Say hello to Behind the SEOs Episode 7 Guest Britney Muller!
Britney is the Founder of Data Sci 101 and a must-see keynote speaker. She previously worked at Moz as a Senior SEO Scientist and a dabbler of data science and machine learning. Mordy and Yosef chat with Britney about her part-time passion leatherworking, how she got into public speaking, and even The Price is Right in Episode 7 of Behind the SEOs!
Show Notes
In this episode, we talk about Britney’s interview with Kevin Indig on Machine Learning. You can view that interview here.
Episode transcription
Mordy Oberstein: Welcome to Behind the SEOs, we bring your favorite search marketers to life. My name is Mordy Oberstein. I’ll be your host along with the great, the Fantastic, the wonderful Yosef Silver. Hey Yosef.
Yosef Silver: Hey, how are you doing, Mordy? It’s been a while.
Mordy Oberstein: It has been a while. You ditched me on the last episode buddy.
Yosef Silver: I apologize. I had a minor something to do with children.
Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I said that your kids kidnapped you. Is that true? Did your kids kidnap you?
Yosef Silver: It feels like it.
Mordy Oberstein: I was wondering if we’d get you back, but like piece by piece.
Yosef Silver: And I missed your birthday, happy birthday for this week Mordy.
Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Appreciate it. I find birthdays awkward by the way. I’m never good about my own birthday. Other people’s birthdays are fine. Just my own is kind of like weird. I didn’t do anything. I just came out. Let’s be honest. Right, OK, too technical. Anyway, we have a wonderful guest for you. I keep forgetting that we’re recording so you can already see her. I keep forgetting that we’re not just doing audio.
Yosef Silver: And Britney’s sitting here awkwardly.
Mordy Oberstein: Yeah like hey, we are such pros, like, what they do on Enter the Web, like they bring you in. First they have like the screen and it’s just the logo and then they bring you in. We’re not that advanced. Clearly, if you haven’t, if you’re not watching this, you’re listening to this. We’re being joined by the absolutely fantastic, the famous Britney Muller. How are you?
Britney Muller: Doing well, what an intro. Oh my gosh.
Mordy Oberstein: Really? I felt I could nailed that better. Thank you though. That was like a double axel. I could’ve totally a triple. For you figure skating aficionados out there.
Yosef Silver: So I think, Britney, you are perhaps one of the most connected people I know nationally, because you’ve got roots in Minnesota and then connections in Denver. And then obviously you were in Seattle for a long time. So where’s home today?
Britney Muller: Yeah, well when will this episode be airing?
Yosef Silver: Like a month, so the first Thursday of every month. So are you moving? Should we talk about that? Yeah, so this will go live early April. First Thursday in April.
Britney Muller: Cool. So by that time, I will have relocated to Minnesota to be closer to family and friends back home. And yeah, that will be sort of my new home base for a while.
Yosef Silver: That’s awesome. And you waited till after the winter and snow to move.
Britney Muller: Trying, yeah.
Mordy Oberstein: I had an uncle that lived in Minnesota for a while. He was a professor. Like the nutty professor, literally, and he like bounce around from state to state, but his favorite was Minnesota. Minnesota and Montana were his favorites.
Britney Muller: Hell yeah, was he the coolest?
Mordy Oberstein: Looking back at it now, he’s probably the most bizarre person I’ve ever met in my entire life. But as a child, it was really fun to watch. It was like, imagine like your uncle was like, I don’t know like The Rockettes . It was on like twenty four hours, seven days a week. But you only saw him like once a year. But yeah, it was interesting.
Yosef Silver: I’ve driven through Minnesota on the way to and from Wildrose, Wisconsin a couple times. Twice actually, but that is my only reference point. Probably layovers, I imagine I’ve seen the airport a lot.
Britney Muller: Yeah, Minnesota is phenomenal. You guys have to come check it out.
Mordy Oberstein: I’m such a New Yorker, like I like East Coast, I’ve dabbled in the middle of the country. I’ve been to Indianapolis. Been to Ohio. Stopped over in Chicago.
Yosef Silver: And now you live in the Middle East.
Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, now I live in the Middle East. So serves me right.
Yosef Silver: It’s the other New York.
Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it’s just like Kansas here.
Britney Muller: Sounds like it, yeah.
Mordy Oberstein: So you’re launching a whole new thing. This is what I hear from Yosef, I haven’t done my homework because I’m a wonderful host, but I know we’re supposed to plug it.
Yosef Silver: So tell us a little bit about its Data Science 101?.
Britney Muller: Yeah, that’s very kind of you. Yeah. So basically trying to set up kind of a hub of data science resources that are accessible to the average person. So kind of, you know, distilling the information and making it really, really easy to understand without technical background, formal education and all that, all that stuff. So I’m super excited.
Mordy Oberstein: That’s very cool. Your interview with Kevin Indig about machine learning was one of the most fascinating interviews ever watched.
Britney Muller: Really?
Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I love that episode.
Britney Muller: Thank you
Mordy Oberstein: I love Kevin. Yeah, love Kevin. That was a great episode. We should link to the show notes if we have, do we have show notes? I feel like we do.
Yosef Silver: Yes, we do.
Mordy Oberstein: Right? Yeah, we do have show notes. We should definitely link to that. I’ll send it to Yosef. It’s awesome.
Britney Muller: Thank you.
Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely.
Britney Muller: What did you like about it.
Mordy Oberstein: I always like, I like the machine learning side of SEO. I think it’s really interesting. And don’t ask me to repeat any of the specifics that I learned from it, because I watched like a year ago. But I remember walking away like, wow, like I actually understand, like, the underpinnings of it a little better than they did before. And it’s really like, I like entities. I like natural language processing. I like the content side of SEO and being able to understand, like how that actually emerges a little bit was relieving to me. I remember walking, being like, OK, a little bit relieved, like I kind of understand somewhat what the hell’s going on.
Britney Muller: I love that.
Mordy Oberstein: Yeah
Britney Muller: That’s a great answer.
Yosef Silver: I also love how you’re pushing the awareness of unconscious bias in machine learning. Like, I think it’s really important and like, blew my mind. I think you presented on that. The example you gave with the wallets in the back pockets with the male versus female attire. Yeah, I think it really blew my mind and something that like it can, it could get really scary if we don’t pay attention to stuff like that.
Britney Muller: Absolutely.
Mordy Oberstein: Not to get all serious.
Britney Muller: Yeah, absolutely. It is quite serious. The implications are dangerous across multiple applications of machine learning. So it’s important to be aware of for sure.
Yosef Silver: Absolutely.
Mordy Oberstein: Not to get stuck down this like wormhole. But since you’re here, I have to keep on it. There was a crazy case. Like what? Google, I forgot what it was, some kind of product that they took a while ago or they they realized it. There’s an image of a wedding, but it’s not like your Judeo-Christian typical wedding image. It’s like machine learning had a hard time identifying it as a wedding. So it basically would only identify weddings if it looked like your typical Judeo-Christian wedding.
Britney Muller: Interesting. Yeah.
Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. So that is, like it can be like a total hot mess. Ironically, Google three or four years later saying, no, no, we don’t have any bias problems in machine learning anymore. But yeah, right.
Britney Muller: Right. It’s all about what it’s been trained on. So if it’s only been trained on those big traditional weddings, that’s all it’s going to recognize.
Mordy Oberstein: Yeah.
Britney Muller: It’s fascinating.
Mordy Oberstein: That’s really cool stuff. OK, we should indicate that this podcast is not about that.
Britney Muller: Okay.
Yosef Silver: Well, technically we’re not really talking about SEO, it’s machine learning.
Mordy Oberstein: Right. Although right. It’s really not SEO. That’s debatable.
Yosef Silver: Britney, you always seem to be like, learning, whether it’s in your career or what you do for the marketing community or you mentioned leatherwork in your little pre-podcast survey. Tell us a little bit, like that’s fascinating.
Britney Muller: I have you know, I like to think that I know myself quite well and I pay attention to things that really fulfill me and give me energy and that I get excited about. And I realized, you know, I realized this for over a decade, but like when I’m learning, when I’m consuming and reading and kind of translating or applying things, I am my happiest. Like, I have so much fun absorbing information and tinkering. And so one thing I started to discover, especially in tech, is that we as technical professionals, we spend our working lives in this digital pixellated world. And for most of us, we’re working on a couple websites all the time, for years. And now, apply that to real life stuff. I know might be a silly example. It’s something I think about a lot. If we were woodworkers and we went to work every day and worked on the same damn table, we would be crazy. We would look and be crazy people. Like that is, people don’t do that right?
