of the season. I could probably, I mean, I know I could do it after the fact in my editing software, but I, you know, I get, we finish these up and then I just want to, I want to move on to the next thing. I don't want to go through it. I think I feel that clapping. I agree with you. I would say not do it because it does feel, um, disingenuous. Yeah. You know, I know the same sounds bite, but if you had it there on the spot, it, you know, he spliced it in later. Yeah. I just bring down the mood. I'm sorry. Yeah. 100th episode. Yeah. We're almost there. 92 more to go. Yeah. Yeah. Imagine that. Imagine that. We'll be like on a talk show. We'll be on a talk show talking about like our overnight success. Um, and you as being the, the, the, the life of the host with the most. Oh, the hands free host. Oh, hands on, hands on, hands on host. You come out with like your sunglasses, white suit, you know, hands on host with the most too much. Yeah. I bring back the dreadlocks. We just sit on the couch and we talk about it. Uh, yeah. You used to have dreadlocks. I did. When I first met you, you had dreadlocks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's not anymore. Not anymore. I will bring it back for our, uh, our debut one. You grown it out a little bit. It looks like maybe you're growing it out. I'm just, I'm just lazy. You're just, you're just, you're just not taking care of yourself. Whatever. It's vanity. All right. Weren't you wearing that shirt yesterday, John? No. Past my nose. Look into my eyes. Yeah. So what can we look forward to? What can our listeners look forward to? All right. What do we got? All right. We got a lot. We got a lot coming up here in the next season. I think, uh, I want to talk. Let's just go through what we're talking. I want to talk about, uh, comic book movies. Okay. Yeah. I'm talking about that. All right. It'd be hard to like not talk about them right now. Well, I want to talk. I want to talk. I want to go back. I want to talk about that, that group of people in that advertisement. Maybe, maybe two episodes. Okay. I want to talk about just, just the, the situation and the improbability of that situation ever happening. And then also, uh, possibly talking about, you know. Is that the D word you're talking about? That's another D word. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah. That's a good one. Season two? Season three? I don't know. Season two? Yeah. Keep listening. I don't know. Yeah. Uh, what else? Oh, e-bikes. You hear about these? You've seen these things? Electronic bicycles. They've been out for a few years, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I got a, I got a problem with that. Yeah. I bet. I don't know. You've got all kinds of stuff. I don't want to spoil it. Yeah. But, uh, yeah. Look, uh, at the titles and descriptions, uh, in, in your, uh, your preferred podcasting streaming service. Great. And as always, though, we, we'd love to hear. I mean, if you've got, if you have opinions, if you've got things you want to talk about or things you think. You know what? You know what? If you think, if you think you can banter with the best of us, with the, with the host and the co-host with the most. Yeah. Hands on, uh, could bring it, right? I mean, come on. We, we could, we could have your guests. Yeah. I can go find the machine. I can go book a slot. Yeah. And we can bring in remote, uh, remote guests. It'd be great. Yeah. We, we can, we can make these opinions, you know, possibly, possibly, uh, we can, we can help shift our opinions. Maybe. Or opinions. Yeah. Yeah. Good luck. Good luck winning that. Well, it's been, it's been a fantastic run. I look forward to many, many more episodes and much, much more, uh, much, much more fun here. This is just fantastic. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Thanks again. All right. Well, thanks for listening everyone. Merry holidays. Happy New Year. We should work that out. We should work that out. How do, how do we say goodbye to people? I mean, it's been a season. We still haven't figured it out. Like, I don't know. I'm going to catchphrase like a, a hasta la vista baby or something like that. Yeah. Has that ever been done before? That's probably been done. Yeah. Maybe we can, we can sort of add our season year resolution. Maybe that, that's what we'll do is we'll figure out a way to, to say goodbye, um, and sign out. Okay. All right. Keep your opinions to yourself. Ooh. Nope. All right. I don't. Keep your opinions to yourself. I'm Scott and you're John or something like that. Perfect. We need a jingle or just cut out, but just no fade, no cut. Just like it. It ends on a word. It's just like mid word. Hey, was it? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, very pretentious. Anyway. Yeah. So yeah, you were closing. You, you close, you close, close out the season. Thank you. We'll close it up. We're all done until next time. Keep your opinions to yourself. All right. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.