Kyle: Hello and welcome to Great Things Tampa Bay, the podcast about great eats, great places, and great people in the greater Tampa Bay area. I’m your host Kyle Sasser, a Tampa Bay native and licensed realtor. This is episode 5, we are calling it Old School Cool. We are covering a great restaurant over in Clearwater, one of my wife’s favorite, she basically showed this place to me to high heaven beforehand, I went and it completely lived up to the hype. So I would like to share with you. We also continue on with our interview with Andy and wrap that up, and he has got a few great things left to say to you, so we’re going to share that with you and then, to leave off, we got a [inaudible 00:00:53] pot, so this is quite depressing but just kind of an interesting talking about. So please stay tuned.

Thank you for inviting me along on your commute to work. Always appreciate it, I know that there’s plenty of other podcasts and you have decided to listen to me, so I just want to express my thank you to you. We love getting your feedback. It always makes my day to have somebody tell us that they love the show. I can’t say it makes my day when they tell me that they don’t like it, but I do like getting positive feedback, so if you have something that could improve the show, please let me know. And you can do so by going to our website which is greatthingstb.com, that’s G-R-E-A-T-T-H-I-N-G-S-T-B.COM. From there, there is the get social link at the top, so just click on that and it will take you to all our social profiles and you can throw [inaudible 00:01:51] there. And we’d love to hear about your favorite spots. So please leave me a message with what restaurants you currently love, you know, maybe you know a great sushi place or what’s the best boat ramp you’ve ever been to.Tell me something crazy that I wouldn’t think about normally. So without further ado, let’s get started.

Segment 1, Old School Cool.

This segment is all about old school cool and I don’t know if you’re anything like me but you kinda have this vision of what like a nice restaurant is and typically, it’s something that you saw on a movie maybe from like some period piece set in the 40s or the 50s or something like that. I am happy to tell you that there is actually a place here in Tampa Bay that fits that bill. And the name of it is Bob Heilman’s Beachcomber, and hope I got that last name right, names are always tough. So we’ll say Bob Heilman’s Beachcomber Restaurant. It’s located in Clearwater Beach, it’s right on the main drag there, whenever you come over the bridge, you take a right boom and yes, just a couple blocks there. You can find it at heilmansbeachcomber.com, H-E-I-L-M-A-N-S-B-E-A-C-H-C-O-M-B-E-R dot com, and yeah this place absolutely fits the bill for Old School Cool restaurant. My wife and I, we like to go there, well she goes there by herself sometimes without me, but we like to go on New Year’s Eve. It’s always a classy dining experience, you know, you kind of want to dress up a little bit, I mean you can eat there in a polo, a jacket is not required. New Year’s, I usually wear one just, you know, because we try to be fancy. So, we like putting on airs.

So Bob Heilman’s, it had a little chain of restaurants there, they started off in Lorain, Ohio, and had one at Fort Lauderdale, they also opened the one here in Clearwater. They all kind of have the Beachcomber dude as a mascot and he’s kind of almost like hobo looking but you know, he looks like he’s from money. Like, he looks like he’s a hobo going through a yacht if that makes any sense. So you’ll see him on the website and you know some of the, some of the items around the dining room, makes it interesting.

Restaurant opened in 1948, so old school dining experience. They have multiple rooms. They have a piano smack dab in the middle, kind of budded up to the bar. Bar is pretty substantial. People mill there, gather around, there’s a bunch of people in there eating and then they have, you know, other additional dining rooms off left and right. And it’s amazing, you know, you sit down, they bring out a relish tray with crackers and I don’t know about you but when I think classy restaurants, I think Captain’s Wafers. That might just be a holdover from when I was a kid, like a restaurant was on another level when they brought out the Captain’s Wafers.

