Podcasts about Very Cool

Hey Guys! sorry for being a little bit absent for the free version of my show. but BOY do I have some news for you. first off, I"M OFFICIALLY A MUISC JOURNALIST!!!! YES!!!! one of my interviews that I recorded for the premium version of my podcast was added to this VERY prestigious library of Rock Music Journalism called Rock's Back Pages!! YES!!!! so that's very cool & exciting. all of the hard work that I did for recording & releasing interview episodes for the free version of my show is finally starting to pay off. and also, I went to my first Sync Conference in 6 years this month so I FINALLY met some music supervisors so that is super cool!! so yeah. things aren't too shabby with me at the moment. so let's get this next episode out of the way. this time, we touch on an artist that you may not have heard of before, but boy did he put out some great songs. here's the link to the song we talked about right here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eT2lELQZHw don't forget to also follow me & reach out to me on Instagram & Tik Tok right here:https://www.instagram.com/iheartoldies/https://www.tiktok.com/@iheartoldiesalso, PLEASE donate to the crowdfunding campaign for my next EP so I can get my next project off the ground. I would REALLY appreciate it. here's the link right here:https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-past-the-present-my-imagination-epalso PLEASE do subscribe to the premium version of my podcast so that way you don't miss out on any of these GREAT new interview episodes that I am putting out for the premium subscription version of my podcast. here's the link to that right here:https://themillennialthrowbackmachine.supercast.com/#episodesplease do also check out the Spotify & Youtube playlists for this podcast. here you''ll be able to find all of the songs that I have talked about for the free version of my show & I also update this list every time I talk about a new song on my podcast. here's the link to that right here:https://open.spotify.com/playlist/21f3uBS6kU4hUF6QAC5JMj?si=312c8b1897494a9ehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS1sYR7xky8&list=PL66sgq_GAmRcXy8yKZJfVmAD14HUYj7Nfdon't forget to also check out this cool new Merch that is specific to the premium version of my show. it's VERY Cool. i hope you guys will grab something & will help me out financially. that would be great. thanks: https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/158056341?ref=dashboard-earnings-by-artworkalso I have a EP that I put out two years ago. I would definitely appreciate some spins on it. and send it to some friends of yours if you like it & they can share it with their friends as well: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/samlwilliams/an-old-soul-with-new--remiagined-thingsif you REALLY like analysis on this week's song & you've never heard of this song before & your a millennial/Gen Z, and you definitely want to learn more about it, than definitely email me at samltwilli@icloud.com, you can also follow me & reach out to me on Instagram & Tik Tok @iheartoldies. I know it's been a long time since I've posted a free episode of this podcast. I just have a life outside of this podcast but I do try to keep you updated about what's going on with me as well as not ignore you guys that listen to this podcast whenever I release a new episode. so I'll try to still release two new free episodes a month to keep you guys entertained. I hope you guys are doing well. I will talk to you guys more next month.

Ryan returns! We catch up on his life over the last couple years, including his VERY COOL new earring. We also celebrate our 100th ConvoCast by dusting off the oft-neglected “YOBcast Topics” spreadsheet to talk about what we WOULD talk about if we were talking about it (but we're not). Do you follow? Potential YOBcast topics like robosexuality, nudity, cuddling, arousal, and much, much more. Thanks friends for 100 conversations! COMMENT ON THIS EPISODE What topics should we discuss on the YOBcast? What stands out from the options mentioned on this episode, and what other ideas do you have? PODCAST EPISODE PAGE YOB Convocast 100 LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE Ryan's Enneagram Nine ConvoCast RATE/REVIEW US Apple Podcasts FOLLOW THE CAST Tom's posts Ryan's posts GET IN TOUCH Call the YOBline: 1.706.389.8009 Email us: podcast@yourotherbrothers.com Mail us: Your Other Brothers / P.O. Box 843 / Asheville, NC 28802 SUPPORT YOB Pledge and join our Patreon community! Shop the YOB store! Give a one-time gift! FOLLOW YOB Facebook Instagram YouTube TikTok MUSIC CREDIT “Growing Pains” by Layup; 100% clearance through Musicbed.

Wish We Never Met philanthropist and independent music advocate Craig Senyk? Listen to the new WWNM and find out!After Dan tells quite the tale of being shut down by girls in high school "before he was gay", guest Craig Senyk pops on unexpectedly to help Dan surprise Amy with a VERY COOL summer music festival performance opportunitiy where she will open for Clint Black and Riley Green. They almost make Amy cry...almost!THANK YOU for listening to Wish We Never Met! New episodes released every Thursday afternoon, and make sure to use the code WISHWENEVERMET to save 15% at FitKitchen.ca!Give this new podcast some love by clicking "follow" on Spotify or Apple, and consider leaving a 5-star review too.FOLLOW the podcast on social media - @wishwenevermetpodcastDo YOU have someone you wish you never met? Something you wish you never said? A place you wish you never went?Email us at wishwenevermetpodcast@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from YOU!

Sue and Kendra had a day at the Topsfield Fair on Tuesday but the coolest part? Riding the 6 Horse Hitch... VERY COOL.

When I first saw Ann Cutbill Lenane's real estate ad on the screen in the back of a NYC taxi - I thought it was genius! Turns out it was. Taxi TV! Wow. Talk about a captive audience! Ann Cutbill Lenane is the ‘OG' of creative real estate marketing in NYC. She was the first real estate person to take advantage of movie theater ad screens. Ann created ads for her luxury NYC properties to entertain movie goers while they waited in their seats for the movie to start in the days before movie seat reservations were a ‘thing'. She did that for 14 years before taking her “Annie Gets It Done” commercial highlighting her exclusive real estate listings and placing it onto the screens in the back seats of NYC's yellow cabs. So, it was no surprise that Ann who advertises on Taxi TV in NYC was featured in a recent Sunday New York Times Real Estate Section article called “Valuable Real Estate in the Back Seat “.   Those back seat taxi ads not only showcase some of New York's most luxurious properties but they're also ‘geo-targeted', meaning real estate agents can restrict their ‘ads' to only be shown while the taxi is traveling in certain areas or on certain streets where they have listings.  Ann, who's an agent with Douglas Elliman, says buyers like to aspire and they want to see ‘into' these apartments and this marketing strategy has translated into property sales. Ann will tell you herself that NYC is a tough real estate market right now for sellers to get the prices they had been hoping for. But after 38 years of doing real estate in NYC, Annie prides herself on knowing just how to price an apartment and how to interpret market data with insider knowledge. Even so, having just read that NY is #1 in the U.S. for people with marketing mindsets, I figured there must be a lot  of competition for buyers  these days? Does Ann worry about that? “No, I'm always pushing it. I was the first one to advertise in the movie theater. I was the first one to advertise real estate in the taxis and I'm gonna be first to do something next. So, you know, I'm not worried about it, as you said, OG. So, I'm always gonna be out there and thinking creatively.”  Speaking of being creative… Annie typically makes 30-second slide shows of her listings, but along the way this single Mom of 2 daughters decided to risk throwing into her ad, that she was also looking for a Mr. Right! “That ad went viral and over 15 million people saw it around the world. I was on Good Morning America, they took it and put it on the teleprompter in Times Square, I mean there were articles in China and Russia. I was getting phone calls from men in jail. I have not found the perfect man, but yes, I sure got a lot of attention from all over the globe."  Ann didn't find “Mr. Right” (yet) but she did find 2000 women who were rooting for her to find Mr. Right! And Ann turned those champions into followers and friends, by creating women's empowerment events to bring them all together under the group name “Wise and Wonderful Women”. That's actually how I met Ann in person as well as other wise and wonderful women at an event she threw a few years ago at the Neuberger Museum in Westchester County.  “Well, it's so funny because what  actually came out of the Man for Anne Taxi ad was all of these men were reaching out, but almost an equal amount of women reached out and wrote to me, because in the ad it says, “  if you love your mother but you still don't live with her and have a kind and generous soul and can appreciate a 56-year-old, fit and fabulous woman, give me a call.” Women were writing me, and they would come up to me and they still do, it's five years later. And they said it was so brave. And I said, tell me why it was brave. Was it because I said I was looking for love? And it was like a kind of a knowing glance, and I said, or was it because I said I was 56?” “And they said, yes.” “So, I said, that's got to stop. “  Ann was inspired to do something that would lift women. She founded “Wise and Wonderful Women to educate and empower women 50 and older. All her events are free. “I didn't get the man but I got 2,000 women so I have 2,000 women that are part of the wise and wonderful women, and we do monthly events that are free and empower and educate women focusing mostly on women that are over 50. But I'm finding that my 23 and my 24-year-old daughters need our wisdom too and need to hear the topics that we are also interested in. We did one on heart health, we're doing one on launching financial grown-ups, on estate planning, all kinds of things and I learn, and these women learn as well, and many friendships come out of these events. “ “So, wow the ad worked all right. It didn't end up with what I thought was the prize, the gold ring, right? But the Wise and Wonderful Women came out of it. And that to me, when somebody tells me that it changed their life or it saved their life, which is what happened recently with some information that we shared during a heart health dinner, how cool is that?” Very Cool! Known as “Annie Gets It Done”, Ann is ranked as Elliman's #1 Manhattan Broker for Transactions. She has been voted the Real Estate Board of New York's Broker of The Year and transacted billions of dollars in sales in Manhattan over her career. She also gives back. In 2020, in response to the sanitation department budget cuts, she co-founded and still runs “One Block”. This very successful non-profit fills 1000 bags of trash on the Upper West Side EACH WEEK with the help of volunteers and paid workers who were formally homeless!  She also founded a literacy initialed in the Bahamas where she has a rental property and is a proactive member of the community there as well.   Interested in Taxi TV ? I read in the NY Times article that NYC has two service providers for anyone interested in knowing more about how to advertise on the screens in the back seat of taxis: Curb and Creative Mobile Technologies. To advertise on Curb Taxi TV, agents can purchase ad space directly from Curb or through its sales partners like Firefly.   Enjoy this podcast of my live Interview with Ann Cutbill Lenane on The Debbie Nigro Show.

Hey Guys! So I'm back with another episode for the free version of my podcast. I unfortunately did not wind up going to that event I was telling you guys about. I explained exactly why I didn't go in this episode. but moving on, I did want to let you know that I got another donation recently for the crowdfunding campaign for my next EP. I could still use a lot more as I"m not exactly close to hitting my goal right now. but the more donations the closer I"ll get to hitting my goal. so that way I can finally release more music to you guys. this week I dive into the history behind the last group & artist I talked about on my podcast. here's the link to that song again just in case you want to listen to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUZa1bDY2JI please do follow me & reach out to me on Instagram & Tik Tok right here: https://www.instagram.com/iheartoldies/ https://www.tiktok.com/@iheartoldies?lang=en PLEASE do sign up for the premium subscription version of my podcast. here you'll be able to hear all of the new interviews I'm currently doing & releasing. this is how you'll be able to hear all of my new interviews episodes that I'm doing as they are not being posted on this feed. there are so many cool interviews with so many cool 60's music legends on this feed. I definitely think that you'll enjoy it. here's the link to it right here: https://themillennialthrowbackmachine.supercast.com don't forget to also check out the crowdfunding campaign for my next EP & PLEASE do donate to it! this will help me get more music to you guys. it is so freaking expensive recording music guys, but you will be helping me be able to afford another EP & get another one out to you guys! here's the link to where you can donate right here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-past-the-present-my-imagination-ep also definitely check out the official Spotify & Youtube playlists for this podcast. here you'll be able to find all of the songs that I talk about on my show including some of the ones that I have mentioned in old interview episodes before they went premium. here are the links to those right here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/21f3uBS6kU4hUF6QAC5JMj?si=04d94bfa5fe94602 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS1sYR7xky8&list=PL66sgq_GAmRcXy8yKZJfVmAD14H UYj7Nf don't forget to also check out my last EP guys. I could REALLY use some more streams on these songs as they are all great. and if you guys stream it, that will help me get more streams without having to pay for more streams. here's the link to that right here: https://distrokid.com/dashboard/album/?albumuuid=32A9BB3B-B65B-4CC7-918A4344B4F035C2 also PLEASE do check out the official Redbubble Merch store for this podcast. here you'll be able to find this super cool new logo that is specific to the premium version of this podcast. hope you like the logo & you'll grab something from this store soon: https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/Fly-On-The-Wall-Stories-by-60sSam95/158056341.WFLAH?ref=explore-for- you-recently-viewed if you found out some VERY Cool information about the last song & artist that I talked about on my podcast & you have never heard of them, then definitely email me at samltwilli@icloud.com, especially if your a millennial & you have never heard of this song before. thank you guys for being patient with a new episode of this podcast. I will be back next month with two more new podcast episodes & I will talk to again next month. in the meantime, please donate to the crowdfunding campaign for my next EP as well as sign up for the premium version of my podcast so you can hear my new interview episodes as well.

In case you are new here - these are the NSFW Eps.  Not serious food content, fit for sharing.  Instead, we are being silly about media - mostly about the 19th Century.  Though here, about the new SHOGUN becasue - so VERY COOL!So we've come to the end of Shogun - a story that both haunted and informed us in our younger years.  Racist, Orientalist - as a book, YES!  But this version. as far as I'm concerned redeems the Entire Venture. And as a 1970's work written by a former prisoner of war during the Japanese Occupation during WW2, writing a book trying to get into the somewhat legendary history of Japan - it did what James Clavell wanted, it introduced Japan as a complex society to America and Britain and it's still sprawling empire at the time. Writing is hard, editing is much much easier.  Clavell's 1st try - needed some work, but somebody had to bust open the doors.  And Shogun did that.Now - how did the Blackthorne/Anjin-san story actually end?  Unclear.  But that's fine with me.Now let's all cheer for whatever H. Sanada has up his sleeve and hope it comes with All The Costumes.As always - you can reach us on the internets.Jamie Lewis (plagueofstrength.com & IG @plagueofstrength)and his NEW YouTube Apprearances on Carved Outta Stone Wednesday AM or Friday PMSchedule Details: instagram.com/carvedouttastone&Greta Hardin (The History of American Food podcast & @THoAFood all over)

In case you are new here - these are the NSFW Eps.  Not serious food content, fit for sharing.  Instead, we are being silly about media - mostly about the 19th Century.  Though here, about the new SHOGUN becasue - so VERY COOL!With that out of the way - Are Jamie & Greta fighting?  Is Mariko sad about her son no longer being hers - or did she just eat some bad fish, and never really cared?  But at least everyone can agree that Yabushige is the master of the expressive grunt, even if Fuji is the queen of eye-acting.  And we all know what's going to happen to Yabu next ep.Oh yeah... and we will be laughing at Ishido's expense as he steps on all the rakes.  Dames - can't talke to 'em, can't listen to 'em. Listen and find out all the ways Anjin looks ridiculous (and yet somehow compelling?) this weekAs always - you can reach us on the internets.Jamie Lewis (plagueofstrength.com & IG @plagueofstrength)and his NEW YouTube Apprearances on Carved Outta Stone Wednesday AM or Friday PMSchedule Details: instagram.com/carvedouttastone&Greta Hardin (The History of American Food podcast & @THoAFood all over)