Mordy Oberstein: Best anology ever.
Britney Muller: It’s so true, though, isn’t it? Like you would never do that. And so for me, my brain really wants to complete things, like so desperately. And it’s unfortunate because in the digital world, we never get a chance to complete a website. We never get to hold it, touch it, feel it, see it in its true form. And so something that is sort of kind of really helped me on all sorts of different therapeutic levels is leatherwork, because I can create something tangible and there’s an end point. Right. I have created a thing and I get to, like, be proud and, you know, give someone that thing. It’s just so much fun.
Mordy Oberstein: That’s cool. Wait so you’re not like skinning cows or anything, like you buy the leather. Like, how does this work?
Britney Muller: Yeah, good question.
Yosef Silver: What a Mordy question, so are you raising cows?
Britney Muller: That is a good question. I kind of want to, so this gets even weirder. I would love to go hunting with my dad and brother and make sure that they skin it properly. That’s like the next stage. But currently I’m buying all of my leather from Tandy Leather and other leatherwork crafter’s, yeah.
Yosef Silver: What sort of stuff have you or rather what have you made that you’re most proud of.
Britney Muller: Yeah, I made this huge, well not huge, but it’s a leather tote bag, like a leather like luggage bag for my brother this Christmas and it’s beautiful. It uses. I used three different hides and it was a custom pattern I just kind of made by hand and by eye. So super fun, but I make like these big purses and totes and wallets and passport holders and watch straps, like you name it, I can kind of a try and put stuff together.
Yosef Silver: That’s amazing.
Mordy Oberstein: That’s so cool.
Britney Muller: It’s so much fun and it’s so cool, because all you need to know are like four things and you can kind of make whatever you want.
Mordy Oberstein: Really? What are the four things.
Britney Muller: Just like how to properly cut the leather and then punch the holes and then learn how to saddle stitch. And then the world is your oyster. You can, whatever you can think of you could sort of start to make.
Mordy Oberstein: Could you make shoes?
Britney Muller: So that’s, that’s so funny, I was just packing up my leather stuff and I have stuff to make sandals, because I really want to make these, like, gladiator sandals that I’ve just been obsessed with for years. But, yeah, that’s kind of my next step.
Mordy Oberstein: That’s amazing.
Yosef Silver: I really like how you framed it, though, with like the website and table comparison. Like, I, a few years ago took up pottery.
Britney Muller: Nice.
Yosef Silver: And I totally get like the therapeutic aspect of it. I paused though, because, like I had so many things. Like I just kept making bowls and plates and cups. I’m like, okay my kids need to break some more of diningware before I can go back and like, I kept giving it out to people. But I like that idea of like, that finality of the creation and like the end of the project, because when you throw a bowl or make a tote, there’s a point at which it’s just done. You can’t go back and like add another strap to your leather bag, well you could, but you shouldn’t. So I love that.
Mordy Oberstein: I kind of feel like, that’s why I like writing content, no matter what I always end up back in some way because you feel like you’ve actually done something. Like, I can sit around and talk about SEO all day long and I feel like. Have you ever felt this feeling where, like you sit in meetings all day. And I had someone tell me, like, I feel like I’m not working. I had someone go Mordy, you did your job. Like you’re talking about what we’re hear to talk about and advising about this and advising about that. And I feel like I’ve done absolutely nothing all day long. So I like things like writing, I always liked writing, like even like before SEO, because I felt like I was putting something out there. So I definitely get that feeling.
Britney Muller: Totally.
Mordy Oberstein: If only I knew how to use leather, then I can do something more tangible. I tried something like this, I tried painting for a while.
Yosef Silver: I’d love to. I’ve always wanted to learn to do glassblowing. I’ve always wanted to do glassblowing. And then, there’s actually a Netflix show. I don’t know if you discovered this, you mentioned Netflix, but there’s like I forgot, it might be Blown Away or something, but it’s a glassblowing competition on Netflix. And I watch that. And I went from I really want to do this to like, whoa, this looks really hard.
