Aaron Francis

Ian & Aaron discuss cheese boards, Aaron's lunch adventure, high performance database consulting, and the Drake vs. Kendrick Lamar beef with special guest Dave Hicking aka Producer Dave. Sponsored by Buttondown, LaraJobs, & Screencasting.com. Interested in sponsoring Mostly Technical? Head to https://mostlytechnical.com/sponsor to learn more.

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Transcript

Ian

00:00:00 – 00:00:00

Hello?

Aaron

00:00:01 – 00:00:02

Hello, Ian. How are we doing today?

Ian

00:00:03 – 00:00:04

Good. How are you?

Aaron

00:00:05 – 00:00:10

Good. Today is the older twin's birthday, so now I have 2 3 year olds and 2 5 month olds.

Ian

00:00:11 – 00:00:13

Oh, no more 4 kids under 3.

Aaron

00:00:14 – 00:00:19

No. No. I gotta go with 4 kids 3 and under, which is not not quite as impressive. I'll be honest.

Ian

00:00:19 – 00:00:19

It's a

Dave

00:00:19 – 00:00:21

little a little less. A little less.

Aaron

00:00:21 – 00:00:25

A little more normie. And I, you know, I hate being a normie. I wanna I just wanna be special. That's all I want.

Ian

00:00:26 – 00:00:35

Unique. That's funny. It's funny. You said that before we've gotten there, you're like, oh, it's kid's birthday, and I was like, I just think one kid. But, no, it's always 2 kids with you.

Aaron

00:00:35 – 00:00:44

Always 2 kids. Always 2 kids. As a as a favor to friends and family, we batched the birthdays so you don't have to come to 4 birthday parties. You can just go to 2.

Ian

00:00:45 – 00:00:48

Double the present cost, though. It's a little unavoidable.

Aaron

00:00:48 – 00:00:54

Yeah. But that's unavoidable. At least, you know, at least you're not spending 4 Saturdays a year at at kids' birthday parties.

Ian

00:00:54 – 00:01:07

Yeah. Oh, man. Just the kids that are friends with your kids, those parents are gonna hate you because it's just like, oh my god. More birthday parties. See, it's only being twins, it is better because I was originally thinking

Aaron

00:01:07 – 00:01:08

It is.

Ian

00:01:08 – 00:01:23

If you have 4 kids, 4 birthday parties I know. Right there. I mean, you you just get to hate the parent kid birthday parties. Like, it just becomes brutal at a certain point. And, so, yeah, you're doing them a favor too because it could be 4 birthday parties for those friends.

Aaron

00:01:23 – 00:01:24

That's what I'm saying.

Ian

00:01:24 – 00:01:25

It's only 2.

Aaron

00:01:25 – 00:01:31

And, you know, as an adult, kids' birthday parties, not that fun. Gonna be honest.

Ian

00:01:31 – 00:01:31

Not fun.

Aaron

00:01:31 – 00:01:32

Not that fun.

Ian

00:01:32 – 00:01:32

Not fun.

Aaron

00:01:32 – 00:01:37

I don't know what changed. They were fun when we were kids, but now they're just not that fun.

Ian

00:01:37 – 00:01:44

Man, I feel bad for you that you're already to the they're not that fun point because you got a lot of them to go to still. You got a long way to go. And the parents

Aaron

00:01:44 – 00:01:53

You know, for for my kids, it was great because my whole family's there. Jennifer's whole family's there. We didn't invite any friends because it's like, you know, what we're talking about is

Ian

00:01:53 – 00:01:54

is not that

Aaron

00:01:54 – 00:02:00

fun. But for other kids, it's like, oh, no. You people, I don't I just wanna just stand here and watch oh, yeah. Yeah. Those those are my kids.

Aaron

00:02:00 – 00:02:03

Oh, yeah. They're playing just like their kids.

Ian

00:02:03 – 00:02:03

What what

Aaron

00:02:03 – 00:02:04

are we gonna talk about?

Ian

00:02:04 – 00:02:04

I have

Aaron

00:02:04 – 00:02:05

nothing to talk about.

Ian

00:02:05 – 00:02:14

Now let me tell you. People don't like to do the drop off. Like, we finally gotten people on the drop off, but it's like parents wanna be there. It's like, I don't want you there. Like, I'm doing the birthday for my kids.

Ian

00:02:14 – 00:02:21

I don't want you there. Just wanna be with their friends. Like, nobody wants you here. Like, you don't wanna be here.

Aaron

00:02:21 – 00:02:21

You don't wanna be.

Ian

00:02:21 – 00:02:30

We don't want you here. Cheat. Like, why are we playing this game? Like, it's fine. Your kid's gonna be fine here for 2 hours.

Ian

00:02:30 – 00:02:36

It's gonna be fine. Just go to Barnes and Nobles, have a coffee, do whatever, like, and come back and get them. But

Aaron

00:02:36 – 00:02:38

I don't want you.

Ian

00:02:38 – 00:02:42

People like to stay with their kids. So Oh, man.

Aaron

00:02:42 – 00:02:42

If you're

Ian

00:02:42 – 00:02:45

those people, don't be those people. Like, like, drop your kid off.

Aaron

00:02:45 – 00:02:49

People. Yeah. Fine. Go have some fun. Go toot around for 2 hours.

Aaron

00:02:49 – 00:02:50

That's the whole point.

Ian

00:02:51 – 00:02:55

2 hours without a kid. Boom. Fantastic. Like, Like, just sit in your car.

Aaron

00:02:55 – 00:03:00

Some other parent is willing to watch your kids, and you're like, nah. I'm gonna stay. What are you doing?

Ian

00:03:00 – 00:03:02

Think that. There's no reason to stay.

Aaron

00:03:02 – 00:03:03

That's a win. Yeah.

Ian

00:03:04 – 00:03:10

Yeah. So, anyway, you guys we're we're finally out of that for the most part, but you you're still Yeah.

Aaron

00:03:11 – 00:03:17

Yeah. We're still very much at the beginning. So, anyway, birthday party was good. Kids are 3. Everyone's happy.

Ian

00:03:18 – 00:03:24

Nice. Awesome. Yep. That's great. One set down a little while till the next one.

Ian

00:03:24 – 00:03:29

So you got a little breather. While. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I had a cheese board.

Aaron

00:03:30 – 00:03:31

You had a cheese board?

Ian

00:03:31 – 00:03:36

Last week or over the weekend? Friday. Who's this?

Aaron

00:03:37 – 00:03:44

Lots of thoughts. Tell tell me, Ian. You got a cheese board. Okay. So first of all, you're you're somewhere fancy.

Aaron

00:03:44 – 00:03:46

Are you are you out are you out on a date? You're out on a a

Ian

00:03:46 – 00:03:47

lunch date. Lunch. Yeah.

Aaron

00:03:47 – 00:03:55

Okay. Well, a little lunch date. Alright. So that kinda sets the scene a little bit. You're out somewhere presumably fancy, because the cheese board looks sophisticated.

Ian

00:03:55 – 00:03:58

It's not a fancy place, but it is a sophisticated place. Yes.

Aaron

00:03:58 – 00:04:12

Okay. Okay. Tell me, on a scale of 0 to 100%, what how how much did you, Ian, want to order this cheese board for lunch?

Ian

00:04:12 – 00:04:15

We were there for the cheese board, man. We were there for the cheese board.

Aaron

00:04:16 – 00:04:19

And that's that's that's from an Ian perspective.

Ian

00:04:19 – 00:04:21

Yeah. It's great. It's great.

Aaron

00:04:21 – 00:04:25

Okay. So explain explain what what we're getting on this cheese board.

Ian

00:04:25 – 00:04:33

You got 3 different types of cheeses. We got a brie. We got some other stuff. You got olives. You got No.

Ian

00:04:33 – 00:04:42

Pickled vegetables, pickled carrots, pickles. Yeah. You got these walnuts that he, like, bakes with sugar and stuff, which is very

Aaron

00:04:42 – 00:04:44

delicious. Alright. Alright.

Ian

00:04:44 – 00:04:45

Yeah. Yeah. And you eat now with cheese.

Aaron

00:04:45 – 00:04:46

Walnuts with sugar. Yeah.

Ian

00:04:46 – 00:04:59

You make this, like, fruit and nut bread, but it's not disgusting. It's unbelievable. It's fantastic. And, yeah, so you just got the sweet and the cheeses, some crackers. You could do wine.

Ian

00:04:59 – 00:05:09

We didn't do wine, but you we have in the past unwind. Like, it's a very it's actually very low key in that he serves it in a pizza box. It's like you could take it to go.

Aaron

00:05:09 – 00:05:10

You could put it there. Pizza.

Ian

00:05:12 – 00:05:14

You Have you never heard of Keith Ford? Do you

Aaron

00:05:14 – 00:05:17

take the pizza out of the box? And do you still have it in the back?

Ian

00:05:17 – 00:05:22

Can I can I just have that? Swap this pizza. We do have this pizza in here.

Aaron

00:05:22 – 00:05:27

Listen, friend. I see this came in a pizza box. I got one got one question for you.

Ian

00:05:27 – 00:05:31

Can we dump out this rabbit food and give me a pizza? Give me human food?

Aaron

00:05:31 – 00:05:49

Yeah. So you tweeted you tweeted date lunch with a picture of this this mess of small items. Yep. My response was, this looks like lunch for a rabbit. And, you know, I got I think I got a lot of people I got a lot of people on my side here that this looks like lunch for a rabbit.

Aaron

00:05:49 – 00:05:51

This is not this is not satisfying. I'm unsatisfied

Dave

00:05:51 – 00:05:51

by this food.

Ian

00:05:51 – 00:05:51

It was a

Aaron

00:05:51 – 00:05:52

fully, like, stereotypical reply to

Ian

00:05:57 – 00:06:01

Texans and your crew, right, was like, this is rabbit food. This is ridiculous. Right?

Dave

00:06:01 – 00:06:01

Yeah.

Aaron

00:06:01 – 00:06:03

Yeah. They let me in

Ian

00:06:03 – 00:06:08

with a your crew. Europeans. Right? The Europeans were like, this is just what we eat for lunch every day. Right?

Aaron

00:06:08 – 00:06:16

Nuno was offended. Noon Nuno was offended. He called me dude. He said, this is just a French thing, dude. Because, like, I'm sorry.

Aaron

00:06:16 – 00:06:18

I'm sorry. I don't live in

Ian

00:06:18 – 00:06:20

France. Oh, I'm trying to conquer you people.

Aaron

00:06:21 – 00:06:26

He was furious. Yeah. Eric Barnes was like, yeah. This is what I eat all the time now. Thanks to Ian.

Aaron

00:06:26 – 00:06:28

What? What what is happening?

Ian

00:06:28 – 00:06:36

Tonya, when when Barnes first started working here, he literally only ate, like, chain restaurant food, pizzas, things in boxes. Yep.

Aaron

00:06:36 – 00:06:36

Hell yeah.

Ian

00:06:36 – 00:06:44

He had he was on your playbook. We got him cultured up, and now it's a he's a man. He's out there. He's a gentleman. He's got a he's got a closet for

Aaron

00:06:45 – 00:06:45

again.

Ian

00:06:45 – 00:06:50

He's he's got a closet for his golf clothes. Right? Like, he eats We gotta get we gotta

Aaron

00:06:50 – 00:06:58

get to that eventually. He's got a closet just for golf clothes with all wooden hangers. I don't know how much you're paying him, but I think you might need to check the account.

Ian

00:06:59 – 00:07:00

Too well. Apparently. Yeah.

Aaron

00:07:00 – 00:07:05

It seems like he may have had access to the cookie jar there because that's crazy.

Ian

00:07:05 – 00:07:06

I don't have ring hangers. I'll tell

Dave

00:07:06 – 00:07:07

you that.

Aaron

00:07:07 – 00:07:08

So Yeah. You're as boss.

Ian

00:07:08 – 00:07:09

Something's wrong. Yeah.

Aaron

00:07:09 – 00:07:22

Alright. Let's go back let's go back to let's go back to rabbit food for a second because friend friend of the par friend of the pod, Mark, Jacqui, maybe. Jacqui, good guy. Met him met him at Laracon. He's come through Dallas.

Aaron

00:07:22 – 00:07:34

We've had lunch. Great guy. Totally totally has us pegged. He did. His I said this looks like rabbit food, and his response was, please discuss girl dinner on the pod.

Aaron

00:07:34 – 00:07:36

And he he gave us a whole he gave us a whole script.

Ian

00:07:36 – 00:07:37

You should read it. You should read it.

Aaron

00:07:37 – 00:07:45

This this sounds like us. Okay. Please discuss girl dinner on the pod. Aaron says, that's not a meal. Ian says, this is what they want.

Aaron

00:07:45 – 00:07:55

Aaron says, where's the food? Man cannot live on snacks alone. That's in the Bible. To which Ian replies, this is their manna. The snacks add up to a meal.

Aaron

00:07:55 – 00:07:59

Plus, they get to forage. And I finish with, who likes foraging?

Ian

00:08:01 – 00:08:06

So I read that, and I was like, oh, man. We're nailed it.

Aaron

00:08:06 – 00:08:07

We're too predictable.

Ian

00:08:08 – 00:08:16

Yeah. Great. It is great. But I think I don't know. I thought I have to say, I thought you might have been, like I thought you might have been exposed to a cheese board here and there.

Ian

00:08:16 – 00:08:20

I didn't know that you would never tasted the the lights of a cheese board.

Aaron

00:08:21 – 00:08:33

So I've been exposed to a cheese board. I have I have enjoyed a cheese board, but for for, like, hey. Welcome welcome to the dinner party. Let's all stand around for a second. Her.

Aaron

00:08:33 – 00:08:42

Yeah. Not not like, oh, let's cut out of work early and go on a date and get cheese. Like that, I'm Elevate. No. No.

Aaron

00:08:42 – 00:08:43

No. No. No.

Ian

00:08:43 – 00:08:49

And it's just like the little lighter. You know? It's a little fresher. Like, it's not all the bread and heaviness. I mean, there's still a cheese.

Ian

00:08:49 – 00:08:55

I mean, breathe pretty heavy, so there's some heaviness, but, like and here's the thing he does such a good job with it. Like he pickles everything himself.

