Jezza: Recent Episodes
Jezza - Beams.fm
🎶 I want life in every word, to the extent that it’s absurd 🎶
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Okay, so so bathrooms, normally you wouldn't make a restaurant recommendation on the place that you go to deposit the food rather than actually take it. But bathrooms are one of my secret feelings of how to recommend a place because you would never recommend a place, like a restaurant based on the bathroom. But once you go to the bathroom you discover what's behind the facade of the restaurant. Right? It's not about the location, it's not about the cuisine, it's about the attention to detail that you would never walk into a restaurant and say hi, I'm thinking of dining here, but I'm going to go to the restroom and check it first. And however clean somebody keeps the restroom is probably a pretty good indicator of how clean the kitchen is behind the scenes and all the other things that actually make your experience better. So I have rarely been to a place where the bathrooms were really nice, but the food also wasn't really top notch. So often I find that bathrooms are a surprisingly good indicator of my overall restaurant experience. Is it the best food is always in the place of the best restroom. No, of course not. But I have rarely been to somewhere where the bathrooms were a disappointment and the food wasn't also somewhat lacking at times. So that's my secret tip for recommending a lot of places is go check the hidden corners, the things behind the facade uh to actually see a little bit more behind the curtain when it comes to the quality of something like a restaurant
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the UK government is building a new policy designed to divert potential asylum seekers to Rwanda. Yeah, I mean, you have to read this story because I really can't believe it's it's actually real. It sounds like a fake news story by Russian hackers or or headline from the onion. But nope no, it's real. Apparently nothing against Rwanda, which by most accounts seems to have come a long way from, you know, being notorious for the genocide of the nineties to become one of the safer countries in East Africa. But fundamentally, it just seems cruel to me that someone would embark on a difficult and perilous journey to seek refuge in the U. K. Only to be exported to an offshore facility temporarily or possibly permanently. You know, without getting into the legal implications which the United Nations has already called into question under international law, blah blah. I mean, I realized how convenient this would be for the administration, but there was something just inherently inhumane about it, isn't there? Imagine someone fled the conflict in Ukraine across europe, navigated the financial and bureaucratic obstacles, gained entry to Britain only then to be told you and your family are being shipped off to East Africa. I mean, I just can't wrap my head around the country with the sixth largest economy in the world and less than 1% of the population and we feel like we need to send a few 1000 desperate people seeking help to Rwanda. I guess this is what we meant when we took back control of our borders. Honestly, it's just embarrassing
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so it's hard not to be talking about Elon musk this week with him buying up all this twitter stock and becoming a board member, but why does he, why is he such a cult figure? Why do so many people love him? I'm just trying to really get my head around it. And I guess to be fair, I mean a bunch of people don't, I guess it's better to say he's a divisive figure. Um to me, he's like this iron man, Tony stark character. He's some sort of corporate prodigal son, both a pariah and everyone, somebody wants to be, I mean, don't get me wrong, I think he's clearly pretty smart, but I would call him more, you know, intellectual than a genius or something. I don't think he's coding the ai or designing any of the rockets or anything like that. Um and I guess in my mind he's more like a trump or a Kanye or somebody like that than it might appear, He's like a brand and he's just a lightning rod that people get galvanized and they kind of rally to that behind this idea that we can solve all the world's problems with, with just a bunch of good technology and free market libertarian capitalism. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm glad SpaceX and Tesla exist, but that doesn't mean we should defund nasa or the international climate accords aren't necessary. You know, Elon musk isn't a blueprint, he's not a template that people can aspire to or even replicate and at the end of the day, it's like we as a society are giving this guy an enormous amount of resources and capital to allocate. And I just keep asking why.
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appeasement. This is the word many people in Britain and other students of history might know from the Second World War. Appeasement is the name given to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's approach to avoid war with Nazi Germany, allowing Hitler to expand its territory unchecked while refusing to enter an armed conflict. And at the time, this made sense. But in 1936 German forces entered the demilitarised Rhineland. Two years later, the annexed Austria and in the Munich Agreement of 1938 other European powers agreed Germany could occupy parts of Czechoslovakia. Peace for our time, Chamberlain proclaimed coming home from the conference. But we all know how that turned out. Despite the jubilation at the time, for obvious reasons, no one wanted to see the horrors of the first World War. Repeated appeasement did nothing to stop Hitler's ambition, and in the end, just six months later from that agreement, Germany invaded Poland and Britain was at war, change the names, the dates and the players involved. And the situation, unfortunately, looks a lot like the conflict between Putin, Ukraine and potentially the rest of Europe today. Now, to be clear, I don't believe NATO should go to war with Russia. But I also very much doubt that doing nothing will deter him. That appeasement will stop him. And so, unfortunately, it seems that it does up to Ukraine to stop him.