Britney Muller: I know.
Yosef Silver: It looks really intense.
Britney Muller: So cool.
Mordy Oberstein: I would love glassblowing.
Britney Muller: That’s what you should get into.
Mordy Oberstein: That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to buy, I’m going to buy what’s it called a kiln or whatever it is. It’s exactly what I need with my four kids around. Nothing bad will happen. Impossible.
Britney Muller: It’s going to be great, yeah.
Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, wait so where? You’re moving to Minnesota. Where are you living now?
Britney Muller: Seattle.
Mordy Oberstein: Oh, Seattle. I love Seattle.
Yosef Silver: This is the longest in my life. No, I rephrase, it’s the longest since 2003 that I have ever gone without going to Seattle.
Britney Muller: Wow.
Yosef Silver: Because of COVID, but I was I used to be there two, three times a year. That’s not true. It wasn’t 2003. But since I moved to the States, I’ve been there two or three times a year and I’m just eager to like, my next visit to Seattle. Something that jumped out at me like when we were prepping was that you never saw yourself as a public speaker. And I think that’s maybe one of the things you’re definitely known as for now.
Britney Muller: Yeah.
Yosef Silver: What what would you recommend for people that want to, like, push that, like they want to be there but they don’t know where to begin?
Britney Muller: They want to get into public speaking?
Yosef Silver: They want to be a public speaker, but they don’t know how. What would you share with people listening?
Britney Muller: Yeah, so the first thing I would say is like. Growth comes from uncomfortable places, and I think it’s important to put yourself in kind of these opportunities that aren’t going to be comfortable. Like it’s a natural human reaction to be anxious and to be nervous and excited. And there’s so much personal growth that happens in those experiences. And so I would challenge any listeners interested to start to, you know, entertain those opportunities and start small. You know, I would never suggest something huge off the bat. I think I got really lucky where I was introduced to Toastmasters and it’s funny because I love to mention them. I didn’t go to that many. I mean, there were moments where I would be walking to one in Denver and I would get so nervous that I would turn around and go home. Like I seriously would panic because I knew that we had to do roundtable intros and nothing freaks me out more than having to, like, introduce myself to an intimate group of people. I can do it to a stage of like lots of people. But whenever it’s small, I don’t know why, but starting to get those experiences and then starting out small, you know, being on a panel and doing talks in your community and then getting feedback too. I think the other trickiest part is watching yourself or listening to yourself speak is the worst. The worst, isn’t it?
Mordy Oberstein: I don’t think I’ve ever done a podcast. And I’ve done like probably hundreds of podcasts already at this point because I do podcasts or a webinar or a conference where I watched it and I’m not cringing.
Britney Muller: Yeah.
Mordy Oberstein: At what I said.
Britney Muller: I know, me too. It’s so hard. We’re so hard on ourselves. It’s insane.
Mordy Oberstein: It’s like missing tile syndrome, where you redo the kitchen floor, beautiful new tiles. And the one thing you notice, like there’s one little tile that has a small hairline fracture, crack in the corner that no one will ever see because under a radiator and it’s all you notice is that crack.
Yosef Silver: Is that thing or is this a Mordy thing?
Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it’s a real thing. Google it. Missing Tile syndrome. My friend from Seattle told me about this. Believe it or not.
Britney Muller: I love that. It could not be more true.
Mordy Oberstein: Yep.
Britney Muller: Yeah.
Mordy Oberstein: It sucks.
Britney Muller: Yeah, it’s brutal.
Mordy Oberstein: It’s the worst.
Britney Muller: It’s brutal. Yeah. But, yeah, it’s so important to have some of that reflection or like the one thing I hate doing to before a big talk, I’ll record myself practicing to see how I’m hitting different points. And that’s excruciating to watch too. You’re just like, oh, what am I doing? Why, why? Why is this happening? Yeah, that’s how you get better. And then to also kind of model after really great speakers like I remember early on, again, I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. I still don’t feel like I really know what I’m doing. But I remember watching Will Reynolds on stage and being like, I can do some of that. Like, I liked how he moved. I liked how he was walking and his different cadence styles of speaking. And I was like, I want to mimic some of that and make it genuinely real. So there’s lots of really beautiful things that you can do like that, too, which is really fun.