Livit Design is the leading design firm specialized in creating unique guest experiences in the Food & Beverage and all areas of Hospitality, Fitness and Retail sectors. For over 20 years, Livit has worked as strategic advisors to investors and global brands on design, operations, guest journey and guest experience with the focus on improving efficiency, profitability and increasing growth potential.Livit Design bills itself as “a perfect mix of foodies, architects, interior designers, guest experience specialists, chefs, kitchen consultants, operations experts, entrepreneurs, graphic artists, DJ's, visionaries and restaurant operators.” One of the projects Benjamin and Livit Design is working on is called The Line. Located in Saudi Arabia by the Red Sea, The Line is billed as the future of urban living. The 105-mile long structure is just 650 feet wide and will eventually be home to more than nine million people. It has no roads, cars or emissions and runs on 100% renewable energy. All great restaurant design has to touch the emotions of diners, but there's not a magic wand that does that. Doing that requires great design and so many other touchpoints and factors. According to Ben, the hospitality industry is divided into two sides. One side focuses on convenience and the other is focused on experience. The Livit team is helping restaurant staff focus on hospitality by creating systems that automatically adjust sensory factors like scent and sound (music) to create better diner experiences.   QUOTES “I believe that one of the biggest differences between what we do and a regular design firm, but what's really challenging is understanding the operations. How do you make sure that you create designs that are profitable? That's where design really matters.” (Benjamin)“It could be the scents, it could be the sounds, it could be the thickness of the menu. There are so many small details in creating that holistic experience.” (Benjamin) “Consumers are getting picky. You go out less. The bland experiences – trying to be everything to everyone – those are the brands that are really suffering. You need to be niche, you need to create a phenomenal experience and you need to be a driver.” (Benjamin) “Restaurant design is an investment, not a cost.” (Benjamin) “Brands that try to be everything to everyone – they're audience is literally dying. That's a struggle in a world where everything is becoming more specialized.” (Benjamin) “We're going to see a lot more artificial intelligence (in restaurants and design). It's going to be better than humans at a lot of the repetitive tasks. Whether that's comps and analysis, restaurant layouts, optimization of spaces, etc.” (Benjamin) “I'm a lighting freak. I think lighting and acoustics are the two things that designers will often overlook and they're not well taught in design schools.” (Benjamin) “The things you touch – the cutlery, the table, the chairs, the glassware, the plateware – those are the most important things.” (Benjamin)  TRANSCRIPT 00:00.00vigorbrandingWell hello today’s guest is someone at the forefront of restaurant design. His name is Ben Kaa I probably pronounced it wrong even though I practice and he’s the founder and chief experience officer at design the what’s amazing is every 8 hours a new live design restaurant opens somewhere in the world. 00:07.00BenAre. 00:19.87vigorbrandingEvery 8 hours a new live at design restaurant opens somewhere in the world. It’s amazing which means he’s a pretty busy guy I think he traveled as much as any human being on earth and anyway so Benjamin welcome. Thank you so much for joining us I’m fascinated by what you do and your story. 00:24.68BenIf that. 00:36.43BenThanks Michael thanks for having me um I can I can maybe start with an anecdote. My daughter has an app that tracks my flights and she said hey dad. You know that you flew from the earth to the moon last year 00:47.81vigorbrandingWow, that’s right’s right? and your back probably hurts. You know I did 2 cities you know I was I started in in New York City yesterday afternoon I went to Atlanta for the. 00:50.10BenAnd then I said yeah honey. But next year I have to fly back. 00:57.81BenThe. 01:06.23vigorbrandingThe rest of the day flew back to Harrisburg waiting day and I thought I did something which was ah nothing compared to what you’re doing there so but anyway, ah, but but but through your travels. Not only do you do brilliant work that I was able to witness some in person with you. 01:16.81BenUm, yeah, are. 01:21.00vigorbrandingAh, but we get to see and learn about a lot. What’s going on in the world. So just first of all, tell us a little bit about live it design. You know how you started about you the whole beginnings. 01:32.40BenYeah, absolutely so I’m an architect by trade and started this company 98 which is what twenty seven years ago or something and always with the intention of becoming a 1 ne-stop shop for everything f and b um, it’s a strange company I would say I haven’t seen anything like it where we have. Chefs and operators and kitchen designers and equipment consultants but also architects and engineers and we have deejs and uniform designers. So. It’s really, ah, you know, really a 1 ne-stop shop for for anything and everything restaurant related and um, you know we maybe for the first you know. Five or six years we were mostly in Europe and then we’ve grown internationally we’re now in 45 countries. The us is our biggest market. Obviously it’s where we have most you know multi-unit restaurants. And that’s our focus we work a lot with private equity. We work a lot with you know the world’s biggest brands so sort of scalability and profitability are almost more important than you know collars and fabrics if you will. 02:32.45vigorbrandingThat’s great. That’s great and and you know it’s it’s cool because again some of the stuff and the style and design that you bring forth is is absolutely beautiful. But then you said it, you’re working with a lot of these large brands and I don’t think people might necessarily. I don’t know attach great architectural design to to the likes of like Starbucks Pizza Hut Taco Bell burger king things like that. But you work with all of them and then I think when people really do focus. They can see what the design is and and how you’re bringing that forth and how you’re making everything much more operationally savvy you want to talk a little bit about that. 03:04.61BenYeah I mean probably there’s not a single person in the western world that hasn’t eaten at 1 of our designs and it’s as you say it’s everything from Starbucks to Ritz culture right? and I think. Often as you say design or highqual design is attached to the risk alters of this world right? Ah, but it’s equally important in any fast cache when any qsr I believe that one of the the biggest differences between what we do and and a regular design firm is that you know the actual front of the house. It’s. 03:35.24vigorbrandingThen. 03:35.38BenEasy part. That’s the fun part. The the mood boards. The pinterest anyone can do that. What is really challenging especially in in scalable brands is understanding the operations. You know how do you make sure that you create designs that work that are profitable that minimize labor. All those things. Are often overlooked at from a design perspective and I think that’s really where design really matters not only in the look and feel of things. But how the engine really runs and works and that’s why I think it’s so important that designers understand the business from the inside. 04:14.00vigorbrandingUm, that’s that’s great. What’s the 1 thing you think every great restaurant design has in common. 04:20.20BenUm, well um I think touches to touch the emotions of the guest. Um, you know we are constantly bombarded by experiences and social media etc and you know when something really touches you close. That’s that’s magic and I think that’s. The beauty of our industry right? hospitality that we get to touch. Ah, people’s lives and their experiences and their celebrations. Um, so so that’s something really important and there’s not a magic wand to do that. It’s like oh create a restroom design that you know touches people’s hearts. It’s. 04:37.20vigorbrandingMan. 04:55.40BenIt’s a combination of so many things and design is one of those components but it could be the scent. It could be the sound. It could be the the thickness of the menu. There’s so many small details in creating that holistic experience that is unique. Um, so you really need to work on I Always say that the designer or a good designer should be like the spider in the web you you change something in the operations and it will affect the guest experience you change you create a Wow moment on the customer Journey. It will affect the culinary side. So. There’s a lot of things and moving parts in a good restroom design and that’s really what I do think that you know great restroom designs have in common that there’s a red thread. You know, along all these things that you know make that cohesive. Fantastic experience. 05:45.15vigorbrandingIt’s brilliant and ah you know you’re you’re you’re a man after my heart I mean ah we do branding we do advertising and marketing for restaurants we our job is to drive people to that front door right? And. We always talk about the consumer journey. We talk about the experience what they’re hearing what they’re seeing what they’re feeling ah the the emotion that we can bring forth and I think when when sometimes when we talk about this stuff. People think it’s all just sort of like ah maybe marketing propaganda but it truly is all about that that experience from the from the sofa. To the seat in the restaurant right? and I love you know again, whether it’s whether it’s a burger King or a Ritz-carlton I love how you sweat the details and I think um I’ve I’ve heard you speak and I’ve seen some of the different lectures you’ve given and. I know like covid ah obviously was a huge game changer in a lot of things that we’ve done. It kept us at home and but you’re seeing um, experience come back right? You’re seeing that physical experience becoming much more important. 06:46.64BenYeah I mean we have I think the advantage of you know as you said in the beginning we open roughly a thousand restaurants every year right all over the world. So we can. Not that we have the crystal ball but we sort of see trends and understand what’s happening in Asia -pacific what’s happening in australia what’s happening in the middle east in the europe in the us etc and 1 1 thing that we’ve seen is a polarization of the industry and I’ll try to explain it. So either you play on the convenience side of things. I want it here I want it now. Um you know I go online and I want it send to wherever I am in less than 50 minutes or you play in the experience side to your point about what do we need to create from an experiential side for people to leave their netflix and their sofa and really go out and have an experience and. 07:34.83vigorbrandingUm. 07:35.45BenConsumers are getting picky. You know you go out less and therefore the Bland experiences right? The the um the legacy American brands is a great example like you know trying to be everything to everyone. Those are the brands that are really really suffering. 07:46.78vigorbrandingMove. 07:53.69BenYou know, really now you need to be niche. You need to create a phenomenal experience. You need to be a driver or you play completely in the opposite you know, ah spectrum and just play on convenience and speed etc and that’s something that we’re seeing Globally you know the trends used to be more regional if you will or or you know continental. 08:06.45vigorbrandingWho. 08:12.54BenNow Trends are really global and that’s something that we’re really seeing Overall so to your point you know, not only driving their guest to the experience but making sure you deliver on that experience is what keeps people coming back. 08:23.46vigorbrandingYeah that’s great. You know it’s funny I was just as I said traveling and I was in an airport somewhere us and I wanted to grab something very quick to eat and get some coffee so this was actually yesterday morning I ran into this diner. Ah, they had a menu that was a Qr code. Fantastic no problem I do that so order my food I went through this whole thing and it was kind of like a pain I just wanted to order some eggs and it was breakfast but I did it I did it no problem I don’t want the thirty drinks they tried to offer me I didn’t want ah of 30 different cocktails. They tried to offer me was like to get through the thing they wanted a tip I’m like. 08:51.13BenAre. 08:58.85vigorbrandingI thought I was supposed to tipple in the service I haven’t met a person yet I haven’t seen anything I haven’t gotten food and nothing but I actually had to program my tip and and pay with a credit card before anything showed up I think sometimes some of the automation can go a little too far. That’s my opinion I mean I think we lose some of the personal touch and the experience and and all that. But anyway. 09:00.29BenAre. 09:16.31vigorbrandingI Just thought I just thought that was ah like a weird kind of experience. 09:18.38BenI think I think we’re all. It’s a very US thing you know I was in Vegas the other day and like I grab a can of coke from the fridge I bring it to the counter I say I want to pay and they flip the screen and say tip you know. 09:28.49vigorbrandingI mean. 09:33.93vigorbrandingUm, yeah, yeah, right? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 09:34.88BenIt was like 1824 28% is like ah what this this is convenience store. Um, but I do think that you know one of the one of the things that sometimes operators are getting wrong is that technology and efficiency should be a means to. Ah, make hospitality better. Make sure that your employees can actually focus on what people are doing better than than machines rather than take out the hospitality of it. So I think. 09:56.70vigorbrandingWho the customer. Yeah no. 10:08.63BenYou know I often get the question because I speak a lot about robotics and innovation and trends in terms of you know what? the future of the industry is and they say well you know we’re going to you know, ah get ah, get out of jobs and you know hospital is going to die yes on the contrary. 10:22.64vigorbranding1 10:24.55BenYou know, rather than you know, being in the back of the house in a fridge doing inventory. Why don’t you go out and talk to your guests you know and and give them a smile and you know ask how the day was. That’s true hospitality and let a machine just manage your inventory. You don’t need to sit there with an excel file and do that. 10:43.28vigorbrandingYeah I mean it’s amazing. You know in 1 of your presentations I saw it I I might get the name of the company wrong. But I can describe what it was I think it’s called each and it was ah it looked like I mean basically the back of the restaurant looked like a manufacturing facility with no people in it. Is that the the computerized system that can like learn the menu items and actually make it and clean itself is that the does I get that right. 11:03.78BenYeah, yeah, so you know we’re now part of some of the world’s biggest projects I guess you’ve heard of the line this you know 170 kiilometer long building built. Yeah so we’re we’re designing some of the f and b there and and sort of understanding the future. There’s now. 11:13.57vigorbrandingAh, we got to talk about that. It’s incredible. It’s ah. 11:21.90BenYou know pieces of equipment that can do up to 15000 dishes per day individual dishes so they can remember you know your Michael your your flavor profile you know? Ah, um, your spiciness levels etc. You know attach a cure code to that specific dish and have it served and they can self-clean themselves. You know. 11:26.85vigorbrandingUm, it’s incredible. 11:41.50BenThe evolution of technology is just amazing specifically if you go to China I think yeah China is sort of for the western world sort of a black box. We’ve had you know office in in Shanghai for many many years and done business there for many of the world’s global brand and. That’s really where I see the innovation happening in terms of you know, not only development of equipment but embracing of technology in the actual operations I think in in in the west or you know, specifically in the us we just scratched the surface on what. You know the future is bringing in terms of automation innovation and also quality and consistency. You know there’s certain things that machines are really really good at is that making things over and over again repetitive tasks doing them perfectly right? And that’s tough for humans. 12:25.55vigorbrandingUm, right? Yeah I know I know I have a very poor golf swing and I know that a simulated golf swing is way better than mine will ever be. So I mean there’s just certain repetitive things and to your point precision that a machine will be better At. And I know like I’ll offend the artists out there that are chefs and everything I don’t I don’t mean to offend but I mean it’s just I was blown away by that machine and and and with the capability of what it was able to do really remarkable. 12:50.87BenYeah, and I think it goes beyond that if we we could you know we we sort of put this in Silos right? There’s there’s equipment in the back of the house and I always say oh people talk about robots to me. The dishwasher is the best robot out there right? The only thing is now. 13:04.21vigorbrandingAre. 13:07.57Bens dishwasers with a yeah that recognize the different dishes then they take it out of the dishwasher and put it on on a shelf to dry. You know the whole automation process and nobody needs to be a dishwasher anymore and I doubt that nobody wants to be a dishwasher It’s just a way of starting right. But the same goes with with all the other things that you know if you think of music right? You know, um as you know and we can talk about later. We have our own restaurant innovation labs that we use to test things spotify uses them to understand the the impact of music behavior on guest. 13:24.19vigorbrandingAh. 13:32.13vigorbrandingYeah. 13:39.38BenSo you can actually automate. You know the music in the restaurants to change human behavior in terms of you want them to stay longer. Do you want them to stay shorter. You want to upsell, certain products, etc, etc. And that’s all automated right? and that could be connected to how many people you have in the store in real-time. Etc. Another thing is sent. You can change the different scents in the restaurant and depending on what cent you have you sell 1 product or the other all these things that influence human behavior and you know restaurant guest behavior happen without you as a guest noticing it but also without the interaction of anyone in the restaurant. 14:14.45vigorbrandingRight. 14:16.62BenAnd that’s what we see more and more right? How can some of these processes that traditionally have been managed by the restaurant manager or the agm or the team members. How can we offload those from their sort of day-to-day task and make sure that somebody centralized or or an ai engine does that. Better than they do so they can once again focus on the hospitality component of things. 14:38.67vigorbrandingYeah, it’s incredible I mean I saw one of your examples in the generative Ai where people that come into the restaurant would affect what would be on the walls like what they’re seeing and and and all that just it’s just incredible and it makes it makes an awful lot of sense as far as that whole immersive experience How you can really kind of make things. Ah. Personal fun, interesting. Always new it just it’s truly fascinating and speaking of you brought it up and I definitely want to hit that. Can you talk about the line that that blew my mind I mean and what is your role in that I know it’s got to be in the architecturally design. Ah as far as restaurants. 15:08.10BenUm, and. 15:16.12vigorbrandingTalk about the whole thing. It’s it’s crazy. 15:18.79BenYeah, yeah, I’m actually flying there. You know the day after tomorrow. So yeah, it’s it’s basically um, building a country right? It’s in Saudi Arabia and by the red sea. It’s a beautiful beautiful location it’s amazing it’s pristine um, I’ve been driving those beaches is just like fantastic right? You can compete with the maldates. Um, and you know it’s building if if we were to build a country or a city with everything we know and everything that we project. What would it be right. So basically the idea is you take a whole city and you put in 1 building and leave 98% of the land untouched and you know you create community living where you know you have everything you need within a 5 minute walk 15:50.83vigorbrandingRight. 15:59.24BenSo It’s really turning everything upside down and we’re helping with the F and B strategy on you know what does f and B strategy look like in the future. Um, it all started with our restroom Labs. We have you know sort of developed um a cross-trained de-skilled operating model. Where young team members can come in and and work without previous experience but deliver on a high note in a fine- dining environment and we started you know, building hotels and FAndBOutlets for Neome the different Neome regions right? Neum have several regions. Um, and that’s where we started you know working more and more into this different giga projects. You know there’s a lot going on that I cannot tell you because it’s sort of under Nda in the future. But what I can tell you it’s mind-blowing and the resources being poured into it is are phenomenal. It’s you know. You go there. It’s the best of the best whether that’s recycling energy water waste. It’s really a privilege to be part of of that environment. 16:58.28vigorbrandingIt’s crazy I do remember this was a big high long mirror building and just it was fascinating. Absolutely remarkable. 17:03.26BenUm, yeah I mean it’s the height of the empire state building two hundred meter wide you can have a football stadium up there three hundred meters up in the year and one hundred and seventy miles and kilometers long it will be built in faces. Of course it’s not being built all. But. 17:13.21vigorbrandingUm. 17:16.21vigorbrandingYeah, yeah, yeah. 17:20.50BenBut you know face 1 is two point four kilometers so and you know a cruise ship. Can you know, go through it. It’s just you know, really really exciting to be part of it. Yeah yeah, exactly exactly. 17:25.96vigorbrandingYeah, well they say Rome wasn’t built in a debt. You can’t build a whole country right? I mean so it’s going to take some time like that makes sense. 17:34.23BenSo and and you speak like you know you speak to Dubai and it was the same like we tried things. We tried the islands we tried the palm. We tried the second Paul we tried the Bush Cahalifa you know it. It requires a lot of vision to be able to move like a country like Dubai that doesn’t have a lot of natural resources to become a word-class you know touristist nation. 17:37.46vigorbrandingMoon. 17:53.75BenSo there’s a vision behind it and it’s going to take time. 17:54.10vigorbrandingYeah,, that’s fantastic. All right? So I’ll bring it back into more I’ll say maybe a more Americanized Pedestrian Baseline issues. So and and you know this is something that I’ll say we as ah as a company will struggle with because. Look the restaurants they’ve they’ve had tough times they’ve struggled all right? So There’s a lot of tired restaurants out there. There’s a lot of restaurants that can use a makeover or refresh but it costs money right? and they’re just worried about turnover they want to get butts and seats they want to make you know what’s their daily check and all that kind of thing you know we know you know I know the design marketing advertising. All that stuff refreshing The the the experience will make them money. But how do you convince? a restaurant owner to take that leap. 18:38.30BenWell, you know when we work with with global brands I Always say the same Um, you know Restroom design is an investment is not a cost right? And um, what we always try is to you know, make sure that we make a proof of concept. What we call an Alpha Prototype or Beta. Before actually rolling it out whether that’s corporate stores or franchises stores so you can really measure things right because to your point we could go to a conference and present a beautiful new design and say oh this is going to be great for your sales all right? What’s that right? So What we always try to do is make sure that we’re not only delivering on the high quality of the design. 19:07.19vigorbrandingUm. 19:13.74BenBut also saying look these are the numbers. This is the increase of footfall this is the increase of you know intent to return. This is the increase of intent to recommend. There’s certain part of that that we could do upfront now we do you know? gen ai we have Oculos glasses we have immersive experiences and focus groups, etc, etc. But ultimately the proof is in the pudding so that would be my recommendation really, you know, making sure that for example, when we do a remodel make sure that you take a store that is an existing store rather than create a new design and and and a new build because then you can really measure the pre and post but always talk. 19:44.99vigorbrandingCorrect. 19:50.40BenAbout design or marketing as an investment not about a cost. 19:51.78vigorbrandingAlways right? and it truly is I said a lot of people look at this is like a paying taxes. You know you have to do it. You don’t want to do it. But it’s It’s truly if it’s not getting your return. You shouldn’t do it. So I mean that’s that’s really the bottom line there. What do you think? what? what are most restaurants do wrong when they when they when it comes to design. 20:03.93BenUm, yeah. 20:10.78BenUm I think in general and I’ve talked to the us I guess most of your audience is us based um one of the things that we see especially coming from Asia or from Europe is you know real estate has been extremely expensive outside of the us land used to be cheap in the Us. 20:14.40vigorbrandingMe. 20:27.14BenAh, labor you know I live in Sweden it’s twenty Eight bucks minimum wage. It’s sort of like when people are complaining about 50 or 20 in the us like I keep it keep them coming send them over I’ll sign them up. Um, so not that we come from the future but we have been exposed to these challenges before in terms of inflation high labor. 20:30.14vigorbrandingI for compared? Yeah yeah. 20:47.70BenAh, lack of skill labor. You know capex increasest etc so a couple of things you know, First of all the understanding of efficiency in a footprint. That’s 1 thing that we see a lot in the us humongous kitchens you know kitchens where you know ah 40% of the restroom footprint is back of the house. 21:00.15vigorbrandingUm, you know. 21:06.65BenYou know that is only cost doesn’t generate any revenue. How do you make sure that you get back to a 25% back of the house versus 40 so the back of the house. Um, operating model is something that is often not seen by designers. So. It’s like a black box. You know? Okay, we’ll design a front of the house and then somebody. Ah, maybe even a kitchen consultant. You know comes in and you know guess what their job is to sell you equipment. So you’re going to end up with a ferrari off a kitchen with a lot of space and a lot of equipment. Well, you don’t make money there you make money in the front of the house. So that’s 1 thing. The second thing is the. 21:30.26vigorbrandingRight. 21:36.56vigorbrandingRight. 21:43.11BenUm, Availability of cheap labor right? You know a lot of tip-grade states etc so there has been really an incentive to um work from an efficiency perspective in the restaurant environment whether that’s layout. You know how many steps you take. 21:55.88vigorbrandingAnd. 21:57.78BenYou know, ah time in motion. So there’s a lot of time motion study done in the back of the house but not a lot to the front of the houses you know where are the station’s position. All those things that they think oh, it’s not important. Well it’s 10 seconds here 20 seconds there you know you go back and punch it into the pos. You don’t have handhelds so the whole. Um. Efficiency component that we’ve seen overseas is something that we’re finally now you know, being able to bring to the us because labor scars you know and salaries are going up, Etc, etc. So um, it’s it’s not reinventing the wheel. What I do think that we can do is we can take best practices and global learnings and actually apply them to the us rather to than to have to invent everything from scratch. 22:40.83vigorbrandingThat’s great. Yeah, and you you bring a global perspective to all this which is really ah, it’s an incredible ah advantage candidly. So So talk about talk about your lab a little bit I mean in my company. Anybody you talk to that works in in our agencies. They know our core values are respect. Innovation and passion. You got to be excited about what you do and innovation is is one of core values. We. We’re always coming up with new ideas talk about the lab because I think that’s a brilliant concept. 23:06.20BenYeah, well yeah, it’s it’s a fun story right? You know one of the talent we work with the world’s biggest brands right? and when you know I remember back in the days we were talking about Ai and automation. They said hey hey then slow down we are implementing wi-fi like. Okay, okay now I know where where I have to put the threshold. Um, it was sort of hard to push these global brands to really innovate. So we came up with the idea to say why don’t we put our money where our mouth is why don’t we set up a restaurant that we can use as a lab. 23:40.93vigorbrandingNo no. 23:42.98BenAnd rather than become the traditional consultant where you come and say oh you should do this or I believe you should do that we could actually come and say look. We’ll try this and these are the results. This worked this didn’t work right? So we become peers instead of consultants. So we said let’s open up a restaurant. We decided to open it up in Stockholm you know second highest. Ah, labor market in the world. So you know either, you’re efficient or you die we decided to only hire people that have never worked in a restaurant right? to make sure that the efficiency was in the model in the equipment in the layout etc and then really pack this with all sorts of sensors that and you can imagine. 24:04.50vigorbrandingYeah, exactly you go broke. Um, first. 24:21.56BenBut everything happens without the guest knowing so the guests don’t know this is a lab um and not only was it extremely successful from a learning perspective in terms of you know the initial objectives what we did not expect is that we were going to make so much money. Actually becoming operators. So what was 1 restaurant became 3 sore the 3 biggest citizens of Sweden we started franticing a year ago we’re now in 10 countries. We’re going into the us now. So it’s really becoming a global brand. We get 73 sites in the pipeline. 24:36.96vigorbrandingHidden. 24:48.36vigorbrandingIt’s awesome. 24:52.90BenSo now I have to balance out the the you know design consultant hat and the operator hat but it also it’s a great way of testing things in different markets. You know we are in Saudi Arabia and we’re opening in Mexico and Buenosiris and we were in madrid and we’re in Belgium and we’re now opening in Nashville. So. 24:56.88vigorbrandingAh, yeah. 25:05.10vigorbrandingUm. 25:08.80BenYou know, understanding how those different Technologies Components efficiencies operate in different markets. It’s very very valuable for us beside you know the fact that we’re building our own global brand which is extremely fun. 25:21.90vigorbrandingYeah, well you better be careful, you might have a conflict. You’ll be like building me oh we’re across the street from you guys in Madrid you’ll lose the ah opportunity to redesign him. Yeah, that’s fantastic. That’s so cool I love it. 25:30.44BenAh, we’ll invite you. We’ll invite you to come over. Don’t worry. 25:38.40vigorbrandingSo when it comes to those big ah chains who’s doing a good job like who who ah pick on American Brand If you wouldn’t mind. 25:45.54BenUm, I mean this, there’s quite a few and and in different ways I would say you know I think um, you know in the us I’m a big fan of Bartacco. Um, the way they not only create experience embrace technology or very early with you know, tech adoption I think they great did a great job in delivering the experience I believe there their sort of model is a day at the beach you work into the restaurant and it’s really it transports you somewhere you know to to. 25:58.17vigorbrandingUm. 26:17.16BenYou know a cardboard whatever that is um but also from a you know training perspective I like both the but back of the house and and the front of the house guest experience. That’s a brand that I really like um I think you know and pizza. We did a great job with them and they had a great run and you know. 26:18.95vigorbrandingUm. 26:31.56vigorbrandingUm, okay. 26:35.63BenUnfortunately very leveraged so when interest rates go up. They’re having a harder time. Um, it’s not an american brand but 1 of my favorites. It’s Jo the jews you’ll see it in some of the american cities extraordinary way of turning. 26:46.76vigorbrandingUm. 26:50.58BenA potentially boring job like serving coffee and juices into being something really really cool. You know and they hire these good looking guys now they have women as well because they’ve gone too big but they really said you know they did something that nobody else had done before. Their capex is extremely low. You know both in terms of equipment and the fphony and they really deliver on a great great experience and I think from a marketing perspective. Undoubtedly they they do something really really interesting. So for for the those listening that haven’t seen it is one of my to go brands for a number of reasons both from operational simplicity efficiency. You know can run one of those those restaurants with 2 team members. Um and delivering a really good experience whether that’s a kiosk in an airport. Or an extra large dining room with full service and they’ve been able to capture you know coffee juices and food in 1 which is something that Starbucks has struggled with for years and I can go on and on but you know yeah, ah. 27:50.75vigorbrandingThat’s that’s awesome. So yeah, you know believe me this good this this Well I could talk to you for hours I am just absolutely I Love what I’ve seen Love what I hear it’s ah it’s just so easy to ignore. Ah good design. Ah, whether it’s you know the the actual architectural design whether it’s the design of the of the brand. It’s so easy to it’s not well. It’s easy to ignore it. But boy you know it when you see it and I think that’s the thing. It’s kind of one of those things you really know it when you see it and when you feel it and that’s that’s what’s going to be successful, especially with people wanting to go back to that experience. So who what’s what’s up What if you can be honest, What’s ah, what’s a larger you know company. That’s not doing a great job in your opinion. 28:32.35BenWell I think if if I go back to my comment people 4 about the brands that tried to be everything to everyone. You know, think of all the legacy bar and grill brands in the us you know there’s a bunch of them. Um, you know, just adding menu items adding menu items. Ah. 28:44.92vigorbrandingUm. 28:49.21BenTry to be lunch dinner. All locations. Um, you know their audience is literally dying right? Its you know you you don’t see any young people going in there I think that’s really a struggle in a world that is coming more and more specialized more and more on a occasion based. Um, those brand really need to rethink I read that you know Tgi Fridays was actually just sold last week to one of their Uk franchisees. You know that whole category is is a category that’s really suffering and that really need to you know, take care of their guest experience. 29:10.99vigorbrandingFrom. 29:23.44BenAnd Beyond that who are they you know it’s It’s been. It’s lost their soul a little bit so there’s a lot of work to be done there but they have a scale and an audience that also you know make it possible to make them come to life again. 29:23.87vigorbrandingRight. 29:38.45vigorbrandingThat’s that’s great. That’s a really good insight all right? So we’ll play I’m gonna play like a little game here’s like what’s worse and I don’t think there’s any good answers here. So but it’d be. It’d be great just to hear you you fill in the gaps here as far as ah, your your points of view on these. 29:42.96BenYeah, quick tip. Ah. 29:49.78BenAnd. 29:49.90vigorbrandingSo so what is worse lots of cluttered I relevantt decorations speaking of I’ll say Fridays I shouldn’t say that but I I will or a bad floor plan. Yeah. 29:58.99BenA bad flowprint all day long. Yeah I think the bad flow Brand will impact on your pnl. Um, you know you’re going. Ah, you’re going to. You know have a higher labor cost, etc. And. Um, you know you know it’s going to impact on the guest experience. So Um I will go with that. 30:13.91vigorbrandingAll right, all right? What’s worse an exposed service area or bathroom doors that only open in. 30:20.49BenExposed service area I think the the bathroom doors that only open in it’s something that you can live with it might be annoying but when you’re having your your dinner experience and see the service area and they are never pretty. That’s something that you’ll remember. 30:34.20vigorbrandingYeah, yeah, especially if they’re busy right. 30:39.89BenI’ve I’ve never seen a guest get back and get back to me say you know what? hey Michael I went to this restaurant and the bathroom doors opened inwards I’ll not never come back again. You know. 30:47.98vigorbrandingAh, but they will see the mess that’s in the service area that’s for sure all right? What’s worse bad lighting or bad carpeting. 30:55.12BenA bad lighting all day long I’m a lighting freak I think lighting and acoustics are the 2 things that designers often overlook and they’re not well taught and in design schools and when you do value engineering. 31:09.51vigorbrandingUm. 31:12.37BenIs the first thing people cut because you don’t see it on the on the layouts. You don’t see it on the renderings but I would go with bed lighting all day long. 31:15.17vigorbrandingYeah, it’s right? That’s great and if you have good lighting then you will be able see the bad carpet without the good lighting. You know you get the carpet you can get away with it. So all right? What’s worse low grade tables and shares or poor menu design. 31:32.53BenAh, low grade tables I would go I think it’s you know and I’ll connect it to the to the carpet comment before the things you touch the cutlery the table the chair the the glass where the plate where those are the most important things. 31:38.10vigorbrandingSo. 31:49.27BenWhat’s on the floor. What’s on the ceiling. What’s on the walls is not as important. So if what you touch is Conveys The the sense of quality. Um, that’s really very very important to me. 31:58.92vigorbrandingUm, all right? So a few years ago ah you talked about we talked about so everything’s Instagram right? Everything’s taking pictures and all all the social media but you talked about the most instagramed restrooms talking about the doors in the United States talk about what made the bathroom so photogenic. 32:18.90BenYeah, so so we actually opened one of our labs in in Los Angeles bad timing November Twenty nineteen so it’s not there anymore, but we were gaining one Instagram follower per second when we opened. Um. We won the best restaurantroom design of the year award voted by consumers by edola and the second best bar in America and what we did um is that we really wanted to create ah just an amazing restaurant restroom experience. So we you know bought this. Onyx handsinks that were lit from from underneath and it had like 40 candles under the mirror and you know greenery and art. You know, really expensive art in the restroom and what really made the difference is that on the mirror and I hope. I’m not going too far politically correct. It said you look fucking beautiful and there wasn’t a person going into that restroom that did not take a picture of you look fucking, beautiful and shared it in social media. So not a recipe for every brand. 33:11.46vigorbrandingUm, that’s right, That’s fantastic. That’s great. Yeah. 33:25.83BenBut ah, you know, just just make sure you create something memorable and don’t underestimate the power of restrooms because when you have a clean, well lit nicely designed restroom that smells great that has you know a really good soap. That really you know makes an impression on what you think the kitchen’s going to be and what you think the rest of the experience going to be. 33:48.84vigorbrandingThat’s great I need one of those those mirrors because I need all positive reinforcement I can get you know and you know it’s funny. You say that but I will say you know the the the hermitage ah hotel in Nashville downstairs next to the bar. The restroom is incredible. And I remember that and I’m not. You know that’s something I will always remember it doesn’t have anything that gives me any positive reinforcement but it was just incredible. Fact there was a sign outside it said ladies knock before coming in to take pictures which I was like why would that be here and I went inside I was like amazing, absolutely amazing. So. Anyway I think a good bathroom’s fantastic and it’s ah it’s important. So what? What’s the future look like for restaurant design I mean what’s trending what? what? what might might meet that what might we start seeing more often. 34:36.61BenSo when it comes to russian design and again maybe I’m not the prototypical designers only thinking of you know the fabrics and the colors and the textures it’s it’s really operational efficiency to me. Um, both in the back of the house and the front of the house. That’s really coming big time. It comes to sensors implementation of technology friction less ordering, etc etc. So that’s something that we’ll see and I can talk for hours about bad efficiency parts specifically in the back of the house etc. The second part that we are going to see is a lot more. Um, artificial intelligence coming in. You know at livid we have now you know a 5 team strong Ai team just because Ai it’s going to be better than humans at a lot of the repetitives that task right? You know whether that’s comp set analysis restaurant layouts you know optimization of spaces etc so there’s a lot of that. 35:22.61vigorbrandingUm. 35:30.42BenThat’s coming into the design space. Ah, but um, there’s a lot of talk about those things but I do think that you know where we started this conversation in terms of the experience the human touch. That’s really going to. Be here for a while you know machines will not be able to do those things for us at least in the foreseeable future. So I think we need to be aware of the tools that we can use as designers but really make sure. To understand where do we add value like like we were saying in terms of understanding trends in 1 market into the other etc etc. That’s something that we see the other I trend that I’m going to see and I’m going to speak specifically to the us is offshoring so you know since the pandemic. Capex construction costs are up what thirty forty percent there depending on states. Um, it’s really becoming hard to get the return of investment capital with the capex that restaurants are now running at it’s really are you know you can make the p and l work. But how are you know you know, get that that investment back. So. 36:19.57vigorbrandingThe money. 36:37.84Ben1 thing that we’re doing for mini brands is actually almost building the restaurants offsite. So this la restaurant that I mentioned you know we bidded it out in California bids came in between 3.4 3 point $2000000 we ended up building it for one point 3 36:49.54vigorbrandingBut. 36:53.81BenSo basically we bought all the pieces from China we bought them from Europe we assembled the restaurant in a warehouse in Spain we shipped it to la we sent an install crew and the rest was up and running in seventeen days that sort of brands becoming. 37:00.17vigorbrandingWow. 37:11.22BenUm, sourcing companies and you know installation companies. We’re now working with you know, quite a few large Us chains in making modular designs and concepts overseas right? You might do it in Mexico you might do it in China you might do it in Eastern Europe just to make sure that if there’s a tariff coming in 1 country you will have you know a plan b but that’s something that we’re going to see more and more because the increase of labor and the increase of construction cost is hitting the us market really really strong. 37:43.70vigorbrandingIt’s incredible and I mean it’s amazing that you can actually build it ship it assemble it cheaper than you can build it on site That’s ah, that’s that’s a shame actually. 37:49.80BenYeah, plus the fact that hey I’m half swedish so we have Ikea in our blood but but the fact that you’re never going to get the quality that you get in a factory in a nice environment. You know where you work in. 37:56.75vigorbrandingAh, of course of course. 38:05.42BenYou know a restaurant environment with local workers that have never done that brand or that assembly before they have to learn every time. So just that scalability this you know is not as easy for 1 ne-off concept or for small brand. But if you are starting to get regional I Always say you know if you. If your ambition is to get beyond 10 or 15 Brands. You should really start looking at it. 38:23.71vigorbrandingYeah, totally makes sense and you know it’s funny. You brought up Ikea I wasn’t going to bring that up I was going to try to avoid this whole conversation. But it is in a weird sort of way. It’s a microcosm of like what we’re talking about and what you do I mean right? The design was impeccable. The user experience second to none and I’m going back to like 19 38:28.40BenMe. 38:41.94vigorbrandingI don’t know 80 when I first was exposed to it I walked in to a store. It’s like this is just brilliant. Everything about it was brilliant I wanted I wanted to buy everything there I wanted to buy the expensive stuff. Nothing was super expensive I wanted to buy the the inexpensive I needed I all of a sudden needed things I never know I knew I needed just because the design was so impeccable and then of course. 38:48.29BenUm. 38:50.67BenOh. 38:58.49BenCount. 39:01.90vigorbrandingThe the user experience as you walk through and the layout and the way they showed everything comes back to design and experience and um. 39:03.50BenAnd we’ve actually just been engaged to I think we’re already delivered it the the future f and b experience of Ikea globally we’ve done it that limitd so there’s we’re we’re closing the circle. 39:14.53vigorbrandingFantastic. That’s awesome, Very Cool. We’re actually I’m talking to them about a project right Now. So I’m excited about it. We’ll see where it goes but what? ah I’ve always been ah, just fascinated by the brand. It’s brilliant and it’s it stands for I think a lot of things that. I’ll say important to me personally just the whole experience to design. Ah the the user experience. Everything about it is just really Impeccable. So hey I could talk to you for hours. But here I have one last question that I ask everybody every time for you. This will be maybe very difficult because you just literally. Ah you know your tires barely touch ground and you’re off somewhere else. So. If You had 1 final meal. What would you eat where and why. 39:55.48BenOh that’s a tough one. Um, one final meal. So um, um, ah, no, no, it’s not going to be bad. Yeah no, so it has to be a social meal. What I would do I would cook ba. Yeah. 40:01.87vigorbrandingUm, it can’t be the swedish meatballs that Ikea either. Yeah. 40:10.76BenThink it’s a very social meal because you cook it with friends. You know you stand around it. It’s our version of the barbecue you stand around it and cook it together I will have it with friends and family. You know, ah last week we had some friends over and you know my stomach hurt from from laughs. 40:10.87vigorbrandingUm, ah, nice. Yeah yep. 40:26.19vigorbrandingAwesome. 40:28.20BenThat’s really yeah, you know the social component of eating I think is the important thing. Ah more so than than what you actually eat but that would be um, you know I would eat a baya ah together with friends and family have a good laugh. And it could be anywhere in the world. 40:47.19vigorbrandingThat’s fantastic. Well um, like I said I’m heading to Madrid here in two weeks so I’m really excited about the the payeea I’m sure that’ll be fantastic and I can’t thank you enough I do want to do this again. I mean I have a million more questions I could we got to dove into so many of these areas so much deeper. Phenomenal, fantastic congratulations on all your success and and thank you very much. You got it all right man talk soon. 41:05.14BenThank you very much thanks for having Michael look forward to stay touch have a good one. Cheers. 