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change is inevitable. Growth is optional, said john C Maxwell. The change is something I have always embraced. I've picked up my life, I've started fresh several times, moved across countries and continents, but change doesn't always mean progress. The dream of my parents generation was one of inexorable progress of society that the golden age of humanity was just at the horizon. The civil rights movement, the moon landing, of course, for the Beatles. But through Vietnam Cuban missile crisis and assassinations of JFK martin Luther king Jr perhaps that endless optimism gave way to a society full of Karen's and okay boomer attitudes. My own generation saw the fall of the Berlin Wall, the foundation of a global online society and the election of Barack Obama. Yes, we can. We thought But the Cold War is back for round two now with the conflict in Ukraine escalating into total warfare, Vladimir Putin threatening his nuclear arsenal and a new migrant crisis unfolding. And so while change is inevitable, progress is never a certainty
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Hey there, Welcome to beams, your daily dose of audio to help you laugh, learn and grow in minutes a day, discover the best of beams and follow great creators worth hearing, comedy news, crypto, pop culture and more, Join in reply, ask a question with your own voice and when you're ready to share your thoughts and build an audience, recording just 90 seconds at a time, let's go.
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one thing where the rent is that Lord of the Rings is actually a Christmas storey. Okay, okay. Calm down. Calm down. Hear me out. Okay. This past December 2021 that is marked the 20th anniversary of the debut of the Fellowship of the Ring. I was 15 when I first sat down during the winter of 2000 won to see Pierre Jackson's adaptations of the book that I had devoured only a few years earlier. Really? Teenage me loved the amazing locations, the realistic costumes, cinematic immersion of the production. I mean, the actors, the music, the props, everything transported me to Tolkien's world. And it was like that was always the way I had already been in my mind. It also created a live long desire for me to visit the middle Earth of our own world. New Zealand and cemented the films is the cornerstone of my pop culture foundation. As for many of my generation, so many people will know the references of boring me reserving One does not simply walk into more door or, of course, the classic Gandalf. You show long poems and while it's not overly a storey about Christmas it, in many ways is the perfect quasi spiritual holiday themes, compassion and mercy. And so, perhaps, unsurprisingly, one film that I come back too often around this time of year.
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one thing worth the rent is the new David Villa, new adaptation of frank Herbert's epic sci fi. Classic. Dune. Specifically how the charismatic protagonist, paul atreides, they have more in common with the likes of populist leaders like Donald trump or you go Chavez than other familiar heroes like Star Wars luke, Skywalker or Neo from the Matrix before we dive in the massive spoiler alert, if you haven't seen the film, I'll chat, avoid anything much beyond that. But maybe some moderate light spoilers. If you haven't read at least the first book, tread with caution, you've been warned. Okay, so dune. A legendary saga of galactic proportions, instrumental in defining much of the 20th century approach to science fiction. It's also notoriously alluded translation to the big screen with all due respect for the enthusiastic if probably problematic attempt from David lynch. Do you imagine what an interstellar humanity might look like by mixing pen oriental influences of cultures from the Middle East with elements of zen buddhism all wrapped up in his futile political structure. Power is shared between the emperor and his terrible sardaukar army, the great houses who were kind of noble lords who administer the various systems and planets of the imperium and the cartel of the spacing guild, which controls a monopoly on all space travel. So yeah, a little bit of game of Thrones in space with a big sand worm instead of dragons. Okay
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Here's a new threat just to illustrate that you can switch between these things and then when you listen back, you listen through each of the posts from top to bottom in the order that they were created in inside of a threat. So it's kind of like a conversation, each one or an episode, depending on how you want to think about it.
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Okay, so I set this group up for you, and what we would do is then this is kind of like your show. And then inside of the show, only people with this specific invite link can add their voice so you can share it with, like, a public link. Or you can share it invite with this kind of collaborative link, and then you can only send that to you and Susie, or you can get other people to use it as you want. The other thing we can do is we can make the beam open to everybody somewhere, like an open mic. That might be the better solution if we want to have more audience engagement, for example, um, so I'm going to put this into a thread and then kind of every bit or every skit or every episode could either be one post, which is 90 seconds inside of a thread, or you make multiple threads. I think like the multiple threads probably makes the most sense so that you kind of do one bit or one gag or one line of thinking on on one thread, and then you start a new conversation in another one. So the atomic elements are the group, and then you post inside the group, uh, individual 92nd post, and that post lives inside a threat. So it's group thread post, and those are the kind of the basic building blocks.
