The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello.

00:00:01 ◼   ► Hello, how are you?

00:00:03 ◼   ► I'm good, how are you?

00:00:06 ◼   ► You sound alright.

00:00:07 ◼   ► How do I sound?

00:00:08 ◼   ► You sound surprisingly good.

00:00:10 ◼   ► Is this LTE?

00:00:12 ◼   ► This is LTE.

00:00:13 ◼   ► You're kidding.

00:00:14 ◼   ► No.

00:00:15 ◼   ► Oh man.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Verizon, good old Verizon.

00:00:20 ◼   ► So the back story is that we…

00:00:23 ◼   ► Stop looking at this picture.

00:00:26 ◼   ► We were supposed to record 36 minutes ago and I was going to be ready when all of a

00:00:31 ◼   ► sudden my home internet went out.

00:00:34 ◼   ► And just like a hard stop, like nothing loaded.

00:00:38 ◼   ► And then I started getting activation paid, like what you would get if you had…

00:00:43 ◼   ► When you don't pay your bill.

00:00:45 ◼   ► No, more like if you have a brand new, like brand new stuff, you know, like you just moved

00:00:50 ◼   ► into cable town.

00:00:51 ◼   ► Like you just moved here, you got your Comcast box, this is what you see.

00:00:56 ◼   ► like actually trying to do the activation doesn't doesn't do anything

00:00:59 ◼   ► and so you had the good idea we're texting and you told me to use my phone

00:01:04 ◼   ► go to the Comcast site and see if they tell you that there's an outage and it

00:01:10 ◼   ► it worked I logged into my Comcast account and it gave me a message here

00:01:15 ◼   ► that says hello John John caps John is in all caps and out it has been reported

00:01:22 ◼   ► in your area we expect this to be resolved by today and then you can

00:01:27 ◼   ► describe I sent this to you yeah we'll include this image in the show notes or

00:01:32 ◼   ► somehow in the art so everybody all of you deserve to enjoy this but Merlin for

00:01:36 ◼   ► the historical record can you describe this this image sure sure I think it's

00:01:42 ◼   ► uh it's clearly it comes from the same grand tradition as the blinking

00:01:47 ◼   ► under construction GIF from back in the day. I guess the primary feature is a big white van that

00:01:55 ◼   ► says Xfinity on it. Close enough, right? This is going to be a repair guy. And then a picture of a

00:02:00 ◼   ► stock art guy in a red and black check shirt with a hard hat climbing a yellow ladder. So far so good.

00:02:09 ◼   ► It's an image to show you that we expect this to be resolved by today. It gets interesting though

00:02:14 ◼   ► because the ladder is situated with a very strange, incorrect drop shadow.

00:02:19 ◼   ► He's basically, it appears to be about to fix an 11 foot high orange safety cone.

00:02:25 ◼   ► It's a lot higher than 11 feet, I think. I think it's about a 15 foot safety cone.

00:02:31 ◼   ► The guy's, there's one orange construction cone on the right side of the page that's upright,

00:02:34 ◼   ► that's at least 10 feet high, and another one, another safety cone next to it that's fallen over.

00:02:40 ◼   ► And this guy on a ladder is, he's on a ladder and he's behind the cone.

00:02:45 ◼   ► He's probably about five feet behind the cone, climbing a ladder.

00:02:48 ◼   ► Oh, and did I mention there's also a dog chasing a cat in the foreground?

00:02:54 ◼   ► And then the really subtle part is in the upper right hand corner, for reasons I'm not

00:02:58 ◼   ► entirely sure of, there's a bird flying by.

00:03:03 ◼   ► You really have to see it to appreciate, but he looks like he's there to fix the safety

00:03:07 ◼   ► cone and anyway they're working on that.

00:03:12 ◼   ► Why?

00:03:16 ◼   ► Why is there...

00:03:20 ◼   ► Why is...

00:03:23 ◼   ► He took the time to put a drop shadow on everything but they aren't right.

00:03:29 ◼   ► The drop shadow on the ladder has no relationship with the cone that he's theoretically fixing.

00:03:34 ◼   ► just a drop shadow stops. It's almost as though we're seeing the cone drop from the sky just

00:03:40 ◼   ► right next to where he happens to be climbing a ladder to nothing. So you pivoted. So I

00:03:47 ◼   ► pivoted. Now we're doing it over LT. Yeah, I should probably close this but I kind of

00:03:55 ◼   ► feel like I can't. I told you when we were texting, this is nothing against Cable Town.

00:03:59 ◼   ► our great company but I swear to Christ every time I see or hear that word

00:04:03 ◼   ► Xfinity I just it makes me see and I can't even tell you why I mean in the

00:04:08 ◼   ► same way that like Farfik Nugent in the like late 80s was funny like Xfinity is

00:04:13 ◼   ► offensive to me because that's their whole their whole branded line of

00:04:18 ◼   ► something involving a cable lifestyle in your home is that right or business I

00:04:24 ◼   ► think that's what they would tell you that that's probably probably the exact

00:04:27 ◼   ► words that they used that when they came up with the idea that they would stop

00:04:35 ◼   ► just calling themselves Comcast and that you know that they would that

00:04:39 ◼   ► Comcast would be some kind of parent brand for all of their various

00:04:44 ◼   ► endeavors. You know like their Comcast logo now they've they've taken the NBC

00:04:48 ◼   ► peacock it's you know part of their like they're a content company now they have

00:04:53 ◼   ► They have NBC they have universal and so like the the cable business is is now Xfinity

00:05:00 ◼   ► And I believe that what you those words you just use is probably how they they they probably pitched it

00:05:06 ◼   ► They would use the phrase SMB probably for small business. They still use that you still hear SMB

00:05:11 ◼   ► Nope. Yeah. Yeah

00:05:14 ◼   ► I mean

00:05:15 ◼   ► I think

00:05:16 ◼   ► It's it's you know

00:05:17 ◼   ► It's funny because you think about think about like when Dropbox came along and well one of the gosh half dozen things that was so

00:05:22 ◼   ► mind-blowing about Dropbox is they were doing something that had been very

00:05:26 ◼   ► difficult for any number of reasons to do before not least because being a

00:05:30 ◼   ► commodity or being a utility is not interesting and it's not sexy and

00:05:36 ◼   ► having dependable you know file syncing in that case was was an unsolved problem

00:05:41 ◼   ► that was not on the face of it that profitable right so there's so many

00:05:44 ◼   ► things that you know setting aside the fact that the sync actually worked which

00:05:47 ◼   ► was mind-blowing but I mean you think about it your cable company now I'm sure

00:05:50 ◼   ► you've seen that graph that's gone around about how the cable companies have like come together over the years, you know, like in the 80s

00:05:55 ◼   ► There was like 30 different cable providers and now there's like four or whatever. Yeah

00:05:59 ◼   ► So I mentioned that thinking was like we've got to have some kind of a way to brand

00:06:04 ◼   ► The notion of this coaxial cable coming into your house that's gonna give you a suite of services, right?

00:06:11 ◼   ► You got your internet connection. You got your TV. What else? Yeah. Oh, well, they got that like the home monitoring, right?

00:06:16 ◼   ► You can get like security

00:06:17 ◼   ► Isn't that part of the Xfinity package? I believe it is any lifestyle, right? Yeah, you get it

00:06:22 ◼   ► That's not just a coaxial cable where you watch sports. No, this is an entire lifestyle Xfinity that you're your

00:06:28 ◼   ► Landline telephone service. Yeah

00:06:31 ◼   ► And they really want you to get that whole package boy. You call them up for anything and boy

00:06:36 ◼   ► They really want to get what is it gonna take to put you into a phone today? I

00:06:39 ◼   ► Have it I have the thing and we don't we don't have a single

00:06:47 ◼   ► Landline phone that's actually hooked up to a phone jack in the house

00:06:50 ◼   ► So we have a phone number and it never rings, but it costs

00:06:56 ◼   ► I think it costs less than if we

00:06:58 ◼   ► Just had internet. I don't know. I'm do I'm overdue to call them and to go through the pantomime

00:07:06 ◼   ► I'm years overdue of the the like I'm sure it's Syracuse

00:07:10 ◼   ► it probably does this you know once a yikey has like a reminder once a year because you really need to you call them up and

00:07:14 ◼   ► say I'm going to cancel my service and then they say oh god no and then they

00:07:18 ◼   ► give you know cut you a deal and give you faster service at a lower price you

00:07:22 ◼   ► know like you're a new customer because if you're like me and you're a dummy and

00:07:25 ◼   ► you signed up a couple years ago and you just let it go your promotional rate

00:07:30 ◼   ► ended at some point and now you know I paid I don't know $200 a month for

00:07:34 ◼   ► something I could probably you know pay a lot less for right that happened to me

00:07:38 ◼   ► with AT&T I need to carefully look at this month's bill but I called them up

00:07:42 ◼   ► To I think I was calling partly because there's a weird charge

00:07:46 ◼   ► I guess I was also just asking about iPhone update availability

00:07:49 ◼   ► Anyway, I ended up calling them and you know the drill where they like want to talk to you about the special offers and stuff

00:07:55 ◼   ► Like that. No, that's why I don't do it. No. No, it's the worst but I have to say, you know, actually AT&T

00:08:00 ◼   ► In my experience, I don't love that service or company

00:08:04 ◼   ► I mean, I really don't but the people that you end up talking to are pretty great at AT&T sometimes but long story short

00:08:10 ◼   ► This this woman was like well, did you know we were that like you could really bring your bill down

00:08:14 ◼   ► I was like tell me about it

00:08:15 ◼   ► What do I have to do to bring my bill down and she's like well

00:08:18 ◼   ► We can just change it to this family data package and diddly-diddly-dee and now my phone bill dropped by like $100

00:08:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. No, but I'm of course, I'm naturally very

00:08:27 ◼   ► Skeptical, it's very skeptical because you figure I was like and so of course now I'm looking for a catch guy. Oh my god

00:08:33 ◼   ► What does it mean? We're re-upping for like another five years. We got to get a Samsung tablet

00:08:37 ◼   ► Like what is it? What's the downside of this? No, it doesn't just you just pay less money

00:08:42 ◼   ► Is that something you'd want to do? I was like, all right

00:08:44 ◼   ► Stockholm syndrome, you know, I'm just like she's being so nice to me and I feel like you know

00:08:51 ◼   ► I don't want to I you know, whenever I talk to a customer service person, I'm terrified

00:08:55 ◼   ► I really don't want to incur their wrath because I don't know there's a few ways they can help you and about a million ways

00:09:01 ◼   ► They could screw you up. All right, or yeah make things worse. Yeah, right all of a sudden you're you know

00:09:06 ◼   ► You signed up for a $300 a month international data plan. Yeah, you're getting the the platinum overnight web package

00:09:13 ◼   ► daddy

00:09:16 ◼   ► Always feels used to feel sometimes they've gotten better at this over the years business with go daddy

00:09:21 ◼   ► I used to feel like I was running down a hallway

00:09:23 ◼   ► Well, it doesn't frat boys were trying to hit me with a sock full of pennies like

00:09:26 ◼   ► Can I just now I don't need anything tonight, I don't anything overnight I don't you think platinum just want this domain I

00:09:34 ◼   ► I don't think Comcast knows what to do with their money.

00:09:39 ◼   ► I really don't.

00:09:40 ◼   ► I mean, they've spent a ton of it here.

00:09:42 ◼   ► I mean, this is Capletown.

00:09:44 ◼   ► I've said this before on the show where they've built the tallest skyscraper in Philadelphia.

00:09:50 ◼   ► And now they're building another one like one block over that's going to be even bigger.

00:09:56 ◼   ► And nobody really knows why.

00:10:00 ◼   ► They've just got more money than they know what to do with.

00:10:03 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I hadn't thought about this in this way too much, but sometimes it seems like you've got in the case of these or like especially legacy carriers from back in the day.

00:10:13 ◼   ► You've got well there's the stuff we made money with in the past like a million years ago. There's an infrastructure that we built like all the investments we made over the years.

00:10:23 ◼   ► And then there's this rapidly evolving market

00:10:27 ◼   ► for what people actually want.

00:10:29 ◼   ► And all of that stuff that we see as being very valuable

00:10:32 ◼   ► just simply does not register for most people.

00:10:35 ◼   ► And in my case, in San Francisco, I mean,

00:10:36 ◼   ► I get one dot of coverage so much at the time with AT&T.

00:10:41 ◼   ► Which luckily is great

00:10:42 ◼   ► 'cause I don't use the phone hardly at all.

00:10:44 ◼   ► But it's interesting to me

00:10:45 ◼   ► like how you take being a commodity business

00:10:48 ◼   ► that's been around for a long time

00:10:50 ◼   ► and because of the nature of the business

00:10:52 ◼   ► can never really be that innovative that fast.

00:10:55 ◼   ► So what do you do?

00:10:56 ◼   ► Well, you sell iPhones, you sell Samsung tablets or whatever.

00:10:58 ◼   ► But it's interesting, like what they want

00:11:00 ◼   ► in the case of Xfinity,

00:11:00 ◼   ► like here's what we want you to know us for.

00:11:02 ◼   ► We want you to know us for this thing called Xfinity.

00:11:05 ◼   ► And you know, the way that they're actually making

00:11:07 ◼   ► all their money, who knows how they're actually

00:11:08 ◼   ► making all their money, but they want to be known for,

00:11:12 ◼   ► as well as this like lifestyle product

00:11:14 ◼   ► that's completely up to date and innovative, you know?

00:11:17 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:11:18 ◼   ► - Does that make sense?

00:11:19 ◼   ► You know, it's just that you,

00:11:20 ◼   ► when you're talking about like fiber and stuff like that,

00:11:21 ◼   ► That's not something you do as easily as you change a logo.

00:11:24 ◼   ► I mean, there's a lot of infrastructure behind what all these companies do.

00:11:28 ◼   ► And certainly you can spin up various kinds of data centers and CDNs or whatever, but

00:11:33 ◼   ► at the same time, I mean, that's all just changing so fast.

00:11:36 ◼   ► Right now, Comcast is a coaxial cable that comes into my house that lets me stream things.

00:11:42 ◼   ► And use the internet, but we don't have cable TV.

00:11:45 ◼   ► We don't, you know, we should talk about my MLB experience, another great one.

00:11:49 ◼   ► No, but for me, that's just that's a dumb cable that comes in and it's a zero or one

00:11:54 ◼   ► It either works fine or it doesn't and that's that's the entire Xfinity value proposition to me

00:11:59 ◼   ► Dogs chasing cats. Yeah, look at that guy. I see the cats got a drop shadow

00:12:05 ◼   ► Yeah, they just like it's probably noon. It's in looks like it might be inside Johnny Ives bubble

00:12:09 ◼   ► It's very white except for the Xfinity van and the cones and the man in the

00:12:13 ◼   ► Bird doesn't get a drop shadow

00:12:15 ◼   ► How come how come the I just noticed this is another detail here the icon next to get a it says get a one-time text

00:12:22 ◼   ► when service is restored and the icon next to it is a

00:12:26 ◼   ► Power power outlet 110, you know plug American electric plug. Yeah, I

00:12:33 ◼   ► Don't get it yeah

00:12:37 ◼   ► What are the other I see there's like a

00:12:40 ◼   ► Read more is like a three dot interface here. If you click those arrows and go to the other pages. What do you get?

00:12:45 ◼   ► It's it's changed because in the meantime, I've gone through the the one I signed up to get that text

00:12:53 ◼   ► There's a hello John Xfinity fall TV sweepstakes

00:12:58 ◼   ► You can learn more about the NBC's the voice

00:13:05 ◼   ► What's this one here? The second one is refer your friends to Xfinity and get up to $500 in Visa prepaid cards

00:13:13 ◼   ► Do you imagine how much money went into the series of meetings about synergy?

00:13:18 ◼   ► I swear to God of which that's the result. I got it. I hold on a second. I gotta send you this

00:13:24 ◼   ► Dog, it's the dog is still there chasing the cat. Oh

00:13:28 ◼   ► my god

00:13:31 ◼   ► Okay, I got it. The bird is still there. The bird doesn't move

00:13:35 ◼   ► What horrific dreamscape is this?

00:13:41 ◼   ► Hello John!

00:13:42 ◼   ► All caps.

00:13:43 ◼   ► Refer your friends to Xfinity registered trademark and get up to $500 in Visa prepaid cards.

00:13:48 ◼   ► So you got a whole bunch of kind of foreshortened perspective having Visa cards.

00:13:57 ◼   ► You got Despicable Me running on a screen and a tablet with a game controller.

00:14:03 ◼   ► yelling into someone's ear on a laptop image and then a dog chasing the cat the other way.

00:14:09 ◼   ► One goes one way, one goes the other way. So what?

00:14:13 ◼   ► There's the other.