Thank You's, and Links:We want to thank all our sponsors.. please visit https://www.airgunweb.com and https://www.gatewaytoairguns.comTonight's show: So I'm looking at the Crosman 3622, which is a $150 PCP. What does $150 get you these days, and is it enough, given that you can get the fully featured Gamo Arrow Classic for $240? Does $90 make or break your PCP budget? What about filling options, power, performance, and accuracy.  Let's talk about the most budget of the budget PCPs and see if it's worth a look.Also, let's talk about Airgun Expo 2024 and the range work we are doing to get ready.  Also, the shop is finally getting cleaned and setup for daily use.  Very Cool!  And of course we'll look at some viewer Q&A.  #crosman #3622 #budgetPCP #pcpairguns #airgunangie #theairgunexpo #targetshooting #outdoorsports #shootingsports #pelletgun #airgunweb #gatewaytoairguns #GRiPAirgunReviewsMan it's a great time to be an airgunner!Links and more:Please subscribe to our NEW GTA YouTube page:https://www.youtube.com/THEGatewayToAirgunsLearn more about The Gateway to Airguns: https://www.gatewaytoairguns.org/GTA/GRiP reviews on the GTA: https://www.gatewaytoairguns.org/GTA/index.php?board=253.0 Exclusive Behind the Scenes and Early Access, Ad-Free content NOW ON PATREON! - https://www.patreon.com/AirgunVideos and AirgunArmy https://www.AirgunArmy.com https://www.airgunweb.com  - meet our sponsorshttps://www.youtube.com/airgunweb  - watch our contenthttps://www.gatewaytoairguns.org  - connect with airgunners worldwide!AirgunWeb & AirgunWebTV Content Disclaimer: https://www.airgunwebtv.com/content-disclaimer/************************************AGW / AGWTV Content Disclaimer************************************By viewing or flagging this video, you are acknowledging and are in full acceptance of the following:Our videos are strictly for documentary, educational, and entertainment purposes only. Imitation or the use of any acts depicted in these videos is solely AT YOUR OWN RISK. Treat Airguns as FIREARMS and observe all the same safety considerations as such.  Any and all work on airguns should be carried out by a qualified and insured individual. We (including YouTube) will not be held liable for any injury to yourself or damage to your airguns resulting from attempting anything shown in any of our videos. These videos are free to watch, and if anyone attempts to charge for this video, notify us immediately.