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Okay, so following up on our retro on friday, I'm going to do like a daily update here and see if that works as a little stand up replacement for me. One of the things I've been thinking about quite a lot is the idea between divergence and convergence and I mentioned this a little bit last week and also in the retro is I think it's really beneficial to be aligned around the strategy of originals in terms of that we're paying micro casters to build a zero content so that we can help bring people under the platform and give them examples to emulate. And I think we really benefit from convergence here in alignment on the other end of the spectrum in terms of exactly what that is. What are those shows? Who were those hosts? What are the topics? I think divergence and diversity is good here. Um just as long as there are still things that we might imagine are appealing to our early target audience. I dropped an interesting little article because you know, I love a framework in the community channel but have a check uh check that out if you think that's interesting on when convergence is useful versus maybe divergence is more useful. The only help I have is uh James was gonna look into some screenshots for me but you stick is gonna do it instead um for the app store. So I hope that we can actually get some uh a B testing going over the break? Well, a lot of the team is away and trying out different screenshot combinations and see what drives a better conversion.
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Hey, here's some ramblings that I hope help give you some some different angles. So whenever I talked about audio and when I say audio, I mean specifically spoken word. But really either I think we've been sitting around campfires and telling stories to each other as humans since tens of thousands, if not years, if not longer. Um, and I think that's why audio is so deeply ingrained in this in this, and it's also uniquely emotional medium as well. If you really wanna empathize with somebody, hearing their tone of always hearing their accent really tells you a whole lot. And a lot of what comes across is non verbal. In the sense of that, it's not just the words. It's the flow, the intonation, the rhythm, all of those things. So for me, I think that's really something. That audio is very different than other media. Is that, um, it's really old as we are and sure. Then we started painting things on the on the wall and caves and other things, but images and video and all these other things as a medium themselves. I think our newer um, the irony, I think that is that radio was a very 20th century invention, and it stayed that way. And so, as other media came and surpassed it, maybe it didn't innovate in the same way on the radio we have today is pretty much still the same thing That was almost 100 years ago.
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one of the things that is I think uniquely difficult about audio is that it's very hard to evaluate what you want to listen to in a way that is quick and skimmable. And what I mean by that is, if you just heard as you scan down a list, imagine you looking at the playlist on Spotify or something, and you just heard three seconds of each song. Would that tell you what you want to listen to? Certainly, Definitely. Some people do. Listen to that. It's actually, Or at least I find music that way. They just skip a lot. Um, and that's actually changed the way music is being produced So that really so many songs now just start with the hook straight away because they feel like they have 10 seconds to people. But when it comes to something much less aesthetic, aesthetic, something more spoken word, I think it's pretty hard. I mean, you can get turned off by somebody's voice very quickly, or just that you can't understand it because of the accent or the background noise or something like that. So I guess it's really easy to say no, but it's pretty hard to say yes, Like, how long do you think you need to listen to something before you decide what you're going to commit to? Well, when you're looking at a podcast or something else like that, the clubhouse room or anything, how do you decide what you want to engage with?
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I think no conversation about Bond is complete without talking about the music, the songs. It's all about the song I love that This trope exists in the series around the big opening number and then boom cut to that iconic, sort of like gun barrel thing with the big song like high concept um, Like Music videos, the opening title credit sequence. I love it. It's also something that we just don't really do anymore. And other films like It does kind of feel retro, Um, in the sense that a lot of films used to do this, and how often the credits are only at the end there, not in the beginning. It's really weird when you go back and watch old films and they start with the credits. You're like, Oh my gosh, why would I do this right? It's one of the tropes that I'm really glad that they have kept up, even in the new incarnations. And I think some of the retro feel and there's different vibe also comes from this not just the cinematography or the setting of the Cold War espionage thing or anything like that. It's as much about these little things like those with the one-liners, the Marty, all of these tropes, and playing with that is really fun. But what's your favorite bond title theme and why?
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Okay, coming out of the retrospective today, you know what I want to talk about, n f t s. So all those hands that were raised during the retrospective that we didn't get the chat about. Let's talk here, looking forward to hear what everybody has to say.