So, my wife, she absolutely loves this time, the relishes are delicious. They easily bring out a selection for them and yeah, tasty, tasty stuff. Then for the food, they have, you know, the old school entrees. I think like chicken livers which is my wife’s favorite, she actually will go with her mother for lunch and specifically just get chicken livers, sauteed chicken livers. Sorry, let me clarify that and then I usually go for the steaks, I mean, they’re not a steak house per se, they also do seafood really, really well, but the steaks are absolutely delicious. You know, it’s just an old school place, you know, you kind of go there and like it’s not kichy jokey, like it’s serious and it’s been maintained since 1948, which is pretty awesome to me.

The staff there is great, they’re always really knowledgeable about all the food they have. They are more than happy to help you out with the selections for wine and all that. The ambiance is absolutely amazing. If you want like kind of a lively atmosphere, you can eat out in the main dining room. We like being kind of tucked around, around the corner from the main entrance there. It’s just a little quiet and a little bit more romantic for us. So they have both sides, you know, the romantic side and the lively out there and watching the lady play the piano.

So the place is awesome and if you’ve been wondering where that kind of experience is, I mean, you know, in Tampa, there’s Bern’s of course. You know, everybody knows about that place. Beachcomber is, I would say, their steak game is not quite up to Bern’s, which makes sense because, you know, that’s kind of Bern’s staple, that’s what they’re known for. But you know, I put it a notch below that, it’s still a great experience, it’s, you know, it can be relatively casual you know, I’d go with like a polo or something like that, it’s a great nice dining experience that kind of transports you back to, I don’t know, like you know maybe the Rat Pack is gonna be shown up there.

And if you ask around, they will tell you some of the famous patrons that have eaten there over the years, but you know I don’t really want to divulge too much on the podcast here. So go to Bob Heilman’s Beachcomber up in Clearwater Beach. It’s amazing and delicious and definitely worth the trip. If you’re going on New Year’s, I would recommend that you do book a reservation and honestly, out of courtesy, I would book a reservation any time since it’s kind of a nice thing to do, you know, makes you feel kind of special when you go on, you’re like “I have a table.” So that’s Bob Heilman’s Beachcomber up in Clearwater Florida. That definitely is a great thing in Tampa Bay.

Segment 2, Urban Interview.

Kyle: So I would like to wrap up this interview with Andy, owner of the Urban Comfort Group and again I’d like to thank Andy for taking the time to sit down with me and conversate. So anyway, without further ado, here we go.

Kyle: What do you see the St. Pete going, I don’t know, let’s say, two years and 10 years.

Andy: I’m bullish on it. I don’t think this is a bubble. I’m concerned about the housing costs, I have to rent.

Kyle: Housing prices have increased 9.2% in the last 4 months.

Andy: It is crazy. It’s not very sustainable. We have unique challenges in that we are water locked on three sides and I think some folks that come into town to service industry with bigger venues that require return customers, don’t fully get that and so there’s businesses in town right now that are failing, many people may not know they’re failing but they’re bleeding money because they come from areas where you have five million people and so that traffic comes, you know.

Kyle: I will say one of my concerns whenever edge was being developed, I mean it still is, but just the sheer number of restaurants that have gone in the last two years, and I mean it’s already a tough business, everything’s relatively stable.

Andy: Oh yeah, there’s [inaudible 00:08:58] a huge influx, it’s still not so like, what is that one called, the Galley just opened and so it’s like, man, a new restaurant, The Galley. Well, that really replaced something else. You know, there’s still turnover in that sense. I don’t think he has many places that aren’t restaurants being built into restaurants. I think that [inaudible 00:09:19] passed, so when we built Comfort, it’s because there was not a restaurant space available. What we are seeing now is that more restaurants that just haven’t made it and they’ve been turned over, but there still is a lot out there. And my concern for folks that are downtown and [inaudible 00:09:38] is people’s leases are starting to come up and they’re gonna see a big spike in rent. That’s not just for restaurants, that’s for all businesses down there.