Tyler Stone (@TylerStoneArt) joins Josiah to discuss his work as a freelance paleoartist. Paleoart (scientific illustration of prehistoric life) is a field with an interesting relationship between art and hard sciences. They discuss this relationship and the nitty gritty of the business side of paleoart, before delving into the challenges of being a science communicator in a field that attracts conspiracy theories, and how AI image generation is impacting the field.Follow Tyler on Twitter @TylerStoneArt // TikTok @TylerStoneArt // Instagram @TylerStoneArtFind more of Tyler's work: https://tylerstoneart.wordpress.comBecome a Fruitless Patron here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=11922141Check out Fruitless on YouTubeFind more of Josiah's work: https://linktr.ee/josiahwsuttonFollow Josiah on Twitter @josiahwsuttonMedia referencedTyler's animation of the evolution of whales, "From Feet to Flippers: The Evolution of Whales," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKbC7QSjWfEOld episode of Very Legal, Very Cool, "sh*tty creationism," where we discussed the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter, https://share.transistor.fm/s/96070284A short video by Tom Scott about the Crystal Palace dinosaurs Tyler discusses briefly, "The Scientifically Inaccurate Dinosaurs That Must Stay That Way," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWItLyDzMyE. I'm including this in case you'd like a visual of them.Episode of QAnon Anonymous that I (Josiah) reference briefly, "The Tartarian Empire," https://soundcloud.com/qanonanonymous/episode-273-the-tartarian-empireThe Paleoartist's Handbook: Recreating Prehistoric Animals in Art by Mark P. WittonOne Million Years B.C. (1966) directed by Don ChaffeyJurassic Park (1993), directed by Steven SpielbergJurassic World (2015), directed by Colin TrevorrowPrehistoric Planet, Apple TV+, produced by Jon Favreau & Mike Gunton.Music & audio creditsYesterday – bloom.Crumble – Dinosaur Jr. (The only reason I put this song in the end is because of the artist's name. That's the dumb joke there. Nothing deeper or more thoughtful.)

I talked about Ronel Blanco's VERY COOL no hitter to give the Houston Astros their first win in 2024, an ex-Astro who showed some loyalty against the Rangers, and a couple of controversial tweets...

Baby, it's cold outside but it's hygge inside! The gals are discussing all their favorite stuff for the holidays, plus some VERY COOL tips from Mr. Christmas himself, Angela's dear friend Michael Mitchell! You don't want to miss his cocktail recipes and favorite Christmas craft! Get cozy and keep it gentle - this is your 2023 holiday survival guide, PYBD style.     Watch the show on our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@putyourbooksdown     Follow Put Your Books Down on social media:     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/putyourbooksdown     Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/putyourbooksdown/     Natalie on IG:  https://www.instagram.com/nataliesanderson/     Angela on IG:  https://www.instagram.com/angelabinghamofficial/     Podcast produced by http://clantoncreative.com

Well git on there little weirdo!  Welcome to THE RANCH!! It's spacious!  It's cozy!  It's FULL OF MONSTERS?! It's another week of KEEP IT WEIRD, the podcast for all things strange and unusual and this week we're home, home on the range!  Lauren starts us off with some VERY COOL science news in a segment we like to call the MAGIC SCHOOL BUS!  The bus often takes us down someone's throat or up someone's butt but today we are fortunate enough that we're just traveling into a petri dish.  Scientists at the Weizmann Institute just announced that they've successfully GROWN A HUMAN EMBRYO!! In a lab!! What does this mean?  Can we grow humans now?  Are they real people?  Are they clones??  All your questions will be answered! Ashley takes on her first WHERE IN THE WORLD (Is Keep It Weird Going?) and takes us to bright & sunny.... Arizona??  That's right, Rainbow Arizona to be exact, to check out the infamous STARDUST RANCH!  Where couple John and Joyce Edmonds lived for 20 long, hard years alongside aliens, ghosts, portals to other dimensions, and monsters that killed their pets.  Were they being abducted and experimented on?  Does Stardust Ranch contain portals to another world?  Who was the mysterious machete man?! Move over Skinwalker Ranch, there's another ranch in town. Check out some links below if you want to learn more about the stories and information shared in today's episode. Donate to our patreon at www.patreon.com/keepitweirdpodcast to help us produce this show and keep it going FOR ETERNITY.  You'll also get bonus episodes, discounts on merch, shoutouts on the show and be automatically entered into our contests! Follow us on social media @keepitweirdcast (Instagram, Twitter & Facebook) to stay up to date on episode releases and paranormal investigations! And if you're looking for that perfect Christmas gift head to our merch store at www.keepitweirdpodcast.com/merch!    Just What is an Embryo Anyway? https://www.bbc.com/news/health-66715669 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-65914934 https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/sep/06/complete-models-of-human-embryos-created-from-stem-cells-in-lab   Never Buy a Ranch https://realhorrordiaries.blogspot.com/2023/03/eerie-encounters-tales-of-stardust-ranch.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQA1hHTaa1Y https://www.nine.com.au/entertainment/viral/alien-stardust-ranch-sale-john-edmonds-arizona/3acfd1eb-fa65-46b1-90f8-6955cfdcca18 https://www.12news.com/article/features/former-resident-says-there-was-something-living-at-buckeye-alien-ranch/75-486285454 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1559154/Is-UFO-ranch-Alien-slayer-posts-mysterious-video.html http://www.bltresearch.com/plantab.php  

On this Joe Keithley (Joey “Shithead”) Interview: How Joe went from playing Pete Seeger & Woody Guthrie folk songs to cranking out fast-paced hardcore… Story behind his first Greenpeace march, the hostility of most clubs early on in D.O.A.'s career, booking a European tour by snail mail (100% true!), breaking wide open in San Francisco, Rock Against Racism, how hardcore has changed, playing with Pete Seeger, standing up for human rights and getting acknowledged for it, politically… his persistence and determination to get elected to political office, not letting defeat after defeat hold him back… his greatest political accomplishments (VERY COOL), the origins of his work ethic, his favorite guitars, top 3 Desert Island Discs (you'll NEVER guess!), best lessons he's learned from getting older, toughest decisions he's had to make, and why in the end… he's a pretty lucky guy!  GREAT hang, super cool conversation with a really interesting and intelligent guy, who happens to be a musical legend! Discover How to Get Your Music Licensed & Placed in TV, Movies, Video Games & Streaming Services: https://MusicReboot.com Support this show: https://www.everyonelovesguitar.com/support   Joe Keithley is the leader, lead guitarist, and vocalist of Canada's legendary political punk band D.O.A. D.O.A is often referred to as one of the "founders" of hardcore punk, along with bands like Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, Bad Brains and a few others. Over the last 40 years, D.O.A. has released 16 LPs, sold a million records and played over 4,000 shows on five different continents. Joe is also a solo artist and his latest LP, just released, is called Stand Joe's been an activist since he was 16 years old. He's stood up for causes like police brutality, sexism, warmongering, racism, the environment, first nations, unions and many other causes, by organizing and playing at well over 300 benefit concerts. Joe's also authored two books, “I Shithead, A Life in Punk” and “Talk - Action = 0” In 2018, Joe was elected the city councillor in Burnaby, Canada which is just outside of Vancouver, and was re-elected in October 2022. Joe is also a member of the Canadian Independent Music Hall of Fame & he the owner of Sudden Death Records (SuddenDeath.com) Subscribe & Website:  https://www.everyonelovesguitar.com/subscribe Cool Guitar, Music & ELG T-Shirts!: https://www.GuitarMerch.com

Hello! This is a reposted episode from a previous podcast I used to do called Very Legal, Very Cool. I'm reposting this episode as a way of introducing Leo Dickenson to the Fruitless canon since he'll be appearing on a Patreon episode I will be releasing within the next week. Enjoy.Originally posted 4/5/2021You can find a link to the Very Legal, Very Cool archive here.Intro music by SHADE08Original show notesIn today's episode, Leo (@LCDickens) joins Josiah to talk about the discourse: Lil Nas X, Dr. Seuss, "cancel culture," evangelicals, exvangelicals, and why the internet sucks but can sometimes be good.Modern Guilt - Beck Fuck Off - The Frogs Sure As Spring - La Luz

Special Note: Hill Farmstead, the best beer in the world, just named a beer after the Civic Standard. Which is fricking VERY COOL. Here's a link to it. 

Very Cool the word groan that Paul was referring to in Hebrew also means Ferret -  Just for your reflection I have attached a great Ferret Sound Smorgasbord ... But much to Wonder with me...  

On this Brent Mason Interview: Brent shares the story behind his move to Nashville, and the alternative misery he would face if he didn't move... working with Chet Atkins, Vince Gill, Willie Nelson, Brad Paisley, Glen Campbell, Nancy Sinatra… his favorite music to play, 5 things responsible for his success as a studio musician, strangest (and funniest) sessions he's been on, sacrifices he made to succeed, toughest decision he's had to make, overcoming shyness. VERY COOL convo w one of the most respected players in Nashville's history. Cool Guitar & Music T-Shirts, ELG Merch!: http://www.GuitarMerch.com Brent is one of the most recorded guitarists in history, has played on 1,800 top ten hit singles, and has recorded with Toby Keith, Aaron Lewis, Reba McEntire, Allison Krauss, Darius Rucker, Asleep at the Wheel, Alabama, George Jones, Trace Adkins, Jamey Johnson, Martina McBride, Amy Grant, Brad Paisley, Willie Nelson, Billy Ray Cyrus, Vince Gill, Ricky Skaggs, Neil Diamond, Marty Stuart and 00's of others  As well as being a Grammy Award winning artist he is also a 14 time winner of the Academy of Country Music (ACM) Guitarist of the Year Award, and a 2 time winner of the CMA Award Musician of the Year (being nominated every year since 1991). He has been named as one of the top ten session guitarists in the world, joining the ranks of Jimmy Page, Larry Carlton, Tommy Tedesco and Steve Cropper.  Brent has played on well over a thousand albums and continues to add to this extensive resume. In October 2019 he was inducted into the Musician's Hall of Fame and in May 2023, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame Nashville Cats Subscribe & Website:  https://www.everyonelovesguitar.com/subscribe Support this show: http://www.everyonelovesguitar.com/support

HEY! YOU! CARMAN'S DOING A KICKSTARTER! CHECK IT OUT!After an almost definitely unhelpful recap of Part 1, we conclude our trek into The Punishment of Gangana. Hopefully this time you walk away with useful knowledge, like the difference between a dragon and a flying lizard, what is and is not a prank (kidnapping), and that if you just wait around long enough, eventually something will happen.Suggested talking points: The Good Podcasting Spice, Goatmeal, Look With Your Wallet, The Hat is VERY Cool, More of a Threat Than a MoralIf you'd like to support Carman's artistic endeavors, visit: https://www.patreon.com/carmandaartsthingsIf you like our show, find us online to help spread the word! Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube. Support us on Patreon to help the show grow at www.patreon.com/wtfolklore. You can find merchandise and information about the show at www.wtfolklorepodcast.com.

Yes, this episode has a HAUNTED PUPPET! Word to the wise, when you see a puppet at a garage sale, just leave it there. Seriously. This longer interview details that spooky story, but also includes Alessandra's experience in the days leading up to September 11th. (as well as a bonus UFO story! thanks to the state of New Mexico for somehow being a hotbed of strangeness!) Each stories hints at the very obvious truth that there is much more going on in this reality than most would like to admit. And once again, that this place we call home, is very much enchanted. To support me on Patreon, cause that would be so VERY COOL of you, click here: https://www.patreon.com/user/about?u=82663030 Many thanks to Alessandra for being so open, and to my listeners, who make this whole pod possible.

Yes, this episode has a HAUNTED PUPPET! Word to the wise, when you see a puppet at a garage sale, just leave it there. Seriously. This shorter episode details that spooky story, but also includes Alessandra's experience in the days leading up to September 11th. Both stories hint at the very obvious truth that there is much more going on in this reality than most would like to admit. And once again, that this place we call home, is very much enchanted. To support me on Patreon, cause that would be so VERY COOL of you, click here: https://www.patreon.com/user/about?u=82663030 Many thanks to Alessandra for being so open, and to my listeners, who make this whole pod possible.

Joy and Claire go to Mean Girls on Broadway, new year resolution-ish goals, advice for job-hunting, and a VERY COOL story that reminds us how small the world is! Happy 2023!! Sign up for our NEWSLETTER HELLO NED DISCOUNT CODE JOY for 15% OFF www.joyandclaire.com Girls Gone Wod email: thisisjoyandclaire@gmail.com Instagram: joyandclaire_ The post 160: Please Let 2023 Be Boring appeared first on This is Joy & Claire.

Matt Stevens Interview: Matt talks about beating cancer and how this changed his life, maintaining integrity in his music, what motivates him to play guitar, best attitude ever about the “new” music business, figuring stuff out and not taking anything for granted. VERY COOL guy Cool Guitar & Music T-Shirts!: http://www.GuitarMerch.com A solo artist with 4 albums of his own, and lead guitarist for The Fierce And The Dead, London-based Matt Stevens has one of the sunniest dispositions you'll ever find. Matt grew up in a small, rural village, and then moved to London, with all his bandmates Subscribe & Website:  https://www.everyonelovesguitar.com/subscribe Support this show: http://www.everyonelovesguitar.com/support

Do you find yourself getting lost in longer songs that tell a story? Sometimes, those long songs feel way shorter than they are. Sometimes, they become classics and mandatory listening! Mike and Nick discuss EPICS - songs that are at LEAST 6 minutes in running time! This should be the LONGEST playlist with the fewest songs...get a sandwich before you start it! What songs did we pick? What songs would YOU suggest? Tune in and find out! We will also have our standard segments - 'DIS-COVERED' and 'THIS SONG SUCKS' - and we'll talk about upcoming releases...and we ALSO have a VERY COOL announcement!!!!

