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Nahi, welcome to the show.
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I'm gonna introduce you as the Sefarim Aficionado, the Sefarim Buff and Maven.
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And the first question I want to ask you is how you came up with the name Sefarim Chatter, the name of your famous, legendary and widely popular Sefarim Torah podcast.
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Thank you, Mahom, for having me on your podcast.
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So the name Sforim Chatter is interesting.
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It started off with, for those who remember, it's like a if you know you know type of thing.
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I had J Music Chatter.
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At that point, I was interested in Jewish music, and there was this J Music Chatter channel, if you will, a Twitter account.
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It was not much of anything.
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And because of that, I decided that you know there's no new Svarim.
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No one's really posting about new Svarim.
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So I said, I'll start something about Svarim.
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And I took the name and I just said Svarim Chatter.
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Now, how did I come up with the name Jay Music Chatter?
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I don't know.
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It's a good question.
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It's just like one of those names that What's J Music Chatter?
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It doesn't exist anymore.
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You won't find it.
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Like I said, if you remember it, you'll remember it.
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I used to post about Jewish music on Twitter way back in the day, many years ago.
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So Svarum Chatter was just a little bit.
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Wait, no, no, no, no.
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I want I want to hear because part of the reason I like to start with that initial question when I just say, What's the name of your podcast?
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Why'd you get to Swarm Chatter?
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Because I like to do that before I actually introduce you.
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So that's like the hook at the beginning.
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We bring everyone in.
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And now uh Nahi, you are world famous.
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You are um you bring to the Torah world and the the broader wisdom-seeking world something that is unique.
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Something that from a yeshiva boy to a 65-year-old Balchuva surgeon, they're really interested in.
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I've even heard there's somebody that's a fan of yours in Norfolk, Virginia, who listens to you while he's swimming.
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He has waterproof headphones.
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And he said that while I spent many years in yeshiva, I've learned more about Judaism from not my rabbis, but from Nahi and the Svarim Chatter podcast.
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High praise there.
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Uh so tell no, I so I think that we can bring a really unique aspect here.
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There are people that like and know the Svarim Chatter podcast, they can now know a little bit more.
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Tell us how you actually started the show.
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What is elaborate for a second just what is the Jewish music Twitter?
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How you decided to then go into Svarim?
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What was the first episode?
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Just give us two to three minutes about that because I think it'll be fascinating.
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Sure, absolutely.
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So, like I said, the name came just from happenstance from the J Jewish music thing.
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Now, the podcast is like this.
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When I started Svarim Chatter, it was a Twitter account posting new Svarim, and eventually it became new books, academic books, Jewish history books, so not books like novels, but I was posting books from Torah Thought from Art Scroll and Feldheim and Mosaica Press and Koran, and then gradually academic books.
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So Magnus and Bialik and Barlana University and so on in Israel.
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And then here, you know, Princeton and Yale and so on, academic books.
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Now it was just that's literally what it was.
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Um I I've been a podcast listener for many years, going back to 2020.
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There was the first podcast podcast.
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So Colin Coward?
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No, not a Steelers fan.
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I'm a Steelers fan.
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There were Steelers podcasts.
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So that's what I was listening to back in the day.
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But not wait well before most people were listening to podcasts.
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Certainly, you know, it was less popular than it is now.
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And so I always wanted to do a podcast.
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Actually, a year before.
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So, okay, let's fast forward.
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So now Svarim Chatter, I start this Twitter account.
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We're in 2016, 2017, somewhere over there.
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And a couple years later, I decided I want to do a podcast.
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And I had a couple of different ideas how I was gonna do it.
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Was I going to have a co-host?
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Was it going to be, you know, I wasn't sure.
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Was it gonna be new Svarim, old Svarim, rapid fire style, in-depth style?
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I wasn't sure how it was gonna go.
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I actually recorded one or two like clips.
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One day maybe I'll released it from the archive.
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They were like unfinished, and they were going to be the Swarm Chatter podcast.
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It wasn't going to be what it is today, but I had this idea.
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I put that aside.
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I was studying for the LSAT, getting ready for law school.
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Things happened.
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COVID happened.
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I didn't get a chance to do it.
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But at the beginning of COVID, everyone was inside about six years ago, right?
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And so I decided, you know what?
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Let me just go record.
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At that point, Swarm Chatter was anonymous.
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People knew who I was, but I hadn't shown my face.
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I didn't say it, my name wasn't there publicly.
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How many followers did you have at that time?