Mordy Oberstein: Do you find that? I do the same thing, I’ve definitely modeled some of what I do after people, but I try that and it’s failed miserably because it wasn’t me
Britney Muller: Right, right.
Mordy Oberstein: Yeah.
Britney Muller: There’s a fine line. You definitely have to. I’ve done things that don’t work for me either for that exact same reason. So I’ve noticed that I know the different qualities and traits that I offer on stage. And when I see other speakers do different things of that nature better, I take notes and I find it really, really fascinating. There’s another kind of quick, funny example to put things in perspective for those listeners who are trying to learn. I gave a talk at Leeds, Search Leeds, a couple of years ago and I don’t know what happened to me. Guys, I was walking to go backstage and I didn’t realize how big the venue was. And like, I was feeling fine. I was feeling whatever. And then all of a sudden I see posters of Cher who had been there months earlier and I started to get sick to my stomach. I literally was like, I’m going to throw up like I am. I suddenly started to panic out of nowhere.
Mordy Oberstein: Wow, you really don’t like Cher.
Britney Muller: Cher really creeps me out. Yeah, I don’t know what happened I just started to panic, and I remember going to the bathroom and trying to straighten myself out. Being like oh my god, it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine. But there was a moment where I really didn’t know if I could get on stage. And the amazing part is, is once you do get up the courage to just get on stage, almost always that dissipates. And you’re like, oh, I’m alive. I’m still breathing. I’m not dying up here. It’s fine. Let’s go. And then you kind of at least for me, I put on this, like, entertainer hat, like, it’s really important to me to make sure everyone’s, like, having fun and engaged and interacting and getting something out of the experience. And so I go on to give this talk that ended up being scored really, really well. And then this group of young women, about eight or nine of them, come up to the stage afterwards thanking me and telling me that they had all joined a public speaking class in London where they watched some of my talks. And it was just the funniest thing because I had just been in their shoes not that long ago, like literally just years before. And so to hear them say that I was like ladies like that is such a huge compliment. But I am no expert. Like, I literally almost shit my pants before coming on stage, like I was this close. But that’s very kind of you, so like putting it in perspective to these people who are like, oh my gosh, she’s on these big stages and gets these great speaker scores occasionally like she must. I still panic. I still have those freak out moments and I still am oftentimes like, what the hell am I doing?
Yosef Silver: I have a mental image of my head of like various friends I have who are speakers who like, go through that. And you go through that before you go on stage, but also what you said, as well as like, it’s kind of that balance between an introvert, and an extrovert, where you’re happy to be on a stage in front of three thousand people, but do not put me on a table with four strangers, please.
Britney Muller: Yes!
Mordy Oberstein: Yep, same for me, totally.
Yosef Silver: I’m thinking of like four or five different people who like, that’s the sentiment. It’s like the stage is the happy place. But you know what? When you’ve got those lights in front of you and you’re just, you’re sharing. It’s a conversation.
Britney Muller: Totally.
Yosef Silver: You’re also, I mean I’ve been in the audience and heard you speak a number of times. I think you’re a natural. Not diminishing any of those feelings that you have before you get on stage, because they’re absolutely real. But you know how to present and bring it.
Britney Muller: Thank you. That means a lot. I think the tipping point for me when I was starting out was taking myself out of the equation and taking my ego out of the equation when I realized, oh, my God, this is not about me. This is about all of these people who are providing, almost donating two of the most valuable resources, their time and their attention. It is an honor and a privilege to be able to be on stages and provide, be a catalyst of this information. And the most beautiful part about that is truly like it’s never about you. Even when I get asked questions about my background, I’m constantly thinking, what are the ways in which it might be of value to someone sitting in the audience? And then they elevate my ideas ten fold every time. That’s the part that I’ve missed the most, this last year. It’s not, I don’t miss on stages quite frankly, I don’t miss preparing for speeches at all. What I miss is interacting with attendees afterwards and hearing their stories and hearing how they’re trying to apply different things to their work or what they’re kind of hung up on her cool ideas they have. That is like the fuel for the speaking right there.