Yo! The Road The Stage is going solo this week - kind of anyways... Producer Ryan Kuly joins us to recap his weekend experience performing in Saskatoon for way over 10k people with One Bad Son. It sounds VERY COOL. We're proud of him, what can we say. Patrick Bateman and Peter Michaels also review some of the albums and shows that have stood strong through the first half of 2022. Watch every episode of The Road The Stage on the CCS YouTube channel which we sincerely hope you've subscribed to by now. Recorded and Produced at Communal Creative Studios in Red Deer, Alberta.

Hello! I was not able to record any new Fruitless this month. Instead, I'll be sharing two old Very Legal, Very Cool episodes. This is the first one featuring Jackal (@JackalJester)You can find a link to the new Very Legal, Very Cool RSS feed here.Here are the original show notes:cw: sexual violence, gore, and racism/racial slurs. In today's episode, Jackal (Mammonburg! @JackalJester) joins Josiah to discuss Caravaggio, Goya, and the Haitian Revolution. This disparate combination of topics began to synthesize into a visual history of modernity, war, colonialism, religion, and revolution from Napoleon to Aristide. The show notes for this episode are pretty helpful since a lot of our discussion focuses on visuals, and of course don't forget to check out Mammonburg, now streaming wherever you get your podcasts. World Destruction - Time Zone, John Lydon, Afrika Bambaataa The Painter - I'm From Barcelona Cruel Summer - Bananarama Dambala - Exuma Money is King - Leyla McCalla Mèsi Bondye - Leyla McCalla You Don't Know What's Going On - Exuma LinksGeneral content warning: a number of the paintings linked below contain violent or disturbing content. Caravaggio Painting no. 1: Saint Jerome Writing, Caravaggio Kim Jung Gi Claire's Redbubble with flat art Goya Judith Beheading Holofernes, Caravaggio Judith taking revenge on rapist, Artemisia Gentileschi Francisco Goya Charles IV of Spain and His Family, Goya The Garotted Man, Goya The Peninsular War The Second of May 1808, Goya The Third of May 1808, Goya The Haitian Revolution First episode of Mike Duncan's series on Haiti Mike Duncan, History of Haiti after the Revolution Disasters of War, Goya series This is Worse, Goya A heroic feat with dead men, Goya For a clasp knife, Goya The same, Goya Invasion of Haiti The body of Charlemagne Péralte (cw: photo of a corpse) Ogou(n) Philomé Obin The Crucifixion of Charlemagne Péralte for Liberty, Obin Duvalier dynasty Jean-Bertrand Aristide The People's Church (or Ti Legliz) movement. There isn't even a Wikipedia page for it. Ernst Prophete Recrucifixion of Charlemagne Péralte, Prophete (I misspoke, there are two sources of this painting I've found, here is the other) Henry Ossawa Tanner The Annunciation, Tanner Nicodemus, Tanner Haiti books referenced The Faces of the Gods - Leslie Desmangles The French Revolution in San Domingo - Lothrop Stoddard (very racist, probably don't read) The Black Jacobins - C. L. R. James Silencing the Past - Michel-Rolph Trouillot The Rainy Season - Amy Wilentz Our Lady of Class Struggle - Terry Rey

So, just about a third of the way through hour two…suddenly no internet connection!  First issue I've ever had with AT&T fiber optics since I switched.  Seems like it has fixed itself!  Very Cool! The Music Authority LIVE STREAM Show & Podcast...listen, like, comment, download, share, repeat…heard daily on Podchaser, Deezer, Amazon Music, Audible, Listen Notes, Google Podcast Manager, Mixcloud, Player FM, Stitcher, Tune In, Podcast Addict, Cast Box, Radio Public, and Pocket Cast, and APPLE iTunes! Follow the show on TWITTER JimPrell@TMusicAuthority!  Please, are you sharing the show? Please, are you listening? How does and can one listen in? Let me list the ways...*Listen LIVE here - https://fastcast4u.com/player/jamprell/ *Podcast - https://themusicauthority.transistor.fm/   The Music Authority LIVE STREAM Show & Podcast!  Special Recorded Network Shows, too!  Different than my daily show! *Radio Candy Radio Monday Wednesday, & Friday 7PM ET, 4PM PT*Rockin' The KOR Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 7PM UK time, 2PM ET, 11AM PT  www.koradio.rocks*Pop Radio UK Friday, Saturday, & Sunday 6PM UK, 1PM ET, 10AM PT!  June 24, 2022, Friday verse two…The Brothers Steve - 08 Beat City [Action Now- 20-20 Re-Envisioned] (Futureman Records)@Elvyn - 12 Time Capsule [Altered Sweet – A Tribute To Matthew Sweet] (Futureman Records)The Flashcubes With Steve Conte - 01 Gudbuy T'Jane (Big Stir Records)The Ormidales - What Am I Supposed to Do @Maladaptive Brad Beard and @Teej - 49 Travels in Nihilon [Garden of Earthly Delight – An XTC Celebration] (Futureman Records)Jason Berk - Don't Forget About Me [Strangers]The Grip Weeds - All Things Bright [Trip Around The Sun] (Jem Records)Haytor- 15@The Overly Polite Tornadoes - My Cocoon [When You Wake Up] (@Jam Records)The Connection - 02 Seven Nights To Rock [Connection Collection Vol. 1]Roger C. Reale & Rue Morgue - 22 Back It Up [The Collection]Joe Benoit Music - 01 Keep Me Satisfied [Too Old To Be A Rock Star]One Like Son - 11 It Knocks Me Out [Classic]Kid Gulliver - Nothing But Trouble (Red on Red Records)@Garland Jefferies – Venus@Lawsuit - 04 Stoplite [Emergency Third Rail Power Trip - 1993]The Cynz - Narrow HipsRonnie D'Addario - I'm On To Something [Best Of 1976 – 1983] (You Are the Cosmos)