Kyle: And then redevelopment, there’s a lot of pressure down there on redevelopment downtown. So how many condos are they building down there right now?

Andy: Yeah, what I mean that’s why you need to support all this business growth. I’m not totally insulated from that here in the district. But I feel safer than being down there.

Kyle: It is good like, you know, I have my real estate license so I mean, you know, I’m like, yeah, but still I come, you know, cautious, I m like, “Ye, no, maybe.”

Andy: What’s going to make or break, so if people in St. Pete really wanna be the next Portland, Oregon, what’s gonna make that happen is closing the gap and the disparity between a house five blocks south of here and five blocks north. Because you can go down there and probably get a house with $50,000. Five blocks north, you are going to pay $500,000, $400,000.

Kyle: Personally, I believe that that is gonna be the next redevelopment sector, I mean, the houses…

Andy: Yeah, but if that takes as long as Kenwood has taken, now we’re talking 20 years.

Kyle: I mean it’s tough, but, just like you said, the simple fact is we have water on three sides, the coastlines are pretty developed, you know and so everything’s basically going to push up in 19, I think personally from the south. Like the houses down there are amazing, I love the houses down there. And yeah, I really think that that’s where the next push is going to come, is through there. Ah, how long it is going to take, who knows.

Andy: Yeah, in any business where you haven’t signed a lease, that’s the problem.

Kyle: Yeah, how to project that.

Andy: Yeah, because, you know, great, it’s gonna be here in 10 years, can I survive the next 10 years. We have had more and more restaurants coming here as well and more bars, and I think there’s servicing a need and so what we’re seeing is the neighborhoods make up less percentage of our clientele, because the neighborhood’s one of the best in the city in terms of supporting their small independent businesses, but they only have so much time and money to given, you know, and so they’re spreading those dollars as accurately as they can and so we’re seeing more people from outside the neighbourhood come to make up for that.

Kyle: And I’m sure [inaudible 00:11:50] and I have no problem driving down here.

Andy: But I think one of you, I think most people that live east of Fourth, don’t eat west of Sixth.

Kyle: Yeah, like you said, like a lot of people don’t, they’re kind of blind and say anything outside of their little bunny trail, you know, so that’s one of the reasons why I’m doing this podcast is to kind of give, like I’ve lived here for 36 years, so I know little spots and places all over the place. How do you feel about FOODNOW, UberEATS, and similar services and how do you feel that they impact the dining experience?

Andy: I’m not a fan and that’s nothing against the folks that work for those entities, but what they’ve done a good job of doing is masking the cost, so when people order UberEATS, they don’t realize that Uber takes 30 cents on the dollar from the restaurant. and then charges a customer another 5. And so, when the customer is not happy with the quantity, the quality, the restaurant pays for it and gets all the blame, where the restaurant’s losing money to do that. You can try to circumvent that by changing the plate options but we don’t leave a lot of money on the table here. When we charge a price for a meal, we’re doing because it’s a fair price. So for us to cut 30% out, that’s way more than our profit margin. So for us to do that and be financially viable, we have to make up plates with smaller quantities where we’re getting closer to breaking even. The other thing with UberEATS and those other services is how often do those customers really come to the restaurant and eat. That’s the school of thought. Well, you get on there, so you’re getting brand exposure. People see your brand and then they eventually come back and we did it initially with the coming here in town and we did not see people coming back at all, so we ended it. When Uber came on the scene and they have a much larger platform, you know, let’s see this does and we’ve gotten some pretty good tractions in some of our locations, but I don’t like the customer doesn’t realize where their money’s going.

Kyle: Because honestly, like I always thought full disclosure, so one of the FOODNOW guys, he is on my soccer team. I’ve mentioned to him that, and if you don’t want me to play this to him, just let me know. But I actually asked him and he said, I was like, “Hey, I’m interviewing Andy” because I was like, “Man, you don’t have Urban.” And he’s like, “Yeah, we used to” and said that you didn’t like the fact that they were taking 30% and I was like, “You can’t really blame him on that one.”