Dave

00:08:55 – 00:08:56

That's just,

Ian

00:08:57 – 00:09:05

it's just so good. And you just have the, the vineginess and the sweetness of the sweet stuff and the savoriness of the cheeses and

Aaron

00:09:05 – 00:09:07

Vinegar is disgusting.

Ian

00:09:09 – 00:09:13

Hot. Vinegar hot in the south, man. There's something wrong down there. Vinegar is hot.

Aaron

00:09:13 – 00:09:13

No. No. No.

Ian

00:09:13 – 00:09:16

No. No. Pickled things. That's a southern thing. They pickled things down there.

Ian

00:09:16 – 00:09:17

What do you do?

Aaron

00:09:17 – 00:09:25

They they do. I don't have to like it, though, but that's why that's why we're big and strong down here, because we don't need these. We don't need these rabbit these rabbit lunches. This girl dinner.

Ian

00:09:25 – 00:09:26

I have a little side question.

Aaron

00:09:27 – 00:09:27

Okay.

Ian

00:09:27 – 00:09:34

This actually came up the other day, with somebody I don't know where is Texas to you in the south or the west

Aaron

00:09:35 – 00:09:36

Neither. It's Texas.

Ian

00:09:36 – 00:09:38

It's its own thing. Well, that's kinda

Aaron

00:09:38 – 00:09:38

how I

Ian

00:09:38 – 00:09:39

sorta feel about it too.

Aaron

00:09:40 – 00:09:46

Yeah. I I would say people often say, like, Texas is the south, and I'm like, no.

Ian

00:09:46 – 00:09:51

Not really. Alabama. Right? Like, it's a it's a different vibe than North Carolina. Georgia, Alabama.

Ian

00:09:51 – 00:09:52

Yeah.

Aaron

00:09:52 – 00:10:11

All of, like, the real, like like, southern states, that's just Right. That's not us. We're a lot more we're a lot more, like, traditionally, more country than we are southern. You know? Like, I feel like southern is all, big dresses and, like, that We're

Ian

00:10:11 – 00:10:14

going that southern stereotypical. Yeah. A lot of

Aaron

00:10:14 – 00:10:20

baking and such. Yeah. And I just feel like, Texas isn't really that. We're more cowboy than we are. You know?

Ian

00:10:20 – 00:10:26

So you're kind of more West Arizona. You probably see a little bit more West Arizona, potentially.

Aaron

00:10:26 – 00:10:37

Arizona, New Mexico, but we don't have the the obsession with, like, jade jewelry and stuff. Okay. We're not going all the way that. We don't go all the way out there that way. So we get we get a little bit of a cowboy, but without the Adobe.

Ian

00:10:38 – 00:10:40

Okay. Alright. So you're your own thing?

Aaron

00:10:40 – 00:10:41

Yeah. We're our own thing.

Ian

00:10:41 – 00:10:48

I mean, it's a huge state, so I feel like it could be a town thing. It's physically large. There's room for a lot of different sorts of folks in there.

Aaron

00:10:48 – 00:10:56

We once drove to California, and we were halfway there and we were still in Texas. So it's a huge it's a huge state. Yeah.

Ian

00:10:57 – 00:11:00

I gotta get that. I've only been in Texas once, and I gotta get that. I guess I'll be there for Lyricon.

Aaron

00:11:00 – 00:11:01

So that'll be there

Ian

00:11:01 – 00:11:06

for Lyricon. That's right. It's not gonna be I need to, like, drive around. You know? I need

Aaron

00:11:06 – 00:11:15

to, like, explore. You need to do the Texas triangle, which is, like, Dallas, Houston, Austin. You could throw in you could throw in San Antonio, but now that Fadeloper's gone, there's really no reason to go down there.

Ian

00:11:15 – 00:11:18

What about way out west, though? That's all, like, kinda eastern Texas, isn't it? What about west?

Aaron

00:11:18 – 00:11:21

Yeah. Way out west. You gotta go so far.

Ian

00:11:21 – 00:11:22

Nothing out there?

Aaron

00:11:22 – 00:11:35

Is Lubbock is like I feel like Lubbock is like 6 or 8 hours away. Maybe it's maybe it's 6 hours. Amarillo's maybe, like, 3 hours away. And And then El Paso, forget about it. That's when you're half that's when you're literally halfway to California.

Aaron

00:11:35 – 00:11:36

Right. Yeah.

Ian

00:11:36 – 00:11:37

It's way, way, way out there.

Aaron

00:11:37 – 00:11:38

It's way, way out there.

Ian

00:11:39 – 00:11:42

Nobody goes out there. Right. No. Nobody in Dallas goes to El Paso.

Aaron

00:11:42 – 00:11:49

We don't go out there. No way. No thing. I'm is there anything between No. Drive?

Ian

00:11:49 – 00:11:50

There's nothing out there? Okay.

Aaron

00:11:50 – 00:11:58

We drove from College Station to California, and there was nothing in between. Not a single thing.

Ian

00:11:59 – 00:11:59

Yeah.

Aaron

00:11:59 – 00:12:03

We did it all. There were 8 of us in 1 suburban, and we drove it straight.

Ian

00:12:03 – 00:12:10

That's how you do it. Holy cow. Baby. Oh, did it, college kids all piled in? Okay.

Ian

00:12:10 – 00:12:10

Yeah.

Aaron

00:12:11 – 00:12:13

Yep. Yep. Alright. Girl dinner. Days.

Aaron

00:12:13 – 00:12:17

Congrat congrats on your girl dinner. Good cheese board. Good segment.

Ian

00:12:17 – 00:12:18

I'm telling you.

Aaron

00:12:18 – 00:12:21

Wouldn't consume it, but I'm happy for you. It's good content.

Ian

00:12:21 – 00:12:32

See no. Because what really spurred him on, right, with the I said you need to do this for the wife, and that's what you need to do. You need to do this for the wife. You can make it your self if you wanna be. If you wanna get extra bonus credit.

Ian

00:12:32 – 00:12:40

Right? Like, go get the cards from nice places. Put it together. Wife comes home from being out. You got a nice little spread going.

Ian

00:12:41 – 00:12:50

Doesn't have to be your home meal if you don't want. Maybe it's the appetizer before dinner, but it's like a nice, nice, thoughtful spread. You gotta have some brie, maybe a little hard cheese. You know what?

Aaron

00:12:50 – 00:12:58

You know what? I think the main problem with this quote, unquote cheese board is there's no meat river. There's there's no there's no meat flowing through the middle.

Ian

00:12:58 – 00:13:08

You could add some chartreuder if you would, like to do that. Why not? A little sausage, a little, some cured meats of various sorts. I think that's Yeah. That would be great.

Aaron

00:13:08 – 00:13:10

Then now we're talking maybe a pile of pepperoni.

Dave

00:13:11 – 00:13:11

And then

Aaron

00:13:11 – 00:13:17

at that point, you got cheese and pepperoni. Just put some bread and sauce underneath, and you're good. You got pizza.

Ian

00:13:17 – 00:13:23

Anthony. That's totally the thing. We didn't do that thing this time, but it's possible to do the thing. I think it does I think he does it. Yeah.

Ian

00:13:23 – 00:13:39

I think he has an option to do it. We didn't do it because we go in, and we have meat fairly often. It was like, this is our chance to have, like, some really finely done custom vegetable situation and, nice cheeses that we wouldn't necessarily buy to have around the house, but which he has access to.

Aaron

00:13:39 – 00:13:41

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you keep saying he.

Ian

00:13:41 – 00:13:42

So who is this

Aaron

00:13:42 – 00:13:50

who is this who is this mystery man? Who's your guy? Who's who's your cheese board guy? I just went to, like, a, you know, a Chili's 2 or something. Who's

Ian

00:13:50 – 00:13:58

the guy? We got to know about this too. So I don't know his name, but he runs this place called the Grazeri, which is in New Paltz, New York, which is a college

Aaron

00:13:58 – 00:14:02

Grazeri, which sounds Italian for grazing, which is what animals do. So carry on.

Ian

00:14:02 – 00:14:16

Exactly. Yeah. He's got and it's a it's a interesting little spot because he's got, like, a counter with cheeses and stuff, and he makes sandwiches. He does cheese boards, but then the other half of the store, it's really weird. It's like well, it's not like a deli.

Ian

00:14:16 – 00:14:32

It's not a deli exactly, but I I it would be very hard for me to explain this to you. Maybe I we can, link to his site. I don't know if there's even pictures there. Probably on Google, there's pictures. But, but half the store is, like, dried plants and other stuff he sells.

Ian

00:14:32 – 00:14:46

So it's, like, half the store is weird other stuff, and then half the store is this foodery. And he's a he's a guy. And see, this is another thing you don't have in Texas and the South in general. There's no, like, mom and pop stores. Everywhere you go, it's just chain stuff.

Ian

00:14:46 – 00:14:56

It's just chain food. There's Okay. There's no And it doesn't feel like you can see it all the time because there's no other Mexican restaurants. It's like Chipotle and Taco Bell.

Aaron

00:14:56 – 00:14:59

Do you know how many Mexican restaurants there are down here?

Ian

00:14:59 – 00:15:00

Not enough.

Aaron

00:15:00 – 00:15:04

They're all mom and pop. Every every corner, every

Ian

00:15:04 – 00:15:06

What about everything else?

Aaron

00:15:06 – 00:15:08

Full on restaurant inside of it.

Ian

00:15:08 – 00:15:11

I'm I'm counting is not a restaurant. Let's just start there.

Aaron

00:15:11 – 00:15:17

Some of the best Tex Mex slash Mexican food you will ever find are in the little gas stations around here.

Ian

00:15:17 – 00:15:24

I do love gas station food, to be fair. But when was the last time you ate dinner at a restaurant that was not a chain?

Aaron

00:15:25 – 00:15:28

So eat dinner out. We don't do hardly ever.

Ian

00:15:28 – 00:15:30

But Friday night

Aaron

00:15:30 – 00:15:42

Friday night, we got takeout from a place called Tai Tai that is that is mom and pop owned, BYOB. I went down there and picked it up. Yep. It is full on it is full on locally owned.

Ian

00:15:42 – 00:15:43

Alright.

Aaron

00:15:44 – 00:15:45

So Friday.

Ian

00:15:45 – 00:15:46

There we go. That's the

Aaron

00:15:46 – 00:15:47

last time we ate out.

Ian

00:15:47 – 00:15:49

I shouldn't I shouldn't paint with such a broad brush.

Aaron

00:15:49 – 00:15:56

I'm painting too broad. Brush. Alright. This is the biggest state in the world, and we don't have mom and pop shops. Give me a break.

Ian

00:15:56 – 00:16:03

That's where we're gonna be. Couple. You know, I'm not saying, you know, I'm any I feel like there's not it's not as much of a thing in general.

Aaron

00:16:03 – 00:16:15

We don't have as much of, like, as much of, like, the you know, we don't have a mafia down here. Right? So we don't have a bunch of little bitty Italian stores on every corner, but we've got mom and pop shops, mom and pop restaurants everywhere.

Ian

00:16:16 – 00:16:17

It's

Aaron

00:16:17 – 00:16:24

crazy. You're crazy. I went to a mom and pop coffee shop every morning to get my coffee, mom and pop.

Ian

00:16:24 – 00:16:27

What? White Rock coffee. White Rock coffee.

Aaron

00:16:27 – 00:16:28

No. White Rock coffee.

Ian

00:16:28 – 00:16:33

Maybe. I know Erika used to say this about North Carolina, so maybe it's a North Carolina thing. Maybe maybe it's more

Aaron

00:16:33 – 00:16:34

of a They don't have

Ian

00:16:34 – 00:16:41

mom and pop? Yeah. They don't have a lot mom and pop. Not literally none, but, like, not, it's not as common. Whereas up here, it's very common.

Ian

00:16:41 – 00:16:45

Like, there are the chains, but there's tons and tons of not chains.

Aaron

00:16:46 – 00:16:52

Yeah. I feel like y'all have that more, and y'all have more, like, the more of the the mafia stuff where it's like every family has their own shop.

Ian

00:16:52 – 00:16:52

Yeah.

Aaron

00:16:52 – 00:16:55

We don't we don't necessarily have that culture, but, yeah,

Ian

00:16:55 – 00:17:12

we're fine. Families that own a bunch of restaurant, like but it's not a chain per se. It's like 10 members of the family own, like, one owns a diner and one owns a deli and one owns whatever. And it's like, they're all in the same family and they're semi connected, but they're not, like, any kind of official chain or anything like that.

Aaron

00:17:14 – 00:17:16

You should I think you need to spend more time down here. That's what I'm

Dave

00:17:17 – 00:17:17

I know. I need

Aaron

00:17:18 – 00:17:19

gathering from this.

Ian

00:17:20 – 00:17:33

I'm so busy right now, but I need to make some time to hit the road and I I wanna do a cross country trip at some point. I don't know when that's gonna happen, but anyway alright. Well, speaking of food, you went to lunch

Dave

00:17:33 – 00:17:34

Went to lunch.

Ian

00:17:34 – 00:17:39

With the author of a sequel light book from, from, I think, some time ago. I think this is, like, a modern book. No. Or, like, a recent

Aaron

00:17:39 – 00:17:40

book. Ago.

Ian

00:17:40 – 00:17:40

But

Aaron

00:17:40 – 00:17:42

Yeah. So Long, long, long time ago.

Ian

00:17:43 – 00:17:45

Where did you go? What did you eat? So How was it?

Aaron

00:17:45 – 00:17:51

So yeah. We went to the we went out to the burbs. So I emailed this guy. I was like, hey. Saw you wrote this book.

Aaron

00:17:51 – 00:18:00

I'm sure you're super busy, but I would love to hang. And he was like, yeah. Sure. Sounds great. So I live in, like, Dallas, and he lives in one of the suburbs.

Aaron

00:18:00 – 00:18:04

And so I drove all the way out to him because I'm like, he's doing me the favor. Yeah.

Dave

00:18:04 – 00:18:04

Aaron

00:18:04 – 00:18:15

we ate at this, restaurant, La Hacienda Ranch, which is very, you know, very Texas themed ranch or, restaurant. Chain? And total chain. Yeah.

Ian

00:18:15 – 00:18:16

Okay.

Aaron

00:18:16 – 00:18:24

Very normy. Very, very suburby. Yeah. And we had lunch for forever, and it was I

Ian

00:18:24 – 00:18:25

love that.