Tristan Frizza is the Co-Founder & CEO of Zeta Markets, an under-collateralized DeFi derivatives platform, powered by Solana and Serum. Matty Taylor (Head of Growth at Solana Labs) guest hosts.00:26 - Origin Story03:08 - Winning the Solana Hackathon05:59 - What is Zeta?08:49 - What's appealing about options?11:17 - Why is Zeta more successful than other options projects?16:44 - Using open-source primitives vs. building20:15 - The front-end24:22 - Mobile user experience28:49 - Rapid Fire Questions: Anonymous Crypto teams30:21 - Rapid Fire Questions: The Metaverse31:18 - Rapid Fire Questions: Insurance in DeFi34:40 - Rapid Fire Questions: Singapore36:12 - Rapid Fire Questions: Sleep38:27 - Rapid Fire Questions: Solana DISCLAIMERThe information on this podcast is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose.The information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.The information on this podcast is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional broker or financial advisor. Matty (00:09):Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Solana Podcast. My name is Matty. I'm the head of growth at Solana Labs. I'll be guest hosting today and we have a special guest Tristan from Zeta. So welcome.Tristan (00:20):Thanks for having me on Matty.Matty (00:22):It would be great to know just a little bit about yourself and maybe how you started your crypto journey.Tristan (00:27):Yeah, absolutely. I can give you the long and the short of it. So I think I started getting into crypto back in the day, probably in 2017 when I think a lot of people got into it during the last ball run. And that was mostly just speculate on coins, looking what was going on in the ecosystem. DeFi didn't really exist yet at that point. And I feel like a lot of people were still grasping at what is the real use case of crypto at the moment, other than this buying these coins and seeing the moon. Didn't feel like there was a real kind of engineering need for it or some kind of real product market fit. And so that's kind of why I tape it off a little bit after a year in that space, just kind of checking the things out.I went back finished my degree, actually ended up doing a bunch of courses in distributed systems and computing, because I started getting interested in the whole blockchain side of things from the engineering standpoint, it was like creating your own coding up your own proof of work blockchain, which I thought was really cool and just understanding the fundamentals of Bitcoin. And then I think over the years I took a bit of a breather on it. I unfortunately missed DeFi summer, which I was pretty firm about. And then coming back to it, I'd been hearing so much about smart contract programming, what you can build in this kind of new DeFi Boom and what was going on there. And so, I came back into the space after having worked for roughly like two years as a data scientist, kind of in the Bay Area.I think I was a little bit tired of the remote work kind of grind there, even though I enjoyed my job. And so I decided, hey, in my free time over Christmas, I'm just going to go and learn how to program on solidity. And so I made a few kind of smart contracts learned what was up there. Randomly was just putting together a DeFi idea, looped in some of my best friends from kind of more of a trading and finance background, we decided to put our brains together and just be like, "Hey, what can we build in this space?"And then yeah, after throwing around enough ideas, I think we ended up settling on something that was really cool. We thought the derivative space was somewhat untapped, especially options seemed like such a huge market, but no one's really done it. And randomly, we reached out to Dom, fellow Australian, and then we basically, he put us in touch with Tolley and Bartos, and after talking to them a bunch and reading the whitepaper many times, I got really sold on Solana and I've just been developing on it since.Matty (02:40):Nice. And if I remember correctly, you guys were the winners of the Solana Season Hackathon, which was extremely competitive. I think there were like 13,000 plus participants, which I believe is the largest hackathon, not only in crypto, but ever in the technology space. So it would be great to just hear like how you guys worked through that whole event and what you guys came up with coming out of it.Tristan (03:10):Yeah, absolutely. So that was definitely a tough experience and an interesting challenge as you mentioned. Yeah. 13,000 people to compete against. And that was really when we were finding our feet in the crypto space, not having as much of a network or I guess like a reputation being new builders in the space and I won't go too much into it, but we went through a team split and stuff during that kind of time. So it was a really tumultuous period. And so, we just thought, "Hey, we got to give this hackathon 110% and do what we do best. Like we're all engineers and X traders. So we got to build man, because that's what we're really good at. And that's how we can prove ourselves. So we went into that.I pretty much quit my job, I would say two days before the hackathon started to give it 110% as did like a couple of the other guys, and then we just went in there pretty much worked out of the same apartment for three weeks, I would say, putting in 16 hours a day. So we must have worked over a hundred hours a week, just ridiculous hours. It was pretty much like wake up, code, go to bed. Which got pretty tiring by the end, I was pretty exhausted, but we pumped out a lot of work and we built out this very early stage binary options, MVP platform of which is very far cry from what we have now. But, it was amazing to smash that out in three weeks, learn Anchor from fundamentals, still in the process of learning Rust at that time.And then whipping together a front end, we ended up getting the product out, which was fine and it was a little hacky, but it worked. And then we ran into so many infrastructure problems. We didn't fully understand or appreciate the difficulty of RPC Nodes and trying to service all those requests. So our front end got rate limited crazy. So to actually get it out there on Devnet that people could use it, we were like, we have this funny photo where it's six laptops side by side, all hotspoting off different Wi-Fi hotspots, just so we get different IPs so we don't get rate limited on all of them. And then we were all doing what's called cranking, to process orders on the back end, all through these mini distributed cluster of computers in the same room. That was an awesome experience. And yeah, it brought the team together, we pretty much got a lot of our friends to come in who were our colleagues and then we hide them off the bat. And then we grew the team pretty quickly to seven or eight people straight off the bat to hackathon.Matty (05:28):Wow. That's insane. I didn't know that story about running your own cluster of computers to not get rate limited. That's amazing. And so I think you mentioned your initial idea in the hackathon and what you worked on initially was binary options, but that's not exactly what's in the product suite today For Zeta Protocol. So maybe just walk us through one, why didn't you pursue that idea and two, what is Zeta today? What is the actual product?Tristan (06:01):Yeah, absolutely great question. So I think with binary options, that was never really the plan for us. We didn't want to box ourselves into that very niche vertical. I think they have a bit of a bad rep in traditional markets. They're kind of banned in a lot of countries because I think they are a little bit of a degenerate product to be honest. It's kind of glorified betting. And so we wanted to move away from that. We want options that people can actually trade properly in a sophisticated manner in financial markets and Hedge Exposure and do all these things that you currently can't really do in crypto markets. People tend to just go bulls long right now, a 100x leverage and either get liquidated or they become a millionaire. So we're like, there's probably some in between where people can be a bit smarter and this is pretty much what all the pros use on Wall Street and all these other places pro traders are trading options and other derivatives.So we're like, this is a great element to have in your toolbox. So we straight away from, I think binary options, even though the reason we did it was because the math is a ton easier and it was easy to implement. So we got that out there. It proved that we could build something like this. And then we backed away from that. We went for Vanilla options, which we think are far more interesting. There's far more market demand. It's like a multi-trillion dollar industry in traditional markets. People use it all the time, super popular. You even see people getting into it from more user friendly apps like Robinhood in the US, has just blown up in popularity. So we're like this clear market fit. And then now we're trying to, I think historically we've been seen as just purely an options platform, which we were for a period of a couple of months, but now we're really broadening our focus to all derivatives, which is really exciting. Having everything cross margin and viewed under the one umbrella platform, I think is really cool and always building into creation. So what we have right now is futures and options. So we are the first one to offer dated futures on DeFi, I'm pretty sure. Even across Ethereum, I don't think anyone offers it, which is pretty interesting. Everyone seems to go fully PERPs, but we do futures, we do options, which is nice because you can kind of hedge out using the futures for your options. And then we're going to be looking to list stuff perpetual swaps as well. Probably broaden it into a bunch of other categories for derivatives based on demand and what's feasible to build on chain. But really we think the options are pretty limited and trying to build out a whole suite of trading products that people can get dug into.Matty (08:21):That a great overview. I guess kind of double clicking on one of the things you said, which is options are really popular product in institutional, traditional finance. And even now thanks to Robinhood of making it a great user interface for retail to even participate in options. Why exactly is that the case? What is so appealing about options that it applies to both audiences?Tristan (08:50):I think for more casual users, I think the payoff structure is just very appealing. I can't demonstrate it here on the podcast, but essentially you have unlimited upside. So as if you were to get a PERP or hold spot, if Solana rips to a thousand dollars, you're exposed to that whole upside, which is really nice to see. But the cool thing is your downside is essentially capped. So if Solana tanks, you only ever lose what you put up for the premium, which may be a hundred dollars or something or other. So it's almost like you're buying this insurance. You've got unlimited upside, limited downside, which is in stark contrast to say, you buy a PERP and Solana tanks a lot. And then suddenly you've lost a ton of money, you get liquidated, which is pretty tough.So I think that's pretty cool. It's also options are inherently cheaper than spot as with like most derivatives. That's why they're more efficient. That's why people trade PERPs because it's easy leverage, I guess, with options they're inherently kind of under collateralized, you're only paying a fraction of what you would for the actual Solana coin is a spot asset. So that's pretty nice. And then I think from the institution side, and hopefully you're going to start seeing this more from the DeFi user side as well. I think it's a really good tool for hedging risk and this is their primary use case I would say in traditional markets. And you can almost think of it like you're buying fixed insurance on your portfolio. So what you'll do is say, I have a net long huge position on Solana or some other coin, and I want to protected on the downside.I'm just paying a small amount of money essentially to buy put say, and so if the market does tank, I've got this nice thing that's protecting my downside. I think those are all really appealing things. And you can start to pair up a lot of these different options so you can buy calls and puts, and then you can build these very interesting payoff structures. Things like straddles, which are kind of this V-shaped payoff where I'm basically market neutral. I'm Delta neutral. I don't have an opinion on where the market's going to rip up or rip down, but I just know it's going to go a long way in one direction. So you essentially start speculating on purely volatility, which is an interesting new trading paradigm that I don't think a lot of people do. So you might be unsure, I don't know where the market's going to move, but I know it's going to move a ton and you can start placing bets on that, which is really exciting.Matty (11:04):Yeah. That's really interesting. I mean, Zeta is not the first project to try to tackle options and bring it to a bigger audience in DeFi. Why do you think previous attempts that this haven't been quite a successful?Tristan (11:18):Yeah. Awesome question. And this is really what spurred us to start in the first place. We were looking into this early 2021, we spent a good month or two, just not even coding that much, but just surveying the landscape, seeing what was out there and where we would necessarily fit in. And so I think at that time, pretty much nothing existed on Solana. There was what? Serum, Bonfida, Raydium had only just launched. It was very early days, but obviously most of the competitors, or people in that landscape were on the eat side. And so I won't name any platforms, but there were a couple out there. They're mostly these one sided AMM pools, which basically all they do is sell options. And so that's not really satisfactory. You're not doing the buying and selling. You're forced into one.And whenever you are placing your capital into this AMM pool, you're a forced seller all the time. So basically you have no choice whether you want to sell the option and you always get done at really poor prices. It also requires people to have pretty good pricing to make sure they get a good deal for their LPs. But from what we saw with some of those platforms, they've priced them really poorly. You have this parameter called implied volatility that you will have an opinion on or put into your pricing model. And I remember the founder of this one protocol was updating it once a week. Whereas, crypto's very volatile, change is intraday. So, if you looked at the gene analytics dashboard, a lot of the LPs were just down 20% to date, which was like, why would I put my money in this pool? It's just losing me money consistently.Matty (12:46):Yeah.Tristan (12:47):And then there were other nice ones that were more like orderbook based, which I think were cool. But the only problem was Ethereum, gas fees were crippling, you try and put on a call spread, it'd be like $200 in fees. And I'm like, that just wipes out all my PNL. I've got to be a whale that's putting on this massive trade. Otherwise, any kind of smaller fry, just going to get completely priced out of the market. And their liquidity was just nonexistent. They've got one strike on their orderbook that had two trades on or something like that. Everything else was just blank. So I was like, there's no way that I'm going to trade on this willingly versus like Deribit or some other kind of options exchange out there.And so I guess the way in which we're different, we're obviously built on Solana, so you get the really nice performance aspects of the network. A big sell for us was being able to use Serum. So the decentralized orderbook infrastructure, which is a feed of engineering there and powers pretty much all our markets, which is pretty incredible. And something that we've tried to do, I guess the four main points we've tried to hit capital efficiency is super important. So we want people to be able to put on positions without having to go over collateralized or fully collateralized and put up a ton of capital, which makes it really inefficient to trade. It means like, hey, I can't open a lot of positions. Suddenly, I've tied up all my money in this one position. And so this is really bad for individual users and especially market makers. Market makers need to put on 50 different positions across all different markets.So that makes it really tough for them, makes it really inefficient to trade. And if you don't have market makers who can trade efficiently, you're just going to have not very liquid markets. So, that brings me into the second point. We want to aim for liquidity, obviously trying to onboard these market makers. We have two dedicated market makers, which is really cool. They're providing liquidity 24/7 and kind of quoting our markets, which is really exciting. The third point is user friendliness. I think options scare a lot of people and derivatives in general, can be scary, because they're a little bit more complicated. But they're nothing to be scared about. And we're trying to bring down that barrier entry, we've seen what other platforms like Robinhood have done in terms of making it a lot more user friendly, building stuff like a mobile app and having more explainers in product.So we've taken some notes from that. We've tried to build a really intuitive trading interface first and foremost. So people can go in there and it somewhat makes sense on how to trade. And it's not this really opaque, confusing Excel spreadsheet looking interface, like you get on some other platforms. And we just really want to lower the barrier to options and make sure that everyone's able to access them and try and use them. And then the last bit is I think safety is really important because they are a volatile product and like options, prices can change quite a lot because they're kind of non-linear in nature. We want to make sure that users are protected. They're kind of managing risks, so we've got like a lot of safe margin parameters at the moment. So people can't get too over levered and then it's getting liquidated really easily.And we also have this internal risk engine. We have what's called a Mark Price or our internal fair for what we think these options are worth these updates pretty much every block. So half a second, essentially it's based on the fifth Oracle, we update it really quickly. It's kind of calibrated to trades and other things that happen on the platform. So it's meant to be really reactive and we basically built this because we don't want prices to drift off what they actually should be. And then people just get randomly liquidated for no reason when they shouldn't be. So far it's been going pretty well. We've had barely any liquidations. I think people have been pretty happy, but always improvements to be made.Matty (16:05):Very Cool. One of the things you touched on was how you're starting with Vanilla options and you're interested in more perpetuals and maybe other derivatives and creating this suite of a variety of products that folks can use and you need cross margining across all of them. How do you decide from a product standpoint, when to use other open source primitives, maybe you can use Marginfi for cross margining or another protocol DeFi primitive for futures, contracts. How do you decide what you guys build versus plugging into this open source composable ecosystem that already exists on Solana?Tristan (16:47):Yeah. This is a really good question and saying we've been grappling with for many months. I think it does come with a set of trade offs and we do have to put our heads down and think about it quite a lot. I think in the early days we were really looking to integrate with one of these linear trading platforms. So anything that's like PERPs or spot or futures. So, obviously talking to teams like Mango and a bunch of others out there on integrating because we're like, "Hey, we need these futures," and we didn't necessarily want to build them ourselves. Because it was extra time. The one thing that's slightly tricky with early composability is so many of these platforms and protocols were changing every week. So it was like trying to hit a moving target.Their code base is changing how they're doing stuff and we're like, we're also changing and trying to be agile. So in the early days that was a little bit tricky to kind of integrate Mango margins, their stuff's a little bit differently to how we do it. So it's really hard to consolidate and do a cross margin across two things. I know Marginfi's trying to tackle this now, which is why we're trying to work really hard with them and trying to integrate because I think it's such a cool product. But yeah, for example, with those futures we realized there's a clever trick where essentially if you treat a zero strike call, it's more or less a future. And so that was something that we could just pretty much chuck straight into our framework and pretty much pop out futures within a day's worth of work, which is pretty cool.But now in the future we're really focusing on composability that's a massive thing for us. So working with say, some of the borrower lend platforms, I think they've got nice functionality and it allows us to do a multi collateral, because currently we just do cash margin for stuff, if we want people to margin with SOL, they can kind of borrow cash on their sole or something rather. And then yet now there's this whole ecosystem of derivatives apps that they are building on top of futures and options. And so we're really trying to service them. So you've seen these DeFi options vaults really blow up in probably the last month or two. There's this whole popping ecosystem of these now whereas, if you were to look at this, maybe like three, four, five months ago, there was pretty barren. No one was there.Everyone was telling us like, hey options have no product market fit, no one cares about it. And now you've got Katana, you've got Friction, you've got like tap a bunch of others. You would've seen the news. We just brought over Ribbon Finance from Ethereum and we helped them launch on Solana, which to my knowledge is the biggest EVM kind of project to move over to Solana properly, which is pretty exciting. So yeah, we're just trying to service this ecosystem and really composed with all the projects that are trying to build up on us. And you've got like five hackathons happening now almost concurrently. You've got like serum convergence, a bunch of cool stuff came out of there. That looks really exciting. You've got this Solana global hackathon, which is coming up shortly and a bunch of others. So very exciting times.Matty (19:33):Yeah. A related question and you answered some of it, but Zeta, it seems like at its core, it is a protocol and you want external developers to be integrating with your protocol so that they can build things like structured product, things like Ribbon or Friction or Katana. But at the same time, you do have a really nice front end that you guys have obviously spent a good amount of time on, how do you view that piece of it where you are a developer platform in a sense, because you're composable with all these other systems that could plug in and provide value to the underlying protocol. But at the other end, how much work do you put into your front end to make it a trading destination for end users?Tristan (20:18):I think we started very much from the singular mindset of let's build this really amazing exchange ourselves and then have realized that, hey, we only have so many hours in a day and this is quite a grand vision. And you really get this exponential payoff or this nonlinear scaling when you start integrating developers from the community, people start building on top of you and you start growing a bit of an ecosystem. I think Serum's like a really great example of that. Obviously they've got this great orderbook, but now it's used by 50 plus projects. It really scales pretty amazingly. And it's like this core primitive in the ecosystem. And so we want to offer that because we've spent like six months trying to engineer this really complex and sophisticated options and future's protocol. We don't want people to necessarily go through the pain of figuring out how to do under collateralized trading and margining and settlement of options and all the pain points that we've had there.And so we want people to leverage that, build cool things. But at the same time we needed like a front end. We want people to be able to trade. I'm not expecting people to whip up type script or get a CLI going and start placing trades programmatically. That's not going to really appeal to the majority of users so it was us coming up with a really sleek web app. We also built not a mobile app, but you can access it through a mobile browser and we're going to integrate that obviously with Phantom mobile, which I think will make for a really nice experience. But yeah, other than that, we've been focusing hugely on DevTooling. That was kind of a pivot in our focus from, we've built this exchange and it works really well internally.And then I think I pushed pretty hard from our side to focus on composability and how we integrate with a lot of other projects. And so that was releasing a typescript SDK, which basically all the market makers and programmatic traders use. It just makes their life a lot easier. And a lot of people don't necessarily want to click trade through our platform. So if you're running a market, making bot, doing all those kind of essential functions, then that's really convenient for you. And then something else I wrote, which is our kind of like Rust cross program in vacation library. This is basically what the vault projects and all these other guys have been bugging us for months for. And I kept basically pushing back on guys like Katana and just being like, "It's coming, we're focusing on the platform. We're trying to get that out then I'll kind of service you guys once it's ready."And so ended up kind of doing it in parallel. I'm like these guys are pretty important to our strategy, we really should be supporting them. So ended up just writing out that client. I even built a bit of a sample vault implementation just to make it as frictionless to move over as possible. And they've kind of taken that and run with it. And the feedback that we've gotten is everyone's like the developer documentation is really good. It's easy to use. They don't even need to ask questions. So it scales well for us where I don't need to get on a call for two hours and walk them through how our stuff works. They just read the docs, fork it over, start running it, make their own changes. And they've got a product working within like an hour, which is pretty amazing.Matty (23:10):That's awesome. One thing you also mentioned was mobile, which is interesting. I mean, yeah, for those who don't know, Phantom, the browser extension wallet has released an iOS app recently and getting a ton of downloads and it's getting the ecosystem thinking how do we optimize for mobile? Obviously part of the promise of DeFi, is that there's billions of people around the world, they have smartphones, they maybe don't have access to first world financial infrastructure. And so if they have a smartphone and they have a Phantom wallet and they can get some funds into the wallet, you get access to this next generation financial system. But on the other hand, and maybe that works well with simple things like I want to get a loan or I want to make a trade or invest in a stock.Matty (23:56):But when you're talking about using pretty advanced derivatives, whether it's futures or options, screen space matters. You just envision the Wall Street trader with 17 screens loaded up. How do you think about that? Are people, do you think going to be trading perpetuals and stuff from their mobile phones in Indonesia? Or how do you see that of playing out?Tristan (24:25):Yeah, definitely see it happening. To be honest, I think I went through a period where I used to pretty much exclusively use binance and FTX from my desktop computer. And then it got to a point where I just got too lazy and it was so convenient on my phone. If I just hear like, this coin is probably a good buy now, I'll just kind of check it on my app and go and place an order. And it's super frictionless. It's super easy to do and very convenient. So I really like that. And I think what spurred us was kind of a twofold thing. One is seeing what our audience was and what people wanted. And obviously it's a global audience.If you're looking at the whole span of things, a lot of people do use mobiles actually, which kind of shocked me because I came into this being I've never used a DeFi app on mobile and I don't think I ever will. And then I looked at what our discord statistics were. We put out actually like a survey or two, how PM guy wanted to do a survey and figure out a little bit what our user base was. Turned out like this huge proportion of people, I forget the exact percentage, but were accessing and using primarily from mobile.Matty (25:31):Interesting.Tristan (25:31):And I think that tends to be probably more of a third world geography type thing. People tend to be very big on the mobile phone stuff. We were like, "Hey, we can't ignore this customer segment. There's clearly like a fair bit of demand there. And this is something that we should probably cater to." And it was really good from the design side. So this second part was we obviously want to simplify, but still have functional options. We don't want to simplify to a case where it's like click one button and it does stuff for you. It's like, we just want to make it intuitive and easy to use without making it unnecessarily complicated.So we're like, "Let's hide stuff like Greek exposures and all this stuff in options. That's like probably for the pros and it's probably overkill." And so we're like let's design for mobile first, which is actually feedback from Josh Taylor, from the Solana team. The designer there gave us a bunch of good feedback of design for mobile first it'll force you to be really efficient and think about screen real estate and then go back to the web one after that and then you'll probably have a much simpler or more compact information dense kind of screen there.So that worked really well for us. We kind of rolled with that, we had these two apps. We actually kind of split it up. We didn't want to have necessarily the same exact experience for both web and mobile, which we had initially. And I think our binary options won. It was just like a clone of both, but we realized, hey, we're going to have different audiences catering to both. Probably the more pro traders are going to get on the web app so we're going to have essentially the options, kind of the layout of all the options. You've got a lot more kind of parameters and knobs to look at. You can look at like open interest and probably we'll add in like Delta and all these other things that I think the pro traders really appreciate.But when we're looking at the mobile app, we gave the normal interface and we put in other stuff, which is useful from the price. And you can kind of get these little metrics, like what's the probability of the option finishing and the money. And I feel like that's a lot more tangible than I just look at an option and it's priced at $2 or 70. And I'm like, what the hell does that mean? Whereas if I'm like, "Hey, this has a 20% chance of finishing in the money," then that makes a lot more sense to regular users. And we changed the flow a little bit as well, where it's like, if people aren't really comfortable placing options, we made a very simplified flow, which is like, I think the price is going up or the price is going down, which kind of caters to the people who are only familiar with these up-down perpetual products.And that basically auto fills out your kind of, I'm buying a call or I'm buying a put with some nearest to expiry, some other parameters. So it kind of takes some of the decision load off people. Because otherwise people come in there, they're like, "I want to buy an option. I don't really know what I'm doing, but I've got to put in things like expiry, I've got to select the strike and then I've got to select all these different parameters. I've got to buy or sell it. Which one do I do? I don't know. It's kind of a lot of mental load." So we are just trying to minimize that for people.Matty (28:15):Nice. That's awesome. So maybe the last section here, we can go through some rapid fire questions. So I listen to this podcast from Tyler Cowen, who's an economist and professor in the United States. And basically how this is going to work is I'm going to say a word or a phrase, you're going to say whether it's overrated or underrated.Tristan (28:37):Got you.Matty (28:38):And then you can give a brief definition of why you think it's overrated or underrated. So, I'm going to say something first, a word and it's just going to be rapid fire. We can talk a little bit about each. But, you ready?Tristan (28:49):Yep. Let's do it.Matty (28:50):All right. Anonymous crypto teams.Tristan (28:53):I think underrated.Matty (28:54):Why is that?Tristan (28:54):I think they do pretty good work. And I think coming from a background in traditional software engineering where people care a lot about credentials and things like that, I think what you should really be measured on is your meritocratic thing where people just do good work. And I think people go out there in the crypto ecosystem, they don't make a big fuss, but they launch these protocols. And I think people do really good work and they don't need to have a Stanford CS background or something, although to contribute to the ecosystem. So it's really nice and refreshing to see people who might be self taught in crypto. And a lot of people are, I think they take it on their own initiative and they go out there, build amazing products and change and push the financial narrative forward or whatever they're building the crypto ecosystem. So I'm pretty bullish on those teams for sure.Matty (29:39):Out of curiosity, why didn't your team go anonymous?Tristan (29:43):Most people in the team I think are pretty anonymous and want to stay that way. I think it's me who's had to be the doxed individual on the team. But it's more like, you want to do these speaking opportunities or go and publicize or get the name out about your protocol. And I think it's very hard or at least for me it was tough to do that. People don't necessarily take you seriously, especially when you're trying to raise capital or do other things, people don't really... That doesn't fly with a lot of people when you're trying to talk to people from more traditional industries, they laugh it off as a bit of a joke. So I don't mind too much from my perspective, I'm pretty comfortable with it. But yeah, at least we have a little bit of a mix.Matty (30:24):The Metaverse.Tristan (30:26):I think overrated. I just hear it is this buzzword, you hear it from everyone, especially guys like VCs and other people. I hear it from a lot of my, I hate to say it but normie friends from outside of crypto. That's start to become a bit more of a tagline, but especially in relation with NFTs, this is something that everyone gets into in the space. And I think that's good to broaden adoption and onboard the next billion users, but I still don't have a really good understanding of what exactly the Metaverse is. And now I'm seeing all this stuff.Matty (30:55):What is it?Tristan (30:56):I don't know.Matty (30:56):I don't even know.Tristan (30:57):No, one's got a definition. It's just this buzzword that gets thrown around and now I'm seeing Facebook rebrands to Meta. You've got this corporate BS coming out and we're going to build the metaverse and I'm like, I don't really want to be part of Zuck's metaverse necessarily. So I'm a little bit bearish on that.Matty (31:14):Yes, I too do not want to be a part of Zuck's wonderland. Insurance and DeFi.Tristan (31:22):Definitely, I think underhyped. People go to the really quick and easy stuff to understand. And obviously NFT is a nice bridge gaming stuff like that I think is really cool. And not to downplay that. Then I think something, the narrative for DeFi is really strong. We're building a new financial ecosystem. If you're looking back at what's happened in traditional finance, obviously there's been like decades of innovation stuff. I feel like that's kind of slowing down and is not really suited to this web enabled world that we live in now. So there's kind of obviously this Web3 meme that everyone throws around, but I think it is genuinely true and it's going to be a bit of a paradigm shift.Even now, I try and open a new bank account or do a cross-border payment or something although it's a huge pain in the ass. There's so many things and steps you have to go through, it takes forever, you get clipped on fees on absolutely everything. Whereas, I remember the first time I opened up a Solana wallet and I just sent someone USDC, it's confirmed in a second, pretty much. I paid a fraction of  cent in fees. I'm like, this is incredible, nothing beats this. And I think Anatoly brings that great statistic of 20% of global GDP just literally gets dedicated and used up by just moving money around and having all these middle men take commissions on things. Unlike, wouldn't it be incredible if we all got a day back in our lives that we didn't have to work if the whole financial ecosystem was a little bit more efficient and more transparent.Personally, I really like it because having worked in the software industry where open source is pretty king there. And the only reason anything works is because people have built all these libraries and other things underneath that all build up. And you can build your application in 10 lines of Python now. And this is kind of like, doesn't obviously happen in traditional finance. You've got all these firms who guard their secrets, it's world gardens. And now you've got this transparent financial ecosystem where everything's, majority stuff is open sourced, it's composable, people don't need permission to go and place and execute orders through Zeta or build whatever their protocol is, their default product on top of us, just go ahead and do it. It's a piece of public infrastructure.So I think that's pretty awesome. And I'm super excited when we live in this world where everything can talk to each other. You're actually earning productive yield on your assets and not the 0.2% that I probably get in my bank account these days. And then following on from that, I think derivatives are pretty cool. I think when you look at any financial ecosystem, you've got a few stages of where you're going through. So, we started with the simple token swaps, then you're going to these borrow lend protocols, then you're getting more into PERPs and leverage. And then I think the last piece of this derivatives puzzle is just trying to get to options and then on the very end of the spectrum, you're starting to get to exotic options and this crazy stuff and you're seeing a few protocols popping up for that. So it'll be interesting to see how it plays out, but I think it's such a natural fit. And yeah, when we started this, we're like, it's such a obvious play that this will take off and we've already seen perpetuals swell to multiple billions, if not more of volume on centralized exchanges, even stuff like dYdX is just blown up massively all of last year and this year. So yeah, I'm super bullish on that. And I think it's under service still. I think it's just going to grow more and more. And if you look at traditional markets, derivatives eclipses spot by 20X or something although it's just huge.Matty (34:42):Singapore.Tristan (34:44):I think under hyped right now. I think it's still fairly under the radar. I think it's a pretty cool part of the world where it's like a nice melting pot between western and east. So it's cool. I think being around here and seeing that it's still an English speaking country, but you get exposure to that kind of side of the world. It was just kind of convenient for us as well because it's that whole kind of APAC time zone. And so far it's been pretty enjoyable. I think there's a really, really fast growing crypto ecosystem. So it's still behind. I would say the US, is kind of the leader. I think all the main people are there in the Bay Area or New York building cool stuff. You're definitely to starting to see more people move here.I think it's a big crypto hub and I think kudos to the regulators for not just trying to outright ban things and trying to have a little bit of a conversation, which I think is pretty rare when it comes to crypto. You have everyone trying to shut it down and label it as this kind of like, this is some black market thing and people are using it for all these nefarious operations, when you have actual legitimate builders trying to build awesome financial infrastructure that will hopefully change the world. So yeah, I'm definitely see like more people moving here. I think hopefully growing a little bit of a Solana footprint, we'll have this Singapore Hacker House going and hopefully a more longer term installment and looking forward to having more startups around.Matty (36:05):Yeah. Completely agree. Huge fan of Singapore. I've been there handful of times and I've always had a really good experience there. So okay, next one. Sleep.Tristan (36:15):I think under hyped for sure. I have a lot of friends, probably more in the kind of banking sphere who are just sleep is for the weak type mentality. They're like I did sleep three hours and go back to my desk job like Goldman Sachs and then just do all my stuff there. And they're like, who needs to sleep? Doesn't really matter. They have fucked up sleep schedules. I've read a couple of books on sleep. I think there's that classic, like Matthew Walker one, on why we sleep and a bunch of other good ones and yeah, it does seem pretty critical. I know at least myself, when I get less than six hours of sleep, I'm super grumpy and just have a lot of brain fog and cannot think straight. And when you're trying to code up smart contracts and Rust, I think you need your mind to be performing pretty well.So we have a bit of a weird sleep schedule going in our team somewhat, we're trying to service 24 hours of the clock. And even though some of us are in the same time zone, say we just have to like stagger our hours. So I'm personally a bit of a early bird. So I try and get off earlier and I enjoy the early hours because I tend to get very tired at night and can't problem solve. Whereas, I'm fresh in the morning. Whereas some other guys in the team, especially on the engineering team, love to pull the late nights and be up until like 3:00, 4:00, 5:00 AM. So, it kind of works, but we're around on the clock. So if a market maker or someone throws a fuss and the platform's breaking, we're always there on call. But I think sleep in general is super underrated. I think it's pretty important in the long run, you want to be getting your six to eight hours.Matty (37:43):I asked this question because I think you had a pretty infamous tweet and I think it was, "Peak crypto living." And it's just a picture of a rug and a ma and a mattress on the floor. I just wanted to get to the bottom of this.Tristan (38:00):That's right. My sleep is terrible. That was when we moved into a new place and I pretty much had no furniture. We bought a wide screen monitor before we bought a bed. We were working super productively, but then I would go up to my room and just more or less sleep on a yoga mat on the floor, which was maybe not the most comfortable thing, but I got by it for like a week and then managed to buy a bit more furniture. I have at least a basic bed now. So my sleep has improved incredibly since then.Matty (38:26):Nice. And this will be the last one. Solana.Tristan (38:30):That one's a hard one to say. I think if you were to ask me last year, it would definitely be under hyped. I still think it's under hyped. I think people have been fighting it and being like, "Hey, this isn't a real chain. It's overblown. It's VC chain bad or something." Although people are kind of always trying to put shed on it, which I don't think is justified. And I look at those people now and I'm like, "Clearly you haven't used any of the apps that are on the platform where you have no appreciation of what the people are trying to build." Because I think being, I wouldn't say an insider, but at least like a builder in the ecosystem, you're like, hey, there are a lot of really cool teams building cool stuff. And there are so many products yet to be launched.So I still think it's in the period where it's under hyped and we're going to have just so many more Solana apps just because it can scale and we're not going to hit these really crappy limits like you hit it on Ethereum L1 where suddenly everything is costing an insane amount of money. So I still think the space has so much room to grow and the way that Solana is built, I think does scale pretty nicely. I think it has definitely gotten some hype towards the end of last year. I think it did feel a little bit toppy, I think in crypto in general and going to break point and there was so much hype and so much crazy sentiment going around. Everyone was feeling really good because their bags are getting pumped and people are in Solana 200 plus dollar territory. And there's this whole NFT thing going on, you've got to listen to announcements from founder of Reddit and founder of Brave and stuff.And you're like, "Wow, this is mainstream adoption. What's going on? Solana's going to infinity." And then the whole market nuked and then kind of brings you somewhat back to reality. And I think now is probably the best time for builders when price is a little bit suppressed. People can kind of put their head down because, I got to say, end of last year was pretty hard to concentrate on just pure engineering. There's a million different distractions going on. So I think it's nice that things are a bit more low key now and it's a bit more of a healthy growth trajectory.Matty (40:20):Yeah, for sure. This is definitely Solana Season from my perspective, because this is the best time to build applications, I think. Yeah. Really happy that you guys are in the ecosystem. I'm really excited that Zeta is now on Mainnet. And yeah. Thanks again for coming on this show.Tristan (40:38):Awesome. Not at all. My pleasure.