Andy: It’s a crazy model that what they’re wagering on is that people will try your food and they come into restaurant and beginning, we still tried to do a good job of it. In the beginning, we were really good about if you came in the door and we didn’t recognize you, ask you, how do you find out about us, and never did someone come in and say, “Oh, I order FOODNOW from you guys.”

Kyle: I was going to say the two things is, so I did not know they took 30%, I just thought it was the delivery fee and like I never ordered from here because they were never on there, but you know I would order as Comfort food when I didn’t want to get out of my sweatpants.

Andy: Yeah, I think there are people out there that…

Kyle: But that’s a hard metric to track though.

Andy: Takeout food on the whole in the country is going up and so they are servicing that need but they’re taking too big of a chunk.They need to lower that percentage, but right now many restaurants feel pressured like you are missing out if you’re not doing it there.

Kyle: And it is relatively new like three, four, five years, probably five years at this point, I think, at least in this area, I know San Fran and other places have probably had a longer, but you know, I mean it’s probably like, what was the other thing that is big, like Groupon, like Groupon came on and all the restaurants jumped on and then they’re like you know we’re losing our ass.

Andy: Yeah, I was never in Groupon.

Kyle: And now, you know Groupon is kind of leveled out where you don’t really see as many restaurants you know it’s more like gym memberships.

Andy: My father-in-law will only eat at places if they have a Groupon. So like, that’s the worst.

Kyle: Like some customers love it, like the JCPenney model, you know, like they love coupons like this.

Andy: There was a store called [inaudible 00:16:00] that was huge.

Kyle: We had some here for a while, for a short while.

Andy: And when the recession hit, they closed because of that. Because they run so thin and they thrive off of promotions and so we don’t really offer happy hours or discounts and that’s because it goes back to we are confident, we’re charging a fair price.

Kyle: I mean is this fair for how delicious it is. I mean, that’s my honest assessment, I’m not just saying that just because, you know, you agreed to interview. Like I’m on Facebook raving about this place and groups, like most marking classes now, that’s what they wanna push you towards, is creating raving fans that will go out for you and, you know, sell your product for you. In real estate, I’m trying to do the same thing with my clients. I’m trying to give them a level of service that causes them to be like, “Holy shit you know I’ve never had an agent that works like this for me.”

Andy: Yeah, that makes sense, totally.

Kyle: And this is part of it, you know, because I put a little blurb in there, that I’m a real estate agent as well, if you’re thinking of buying a place in Tampa Bay, let me know.

Andy: Yeah.

Kyle: But the thrust of the podcast is, this is a great place to go, check it out, you might not know about it.

Andy: I think we’ve I’ve been fortunate with how recognized our brand is becoming when you compare it to our real revenue. See, I don’t know what you call that brand, leverage or whatever term but there’s still [inaudible 00:17:19] who have no idea who we are or how many locations we have. A lot of people say, “Oh yeah, I’ve been to your place, the brewery.” I’m like, “No, we have other ones, you knew? ” “Yeah, you have two, right?” Like, “No, we have four.”

Kyle: I know you have a brewer. Are all the beers brewed in-house?

Andy: Three-tiered system. We are not allowed to sell beer to ourselves or self-distribute and so we are retail locations, I mean, we also cannot sell beer to a distributor.

Kyle: And that’s Florida’s ridiculous laws.

Andy: Yeah. So we only brew the beer down in Comfort that’s where it’s all sold.

Kyle: And they don’t have, you don’t have food down their at Comfort?

Andy: Yeah.

Kyle: Because I went there for the first time at the end of February, a great place, have a delicious cocktail. It’s like a Mojito or something but it was amazing.

Andy: Probably Hemingway Daiquiri, the coconut rum?

Kyle: I think so. Yeah, it had the St. Pete distillery.

Andy: Yeah yeah.