Aaron

00:18:25 – 00:18:34

Great. He was shocked. He was shocked to hear that SQLite is having, like, a a resurgence. He's like, what? It's it's popular now?

Aaron

00:18:34 – 00:18:39

People talk about it? And it's like, dude, you have no idea. Everybody's talking about it. Wow. It's the hotness.

Aaron

00:18:40 – 00:18:45

He told me a bunch of stories about the old days. I think he's, you know, he's in his early fifties.

Ian

00:18:46 – 00:18:46

Okay. Told me

Aaron

00:18:46 – 00:18:50

a bunch of stories about the old days when he met Rasmus Leardorf and when he met the

Ian

00:18:51 – 00:18:51

Wow.

Aaron

00:18:51 – 00:19:07

You know, the creator of sequelite, whom he worked with for, like, 5 years. He worked with the guy. And after our after our lunch, he called the guy who wrote SQLite and was like, hey, this this kid's doing a course. Do you wanna help him? And the guy was like, sure.

Aaron

00:19:07 – 00:19:11

I'll do whatever whatever I need to help him. The creator of sequel light. Yeah.

Ian

00:19:11 – 00:19:14

That's what happens when you just do stuff. When you just do stuff, things happen.

Aaron

00:19:14 – 00:19:15

Yeah. Things happen.

Dave

00:19:16 – 00:19:16

Crazy.

Aaron

00:19:17 – 00:19:30

Yeah. And so also the guy that wrote the book was like, hey, man. Like, this sound what you're doing sounds really cool. If you need any help with anything, I would love to help. Like, if you want me to review stuff or if I can make anything clear for you, it's like, for real?

Aaron

00:19:30 – 00:19:37

You're just gonna help? I was like, yeah. I would love to have you review the videos. I'm, you know, happy to pay your pay your rate. And he's like, no.

Aaron

00:19:37 – 00:19:44

Don't worry about it. I'll just I love doing this stuff. Like, this is crazy. Yeah. He'd do, like, a

Ian

00:19:44 – 00:19:47

forward or something. Like, in a book, he'd do it. He'd do the forward. You know? Like

Aaron

00:19:48 – 00:19:51

I know. I kinda wanna get him on, like, a kinda wanna do, like,

Ian

00:19:51 – 00:19:51

a Something like

Dave

00:19:51 – 00:19:52

a short

Aaron

00:19:52 – 00:19:53

run. Podcast or something.

Ian

00:19:53 – 00:19:55

Yeah. Or just in the QM video.

Aaron

00:19:55 – 00:19:58

Creator of SQLite and other people.

Ian

00:19:58 – 00:20:07

Even as part of the course, like, here's a QA with the guy who first wrote it and, like, the author. They're like, that would be a cool, like, hour and a half, 2 hour little bonus thing.

Aaron

00:20:07 – 00:20:19

I know. It's crazy. So we had this long lunch, and, you know, we're talking about everything and, you know, luncheons. And he's like, hey. You know, my my office is right across the highway.

Aaron

00:20:19 – 00:20:23

Like, do you wanna come see do you wanna come see the server room and all the

Ian

00:20:23 – 00:20:24

The end.

Aaron

00:20:24 – 00:20:28

The whole the whole IT closet? And I was like, sure. Let's go.

Ian

00:20:28 – 00:20:30

So He's got an IT closet.

Aaron

00:20:30 – 00:20:42

Yeah. We, like, you know, drove down, did a u-turn, drove down the other side of the highway, and, like, there's his office. He works at, like, a real estate company. And, you know, we went in and he showed me. He's got, like, 3 racks of servers.

Aaron

00:20:42 – 00:20:51

He's running postgres in house. He's running his PBX, his voice over IP. He's running all that in house. I realize he's running everything. Wow.

Aaron

00:20:51 – 00:20:59

Everything in house. Easy. He's got server racks, and he's like, these are Solaris, and I you know, I built these. I bought this one for 10 year. Yeah.

Aaron

00:20:59 – 00:21:06

He's like a real Wow. He's a he's a real IT guy. Yeah. He knows stuff that I can't even dream about. Right.

Aaron

00:21:07 – 00:21:11

And super smart. He's doing. Super nice. He knows exactly what he's doing.

Ian

00:21:11 – 00:21:11

Yep.

Aaron

00:21:12 – 00:21:22

So it was great. And I had him sign my book, and he showed me all the he gave me a tour of the office and talked about the good old days, and it was just it was awesome. It was so fun.

Ian

00:21:23 – 00:21:24

That is amazing. That kid

Aaron

00:21:24 – 00:21:25

That crazy?

Ian

00:21:26 – 00:21:32

It's totally crazy. And now you're hooked in with when when was it first written, sequel lite? I don't even know. Like, when did it launch?

Aaron

00:21:32 – 00:21:47

SQLite itself, I feel like it was early 2000, maybe. Yeah. Maybe it was the nineties because he said he was writing when he discovered it, he was writing, he wrote journal articles, like

Ian

00:21:48 – 00:21:48

Home bad.

Aaron

00:21:48 – 00:21:52

Like, magazine articles. Right. It's like, oh, shoot. We have blogs now. Right.

Aaron

00:21:52 – 00:21:56

Initial release, 2,000. Okay. 17 August 2000.

Ian

00:21:57 – 00:22:06

That's kinda crazy. I wonder, like, the guy even know that, like, it's embedded in, like, every app and every phone that, like, this is just the way things are stored? Like

Aaron

00:22:06 – 00:22:11

Yeah. He knew that. What he was surprised what he was surprised to hear about is that web people are picking it up.

Ian

00:22:11 – 00:22:13

Yeah. Crazy.

Aaron

00:22:13 – 00:22:18

Yeah. Because he just, like, you know, he's not he's not on camera. Of course. Not. Why wouldn't he?

Aaron

00:22:18 – 00:22:28

He's, like, he's made it. I'm, you know, when I'm 55, I'm gonna leave all you nerds behind and log off. But I know. Yeah. He he was just, like, shocked to hear that people are interested in it.

Aaron

00:22:28 – 00:22:33

And he told me the whole story of writing the book and how miserable writing a book is and how much

Ian

00:22:33 – 00:22:34

Yeah.

Aaron

00:22:34 – 00:22:52

Like, how much effort it is to do it with a, like, a technical like, a proper technical house, and it just sounded awful. But, yeah, it was so fun. Lots of great war stories. And, of course, he's got you know, he was like, yeah. You you know, there's one way that you can deadlock SQLite.

Aaron

00:22:52 – 00:22:57

You gotta be really careful about. Nobody talks about it. Nobody knows about it. And I'm like, give me give me give me.

Ian

00:22:57 – 00:22:58

I gotta know.

Aaron

00:22:58 – 00:23:04

Tell tell me what it is. Give me the secrets. Oh, that's fun. Wow.

Ian

00:23:05 – 00:23:10

That's awesome. That's great. Yep. Side side track here. Twitter.

Ian

00:23:11 – 00:23:19

Yeah. I've been having this feeling lately, like, what you just said. Uh-oh. Twitter like, not just Twitter, but, like, social media. I feel like feeling over it.

Ian

00:23:19 – 00:23:28

Oh, a little bit. Like, see, your case is a little different because you actually can make money over Twitter, but I don't make any money on Twitter. There's no there's no financial incentive on Twitter for me. Like, I'm not gonna make any

Dave

00:23:28 – 00:23:28

money.

Aaron

00:23:28 – 00:23:30

Nobody's buying help desks off Twitter.

Ian

00:23:30 – 00:23:39

No. Like, I mean, Lara Jobs makes some money off it and stuff like that. But, like, that's like an automated feed thing, whatever. That could exist. That's not me, like, participating.

Ian

00:23:39 – 00:23:47

You know what I mean? Like Mhmm. But then I like the people I communicate with, but there is just like, I don't know. There's just like it just is like kinda old. Can I get old?

Aaron

00:23:47 – 00:23:49

Is it feeling stale for you?

Ian

00:23:49 – 00:23:59

It's a little stale. It's a little like you get the FOMO of people doing other stuff, which don't even know what they're really doing. Right? It's like, you know, it's our version of, like, sexy people on Instagram. It's like, Right.

Ian

00:23:59 – 00:24:07

Not everybody's actually that beautiful. Nobody's actually that beautiful, really. Right? It's just that, like, this is what people corner. That's People put forward.

Ian

00:24:08 – 00:24:15

And I'm just like, I don't know. Like, it's just like, what do I get from it? Am I actually am I actually getting a lot from it? I don't know.

Aaron

00:24:15 – 00:24:19

No. See, you can never up today. You can never ask what am I getting from it.

Ian

00:24:19 – 00:24:20

Right.

Aaron

00:24:20 – 00:24:20

Yeah. Nothing.

Ian

00:24:20 – 00:24:22

Nothing. That's easy.

Aaron

00:24:22 – 00:24:23

Not not a thing.

Ian

00:24:24 – 00:24:33

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I'm probably not giving it up because it's so embedded in me now, but it's just like, like I don't know. I don't I don't have a, you know, a fully formed thought here.

Ian

00:24:33 – 00:24:43

It's more like a I don't know. Got another election coming up. It's gonna be ugly. You got it's just all that kind of stuff. It's like the weight of it all.

Ian

00:24:43 – 00:24:49

It's just like, I don't know. It's like You know? The trade offs here worth it. I don't know if that's true. I don't know if it is anymore.

Ian

00:24:49 – 00:24:50

You know?

Aaron

00:24:50 – 00:25:02

I don't know if it is. I will say, the the JavaScript's, debates have really made me tired. Right. I think they're now arguing about let versus cons, and I'm just like

Ian

00:25:02 – 00:25:06

I couldn't get into what they're even really talking about from the perspective. Doing. I can't.

Aaron

00:25:06 – 00:25:27

There's a guy, I think, Ryan Florence, creator of Remix, who gave a talk about and I I had to mute him because he's so he's always just complaining about Yeah. How everybody's doing stuff wrong, and I'm like, I just can't. I'm sorry. So I get that. I I get the I get the little bit, like, are we doing the it feels like we're we do the same topics every 6 weeks.

Aaron

00:25:27 – 00:25:39

Right. Every 6 weeks, we're talking about, is that really MRR, or is that one time purchases, or boilerplates are bad, or, like, JavaScript is serverless. And I'm like, guys,

Ian

00:25:40 – 00:25:56

shut up. Algo tweaks that, like, kind of poke you've seen more of the, like, you know, if you're, if you go off your followers to like the algo driven one, then you see more of the, like, just obviously click baby type stuff is more highlighted, which I don't love. And like, which I mean, the the Laravel circle, I still enjoy. Right?

Aaron

00:25:56 – 00:25:57

So So good.

Ian

00:25:57 – 00:26:30

What I might have to do, and I've done this before, is go in there with the ax and just, like, really take out everybody I'm following that's not, like, in the core circle of, like, people I actually wanna hear from and just, like, reset. Because, like, you know, it grows over time and I think I'm up to, like, you know, 600 or something more, way more than I ever wanted. And like, then you just, yeah, whatever. It's all feeding into the feed there. And it's like, maybe I just gotta take the time, which is annoying, because all the, X like block all the tools, I think, for like the stuff that used to make that easier to do.

Ian

00:26:30 – 00:26:40

And so now, like, you're just gonna have to literally go in there and, like, click this button 500 times, which is super annoying, but I don't know. I think I I gotta start there, I think, and see if that's

Aaron

00:26:40 – 00:26:40

Start there.

Ian

00:26:41 – 00:26:41

Refresh

Aaron

00:26:41 – 00:26:51

it. Start with curating. Curate your feed. I think that'll help. Curate, mute mute anyone that you see a pattern of engagement bait.

Aaron

00:26:51 – 00:26:53

There are there are even Yeah. I I

Ian

00:26:53 – 00:26:56

don't Well, there's so many that's infinite. It just switches to their people.

Aaron

00:26:57 – 00:27:10

There's there are super spreaders. And if you if you mute the super spreaders, they the other ones the other ones pretty much go away. There are even some people in the Laravel community that will just ask open ended questions that you're, you're like, come on.

Ian

00:27:10 – 00:27:12

Yeah. Yeah. I see what you're

Aaron

00:27:12 – 00:27:17

I see what you're doing. Yeah. Explain to that. I'll get That happens too much and they're gone. You just mute them.

Aaron

00:27:17 – 00:27:27

Yeah. Yeah. And then and then you're you gotta get your mute words ready for November. You gotta mute you gotta mute Biden, Trump, Democrat, Republican. You gotta mute everything.

Ian

00:27:27 – 00:27:38

I have to say, I've never used many of these tools. Like, I'm not a big muter. I'm not a big, mute wordless guy. I have a few in there. I think I actually do have Trump in there at this point, but, like yeah.

Ian

00:27:38 – 00:27:38

I don't know.

Aaron

00:27:39 – 00:27:45

You also you also have to mute this is insane. You have to mute the the versions of the words that people are trying to get around mute filters.

Ian

00:27:46 – 00:27:47

So I also have t t

Aaron

00:27:47 – 00:28:00

r star m Right. T r star because people are like, oh, I don't wanna I don't wanna tweak the name, lest I upset people. And then it shows up in my feed, and I'm like, I'm upset now. I didn't wanna see it. So you have to view like, you gotta view all these random variations of it.

Aaron

00:28:00 – 00:28:01

It's insane.

Ian

00:28:01 – 00:28:04

That's so much work. It's a lot of work right there. Work. A lot of work. I don't know.

Aaron

00:28:04 – 00:28:10

But, Ian, think about it. You could get many tens of likes on your face. You just gotta you gotta stay on the line.

Ian

00:28:10 – 00:28:17

You feel happier than that? No. I don't know. Then the whole thing pass. Yeah.

Ian

00:28:17 – 00:28:21

It'll pass. It'll pass. You'll stay on the grind. You'll keep you'll keep rounding as they say in one of our favorite I'm

Aaron

00:28:21 – 00:28:26

gonna stay on the ground. It'll pass, please. Don't worry. Yeah. I'm not going anywhere.

Aaron

00:28:26 – 00:28:28

My livelihood depends on it. Where are we

Ian

00:28:28 – 00:28:51

going next? That is an interesting thing, though. I mean, Like my livelihood depends on Google Basically, like SEO is really the main thing We have a couple other angles to bring in some customers, but SEO is still the big one. And it does suck because, like, it's way, like, ultra mega insanely competitive. It's unbelievable.