Mordy Oberstein: One hundred percent agree.
Yosef Silver: Totally agree. And we have such a sense of community in the digital space. And like that is perhaps one of the hardest adaptation, I mean, the whole human contact adaptation of the last year. Gosh, it’s been a year already. Is a massive challenge, but I mean, there are stories, I’m sure you have many memories of conferences, but there are conference stories that like, will stay with me forever. I’m feeling nostalgic.
Mordy Oberstein: Let’s all shed a tear for conferences. I will say, like I do, like the Silver: lining is I have an excuse out of every single social obligation now. There’s literally a pandemic. I can’t go anywhere. OK.
Yosef Silver: So Britney, you mentioned a lot on your intake that you you kind of like hustled yourself to attend conferences early in your career. So on a personal note, in 2017, I had an injury, I’d lost a job and like before I did anything I booked myself a conference ticket for a conference that was upcoming that my previous employer had paid for. And then my first thought was like, I’m going to put this on a credit card before I realize how much debt I’m going to get into while I look for a job. But I can totally relate to like that drive in that community. So if there’s anything you want to share around, you know that.
Mordy Oberstein: Best conference story.
Britney Muller: You guys, this gets crazy. So no one, I don’t think I’ve ever told some of these stories. So this will be good.
Yosef Silver: Awesome, exclusives.
Britney Muller: Yeah, no, for sure. So I’m trying to pull up. I have this really ridiculous email that I sent to Moz, I think it was back in 2013. Here it is, subject line: I’ve got some cupcakes for you. Hi, Jen. How are you? Did you have a nice weekend? I hope it was fun filled and relaxing for you. So…I’ve made this very awkward SEOMoz or bust video for you guys. You’re featured in it. Please notice the scrumptious cupcakes I drew for you. Haha, my art skills are weak sauce. I know regardless of how awkward and nervous I am in this video, I didn’t know what to do with my hands, all capital. I will do whatever it takes to go to SEOMoz next month and promise to provide you guys value. I’m just unable to scrape together the thousand dollars for a ticket after recently starting my own company. I kid you not. I know a woman who was on the show Cupcake Wars and would love to bring you her delicacies. Please let me know if there is any way I can help and I look forward to hearing back from you soon. Peace, love and Grandma hugs, Britney. Like, I was not afraid to do stuff like this, you know.
Mordy Oberstein: Did you get a ticket?
Britney Muller: I got a heavily discounted ticket and spent all my money on the flight, and like this really sketchy Airbnb, where this cat would bust into my room every night and just stand on my chest. I was like this is weird. And I had to walk and this sounds like such an old man tale, I literally had to walk almost two miles to and from the venue every day. But I didn’t care I was going to do anything, because these were my heroes. I was obsessed with the space. I had gotten to know people on Twitter and I was just dying to meet them. It was so funny.
Yosef Silver: You know what comes to mind as you tell that story, though? I feel like you’ve taken that moment and paid it forward. I feel like, I’ve seen your tweets from previous years?
Britney Muller: Yeah.
Yosef Silver: Where you’ve tried to do that for other people, too. And I, again, like you do amazing work for the community.
Britney Muller: Yeah.
Yosef Silver: I think you embrace the sort of pay it forward of the way you got your start.
Britney Muller: Yeah. I try really, really hard to help other people do that same thing because, you know, the other crazy kind of starter story was I really wanted to go backpacking around Europe and I had this like, you know, kind of midlife crisis of when am I going to be able to do that? And so I reached out to SearchLove and I could only afford to stay at this really sketchy hostel downtown London, where I shared a bedroom with three guys who are from all different parts of the world, and two of them didn’t get along. And so I’m in this like, weird, sketchy.
Mordy Oberstein: That’s weird.
Britney Muller: Yeah, no, it’s super weird. And then I would get up early every morning because I didn’t like putting my makeup on and stuff in this, like, coed bathroom that we all shared. And so I would sneak downstairs and kind of break into this bar’s bathroom. And so it was like this old time pub in London and it smelled terribly. And I’m like, how am I going to show up to this conference looking professional and like, I have my shit together when this is where I’m staying. But I made it work, like I literally just made it work and hustled and was doing stuff like that till I got, and then when people started inviting me to conferences and like, I don’t have to buy a ticket, it blew my mind. I was like, wait, what you’re going to, some of you are going to put me up in a hotel, like this is crazy.