00:14:14 ◼   ► Yeah that's terrific John. You should do that. You should refer some people to Xfinity.

00:14:17 ◼   ► Yeah I feel like I'm doing that right now.

00:14:19 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's an unrecognized revenue stream right there. I always have so many

00:14:26 ◼   ► opportunities to suggest new cable providers to my friends.

00:14:30 ◼   ► Why?

00:14:31 ◼   ► Just be having drinks.

00:14:32 ◼   ► I'm there must be some reason for but why would they why would my reward come

00:14:35 ◼   ► in the form of prepaid Visa cards like I'm a drug dealer or something why

00:14:41 ◼   ► wouldn't they just give me credit on my bill I don't know or special access to

00:14:47 ◼   ► behind-the-scenes stuff from The Voice I really don't get it that the grand prize

00:14:53 ◼   ► you can win a $10,000 $10,000 I don't know if that's cash or in Visa cards

00:14:57 ◼   ► plus a trip for two to the voice finale in Los Angeles Amy would love that I

00:15:02 ◼   ► I bet she loves The Voice.

00:15:04 ◼   ► I can't help but feel that ultimately Comcast should be a very like, or anybody like that,

00:15:11 ◼   ► but a company with millions of customers all paying like $100 to $200 a month for service

00:15:20 ◼   ► that, you know, it was like a one-time infrastructure layout to, you know, put the cable in the

00:15:24 ◼   ► streets and through the poles and everything and into everybody's houses.

00:15:27 ◼   ► I mean obviously, you know, there's to get from where nobody had cable and in America to where everybody has cable running into their house

00:15:34 ◼   ► That's an accomplishment right, but that's all in the past. It's all there now. It just runs. It should it should really just be like

00:15:41 ◼   ► like a 25 person company

00:15:43 ◼   ► Just answering calls. Yeah, just answering some calls and you know, mostly mostly just you know field

00:15:51 ◼   ► You know guys who go out in the field and troubleshoot problems and stuff like that

00:15:54 ◼   ► Like there's no real reason for Comcast to exist as a very large corporation.

00:15:58 ◼   ► Well, that's the irony. I remember gosh, years ago you talking about,

00:16:02 ◼   ► wasn't that was a Comcast where they,

00:16:04 ◼   ► you had to get the special DRM card for your cable box.

00:16:08 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah.

00:16:09 ◼   ► He came out and he brought one that didn't work exactly one and then he came

00:16:14 ◼   ► back.

00:16:15 ◼   ► It was, it was two cable card, uh, Tivo.

00:16:19 ◼   ► And he came out and it was like he had one that worked and one that didn't.

00:16:24 ◼   ► and he's like i'm gonna go get some more cards as i was a are they in your truck

00:16:27 ◼   ► and it's not how i got a pic you're going to have spares yeah

00:16:32 ◼   ► and i think the next time i know it was always a different guy wasn't like the

00:16:35 ◼   ► same guy give your skip in the great park is indeed that you have to make a

00:16:37 ◼   ► new appointment

00:16:38 ◼   ► yeah i mean appointment that's what i think that what he did in friday it's

00:16:42 ◼   ► like i guess i'm waiting for you

00:16:44 ◼   ► now and ultimately

00:16:46 ◼   ► a guy came and he had one

00:16:49 ◼   ► always with only two guards everytime and i'd always say label can you put out

00:16:53 ◼   ► like on the third visit I was like can you please put down to tell the guy to

00:16:58 ◼   ► bring a whole box full of these cards and he was like well we don't usually do

00:17:02 ◼   ► that and I was like what do you think maybe you should I was like this is the

00:17:05 ◼   ► third one just bring a whole stack of them obviously some of these things work

00:17:08 ◼   ► some of them half work and some don't work so we wound up with with like on

00:17:13 ◼   ► the third one we got a fully working cable card and then the second cable

00:17:17 ◼   ► card got everything except HBO and my Showtime or whatever you know like

00:17:21 ◼   ► Whatever the pay channels are premium stuff and I was like good enough

00:17:24 ◼   ► So like every time we wanted to TiVo

00:17:28 ◼   ► Like an HBO show we'd have a 50% shot that it would be just a black screen for the hour of the broadcast

00:17:35 ◼   ► So we just set up the TiVo I say we Amy's actually the TiVo runner of the house

00:17:41 ◼   ► She set it up so that any of the HBO shows that we wanted we would

00:17:45 ◼   ► She would just set the TiVo to record all of them, you know

00:17:49 ◼   ► like so like when the new episode of the sopranos came out just keep recording it

00:17:53 ◼   ► over and over again because if you do you know and there's like eight copies

00:17:55 ◼   ► of it on the TiVo one there's a good chance one of them is gonna work

00:17:59 ◼   ► Xfinity it's all about improving your chances now we that was years ago we now

00:18:03 ◼   ► have a new TiVo that I don't know what it's got some different kind of cable

00:18:07 ◼   ► card right what it's good now but the beauty part of your what you're

00:18:12 ◼   ► describing here we get the 25 people answering phones is I mean I I cannot

00:18:18 ◼   ► begin to, first of all let's be honest, you're not gonna, I mean I'm gonna

00:18:21 ◼   ► troubleshoot the shit out of everything that I can. Like I just sent you that

00:18:25 ◼   ► Earl right? I know how to get to the Motorola surfboard, I know how to go in

00:18:28 ◼   ► and do things, I know how to hack on this a little bit, I know how to go unhook and

00:18:31 ◼   ► rehook every cable and you know I learned one time ago not to be that guy

00:18:35 ◼   ► if you do call, but if I've reached completely reached the end of my rope I

00:18:38 ◼   ► will, I will you know you end up calling them and you go through the thing you

00:18:41 ◼   ► try and get you know pushed up to higher level tech support and stuff like that

00:18:45 ◼   ► because everything apparently is a black box when it comes to doing anything with coaxial cable.

00:18:51 ◼   ► And the irony is that, well first of all, when they do send somebody out to your house,

00:18:55 ◼   ► you know, whenever, usually a week later, it's a complete, in my experience, a complete crapshoot,

00:19:02 ◼   ► what you're gonna get.

00:19:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:19:03 ◼   ► So like a lot of times you get like, you know, Bob Hoskins from Brazil,

00:19:07 ◼   ► and this guy comes out in his white, you know, F-150 and he's got a magnetic sign on the side.

00:19:12 ◼   ► It's like the equivalent of like holding a finger up for a mustache and I work for Comcast.

00:19:16 ◼   ► He's got like a magnetic sign that goes, "It's okay, it's cool.

00:19:19 ◼   ► I'm actually Comcast even though he's not."

00:19:20 ◼   ► He's a contractor.

00:19:22 ◼   ► And these guys come out there and what's funny is like every fifth visit, you know, like

00:19:26 ◼   ► every two years I get somebody else to come out for some reason.

00:19:29 ◼   ► They'll be like, there's been like probably eight people that came out and made a big

00:19:34 ◼   ► mess and then every few years somebody comes out and cleans up the mess.

00:19:37 ◼   ► This woman, this awesome, this awesome Gulf War veteran woman came out and she's like,

00:19:40 ◼   ► I can tell you why it's not working because these dinguses just keep hanging up all these junctions

00:19:44 ◼   ► You realize you're losing this much of a percentage of it. I'm like, wow, you're magic. She's like, yeah

00:19:49 ◼   ► I just took out about 40 feet 40 feet of cable

00:19:51 ◼   ► That's why you weren't getting a signal because they just kept spaghetti and new stuff in they don't want to drill a hole

00:19:55 ◼   ► Oh my gosh, I'm gonna need a special form for that

00:19:57 ◼   ► But you know

00:19:58 ◼   ► It really depends on what you get there could be people who come out and just don't have the slightest idea how to fix

00:20:03 ◼   ► Anything but the most trivial thing and other people who like you get like $500 worth of service from them

00:20:08 ◼   ► I've had this similar experience exact same where it sometimes you know, you get you get the Robert De Niro character from Brazil

00:20:14 ◼   ► Who actually knows how to fix things?

00:20:17 ◼   ► and

00:20:19 ◼   ► I remember one time it was the same thing where there was a guy who was like testing our signal

00:20:23 ◼   ► Outside the house and he was like, it's pretty good out there

00:20:26 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, you know like he was good enough for even even that he just said pretty good

00:20:30 ◼   ► He's like it's alright because but here at your in your living room. This is this is terrible. You lose something's going on

00:20:36 ◼   ► So he like I don't know it was like some kind of terrible spiderweb of junctions. I had no idea

00:20:42 ◼   ► I thought it was a zero and one thing but apparently you lose a lot of I guess decibels or whatever of strength

00:20:47 ◼   ► With each, you know, however many feet of coax you add it can

00:20:51 ◼   ► Yeah, there's a huge effect and if that's there if the one the one will flip back to a zero and just won't be enough

00:20:56 ◼   ► To drive your router, right? You know those those like coaxial like why splitters?

00:21:01 ◼   ► Y'all God yes, yeah, I sure do he came up

00:21:04 ◼   ► He came up from like our downstairs like our basement with with this one

00:21:08 ◼   ► And he is he's this is what he said he took out and it had like

00:21:11 ◼   ► It was like it was literally rusted. It was it was rusty, and he goes well

00:21:17 ◼   ► I took this out and he goes it wasn't even doing anything

00:21:19 ◼   ► It wasn't there wasn't you know like the split wasn't going anywhere

00:21:22 ◼   ► It was just somebody somebody used it to you know string more cable together

00:21:27 ◼   ► We came home one day and came upstairs. Everything was dead dead dead dead. The bill was paid. Everything was dead. I

00:21:32 ◼   ► Went downstairs and I did my usual troubleshooting on the incredibly ancient equipment

00:21:37 ◼   ► and it was really obvious that someone had had basically had cut the cable to our house and

00:21:43 ◼   ► Then wide off the cable to go into our neighbor's house

00:21:46 ◼   ► And at first I thought it might be our mookie neighbors wanting to watch the Super Bowl for free or something like that

00:21:52 ◼   ► But I called Comcast and what it became apparent once we got it one of the actual useful people out there

00:21:58 ◼   ► Was that that was just what they thought needed to be done. They thought oh, we don't need this cable over here

00:22:02 ◼   ► Obviously, there's only one house here. We'll cut this one off and just put this one here

00:22:05 ◼   ► So they cut off literally physically cut off the cable and then reconnected it to our neighbors

00:22:10 ◼   ► Like, you know like like a 1920s switchboard. I

00:22:13 ◼   ► Think I've told this story, but it was many many years ago

00:22:19 ◼   ► But when I was the best cable experience I've ever had was when I was in college

00:22:22 ◼   ► Had lived like my last few years in college we had a big big six-bedroom apartment in West Philly

00:22:30 ◼   ► and six, you know six roommates everybody got a room and we called to get the

00:22:36 ◼   ► cable service and the guy who came out was I want to say Russian but you know, he had some kind of Eastern European accent and

00:22:46 ◼   ► He's hooking up our cable up, you know on the up-and-up and I forget who it was

00:22:51 ◼   ► it wasn't me, but one of my roommates said something to him about

00:22:53 ◼   ► Talk a little bit of the code. Yeah

00:22:58 ◼   ► For any extra services he goes he was like Jim because I've heard about there's some ways that you

00:23:06 ◼   ► I don't want to say his name because I don't want to embarrass it, but he called him smoker channels

00:23:15 ◼   ► He was like, you're here, there's something you can get the smoker channel for free.

00:23:29 ◼   ► The guy just stops.

00:23:32 ◼   ► And I thought at first when he stopped that it was like, like when you offer a cop a bribe

00:23:36 ◼   ► and then all of a sudden it's like now you're in trouble for for giving a, you know, the

00:23:41 ◼   ► cop a bribe.

00:23:42 ◼   ► guy says and said would you you know would you like something like that and

00:23:45 ◼   ► he's and and we were all like yeah yeah what would it take and he goes he goes

00:23:51 ◼   ► well I could come back to I don't work tomorrow because I could come back here

00:23:54 ◼   ► tomorrow and and do this on my own time and it would and I forget what he asked

00:24:01 ◼   ► for I don't know like 200 bucks or something and we all agreed yes so right

00:24:06 ◼   ► there on the spot he called in and we heard him he called in to like his

00:24:09 ◼   ► supervisor and said yeah I'm at whatever our address was he goes yeah they no

00:24:15 ◼   ► longer want service yeah they don't want any they can't afford it they don't want

00:24:18 ◼   ► any things so just cancel it you know shut them off and he goes I'll see you

00:24:23 ◼   ► guys tomorrow and he comes back the next day and he's just like in street clothes

00:24:26 ◼   ► and he had like a box and he was it was like a he'd been brought everything we

00:24:32 ◼   ► didn't have to do anything he just had like a cable box and he went out and

00:24:35 ◼   ► climbed up like the pole outside our apartment and next thing you know we had

00:24:40 ◼   ► a cable service that got us everything. We never paid anything for it.

00:24:46 ◼   ► We paid the guy like 200 bucks one time.

00:24:49 ◼   ► That would have been back then even. That would have been like at least 50 bucks a month.

00:24:53 ◼   ► Something like that.

00:24:54 ◼   ► I might be slightly misremembering. It might be that we maybe we had to...

00:24:59 ◼   ► I don't think we paid anything. I think we paid nothing. We just had it all.

00:25:03 ◼   ► That's how it worked back then.

00:25:04 ◼   ► I mean, if you had the right box with the,

00:25:06 ◼   ► I mean, it was all physical stuff.

00:25:08 ◼   ► I mean, I remember around that same time,

00:25:10 ◼   ► maybe a little earlier,

00:25:11 ◼   ► there was an old trick with the kind of cable boxes we had

00:25:13 ◼   ► for maybe Cablevision or whatever it was,

00:25:15 ◼   ► where you take a certain kind of cardboard,

00:25:18 ◼   ► there was a certain thickness,

00:25:19 ◼   ► and you fold it on the end about certain amount,

00:25:23 ◼   ► like a half an inch,

00:25:24 ◼   ► and you slide it into the top of the cable box

00:25:27 ◼   ► in the little crack, right?

00:25:29 ◼   ► The little, you know, and you pull it back,

00:25:31 ◼   ► Suddenly you get all the smoker channels you get everything really? Yeah

00:25:35 ◼   ► Yeah, basically admit you get Showtime HBS Cinemax and whatever the other one was yeah movie channel. We got everything we got pay-per-view

00:25:42 ◼   ► Kidding. No, we got because I remember I used to be into boxing, you know, not like seriously, but like it was expensive

00:25:49 ◼   ► Those things are expensive. Yeah, like Tyson it was like, you know in the 90s and Tyson was still fighting

00:25:53 ◼   ► I'm the one I remember specifically we even you know, we used to invite people over because you know

00:25:59 ◼   ► you couldn't watch those things without you know without paying but we I remember

00:26:02 ◼   ► the one remember the one it was crazy it was like boxing was like pro wrestling

00:26:05 ◼   ► back then it was the one where the fan man it was an outdoor fight and the guy

00:26:10 ◼   ► on a parachute came into the ring in the middle of the fight remember that I know

00:26:14 ◼   ► I don't remember that my god this is this like really happened like in the

00:26:17 ◼   ► middle of a Mike Tyson heavyweight bout this guy named fan man I don't know

00:26:22 ◼   ► where his name came from but he had like a parasail and he like came into the

00:26:27 ◼   ► ring and had like stop the fight and beat this guy up and get him out before

00:26:30 ◼   ► they resume the fight

00:26:32 ◼   ► Riddick Bowe vs Evander Holyfield. It wasn't Tyson, Holyfield. Look at that.

00:26:37 ◼   ► Wow. That was real and I had that we got that for free. He passed in 2002.

00:26:43 ◼   ► Sorry to say. Oh that's just fan man passed. I didn't know that. RIP fan man. It wasn't that many years after it

00:26:49 ◼   ► happened. It was probably like what 95? 96.

00:26:54 ◼   ► He's a parachute and paraglider pilot from Henderson, Nevada known for his appearances.

00:26:59 ◼   ► His most famous appearance was the November 6, 1993 boxing match between Evander Holyfield and Riddick Bowe at Caesars Palace.

00:27:05 ◼   ► Fan made headlines when he used his powered paraglider to fly into the arena, eventually crashing into the ring.

00:27:11 ◼   ► Damn. Oh man.

00:27:14 ◼   ► Dogs chasing cats.

00:27:16 ◼   ► These dogs chasing cats. You gotta fix. The thing is, the cone that's standing up looks like it's fine.

00:27:22 ◼   ► It seems like he would work on the 12-foot cone that have fallen over, but you know,

00:27:27 ◼   ► I'm not an Xfinity mechanic.

00:27:31 ◼   ► I want to take a break and I'm going to thank our first sponsor.

00:27:34 ◼   ► These guys are great.