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About a thousand, maybe a little more.
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It's a big number.
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And I think the numbers in those days of Twitter, those were real.
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Like if you had a thousand, it was a thousand.
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It wasn't AI bots or whatever.
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It was like real numbers.
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Twitter was like a big Mantiv.
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Yeah.
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So I decided I'm gonna go and I'm going to record a podcast.
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And the first podcast episode was just me talking about Svarim.
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I think there was the new Shamak Dalim then of the Khidah, which is like his bibliographic work.
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It was from Mahon Amor put out.
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There was a safer called Im Labina, Rabiaak of Emden.
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It was Rabyakov Emden's marginal comments on his um Kreskit Dailis, which is in the British Library, I believe.
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And so there was a new edition of that.
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And he had meant it as a safer.
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So Im Labina, the new edition.
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The first edition, rather, came out for manuscript.
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And so that was the first podcast.
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I did another one.
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It was done live on Twitter, like the worst way to jump, you know, a podcaster, jump from it live.
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And then the third episode, I had my good friend Israel Mizrahi, Mizrahi Books in Brooklyn.
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I had him on as a guest.
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I had Antovi Bashevkin, a couple other.
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How many episodes are you up to now?
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Now we're up to over 450 episodes.
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So and that's not including ones that are recorded.
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I probably, including the recorded, unreleased ones are about over 500, probably around 500.
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So this was a long, yeah, this was, but at the time it was just record and release.
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I was recording them live, and it started off doing again interviews and so on.
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So that's really how it started.
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And then that's that's really where we are today.
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And by the way, today I'll say it's still on Twitter, but mostly more or less I'm on now WhatsApp.
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There's a WhatsApp community, new books, news foreign book deals, and so on.
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That's really yeah, that's really, and there's a WhatsApp status.
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How do you support the show?
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I mean, in order to, I know that uh there costs subscriptions in order to host a podcast.
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There are subscriptions that you need in order to edit a podcast, in order to have video and to have audio and to have production and to have editing.
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You fit the bill yourself, or you raise money?
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So I'll tell you, when I started it, um there was very little editing, very little of anything involved.
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I didn't even have a mic.
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Like I had nothing.
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I literally just started using my phone and I had a Mac and I just used my computer recording to my computer.
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Eventually, yes, got equipment and so on.
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There also is subscription costs.
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I mean, they're not as you know astronomical, but there are subscription costs.
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But again, yes, and and throughout, it was just me.
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Now, the podcast in the beginning, uh, like didn't make any money.
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Like the Twitter account.
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The Twitter account for years didn't make any money.
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I mean, it's only later, more recently, we're on an Amazon affiliate and some of the publishers, Art Scroll, Mosaic, a core on their affiliate.
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So you post links and displayed on the Swarm Shadder website on the Swarm Shadder website in the description that it's an affiliate.
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Use a link right or on a commission, as you have to do.
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So it's it says it there.
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Um there are generous sponsors, there are those that really are appreciative, enjoy the podcast.
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Gluck plumb may give them a shout and some others, as well as there are those that want to just support the show, you know, support the show, and there are those that want to promote advertise the product.
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But I tell this to people often, and I'll say it here you start a podcast, something that you're interested in and good at, and you have a niche, and then eventually, if you're good at it enough of listeners, you'll make money.
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But don't go into it like I'm gonna do I'm gonna create a podcast to make money.
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I don't think.
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And you know, it it when I started, uh I also started during COVID.
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COVID was really bad for a lot of people, and it caused a lot of deaths.
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But I I got married during COVID with uh 25 people, 30 people in at my wedding, you know.
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Um actually the whole world shut down.
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I moved back to Virginia.
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Uh I was in Shizuchum for a year, ended up marrying somebody in Virginia after a year in Shizuchum running around, got married, the world still was shut down, moved back to Eric's moved back to Lakewood.
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I wanted to go to Eric's show, but of course it was closed.
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Moved back to Lakewood, got back into the KOL, and by the time that the world opened up again, I was married.
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I think I already had a kid, and I already had and I started and oh anyway, I'm getting sidetracked, I digress.
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But I started a podcast because for that exact reason.
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Not that I wanted, well, I wanted followers and I would love to make money on it, but because I actually had another similar idea where I loved to create obligations for myself.
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So let me go ahead and pop open a microphone and I would say a Dvar Torah and send it out on WhatsApp.
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And some people liked it, some people didn't.