Ian

00:28:51 – 00:29:01

And, like, so it sucks. But everything else is worse. Right? Because everything else is like yeah. Like, someone typing in, like, I you know, IT help desk software.

Ian

00:29:01 – 00:29:17

Like, hey. I know what they're looking for. Like, getting that person gives you a good shot at selling them. Like, with everything else, even, yeah, you could be the biggest Twitter customer service info person out there, and you're still, like, still way far away from Yeah. The actual sales.

Aaron

00:29:17 – 00:29:18

Makes no sense.

Ian

00:29:18 – 00:29:31

Yeah. Half the you're really talking to the agents, which aren't even the people who buy. Mhmm. So, like, there's a lot of, like, it's much harder to reach in these roundabout ways. But, yeah, your stuff is great because you're talking directly to your people.

Ian

00:29:31 – 00:29:44

Right? It's like devs buy your stuff and you're talking to the devs. This is still the part of Twitter that is actually not totally imploded as some of the other parts have. It's like the devs circle is still strong. People are still on there all all the time.

Ian

00:29:44 – 00:30:00

And so, like, that makes a lot of sense. But for you, like, if if Twitter were to go away or to be, like, whatever, crippled and whatever weirdo Elon Musk, he decides now it's gonna cost $500 a month or whatever. Who who knows? Right? It's probably not gonna happen, but whatever.

Ian

00:30:00 – 00:30:05

It happened. It's like your backup plan. Do you need some backup plans? You need some

Aaron

00:30:05 – 00:30:10

I got I got some backup plans. I got YouTube, man. You do have YouTube. Yeah. YouTube YouTube is

Ian

00:30:10 – 00:30:12

YouTube is even better, really.

Aaron

00:30:12 – 00:30:26

Yeah. I was gonna say, I think maybe Twitter is the backup plan. I mean, I I enjoy I enjoy spending time on Twitter, because it's like we're talking to all our friends, but I think YouTube is is the better business play.

Ian

00:30:27 – 00:30:44

You guys are really Twitter. You gotta really track that at this time. I feel like you gotta try to make an actual effort to see if you can figure that out when you launch this course of, like obviously, on Twitter, it's easy because you can just have a link that converts Mhmm. And tracks and whatever. But I don't know.

Ian

00:30:44 – 00:30:56

Like, use an offer code on YouTube or whatever. Something that you can, like, try to really see where the breakdown is. I think that'd be, like, super interesting to to know that. You know? Like Yeah.

Ian

00:30:56 – 00:31:18

Not seeing the impressions from YouTube, but, like, can you actually convert them off the sales? Yeah. Like, can you get them off there and actually buying, like, which I think you can, but I think it would be really interesting to have some data around that. Like, you know, even if it's 15% off coupon or something. Like, that that's worth 15% to find out that, yes, in fact, this is

Aaron

00:31:18 – 00:31:21

it to come talk about on the show. Yeah. It's worth it just to have content.

Ian

00:31:21 – 00:31:22

That's it. But for me

Aaron

00:31:22 – 00:31:27

It's worth it for me for me to get 15% off so we can talk about it. That would be great. Sense.

Ian

00:31:28 – 00:31:35

Well, you're gonna be doing more courses. So you find out with the first one if it's actually that's gonna channel what you think it is. And then you can then have that info.

Aaron

00:31:35 – 00:31:53

I think we'll probably I mean, we're we're going to do several SQLite videos that are specific to YouTube. And so Yeah. Yeah, throw in a YouTube, like, use coupon code YouTube or something would be interesting to see. It's just, man, YouTube is so much more durable than than Twitter. Yeah.

Aaron

00:31:53 – 00:32:01

Twitter is good. It's really good and spiky. You can get, like, a big Right. Amount of hype on launch day, but then it's just it's off into the void. Right.

Aaron

00:32:01 – 00:32:08

And YouTube just keeps kicking, man. It's crazy the way that those videos can bounce around for months.

Ian

00:32:08 – 00:32:14

And then get hot again. Yeah. Mhmm. They'll have views growing a month in. That's so that's so nice.

Aaron

00:32:14 – 00:32:17

Such a long term durable strategy, I think.

Ian

00:32:17 – 00:32:30

I gotta figure out something with YouTube. I don't know what to do there, but I feel like I have some ideas actually for Lara Jobs that could be interesting. Perhaps, Bob, I don't really know. But I don't know. This episode is brought to you by Button Down.

Ian

00:32:30 – 00:33:37

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Ian

00:33:38 – 00:34:03

And if you email support, we'll give white glove migration to your existing subscribers and archives for free. Thank you so much to button down. That's an incredible offer. Make sure you check them out to get 50% off your 1st year using the coupon code diet coke, and also make sure to take advantage of that white white glove migration service. Thanks again to button down for sponsoring Mostly Technical.

Ian

00:34:03 – 00:34:16

Alright. Well, speaking of YouTube, you had a new, video this week. And I thought well, tell us what it is, but then I thought it would be cool to go down into it a little bit because I had a couple of questions.

Aaron

00:34:16 – 00:34:23

Uh-huh. I felt I felt like I felt like the Ian's gonna come down with the hammer. Okay? You got a few questions. Is it good or bad hammer?

Aaron

00:34:23 – 00:34:23

No.

Ian

00:34:23 – 00:34:34

I don't. It's not even a it's more of my here's my question. And so you did a, like, follow me along as I figure out this thing Yeah. Type of video. And, like, we're following you along.

Ian

00:34:34 – 00:34:46

You're looking in the Laravel source. You're, like, digging around trying to figure stuff out. Like, just like guys we all do when we are in the weird spot and we have to figure out how something works. Right? And, like, people seem to really dig it.

Ian

00:34:47 – 00:35:00

So, yeah, I was just curious, like, how you make that watchable. Like, what are your tricks there? Cause like, obviously can go very wrong. I think too, like watching somebody poke around the source code of Laravel for too long. That's not as much fun.

Ian

00:35:00 – 00:35:04

Like, how much pre looking around do you do? How much do you know where you're going?

Aaron

00:35:05 – 00:35:05

Yeah.

Ian

00:35:05 – 00:35:10

Is there editing stuff? Like, I don't know. I'm just kinda curious because people dug it, and it was only, like, 23 minutes. So it was,

Aaron

00:35:10 – 00:35:10

like, long.

Ian

00:35:10 – 00:35:11

Yeah. It wasn't,

Aaron

00:35:11 – 00:35:12

like It was pretty

Ian

00:35:12 – 00:35:23

long for It wasn't 2 hours. Right. Right. It was, like, long for yours for you and your standard video, I think, is usually less than that, but it wasn't, like, yeah. Here's 2 and a half hours of me digging around and coding.

Ian

00:35:24 – 00:35:27

So so give us the I want secrets. So it's my angle on this was what's the secret?

Aaron

00:35:27 – 00:35:29

What's the secret? I'll give you the secret.

Ian

00:35:29 – 00:35:29

I'll give

Aaron

00:35:29 – 00:35:54

you the secret. So the video was like, like a watch me code style video where I'm Right. Coding up a feature in my own, you know, aaronfrance .com repository. And the theory was, I wonder if so like you said, typically, my videos are a lot shorter, you know, 5 to 12, 13, 14 minutes, something like that. And they're much more they're much tighter.

Aaron

00:35:54 – 00:36:00

They're much more like, here's the exact thing I'm showing you. Let me retake it 50 times to make sure it's the exact thing. Right? Yep.

Ian

00:36:00 – 00:36:01

This one, I thought, alright.

Aaron

00:36:01 – 00:36:02

I have this thing that I have

Ian

00:36:02 – 00:36:02

already done. So that's secret number 1.

Aaron

00:36:02 – 00:36:26

I've got this thing that I've already done. There's not really, like, a crispy takeaway lesson. Like, look at this great secret thing I discovered in Laravel. It's like, yeah, this is more just a a conglomeration of ideas, tips, tricks, tactics, whatever. And so I went with the longer, more relaxed, like, watch me code kinda thing.

Aaron

00:36:26 – 00:36:36

As an experiment to see if people would like it. And turns out they did. The numbers are very good. People did like it. So the secrets are I'd excuse me.

Aaron

00:36:36 – 00:36:38

I'd already coded the entire feature

Ian

00:36:38 – 00:36:39

Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron

00:36:39 – 00:36:42

And and shipped it and then was coming back to do a video

Ian

00:36:44 – 00:36:48

on it. So Which which right there, we start for a second. I think that's very interesting because you see most of these are not like that. Right? Like, it's the person bumbling through.

Ian

00:36:49 – 00:37:01

They don't know the, what the answer's gonna be, which I think could be interesting in its own way. If you have that kind of time to sit and watch 2 hours of somebody doing that. But like that, you know, where you're going, let's you like kind of teach the interesting parts, I feel like.

Aaron

00:37:01 – 00:37:32

I think so. Yes. And so I think I will eventually do some some live streams, trying to, like, nail down some sponsors to do some live streams, and I would like to make those much more, like, 2 hours watch me figure it out from Mhmm. You know, x knee hello from nothing as we might say. But this one was so I think the the way that you keep the magic is then, like, you do the thing once and then you basically, like, delete it all and then start from scratch for the video.

Aaron

00:37:32 – 00:37:40

Because what I what I don't wanna do what I don't wanna do is, like, have the reference implementation on one monitor Right. And just be kinda, like, copying it off the other monitor.

Ian

00:37:40 – 00:37:41

Right.

Aaron

00:37:41 – 00:38:02

What I wanna do is show the process of, like, how I actually got there Yeah. And actually kinda have to do it again from scratch because I'm not looking at the exact implementation. Yeah. And so my brain is not powerful enough to know exactly what the answer is, but it does remember the pathway of, like, yeah, you did this, and, like, we had to go look here, and then this is kinda the shape of the thing.

Ian

00:38:02 – 00:38:03

Yep.

Aaron

00:38:03 – 00:38:25

So, like, the one I did in the video actually turned out slightly different than the one I shipped, you know, earlier on just because as I was doing it, I thought, oh, this is this is the way that I should do this. Yep. There is some editing. I did, you know, I did go down some some false paths and have to back up. And I thought, I don't like I the pace, I gotta keep it moving.

Aaron

00:38:25 – 00:38:31

Right? I don't want it to be I'd like you said, I don't wanna spend too long just mucking around being like, what? What are we doing here? Oh, this

Dave

00:38:31 – 00:38:31

is a

Aaron

00:38:31 – 00:38:43

huge mistake. Let me go back. That can be interesting sometimes, but for this one, I felt like, no, it's already kind of long. So I got to I got to keep it on the happy path, the straight and narrow for a while. But, yeah, that's that's pretty much it.

Aaron

00:38:43 – 00:38:55

I think the the key is I knew, 1, that it was possible, and 2, roughly what it was gonna be shaped like. And then I, you know, just did it all from scratch on on camera, and people liked it.

Ian

00:38:55 – 00:39:01

How how long did you have between when you first did it and when you recorded doing it? Like, did you do it that day? It was actually a couple

Dave

00:39:01 – 00:39:01

of weeks.

Ian

00:39:02 – 00:39:05

Yeah. Yeah. So that's huge too. I think that's actually part of the secret. Right?

Ian

00:39:05 – 00:39:05

Because it's like

Aaron

00:39:05 – 00:39:06

Yeah. That's interesting.

Ian

00:39:06 – 00:39:32

Then it's like, you know, yeah, you've forgotten enough of it that it's like, oh, I'm still gonna have to really I know where to look, but, like, I have to actually look because I don't actually remember exactly what it was that I was doing. And so, yeah, you kind of still feels authentic and is authentic that you are, like, looking and but you just know the general areas to go to instead of, yeah, here's 20 minutes of me wandering in the wrong direction and then coming back to the right direction, which is not as entertaining.

Aaron

00:39:32 – 00:39:48

No. I don't think so. But I think these these, like, longer form watch me figure stuff out videos, one, they're fun they're fun and easy for me to do. But, 2, it seems like a lot of people commented and said more of this style. Like, we like these kinds of videos.

Aaron

00:39:48 – 00:39:51

Great. I can do that. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool.

Aaron

00:39:51 – 00:39:52

Awesome.

Ian

00:39:53 – 00:39:59

Yeah. I like that stuff. And then I think if you're mixing some live streams that those could be your, like, hey. Here's a 2 hour video of me wandering around. Right?

Ian

00:39:59 – 00:40:35

Like, if you want that, then that's out there, like, I think this is pretty common. Like there's this, like, fantasy book YouTube channel called in deep geek that does, like, Tolkien and, Lord of the or, George RR Martin stuff and whatever. And that's kinda his thing is he's like, he got like, you know, the 10 to 12 minute videos that are, like, a topic, and he just, like, covers them and they're edited and whatever. And then he does these live streams, which are which which he puts on his own channel, a different channel. So I don't know if there's some algo reason to have your own channel for those.

Ian

00:40:35 – 00:40:55

You might wanna look into that. That's I don't know if he just did it for his own organization or there's a good reason algo wise. But, yeah. And then he does these, like, just q and a type things where he just spends, like, 3 hours digging into people's questions about a very specific topic because people get, you know, people are super into this stuff. So Yeah.

Ian

00:40:55 – 00:41:05

So sometimes I put one of those on. It's kinda interesting background, fodder, but anyway, yeah. So that seems like a logical setup and breakdown there.

Aaron

00:41:05 – 00:41:15

Yeah. I'd like to do I'd like to do some of the long form streaming stuff. 1, because I think it's fun. I really enjoy streaming. But 2, I think now it can be more valuable.

Aaron

00:41:15 – 00:41:20

Back when I, like, had a full time job, streaming was so much effort for so little reward

Ian

00:41:21 – 00:41:21

Yeah.

Aaron

00:41:21 – 00:41:29

That it just I just I just had to let it go. It just was not like, I have many many handfuls of people show up, and I'm, you know, doing it for 2 hours.

Ian

00:41:29 – 00:41:31

This is pointless. Amount of time.

Aaron

00:41:31 – 00:41:32

Huge, massive stuff.

Ian

00:41:32 – 00:41:36

Trying to do other stuff in the night or whatever. It's like, well, I'm gonna take 3 hours and

Aaron

00:41:36 – 00:41:37

Yes. It was like

Ian

00:41:37 – 00:41:37

and screaming.