Yosef Silver: Do you have like crazy speaker requests. Like, please make sure that a crazy cat in my hotel room?
Britney Muller: No more crazy cats, I swear.
Mordy Oberstein: Did you bring the cupcakes, though, to Moz?
Britney Muller: They said they didn’t want, or they didn’t need them or something. Yeah.
Mordy Oberstein: That’s ridiculous. Somebody offers you free cupcakes, you take them.
Britney Muller: Yeah.
Mordy Oberstein: OK, so I have this, we have this little section of the show called Rapid Fire Questions. They make absolutely no sense. I have no idea what goes through my mind when I’m writing them. I take no responsibility for this and Yosef is looking nervous.
Yosef Silver: This where I like, leave or mute myself. Where I second guess if I want to be on this podcast anymore.
Mordy Oberstein: Wait, do you want to take some of them, Yosef?
Yosef Silver: Let’s alternate.
Mordy Oberstein: Alright let’s alternate. I’ll start off with…
Yosef Silver: Number one?
Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I’m like debating, should I save that one for the last. Nah, let’s just go for it. OK, and you can answer really quickly, you can answer really slowly, you can go on a tangent. It’s all good.
Britney Muller: OK.
Mordy Oberstein: But the first question is hit the pavement or hit the bottle?
Britney Muller: Ooh.
Mordy Oberstein: So sometimes there thinkers.
Britney Muller: They are, I think if it’s something work-related, hit the pavement, And if it’s something emotional-related hit the bottle.
Mordy Oberstein: Good sintinction, except sometimes work-related also means hitting the bottle.
Britney Muller: Exaclty.
Yosef Silver: Depeche Mode or A La Mode?
Britney Muller: I don’t even think I know what either of those mean. What did you just say?
Mordy Oberstein: Depeche Mode or A La Mode?
Britney Muller: A La Mode?
Yosef Silver: A La Mode is like when you get ice cream on the side and Depeche Mode is a band
Mordy Oberstein: Band from the 80s.
Britney Muller: I’m just going to say A La Mode, because it reminds me of ice cream, I have no idea.
Yosef Silver: Again, this is Mordy’s brainwork for you for right now.
Mordy Oberstein: No, because I had a question before this that Yosef asked to remove and it had to do with Depeche Mode song. And there was a logic to this.
Yosef Silver: For you.
Mordy Oberstein: For me, there was a logic.
Yosef Silver: OK, next.
Mordy Oberstein: Alright, brain surgery or rocket science?
Britney Muller: Rocket science.
Mordy Oberstein: Nice.
Yosef Silver: Wheel of Fortune or The Price is Right?
Mordy Oberstein: Also a conundrum.
Britney Muller: The Price is Right.
Yosef Silver: Really?
Britney Muller: Yeah.
Mordy Oberstein: Yes.
Britney Muller: It’s way more fun, yeah.
Mordy Oberstein: It’s so much more dynamic.
Britney Muller: Yes and interactive.
Mordy Oberstein: There’s something about it. And like you’re like hustling against. Like some guy bids seven hundred and fifty dollars and then you bid like one dollar or they do seven hundred and fifty five just to screw you. It’s a little bit cutthroat, like these grandmas can get cutthroat.
Yosef Silver: I just realized I’m not thinking about Wheel of Fortune.
Mordy Oberstein: No.
Yosef Silver: I’m not thinking Wheel of Fortune. What’s that survey game show with big eh-eh when they get it wrong?
Britney Muller: Oh family feud?
Mordy Oberstein: Family feud?
Yosef Silver: Yeah. Oh so in British England that’s called Family Fortune.
Britney Muller: Oh.
Mordy Oberstein: Interesting. You guys always have to be different huh?
Yosef Silver: That’s what I was thinking of. Oh because of Fortune. Wheel of Fortune. Family Fortune.
Mordy Oberstein: There you go, it makes sense.
Yosef Silver: Sure. Totally make sense.
