A Niche Rewind: 50 Episodes

A Niche Thing with Aneesh Bhasin

Host Anish Bhasin celebrates the 50th episode of A Niche Thing by recapping some of his most diverse and engaging conversations from the past year. He revisits episodes

Key takeaways

Anish Bhasin kicks off the 50th episode by reflecting on his inspiration from Austin Kleon's book Steal Like an Artist and his journey producing the podcast over a year.
In the coffee recap, guest Rahul from Subco explains why coffee is botanically a fruit/cherry and compares brewing methods like V60, Kalita, AeroPress, and French press.

Main topics

Specialty coffee brewing methods
Consensual non-monogamy and polyamory

Notable quotes

"Coffee is a fruit. So it's always really important to start with that fact."

Conclusion

The episode successfully captures the podcast's core mission of exploring diverse

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:00) IVM Speaker 8 (0:03) Life may be anything, the first thing is very important. First memory, first love, first heartbreak, first work. Friends, I am Gopal Dutt and this is my first podcast. First with Gopal Dutt, which will be released on IVM Pop. I will talk to those who are in their work, whose name we all know. So come to the YouTube IVM Pop channel or wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen to our podcast. Meet interesting people. Speaker 7 (0:43) A Niche Thing explores subcultures around us that make for great interests and hobbies. These range from topics like affordable art to exploring the world of coffee, hi-fi, sneakers, watches, vintage fashion, where the list goes on and on. It's a podcast with something for everyone. So let the conversation begin. Speaker 7 (1:03) Welcome to A Niche Thing and today's episode is actually very special because we complete 50 episodes. That's one year of podcasting. I don't know how this has gone by. My producer here, Saurabh, he's smiling because he's seen me fumble, fumble from 100 times to perhaps 10 times now per episode. But yeah, it's been an amazing journey and I actually want to talk a little bit about why I even started a podcast. And my idea was, and this is super inspired by this book called Steal Like an Artist, which is that write the book you want to read, make the movie you want to watch. And for me, the podcast was about that. Can I create the podcast? I would want to listen to myself. And long story short, I reached out to the IBM team. I think initially they just were obliging me by saying, OK, let's do this, but give us a set of 40, 50 episodes. And from there, it's been quite a journey. I still remember recording the trailer of the podcast and both Saurabh and Kavita were like, Anish, just smile more, show more emotion. I was like, this is all the emotion I have. So it's been a great journey. And what I'm doing for this episode is I'm actually going back to a few conversations which vary again from food to relationships, different subcultures. And I think these are not only very interesting conversations that I've had, but also they are very diverse conversations. So we'll take a short little break and we'll get back to the episode. Speaker 8 (2:34) You know that feeling when you finish a movie and you just need to talk about it? That desperate need to discuss why Kal Hona Ho hits different. Enter IVM's brand new podcast, Cine5. It's Shreemi and Karan just yapping over Hindi cinema every Friday. Rom-coms, directorial debuts, career-defining moments. Whatever they're vibing with, they're breaking it down. Join the podcast on IVM Pop's YouTube or any audio streaming platform. Caution! You'll want to re-watch everything after listening to us. Come join us on Cine5! Speaker 8 (3:09) Life may be anything, the first thing is very important. First memory, first love, first heartbreak, first work. Friends, I am Gopal Dutt and this is my first podcast. First with Gopal Dutt, which will be released on IVM Pop. I will talk to those who are in their work, whose name we all know. So come to the YouTube IVM Pop channel or wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen to our podcast. Meet interesting people. Speaker 7 (3:50) Welcome back to the 50th episode of A Niche Thing. Like I said, this is going to be a recap episode. And actually, the first episode I want to talk about is the first episode of the podcast, which is about coffee. And I was very careful about titling this episode as well, because the title is You Should Love Coffee More Than You Love Food. And the whole idea here was that coffee is, it's a food product. It's a fruit. And the moment you look at it from that standpoint and that aspect, You then realize that black coffee doesn't have to be that bitter, hot beverage we've been having. And I'm not talking about coffee from a functional point of view, from a caffeine point of view. I'm actually talking about it from a taste point of view, because that is what coffee is for me. It's just a really beautiful, tasty cup of beverage. And that's what we talk about in this episode. We go from right from, again, looking at coffee as a fruit, how to brew coffee and why you should stay away from French presses. I personally hate French presses. I think that's where a lot of coffees go to die. And these are some of the things we discuss in the episode with Rahul from Subco. Speaker 3 (4:56) Coffee is a fruit. So it's always really important to start with that fact. Because that sets a certain framework for how you understand something that you've never understood quite as a sensory experience before. It's something that you've always understood as something that comes with milk and sugar or chicory or not. If you scale that idea back and you say, okay, coffee is a fruit. I mean, it's a berry or a cherry, depending on how you want to define it. And it grows on a tree and it's beautiful when you see it. And I know Anish has seen the farm level recently, I think, or maybe even before that a few times. Awesome. So it is a surreal experience. And Speaker 7 (5:33) then coming to Fritter, which is my preferred way of drinking coffee because it's so approachable. You can even do it at home easily. Let's talk about the Kalita, the V60 and the Porova. Speaker 3 (5:43) Sure. Yeah. Me too, first off. I love filter. Yeah, these three methods are good ones to kind of discuss. I think, I guess