Aaron

00:41:37 – 00:41:47

No. It didn't make sense. But now I think it makes a lot more sense as, like, the empire is content based, so more content is better. So I I'll I'll probably pick it up eventually.

Ian

00:41:48 – 00:42:06

I do think people like the idea of, like, sometimes you're live. Like, there is just an interesting there's just something intriguing about that even if, even if I don't watch it myself, it's like you're out there. You're doing stuff. You're talking about being out there doing stuff. Maybe I catch up on the recordings of some of it later on or parts of it or whatever.

Ian

00:42:06 – 00:42:20

So there is something to that, I think. People do the people who love watching livestreams definitely are kind of passionate about it. So Yeah. Alright. We have one other one on the list here.

Ian

00:42:20 – 00:42:23

We're gonna bring in a special guest. We're gonna do something first.

Aaron

00:42:23 – 00:42:25

Is he is he on standby? Can he hold off

Ian

00:42:25 – 00:42:27

for a few more minutes? Yeah. He can hold on.

Aaron

00:42:28 – 00:42:36

Alright. I've got one more I got a business topic for you. Oh, okay. Business slash Laravel slash courses slash everything.

Ian

00:42:37 – 00:42:37

Let's do it.

Aaron

00:42:37 – 00:42:53

I have now I have now done a few hours since, since the happening. I've now done a few hours of, performance consulting for Laravel as as, like, just straight up, you pay me you pay me hourly, and we'll hop on a call, and we'll do some performance consulting.

Ian

00:42:53 – 00:42:54

Okay.

Aaron

00:42:54 – 00:43:22

It turns out that they've both been database consulting. So I, you know, we've mucked around with some queries, changed some indexes, gotten some stuff going. And it's worked extremely well. So these two people, super happy with the results. Things are, you know, a 1000 times faster, it's it's this is how my brain works now.

Aaron

00:43:22 – 00:43:25

This is good content. This is great content.

Ian

00:43:25 – 00:43:25

Yeah.

Aaron

00:43:25 – 00:43:35

This needs to be content. Yeah. So so here's here's my theory. You know, we were on here not so long ago with the WAV man, Adam WAV. You know?

Aaron

00:43:35 – 00:43:47

And we talked about this, you know, mastering eloquent database for Laravel, whatever, yada yada yada. Yep. We landed on high performance Laravel as being, like, wow. That's sexy. I like that.

Aaron

00:43:47 – 00:44:01

Mhmm. I think and and my my hesitation with that is I think I could do that. I think it would take a lot of, you know, research and figuring out the nondatabase parts to pull into a course like that.

Ian

00:44:01 – 00:44:01

Mhmm.

Aaron

00:44:02 – 00:44:25

I think the best way for me to do that kind of research is to open myself up for consulting calls like this and say, listen. I'm doing I'm doing a certain fixed number of Laravel performance hours, consulting clients, whatever. 1, I will, like, get get paid for it. So it's not just you know, it's not a huge waste of time. I'll get paid a market rate to do it.

Aaron

00:44:25 – 00:44:41

Potentially, I could record the calls, so that it could be, you know, with, you know, their permission, of course. It could be good bonus content to be like, hey. You've learned all this stuff in the course. Now watch as we, like, actually put some of it to use.

Ian

00:44:41 – 00:44:41

So that

Aaron

00:44:41 – 00:45:09

could be a good set of content itself, but I think more importantly, it would expose me to many more real life applications that I can pull I can pull ideas out of. Because I have I have a lot of ideas, but they're all based on, like, my experience alone, with Laravel, which is which is a lot, but not as much as, you know, talking to 15 different people. Yep. So that was the brainstorm I had. Give me your thoughts.

Ian

00:45:10 – 00:45:21

I like that. Okay. I think there's a couple interesting things there. Like, I mean, you could almost even sometimes do them for free even, like, because just for you to be on there and you're gonna record it and maybe use it or whatever. Right.

Ian

00:45:21 – 00:45:53

But, I guess the thing it made me think about was I definitely like this idea. I think you getting and seeing the real world issues that other types of applications that you haven't built, is obviously super useful. It did give me an idea of like where this course should go instead of high performance Laravel. Should it be like high performance databases with Laravel? So it's like, because I mean, the reality is like, nobody has the like performance issues in the Laravel PHP layer of their application.

Ian

00:45:53 – 00:46:10

Like, I mean, maybe that's gonna be like 5% or 10% of all the performance issues somebody has. I mean, it's just like the computers are so fast. Laravel is plenty fast. Very few apps have so much actual load that, like adding one more server can't just solve that problem of the, like, PHP layer of it. Right?

Ian

00:46:10 – 00:46:39

So like Yeah. So like all the big meaty wins outside of some edge cases are going to be because your database access is messed up in some way or another, or you're looping over things weird or whatever. Like there so that's where there is like the with Laravel part, I think, rather than just being like generic database performance, it's like, no, we're gonna go fix this. And like, because you're doing something weird with eloquent you shouldn't be doing or whatever, you're gonna fix this query and this is how it impacts. Or just even we're gonna be in a reliable app when we do it.

Ian

00:46:39 – 00:46:59

So it looks like your app and you'll understand what, you know, we're gonna use the query builder instead of raw SQL like you would have to do and if it was just about databases. Right? So, like, it could still be all Laravel and NICE, but it's like 90% of your performance issues are in the database, you know, for sure. So that's what the course is about. And I feel like that's something everybody gets.

Ian

00:46:59 – 00:47:25

They know their database stuff's messed up and their queries are slow and like whatever, all that stuff. But yeah, no, I'd like, this for both maybe informing what the course should actually be in its final version, as well as, or even if you deemed the high performance Laravel. Right. But it's like, and maybe there are some, like, there are some lessons on PHP performance, but it's like the bulk is database because that's where the bulk of the stuff is probably gonna be.

Aaron

00:47:25 – 00:47:35

Yeah. That's kinda that's kinda how I'm feeling. I like I like, you know, the idea of high performance databases with Laravel, but I think I still think high performance Laravel

Ian

00:47:35 – 00:47:35

Right.

Aaron

00:47:35 – 00:47:49

You know, to Adam's point, sounds sexy. Yeah. Yeah. Even if even if 75% of the videos are database and the rest are like, you know, cache your views and your routes, and here's how Octane works and stuff like that.

Ian

00:47:49 – 00:47:54

Yeah. Like, here's how you fix your, you know, PHP, the Nginx settings,

Aaron

00:47:54 – 00:47:55

and, like PHP, FPM, and

Ian

00:47:55 – 00:48:03

all that. Fine before, but now your charts look better because, like, it's literally look doing nothing, but doesn't actually matter because you weren't

Aaron

00:48:04 – 00:48:05

Wasn't a it wasn't actually a problem.

Ian

00:48:05 – 00:48:11

Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Wasn't actually a problem. It's just that your data CPU was at 30% instead of 2%, but it didn't actually matter.

Ian

00:48:11 – 00:48:21

But, yeah. So, yeah. I like I like that. And I think it's kind of interesting I imagine you're just gonna get a lot of ideas from it. You know?

Aaron

00:48:21 – 00:48:22

I think so.

Ian

00:48:23 – 00:48:34

I I could see you getting all kinds of different ideas. Yeah. For the course and other things. And if it's a content that you can use, I mean, it's not the kind of thing where it's like, it's like low

Aaron

00:48:41 – 00:48:49

Yeah. That's why I wanna that's why I wanna make it paid because I don't want it's just Right. I don't wanna get hammered with, like, nonsense requests. You know what I mean? Yep.

Ian

00:48:50 – 00:48:55

Yeah. I like that. Where did you did these people just approach you, or did you put something like this out there or no? No. They just d

Aaron

00:48:55 – 00:48:59

m to me on Twitter. We're like, hey, I'm having problems. Can you help? Sure.

Ian

00:48:59 – 00:49:03

Yeah. So I'm sure if you put something out there, right, you'd get 10 more or whatever. Right? So I know.

Aaron

00:49:04 – 00:49:16

That's the other thing is, it's super fun. I loved it because I got on these calls, and I I knew I knew the answer. And I was like, oh. Oh, yeah. I can see what the problem is.

Aaron

00:49:16 – 00:49:24

You're easily. Like, let's fix it. And it's just it's really fulfilling to be like, hey. I'm actually good at this. So that part that part was fun.

Aaron

00:49:24 – 00:49:30

And that also, like, that also reinforced the need for this kind of material.

Ian

00:49:30 – 00:49:30

Right.

Aaron

00:49:30 – 00:49:35

Because I get on these calls, and I'm like, yep. I see it from a mile away, and

Ian

00:49:35 – 00:49:35

people are like,

Aaron

00:49:35 – 00:49:43

oh, wow. That's really helpful. It's like, ah, okay. Great. There's a mismatch here, and where there's a mismatch, I can create material for people to learn.

Ian

00:49:44 – 00:49:56

Yeah. This is always fun when you like, something's obvious to you, but it's not obvious to someone else. And it's like you have that knowledge. Mhmm. But, yeah, I mean, there's gotta be, Yeah.

Ian

00:49:56 – 00:50:08

I think it's great. I think you should definitely record them even if it's just for your own use. Right? So you could, like, go back to them and stuff, like, as long as people are okay with it, which I assume Mhmm. Most of them would be, especially ones that are just for your own use and whatnot.

Ian

00:50:08 – 00:50:13

Mhmm. So, because you can always, like, recreate the issues, obviously, and whatever.

Aaron

00:50:13 – 00:50:13

Yeah. Yeah.

Ian

00:50:13 – 00:50:18

Yeah. It up or whatnot. Mhmm. So, yeah, I like that. That's really cool.

Ian

00:50:18 – 00:50:19

I think that's gonna lead to some good stuff.

Aaron

00:50:20 – 00:50:26

I think so. Well, let's just say here, if you're having, if you're having Laravel performance issues

Ian

00:50:26 – 00:50:26

Yeah.

Aaron

00:50:26 – 00:50:30

And you wanna you wanna talk about it, send me an email.

Ian

00:50:31 – 00:50:31

I like it.

Aaron

00:50:31 – 00:50:36

You can email me. Where should they email me? Oh, should I give them my personal? That's fine.

Ian

00:50:36 – 00:50:38

Can I DM you on Twitter or

Aaron

00:50:38 – 00:50:49

Yeah? I don't know, man. I guess the DMs on Twitter just get lost. So many get there's that secondary inbox for people that don't follow you, and it's usually full of people that are like, hey. I'm launching on product hunt in a few days.

Aaron

00:50:50 – 00:51:08

And then every now and then, a real person is in there, and they just get totally lost because of all the spam. So email me at erindfrancis, d as in Daniel, erindfrancis@gmail.com. If you're having Laravel performance issues and you want a consultant to help you, I e me, yeah. We'll start there.

Ian

00:51:08 – 00:51:15

Yeah. And if I do end up in the mostly tech pod, email, that's fine too. We'll forward those over. Yeah. That's great.

Ian

00:51:15 – 00:51:20

So contact him. We'll we'll get you on the show. We'll hear about your problems on air potentially. So

Aaron

00:51:21 – 00:51:22

so. Yeah.

Ian

00:51:22 – 00:51:24

Some some interesting weird hacky things.

Aaron

00:51:25 – 00:51:26

Alright. We bringing on our expert?

Ian

00:51:26 – 00:51:29

Alright. We're bringing on a expert. Let me see.

Aaron

00:51:30 – 00:51:32

This is good because I don't know anything

Ian

00:51:32 – 00:51:33

about this

Aaron

00:51:33 – 00:51:36

topic. Like, less than nothing.

Ian

00:51:36 – 00:51:38

We're giving the people what they want here.

Aaron

00:51:38 – 00:51:39

Less than nothing.

Ian

00:51:39 – 00:51:45

Twitter says they want this, so we are going to bring in a, highly knowledgeable special guest.

Aaron

00:51:45 – 00:51:51

To to tease a little bit what the segment is, all I will say is that I know that Drake is from Canada.

Ian

00:51:51 – 00:51:51

That's

Aaron

00:51:51 – 00:51:55

it. That's all I know. That's literally all I know.

Ian

00:51:55 – 00:51:56

Oh my goodness.

Aaron

00:51:56 – 00:51:59

And he was maybe in Degrassi. Is that right? Was that the show?

Ian

00:51:59 – 00:52:05

Yeah. I've never seen the show, but that's where he is. Alright. So we have producer Dave.

Aaron

00:52:05 – 00:52:07

Producer Dave. Dave Hickey.

Ian

00:52:07 – 00:52:08

Dave Hickey.

Dave

00:52:08 – 00:52:08

Dave is here.

Ian

00:52:08 – 00:52:10

Yeah. I was just I

Aaron

00:52:10 – 00:52:18

was just telling Ian that all I know is that Drake is from Canada. So that's that's kind of the ground the turtle ground we're working with. Yeah.

Dave

00:52:18 – 00:52:21

It's an excellent start, Aaron. Thank you.

Ian

00:52:21 – 00:52:31

Okay. So we haven't talked about anything yet. So so so the Kendrick Drake beef has kinda taken over. It's taken over Twitter. I mean, it's literally, like, all that's on the timeline.

Ian

00:52:31 – 00:52:34

Yeah. It's on my timeline. And I didn't follow that Not

Aaron

00:52:34 – 00:52:34

not on mine.

Ian

00:52:34 – 00:52:46

Maybe on yours. But I don't follow, like, a ton of rap people even though rap is my primary form of listening music. But I don't know. I feel like the algo is, like, throwing a lot of Drake, Kendrick out there. And then Yeah.

Ian

00:52:46 – 00:53:00

Joe Chanenbaum and some other people were like, we gotta hear what Aaron and Ina had to say. And then I was like, alright. But then we gotta bring on Dave, because for those who don't know, Dave has run a, rap podcast called Clock Radio Speakers for 10 years, 12 years.

Dave

00:53:00 – 00:53:03

Yeah. Like, we've been here since 2011. Yeah.

Ian

00:53:03 – 00:53:14

Okay. So 13 years. So, we have an expert here. I am not as expert as Dave, but I'm up on it a little bit. Aaron knows that Drake is from Canada.

Dave

00:53:14 – 00:53:15

I know he's

Aaron

00:53:15 – 00:53:16

from Canada.