Mordy Oberstein: Oh I love this next question.Take it, it’s yours Yosef.
Yosef Silver: Crash test dummies or mannequinns?
Britney Muller: Crash test dummies.
Mordy Oberstein: Thank you.
Britney Muller: Yeah.
Mordy Oberstein: Wait, do you remember in like the early nineties when they had those commercials.
Yosef Silver: Mm hmm.
Mordy Oberstein: Right, It was it was a crash test dummy talking and like they would get into a crash and then it would be like buckle up for safety, something like that.
Britney Muller: Yeah.
Mordy Oberstein: I have to watch those. Like, some of my earliest memories are or were those dummies in the commercial. Total random tangent. OK, I have no idea what I was thinking when I came up with this, but Kant Kirkegaard? For those of you who like philosophy Kant or Kierkegaard?
Britney Muller: I’m going go with Kant because I don’t know either.
Mordy Oberstein: Ooh Interesting.
Britney Muller: Yeah.
Mordy Oberstein: I like both of them. I think each has their own purpose. It’s Aristotle I have a problem with but yeah, OK. Everyone’s like, what? Aristotelian logic is ridiculous, it is absolutely absurd. Anyway, oh, your turn Yosef.
Yosef Silver: Tunnels or bridges?
Britney Muller: Bridges for sure.
Yosef Silver: Yeah, totally.
Mordy Oberstein: Really?
Britney Muller: Yes, tunnel freak me out.
Mordy Oberstein: That’s what’s cool about them. Like, coming from New York, so we have the Lincoln Tunnel and you have there’s another one, the Battery Park Tunnel. Whatever it is, they’re freaky as anything, you’re like stuck in there in traffic for hours. But there’s something enjoyable about that like, freakiness I found. OK, like, let’s not get into my psyche.
Yosef Silver: I fell like tunnels are always that moment from like Independence Day, or Men in Black. Which is the movie where the dog jumps into the emergency exit of the tunnel?
Mordy Oberstein: I don’t know.
Yosef Silver: I always confuse Independence Day and Men in Black. I should not talk about pop culture.
Mordy Oberstein: Also, Daylight was a great movie about tunnels with stalone where they get stuck in a tunnel. And he’s like a cop. It’s like one of those, like movies where, like, the most ironic thing happens. There’s a flood, the tunnel collapses and a giant flood. And it turns out the one guy who designed the tunnels is in the tunnel there to save everybody. Like, what are the chances of that happening?But it’s a good movie.
Yosef Silver: Or The Taking of Pelham 123. That’s in a tunnel.
Mordy Oberstein: I didn’t see that.
Yosef Silver: Really? Watch the original? Not the remake.
Mordy Oberstein: Right the remake with what’s his name? Ethan Hawke. Right.
Yosef Silver: The original is really good.
Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, so there’s a movie I haven’t seen. That’s pretty surprising. OK, ironically, the last question out of time or out of money?
Britney Muller: Out of money.
Mordy Oberstein: Hmm. I like that. That’s very philosophical.
Britney Muller: Yeah.
Mordy Oberstein: True.
Britney Muller: It is true.
Mordy Oberstein: Right. Would you rather be poor or dead, let’s put it that way. That’s what it comes down to fundamentally. And, you have now explored the recesses of my mind.
Britney Muller: Scary.
Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, a little bit. Is that it?
Yosef Silver: So Britney if people want to learn more about data science 101, or if they want to follow you, what’s the best place to find you or contact you.
Britney Muller: Yeah, so I am @BritneyMuller on Twitter and Instagram and LinkedIn and they can contact me at any of those places. I’m probably most active on Twitter.
Mordy Oberstein: Awesome. Thank you for joining us.
Britney Muller: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Yosef Silver: It’s a been real pleasure. Thank you for coming.
Mordy Oberstein: And folks listening at home or in their car or wherever you can find Behind the SEOs on YouTube, our channel, Behind the SEOs on Twitter @BehindSEOs or our website behindtheseos.com New episodes come out the first Thursday of every month. It’s a monthly podcast, so you should subscribe to be notified, because who the heck remembers when the first Thursday of every month is? We don’t and we do the show anyway thank you so much for tuning in and we appreciate it.