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Okay, Boomers, let's keep it short. We're debating a little bit internally about the length of an individual post. We thought maybe the easiest way to prototype and get some feedback from ourselves and a gut check was just to start a thread only full of 32nd comments. So leave a post below. That is only in 30 seconds. Tell us about your day. Tell us something interesting that you would bring to stand up and whatnot. And 30 seconds, Max. Here we go.
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Okay. Another request for community input. We've been talking a little bit about the length of an individual post on the app, and we're wondering what you think about that. Is it long? Short? Just right. What do you think? What are the pros and cons right now having a 92nd time limit?
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so I wanted to start a conversation about different surfaces. I think as a fan, we probably all have our different tournaments and especially the majors, are somewhat built around the variety of surfaces that they have there. Um, but I think it's really the only sports I can think of That has this fundamental characteristic of actually the court literally changing. Um, I suppose another other surfaces. Sometimes you have something like artificial turf versus real grass or something like that. But I can't think of another sport off the top of my head that has such a dynamic range to eat the top tier, uh, tournaments. And then for the top players that such an adjustment. I think for most of us like amateur players club players, then is that Is that so noticeable for myself? I think it is. Uh, I'm surprised that it is, but I do think it is, uh, recently I had the opportunity to play tennis on a grass surface for more than like a few days in a row, and I really found that when we went back to the hard court, a dramatic difference during the that time there. So sometimes he played on a grass court. Sometimes he played on a hard court and I could really notice two different things. Is one just like what? Techniques and what, um, how the ball bounces so different. And that really made a big difference in the play, but also just physically on the body. Um, what it felt like was really different after being on the grass for hours versus hard court.
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so I wanted to continue the conversation around the matter verse that James brought up this morning. And for me, I think it's something that is, um, very emblematic of blurring of between between our digital and real world lives. Um, a lot of people use things like Second Life or even World of Warcraft, rather than sort of like immersive virtual only worlds. But I am very intrigued by this idea of sort of, um, combining both is virtual physical and augmented world into something. Um, that isn't one isn't a replacement for the other. So, you know, we're still going to live in the real world. I don't actually think that will go into this bubble verse like the Matrix and really just completely plugged in and detached ourselves from the physical world completely. Um, but at the same time, we see how much more the digital world means to us. And if we agree it has value than it will have value and how we migrate towards this world, that is really realistic, both in terms of outlook and viewpoint, but also in terms of being corporal beings versus sort of intellectual ideas or a digital persona is really interesting to me.
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I've got a question for all the early adopters out there, especially when it comes to wearable tech. So I was one of the people who, back in the day, I'm gonna say maybe, like, 2012 or something like that. Um, I was on the Kickstarter for the original pebble and also had one of the two that came out. Um, and for a long time, I thought that was really interesting. And I enjoyed it. Um, and then I wore an android watch. For a long time, I never owned an apple watch, but I I feel personally that when the Apple watch came out, um, that whole genre of wearable tech kind of fell off from here, at least in the direction that I didn't want to. Um And I'm curious for people who are into wearables, especially the smartwatch. What do you use it for now, it's been through quite a long hype cycle. Lots of people have apple watches, android watches, other sort of fit bits and other sort of like, um what do you think about that now? Looking back, how long have you been wearing those things? What do you use them for now. And how do you think of how do you How do they work in your daily life now, where you are an early adopter?
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Hey, everyone, it's Jeremy from the Beams team here. We're having some discussions internally, and I just wanted to actually ask the community for some input on something. So far, we have focused on groups rather than people, so that you come onto the platform and you find groups talking about topics you're interested in. And then you start engaging in there, and that's how you find and discover content is by discovering those groups and then becoming a member. Then you get updates based on that. Now what we've heard from a lot of people and I also feel this way is that while I discover great content that way, and I think it's a very useful way to focus a certain set of conversations, I also just discover interesting people on the platform. And I would love to follow some of those people regardless of what they're doing. So we're thinking about adding a the ability to actually follow other people. We're not going to get rid of the group's thing. At least we don't think so. I think that they can live alongside each other, but we wanted to get some input from you all. What do you think about adding the ability to follow other people that you find on the platform, let us know your thoughts. Thanks.
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Hi, there is jeremy from beams were building a new social media platform around the power of people's voice to create authentic conversations and community to help bring people closer. Together, we're testing a new Web experience to make creating and listening easier, using just your browser and we'd love for you to try it out to get started. Why don't you tell us about your favorite food?