Kyle: That place is good. A little dangerous but well, we were PedalPub so.

Andy: Oh, okay, yeah yeah.

Kyle: So Comfort, what’s their focus?

Andy: Serving Comfort food. So fried chicken, chicken pop pie, we have a braised beef rib on there, a pulled pork and grits dish, shrimp and grits, fried green tomatoes. That menu is pretty expensive. There is a lot on that menu.

Kyle: And Creamery is?

Andy: Homemade ice cream and dessert waffles.

Kyle: Delicious, I want to stop by that one.

Andy: And Deli is where we cure all our own lunch meats.

Kyle: That used to be…

Andy: Provisions?

Kyle: Yeah, it used to be provisions, right?

Andy: Yeah, so initially that was just a sore spot and then we thought of this idea, okay let’s do sandwiches and craft beer. So we launched that, kind of saw what the customers wanted and what they didn’t want. One mistake, one failure we had is buying a bunch of European-labeled beer and our craft beer industry here in town is not monogamous. People are more attracted to a brand they don’t know or a brand that they trust but of style or beer that they haven’t had yet. Like the Chimays, great beers, widely known. People aren’t as interested and spend $19 dollars on a Chimay even though that’s almost like close to cost, when they can buy a $2.50 IPA from a brewery 30 miles from there. [inaudible 00:19:37].

Kyle: So you feel people are more about exploring new stuff or…

Andy: I think people in our industry focus too much on the quality of the liquid versus the intentions of a buyer, so the intentions of the buyer is to try new stuff and experiment and have experience. If they’ve already had a Chimay, they know it’s going to be like the same way tomorrow, same way a week from now. So there’s nothing new under the sun there. And I think they’re less attracted to pursue that. Also it’s price. $9 for a Chimay when you can, you know, spend $2.50.

Kyle: It’s true, it’s true, I could get four, you know, two, three or four.

Andy: Yeah. Nad I think that’s how Bill [SP] kind of looked at it too.

Kyle: Make sense, any personal favorites?

Andy: For beer? I’m big in porters and stouts. So [inaudible 00:20:00] stout has been one of my favorites forever. Kind of those sweeter one I guess that has a roasty backbone..

Kyle: So I’m not big on beer, I like craft beers but I don’t like the IPA stuff and all that, but I had, I went to Two Henrys and had, they had like a vanilla, which probably marks…

Andy: You know the porter??

Kyle: It might have been an ale. It was on a little on the lighter side because I don’t usually go for the darker stuff.

Andy: Okay, so what I tell people is the color of your beer dictates the taste, just like the color of your shirt dictates the warmth. So you can have really happy dark beer or really light dark beer or you can have a really sweet dark beer and that is just, yes, there’s certain flavors that will come out with how kilm [SP] the grain is, but you can make a dark lager that will be way lighter than like certain light beers that are with ail.

Kyle: Do you have any of those you can recommend to me?

Andy: A dark lager? If you want to get hammered, you got a Doppelbock. Doppelbock has to have 6.3% alcohol or more.

Kyle: D-O-P-P-E-L?

Andy: Yeah and then there is also Dubbell, D-U-B-B-E-L-L, which is a Belgian style. Those are kind on the sweeter side but the alcohol content is so high, but they would still be darker nature and…

Kyle: And I will say like your Urban Brew and Barbecue, the staff has always been really helpful on the beers, so I guess, they either really love beer or there’s some training on it.

Andy: Yeah, we’re doing more, more training, pretty extensive training. There’re programs out there like Cicerone that you can do, but Cicerone kind of covers some things that I don’t think are as useful. One of the questions on their test is where is 80% or 90% percent of alcohol metabolizing your body. A bartender really doesn’t need to know that.

Kyle: Yeah, a little, seems more of like a law enforcement sort of.