Keyboards and mouse are essential computer peripherals. Keyboards are used to input data while the mouse interacts with anything on the screen. These two components are the most used peripherals, exposed to the environment, and the ones that we are always in contact with. Thus, it is crucial for these peripherals to always be cleaned and disinfected to ensure our safety. But how can you disinfect keyboards and mice without damaging them? In this episode, we invited Natasha from Man & Machine. Natasha shares how Man & Machine revolutionized the industry through washable keyboards and mice commonly used in the medical field and military, such as the Marines. What is Man & Machine? [01:04] Man & Machine started as a small computer repair facility in Landover, Maryland. They slowly transitioned to enhancing computer monitors in marine applications. Because of their work in marine applications, many customers started asking for waterproof keyboards and mice that they could use on boats. That's what led them to their current focus: washable mice and keyboards. [02:11] Currently, they have two different variations that they offer: Medical Grade and Sealed keyboards and mice. The other one is the washable line of keyboards and mice that are more traditional and open-style and internally sealed so you won't damage them when you wash them. They also offer mouse pads, laptop keypad covers and large silicone sheets that can be sterilized. Specifications [5:32] Man & Machine offers the traditional scroll wheel mouse that everyone is used to. You can spray, wipe, and sink rinse them without damaging anything internally. Same with their keyboards which range in size from 13 inches to 17 inches wide with numerical keypads. They designed them with a fitted drape containing the legend keys printed on them to allow the user to see what keys are being pressed. Preventing accidental key presses when cleaning the keyboards [08:48] Except for the It's Cool Variant, all of their keyboards have a feature called “TruLock.” TruLock is a technology they developed that allows users to lock the keys on their washable keyboard. After pressing the Function + F11 Key, the indicators from the Scroll Lock and Num Lock will flash, telling you that you can safely wipe your keyboards without inputting gibberish or unwanted commands to your system. Their Premium keyboards use the Control Keys to enable the “TruLock” feature. Other Features and Specs [16:37] Man & Machine's products have the “cool” moniker to them. The Very Cool and It's Cool are recommended for operatory. The L Cool is recommended for administrative or front-desk areas where there may not be as many germs or aerosols, but you can still disinfect them if you want to. They also have fully-sealed keyboards, Really Cool to Slim Cool, which can be submerged in a 1:10 bleach solution. [17:29] Their Premium keyboards can be customized with custom-made cables from 12 inches to 16 feet. Their wireless keyboards operate on RF USB Dongle. Another amazing feature is you can pair both the keyboard and mice with the same USB dongle, so it only takes one USB port on your computer. Man & Machine is now launching a wireless keyboard that uses either Bluetooth or RF wireless.   To learn more about Man & Machine, visit: Website: https://www.man-machine.com/  Use code LevelUP for 10% off! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ManAndMachine LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/man-machine-inc/?viewAsMember=true Twitter: https://twitter.com/manandmachineco Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/man_and_machine_inc/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIN6hqKVjaXB4tooZoPXl9w  

The boys are putting out 2 episodes with less space between them then MJFs eyes! Listen in to a wonderful episode with included interview with friends of the show and Full Gear ticket Winners Issy and Matt! He's a Wrestler! Very Cool!

Happy Halloween and dia de los muertos folks! After a long break the Dream Regime plus Mr. Very Young and Very Cool return to dive back into the love, the laughter, the tragedy and the poignant deliciousness of Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennans' all hallowed eves repertoire. Sharing childhood Trick or Treat memories this one's also a tribute to James' Mom (RIP) who recently left to join the majority. Death, Love, and Rebirth has nothing on us. Feel the love folks!

In the inaugural episode of the Long Relief podcast, the first-ever podcast about sports, Jordan Wolf and Josh Aeschliman preview the NBA season ahead of Tuesday's opening night action, give their NFL awards picks at the 1/3 mark of the season, discuss the MLB playoffs and more. ---- 6:07 -- NBA preview -- A stunning No. 2 seed pick 28:00 -- NBA awards picks -- Ben Simmons for Most Improved Player? 39:39 -- NFL front-runners -- Josh Allen is good at football 47:34 -- Ed Orgeron out -- Humidity sucks 53:21 -- MLB playoffs -- The Braves are Very Cool

Great show for you this week! Huge news in the NFT space. Mutant Bored Apes sold out in minutes and raised $90 million! 3 eth per mint. Not only are we going to talk about some cool generative NFT drops but also we have 2 HUGE projects with major PUMP potential. Two avatar projects to mention are Purrnelopes Country Club and Axolittles! We are looking for these two NFT drops to do very well and have 9 lives! We have 2 projects making big moves in the NFT space. First project is no stranger to the channel… DexKit with the ticker $KIT . KIT has been working hard on a unique NFT marketplace which will enable you to mint, sell, and trade your NFTs on your own website! VERY COOL! The second project to discuss is 1000BLOCKS . Their ticker is $BLS and they are built on the BSC. We are going to have a deeper dive next week into this project as their main net launches. But they just had their IDO on Walt Finance's launchpad and sold out in 2 min. This is a record on Walt! $BLS can be found on Pancakeswap and Waltswap.

I'm very excited to share my interview with the talented and creative Heather Dawson. She is a Brooklyn based artist who turned her hobby of handcrafted fused, stained glass into her career! She details how she did it and how she runs her company. It was a joy to pull back the curtain on her creative process and her entrepreneurial journey. Heather shares that she was let go from her job, which ultimately turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It gave her that needed push to go all in with her fused stained glass. Her inspiration comes from traditional flash tattoo designs. VERY COOL! She is such an inspiration and proves that your hobby can turn in into a career. It is not easy as she states, but if you are passionate about starting then it certainly is possible. Follow Heather's journey on instagram @heatherdawnglassworks If you enjoy the podcast then please subscribe and give us a written review. Bookings please email us at nowthatsartpod@gmail.com. Happy Listening! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/nowthatsart/message

Barbie Dolls Are Now Honoring Front Line Workers! Mattel, Inc. just announced that Barbie® will donate $5 for the sale of every eligible Barbie doctor, nurse and paramedic doll sold at Target during August to the First Responders Children's Foundation (FRCF), benefiting the children of first responders. These special Barbie dolls give children the opportunity to role-play with everyday heroes who show up for us in emergencies 365 days a year. LOVE THIS! Go Barbie Jillian Crane, President of First Responders Children's foundation joined me for a great conversation that makes me love Barbie more now than I did as a kid. As a kid I liked her hair, her playhouse and Ken better than her, because quite frankly her swanky lanky physique just made my chubby one feel inept. But times have changed and so has Barbie. With over 200 careers, Barbie continues to celebrate role models, as every child imagines that they can be anything, but actually seeing that they can, and hearing the stories of others, makes all the difference.   Jillian Crane said , “Mattel and Barbie showed up for First Responders Children's Foundation at the beginning of the pandemic. With their generous donations, we gave some joy to children across the country during a very difficult and scary time. With Mattel's financial support, we bought thousands of hotel room nights with food stipends for first responders on the frontlines." Very Cool.  Jillian added, "This exciting new partnership with Mattel, Barbie and Target will support our Power of Play Program which focuses on the social, emotional and behavioral well-being of children. BTW: This is a continuation of Mattel's #ThankYouHeroes signature program, launched last year as part of the company's broader “Play it Forward” platform, focused on leveraging Mattel's iconic brands to give back to communities in times of need.    

Support for GIGPOD is brought to you by MANSCAPED.Get 20% OFF @manscaped + Free Shipping with promo code GIGPOD at MANSCAPED.comWe're now into March where the COVID death rate fell below 1 for the first time since October 2020, we had THAT interview with Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, which was still nowhere near as bad as Lenny's January rant about Dubai, and speaking of princes, we said goodbye to TV's clown prince of attention - Piers Morgan was away from Good Morning Britain!Ryan McGinlay of VERY COOL podcast, The Sellick, The Thunder joins Stevie to discuss two utterly appalling draws in this month.  A 0-0 stalemate at Tannadice finally saw us surrender the league title to Rangers, then despite our rivals being knocked out of Europe a few days beforehand, we still drew 1-1 with them at Celtic Park and looked utterly fatigued beyond belief.Only two more of these to go and it's then all about the Large Angelos revolution!Thanks as always for listening.Music Credit - Chemical Brothers - Out of Control Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support for GIGPOD is brought to you by MANSCAPED.Get 20% OFF @manscaped + Free Shipping with promo code GIGPOD at MANSCAPED.comWe're now into March where the COVID death rate fell below 1 for the first time since October 2020, we had THAT interview with Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, which was still nowhere near as bad as Lenny's January rant about Dubai, and speaking of princes, we said goodbye to TV's clown prince of attention - Piers Morgan was away from Good Morning Britain!Ryan McGinlay of VERY COOL podcast, The Sellick, The Thunder joins Stevie to discuss two utterly appalling draws in this month.  A 0-0 stalemate at Tannadice finally saw us surrender the league title to Rangers, then despite our rivals being knocked out of Europe a few days beforehand, we still drew 1-1 with them at Celtic Park and looked utterly fatigued beyond belief.Only two more of these to go and it's then all about the Large Angelos revolution!Thanks as always for listening.Music Credit - Chemical Brothers - Out of Control 

This episode Jason speaks with archivist/artist/healer/historian Margarat Nee both about her life coming of age as a punk girl at the cusp of the 1980's in North County San Diego and about her work today documenting the era with her ongoing project the San Diego Punk Archive. The two attended the same Encinitas High School five years apart. Margarat shares tales of San Dieguito she says she wasn't a problem child but was physically removed by a bouncer from the only dance she ever attended, so you'll have to decide.She was a classmate of Eddie Vedder, she has many tales to tell. The story also leaves North County in borrowed cars to punk rock San Diego and Los Angeles. We go on to learn about her work on the SDPA, her motivation, and belief in its value and about the growing networks of punk archivists across the country and the world doing similar work. In the course of this talk Margarat drops the very exciting news that a legit documentary film about SD art legend Shawn Kerri is in the works. She has spoken with the films producers and it's really happening. Very Cool. Thank you for listening! Contribute to San Diego Punk Archive: Venmo: @Margarat-Nee. San Diego Punk Archive Music The Penetrators: I'm w/ the guys A clip from local news show about The Penetrators. Tm Pod theme by Jason. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jason-traeger/support

Erika is the one-woman-show behind Betty Moon Studios.  She specializes in creating one of a kind resin pieces incorporating hand-foraged flora and fauna on to re-claimed, live-edge wooden slabs.  Not only does she also have her own apparel, she hand-paints and repurposes old vinyl records into clocks of art. Very Cool! Be sure to check her and other talented artists and artisans at the Artisan Market at the Kona Brewery Block, hosted by  Hi/Co Coffee. 

WEDNESDAY - We get down about threes. That tree hustle is a real thing. We have a solution for the Dr. Suess books. RRR - This publication is almost 100 years old. Lets take a trip to the space hotel. Angel wants to be friends with Yusaku Maezawa. Taylor Swift joke. Monster Sports - NBA All Star weekend. Russ gets a small amp for guitar. Steven Kramer - Black box in your car. Monsters Clubhouse with Jana Banana! To The Top with Carlos - Biggie. K.O.D. - Very Cool gig.

TCM Cars at Bathurst are cool. Very Cool. Which is why we've got three-time TCM champ and all round good bloke Steven Johnson on the show to talk about it. He's racing an XD Falcon now, running as a tribute to his old man's famous Ford that made the Johnson name so famous at Bathurst in the early 80s. Stevie J talks developing the car, his thoughts on close family friend JB and his battles and much, much more. Then Will Davison is back to preview his first weekend back as a DJR driver as the Supercars head to the Mountain. Plus, we predict what will be 'Hot' or 'Not' this year. Probably badly, but it was fun trying!

TCM Cars at Bathurst are cool. Very Cool. Which is why we've got three-time TCM champ and all round good bloke Steven Johnson on the show to talk about it. He's racing an XD Falcon now, running as a tribute to his old man's famous Ford that made the Johnson name so famous at Bathurst in the early 80s. Stevie J talks developing the car, his thoughts on close family friend JB and his battles and much, much more. Then Will Davison is back to preview his first weekend back as a DJR driver as the Supercars head to the Mountain. Plus, we predict what will be 'Hot' or 'Not' this year. Probably badly, but it was fun trying!