Ian

00:53:16 – 00:53:22

That's it. Where he's at. Okay. I assume he hasn't heard any of the songs. I was hoping he'd listen to the listen to the all the

Aaron

00:53:23 – 00:53:24

name a Drake song. Not

Ian

00:53:24 – 00:53:27

a single one. That seems impossible.

Aaron

00:53:27 – 00:53:30

From not before. Not a single one. Listen.

Dave

00:53:30 – 00:53:31

So Aaron's in a ball.

Aaron

00:53:32 – 00:53:37

No. No. No. I could give you, the chance to rapper. I have listened to chance to he's the rapper.

Aaron

00:53:37 – 00:53:38

He's in the name. Yeah.

Dave

00:53:38 – 00:53:40

That's that's good SEO. Yeah.

Aaron

00:53:40 – 00:53:45

Yeah. It's great SEO. Yeah. It's like it's like calling it, like, Thai food near me. That's the name of the restaurant.

Ian

00:53:45 – 00:53:45

The

Aaron

00:53:45 – 00:53:51

other one, I listened to some NF who's a Christian rapper. They exist. Yeah. Yeah.

Ian

00:53:51 – 00:53:51

For

Aaron

00:53:51 – 00:53:53

sure. Good nice and clean for the kids.

Dave

00:53:53 – 00:53:54

Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron

00:53:54 – 00:54:00

And that's about it. So Okay. That's those are my bona fides. So you might have a little bit of an edge up here on me, Dave.

Dave

00:54:00 – 00:54:04

Boy, I'm how how zoomed out are we going here?

Aaron

00:54:04 – 00:54:06

Like, where do we even start? Alright.

Ian

00:54:06 – 00:54:29

I think we're not gonna go all the way out, but we're gonna go let's go with, like, I thought it'd be good to give you give us just like a, a little bit of the recent background. Yeah. Because I think like people maybe don't even understand why they're fighting. I, at the beginning, like, this is just fake I see clearly seems not fake right now. So maybe give us a little a little rundown of why people are mad at each other.

Aaron

00:54:29 – 00:54:34

And and for who's on the other side of the battle? Just so the listener knows. I know. It's Drake versus

Dave

00:54:35 – 00:54:39

Kendrick Lamar. Right? So, yeah. Definitely. And you know who, obviously,

Aaron

00:54:39 – 00:54:39

you know

Dave

00:54:39 – 00:54:40

Kendrick Lamar is. Yeah. You know

Aaron

00:54:40 – 00:54:42

who you know who California. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave

00:54:42 – 00:54:44

He's from California. Pulitzer prize winner.

Aaron

00:54:46 – 00:54:46

Is Is that real?

Dave

00:54:46 – 00:54:53

You know? Yeah. Seriously. He won a Pulitzer prize for a rap album, first time it's ever happened. Cool.

Dave

00:54:53 – 00:55:20

So, you know, what can you even say? So basically, this is one of those things where and this happens a lot in hip hop where there's, like, 2 different artists who are so much, like they're almost mad at each other because they, like, wanna be be the other person or there's, like, there's that sort of, like, we can only the other person. Yeah. Only one I mean, that's that's definitely like a Drake, Kanye sort of situation, right, for for sure. This is more of a Drake and Kendrick came up at at roughly the same time.

Dave

00:55:20 – 00:55:33

Right? They sort of emerged out of the the primordial ooze at roughly the same time. They became famous sort of the same time. Drake a little bit more a little bit earlier before Kendrick and but they sort of went in very different directions. Right?

Dave

00:55:33 – 00:55:54

So Drake occupies the sort of stereotype in hip hop of the, like, very successful rapper. Right? So he has lots of big hits. You really wouldn't go to listen to Drake's music all the time for, like, really thought provoking, politically interesting music, but the man makes hits and has made hits for a very long time. Right?

Dave

00:55:54 – 00:56:04

I mean, routinely for coming up on 15 years now. Cool. Kendrick, is sort of seen as the I don't know. Ian, you correct me if I'm wrong. I'll call him the thinking thinking man's rapper.

Dave

00:56:04 – 00:56:26

Right? He is introspective, complex, has definite political opinions whether people like it or not. Well, you know, his most recent album was a double album that was, like, full of, like, self introspection and talked about his his journey through therapy and family trauma and just went in, like, a completely different record. Now that's not to say that Very Taylor Swift in that way. Double album, very introspective.

Dave

00:56:26 – 00:56:27

Okay

Aaron

00:56:29 – 00:56:31

Okay. So I'm tracking. Yeah. Okay. Makes sense.

Dave

00:56:31 – 00:56:32

Sure. There's a lot

Ian

00:56:32 – 00:56:34

of Taylor Swift at some point too. They're they're both.

Dave

00:56:34 – 00:56:40

I mean, Taylor's producer, Jack, he makes a a cameo in this, in this beef at some point.

Ian

00:56:40 – 00:56:40

Oh,

Aaron

00:56:40 – 00:56:43

wow. Blow your mind. Are you talking about Jack Antonoff?

Dave

00:56:43 – 00:56:44

I am. Yes. I know.

Aaron

00:56:44 – 00:56:45

I know everything. I know.

Ian

00:56:45 – 00:56:46

It's just a little something.

Dave

00:56:47 – 00:56:48

Just a little something. Just a little

Aaron

00:56:48 – 00:56:51

something I know. It's not a big deal. It's not a big deal.

Dave

00:56:51 – 00:57:16

So, you know, these 2 kind of went in different directions, but they've been obviously been considered 2 of the most famous rappers truly, in the world for a very long time. And as sort of the previous generation ages out, they are at the top. Right? They are the 2 at the top. And Kendrick is he has an old school mentality when it comes to this where it's like he believes he's the best.

Dave

00:57:16 – 00:57:32

And anytime anybody tries to say differently or that there's any sort of we're on the same level, he's going to he's going to address that. He's, he's he's a little petty in that way. Right? And as as many great rappers historically are. Right?

Dave

00:57:32 – 00:57:37

Because rap is as much sport as it is business sometimes. And you got a lot of machines

Aaron

00:57:37 – 00:57:38

on. Yeah.

Dave

00:57:38 – 00:57:51

You got a lot of, you got a lot of emotions. Right? So these 2 were sort of circling each other for a very long time. Lots of, like, what what in hip hop are called subliminals, right, which are sort of lines on record.

Aaron

00:57:51 – 00:57:53

Yeah. No words out in the normal world.

Dave

00:57:53 – 00:58:08

Good. Good. See, I appreciate that. Yeah. You know, honestly, in a way that I think a Taylor Swift fan like you can appreciate, there's a lot of fan activity dedicated to understanding who is this about, who is this line about, are they referencing this person.

Dave

00:58:08 – 00:58:11

So this has been going on for 10 years.

Ian

00:58:11 – 00:58:11

Wow.

Aaron

00:58:11 – 00:58:12

It has

Dave

00:58:12 – 00:58:22

escalated recently. And at first, it started with normal rap beef stuff. Right? Little lines, darts, reference. Just, you know, we're jabbing.

Dave

00:58:22 – 00:58:24

We're we're sort of playing around.

Aaron

00:58:24 – 00:58:24

Mhmm. Mhmm.

Dave

00:58:24 – 00:58:28

So I'd say about a week ago, this started to go nuclear. K.

Ian

00:58:28 – 00:58:28

And then

Dave

00:58:28 – 00:58:30

it went even more nuclear.

Aaron

00:58:30 – 00:58:32

Wow. Thermonuclear. Thermonuclear.

Dave

00:58:33 – 00:58:42

In a way that and so it's funny. We're gonna talk about this on my show we record tomorrow night. We're gonna do a whole thing on this. I'm sort of just gonna, like, have my jaw Scoop in for half the

Aaron

00:58:42 – 00:58:44

Give us the scoop.

Dave

00:58:44 – 00:59:12

Yeah. So, you know, what happened is we're now beyond just 2 guys saying I don't like you or you don't like me or you suck or whatever, whatever. Classy. What we have are very serious allegations of domestic violence, of, sexual perversion, of sex trafficking, of underage sex with minors. Like, we're like, this has gone to an incredible level here.

Dave

00:59:12 – 00:59:18

Okay? And there Who who is accusing whom? Each? Sure. Sure.

Dave

00:59:18 – 00:59:47

So, Drake is accusing Kendrick of, being unfaithful to his wife, which Kendrick basically admitted to on his most recent album anyway, of abusing his wife, which certainly was not, was has never been has never been claimed by by Kendrick, along with some other things. Kendrick is accusing Drake of having sex with underage women and effectively running a sex trafficking ring out of his house.

Ian

00:59:49 – 00:59:49

This is this

Aaron

00:59:49 – 00:59:52

is less fun than I anticipated. Keep going.

Ian

00:59:52 – 00:59:53

You know? To the fun part in a

Aaron

00:59:53 – 00:59:53

sec. Yeah.

Dave

00:59:53 – 00:59:56

Well, it sort of was like, oh, this is fun.

Aaron

00:59:56 – 01:00:00

Yeah. Let's go back to the you suck at rapping. Like, that's fun.

Dave

01:00:00 – 01:00:12

Well, what's what's weird about this is, like, this got very, very serious. What's the I'm trying to think of the timeline here exactly. So, like, May 3rd well, today's I'm looking at my watch. Today's 6th. So on May 3rd

Aaron

01:00:13 – 01:00:16

Just for the record, you don't have to be that specific with this audience. Maybe

Ian

01:00:16 – 01:00:17

this is good this

Aaron

01:00:17 – 01:00:19

is good prep for your audience. Yeah.

Ian

01:00:19 – 01:00:19

But you

Aaron

01:00:19 – 01:00:21

could've said the 4th. You could've said the second.

Dave

01:00:21 – 01:00:25

So it's in And if I'm being too specific, I apologize. I'm trying to, like, trying to get you so

Ian

01:00:25 – 01:00:25

Is that

Dave

01:00:25 – 01:00:35

the same? Basically, they the the 2 of them went very, very serious. And, like, within a 20 minute time span. Right? So, like, Drake put out a record, serious accusations.

Dave

01:00:36 – 01:01:06

20 minutes later, Kendrick put out a song called Meet the Grams. And I mentioned that specifically because it's like one of the most haunting, crushing, psychologically debilitating records I've ever heard in my life. The only response that someone can have to it when you listen to it is your jaw drops. My wife, one of the perks of perks of being married to me is you have to listen to all my music and all my opinions about music. And, I played it for a while we were in the car going to, like, someone's open house.

Dave

01:01:06 – 01:01:12

And I was like, oh, you should hear this new record. Really not a great time because we were, like, about to, like, roll up on their house and her jaw just drops.

Aaron

01:01:12 – 01:01:13

Oh, oh, I destroyed the vibe.

Dave

01:01:13 – 01:01:21

And And then, like, as we're pulling up, we get to the end, and she just looks at me, and she's just like, what? I was like, yeah. I know. And then I was like, and let's go see these fools.

Aaron

01:01:21 – 01:01:22

Whose record was that?

Dave

01:01:23 – 01:01:25

That was Kendrick Lamar. It's called meet the grams.

Aaron

01:01:25 – 01:01:26

That was a full record.

Dave

01:01:26 – 01:01:29

A full song. Yeah. So I'm and I'm using the term record. A full song. Yeah.

Aaron

01:01:30 – 01:01:32

Okay. A full song that came out after

Dave

01:01:32 – 01:01:35

20 minutes after Drake's song. So they've been trading songs back and forth.

Ian

01:01:35 – 01:01:36

Yeah. Like, every day, this

Dave

01:01:36 – 01:01:40

Every day or 2 going back and forth. The pace has just been accelerating.

Ian

01:01:40 – 01:01:40

The pace

Dave

01:01:40 – 01:01:55

has been accelerating. And the thing about thing about, like, beefs and and and battles in hip hop is that, it's almost like it's almost like political, confrontations in a way where it's like it's not really about the facts.

Aaron

01:01:55 – 01:01:58

Mhmm. It's about what classic politics as

Dave

01:01:58 – 01:02:33

I It's about what people want to believe and what they and, like, what fits their world their worldview and their narrative. And what we've got here is yeah. There's all kinds of we're gonna go into some much much more depth on my podcast. There's all kinds of, like, weird intersections between how, like, younger generations and I would say modern social media uses words like predator and grooming in very, I would consider elastic ways, not necessarily legalistic definitions. And what Drake is doing is Drake is this one of my favorite sayings in the show.

Dave

01:02:33 – 01:03:05

It's one of my favorite sayings in life. If you're explaining, you're losing. And Drake is explaining right now. And so he is, like, trying to, like, offer this, like, I didn't do this, and I and it's just, like, it doesn't matter because what I mean, Kendrick is out here releasing, like, danceable party records where, like, he's calling him a pedophile and people are, like, going crazy to it, and it's, like, doing well on the charts. And it's like, how do you like, all that tells you is that the p the the the quote unquote people, the larger culture has decided we're going to make fun of you.

Dave

01:03:05 – 01:03:12

And there's nothing that there I true I will say it. Sometimes this happens where there's a bit of a gang up effect where people are just like, yeah. We've all decided. It's time. You're done.

Ian

01:03:12 – 01:03:13

So you're

Aaron

01:03:13 – 01:03:15

telling me he's losing he's losing the vibe war.

Dave

01:03:15 – 01:03:34

The vibe war is totally lost. Now he's really honestly, the act to me, the accusations are so serious. I think he's just trying to, like, make sure that he isn't, like, in legal trouble or, like, financial trouble potentially. Right? Because, like, you first of all, so he is, he signed through a, it's a very large, deal with Universal Records.

Dave

01:03:35 – 01:03:40

They gave him 400 to $500,000,000 upfront, I believe, for a certain amount.

Ian

01:03:41 – 01:03:42

How do I get in on this action?

Dave

01:03:42 – 01:03:44

So Oh, man.

Aaron

01:03:44 – 01:03:46

You have to rap. I could do that.

Dave

01:03:46 – 01:03:48

You can rap. You can rap.

Aaron

01:03:48 – 01:03:49

It's easy.

Dave

01:03:49 – 01:03:55

What is And so yeah. Go. Sorry. I've been I've been just talking. But anyway, so I I have to assume at this point, Drake, like, the vibe war is lost.