00:27:36 ◼   ► Neid, these are our friends at Neid.

00:27:38 ◼   ► Neid is a refined retailer and lifestyle magazine for men.

00:27:43 ◼   ► Each month, Neid sources and curates a selection of exclusive products from brands around the

00:27:48 ◼   ► world and they're presented in a monthly editorial, a lot like what you'd expect in any

00:27:52 ◼   ► contemporary men's magazine. They shoot all their own photos, they hire

00:27:56 ◼   ► independent photographers, so there's a lot of a lot of independent

00:27:59 ◼   ► photographers who are making good money from this too. They just celebrated their

00:28:04 ◼   ► first anniversary on November 5th. Now as we record that's just yesterday

00:28:08 ◼   ► literally I mean this is we're talking right on the anniversary and so they're

00:28:13 ◼   ► launching to celebrate that a full redesign introducing an all-exclusive

00:28:18 ◼   ► all limited edition collection with their favorite brands from the whole past year.

00:28:24 ◼   ► And they've also launched a new concept called Essentials, E-Essentials, where they're offering

00:28:30 ◼   ► ongoing ever-changing collections for men's everyday staple items, stuff you need to,

00:28:35 ◼   ► you know, like grooming products and stuff like that, coffee, stuff that you want to,

00:28:40 ◼   ► you know, keep coming in on a regular basis.

00:28:43 ◼   ► They've more than doubled their return window for stuff that you want to send back.

00:28:47 ◼   ► launched favoriting of products which is makes it sort of like a private need

00:28:52 ◼   ► specific version of Pinterest for the things that you like and best of all

00:28:58 ◼   ► this is very important for my audience they've just launched shipping to Canada

00:29:04 ◼   ► so in celebration here's what they've got talk show listeners now this is the

00:29:10 ◼   ► thing with me need is they're sort of like a lean and mean organization and

00:29:15 ◼   ► and I've heard him do the same thing on other shows like ATP.

00:29:17 ◼   ► They don't have any kind of special coupon code or anything like that.

00:29:20 ◼   ► You just sign up.

00:29:24 ◼   ► You go to neededition.com, I believe is the URL.

00:29:31 ◼   ► That's where you go to find out more and sign up.

00:29:33 ◼   ► Need edition, not a edition like math, like edition, like it's an edition of the magazine.

00:29:40 ◼   ► Go to neededition.com and that's where you sign up for this thing.

00:29:43 ◼   ► But here's what you can do as a listener of the show.

00:29:45 ◼   ► After you sign up and you buy anything, just shoot them an email at hello@neededition.com.

00:29:51 ◼   ► And in the subject line, put "First Anniversary."

00:29:55 ◼   ► And what they'll do is they'll write back to you.

00:29:58 ◼   ► They'll probably say something witty.

00:30:00 ◼   ► But then they'll look for your email address and their orders and they're going to throw

00:30:03 ◼   ► in a whole bunch of extras, field notes, t-shirts, socks.

00:30:10 ◼   ► I just got email from Matt at Neat Edition that they just got in literally like yesterday

00:30:16 ◼   ► these new Ebbets Field hats.

00:30:18 ◼   ► They're gray wool, really cool baseball caps with the Neat Edition logo, navy wool, really,

00:30:24 ◼   ► really nice stuff, brown leather adjustable strap.

00:30:27 ◼   ► Like these are like $50 baseball caps.

00:30:30 ◼   ► They're going to first five, 10 orders that come in, they're going to just throw those

00:30:33 ◼   ► hats in there.

00:30:35 ◼   ► Everybody though who orders and you send them an email at hello@neatedition with first anniversary

00:30:39 ◼   ► in the subject line you'll get free stuff and all of those people everybody

00:30:45 ◼   ► who does that and sends them that email they also they're gonna add those people

00:30:50 ◼   ► to receive 25% off everything for the next three months that's huge 25% off so

00:30:57 ◼   ► there's a lot of percent big percent that's a great organization it's a great

00:31:01 ◼   ► service and that I mean it's amazing what he's done with that in one year

00:31:04 ◼   ► they are really amazing I think it's one of those things too where it's it's it's

00:31:09 ◼   ► It's not like, oh, it launched and it got huge immediately.

00:31:12 ◼   ► But I think it's one of those things that

00:31:14 ◼   ► could be huge pretty soon.

00:31:16 ◼   ► Because it's a very, very cool service.

00:31:17 ◼   ► Because it just works for a certain kind of brain.

00:31:20 ◼   ► My brain needs exactly that help.

00:31:21 ◼   ► I don't want to see 11 different things that I could get.

00:31:25 ◼   ► 11 different shirts or 50 different shirts.

00:31:27 ◼   ► Show me this cool thing.

00:31:28 ◼   ► It's very well curated.

00:31:30 ◼   ► That's exactly the same here.

00:31:32 ◼   ► I can't make decisions.

00:31:34 ◼   ► I don't want to see 13 different shirts.

00:31:36 ◼   ► Just show me one.

00:31:38 ◼   ► and then I'll give it a thumbs up or thumbs down.

00:31:40 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:31:41 ◼   ► - So my thanks to them.

00:31:44 ◼   ► No dogs, no cats at Neat Edition.

00:31:47 ◼   ► I don't believe.

00:31:48 ◼   ► - My goodness.

00:31:50 ◼   ► I've got, are you a Levi's 501 guy?

00:31:54 ◼   ► - I am.

00:31:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, me too.

00:31:55 ◼   ► So I've got four pairs of Levi's 501s

00:31:57 ◼   ► that look like they fell off a hobo.

00:31:59 ◼   ► And I have exactly one pair of pants that fits me.

00:32:01 ◼   ► And they're from Neat.

00:32:02 ◼   ► I got one pair of jeans that fits me.

00:32:04 ◼   ► It makes me realize what pants that fit feel like.

00:32:07 ◼   ► So don't wear them too much because they're a little bit jarring.

00:32:10 ◼   ► I have bones to pick with.

00:32:12 ◼   ► I do wear Levi's 501.

00:32:13 ◼   ► And a couple years ago, I tried something else.

00:32:15 ◼   ► I think I got something.

00:32:16 ◼   ► I went to the-- got them from the Gap or something.

00:32:18 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:32:19 ◼   ► But then they didn't work out either.

00:32:20 ◼   ► But my problem with them is they're-- what I want

00:32:23 ◼   ► is I just want the exact same jeans over and over again.

00:32:26 ◼   ► And you can't do that.

00:32:27 ◼   ► They're always changing the name of the denim-- they've

00:32:33 ◼   ► got 40 different names and styles of denim.

00:32:35 ◼   ► I just want--

00:32:36 ◼   ► to go to the Levi's site is completely overwhelming. I was going to try the same thing. I was like,

00:32:40 ◼   ► "Okay, I'm going to find exactly this one, get this SKU, buy five of them, and then rotate

00:32:45 ◼   ► them for the next five years."

00:32:46 ◼   ► Yeah, I tried to do that. The ones I bought last time aren't there anymore. I bought them,

00:32:52 ◼   ► and also the sizes are different. I bought a new pair with the exact ... They even print

00:32:58 ◼   ► the size right on the patch on the back.

00:32:59 ◼   ► Now, you've got to ... I learned this from a female friend of mine in college. He's like,

00:33:03 ◼   ► Whenever I go try on anything in a store, especially if it's not like super

00:33:07 ◼   ► expensive, if it's anything that's like, like, you know, anything that's not

00:33:11 ◼   ► basically like evening wear, take four into the dressing room and try them on in

00:33:16 ◼   ► the same size. And I'm like, you are high.

00:33:18 ◼   ► There's absolutely no difference.

00:33:19 ◼   ► And there's, there totally is a difference.

00:33:21 ◼   ► And look no further.

00:33:22 ◼   ► Go grab after, after the program, go grab a bunch of pairs of five Oh ones and look

00:33:25 ◼   ► what country they're made in.

00:33:26 ◼   ► So if you're wondering why, I mean, I've got some that are from Mexico.

00:33:30 ◼   ► I've got some that are from like Central America.

00:33:34 ◼   ► I mean just to say that it isn't like there's like this one lady in San Francisco that's

00:33:39 ◼   ► making all these jeans.

00:33:40 ◼   ► There's a lot of variation.

00:33:41 ◼   ► I bet the cotton is different in a lot of them.

00:33:43 ◼   ► You got to try them on.

00:33:45 ◼   ► Yeah, but that's like what I did.

00:33:48 ◼   ► I think you're exactly right but I hate it because that's not what I want to do.

00:33:52 ◼   ► The whole point of knowing my size and knowing that I want Levi's model 501 is I want to

00:33:56 ◼   ► just order them online.

00:33:58 ◼   ► My clothes like other people buy beer or I just I'll just go like American Apparel white t-shirts boom

00:34:03 ◼   ► Send me a pack of those

00:34:04 ◼   ► But that's how I want it to be almost like a paper towel dispenser at my kids elementary school

00:34:10 ◼   ► I want it to be so straightforward

00:34:11 ◼   ► I buy exactly the same socks exactly the same shirts and then when they when they change for some reason you're like

00:34:17 ◼   ► Oh this got really this got a little too silky. It seems really weird. I feel really undermined by the brand. Yeah, I

00:34:24 ◼   ► I feel like Steve Jobs sort of had it right where he where you know everybody thought it was sort of eccentric

00:34:28 ◼   ► But where he was like, this is it this I bought he had that Japanese designer

00:34:32 ◼   ► I give him like 75 of those black shirts and that was it. I

00:34:36 ◼   ► Think it's the smartest thing in the world

00:34:38 ◼   ► I mean

00:34:38 ◼   ► You just don't want to have to you shouldn't have to think about that stuff

00:34:42 ◼   ► And if you're the problem is once you become a little eclectic

00:34:44 ◼   ► Then you kind of got to become really eclectic because you can't have like fucking clown shoes that you wear every day

00:34:50 ◼   ► You've got to have some variation, you know, you have your driving mock. He was

00:34:53 ◼   ► Because the smart part was getting like 75 of them at once rather than say just get the

00:34:58 ◼   ► 10 that you need and then as they wear out you'll get more because you can't trust that

00:35:03 ◼   ► they're going to be there to get more.

00:35:05 ◼   ► You really got to load up.

00:35:06 ◼   ► Also good reason to maintain your weight as you get older.

00:35:08 ◼   ► It is.

00:35:09 ◼   ► I think it's good motivation.

00:35:10 ◼   ► Good motivation.

00:35:11 ◼   ► A real-time follow-up.

00:35:12 ◼   ► The story of Parachutist James Miller aka fan man is tragic.

00:35:19 ◼   ► He took his own life.

00:35:20 ◼   ► He was a young man.

00:35:21 ◼   ► Took his own life.

00:35:22 ◼   ► unusual that he would pass away at that. Yeah. That's well that's. But you know he had his

00:35:29 ◼   ► moment you know. I suppose it's not surprising that the guy who parachuted

00:35:33 ◼   ► live into a heavyweight title fight at Caesars Palace had had some mental

00:35:39 ◼   ► health issues and I don't even mean to make fun of it. I don't know. You know I'm

00:35:42 ◼   ► not you know what he did in the fight was funny him taking his life is is

00:35:46 ◼   ► tragic but it's I suppose it's not that surprising. Did you ever read up on rock and

00:35:49 ◼   ► No. You know about him? No. The Rainbow Wig John 3 16 guy? Oh yeah yeah. As a sports fan you should know he's

00:35:58 ◼   ► he's he's had a lot of balls in the air over the years. Is he still around? I don't remember I

00:36:04 ◼   ► think you know it started as well but it's funny because in my head I think what are the two of the

00:36:08 ◼   ► two characters you remember from early adulthood like that would be parodied on The Simpsons like

00:36:14 ◼   ► at a sporting event. Well there's the guy in the clown wig and there's the guy who holds up to John

00:36:19 ◼   ► 316 sign and the first amazing thing is that that was the same guy he changed

00:36:23 ◼   ► tack at one point he went from rainbow wig to John 316 so that was him it's the

00:36:28 ◼   ► same guy but I think at some point it ended again so it's making this really

00:36:33 ◼   ► sad I think it ended up with some kind of hostage situation at some point and

00:36:38 ◼   ► he you know got got taken away so for those of you who don't know this guy

00:36:44 ◼   ► What was his name? I remember rock and roll and rainbow

00:36:48 ◼   ► Roland Stewart there he is. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah Roland Stewart. How do you spell Roland? Send it on the road. LL Ian

00:36:57 ◼   ► Stewart he was a guy who would

00:37:01 ◼   ► He would he would obtain

00:37:05 ◼   ► tickets

00:37:07 ◼   ► For sporting events that were optimally placed so that he would be on TV

00:37:11 ◼   ► Like like, you know, he was he knew which tickets to buy that would be within the camera angle that you know

00:37:18 ◼   ► It'd be frequent and and he what did he do first the rainbow wig?

00:37:22 ◼   ► Yeah started out with the rainbow bit women, but it's sort of like Marlin's guy

00:37:25 ◼   ► We were like tell me more about this guy

00:37:27 ◼   ► Like how is it?

00:37:28 ◼   ► He's always

00:37:29 ◼   ► Where he's at so many games in so many places and he's always he always ends up on camera and then of course

00:37:34 ◼   ► enough to became a bit started out with the rainbow afro wig and

00:37:38 ◼   ► then later on he went to the John 3 16. All right John then he used to I remember

00:37:43 ◼   ► he don't it was always football game I remember he probably did everything but

00:37:46 ◼   ► I remember seeing him on football games and he would he must have had a lot of

00:37:51 ◼   ► money because you know that's there were expensive seats near the front and he

00:37:55 ◼   ► had to travel a lot because it wasn't like oh he was a guy in Kansas City and

00:38:00 ◼   ► he was always at Kansas City Chiefs games no he was like every he was like

00:38:03 ◼   ► at the the game of the week every week wherever it was. It says Wikipedia his

00:38:08 ◼   ► His first major appearance was at the 1977 NBA Finals.

00:38:12 ◼   ► By the time of the 1979 MLB All-Star Game,

00:38:14 ◼   ► broadcasters actively tried to avoid showing him.

00:38:17 ◼   ► Then you get him here behind the goal posts,

00:38:19 ◼   ► Olympic medal stands, Augusta National Golf Club,

00:38:21 ◼   ► 1982 Indianapolis 500, behind the pits of Gordon Johncock.

00:38:25 ◼   ► And eventually he got commercials and stuff, but yeah.

00:38:28 ◼   ► - I'm surprised that he got in at Augusta.

00:38:31 ◼   ► 'Cause Augusta seems like the type of place where--

00:38:34 ◼   ► - Is that the Masters?

00:38:35 ◼   ► Is that where the Masters is? - Yeah, that's the Masters.

00:38:36 ◼   ► wouldn't hesitate to you know take a guy out maybe he had a green jacket like a

00:38:40 ◼   ► green blazer and a rainbow wig so yeah like that he's like it was like the old

00:38:49 ◼   ► time predecessor to this year's Marlins man who I have to admit I got I got very

00:38:55 ◼   ► into this year with did you watch any of the baseball he know I did yeah it was

00:39:02 ◼   ► it was absolutely fascinating and so this guy and I know this whole backstory

00:39:05 ◼   ► story behind this and he like but it was pretty amazing because I can't remember where it started out

00:39:09 ◼   ► But it was for some reason

00:39:11 ◼   ► I think obviously it was most striking in the Kansas the games that were in Kansas City because it's a complete solid

00:39:16 ◼   ► Cerulean sea of blue. I mean blue

00:39:20 ◼   ► I mean, it's just solid blue and then this one guy in a traffic cone orange

00:39:25 ◼   ► Jersey that says Marlins on it and he is right effing behind home plate

00:39:30 ◼   ► I mean he's right there and he does this great thing

00:39:32 ◼   ► Well, right when the pitcher starting to throw he stands up so you can see his Marlin's Jersey

00:39:38 ◼   ► He I don't know what his problem is seemed to me like he couldn't stand still like I I am a baseball fan

00:39:43 ◼   ► So I was mostly watching the maybe he had piles. I

00:39:45 ◼   ► Was car bunkular he didn't seem to be paying attention to the game on a regular basis at times

00:39:52 ◼   ► He was but there were he would chat up his seat mates nearby something. Yeah. Yeah

00:39:58 ◼   ► He you know again, like you said it was he was quite incongruous in the games in Kansas City and hats off to the people

00:40:05 ◼   ► of Kansas City for their their can like I don't know how many thousand forty five fifty thousand people fit in that stadium and I would

00:40:11 ◼   ► say

00:40:12 ◼   ► 49,999 and then were wearing Royals blue

00:40:16 ◼   ► It was an impressive sight

00:40:18 ◼   ► No, I think that spirit too. I mean that was that was a great series and they they fought hard and those fans really man

00:40:25 ◼   ► and they lit that place up.