Do you think your Wu-Tang sword can defeat me?" "En garde, I'll let you try my Wu-Tang style" We have talked about this album for the last 26 episodes and now we are finally talking about it! We catch up with the RZA, the GZA, Ghostface Killah, and ODB! We take some constructive criticism from a caller and then we have a DOUBLE making fun of Aaron. He needs to protect his neck? We bring da ruckus about getting older and the problems with having a dog who loves to eat underwear.  Rosie talks about food and then Russ takes us on a trip through the greatest Superbowl songs ever. One of them WILL depress you.  We get into the album and talk about how it was made, why it was such a huge step forward, and talked about how Thelonious Monk influenced Wu-Tang. Aaron takes us through each rapper's style and guides us through all these darn chambers! We talk Method Man and overeating and Aaron reveals his VERY COOL username on the Wu-Tang message boards that we remember from our youth.  Then Russ takes us to the best NFL call outs and Rob drops some knowledge about Hall and Oates. This podcast is truly nothing to F@#k with! Contact us at beckdiditbetter@gmail.com and follow us @beckdiditbetter on Instagram and Twitter!    Call or text the Beck Line at 802-277-BECK (2325)      

So excited and pumped and stoked to have Middle Class Fashion on my very good podcast again! They are cool and fun and fun and funny.  Makes sure and stay to the end to hear the very first episode of Jenn's I Have Some Questions podcast!  Listen to Middle Class Fashion's new album SCARY where ever you stream your music. HERE'S THEIR BANDCAMP --- https://middleclassfashion.bandcamp.com/ Check out our VERY COOL sponsor ROUGHNECK BEARD COMPANY and make sure to use promo code MFB15 at checkout for 15% off your order --- https://roughneckbeardcompany.com/ FOLLOW ME!  http://www.mattfbasler.com http://www.facebook.com/mattfbasler http://www.instagram.com/mattfbasler http://www.twitter.com/mattfbasler https://open.spotify.com/artist/2hTswWd7EvLFppHz5xQBeG

Justin James Carretta is a singer and a songwriter. He has taken his two good skills and combined them to become something he calls a "singer songwriter". He was rude to me on a different podcast, but kind of nice to me on this one.  HERE'S HIS FACEBOOK --- https://www.facebook.com/justinjamescarretta Check out our VERY COOL sponsor ROUGHNECK BEARD COMPANY. I forgot to ask for a promo code to get you some sort of percentage off, but they are worth full price so it's no biggie. --- https://roughneckbeardcompany.com/ FOLLOW ME!  http://www.mattfbasler.com http://www.facebook.com/mattfbasler http://www.instagram.com/mattfbasler http://www.twitter.com/mattfbasler https://open.spotify.com/artist/2hTswWd7EvLFppHz5xQBeG

You know what rules? When you get an honest-to-God journalist on your show, and guess what??? I got one! Gonna talk to my buddy Cam who writes for a newspaper in New Mexico and is also a certified baaaadddaassss. Cam likes to write, Cam likes sports, Cam likes sneakers and goddamn Cam likes to COOK! We're gonna chat about that infamous ESPN screengrab and his loyal dog Goose. This is a fun one, cuz I finally got a new microphone so it sounds like a dream. Buckle up, here comes VERY COOL! baby

Hey Broke Asses!   This week we have founding member Charlie Munday back with us and we are SO excited! We are also riding the hype of DC Fandome and Marvel's Avengers just on the horizon by having our topic be the elevator pitches for our dream superhero videogames! It's a real fun discussion and we are open to discussions with any famous developers looking for video game ideas….seriously…we have them. But they're ours… so. Don't steal them. Please. Anyway, enjoy the show!   Email us at Brokeassgamecast@gmail.com with any feedback, questions, ask for video game recommendations, or just send kind words! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram (brokeassgamecast) and Twitter (@brokegamecast)!   TIMESTAMPS -NEWS! 1:13 - Witcher Mobile Game in the Style of Pokemon GO Incoming! 4:45 – Apple VS Fortnite Update 10:00 – Tony Hawk Trailer Looks COOL and the Demo is Available If You've Preordered 12:15 – Gamescom Is COMING. Naturally, We Speculate. 19:00 – Gotham Knights and Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League Announcement and Details! -DEALS 41:41 – Playstation Sales, Deals, and Certified Steals! 51:55 – Nintendo Has TWO Sales Happening Right Now! 59:25 – Xbox Gamepass, Sales and Deals! -WHAT WE'VE BEEN PLAYING 70:44 – Charlie Played Some Star Wars: The Old Republic! 77:20 – Charlie is All Aboard the Ghost of Tsushima Train! 84:11 – Cory Is Really Doing Apex Season 6. 86:20 – Grayson Has Hit 100 Hours in Persona 5 Royal 87:30 – Grayson, Charlie, and Josh Are All Loving Spiritfarer SO MUCH. Play it!! 96:40 – Grayson's Paper Mario: The Origami King Progress 98:50 – Josh Beat Bloodborne and is VERY Proud of Himself, Okay?! 103:07 – Vader Immortal on PSVR is Very Cool and Very Immersively Star Wars 106:33 -TOPIC OF THE WEEK – Our Dream Superhero Video Game Pitches

The Historians head to the Big Apple for a VERY COOL girls trip that is immediately derailed by a mysterious nude man in need of a nap. We discuss Dorinda's intense disgust of the 'F' word, we question Kristin's thought process when it comes to her 'Denim & Diamonds' craft party, we watch Kristin step up to Big Dog Bethenny in the press, and we get to see Luann at her absolute COOLEST.

Starling Tribune - Season 4 Edition – Episode 15: Taken (A CW Network Arrow Television Show Fan Podcast)   The Official Arrow Podcast of the Gonna Geek Network   As Arrow reaching the mid-Spring-Break-season finale, the Reporters have a ton to talk about including: - William Kidnapping not as catastrophic as SP feared - Samantha Clayton still lives (for now) (#AnnaHopkinsForCaptainMarvel) - Role of parents in the Arrow Universe - Speedy is done with DaddyMalcolm - Fights on screen are as good as ever - Diggle was cool on snipper duty - Magically Dramatic Rain effect #DigitalRain - Damian Lost His Powers! - Vixen was great, which animal totem was the best? - Conklin is back? - We get our Arrow Cave - Samantha Clayton knows who The Flash is now – way to go Oliver and Vixen - Was Oliver at fault for Felicity's break-up? - At this time Damian doesn't know that the Green Arrow is Oliver!   This week brings the reporters to total confusion on “Who's In The Grave.” The reporters wrap up the episode with a list of Easter Eggs, Arrow News, Feedback and comments from the chat. Thank you for downloading and listening!   Transcript:         http://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewtopic.php?f=172&t=25574 Episode:            “Taken” [Season 4 Episode 15] Air Date:           Wednesday, February 24th, 2016 Director:           Gregory Smith 2ep Arrow | 2ep LoT | 4ep Saving Hope | 5ep Rookie Blue Story:   Marc Guggenheim Teleplay:           Keto Shimizu: 23ep Exec-Story Ed. | 11ep Writer | 6ep Vixen writer | Being human, The Cape...             Brian Ford Sullivan: 6ep Writer | 4ep Teleplay | 6ep Vixen IMDB Link:        http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4862540/?ref_=ttep_ep15   EPISODE DC EASTER EGGS:   Season 4 Episode 15 “Taken” Easter Eggs (Date: 25 Feb 2016) Article: http://comicbook.com/2016/02/25/arrow-easter-eggs-and-dc-comics-references-in-taken/ Taken - name of the Liam Neeson Series of movies Olympics - Meh, not a DC easter egg. William - Meh, not a DC easter egg. Time Travel Deja vu - lines Felicity said were repeated from the Flash Episode Constantine in Hell - Lots of Hellblazer storylines with Constantine in hell Vixen - pretty obvious - we discussed her DC “Roots” last week (no pun intended, ok, it was) “Animated Encounter” - reference to the Vixen animated series on CW Seed “I had that under control” - repeated line in CW Arrowverse “Don't you dare tell Barry about this” - Vixen outs Barry's secret identity News 52 mic flag again Reference to “an army of little Olivers” - Connor Hawke? Nelson Plaza - reference to DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson Den Of Geek is keeping a running tally of Season 4 Easter Eggs (Date: xx Nov 2015) Article: http://www.denofgeek.us/books-comics/arrow/249909/arrow-season-4-complete-dc-comics-references-guide   ARROW NEWS:   TV Line's Who's In The Grave Summary - Updated (Date: 23 Feb 2016) I would updated it again given that last night Baby Momma and William go away... Link: http://tvline.com/gallery/arrow-season-4-who-died/#!1/arrow-season-4-who-died-9/   SPOILER: Marc Guggenheim on Olicity (Date: 25 Feb 2016) Marc Guggenheim commented on the Oliver & Felicity wedding picture - not a hoax or fake-out Link: http://comicbook.com/2016/02/24/arrow-producer-says-olicity-wedding-is-not-a-dream-sequence/   Stephen Amell introduces Madison McLaughlin as (Date: 25 Feb 2016) Character not disclosed, episode not disclosed. Looks like they're planning something... IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3028348/  With credits on Supernatural & The Mentalist Link: http://comicbook.com/2016/02/25/stephen-amell-announces-madison-mclaughlin-to-appear-on-arrow/   Stephen Amell would love to do an episode of Supergirl (Date: 25 Feb 2016) Talks about how he loves representing the DC TV universe and would love to film in LA (at home) Link: http://comicbook.com/2016/02/25/arrows-stephen-amell-would-love-to-do-a-supergirl-crossover/   Stephen Amell shares close-up of “Old-Man Arrow” on LoT (Date: 25 Feb 2016) Nice close up shot of an of aged Oliver Queen. Solid LoT makeup department. Link: http://comicbook.com/2016/02/25/stephen-amell-shares-close-up-of-old-man-green-arrow-on-dcs-lege/   Concept Art!! Vixen's Costume (Arrow) and Ollie cyber-arm (LoT) (Date: 23 Feb 2016) Interesting detail of costume and amulet. Very Cool concept art for Ollie's arm. Link: http://www.comicbookresources.com/article/arrow-ep-shares-vixen-concept-art Link: http://www.comicbookmovie.com/dc_tv/legends_of_tomorrow/get-a-better-look-at-green-arrows-metal-arm-in-new-a131452   SPOILER: Legends of Tomorrow: Deathstroke 2046 Revealed as… (Date: 25 Feb 2016) Grant Wilson, son of Slade Wilson, who was the original Ravager, hired by HIVE to take out T.Titans Link: http://comicbook.com/2016/02/25/legends-of-tomorrow-deathstroke-of-star-city-2046s-identity-reve   SOME GENERAL DC NEWS AND DISCUSSION   Cast for the New DC Show “Powerless” Announced (Date: 23 Feb 2016) Alan Tudyk from Firefly and Danny Pudi from Community :) Link: http://comicbook.com/2016/02/23/dc-comics-sitcom-powerless-adds-alan-tudyk-danny-pudi-and-christ/   R-Rated Director's Edition of Batman V. Superman DoJ (Date: 25 Feb 2016) Notes: SP & Chris will share their thoughts on this Link: http://screenrant.com/batman-v-superman-r-rated-directors-cut-mistake/   ARROW CAST & CREW INTERVIEWS   TV Line interviews Emily Bett Rickards  (Date: 23 Feb 2016) Notes: Fan theory at the end - Ghost Felicity in the car Link: http://tvline.com/2016/02/22/arrow-season-4-emily-bett-rickards-preview-felicity-oliver-william/   IGN Interviews Stephen Amell  (Date: 23 Feb 2016) Notes: Stephen Amell - superhero costumes on set don't fit perfectly for action the first time Link: http://ca.ign.com/articles/2016/02/23/arrow-stephen-amell-on-vixens-introduction-and-olivers-son-being-targeted   Megalyn E.K. interviewed by comicbook.com (Date: 25 Feb 2016) Notes: didn't know about live action until early Jan. Possibility for a Flash appearance, first DC character from a real city vs. a fictional one. Link: http://comicbook.com/2016/02/24/megalyn-echikunwoke-talks-vixens-transition-to-live-action-deadp/   Megalyn E.K. interviewed by CBR  (Date: 24 Feb 2016) Notes: Really excited to be first woman DC Black live action super hero. Was open to “pixie-cut” hair. Discusses making the move from voice-acting to real life, and background as a dancer IRL. Link: http://www.comicbookresources.com/article/arrow-megalyn-ek-calls-vixen-a-dream-come-true   Wendy Mericle talks about Megalyn E.K. in Vixen preview clip (Date: 24 Feb 2016) Link: http://www.comicbookmovie.com/dc_tv/arrow/new-arrow-clip-sees-vixen-take-down-the-bad-guys-a131412 Video: https://youtu.be/K5ubtNyOthw   GREEN ARROW COMICS & TOY NEWS   Multimedia: DC All Access App Released (Date: 25 Feb 2016) Note: this is potentially a big deal.. There has been no DC presence in digital comics outside Comixology, including no digital copies of books like Marvel Link: http://www.comicbookresources.com/article/dc-all-access-mobile-app-unites-dcs-films-tv-comics   Toys: Funko announces new DC Pops! (Can you say Boob Window) (Date: 23 Feb 2016) New Pop Funkos of Firestorm (classic), Supergirl, Powergirl, Black Manta, Cyborg Link: http://toynewsi.com/news.php?itemid=26007   Comics: Dark Archer Issue #4 (Direct to Digital) (Date: 24 Feb 2016) Synopsis: After Merlyn's captor is revealed, Malcolm begins his confession… Link: https://www.comixology.com/Arrow-The-Dark-Archer-2016-4/digital-comic/337421   Comics: Suicide Squad Most Wanted: Deadshot & Katana Issue #2 (Date: 24 Feb 2016) Synopsis: Katana has done her best to prepare her Markovian friends for Kobra's occupation, and now it's time to search for Doctor Jace. Finding her way through a mountain pass full of Kobra's Blackadder troops proves to be a bigger challenge than she expected-especially when she cannot go it alone! *Meanwhile, Deadshot abandons his post with the Suicide Squad to deal with some long overdue family business. Will Floyd finish the job before Amanda Waller detonates his nano-bomb? Link: https://www.comixology.com/Suicide-Squad-Most-Wanted-Deadshot-and-Katana-2016-2/digital-comic/337426?ref=bGlzdC92aWV3L2Rlc2t0b3AvZ3JpZExpc3QvbGlzdDEwMTg1   FEEDBACK:   Voicemail – Black Adam NEXT EPISODE   Part 2a: Episode:            “Broken Hearts” [Season 4 Episode 16] Trailer:  https://youtu.be/5Y-_6wl9KW0 Air Date:           Wednesday, March 23rd, 2016 Director:           John F. Showalter 1st ep Arrow | 1ep LoT | 3ep Flash | 15ep Supernatural | 1ep Supergirl                                          1ep Forever | 3ep The100 | 1ep Constantine | 3ep Revolution | 1ep Alphas                                          10ep Mentalist | 1ep Sleepy Hollow | 1ep Nikita Writers: Rebecca Bellotto: 1st ep Arrow. |  Relative newcomer to the scene from misc production staff             Nolan Dunbar: 1st ep Arrow | 1 other writing credit, but a bunch of Asst. Director Synopsis:          No synopsis has been made available yet. IMDB Link:        http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4862544/?ref_=tt_ep_nx Promo:  http://comicbook.com/2016/02/25/arrow-broken-hearts-extended-trailer-released/   Part 2b: Starling Tribune Hiatus Plan No new episode next week, so instead we're going to take a look at... Arrow Season 2.5 Writers:             Marc Guggenheim, Keto Shimizu, Brian Ford Sullivan Artists: Joe Bennett, Szymon Kudranski, Craig Yeung Release Date:    (Digital) Sep 1, 2014 | (Collected) Oct 2015 Wikia: http://arrow.wikia.com/wiki/Arrow:_Season_2.5 Comixology: https://www.comixology.com/Arrow-Season-2-5-2014/digital-comic/291228?ref=c2VyaWVzL3ZpZXcvZGVza3RvcC9ncmlkTGlzdC9Db2xsZWN0ZWRFZGl0aW9ucw Hollywood Reporter: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/arrow-season-25-reveals-hidden-729128     Tune in to see what the Starling Tribune crew thinks will happen this season on Arrow based off what we've seen so far. After the show wraps keep listening as we bring fans on the show discuss their theories for season 4.   If you missed us live catch us next time and chime in yourself! Plus you won't miss out on our live post-show conversations.   Join The Starling Tribune each week as we stream live on Thursday nights at 9:00 PM eastern or 8:00 PM Central at gonnageek.com/live. Join the fun chatroom and interact with the hosts live. Contact us: @StarlingTribune - starlingtribune@gmail.com - www.starlingtribune.com - www.facebook.com/starlingtribune - 612-888-CAVE or 612-888-2283.   Starling Tribune is proud to be a member of the GonnaGeek network found at GonnaGeek.com. For more geeky podcast visit GonnaGeek.com.   You can find us on iTunes under ''Starling Tribune." We are very thankful for all of our positive iTunes reviews. You can find all our contact information here on the Network page of GonnaGeek.com Our complete archive is always available at www.starlingtribune.com   Chris and SP will be at C2E2 in Chicago on March 18th, 2016 with several other GonnaGeek network podcast hosts for a panel on “Everyday Podcasting For Your Everyday Life.” Come out and meet the hosts and have your podcast question answered!   This podcast was recorded Thursday February 18th, 2016.   Thank you for listening and we hope you enjoyed the show!