Dave

01:03:55 – 01:03:59

Now it's like You don't wanna talk about it. You don't wanna actually.

Ian

01:04:00 – 01:04:00

First of

Dave

01:04:00 – 01:04:18

all, let's all hope this isn't really true. Right? Let's all just state that for the record. But, like, you need to make sure that, like, I mean, I don't know. If a label throws on 4 or $500,000,000, it'd be tough with a lot of musicians to have a quote, unquote morals clause, but you have to assume there might be some sort of protection somewhere for some like, you I mean,

Ian

01:04:18 – 01:04:19

Dave

01:04:19 – 01:04:33

has to defend his livelihood at some point. Right? So, like, to me, this is like we've entered the not so much the, oh, I hate you so much. It's like, oh, I need to make sure my career and my livelihood isn't destroyed, which is this all happened in a week. It's, like, wild.

Dave

01:04:33 – 01:04:35

Ian, you look like you have a question.

Aaron

01:04:35 – 01:04:36

Yeah. I don't know.

Ian

01:04:36 – 01:05:02

I mean, the whole thing to me is comes like, rappers always say stuff. Right? And I mean, modern rappers, there's even less truth in it, which is to me why it's actually less interesting than it was like in the nineties and early 2000s where it's like people who had hard lives rapping about their hard lives was more interesting to me and more like, right. And more like, attainable goals. Like, I would like to make money and drive a Lexus.

Ian

01:05:02 – 01:05:14

I would like to provide for my parents. I would like, like, these are the things they would wrap up. Right? And, like, now, right, they're like, Drake has his own plane, and it's like He does. Painted for him, the air Drake.

Ian

01:05:14 – 01:05:22

Right? He's like, he has not like attainable. This is not like this is somebody living on a not a man of the hill anymore. No. No.

Ian

01:05:22 – 01:05:34

These guys are men of the people at this point. And so, I guess, to me, like, part of it is, like, the so what are they saying? Maybe it's real. Maybe it's not. It's a rap song.

Ian

01:05:34 – 01:05:45

People say they've killed people. People say all kinds of stuff on rap songs. It's a lot most of it's not true or partial truths or whatever. Right? So, like, to me, in a battle like this, it's like who makes the best music.

Ian

01:05:45 – 01:05:48

Like, I'm like, the music is right now.

Dave

01:05:48 – 01:05:51

I hear you, but I think we're in the minority because we're old.

Ian

01:05:51 – 01:05:52

It could

Aaron

01:05:52 – 01:05:53

be. I think, like, well,

Ian

01:05:53 – 01:05:59

I think but, see, I think Kendrick is I think the it seems like people think Kendrick is winning, and I think Kendrick's made the best songs.

Dave

01:05:59 – 01:05:59

Yeah.

Ian

01:05:59 – 01:06:05

So I think I think Kendrick like, there's not like us as a song I will just listen to. It's just on my Kendrick

Dave

01:06:05 – 01:06:07

song is terrible, but people love it.

Ian

01:06:07 – 01:06:09

Amazing. It's a fantastic song.

Dave

01:06:09 – 01:06:21

But people like it. And it's like as soon as I heard that as soon as I heard it, I was like, really? You're you're doing that? But then I like, I saw the reaction, and I was like, oh, I misjudged. As as Aaron said, like, the vibes the vibes have shifted.

Ian

01:06:21 – 01:06:22

The vibes. The vibes

Aaron

01:06:22 – 01:06:22

have shifted.

Dave

01:06:22 – 01:06:23

And sometimes

Ian

01:06:23 – 01:06:31

it happens. About the music. People want a danceable Kind of the light. In the car. I don't wanna hear somebody listing out their beef.

Ian

01:06:31 – 01:06:36

Like, it's like, I'm gonna go really old school here. Yeah. Go ahead. You can Dave's the per perfect person to ask about this. Yeah.

Ian

01:06:36 – 01:06:47

I don't know if Aaron even remembers this, but way back in the day, you had jay z and Nas who were in a beef. Yeah. And I think the popular opinion is that Nas won with either

Dave

01:06:47 – 01:06:49

that I'd actually do that. Yeah. Go ahead.

Ian

01:06:49 – 01:06:59

I always prefer the takeover. I feel like takeover is the better song. And so takeover for me wins. Like, I feel like the lines are better. I feel like the song is better.

Ian

01:06:59 – 01:07:09

And even though ether's a good song, like I don't ever go back to ether. I never go back to ether, but I go back to takeover. Like, takeover is just a damn good song, especially the live version. Yeah. So the music is what sticks in people's head.

Ian

01:07:09 – 01:07:14

That's how you win to me. It's like the song I listened to 5 years from now, that's who won. Not like

Aaron

01:07:14 – 01:07:21

So Ian, tie it back to last episode. Yes. Drake is fighting when he should be winning. He's he's he's playing the wrong games.

Ian

01:07:21 – 01:07:22

The guy. He's playing the wrong games.

Aaron

01:07:23 – 01:07:24

Gotta make better music.

Ian

01:07:24 – 01:07:26

The 2 of them are playing completely

Dave

01:07:26 – 01:07:44

different games. Drake is playing this like, oh, we're I'm trying to jab you. We're having fun, and Kendrick is like, I'm going to destroy like, they are they are operating at different levels. But, Ian, what I would say is, like, the the Nas and Jay z thing, that's actually a great example. Ether's not a very good song, but people wanted to see sometimes this happens.

Dave

01:07:44 – 01:07:48

Like, people want the the guy on top. They they wanna see him taken down a notch.

Ian

01:07:48 – 01:07:49

Yeah. You want Like an underdog story.

Dave

01:07:49 – 01:08:12

They want it's the underdog story, and that's what people want want to see. You know? And that was the case where the vibes just kind of shifted. The only other thing I think is really interesting about to me, one of the things interesting about this beef, and I think this kind of ties in with just culture in general. Like, the salaciousness and, like, the level of, like, the the sort of how like, I like, The New York Times is reporting on this

Ian

01:08:12 – 01:08:12

That's right.

Dave

01:08:12 – 01:08:13

Because it's, like, a big thing.

Ian

01:08:14 – 01:08:17

Reporting on it. That's why we shared it. Yeah. They get rid of this from us. But, like Yeah.

Dave

01:08:17 – 01:08:34

So, in the Jay and Nosby, Jay that's effectively ended because Jay went on a radio station, and he was doing a freestyle, and he had some, we'll say, salacious lines. And his mom made him apologize because his mom was like, this has been neat to you. You can do better.

Aaron

01:08:34 – 01:08:36

Jay z's mom did?

Dave

01:08:36 – 01:08:37

Yeah. That's true.

Aaron

01:08:37 – 01:08:39

That's cool. By the way, it's so awesome the way you Shut

Ian

01:08:39 – 01:08:40

up the mom.

Aaron

01:08:40 – 01:08:44

That's so, like, so, like, you're in you're in the culture with your

Ian

01:08:44 – 01:08:45

columnist Jay z and,

Dave

01:08:45 – 01:08:48

like, oh, mister Jay z. Yeah. Sean Corey Carter. Yeah. Of course.

Dave

01:08:49 – 01:08:59

We are so far beyond that. And in this era of social media, if, like, you know, Kendrick were to be like if, you know Kendrick would never be like, oh, I'm so sorry for accusing you of

Ian

01:08:59 – 01:09:00

this. Right.

Dave

01:09:00 – 01:09:11

That's just not we are so far beyond that because, like, things that would be beyond the pale sort of not that, like, in like, there have been salacious rap battles in history, but we're talking, like, between 2 guys who are names.

Ian

01:09:11 – 01:09:20

Dirtier than I just want It's very dirty. Like, I just want that feel less dirty than, like, just other dude. But so what do you think about this Oh, to me

Aaron

01:09:20 – 01:09:22

what dead is is a lot cleaner. Yeah.

Ian

01:09:22 – 01:09:22

And I'm not

Dave

01:09:22 – 01:09:36

sure if it's Aaron, Kendrick on one of these songs, he'd tell he he like, one of the songs is, like, written basically each verse is written to different members of Drake's family, telling them all the ways in which Drake is a deadbeat.

Ian

01:09:36 – 01:09:38

Yeah. Like deserves time.

Dave

01:09:38 – 01:09:44

Like, it is we are we are at, like, incredible level. 5. Yeah. Yeah. Defcon 1.

Dave

01:09:44 – 01:09:45

1. Defcon 1. Yeah.

Aaron

01:09:45 – 01:09:49

Who can who can can say for sure? Chance Rapper would never do that. As much as I know about rap,

Ian

01:09:49 – 01:09:52

Chance Rapper would never do that. You need to rap beef, actually, because

Aaron

01:09:52 – 01:09:54

Yeah. Where's that guy? Heard

Ian

01:09:54 – 01:09:55

from John in years.

Dave

01:09:55 – 01:09:57

I got stories about Chance Rapper. So this

Ian

01:09:57 – 01:10:06

is, though, what I think is interesting. Because to to me, Kendrick I'm not a big Kendrick. I like old Kendrick. Mhmm. New Kendrick is too he's too deep in his head.

Ian

01:10:06 – 01:10:34

Like, I don't want it's, like, he's just too deep. I feel like the music has come sort of second to, like, whatever he wants to say, but I don't, like, necessarily care as much what I want to say. Like, I want a song that when I play in my car is, like, awesome. And, like, that is where I feel like this this beep has, like, made Kendrick so alive to me because I'm like, oh, shit. Like, he's taking his word skills and abilities, but then he's also making really good songs with it, because he's, like, motivated in the proper direction of, like, he's got a direction that's just not him in his head.

Ian

01:10:34 – 01:10:45

It's like him with a focus. And even though that focus is Drake and tearing him down, it's, like, giving him motivation that is causing him to make great music, which I find very intriguing. Drake is

Aaron

01:10:45 – 01:10:48

like muse. Yeah. And Drake's kind of a joker. They need each other.

Ian

01:10:49 – 01:10:57

But Drake, I don't think he's good. Kills the snotty. Kills, like, values a thumbs up. Right? So That's great.

Ian

01:10:57 – 01:11:25

I don't know. That's my but my take is, like, Kendrick has, like, kind of elevated his game of the actual music and put his skills with it in a way that where I feel like having to come out with a song every day has made him make different choices that I think has been quite intriguing versus, like yeah. Whatever. I'm gonna spend 4 years on an album, and I'm gonna, like, overanalyze every lyric to the nth degree and, like, forget that I'm supposed to be making a song that actually people wanna play. So I know a lot of people like that, and this is my take.

Aaron

01:11:25 – 01:11:30

One is a bop. We just want a bop. We want something we can listen to. We just we just need something good.

Ian

01:11:30 – 01:11:33

That's what I want. That's what I want. It's like

Dave

01:11:33 – 01:11:35

You're a simple man. You have simple simple dogs. Man.

Aaron

01:11:36 – 01:11:38

I am a simple, simple man.

Ian

01:11:38 – 01:11:41

And listen in fact take care are you you gotta get it on this.

Aaron

01:11:41 – 01:11:43

Yes. Here's here's my take. Here's

Ian

01:11:43 – 01:11:43

my take.

Aaron

01:11:43 – 01:11:47

From, from what some people may say is an outside perspective.

Ian

01:11:48 – 01:11:48

I don't know. I feel

Aaron

01:11:48 – 01:11:59

like I'm kinda in it. You know? But Mhmm. From an outside perspective, having just learned who Kendrick Lamar is Mhmm. And having just learned their different styles, here's here's my synthesis of it.

Aaron

01:11:59 – 01:12:04

Yeah. Drake is the fast and furious franchise. He's big. He's commercial. Yeah.

Aaron

01:12:04 – 01:12:08

He's a little he's a little bit he's a little bit cheesy.

Ian

01:12:08 – 01:12:10

A little cheesy, but he can

Aaron

01:12:10 – 01:12:13

you know, historically, maybe it sounds like maybe it's changing, but historically Yeah.

Ian

01:12:13 – 01:12:13

Sure.

Aaron

01:12:13 – 01:12:24

He just makes he just makes big stuff that people wanna listen to. Kendrick is Christopher Nolan. He's he's cerebral. He's thoughtful. He's making all these deep references, and they're just they're just different vibes.

Aaron

01:12:24 – 01:12:32

How do we feel about that, Dave? It feels pretty good to me. I know a lot about each job. What's weird to me is movies and rap. It's kind of my

Dave

01:12:32 – 01:12:35

thing. I'm not a I'm not a fast franchise fan, really.

Ian

01:12:36 – 01:12:37

Oof. Oof. I know.

Dave

01:12:37 – 01:12:41

And I'm more of a Nolan guy, but that's okay. You know, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.

Ian

01:12:41 – 01:12:51

I want we got we should do I haven't watched most of them either, so I would probably go do that. We could do that. We could do that on the show. It's like a little side episode where we, like, review each Fast and furious.

Aaron

01:12:51 – 01:12:51

This is when

Ian

01:12:51 – 01:12:51

this is

Dave

01:12:51 – 01:12:54

when we start a Patreon, and we just do movie reviews.

Ian

01:12:54 – 01:12:55

I think that's scary. Who

Aaron

01:12:55 – 01:12:58

are the Patreon. Yeah. You're not like, carry on.

Dave

01:12:58 – 01:13:00

Alright. Sorry. No. No. Yeah.

Dave

01:13:00 – 01:13:05

I don't know. That's so, Aaron, I will say that's that's really that's actually not a bad it's not a bad comparison. Yes. Yeah. I'm not I'm not mad at that.

Dave

01:13:05 – 01:13:06

I'm not mad at that.

Ian

01:13:06 – 01:13:14

Right? So expert opinion here, Dave. Yeah. A, who do you think is the winner? B, is this gonna keep going on?

Ian

01:13:14 – 01:13:22

This last Drake album sounded like he was gonna be like, I'm done with this now, and I'm not really gonna be responding basically is the kind of vibe.

Dave

01:13:22 – 01:13:29

He he seems to be he wants to be done with it. He should. Because he's being dragged through the mud. Yeah. And then some.

Dave

01:13:29 – 01:13:43

Yeah. I mean, I I don't think Kendrick I mean, Kendrick wants to I mean, it's it's very personal. Right? Like, Drake made the mistake of of mentioning Kendrick's wife on a record and then made the allegations, and that made it very personal. And I think No.