00:40:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's great.

00:40:28 ◼   ► But this one guy wearing a bright, flaming orange

00:40:32 ◼   ► Marlin's jacket and hat really stuck out.

00:40:35 ◼   ► And he literally, right behind home plate,

00:40:37 ◼   ► I mean like, maybe like out of the 45,000 seats,

00:40:41 ◼   ► like he was always in maybe one of the two seats

00:40:44 ◼   ► that he would be most visible behind the batter.

00:40:46 ◼   ► Like there's only like, there's one on the left

00:40:48 ◼   ► and one on the right where you're that visible.

00:40:50 ◼   ► And he was in that seat all the time.

00:40:52 ◼   ► I don't understand, how can you guarantee,

00:40:54 ◼   ► How can you buy that? I don't know. I, I, somebody,

00:40:56 ◼   ► I think Jason Snell sent me an article about this and I looked at it briefly.

00:40:59 ◼   ► I think he's a, like a medical professional,

00:41:01 ◼   ► like some kind of a dentist and like he gets these tickets somehow. But I mean,

00:41:06 ◼   ► if you think about all the work that goes into that, it was in,

00:41:09 ◼   ► it was in San Francisco too. Right. Let's be clear.

00:41:13 ◼   ► He was in San Francisco for a few games.

00:41:16 ◼   ► Then he went to Kansas for a few games and so forth and came back. It's,

00:41:21 ◼   ► I mean, it's, it's a real dedication. Yeah.

00:41:24 ◼   ► Yeah, and those are I you know and who knows if like a thousand dollars. Oh, I think for the World Series

00:41:30 ◼   ► It was a lot more I went on StubHub because I got curious and I was like, well, what would it cost and and like

00:41:35 ◼   ► the seats in

00:41:37 ◼   ► The what's the is it AT&T what's the the Giants that's what it is this week. Yeah. Yeah

00:41:44 ◼   ► Well, but the Giants ballpark AT&T Park. Yeah. Yeah, I'm formerly SBC formerly Pac Bell

00:41:53 ◼   ► It the ones that are that close right behind home plate were thousands of dollars on StubHub and it's like everything on StubHub

00:42:00 ◼   ► I mean, it's you know, it's it's a it's a negotiating thing. It's not public a kind of gray market

00:42:06 ◼   ► You know like eBay for tickets or something. Yeah. Yeah, it's a mate. You've never used it. It's amazing. It's truly amazing

00:42:11 ◼   ► It's a great great service

00:42:13 ◼   ► where you can resell tickets and they automate it and they

00:42:18 ◼   ► They totally you can you know, like they stand behind every ticket that they sell so you don't feel like you're it's not like eBay

00:42:24 ◼   ► like StubHub because you know like with eBay if somebody rips you off you you they have like a mediation but

00:42:30 ◼   ► StubHub sort of stands behind it. It's like StubHub buys the ticket from the person and then you're buying the ticket from StubHub

00:42:38 ◼   ► Oh my gosh, that's fantastic

00:42:40 ◼   ► So really what you would hope eBay what PayPal originally kind of seemed like an S almost escrow

00:42:45 ◼   ► But like really hands-on they take it and make sure yeah, and they and they have

00:42:50 ◼   ► offices physical retail establishments and a lot of I

00:42:55 ◼   ► Lot of major cities most major cities. So if you buy tickets at the last minute, you can go pick them up

00:43:02 ◼   ► like I I bought tickets for a

00:43:05 ◼   ► Yankees game in in August for the it was Derek Jeter day and I didn't know if we're gonna be a go and I

00:43:11 ◼   ► bought them the day before and

00:43:15 ◼   ► It was so easy. I'd we were gonna be in in New York anyway

00:43:19 ◼   ► This is why I bought the tickets on for a thing on Saturday

00:43:22 ◼   ► so we're staying over and

00:43:25 ◼   ► Just there's a place in Midtown. You just go in and you show them your ID and

00:43:29 ◼   ► Then they just handed me an envelope with the tickets. That's amazing

00:43:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I had bought them like, you know a day before but then I have to wait

00:43:39 ◼   ► I mean, it's a lot so that certainly must have been a lot of dough

00:43:41 ◼   ► I guess maybe he got them for free or discounted or something, but it's a lot of dedication

00:43:46 ◼   ► No, there's no way he had to buy them out

00:43:48 ◼   ► But it's just crazy because somebody has that seat if there's like a season ticket holder and you're like a fan of the Giants

00:43:54 ◼   ► Why would you give up that great seat unless he really made an offer you couldn't refuse?

00:43:57 ◼   ► And it's just so funny because it's for his purposes

00:44:02 ◼   ► It's not just like he wants a good seat. He wants to be he clearly wants to be on TV

00:44:07 ◼   ► There's only like three or four seats

00:44:09 ◼   ► They're into pound for pound. He's on screen more than anybody, but maybe the pitcher and the catcher

00:44:15 ◼   ► Yeah, you know what? I mean if you think about it

00:44:18 ◼   ► I mean that guy is except for occasionally like he might be

00:44:20 ◼   ► Obscured by the umpire for a second

00:44:23 ◼   ► But he seems to have a really good sense of like where to be to make sure he's on camera

00:44:26 ◼   ► Yeah, definitely seems like it

00:44:28 ◼   ► You know and it's and it makes a big like even being in the front row makes such a big for his purposes makes such

00:44:34 ◼   ► A big difference compared to being in the second row. Yeah

00:44:38 ◼   ► It's like something from a different age though

00:44:40 ◼   ► Cuz if you think about guys like the like the parasailing guy or rock and rollin or Marlin sky

00:44:44 ◼   ► I mean, you know, it used to be really hard to be famous

00:44:47 ◼   ► Yeah, you know it took a took a lot of work to be famous

00:44:50 ◼   ► So you you know you had to have a publisher for a book you had to have an agent to like try and even like

00:44:56 ◼   ► Beg to get you on TV. It's just like today

00:44:59 ◼   ► there's there's so many more avenues for becoming slightly famous that I kind of admire the

00:45:04 ◼   ► The grunt work, you know on the ground

00:45:08 ◼   ► A medical professional who decides to jet between cities to be on TV in the background

00:45:13 ◼   ► It's it's wacky world, you know the the I'm sure you know this because you've got got into him too

00:45:20 ◼   ► That the Royals tried to buy him out of those seats. Are you kidding? You didn't notice there?

00:45:24 ◼   ► The after the first game the Kansas City Royals or you know, like the the organization approached him and said, you know

00:45:32 ◼   ► We we you know, we'd like you to move

00:45:36 ◼   ► We will offer you will trade you for this these tickets you already had for this seat

00:45:40 ◼   ► we'll give you a luxury box or you know a seat in one of the luxury boxes and

00:45:43 ◼   ► You know, you'll get the full. I don't know, you know food and beverage whatever

00:45:49 ◼   ► Please please give up your seat and he was like now, you know, they and he you know declined because his whole goal

00:45:56 ◼   ► You know, that was the whole point. I don't I think that I don't think they quite understood the psychology of the guy that the psychopath

00:46:03 ◼   ► You know that lucky he is lucky to end up floating in whatever. I guess the Kansas City River

00:46:07 ◼   ► That's that's I could see them getting pretty miffed about that

00:46:10 ◼   ► You think about what that ad space costs for all those?

00:46:13 ◼   ► You know the ads that are green screen back there and all the kind of as they say today optics of like how you present

00:46:20 ◼   ► You know your brand it must have been super annoying to them

00:46:24 ◼   ► Yeah, it makes me wonder how many people out there are gonna be inspired by the guy and then if it's gonna start like a

00:46:29 ◼   ► resurgence in

00:46:31 ◼   ► You know, yeah

00:46:33 ◼   ► What would you call it?

00:46:35 ◼   ► Stick out, you know, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, everybody needs a project

00:46:40 ◼   ► It's important to stay busy, you know as you get older

00:46:43 ◼   ► But it's like you never really notice the people there are always people behind home plate or behind the end zone

00:46:49 ◼   ► You know, there's always fans in the front row and you just never notice them really

00:46:52 ◼   ► I mean, I guess every once in a while you see Jack Nicholson that at Lakers game or something like that

00:46:56 ◼   ► we show it but you know, you just don't notice the fans until they're

00:47:01 ◼   ► Wearing bright orange Marlin. I had an uneasy moment in one game. It made me feel really old

00:47:07 ◼   ► There was this I'm guessing probably the greatest dad in the world that had brought his kids to the game in Kansas City

00:47:13 ◼   ► But there was this probably like 11 year old girl

00:47:15 ◼   ► Sitting in like the fifth row and I was like man, it's like 11 15

00:47:19 ◼   ► She's she's not pretty late forget her age. I was hoping the game would end cuz you know as a school night

00:47:25 ◼   ► You don't think about it like take your dad taking you the world series

00:47:30 ◼   ► He become an old guy and start thinking about bedtime

00:47:32 ◼   ► What she has a math test tomorrow exactly exactly is your kid still a night owl? Yeah, he is

00:47:40 ◼   ► He's a natural born and as soon as Saturday hits, you know, he's not you know school starts at 8 a.m. You know, Monday Tuesday

00:47:48 ◼   ► You know right through Friday and then soon as Saturday comes he sleeps till noon. No kidding

00:47:54 ◼   ► Wow

00:47:56 ◼   ► Man, I hate that daylight savings time. I can jump on this bandwagon, but man

00:48:01 ◼   ► I'm so relieved when that ends it makes our life so much easier. I

00:48:04 ◼   ► Couldn't disagree more. No, you don't like the savings time. Uh

00:48:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't like that. It's like it's trouble

00:48:13 ◼   ► It's very hard to get my kid to go to sleep when it's like even 830 and it's still light outside now

00:48:18 ◼   ► You're saying you're pro daylight savings time. You like the extra daylight at night?

00:48:21 ◼   ► I do hold on but that's I mean

00:48:23 ◼   ► Let's thank a sponsor and we'll go with it because that was the whole thing I wanted

00:48:27 ◼   ► to talk about.

00:48:28 ◼   ► I'd love to go head to head on this.

00:48:29 ◼   ► I think this is something America needs to hear.

00:48:31 ◼   ► People have very strong feelings about this, Jon.

00:48:34 ◼   ► Our second sponsor is our good friends at Warby Parker.

00:48:38 ◼   ► You guys know Warby Parker.

00:48:40 ◼   ► That's the independent eyeglass eyewear company that was founded simply on the basis that

00:48:47 ◼   ► buying eyeglasses should not cost an arm and the like.

00:48:51 ◼   ► I shouldn't have to pay 300 bucks just for a regular pair of glasses.

00:48:55 ◼   ► And like we were talking about with the Levi's before, you ought to be able to buy them right

00:48:58 ◼   ► there online and just have it be easy and not have to go into a stupid store and waste

00:49:03 ◼   ► a whole day.

00:49:06 ◼   ► Or be park, if you haven't heard, what you do is you go to their website.

00:49:09 ◼   ► They have a whole bunch of glasses to choose from.

00:49:11 ◼   ► You pick a bunch that you like.

00:49:13 ◼   ► Pick different ones.

00:49:14 ◼   ► Then they send them to your house for free, just empty without, you know, any kind of

00:49:18 ◼   ► prescription lens in them or whatever.

00:49:20 ◼   ► you can try them on see if you like them you know see if there's something stupid

00:49:24 ◼   ► on the sides that you didn't notice when you were looking at him straight on you

00:49:29 ◼   ► know I mean that's like you're making fun of me no I'm a sneaky Pete's I loved

00:49:35 ◼   ► your sneaky Pete's but I'm saying I'm the type of person where I would I would

00:49:39 ◼   ► ordinarily think I'm never gonna buy eyeglasses online because I have to see

00:49:43 ◼   ► them in person I cannot judge this just by pictures well that you don't have to

00:49:47 ◼   ► do that. You judge them online looking at the pictures just to have them sent to your

00:49:51 ◼   ► house then you get five of them and you can actually sit there and examine them in your

00:49:55 ◼   ► own hands. You pick the one you like and then boom a couple days later in they come with

00:50:02 ◼   ► your prescription lenses in place. They also, they do a great great thing and here's the

00:50:12 ◼   ► They start at just 95 bucks you go to Warby Parker calm

00:50:15 ◼   ► And they start at 95 bucks. They have showrooms in some cities. I think New York has it to San Francisco

00:50:21 ◼   ► I have one. I don't I don't I don't know of that. I've done the home try on several times. It's it's amazing home

00:50:28 ◼   ► Try on you should never know. That's the thing. I remember one time million years ago

00:50:31 ◼   ► I went to well

00:50:32 ◼   ► I won't say the name but it was a site where you could go and like upload a picture of yourself and try the glasses on

00:50:37 ◼   ► online and then I got the glasses and they're like clown glasses had no idea of the actual

00:50:41 ◼   ► like you know you can't tell until you put them on your actual stupid face.

00:50:45 ◼   ► All right there's just no way so here's the other thing though they for every pair of glasses that

00:50:52 ◼   ► they sell they distribute a pair to someone need around the world they've partnered with

00:50:58 ◼   ► non-profits there's one called vision spring but that's it 15 percent of the world population a

00:51:05 ◼   ► billion people around the world lack access to prescription glasses. So if anybody out

00:51:12 ◼   ► there who has bad vision, and my uncorrected vision is at this point in my life absolutely

00:51:18 ◼   ► horrible. Like I would be, I don't even know if I could cross the street. If you think

00:51:23 ◼   ► about what that would be like not to have glasses, I mean I don't know how I would even

00:51:28 ◼   ► function. I mean the only thing I can see about six inches in front of my face uncorrected.

00:51:33 ◼   ► So think about the fact that there's a billion people worldwide who don't have access to

00:51:36 ◼   ► glasses.

00:51:37 ◼   ► And you know, like if you were a kid, how you couldn't even see, how are you going to

00:51:40 ◼   ► learn anything?

00:51:41 ◼   ► So they're doing a great thing.

00:51:43 ◼   ► Every time they sell a pair of glasses, they send one to people in need.

00:51:46 ◼   ► I think that's a huge part of it.

00:51:48 ◼   ► And it doesn't mean, you know, the prices aren't jacked up.

00:51:50 ◼   ► It's not like you're paying double.

00:51:51 ◼   ► You're paying less than you would pay at a typical eyeglass place.

00:51:58 ◼   ► All of their glasses include anti-reflective, anti-glare coating.

00:52:01 ◼   ► There's no additional cost for that, no upsell on stuff like that.

00:52:04 ◼   ► Everything comes with a really nice case, cleaning cloth, everything you want, stuff

00:52:09 ◼   ► like that.

00:52:10 ◼   ► Really cool kit.

00:52:11 ◼   ► It's great stuff.

00:52:12 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:52:13 ◼   ► I've lost track now of how many Warby Parker glasses we've got here in the Gruber household.

00:52:18 ◼   ► Sunglasses, everything you might want.

00:52:22 ◼   ► And here's the thing.

00:52:23 ◼   ► This is new.

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00:52:25 ◼   ► I think it's new.

00:52:26 ◼   ► Progressive lenses starting at $295 including the frames.

00:52:29 ◼   ► progressives this is for my demographic now are

00:52:33 ◼   ► That's where you have a distant prescription at the top of the lens

00:52:37 ◼   ► I've got that and a transition to a reading lens near the lenses bottom

00:52:42 ◼   ► And it's there's not like a hard line in between them that that says bifocal. It's just I don't know

00:52:47 ◼   ► I don't know how they do it. They call it a digital freeform lens, which is the most advanced progressive technology

00:52:55 ◼   ► It's applied digitally with a computer. So the design is more precise than traditional models of progressives

00:53:01 ◼   ► See they got that that's that's where I'm at in my life with the glasses so

00:53:08 ◼   ► Anyway, here's where you go to find out more go to warby Parker comm slash the talk show

00:53:14 ◼   ► Warby Parker comm slash the talk show

00:53:19 ◼   ► and my thanks to him if you need glasses, you need sunglasses just go check them out because

00:53:24 ◼   ► you get to and what are they going to do here there you use that URL and you get

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00:53:34 ◼   ► alright daylight savings time look at you don't do a quick check in it have you

00:53:39 ◼   ► checked on your cable

00:53:41 ◼   ► see just curious if the camera fix the cone

00:53:44 ◼   ► hold on let me see

00:53:49 ◼   ► If this actually works it's gonna be mind blowing.

00:53:54 ◼   ► I didn't get a text from him so I'm not obvious.

00:53:56 ◼   ► It's a one time text so you're only gonna get it if you're plugged in.

00:54:00 ◼   ► You know what though, I was smart enough not to do it on the machine where I was recording

00:54:07 ◼   ► our call on.

00:54:09 ◼   ► But it looks like it is working.