Andy: Yeah, maybe they’ve improved it since the last time I’d seen it. We used to require everyone here to do a Cicerone test and we kind of decided to pull that stuff inside and we have 10 different classes that we teach about the history of craft beer, different styles of craft beer, how to properly pour craft beer. What I’m most proud about with our restaurants is the level of doing things from scratch that we have taken it. When I threw the idea about us making our own bread, a lot of people were, “Okay, that’s just crazy,” you know.

Kyle: Most people don’t know this but most bread, you usually get out from a local bakery, right?

Andy: Yeah it’s probably more economical to do that, but it gives us a lot more control over the quality of our bread and like we wanted to try something new, then we just do it. So the only thing we don’t make is cheese and ketchup. And cheese, we just haven’t decided to tackle that yet. I don’t if we ever will. That’s quite an operation to take on, and then ketchup, everyone’s reference, everyone has ketchup by the age one or two and so there is a deep rooted reference to Heinz. And no matter what you do, you’re never gonna to make something that’s as good.

Kyle: That’s true, have you eaten at a refinery?

Andy: Yes.

Kyle: So they do actually make their own ketchup there?

Andy: Yes.

Kyle: [inaudible 00:23:43] I guess they still do.

Andy: Yeah, actually they do. We’ve toyed around a bit and ultimately, I think you get like that’s good, we want it to be great though.

Kyle: You wanna blow people’s minds?

Andy: Yeah, and so we’re never going to do that with ketchup.

Kyle: And personally, I believe that if you’re still putting ketchup on things besides French fries after the age of 8, you should probably expand your mind a little bit.

Andy: That’s all right. To each their own. I’m not good at self-promotion at all, but I’m very proud of what we’ve been able to do but I am even more looking forward to the changes that we’re making with the current employees and with this management group, we’re really gonna set the foundation in 2017 for some great growth in the years to follow.

Kyle: I love it, I love it. Thank you so much for your time, Andy.

Andy: You’re welcome.

Kyle: Thanks to Andy for having that interview with us. Again he is the owner of the Urban Comfort group of restaurants which includes Urban Comforts, Urban Barbecue, Urban Creamery and Urban Deli, and I’d like to recommend this week that you give Urban Deli a try, they go there, they cure all their own meats and make their own breads, and it’s amazing. And all of these restaurants are on Central Avenue, so if you’re really bold, you could hit all of them up in one day, I mean, you’re more than welcome to. I think most sane individuals would probably spread that all over a few days. But you know, I don’t know, that’s up to you.

Segment 3, Let’s Get Personal

Kyle: So I release these a few weeks after they’re recorded, I usually just kind of bust through, you know, three or four of these in a day. It takes time to set up the equipment and all that and get the sound right and I always try to go through and you know, record a few in sequence.

So this is the birthday week for both myself and my wife. What we usually do is we combine a dinner together. This week we went to Melting Pot, which, yeah, I know, you all are thinking it’s like, it’s like a, you know, it’s a chain restaurant, they’ve been around forever, what’s new and exciting there. Well, I wanted to share with you that there is something great about the one here in St. Petersburg. I’m gonna to go a little more in-depth into it in a future episode, but the cool thing about the Melting Pot here in St Pete which is on Fourth Street, just south of 22nd Avenue. It’s a little tough to see because I’m not sure if it is landscape or whatever but it’s hard to spot the place. You’ll see it when you drive by it.

But the cool thing about the Melting Pot here in St Petersburg is that we get try of a lot of the new stuff that they try out before it goes out to the other restaurants. So if you ever eat at Melting Pot, you know they bring out you know the pots and broths and all that stuff that you can cook the meals then. Currently at the one of the St. Pete, they’re trying out a new way of doing it, which is they bring out a cast iron skillet and then put that down and you’re able to grill your food, which you know, I mean there’s similar things around, but what we found was that if you cook the meat, almost all the way in the broth and then transfer it over to the grill and then seer it up on the grill, the taste becomes absolutely amazing.