maybe we could start with the AeroPress. Speaker 7 (5:54) Yeah. And in a nutshell, they're all doing the same job. They're basically taking your ground coffee, your roasted ground coffee, and you're adding hot water in one way or the other and giving it time to extract. Speaker 3 (6:07) Yeah, Anish, I think one of the important bits is, you know, why is it called filter? Well, there's a paper filter, in fact. involved in ensuring your grounds do not go into the ultimate coffee extraction or liquid, hence, you know, filter as a term utilized. So whether it's a V60 or a Kalita or an Aeropress, there's a paper filter presence. Those of you who've brewed with those methods. So yeah, as Anish said, you know, the principles are pretty similar. I mean, you have ground coffee, ground to a certain size in terms of surface area, and then you have... certain temperature of hot water that you might want to put into that coffee, certain amount of time you might want to brew it for. So there's a lot of similarities that go between them. I'd say the differences would be fundamentally, I mean, there are different ways even to brew with an AeroPress. Oh, that's another rabbit hole. It's Speaker 7 (6:58) a Speaker 3 (6:58) rabbit hole for sure. So I'm not going to go into that. But typically speaking, an AeroPress is somewhat more like a French press style of brewing, but like a lot better. Whereas... The V60 and the Kalita are brewing methods where you're kind of slowly and steadily pouring water through kind of either a cone or a flatbed filter in which there is coffee. And as you pour, the coffee extracts as you pour, right? Meaning you're pouring water on top and then you're slowly seeing coffee come out the bottom, ready to drink. Whereas in the AeroPress, there are various ways to do this, but typically, if you kind of invert your AeroPress, and that's how I brew it, and that's how I would recommend people to brew it, the coffee's not extracting in real time. You're giving it about anywhere between a minute and three minutes to sit in that AeroPress chamber, and you might stir it, you might not. I mean, there's various ways to do it, but at the end of your brew cycle, you then flip it over, and then you plunge it, and that's where your brew comes out. Speaker 7 (8:02) Moving on from coffee to relationships and again, super interesting thing. Episode number five, we speak about non-monogamy. Actually even spoke a little bit about kink, but coming back to non-monogamy, how non-monogamy can also be non-sexual, which is something again, fascinating. You know, a lot of times when people are talking about non-monogamy, which is polyamory and E &M is another term, it's usually considered to be sexual. And we just got into so much about relationships in this episode, which were new to me. A lot of concepts that on one hand are very familiar to us as Indians. On the other hand, it's just so sounds so bizarre sometimes. So we get into discussing polyamory, non-monogamy. And one thing that really like made an impact from this episode for me was that jealousy is a fear. It's not an emotion. And again, very interesting take. Never looked at jealousy like that. So this is episode number five with Ailee. Speaker 5 (9:04) Okay, I'm going to start from non-monogamy because it's the wider umbrella term. So non-monogamy is the practice of sexual, romantic or interpersonal relationships with multiple people at the same time. Non-monogamy is as old as human beings. It's been practiced since the beginning of time. Now, the difference of what we are talking right now is consensual non-monogamy. and non-consensual non-monogamy. So the most practiced form of non-monogamy is non-consensual non-monogamy, which is your cheating, affairs. That's the sort of aspect of non-monogamy that causes the most harm. It brings a lot of feelings of guilt, resentment. It's the cause for a lot of divorces, separations, etc. Speaker 7 (9:58) For a lot of people, I think just being with one partner can come with so much issue about how much time you're spending and all of that. The moment you don't you don't have multiple partners. I think everyone will have to be super strong emotionally and mentally, right? To actually sustain in this lifestyle. I Speaker 5 (10:14) would not say strong. In fact, emotionally strong is the opposite. You have to be emotionally vulnerable. Oh, Speaker 7 (10:21) that is interesting. I never, again, never looked at it from that point of view. Yeah. Do tell more. Speaker 5 (10:27) Emotional strength is part of a toxic culture that believes that emotions are bad for you. My school of thought is that emotions are beautiful, all the ones that make you feel comfortable, which is your joy, happiness, love, and the uncomfortable ones like fear, sadness, and anger. So, I mean, there are only very few emotions that exist at least on a dictionary of emotions. And then from there, there's a spread of multiple, you know, nuanced version of anger, for example, irritation or sadness, etc. So emotionally vulnerable. And also, you have to look at how emotionally reactive someone is. So polyamory is not for everyone. Now, how do you regulate your emotions? So there is emotional reactivity and emotional regulation. One is a skill and one is a personality trait. Now, knowing how to react to emotions or having a way of feeling them, expressing them and then just being okay, you know, and not holding on to them is a skill that you learn. And a lot of polyamorous people, I mean, are advised to. to go through certain, you know, trainings or whatever, like at least inform themselves about these things. Reactivity, again, is something that you can manage or you can learn about, but it's always with the help of a mental health practitioner to support. Now, once you have all these emotions, yes, you're right. More people, more emotions. So if you're averse to emotions or you're afraid of them and you see them as a weakness, then perhaps polyamory is not for you. Perhaps you want to practice some other kind of consensual non-monogamy. Maybe you want to practice non-monogamy, the non-consensual one, because you can't deal with things, right? Or the emotions of your partner. So again, polyamory is not for everyone. You need to be able to understand your emotions better. You need to learn skills to regulate emotions better.