00:54:13 ◼   ► Hey Mazel Tov.

00:54:15 ◼   ► No text from him though.

00:54:17 ◼   ► Maybe they're not.

00:54:18 ◼   ► to keep slugging along this way yeah well we can keep going yeah I mean I

00:54:23 ◼   ► can't I say if it ain't broke don't fix it mm-hmm if the cone falls over and it's

00:54:29 ◼   ► not hurting anybody just leave it there yeah what's that dog ever catches that

00:54:33 ◼   ► cat all right so daylight savings time so you you're you're opposed to it and

00:54:46 ◼   ► because of the summer months where it packs the daylight at I see I feel like

00:54:51 ◼   ► we've got the whole thing backwards I feel like I could totally get behind

00:54:57 ◼   ► because we it's not even like a six month six month thing anymore I thought

00:55:00 ◼   ► it used to be been and I know they're always they changed everything around

00:55:03 ◼   ► it's real confusing it's very confusing and I don't think it starts later and

00:55:08 ◼   ► ends later now I know I know they changed it I believe so that it ends

00:55:12 ◼   ► after Halloween right on purpose to make it safer for kids which is great but

00:55:17 ◼   ► then I think it starts later - is that right I don't know I'm not quite sure

00:55:23 ◼   ► about that but I it but the but the fact is though that there's more of the year

00:55:30 ◼   ► that's daylight savings time than there is that standard time hmm right oh no I'm

00:55:37 ◼   ► sorry I take it back they moved it back it's so the next one 2014 it started

00:55:41 ◼   ► March 9th ends November 2nd. Wow, you're totally right December Wow, right

00:55:46 ◼   ► So it's really just it's just November

00:55:49 ◼   ► December so - yeah three three quarters of the year something like that. Yeah

00:55:55 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe it's like a one-third two-third type thing. Mm-hmm. No, I think you're right four months

00:56:00 ◼   ► Yeah, you're right and I can't help but think that it to me if they're gonna do something like that

00:56:05 ◼   ► it's backwards because it's

00:56:08 ◼   ► I'm amenable to the argument that when it's 8 45 at p.m. 8 45 and you're trying to put your kid to bed that and

00:56:16 ◼   ► It's enough daylight where you could be outside playing ball

00:56:19 ◼   ► That's a tough sell right like because now you feel like you're almost lying to your kid. You're you know

00:56:24 ◼   ► How can you say it's bedtime? You know that it does seem dishonest, right?

00:56:30 ◼   ► It's like you're saying it's bedtime and your kid hopefully hopefully your kid has a window in their bedroom

00:56:37 ◼   ► And they can look and see that it's daylight

00:56:40 ◼   ► It's you know, I understand that's a hard sell

00:56:42 ◼   ► but those are the months where I I wouldn't be opposed to to rejiggering it like in the

00:56:47 ◼   ► Around June, you know, it's a circle four months around June where it's longest and take an hour of daylight there

00:56:53 ◼   ► my problem is I just get so I

00:56:57 ◼   ► Don't want to throw the word depressed around because I don't I don't have like a clinical depression

00:57:02 ◼   ► But I do suffer a little blue. I get I would call it like a melancholy like like

00:57:07 ◼   ► Like this need right now this like today. I feel a little melancholy just because it's right now

00:57:14 ◼   ► It's it's a rainy day here in Philadelphia. It's probably why my my cable went out

00:57:17 ◼   ► It you know Comcast doesn't really hold up too much in the weather

00:57:23 ◼   ► That's a that's a lot to ask of hardware John

00:57:28 ◼   ► You know, that's true though. You remember cuz back when I did the show with Dan it really was the case

00:57:33 ◼   ► This was before the guy pulled out that rusty why thing, you know, why splitter? No, it's true

00:57:38 ◼   ► We're on rainy days when Dan and I would record the show years ago

00:57:41 ◼   ► He would always he could tell because it was like my it was like all broken up

00:57:46 ◼   ► Like the Skype audio was all busted up on a rain. It was very consistent that if it was raining my

00:57:51 ◼   ► Connection could not handle Skype. That seems crazy

00:57:54 ◼   ► That's

00:57:56 ◼   ► Fixed I think but it's but anyway, it's a rainy day here

00:57:59 ◼   ► No, it's like my wife gets home from work and it's dark and that's that's you know, it's no fun for me

00:58:04 ◼   ► It's certainly no fun for her but for people who have like an actual job you're coming home and it's in

00:58:08 ◼   ► After the time goes back right come on. It's dark at night. It's totally depressing

00:58:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I use when I used to when I used to work you've many many years ago at the the Philadelphia Inquirer

00:58:18 ◼   ► It was a type of place type of gig where it was

00:58:21 ◼   ► You know, you'd show up at 9 and you'd left at 5 everybody left at 5, you know, like 455

00:58:26 ◼   ► Everybody's putting coats on it was just that type of office. There was

00:58:29 ◼   ► Nothing in the department. I worked in there was nothing, you know, no reason to stay

00:58:34 ◼   ► And I remember leaving the one time was like I must have been like the first weekday

00:58:38 ◼   ► I guess the Monday after we set the clocks back and it was pitch black

00:58:42 ◼   ► It's just dark as night and you as you leave work at five. It just was very depressing. I think

00:58:49 ◼   ► Well, let me let me this is what a dummy I am. Let me ask you this. Why don't they just change?

00:58:55 ◼   ► I hear here's the thing it would seem really weird if they just change time and we said from now on

00:59:01 ◼   ► Like daylight savings time is what we're gonna have all the time, but it sounds like that's kind of what you're advocating for

00:59:06 ◼   ► It's like why don't you just change time so that we just we just toss in an hour here

00:59:10 ◼   ► We change this stuff around and now we we have light at night that that's kind of really what you're saying, right?

00:59:15 ◼   ► That is what I'm saying that makes it seem doubly crazy that we change it during the year that it's it's that going back and forth

00:59:22 ◼   ► So I would be nice if there was I mean, I know I can't do a lot with the rotation of the planet and the angles and stuff

00:59:26 ◼   ► But still, you know, I mean that that's the part that's weird is the is the changing part

00:59:31 ◼   ► I think I think you could make a case and I'm not a scientist John

00:59:34 ◼   ► I think you could make a case for saying we just need to permanently do this. This needs to be just time now. I

00:59:39 ◼   ► Had it and it's just it's such a kick in the teeth

00:59:44 ◼   ► I feel that when you've set it back in the fall that you know, like because you know the days were getting shorter

00:59:52 ◼   ► as October went on anyway. You can see, "Hey man, I remember when it was still light out

00:59:58 ◼   ► at six o'clock."

00:59:59 ◼   ► I really noticed it this year. It seemed like it happened fast.

01:00:02 ◼   ► I don't know. It did seem like that to me too. When I was a kid, it seemed like I was

01:00:08 ◼   ► ignorant and stuff like that. I didn't even know what time it was most of the time, I

01:00:13 ◼   ► guess. As an adult now though, and I feel like that sudden extra hour jump of darkness

01:00:19 ◼   ► At what should be a reasonable time of day not like what most people would still call the afternoon not the evening

01:00:25 ◼   ► It's just it's it. I don't know

01:00:28 ◼   ► I'd almost rather even I I

01:00:30 ◼   ► Would advocate switching to the daylight savings time year-round. I would just say let's just call that it set the clocks on that

01:00:38 ◼   ► I can't believe I've never heard of that before but that because that seems like the kind of

01:00:41 ◼   ► Whackadoodle campaign that I would have heard about by now and it kind of makes sense. Let's just get one guys here

01:00:47 ◼   ► Here's your slogan. Just pick one

01:00:49 ◼   ► That's the slogan. It does seem though, it seems like a hard hard thing for them to

01:00:54 ◼   ► ever get off the ground. So what's the what's the downside of permanent

01:00:57 ◼   ► daylight savings time? Because I have to tell you just in fairness I could get

01:01:00 ◼   ► behind your wackadoodle scheme as long as it's consistent. The hard part the

01:01:04 ◼   ► hard part is like I say like in the summertime I mean we just need an idea

01:01:08 ◼   ► and I understand the light changes like I say angles rotation but like there just

01:01:12 ◼   ► has to be some idea that if I'm I don't sound like I'm trying to do some kind of

01:01:15 ◼   ► social engineering trick on my kid to get her to go to bed at 2 p.m. or something like

01:01:19 ◼   ► that.

01:01:20 ◼   ► You just need to pick one.

01:01:21 ◼   ► Well, the downside whenever I get on my hobby horse about this, I hear from the morning

01:01:26 ◼   ► people, it's the morning people, is that all of a sudden now the morning people have, it's

01:01:31 ◼   ► pitch black and they always try it out.

01:01:34 ◼   ► It's always, and everybody always trots out the children, but then kids are waiting for

01:01:37 ◼   ► the school bus and it's pitch black at 7.15 in the morning or whatever and that's no good.

01:01:43 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:01:44 ◼   ► To me, and it's like, I think there's like a farming angle on it, but to me it's like,

01:01:49 ◼   ► well the farmer should just get up when the sun rises. Don't worry about what time it is.

01:01:53 ◼   ► I don't understand why are the farmers so time constrained? Do they need to get to AA?

01:01:58 ◼   ► Like why does it matter what time the sun is up? Is the grain store closing? Like,

01:02:03 ◼   ► I don't understand exactly how that, you know what I'm saying? It only makes sense if there's

01:02:07 ◼   ► other stuff the farmers have to do as well as work in a field. Otherwise the clocks don't mean

01:02:12 ◼   ► Fuck all you just go work in your goddamn field whatever you need to it

01:02:15 ◼   ► Isn't like you look you look you pull out your pocket watch and go Oh deary me

01:02:19 ◼   ► It's for I better start wrapping up now get back to work farm farm

01:02:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't I don't know what the deal is with that and I did here now

01:02:27 ◼   ► You know and and just right here in my own household, you know as I endlessly bitched about the daylight savings time

01:02:34 ◼   ► rollout last week

01:02:36 ◼   ► Amy even said well, you don't take the kid to school every day. It's pitch black. It was pitch black last week

01:02:41 ◼   ► It's nicer now that we you know look it actually looks like morning when I'm taking them to school

01:02:45 ◼   ► So I appreciate that

01:02:46 ◼   ► I don't know maybe the answer is is that sometime around November like through from November through like New Year's

01:02:52 ◼   ► We should all just stay in bed mmm

01:02:55 ◼   ► And well, I think the the depressing lack of sunlight really supports that I think if we all just agreed to just be a little bit

01:03:02 ◼   ► More logy you know logy our way into Christmas. Yeah

01:03:06 ◼   ► Well, is there also an angle of energy saving isn't that another angle of it? Oh

01:03:11 ◼   ► Definitely. I think that's I think that was the explanation behind the why we kept it and well and why we've expanded it. Mm-hmm

01:03:19 ◼   ► all right, why we've added made more and more of the

01:03:22 ◼   ► of the calendar year daylight savings is

01:03:27 ◼   ► That it I don't know. I'm not quite sure what the argument is though. I have to be honest with you John

01:03:34 ◼   ► I'm still deeply confused just about time zones alone

01:03:38 ◼   ► I was talking to Mike Hurley the other day and I was asking him whether they get Christmas in a different season than we do

01:03:43 ◼   ► I honestly don't understand anything about how any of this works and I still have to basically mentally draw a

01:03:50 ◼   ► Picture to understand which time change causes what difference and that my brain is just not wired to totally understand this

01:03:56 ◼   ► I'm bluffing my way through this a little bit, but I honestly find everything involving time

01:04:01 ◼   ► completely bizarre. Well you know what the China does right? What? Did you know

01:04:08 ◼   ► that China does not have they don't believe in time zones? So China is a

01:04:12 ◼   ► land mass. Well it's a land mass roughly comparable to the United States you know

01:04:18 ◼   ► it's about you know it's the same sort of shape too it's you know wider than it

01:04:22 ◼   ► is tall and it's about the same width like if they went with time zones they

01:04:25 ◼   ► would span four time zones like the continental United States does but they

01:04:30 ◼   ► don't do it. They just have the clocks are set to Chinese time

01:04:34 ◼   ► and that's it. And so if you're on the well, regardless of like

01:04:37 ◼   ► how how far north you are, because I mean that we're no

01:04:39 ◼   ► West, it would be no East and West. No, but I mean, also, you

01:04:42 ◼   ► know, as you go higher up, like in Washington, like their days

01:04:45 ◼   ► are really short. You know, I mean, as you go further, oh,

01:04:48 ◼   ► right, right. The days are shorter. Yeah, yeah. And like

01:04:51 ◼   ► people in Florida get a little bit more, a little bit. It's all

01:04:54 ◼   ► completely perplexing it. If somebody told me that this is

01:04:56 ◼   ► one of those Capricorn one situations, and the whole time

01:04:59 ◼   ► thing was a bluff I would have no trouble believing it I find it all

01:05:02 ◼   ► completely perplexing no but it's it's like totally serious we're like there's

01:05:06 ◼   ► one time in China just Chinese time and I think it's I think it's optimized for

01:05:11 ◼   ► their East Coast because that's you know that's where all the big cities are Wow

01:05:15 ◼   ► and but if you live on the in the western side of China you the Sun

01:05:20 ◼   ► doesn't even come up until like 11 a.m. and you just they just sit there live

01:05:25 ◼   ► their lives accordingly like maybe I don't know maybe school doesn't start

01:05:28 ◼   ► 11 over there. I feel like I've seen like three different documentaries in the last year that lead me to believe that the whole modern concept

01:05:34 ◼   ► Of time and being on a certain time comes out of the railroad schedules. Is that right?

01:05:39 ◼   ► Yeah could be yeah

01:05:42 ◼   ► Because I guess there was a time when like each train company had their own time that they kept and it became very important

01:05:46 ◼   ► Obviously if you're you know changing trains that all's got to work together. I

01:05:49 ◼   ► Don't know. Yeah, but it's nice though. See it. There is a certain appeal to that

01:05:53 ◼   ► so it's like in China, it depends where you live if you think of

01:05:58 ◼   ► What you know what what is a good bedtime for a child?

01:06:02 ◼   ► You know it might be off by three hours depending on if you're in the east or the west

01:06:05 ◼   ► But if you tell somebody I will we will we will have this conference call at two o'clock in the afternoon

01:06:11 ◼   ► Everybody and everybody knows it's at the right time. I think that's very appealing

01:06:16 ◼   ► That's why I mean like if I could ever get my brain around it going to pure GMT

01:06:19 ◼   ► I find something very appealing about that like that. It's always this certain time like that's that's that's the one we all refer to

01:06:24 ◼   ► I mean even just you know trying to schedule stuff with people in this you know increasingly

01:06:28 ◼   ► It's the central time zone that really screws me up because it's just enough off from the two main areas

01:06:34 ◼   ► Screws with my head. Yeah, I'm not good with that either and and you know what you're right

01:06:38 ◼   ► The central time is worse because so I did the layer tennis commentary

01:06:41 ◼   ► Yeah, two two weeks ago must have been two weeks ago wasn't last week and that all runs on Chicago, yeah, and I

01:06:52 ◼   ► It's good for me. I was ready an hour early

01:06:54 ◼   ► Funny part is you know, I'm on the west coast here on the east coast and you know, the East Coast wins always

01:07:00 ◼   ► You know Eastern Time is the winner. It's the canonical time in America. Everybody else just has to like do the math

01:07:05 ◼   ► Central is the only time zone where I periodically go the wrong way

01:07:09 ◼   ► Like I know you guys are three hours later than us

01:07:12 ◼   ► But for some time for some reason sometimes when I'm when I'm doing the mental math, I get the central time zone wrong

01:07:17 ◼   ► So I'm basically putting them in the Pacific Ocean sometimes

01:07:21 ◼   ► Yeah, and it I don't know it just doesn't seem we're gonna the timeline do you understand the international?