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Okay second Question What's one of your favorite childhood memories?
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so Petra Key chain is a storytelling format where presenters shows 20 slides for 20 seconds. And the point is to basically tell a storey about yourself, who you are sort of a collage, a tapestry of words and images. But today at the beams off site, we're going to do a version that I'm going to dub matching future. Thank you, Simon. And it's five seconds for 90 seconds. Five slides. Sorry for 90 seconds each to try to get to know each other. So maximum of seven minutes or so. S o very excited to see what storeys people tell. And then the twist is I'm going to ask everybody to actually record in this beam when they tell this storey it was the other girls.
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having fun. Leonard Group Having fun? Always. Always. Simone, remember? Never? Yes. Uh
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Hi there. It's Jeremy from beams were building a new social media platform to help people create, share and connect using just their voice to make it as easy as possible to create audio. We've built a new way to publish using WhatsApp feature. We'd love for you to record a voice message for us to help try it out. So in less than 90 seconds, tell us what you had for breakfast. Did you like it? Love it. Hate it. Thanks.
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Well the US Open 2021 just finished last night pretty dramatic. Especially given that last year the tournament had a zero fans. So to see that to return to the the boisterous vibrant excitement of new york was pretty interesting for me. I think tennis fans in new york are a certain kind of folk and I think the atmosphere there is really demonstrably different from places like Wimbledon and whatnot, whether you like it or love it or hate it, whatever. I think it's quite a unique stage. And after having watched the last two weeks of tennis, I definitely have some thoughts. Um First and foremost, m a radical new. I think second, Djokovic, I think 3rd maybe cissy pass and the bathroom story. uh and then the 4th one around this young guy, Carlos Alvarez, I'm gonna leave some of my thoughts here. Would love to know what anyone else thinks.
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a beams team are off site is only a few weeks ago. Way. Uh, I'm looking forward very much to meeting many of you and those of you who I have met him before in real life. Looking forward to that again, I wanted to see what are your hopes and dreams for our off site. It will be the first time many of us are meeting in person. And I would love to hear what you hope that will happen. What do you have any excitement specifically about? Or anything else that you'd like to see happen at the off site? Let me know.
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Yeah. Okay beams team. I'm curious what's the summer that you're really nostalgic for? You know, is there some special experience you had? Maybe it was a special summer growing up or you got to travel somewhere or do something extraordinary or maybe you just had a really nice time. But I'd love to know what you think about when you have those more memories, those fond memories of something. What do you reminisce about? Tell me?
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Rick and Morty. Here we go. I don't think there is a show that has had as much of a cult following in recent years that I think actually deserved it as much as Rick and Morty, at least in our sort of horn dirty crowd on. But I think it's funny and compelling and creative. I think the thing that keeps me coming back is really two things on. I just watched the first episode of the new season, and I think it had had both of these things. The first is just how committed they are to this, almost like frustrating sadism towards what you want for the character is what actually happens to them and over and over again. They tempt us. They tempt us with this, this feeling that maybe this time will be different. But no, no, it never really is. And the Storey always just sort of sits on the edge of satisfaction and fulfilment. But it never quite gets there, and I think the first episode is a great example of this. And like many Rick and Morty episodes, the side blocked. The sub blood is actually far more creative and interesting than the quote, quote main plot, which is really just a vehicle tow. Tell the side plot sometimes where Morty has to go off into this different world where time moves differently and inadvertently creates this, like whole culture built around the cult of him coming in and out and accidentally messing things up. And in the end, the irony is Bye, Morty, trying to impress his love Jessica or leased the upset of object of his affection, he actually is the one that prevents that from happening.
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So I found a cool little service called Beer 52 and it's a subscription like everything is these days. But once a month they send you a box full of craft beers from around the country and around the world. I think it's only available in the UK right now. I'm not sure, but it's something like £24 a month for a box of eight beers. So I think that's pretty good deal. When it comes to these kind of craft beers, though, come out of thing about £3 each that way. And for me, I kind of saw. It just is a way to just get break up the routine of stuff that that maybe I wouldn't buy from the local shop or anything like that, just to try some different stuff and see how it goes.
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All right Team beams another question coming at you What's your hometown and what's something special that only people who are from there know about it?
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Alright, here we go, beams. Team Chat. Week one. I want to know what is everybody's highlight of working at beams so far. Something funny, something substantial, something meaningful, something silly. I just want to know what's been your highlight so far on this journey.
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