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Eventually I figured out that if you could just master your website and and and SEO and share with the right people and mess with the algorithms, even if you have nothing to say and you're a brutal unlearned Ama art, you still can become viral and you know, tell your friends to hit the like and subscribe button.
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You can learn all about it.
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But to this day, there are episodes that will have a lot of views and a lot of listens, and some will have barely any, except for my mom and my grandma, who should live and be well, the biggest fans.
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But it I would still do it even if nobody listened.
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Because I want to either interview someone because I love to learn or because I want to preach some idea or something.
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Anyway, what's your favorite episode you ever recorded?
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Favorite episode and no hard feelings.
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It doesn't have to be a rabbi, it doesn't have to be an academic person, it could be male, it could be female, it could be right wing, it could be left wing, the most enjoyable podcast episode you ever recorded.
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I still go back to the first episode of Matt Goldish in Shopsate V series.
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I think that series is really what launched Swarm Chatter in a way to the wider republic with the Shop State TV series.
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I still got comments on it.
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That was the first big series we did on Swarm Chatter, and I had a lot of fun preparing for that, recording that.
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I still remember talking to where I where I was when I was speaking to Matt Goldish before I even recorded that episode.
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Someone suggested I reached out to Matt Goldish to do an episode of Swarm Sight SV.
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Did so.
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He's a great guy, a friend of mine now, and that was a really I would say that's the the still number one.
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Shabside Svee, can we say it's interesting.
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I mean, you what do you you must have spent hours on it?
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Did he just have schizophrenia or or just probably had a little case of bipolar OCDism?
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Yeah, you read Gersham Sholem.
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You can listen to the series and read Gersham Sholem's 1,000-page biography, essentially.
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There's much more to the story than that, but if you just and you record everything from your house, you live in Lakewood?
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Live in Lakewood.
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Um, recorded from my house.
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Now, many of them, most of them as we're doing it here over Riverside.fm, used to be over Zoom back in the day with poor audio quality.
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Uh and uh I do do some in person now, though.
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So I did one today in person.
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So sometimes we do, especially the small talks very often.
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So I'm not uh yeah, we don't need to elaborate on.
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I'm sure the audience knows about your small talks, your long talks.
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How many is it now?
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Um I'm trying to keep up, but I worked, I started from the first episode, and I'm trying to work my way forward.
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I forget how far in I got.
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Small talks are daily, weekly?
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Small talk is every Wednesday.
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Those are twenty they're supposed to be 20 minutes or less.
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Recently I've been very strict about that.
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Tried to cut it down for a while.
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They crept up a little bit longer.
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They're really focused on a book.
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It's very short.
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The questions are, you know, really what's tell the listener about your book, what's your book about, what are your sources, give some examples, who's the book meant for?
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What are you trying to accomplish with the book?
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And so on.
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They're very book focused.
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Um, it's easier for me to prepare for.
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There's much less prep involved, and so on.
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Those are on Wednesday.
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Sunday are the long form episodes.
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Love it.
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I love it.
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Weekly, I look forward to it.
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I look forward to it.
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I listen in the car.
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Audio podcast is such a good avenue, right?
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And especially with 24-6.
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Do you get most of your listings down with 24-6?
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That's a good question.
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I I think it's still Apple far and away.
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Far and away.
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Interesting.
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So for audio, for me, the the it's harder to get to rank for some of these words that I'm trying to rank for, like parsha's vayakel pekute, or rank for inspirational Torah that'll make me happy.
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Like ranking for that on Spotify is very hard on Apple Apple Podcasts.
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It's interesting.
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Uh, I could not rank without paying money for uh some of the words Torah and Parsha and Musar, but I rank for Ravgamliel Rabinovich, Rabinowitz, Rabinovich, the great goddamn why.
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One time we mentioned him in an episode of Vart, he said, and ultimately AI algorithm picked up on it, and now we rank like number one or two for Ravgamliel.
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So you never know how exactly you're going to be picked up.
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So you do everything by yourself.
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Nobody helps you.
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No.
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I've also I also do the editing by myself.
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In the beginning, I didn't edit much.
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Now I do edit.
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I will say I want to give a shout out to Usher Tesser of Control A.
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Uh, he helped me.
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Who's Control A?
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Who's Usher A?
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That's Usher Tesser.
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That's his company.
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So he does um now with a lot of restaurant stuff here in Lakewood, but he did some work about with podcasts.
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And so he helped me with my music.
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He was like, we're friends, and he was like, nah, you gotta get some intro music, you need to get some cover artwork for some series.