01:07:27 ◼   ► What's it called the internet international dateline? Do you understand that? No, uh

01:07:31 ◼   ► If I make diagrams and draw I can I can somehow get us we went to New Zealand

01:07:38 ◼   ► It still makes no sense to me that well

01:07:40 ◼   ► You guys had a crazy flight because you had to get all the way

01:07:42 ◼   ► Over to here before you could even have the terrible flight we had but it was like a 15-hour flight

01:07:47 ◼   ► But I remember arriving in New Zealand and we felt pretty good

01:07:50 ◼   ► My wife had some nausea from you know traveling but I was cock of the walk

01:07:54 ◼   ► I felt fine coming back from New Zealand. I was out for three weeks

01:07:57 ◼   ► If I was that possible, I don't know I found that to be worse too

01:08:02 ◼   ► They're getting back from New Zealand was it just felt like I felt like I had mono. I mean, I was I felt like I was drugged

01:08:10 ◼   ► You know Michael Lop Michael Lop lost a birthday. Oh, no

01:08:16 ◼   ► Maybe this was not the year. It was the seven later. Yeah, you didn't go. Yeah

01:08:20 ◼   ► Yeah, it was the second time I spoke at web stock and Michael Lop

01:08:24 ◼   ► Got on an airplane in SFO the day before his birthday and when he stepped off the plane in

01:08:31 ◼   ► Auckland

01:08:33 ◼   ► It was the day after his birthday. That makes no sense. I swear to God

01:08:38 ◼   ► You know, you know what it's feel like to be like a leap year, baby. Yeah, and I

01:08:44 ◼   ► You know, yeah, he's a big boy, you know, he wasn't it wasn't sad about it

01:08:49 ◼   ► But like I told Jonas and Jonas was just blown away

01:08:52 ◼   ► I mean if I got nine year old kid like to think that you lost your birthday because it's really unjust

01:08:57 ◼   ► Yeah, and he like that was like the thing like when he went back to school because Jonas came with us again

01:09:02 ◼   ► And then it was like well, you know, what'd you what'd you do?

01:09:04 ◼   ► It was like you went to New Zealand

01:09:05 ◼   ► It's like wow

01:09:06 ◼   ► That's awesome

01:09:06 ◼   ► I happen and then his story was my dad's friend

01:09:09 ◼   ► Lost a birthday and he'd like explained it and all of his friends were like that's outrageous

01:09:13 ◼   ► It's the saddest story ever

01:09:16 ◼   ► If there's anything that can make kids unionize

01:09:19 ◼   ► Like missing out missing a gift-giving holiday, right?

01:09:24 ◼   ► It just it does it confuses me how that could happen though. It just seems like it should be a different time

01:09:30 ◼   ► What was he for? I always see for Halloween this year. Oh

01:09:36 ◼   ► Oh, Sherlock Holmes. Oh, wow. I mean with that with the hat and everything. Yeah. Well, there's only really one way to do it

01:09:43 ◼   ► You kind of have to go she's gonna go Cumberbatch

01:09:45 ◼   ► Yeah, but I don't know that that's a that's not canonical. Yeah, it's like it's not recognizable you you're not gonna

01:09:52 ◼   ► You kind of got to go. I don't know what that hat's called. But yeah the Sherlock Holmes hat right? That's cool

01:10:00 ◼   ► What what what so does he read it or like movies? Like how did he get into Sherlock Holmes?

01:10:05 ◼   ► He's into the he's into the the new movies the Robert Downey jr. Ones. I enjoyed those very much

01:10:12 ◼   ► Are those kind of swashbuckling

01:10:17 ◼   ► Yeah, there's yeah, especially the second one the second one's a little it's it's you know a little Indiana Jonesy

01:10:23 ◼   ► It's not it's not a very into light. You know there's some of that, but it's it's a more action-oriented Sherlock Holmes

01:10:30 ◼   ► Nice, that's a good one

01:10:34 ◼   ► My kid was Hermione Granger from Harry Potter. I saw the picture

01:10:39 ◼   ► She was a dead ringer. She she kind of nailed it. I think yeah. Yeah

01:10:44 ◼   ► That's good. It's it's you know, but this is it was nice because the last couple years before that we'd done Marvel

01:10:50 ◼   ► Related, you know costume superheroes. So I thought this was a nice change

01:10:54 ◼   ► yeah, Jonas Amy Amy knocks it out with the

01:10:59 ◼   ► Look at that photo. Look at that guy. Yeah, it's got a little pipe in his hand. It's got the magnifying glass

01:11:05 ◼   ► That's so great. I love his cloak. Yeah. Yeah good stuff. Yeah, so Amy sources all that stuff on the internet

01:11:12 ◼   ► She kind of runs that joint doesn't she? Yeah. Yeah, same here same here. He's getting old

01:11:18 ◼   ► I mean he's 10 so he's I think he's running out but he's done. He's done just about all the big ones

01:11:22 ◼   ► He's done trying to think he's done Buzz Lightyear. That was really young Buzz Lightyear

01:11:27 ◼   ► Han Solo Indiana Jones the my favorite was the Clint Eastwood man with no name. Oh, that was great

01:11:35 ◼   ► I remember that his Indiana Jones was really good too. I remember that one

01:11:38 ◼   ► Trying to remember what else is in there Oh

01:11:42 ◼   ► Doctor who he did. Dr. Who last year. Oh, he's like Matt Smith. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, that was a good one

01:11:50 ◼   ► Yeah, everyone

01:11:51 ◼   ► He's kind of my canary in a coal mine for what's happening in the world when I hear you talking about like Minecraft and YouTube

01:11:57 ◼   ► and stuff like that. I feel like I'm learning a lot about what's coming up through you and him.

01:12:02 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm looking, you know, Moltz wrote a YouTube book. Not a YouTube book, a Minecraft book.

01:12:07 ◼   ► Really?

01:12:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:09 ◼   ► Wow, that's cool.

01:12:10 ◼   ► It's coming out, it might be coming out tomorrow.

01:12:13 ◼   ► Oh, that's awesome.

01:12:14 ◼   ► I can't wait to read it because I gotta tell you, this Minecraft thing, I still don't get it.

01:12:20 ◼   ► Terrified by it. I'm utterly terrified. We went to Scott Simpson's birthday party over the summer

01:12:26 ◼   ► and it was her first exposure to Minecraft on a screen.

01:12:29 ◼   ► 'Cause I've, yeah, let's be honest,

01:12:30 ◼   ► I've kept her away from it.

01:12:31 ◼   ► 'Cause everything I've heard from everybody,

01:12:34 ◼   ► you know me, right?

01:12:36 ◼   ► Like I'm not that guy.

01:12:37 ◼   ► Like she can play with, she can do stuff on the iPad.

01:12:39 ◼   ► I'm not like, we're not crazy about that kind of stuff.

01:12:41 ◼   ► But every, to a person, every mom and dad says

01:12:44 ◼   ► the same thing, which is there's the life that I had

01:12:46 ◼   ► with my kid before Minecraft and the life after.

01:12:49 ◼   ► It'll probably be fine.

01:12:50 ◼   ► But I, she's seven, I'm enjoying these days.

01:12:53 ◼   ► And so I'm circumspect.

01:12:56 ◼   ► It's pretty immersive though, huh?

01:12:58 ◼   ► - It can be.

01:12:59 ◼   ► Certainly, you know, the best I can get it.

01:13:04 ◼   ► I really can't wait to read Moltz's book

01:13:06 ◼   ► 'cause I really, it's like nothing else

01:13:10 ◼   ► that I've ever seen before.

01:13:11 ◼   ► There is a way that you can play it like a video game

01:13:13 ◼   ► where you're running around and there's these creepers

01:13:16 ◼   ► that are like zombies that you have to avoid

01:13:18 ◼   ► and you need to build shelter for the nighttime.

01:13:21 ◼   ► But that's not really, that's not what kids are doing.

01:13:24 ◼   ► It really is-- - It's more like Lego, right?

01:13:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's more like virtual Lego.

01:13:28 ◼   ► The Lego company should've bought Minecraft.

01:13:31 ◼   ► It's crazy that Microsoft, either them or Disney,

01:13:34 ◼   ► I can't believe Disney didn't buy them.

01:13:35 ◼   ► Because I really think it's got staying power.

01:13:37 ◼   ► - There were so many kids in homemade Minecraft costumes.

01:13:42 ◼   ► For Halloween. - Oh yeah.

01:13:44 ◼   ► - But it was a very inefficient,

01:13:45 ◼   ► it was mostly you'd see a kid with a blocky kind of tunic

01:13:47 ◼   ► and then holding up the box

01:13:49 ◼   ► that should've been on their head

01:13:50 ◼   ► They can't see a damn thing

01:13:51 ◼   ► But they were they were blocking mcmain craft or whatever his name is

01:13:54 ◼   ► I'm trying to

01:13:59 ◼   ► It's mostly about the building the collaboration you yeah the game itself and forgive me because I've never played it

01:14:05 ◼   ► But so basically you start out in this world and you got to stay alive you got to build stuff you have to mine

01:14:10 ◼   ► And then that enables you to get things and then you make comp combinations of different things make other things. That's kind of the idea

01:14:17 ◼   ► yeah, and it's like you you dig to get raw materials and then you can turn the raw materials into things and

01:14:24 ◼   ► The whole game is super hackable

01:14:28 ◼   ► Like you just unzip a jar file and there's all you know

01:14:32 ◼   ► It's like going into it like in Mac terms like opening up the application package and you can go in there change all the stuff

01:14:38 ◼   ► Out it's like res edit for pixels. Yeah, it's very much

01:14:43 ◼   ► So it's exactly like the way we hacked our stuff with res edit 20 years ago

01:14:48 ◼   ► That's what the kids are doing with the Minecraft extensions and mod packs. That's not like that

01:14:53 ◼   ► But yeah, and it's like and they play, you know, and this is the part where it starts to get like hey

01:14:59 ◼   ► What the hell's I got it

01:15:00 ◼   ► I kind of have to step in here as a parent like make sure this is alright is when they collaborate on a server and

01:15:05 ◼   ► And it's all open. This is the thing

01:15:08 ◼   ► Can't you get like your own?

01:15:10 ◼   ► I was seeing the penny arcade guys are talking about this like you can get like a private server, right if you absolutely

01:15:14 ◼   ► Know and it's really like as a responsible parent. It's like you kind of my you know

01:15:19 ◼   ► You kind of have to limit it to private servers, you know

01:15:21 ◼   ► It's like you can't just go and play on the servers where people are, you know

01:15:25 ◼   ► You know could be anybody it's like, you know, so he's got one

01:15:29 ◼   ► You know, it's cheap. I don't know. It's like three dollars a month or something like that. But Jonas has his own server

01:15:37 ◼   ► It's like, you know, like getting a web hosting account cost like three three bucks a month

01:15:40 ◼   ► And but then him and his friends

01:15:42 ◼   ► He just gives an address to his friends and him and his friends from school can play together and it's just like the six of

01:15:48 ◼   ► Them I think it's like a private room. Yeah, and you know and they build stuff together

01:15:53 ◼   ► it's crazy like he showed me like him and one of his pals from school built like a

01:15:57 ◼   ► Place for their characters to live like a skyscraper, you know with like a you know, pretty cool pretty it was pretty cool pad really

01:16:05 ◼   ► Like way up high though like massive massive building really pretty cool. That sounds like a lot of fun. I

01:16:11 ◼   ► don't know I

01:16:14 ◼   ► It's very freeform. That's the thing. It sounds very creative and collaborative

01:16:18 ◼   ► Yeah, and the thing is is the the company behind it. It's it's really genius and it is sort of a triumph of

01:16:25 ◼   ► Openness where you know, like I said the game is hackable

01:16:31 ◼   ► But if you want to play online, it's not like you have to play with the official Minecraft online

01:16:37 ◼   ► Server and you have to pay for it or whatever anybody like can run their own Minecraft server

01:16:43 ◼   ► It's all just you know, you know, like the game is is commercially you have to pay for the game, you know

01:16:48 ◼   ► I'm sure but you do you license a copy like a seat?

01:16:52 ◼   ► It's gotta be so boring for people

01:16:58 ◼   ► Let me understand this television has channels. How does that work if you paid? How do you change them?

01:17:03 ◼   ► All right, but like the the iPad app is like $6.99 and that I think that's not bad Wow, okay

01:17:08 ◼   ► Yeah, but but it's weird though. The iPad one is weird

01:17:12 ◼   ► Like it's really it's like solo like you can't can't you can't play the iPad one on the I was gonna say if it's Java

01:17:17 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah

01:17:18 ◼   ► I don't even know how they made the iPad one since the whole thing's written in Java

01:17:22 ◼   ► But anyway, you play on a computer and you can connect to any server and anybody can run a server

01:17:26 ◼   ► and so there's public servers where there are thousands of people running around and

01:17:30 ◼   ► You can just set up your own server anywhere you want and have just you and you know

01:17:36 ◼   ► You're two pals and you know, it's nice and peaceful and quiet. Hmm

01:17:39 ◼   ► But you can chat, you know, yeah while you're on the server and that's where you know

01:17:44 ◼   ► There's some parenting that needs to come in. Mm-hmm needs it, you know can't just be how do you how do you if you do?

01:17:51 ◼   ► Do you how do you limit access to that you got hours for that or yeah, they got it's got to be like

01:17:55 ◼   ► you know certain time you got it you know make sure your homeworks done first and

01:17:58 ◼   ► she's my kids in frickin first grade and by the time we pick her up from after

01:18:02 ◼   ► school and she does her homework like we've got I feel like we've got like an

01:18:04 ◼   ► hour before bedtime so maybe maybe the thing here is to just is to turbo like

01:18:09 ◼   ► you guys do and just push push bed down to like 1130 well you can't do that at

01:18:14 ◼   ► school night Jesus well you know she'll figure it out she could nap she could

01:18:18 ◼   ► nap during recess or something I guess I have to admit as a parent I do feel like

01:18:23 ◼   ► Jonas's school seems pretty good on homework they don't he seems to get a

01:18:27 ◼   ► lot less than a lot of kids seem to now nationally are you guys a common core

01:18:32 ◼   ► state no I don't even I know I don't think we are it just seems to me I as a

01:18:40 ◼   ► parent I have the exact same perspective on it that I had when I was actually in

01:18:44 ◼   ► school which is this is bullshit I've been yeah you had me all day right right

01:18:50 ◼   ► Like that's a long day like 8 a.m. Till 3 in the afternoon is an awful lot of chunk of your time

01:18:55 ◼   ► Why is there more work to be done I don't I've never I

01:19:01 ◼   ► Hack it feels like a behavioral hack because like with my kids she brings home like worksheets like right now

01:19:07 ◼   ► She's doing fractions. And so it's a lot of like show, you know, two-fourths show three-eighths, you know

01:19:14 ◼   ► By filling in these pie pieces and it really seems like and this is not bad

01:19:18 ◼   ► But it is what she did at school. It's just they want her to do more of it at home

01:19:21 ◼   ► Which to my mind like I get the idea of the repetition in practice even the kind of you know

01:19:27 ◼   ► Primacy and recency thing of trying it in different places like I can get all of that

01:19:30 ◼   ► But this is one of those few legacy things that feels like something from our childhood

01:19:34 ◼   ► We're really legitimately school was about teaching you to follow rules and I was about teaching you to like habituate yourself to certain kind

01:19:40 ◼   ► You know what? I mean? Like yeah that has changed so much from when we were kids

01:19:45 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know if you ever have gone through stuff with your kid with like creative spelling

01:19:49 ◼   ► We're like kids are encouraged to just try to spell stuff. However

01:19:52 ◼   ► Me nuts

01:19:55 ◼   ► It did me at first we had a conference with the teacher about it

01:19:59 ◼   ► But you know, I was a kid

01:20:01 ◼   ► There's no way you would see something on the wall outside your classroom with a typo on it. I'd be now with red pen. I

01:20:06 ◼   ► Jonas's school that I don't know when I don't think they started

01:20:12 ◼   ► Trying to enforce correct spelling until fourth grade like like first second third grade

01:20:17 ◼   ► It's to spell it spell everything however you want and somehow the teachers are adept at reading it

01:20:22 ◼   ► But I would was like I don't need I can't even you gotta unhook your mind and just in my case

01:20:26 ◼   ► You got to read it phonetically

01:20:27 ◼   ► I mean it depends on which teeth my daughter is missing because she'll pronounce things with a lisp like when she writes it

01:20:33 ◼   ► But but but I was I was a little concerned in a way that I'm usually not where I was like

01:20:38 ◼   ► Is this okay? Is she wired right? Like should that's exactly what I miss?

01:20:41 ◼   ► I I had the exact same experience and then I would open my eyes as I went to one day

01:20:48 ◼   ► I went to pick him up at school and outside his classroom was the it was

01:20:53 ◼   ► some project that the whole class had done everybody's was up on the

01:20:57 ◼   ► Tacked to the the court board

01:20:59 ◼   ► runs on the on the hallway and I started looking at everybody else's in this class and they were all exactly the same

01:21:05 ◼   ► Like in terms of spelling illiterate

01:21:10 ◼   ► It's embarrassing at first because you're like, but is mine the only kid who doesn't know how to spell, you know words

01:21:16 ◼   ► Alright, I thought oh shoo. That's a big relief. I kept thinking there's got to be we're gonna get an uncomfortable

01:21:23 ◼   ► teacher conference where they're gonna say hey

01:21:25 ◼   ► He's got it and then no it never happened and then like all of a sudden in fourth grade though

01:21:29 ◼   ► They started like correcting their spelling and the kids were all like what the fuck? Yeah, right exactly

01:21:35 ◼   ► Well, I you know, I I get it I think I mean it's who knows why anything does anything John

01:21:40 ◼   ► It's so it's so conceited for us to imagine that we can understand anything as laypeople about how something works out or does it

01:21:47 ◼   ► But I will say you know what when we brought this up with her teacher

01:21:50 ◼   ► I'm sure this is super interesting to people who want to know about the Apple ecosystem, but people but but we went in there

01:21:56 ◼   ► Like hey, is this is this a good thing? She said look it's first grade, you know

01:21:58 ◼   ► She's at that time six

01:22:00 ◼   ► Like we I just want her to come in here and write as much as she can every day and I was like

01:22:04 ◼   ► "Whoa!"