And of course, you know, it is the traditional Melting Pot experience, you know, it’s not a get in and get out kind of meal. So anticipate spending a while there. But it’s always cool just to pop in there and see what they’re doing and what sort of new stuff they’re trying. They also are doing award-winning cheese that they prepared. They won an award for the best cheese and they bring out a fondue of this stuff. It is mind-blowingly delicious. And here’s the bad part, it’s only going on for about eight weeks. So when you hear this, it’s going to be about halfway through that, so you need to get there right now, ask for their award-winning cheese fondue. It is like, I don’t say it too often, but stop what you’re doing and make the reservation, get there and try the stuff because it is stupid. If you like cheese in any form or fashion, it is delicious. So I wanted to share that with you and get that out to you, just so you know.

Saturday night, not too much going on, you know, we’ve booked our cabin for the solar eclipse, August 21st. So if you haven’t done so, do make some plans for that. There is a new podcast called Every Little Thing and their first main episode, they actually covered the impact that witnessing a solar eclipse firsthand has on people and they all described it as rapturous. I mean, I’m sure you can imagine how weird and creepy it must be to, you know, have the sun blotted out in the middle of the day for a few minutes and how unnerving that might be but they are actually chronicle and follow around some people who, that’s what they do, like every 18 months because that’s how often solar eclipses happen on the face of the planets. They’re a group of people that just go around and travel and just kind of follow them around. And as I’m sure you can imagine they are a few characters but it’s an interesting podcast and it might inspire you to pulling the trigger and booking a place to get out and see the eclipse.

And I’d like to remind you that our burrito contest is still going on, so go to our website or social media pages and find the contest link and click on that and share with us your favorite burrito place and we will be choosing a winner. Winner will get a $25 gift certificate to the Red Mesa Family of Restaurants, which is delicious. So we would love to have your input. We will be announcing the winner on episode 6 or 7. So please subscribe so you will be notified that you won.

Segment 4, Sobering Thoughts

Kyle: So I was listening to another podcast, it’s called 44,000 Hertz. And it’s a podcast basically about sound and how sound impacts, you know, your life, how you react to sounds, how designers actually design sound to evoke certain emotions and stuff. It’s a great podcast, it’s really, really interesting. But they actually ran through a thought experiment with an astrophysicist or somebody that’s interested in outer space and they were saying that human beings, we rely mainly on sight which is a result of light bouncing off of everything. And light is everywhere in the universe, like it’s everywhere, you know, there are stars in the sky, there’s light reflecting off of everything’s, you know, the sun puts out a ton of light.

But by comparison, being able to hear my voice right now is very, very, very rare and special in the universe. And if you think about it, it makes sense. You know, for a sound to happen, you need air, a medium, you need something like that can produce the sound and then you need something that can receive the sound, which is your ears. You know, it’s like on the moon, you know, there’s no atmosphere on the moon, so there’s no sound up there. You know, so like if something explodes up there, there’s no, you know, there’s no sound. If somebody were to speak, there’s nothing to vibrate the vocal chords.

And if you go to Venus, then the sound is going to be, well I mean, in addition to you know dying within like you know five-tenth of a second, being crushed by the atmosphere. If you were on Mars though, you couldn’t hear anything and that’s because Mars’ atmosphere is so thin, you know, the winds there can blow 100 miles an hour, but because there’s not atmosphere there, you don’t feel the pressure from the wind. It’s not applying a lot of force to you. You know, if you’re trying to have a conversation again while not dying, you won’t be able to hear much at all. You know, you might just hear the, you know, little tinkles of fine sand hitting your spacesuit as the 100-mile an hour wind throws it against your face mask.

So sound very, very, very rare and it’s amazing honestly to think about that we have developed both the instruments to communicate and the receptacles to hear it. You know just the fact that it’s not uncommon on this planet. It got me a little philosophical as well, so I just wanted to share that with you.

Outro

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