Ian

01:13:43 – 01:13:47

Kendrick's got, like, 10 more 10 more records coming for sure. Like, there's not He's gonna right.

Dave

01:13:47 – 01:13:58

And so, like, I think I mean, the Kendrick has won. It is done. It is over. Right? But there's, like, there's different levels of, like, how bad could this be?

Dave

01:13:59 – 01:14:27

You know, like, and so Drake, Drake will, Drake will still try to do something, but he probably the thing is, like, he needs to go away for a while, and he needs to figure out a way to gracefully do that. Right? Like, in the old days when we still had, like, media that gatekeeped and PR handlers and everything else, Drake would go away for a while. There'd be, like, the Barbara Walters, like, soft focus interview where she, like, talked about his trauma or something like that. That doesn't really you know, I don't know if that really exists anymore.

Dave

01:14:28 – 01:14:30

So, like, I'm not really sure how he gracefully tries to

Ian

01:14:30 – 01:14:38

get out of there. The songs. Like, I mean, you'd be like, oh, yeah. And next year when the next album comes out, like, then you'd hear the response. Not like, oh yeah.

Ian

01:14:38 – 01:14:49

Like every day they're just like going back and forth in a way that, like, everybody can participate in. Maybe those songs existed the next day, right, but you didn't hear it. Just it was hard to get ahold of because it wasn't a way that he used them.

Dave

01:14:49 – 01:14:54

That has been an interesting thing to watch how social media and the ease of recording and releasing on streaming just

Ian

01:14:54 – 01:14:54

Yeah.

Dave

01:14:54 – 01:15:06

Injects cocaine into the sort of cycle of music, right, where it's like you can go and really you can make something professionally, record it, and release it super like, so much faster than you used to be.

Ian

01:15:07 – 01:15:13

Has been very remarkable. It's like these are, like, Finnish songs. Like, they're I'm sure, like, you've been, like

Dave

01:15:13 – 01:15:14

Kendrick has been tweaking

Ian

01:15:14 – 01:15:18

a little bit, but they, to me, they sound like these are good song. These are songs.

Dave

01:15:18 – 01:15:18

Like, I

Ian

01:15:18 – 01:15:23

wouldn't be like, oh, this is a half finished song. Like I Yeah. No. They, they produce this song and it sounds good. Like Yeah.

Ian

01:15:24 – 01:15:30

Which is pretty remarkable that it's, like, every day, which kinda shows you, I mean, how much time do they actually spend on an album? Like Well, I mean, we'd, like, show

Aaron

01:15:30 – 01:15:32

the rest of us doing? Right.

Ian

01:15:32 – 01:15:33

Yeah. Working for 10 days a year.

Dave

01:15:34 – 01:15:37

But, I mean, that's honestly, that's how creative inspiration for music goes. Right?

Ian

01:15:37 – 01:15:39

Yeah. You know? Tupac back in the day. Right? I was

Dave

01:15:39 – 01:15:45

gonna say, what you'll appreciate this right? Like, much of much of the blueprint was done over a long weekend.

Ian

01:15:45 – 01:15:45

Right. Right?

Aaron

01:15:45 – 01:15:46

Like That's

Ian

01:15:46 – 01:15:47

how it goes. You get in the zone.

Dave

01:15:47 – 01:15:51

So, like, you get there are these zones. You just find these pockets, and you and you kinda go from there.

Aaron

01:15:52 – 01:15:57

So You know, in the same way, Bon Iver wrote his I think his breakout album in a cabin. He did.

Ian

01:15:57 – 01:15:58

He did.

Aaron

01:15:58 – 01:16:00

Yeah. And, where's he from?

Dave

01:16:00 – 01:16:03

I'd like to go to Wisconsin. Area. Yeah. No. He's from Wisconsin.

Dave

01:16:03 – 01:16:04

Yeah. Shout out to He's

Ian

01:16:04 – 01:16:05

from Connecticut.

Dave

01:16:05 – 01:16:08

Friend of the show, Ben Holman. He's from, he's from

Ian

01:16:08 – 01:16:08

the oak

Dave

01:16:08 – 01:16:12

he's from the same exact area as Boni Bear, Oakdale, Wisconsin. Yeah.

Aaron

01:16:12 – 01:16:17

Here's something. Where is Wisconsin in relation to Connecticut? They gotta be, like, up there together. Right?

Dave

01:16:17 – 01:16:20

Aaron, are you are you trolling you're trolling me. Right? This is a

Ian

01:16:20 – 01:16:20

true map.

Aaron

01:16:20 – 01:16:21

I have

Ian

01:16:21 – 01:16:24

a little He only knows about the He only knows about the triangle.

Aaron

01:16:24 – 01:16:28

There's no way that if you put a map in front of me right now, I could tell you which one's Wisconsin.

Dave

01:16:28 – 01:16:29

Ian

01:16:29 – 01:16:29

Really?

Aaron

01:16:30 – 01:16:32

11 in Boy. Let's see.

Ian

01:16:32 – 01:16:34

I can identify education system.

Aaron

01:16:34 – 01:16:38

I can identify maybe 10 states, so we're talking about 1 40 chance.

Dave

01:16:38 – 01:16:44

Give me a state in the Midwest you know, and I'll give you, like, sort of the relative bearing. What's the what's the question? Chicago.

Aaron

01:16:44 – 01:16:46

I could point out Michigan, I think.

Dave

01:16:46 – 01:16:50

Okay. So it's directly west across the across Lake Michigan

Ian

01:16:50 – 01:16:50

Yeah.

Dave

01:16:50 – 01:16:51

From Michigan is where

Aaron

01:16:51 – 01:16:52

Wisconsin is.

Dave

01:16:52 – 01:16:53

Yeah.

Ian

01:16:53 – 01:16:53

Yeah.

Aaron

01:16:53 – 01:16:54

So it's up there.

Ian

01:16:54 – 01:16:54

Sure. I got it.

Aaron

01:16:54 – 01:16:54

Up there.

Ian

01:16:54 – 01:16:55

I got it.

Aaron

01:16:55 – 01:16:55

It's up there.

Dave

01:16:56 – 01:17:00

I mean, I'm I'm over to the right, but yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. We're kind of at similar Yeah.

Aaron

01:17:00 – 01:17:01

Yeah. Similar. Latitudes.

Ian

01:17:01 – 01:17:06

I think Aaron's we busted a few fuses. He's just like Yeah. I'm he's got Aaron Aaron's

Aaron

01:17:06 – 01:17:07

going by by. Me a

Dave

01:17:07 – 01:17:08

long time ago.

Ian

01:17:08 – 01:17:10

Yeah. Sorry. I'll just heard

Aaron

01:17:10 – 01:17:12

of Nas in my life. Oh,

Ian

01:17:12 – 01:17:13

no. Come on. We gotta

Dave

01:17:13 – 01:17:18

you need to put together, like, an intro to rap, like, playlist for Aaron or

Ian

01:17:18 – 01:17:19

something. We gotta do a mix

Aaron

01:17:20 – 01:17:21

Give me a text message. I can't do it.

Ian

01:17:21 – 01:17:25

Rap at Dallas. Come on. We gotta get you in the fold, man, on the rap. Yeah.

Aaron

01:17:25 – 01:17:27

I just can't do it. Yeah. Sorry.

Ian

01:17:27 – 01:17:29

Rap's the best form of music. It's just it's

Aaron

01:17:29 – 01:17:32

just Oh, okay. That's all for

Ian

01:17:32 – 01:17:35

today, folks. Oh, it's so good.

Aaron

01:17:35 – 01:17:36

It's not.

Dave

01:17:36 – 01:17:42

It's just good stuff to storm. Maybe we hook him through Bon Iver. Right? Bon Iver has been on some rap records. We kinda get him yeah.

Dave

01:17:42 – 01:17:44

We kinda get him that way maybe a little bit.

Ian

01:17:44 – 01:17:45

There we go. We gotta go in.

Aaron

01:17:45 – 01:17:50

I wouldn't have listened to the the albums or the records that Boni Bear has been on for

Ian

01:17:50 – 01:17:51

sure. Yeah. Sure.

Aaron

01:17:51 – 01:17:51

There's a

Dave

01:17:51 – 01:17:51

There we go.

Aaron

01:17:51 – 01:18:00

There was a weird, like, Boni Bear, Kanye, Francis and the lights, Chance the Rapper for a little bit. Francis and the lights is They were buzzed.

Dave

01:18:00 – 01:18:06

Francis and the lights is my guy. I know Francis and the lights. I've been here on the lights. Oh, you love Francis and the lights? Now we're best friends.

Aaron

01:18:07 – 01:18:08

Francis and the lights. Yeah.

Ian

01:18:08 – 01:18:08

Hold on.

Aaron

01:18:08 – 01:18:12

I know what so weird. They're so weird. That's totally my my speed.

Dave

01:18:12 – 01:18:16

Oh, no. Francis yeah. Francis is a great guy. I've been to dozens of his concerts.

Ian

01:18:16 – 01:18:19

What? Yeah. Dave's on the inside with Francis.

Aaron

01:18:20 – 01:18:20

No way.

Dave

01:18:20 – 01:18:21

Yeah. For sure.

Ian

01:18:21 – 01:18:24

He, like, knows the band members or something. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I was like

Aaron

01:18:24 – 01:18:24

Yeah.

Ian

01:18:24 – 01:18:29

All that. Yeah. He's behind the stage. He's not going to the concert in the seats. He's going to concerts.

Dave

01:18:29 – 01:18:37

He's back there. Honestly, yeah. Tip like, when I, yeah, typically go, it's yeah. How? It's a really long story, kind of, I guess.

Dave

01:18:37 – 01:18:45

My wife and I, we became fans of his because, oh, you'll love this. We're gonna take it full circle. He produced and cowrote a Drake record back in 2010.

Aaron

01:18:45 – 01:18:47

Get out of here. Francis did?

Dave

01:18:47 – 01:18:53

Yeah. So we saw that we saw his name in the credits. I looked I looked up his music. I started listening to it. I liked it.

Dave

01:18:53 – 01:18:57

We saw him open a a show here in Connecticut, and we

Aaron

01:18:58 – 01:18:59

Weird dude. Right?

Dave

01:18:59 – 01:19:03

Well, he's an unusual guy, but I like Yeah. I do too.

Aaron

01:19:03 – 01:19:03

He's awesome.

Dave

01:19:04 – 01:19:13

We, we met him. We basically, like, left after the opener because we only wanted to see him. We happened to see him outside. He was very kind and gracious, took a photo with us. This is back in the sort of Tumblr early Twitter days.

Dave

01:19:13 – 01:19:22

So I just reached out to him the next day and said, hey. Thanks for being cool and taking a photo, and we just exchanged emails and became, like, sort of, like, kind of friends after that. And so, like,

Aaron

01:19:22 – 01:19:24

I would pals with Francis and the lights?

Ian

01:19:25 – 01:19:26

Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron

01:19:26 – 01:19:33

That is crazy. Man, I'm so glad you came on the show. Cool about that. But that is crazy. That's great.

Ian

01:19:33 – 01:19:35

I don't think he's done much lately. He's been doing stuff? I feel

Aaron

01:19:35 – 01:19:36

like he was rattled

Ian

01:19:36 – 01:19:37

a little more. He's been

Dave

01:19:37 – 01:19:54

he's been a little bit on hiatus. He, because, you know, he, he's he did a lot of work, for he did a lot of work with Chance. He did a lot of work with, with Kanye. He was sort of out on, like, Kanye's, like, ranch basically in one in, like, in LA and Wyoming for a while, kinda doing work there.

Ian

01:19:54 – 01:19:55

Break from that.

Dave

01:19:55 – 01:19:57

And then his dad all kind of like had to recover.

Ian

01:19:57 – 01:19:57

Yeah. We

Dave

01:19:57 – 01:20:02

all kind of like, yeah. Yeah. Well, in full bloomer. Yeah. So Interesting.

Ian

01:20:03 – 01:20:05

Yeah. I'd like to go on hiatus. That's pretty

Aaron

01:20:05 – 01:20:07

Oh, I would love to go on hiatus. Can you imagine?

Ian

01:20:08 – 01:20:23

There's this guy whose whole thing is, like, his advice to, like, founders is, like, every 5 years, you take a year off. And I actually think it's, like, the greatest advice ever, and I've never been able to actually execute this advice, but I feel like it is just top tier advice. Like, if

Aaron

01:20:23 – 01:20:32

you do the math There should be some sort of government fund to allow that to happen. Like, listen, I've been a business owner for 5 years. I'd like to take my sabbatical now.

Ian

01:20:32 – 01:20:35

Yeah. You do the great sabbatical. Recharge the batteries.

Dave

01:20:35 – 01:20:37

I was gonna say you gotta recharge for the max effort.

Aaron

01:20:37 – 01:20:39

Right? Like, you go hard and then you You're telling me.

Ian

01:20:40 – 01:20:42

Max effort. I've I've burned it off

Aaron

01:20:42 – 01:20:45

both ends, man. I need this government subsidiary to step

Ian

01:20:45 – 01:20:46

in and

Aaron

01:20:46 – 01:20:47

give me a year off.

Ian

01:20:47 – 01:20:53

Yeah. The money. That's the hard part. But if you can get it all organized, it's like that is it is good advice. But alright.

Ian

01:20:53 – 01:21:10

Well, I think we've I think we've covered that. Definitely, we'll have the link to, Dave's podcast down below if you wanna go the full 3 hour episode on every edge case and corner and lyric. Yeah. Dave will be covering that in great depth. So thanks for coming on, Dave.

Dave

01:21:10 – 01:21:11

Thanks for having me.

Ian

01:21:11 – 01:21:14

Awesome to have you finally on. Dave's Thanks for coming on. To be clear.

Aaron

01:21:14 – 01:21:15

Thanks for the show.

Ian

01:21:15 – 01:21:26

Yeah. He actually edits the show and produces it and handles all the distribution and everything. So, awesome to have him on finally. And, yeah, I'm sure he'll be on again here. So thanks everybody for listening.

Ian

01:21:27 – 01:21:38

Follow us on mostlytechnical.com, mostlytechpod on Twitter, mostlytechnicalpodcast@gmail.com if you have any feedback, and we will see you next week. Thanks all.

Aaron

01:21:38 – 01:21:38

See you.

Dave

01:21:38 – 01:21:39

Thanks for having

The Secret

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