01:22:05 ◼   ► But shouldn't she just be writing a lowercase letter A

01:22:08 ◼   ► 40 times on a page like we did?

01:22:10 ◼   ► And the funny part is she does.

01:22:13 ◼   ► She loves, I think she has graphophilia.

01:22:16 ◼   ► We put on like a Harry Potter audio book

01:22:20 ◼   ► when she gets home from school,

01:22:20 ◼   ► and she sits there and makes art and draws and writes

01:22:23 ◼   ► for like two hours.

01:22:24 ◼   ► I never would have.

01:22:25 ◼   ► I mean, I would have scribbled a little bit

01:22:27 ◼   ► and colored maybe at her age,

01:22:29 ◼   ► but now she's doing stuff.

01:22:30 ◼   ► She's teaching herself cursive by tracing.

01:22:33 ◼   ► had zero just in cursive when I was seven six or seven years old no teaching

01:22:37 ◼   ► it now to herself because it's fun because it's all it I guess just all

01:22:40 ◼   ► seems doable so why wouldn't I just teach myself cursive I guess my only

01:22:45 ◼   ► interest in it when I was that early is I want to be able to read my parents

01:22:48 ◼   ► and stuff not like like diaries or whatever but it seemed like my parents

01:22:52 ◼   ► had this secret language that I couldn't understand like my mom would write a

01:22:56 ◼   ► shopping list and I couldn't read it right right right right well you know

01:23:00 ◼   ► It's to state the obvious. I think you know when you have stuff that you want to read when you have an incentive

01:23:06 ◼   ► I mean the obvious example being like oh a list of ideas for presents or something or anything like whatever stuff on screen

01:23:13 ◼   ► And in my case with my kid comics like she can suss out a huge amount of the story from the sequential art

01:23:18 ◼   ► But then she can also like put together enough of the words to know what it says without me reading it which I find

01:23:25 ◼   ► Fantastic, you know, it's it's weird though. Cuz like I'm I'm I have really mixed feelings about a lot of stuff with the school stuff

01:23:32 ◼   ► We've got the common core here, you know

01:23:34 ◼   ► Which is the I guess the progeny of no child left behind

01:23:37 ◼   ► Was lots of things you have to teach a certain way you got to be tested a certain way and some of it

01:23:42 ◼   ► Did you have new math when you were a kid remember new math and your parents were always confused

01:23:47 ◼   ► They there's kind of a new version of new math that is completely mind-boggling

01:23:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I didn't like the way they taught math and it did I I don't think it worked very well for Jonas I

01:23:56 ◼   ► Math is he's just not not a math person

01:24:00 ◼   ► Yeah, and I was I took to math like a fish to water

01:24:03 ◼   ► Like I was always very very I never I don't even know how I learned everything

01:24:06 ◼   ► They you could just show it to me as a kid

01:24:08 ◼   ► Yeah

01:24:08 ◼   ► And I figured it out some kids just see stuff and it's just in

01:24:12 ◼   ► Really maybe because I'm a slightly visual person

01:24:14 ◼   ► I think about like some people people with perfect pitch basically see notes in the way that I see colors

01:24:20 ◼   ► people with met see relationships that I don't see and I think some people are really just wired that way and

01:24:26 ◼   ► Boy, god bless the man or woman who can identify that in your kid and and know what that's gonna mean for them both up

01:24:33 ◼   ► And down as they go forward the thing that they didn't do

01:24:36 ◼   ► And I don't even know what the what the teaching method is, but they when I was in first grade

01:24:40 ◼   ► We memorized everything you had to memorize 6 plus 7 is 13 7 plus 6 is 13

01:24:46 ◼   ► seven but yet memorize them all and we had speed tests and that's all I remember from first grade math is

01:24:52 ◼   ► You know, we'd get like a sheet with 40

01:24:56 ◼   ► You know basic addition problems like that and you'd only have like 90 seconds or two minutes to do it

01:25:02 ◼   ► And if you know it was expected that some of the kids weren't even gonna complete the whole thing because it was not just about

01:25:07 ◼   ► Accuracy was about you know getting fast at it

01:25:09 ◼   ► Jonas's school never, you know

01:25:14 ◼   ► Encouraged any kind of memorization of anything and in fact really I just remember times tables like in third grade going on forever and ever

01:25:20 ◼   ► No, and in fact they were allowed to

01:25:23 ◼   ► Like with times tables, you know, like could you just like the the matrix, you know, the sick, you know

01:25:29 ◼   ► The numbers across numbers down. Yeah, you go down and over and you can get the the product

01:25:35 ◼   ► They were allowed to use that chart when they take tests Wow and it to me is crazy because it's like well

01:25:41 ◼   ► That's what the test was when we were kids.

01:25:43 ◼   ► Yeah, and it takes them forever to complete a math test.

01:25:49 ◼   ► That's amazing.

01:25:50 ◼   ► In third grade, that's what we did every day,

01:25:52 ◼   ► is we practiced products.

01:25:53 ◼   ► And then we had the same, in a different order, mixed up.

01:25:57 ◼   ► We did the same 100 problems then,

01:26:00 ◼   ► and that's what we did every single day.

01:26:02 ◼   ► But my take on it as a parent is I'm certainly

01:26:06 ◼   ► interested in this education, but I'm not

01:26:08 ◼   ► going to pretend like I'm an education expert

01:26:10 ◼   ► and that the people who are education experts,

01:26:14 ◼   ► just because this confounds my common sense approach,

01:26:19 ◼   ► I don't wanna be that guy.

01:26:20 ◼   ► - There are so many of that guy, Jon.

01:26:24 ◼   ► - Right.

01:26:25 ◼   ► - My wife does a lot of stuff with PTA.

01:26:27 ◼   ► She's really involved in the PTA.

01:26:29 ◼   ► And there are so many of that guy, or gal.

01:26:32 ◼   ► And it's just the person who comes in

01:26:34 ◼   ► who read something in The New Yorker,

01:26:35 ◼   ► and they got some ideas about how to really shake things up.

01:26:39 ◼   ► It's nothing different from your 22 year old friend who's giving you advice on child rearing.

01:26:43 ◼   ► Right.

01:26:43 ◼   ► You know it's like I'm and let me just say in terms of disclosure nothing in this world is

01:26:48 ◼   ► more humbling or educational for me than walking in like volunteering in the classroom going on a

01:26:52 ◼   ► field trip and I realize how much I am doing horribly wrong compared to these teachers and

01:26:56 ◼   ► I'm the one with all the smart ideas right I went to college and stuff.

01:26:58 ◼   ► Right.

01:26:59 ◼   ► You've been such a dumb ass.

01:27:01 ◼   ► So I don't go into the you know I'm certainly thinking I it seems to me that they could it

01:27:07 ◼   ► it would do well if they would just spend a month or two honing in on memorizing, you

01:27:11 ◼   ► know, some of these math facts. But I don't go into the teacher conference and say, here's

01:27:16 ◼   ► what you should do, you know?

01:27:17 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I kind of don't, I have to admit, I don't understand how you would not do that.

01:27:22 ◼   ► But then I look at her homework, and I'm sure you've seen numerous things, there's probably

01:27:25 ◼   ► whole tumblers devoted to the whackadoodle way they're supposed to do math now with these

01:27:30 ◼   ► word problems and stuff like that. Fact, fact, fact, families and stuff like that. Where

01:27:35 ◼   ► It's you know, and again, it's kind of a meme, but you'll see stuff where it's like, no,

01:27:41 ◼   ► no, you don't subtract 111 from 217 like that.

01:27:45 ◼   ► You have to do this from that and this from that.

01:27:47 ◼   ► And then imagine that there's a hundred of these and three left over.

01:27:49 ◼   ► And I'm like, I honestly don't know how to do math that way, but I guess there's a reason.

01:27:54 ◼   ► I guess there's a reason people like you probably like, you figured out a lot of the tricks

01:27:58 ◼   ► about getting close to something and then figuring out the rest, right?

01:28:01 ◼   ► You figured that out a long time ago.

01:28:03 ◼   ► You know what I'm talking about?

01:28:04 ◼   ► people have that, learn these tricks for a quick estimation and

01:28:09 ◼   ► then getting it right after the estimation.

01:28:10 ◼   ► I bet you've been good at that forever.

01:28:13 ◼   ► >> Yeah, it's always just came naturally.

01:28:15 ◼   ► The one thing I remember being very proud of myself for is at some point,

01:28:20 ◼   ► I don't know when, I don't know when I learned everything.

01:28:23 ◼   ► But it was third, fourth, fifth grade, somewhere in there, probably before fifth.

01:28:27 ◼   ► But at some point, but we hadn't learned long division yet as a class.

01:28:32 ◼   ► we took a standardized test.

01:28:34 ◼   ► What did we used to take, the Iowa test?

01:28:36 ◼   ► - Oh right, yes, yes, yes, that does ring a bell.

01:28:39 ◼   ► - I don't know why we took the Iowa test,

01:28:41 ◼   ► but we used to, I grew up in Pennsylvania,

01:28:43 ◼   ► but we took the Iowa test of basic skills.

01:28:46 ◼   ► And it was like the SAT for grade school kids.

01:28:51 ◼   ► And there was long division on it.

01:28:54 ◼   ► And I was like, ooh, and I kind of had like test anxiety.

01:28:58 ◼   ► But I somehow figured out a way to get the answer.

01:29:01 ◼   ► Like I somehow taught myself long division before we ever learned it.

01:29:05 ◼   ► And I remember my teacher asked me, I had totally aced it.

01:29:08 ◼   ► I got like an, I think the highest score, it was like a percentage.

01:29:11 ◼   ► I got like a 99% on the math.

01:29:13 ◼   ► And my teacher asked me, how'd you get this one?

01:29:15 ◼   ► And I explained it.

01:29:16 ◼   ► And he was like, that's fascinating,

01:29:20 ◼   ► cuz that's not the right way to do it, but it is a way to get the answer.

01:29:24 ◼   ► >> Yeah, it's funny, if you think about it,

01:29:25 ◼   ► when you ask somebody to show their work, on the one hand, it's completely sensible.

01:29:28 ◼   ► Like especially something like long division,

01:29:30 ◼   ► showing your work is an indication

01:29:33 ◼   ► that you understand how to solve this.

01:29:35 ◼   ► But what it really shows is you learn how to solve this

01:29:38 ◼   ► in the way that I taught it.

01:29:40 ◼   ► 'Cause the thing is, at least in arithmetic,

01:29:44 ◼   ► maybe not in higher math, but in arithmetic,

01:29:45 ◼   ► there's an answer.

01:29:47 ◼   ► Like this times this will always be that.

01:29:48 ◼   ► There's no quantum mechanics at the basic arithmetic level.

01:29:51 ◼   ► And so the thing is, if you can just look at a problem

01:29:54 ◼   ► like whatever, 17 times nine, and know what that answer is

01:29:57 ◼   ► without having to show your work.

01:29:59 ◼   ► It seems kind of weird,

01:30:00 ◼   ► 'cause some people just see those numbers.

01:30:03 ◼   ► I mean, I really admire people who can do that.

01:30:04 ◼   ► Where they just, you know what I'm talking about?

01:30:06 ◼   ► It's almost like a Rain Man kind of thing,

01:30:08 ◼   ► where some people can just see that.

01:30:10 ◼   ► They don't need to show the work,

01:30:11 ◼   ► 'cause there's no work to be shown.

01:30:12 ◼   ► It's just that this times that will always be that,

01:30:14 ◼   ► and I know that.

01:30:15 ◼   ► - Soon as you said 17 times nine, I thought 153.

01:30:20 ◼   ► - Is that what it is?

01:30:21 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:30:22 ◼   ► - Are you kidding?

01:30:23 ◼   ► - Because you just do--

01:30:25 ◼   ► - 17.

01:30:27 ◼   ► asterisk

01:30:29 ◼   ► checks out

01:30:30 ◼   ► 153 spotlight says right because you do ten times you do ten times nine to get 90 and then you do seven times nine to

01:30:36 ◼   ► Get 63 and you add them together. Oh my god. I hate you. Oh

01:30:39 ◼   ► My god, you might you might as well be like telling my future from tea leaves. I can't believe you

01:30:44 ◼   ► Do you know what that we had one time with the teacher conference?

01:30:47 ◼   ► This is I love I love having you on the show

01:30:49 ◼   ► But one time I did talk to him with Jonas's teacher about it a little not in a way where I was trying to prescribe

01:30:54 ◼   ► How I thought they should teach math

01:30:56 ◼   ► Sprouts things he found on the internet

01:30:58 ◼   ► No, not at all

01:31:00 ◼   ► It's just sort of like what's your take and and her explanation and I do believe this is there's there's not as much point to

01:31:06 ◼   ► Memorizing this stuff going through life because everybody has computers with them everywhere. They go, you know

01:31:12 ◼   ► It's she's sort of like more or less, you know

01:31:15 ◼   ► And but in a way that made a lot of sense to me that what you know

01:31:18 ◼   ► If we teach them these story based ideas, but know that you know on the assumption that they're going to actually use

01:31:25 ◼   ► Calculators and stuff, you know to do it. They'll understand the what's actually necessary. I don't know. There's something like that. Hmm

01:31:32 ◼   ► Like what's the point of learning all this stuff if you don't you know

01:31:37 ◼   ► If you're never gonna actually do it by hand anyway

01:31:39 ◼   ► Well, you know back to that idea though of what's what people's natural kind of faculties are

01:31:44 ◼   ► To use that word story in a slightly broader sense

01:31:48 ◼   ► I mean if you think about how many of the things you learn in elementary school

01:31:51 ◼   ► Will either be either connect with you or they won't based on whether you get the story

01:31:56 ◼   ► So the problem is if you get hit history taught in an uninteresting way or by an uninspired teacher

01:32:01 ◼   ► You see it as a collection of facts to be memorized instead of seeing that as a story, you know

01:32:06 ◼   ► And there's a reason why until I went to college

01:32:07 ◼   ► I still continue to call everything and including arithmetic just math because that was math not understanding

01:32:14 ◼   ► There's there's a bigger story to tell here than plus-minus, you know times and divided by you know what I mean?

01:32:20 ◼   ► it's like but there are some people who really have that natural affinity of being able to just look at these patterns and it and

01:32:24 ◼   ► It makes sense and maybe they're learning a word for what that's actually called

01:32:29 ◼   ► But you know gosh, I just feel like having to have a teachers

01:32:33 ◼   ► Who are able to to suss that out and then put up with the parents who come in and give them things they found in?

01:32:39 ◼   ► Mother Jones. Yeah

01:32:41 ◼   ► What a job I do I do think and it sounds like it's the same

01:32:46 ◼   ► With with your school. I do feel like the one dad so the math, uh, you know, I don't know

01:32:51 ◼   ► What do I know I I kind of think they're doing it wrong, but whatever

01:32:55 ◼   ► But with the writing I do kind of see where they're going and where I do object to the idea that

01:33:02 ◼   ► Spelling doesn't count but eventually it does start to count but I do that

01:33:05 ◼   ► We had the same thing where there they just want the kids to write

01:33:08 ◼   ► Stories like from like first grade on and I do see that there that's very different

01:33:14 ◼   ► I don't remember ever just writing. I mean when I was in first grade we used to you know

01:33:18 ◼   ► I mean it was the what you were writing about was a McGuffin

01:33:21 ◼   ► The the whole idea of having like what you did over Thanksgiving when nobody really cared with the what you did over Thanksgiving

01:33:26 ◼   ► They wanted to make sure you could still write in cursive and knew how to punctuate it and spell it right, right?

01:33:31 ◼   ► Where is it? No, it wasn't really telling writing anything. It was about demonstrating you had the mechanical skills. You've been taught

01:33:38 ◼   ► Yeah, whereas now it seems like it's more about they really want to train those muscles in their minds at an early age to be

01:33:45 ◼   ► able to express take your thoughts and express them and

01:33:48 ◼   ► That worrying about spelling is just all it's just roadblocks to getting that out on the page and you know as a professional

01:33:56 ◼   ► Writer there is a line. There's certainly a very common line of advice for adult writers people writing that your first draft

01:34:05 ◼   ► you should just go just get it on the page don't worry turn off the thing that makes red underlines and stuff like that and

01:34:11 ◼   ► just go and get it out on the page and then go back and

01:34:16 ◼   ► Do the stuff like oh you didn't even uppercase that the character to start that sentence you you know

01:34:22 ◼   ► You misspelled some words you you know, totally need commas to close. Don't worry about that in the first draft

01:34:28 ◼   ► I don't really write like that. I kind of well cuz you know, I don't need to but but what you're describing

01:34:33 ◼   ► - I totally agree with you, 'cause what I feel like,

01:34:36 ◼   ► and I might be oversimplifying this,

01:34:37 ◼   ► but I really do feel like something

01:34:41 ◼   ► that always inhibited me a little bit was,

01:34:43 ◼   ► if there was one thing where I got it a little bit,

01:34:47 ◼   ► it wasn't things like English language arts, you know?

01:34:50 ◼   ► And the idea of having to write a paper

01:34:52 ◼   ► was not the thing that worried me or was fretful to me.

01:34:56 ◼   ► The thing that I didn't like was having to go

01:34:57 ◼   ► and do the process of doing the index cards.

01:35:00 ◼   ► I'd like to index cards, I always have,

01:35:01 ◼   ► but having to do the index cards,

01:35:03 ◼   ► turn the index cards into an outline

01:35:04 ◼   ► that you have to turn in as part of the theme.

01:35:07 ◼   ► Whereas I feel like, man, I could write this thing

01:35:09 ◼   ► in my sleep, but all these other,

01:35:11 ◼   ► this weird artificial scaffolding

01:35:14 ◼   ► that I guess proves I learned your process,

01:35:16 ◼   ► like that always got in the way.

01:35:18 ◼   ► And I think there's still that voice

01:35:19 ◼   ► in a lot of people's heads if they wanna write anything

01:35:22 ◼   ► where they're gonna, they would never in a million years

01:35:25 ◼   ► turn off the red underlining

01:35:26 ◼   ► 'cause that's how they know they're doing it right,

01:35:27 ◼   ► even if it doesn't make any sense

01:35:29 ◼   ► what they're actually writing.

01:35:30 ◼   ► No, I had the same thing.

01:35:32 ◼   ► We learned in my school, elementary school,

01:35:35 ◼   ► and it was year after year, it wasn't just one teacher.

01:35:38 ◼   ► It was the curriculum was this sort of formal...

01:35:41 ◼   ► You mentioned the index cards.

01:35:43 ◼   ► I actually forgot about that.

01:35:45 ◼   ► I remember the outline, but I do think that there was a time

01:35:47 ◼   ► when we were supposed to use index cards too.

01:35:49 ◼   ► - When you went to the library, did your research.

01:35:51 ◼   ► There was, in my case, a pretty prescriptive way

01:35:54 ◼   ► you're supposed to make notes on every index card.

01:35:56 ◼   ► - Right, and the outline had weird rules.

01:35:58 ◼   ► you had to start with uppercase letters

01:36:01 ◼   ► and the next level of hierarchy was lowercase letters.

01:36:04 ◼   ► - And that all went into the grade.

01:36:05 ◼   ► Like if you used a numeral two instead of a Roman numeral two

01:36:08 ◼   ► at the wrong place, that was marked against you.

01:36:10 ◼   ► And it's like, what better way

01:36:11 ◼   ► to disrupt somebody's thought process

01:36:13 ◼   ► than by having them think about what kind of digit to use

01:36:15 ◼   ► to brainstorm.

01:36:16 ◼   ► - Right, just to get your ideas out, right.

01:36:19 ◼   ► And I remember the Roman numerals part,

01:36:22 ◼   ► 'cause that was something that I was never good at.

01:36:25 ◼   ► Absolutely never good at Roman numerals.

01:36:28 ◼   ► once I got past five it was you know with the whole thing where you put the ones before the digit and

01:36:34 ◼   ► Never never worked for me. I mean I still have to sit there and when I'm watching like like a Super Bowl

01:36:41 ◼   ► Kind of location. I still have to mentally sit there and do it the equivalent of arithmetic to figure out Oh

01:36:47 ◼   ► 39 I have no idea if the Super Bowl is right except

01:36:51 ◼   ► No, I don't I when they hit 50 50 was awesome because it was I don't even know what it was

01:36:57 ◼   ► but it's

01:36:59 ◼   ► Just like an L or something like CM I

01:37:02 ◼   ► Don't know. I hate the Super Bowl with the Roman normal. It's just freaking I've I really I wish I would have made like a public

01:37:09 ◼   ► Campaign for it. I you know, it's really unnecessarily pretentious given the audience

01:37:13 ◼   ► Once they guess it seems fancy

01:37:16 ◼   ► But once they hit 50 that's where they should have stopped and just you know

01:37:22 ◼   ► Just Super Bowl 2014 Super Bowl 2015 get in some ugly numbers

01:37:27 ◼   ► It's all ugly at this point. It's really bad. It was yeah, it only made sense

01:37:33 ◼   ► It's like with the rocky films. Yeah, they use Roman never go beyond the number of rocky films that you know what?

01:37:38 ◼   ► That's Gruber's rule. No. Yeah, it's your do if you need more than that you use a usual use a numeral

01:37:44 ◼   ► That's yeah exactly rocky the the upper bound on on Roman numerals is where that was like seven something like that nine twelve

01:37:52 ◼   ► I don't know but they made the most recent one they didn't put a roman numeral behind even they wouldn't break the rocky rule like

01:37:57 ◼   ► They stopped adding roman numerals and made like in a rocky forever or something Rocky Balboa. Yeah. Yeah, that's it Rocky Balboa

01:38:04 ◼   ► Rocky

01:38:07 ◼   ► head on that guy

01:38:09 ◼   ► Rocky films god. I love Wikipedia. I'm looking at it right now. Here we go. They went to Rocky 5

01:38:14 ◼   ► That's that and then they went to Rocky Balboa Creed one called Creed

01:38:18 ◼   ► That must be upcoming. I think I heard about this

01:38:21 ◼   ► spin off. It's Creed's grandson? Michael B. Jordan? Is that the guy from The Wire?

01:38:29 ◼   ► Yeah I think so. Damn look at that. It's uh it's what's his name it's uh is that

01:38:33 ◼   ► Wallace? That's Wallace. Wallace is everywhere now this is crazy. Yeah.

01:38:41 ◼   ► So they went to Rocky 5 and then that's it. You know what I'll you know I'm just

01:38:46 ◼   ► gonna say on the strength I'm okay with 7. I think 8 is ugly. I think 9

01:38:51 ◼   ► is excreble I don't know I don't look at an IX oh see when you start going

01:38:56 ◼   ► before the numbers oh that's just dick although I think I told you this when I

01:39:00 ◼   ► was a kid our creature feature was on WX IX channel 19 which you got to give him

01:39:06 ◼   ► credit that's pretty great X IX yeah yeah because it's you know it's got like

01:39:10 ◼   ► a nice what's that called too clever by half now but the palin palindrome that's

01:39:19 ◼   ► Yeah, right, right, right a symmetry. Oh, yeah, exactly. There's a there's a pretty visual symmetry. Mmm

01:39:26 ◼   ► The Roman neural system

01:39:30 ◼   ► How did they even how did it's amazing that a

01:39:35 ◼   ► Culture that came up with that had any success at all. Let alone like a continent spanning Empire

01:39:42 ◼   ► Oh hundred percent it really seems like the kind of thing you make deliberately difficult to confuse normal people

01:39:49 ◼   ► It's like one two and three all right. You're on with you, so here's how it works. This is a one okay?

01:39:56 ◼   ► It's one mark. Here's two okay. You make two marks. Can you guess what three is is it three marks? Yep, and what about four?

01:40:03 ◼   ► That's IV

01:40:05 ◼   ► Right immediately. What's a V hang on? We're not there yet first learn IV you gotta learn IV before you learn V

01:40:10 ◼   ► Right at that point in the discussion you only have to get to four before you automatically

01:40:16 ◼   ► Like whoever came up with it you got to say no, it's uh, I think that's a it's like a Turing thing

01:40:23 ◼   ► It's like it just it doesn't make sense

01:40:25 ◼   ► You have to know about five

01:40:28 ◼   ► It's like those directions where like you realize you should have read them all the way through before you started

01:40:36 ◼   ► We like you know that eight has something you were supposed to have done back in step four it's

01:40:40 ◼   ► Exactly exactly that's probably why my cable went out

01:40:44 ◼   ► I skipped skip step. I didn't read step eight before I did step six

01:40:50 ◼   ► No, but you know how it's like like our our decimal notation it breaks down after a certain large number

01:40:57 ◼   ► and that's why we switched to the exponential notation for very very large numbers and

01:41:02 ◼   ► You know that's and that's something I'd never made sense to me or it made sense

01:41:06 ◼   ► But I always had to go back and look it up and it's just telling you how many zeros are on the ten or something

01:41:12 ◼   ► But it's because you know for dealing with those truly staggeringly large numbers writing it all out doesn't make sense

01:41:19 ◼   ► Roman numerals break down at four

01:41:21 ◼   ► It's one thing with pie

01:41:24 ◼   ► Like people have their reasons for wanting to get in 50 to 50 places in pie and that's a level of complexity

01:41:29 ◼   ► That we accept even if not to always totally understand but to have an idea of a fucking broken for that's I

01:41:36 ◼   ► Mean, it seems like that's a good first draft, but let's try that again

01:41:40 ◼   ► Now can you do four single strokes is that acceptable as an alternative I think IV is canonical I

01:41:47 ◼   ► think as I recall I believe that it's it's

01:41:52 ◼   ► It's sort of like the in an English language. It's like it's gonna get the the italicized informal

01:41:58 ◼   ► Oh the INF yeah, yeah, I think you're right. Yeah. Well, I don't know if you know, but I'm a third I

01:42:04 ◼   ► Am I my father and my grandfather share my name or I share their name

01:42:09 ◼   ► I should say so I've had I've had to live with walking around putting Roman numerals after my name and

01:42:14 ◼   ► Nothing makes you seem like a bigger dick faster than having Roman numerals after your name

01:42:20 ◼   ► That's always the bad guy in like an 80s 80s comedy

01:42:23 ◼   ► For legal purposes you you you have to well, they're dead now, so I think I can fly on that a little better

01:42:29 ◼   ► Yeah, but I'm sitting here look at this one is an I five is a V 10 is an X 50 is an L

01:42:35 ◼   ► So you can't even that was it to X X X X X?

01:42:38 ◼   ► So I was right it was there was the one glorious year where the super it was like Super Bowl L

01:42:44 ◼   ► Right, but even that it was at least it was understandable

01:42:48 ◼   ► But even that it kind of looks stupid right because when you think it sounds like a Samsung tablet

01:42:53 ◼   ► Right, when you think Super Bowl, you think a lot of X's and you know.

01:42:58 ◼   ► And you know what, one of the reasons I feel like it stuck is that X, you know I've said

01:43:03 ◼   ► this many times in the show, X is clearly the coolest letter of the alphabet.

01:43:06 ◼   ► Yeah absolutely.

01:43:07 ◼   ► Like the whole logic behind calling the Mac operating system OS 10 is just that the X

01:43:14 ◼   ► looks cool.

01:43:15 ◼   ► It's got diagonals and diagonals look great, it's just diagonals.

01:43:19 ◼   ► And they cross, it looks super.

01:43:22 ◼   ► X-ray vision, you know, that's you know, the the letter for secret agents

01:43:27 ◼   ► X-rated films, you know

01:43:31 ◼   ► Right. It's you know, that's what you get on the smoker channels. Yes, when you get your smokers. That's right

01:43:36 ◼   ► No, it's been and I feel like that's why the Super Bowl stuck with it because they got to put a lot of X's in

01:43:41 ◼   ► The name. Why did they always do Roman numerals for years on old movies?

01:43:45 ◼   ► Is that you got the tradition or a rule or like an industry thing?

01:43:50 ◼   ► You know what? I mean when you saw for the year. Yeah, they would always show on TV shows and movies to show

01:43:55 ◼   ► The year was made it would always be in Roman numerals. I

01:43:57 ◼   ► think it was just like a format, you know, like like a

01:44:02 ◼   ► Like a tradition yeah. Yeah. I think it was just like a tradition Tarantino did it on one of his

01:44:09 ◼   ► Like retro like that Roadhouse movie or whatever the hell it was called

01:44:14 ◼   ► Yeah, when you see it like a title screen that's got a Roman numeral date on it that that really is like a throwback

01:44:20 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like the expendables maybe can't tell I don't know. Let me take a break

01:44:25 ◼   ► I got another sponsor to talk about I want to I want to tell everybody about him

01:44:28 ◼   ► It's another longtime friend of the show return sponsor our good friends at igloo igloo

01:44:33 ◼   ► Now they that's the intranet you'll actually like

01:44:37 ◼   ► It's built with easy-to-use apps like shared calendars Twitter like micro blogs file sharing task management and more

01:44:46 ◼   ► So you put your team together, you start your own little Twitter microblog thing on igloo

01:44:51 ◼   ► and it's like you have a Twitter that is private to your team instead of being out in the public.

01:44:56 ◼   ► But that way you can just comment on things, keep it all within your team for privacy purposes.

01:45:05 ◼   ► It's everything you need to work better in one very configurable cloud platform.

01:45:10 ◼   ► Now they have responsive design, everything works great on your phone, your Android phone,

01:45:15 ◼   ► iOS device, your tablet, your laptop obviously. It works great with the bigger screen iPhones

01:45:23 ◼   ► right away. It's all responsive. You can review documents, you post project updates, change

01:45:30 ◼   ► administrative settings, or even complain about why there's a U2 album stuck in your

01:45:37 ◼   ► iTunes right there from your phone. Everything you can do on Igloo you can do right from

01:45:41 ◼   ► the phone. When you design your igloo, you have a whole bunch of choices. You get to

01:45:46 ◼   ► change the changes you make, carry across all devices. So it's not just like, oh there's

01:45:53 ◼   ► this one special look for the iPhone, but then when you make the design changes you

01:45:57 ◼   ► only see them on the desktop. No, the design changes you make go all the way from your

01:46:03 ◼   ► brand new retina iMac right down to your iPhone. They have a file preview engine, fully HTML

01:46:08 ◼   ► compatible so you can preview everything online yeah add comments new versions of

01:46:15 ◼   ► files everything you want to do here's the thing they want to talk about this

01:46:20 ◼   ► thing called Gartner's magic quadrant now this is all outside my wheelhouse

01:46:25 ◼   ► this is Casey's terms is out in the parking lot but but it's a big deal for

01:46:30 ◼   ► for people who work you know probably a lot of you who are listening to the show

01:46:35 ◼   ► who work out there and were things like white papers or things you encounter all the time.

01:46:41 ◼   ► So just this past week, Gartner released their famed magic quadrant for social software in

01:46:48 ◼   ► the workplace. That's a white paper they put out every year. Igloo appears for the sixth

01:46:54 ◼   ► consecutive year. That's right alongside, this is who they're up there with, Microsoft,

01:46:59 ◼   ► Google, VMware, Salesforce, and SAP. So it's a report that values the size of the

01:47:07 ◼   ► vendor. In Gartner's terms this is viability. Igloo is praised for their

01:47:13 ◼   ► responsiveness and customer experience. Here's an excerpt right from the

01:47:18 ◼   ► Gartner's profile of Igloo. This is Gartner's words. Feedback from Igloo's

01:47:22 ◼   ► reference customers was consistently positive. They praised the products

01:47:26 ◼   ► quick deployment configuration and customization flexibility with self-service options for

01:47:32 ◼   ► non-technical users, control over branding and information organization and ease of use.

01:47:38 ◼   ► They also praise the responsiveness of Igloo as an organization.

01:47:43 ◼   ► So really there it is right there.

01:47:45 ◼   ► It's a third party, you know, Gartner telling you exactly the things that I've been telling

01:47:49 ◼   ► you about Igloo for months.

01:47:50 ◼   ► telling you uh it was all kinds of responsive

01:47:54 ◼   ► right and it well what it is is it easy it supposed to ask their whole point

01:47:58 ◼   ► their whole point is that all these internet's these legacy ones like

01:48:01 ◼   ► SharePoint and the old portal technology

01:48:03 ◼   ► were a huge pain in the ass they were confusing to set up confusing to

01:48:07 ◼   ► administer

01:48:08 ◼   ► and confusing as hell to use that's the big thing

01:48:11 ◼   ► I think is that they were confused I remember I when I had you know had jobs

01:48:15 ◼   ► and we used

01:48:15 ◼   ► the share always all those kinds of apps always even if you got the open source

01:48:19 ◼   ► ones

01:48:20 ◼   ► You always kind of felt like it was the worst of every world they were they were difficult to deal with there were some

01:48:25 ◼   ► They're real flimsy. They were real ugly to use and nobody wanted to use them. It wasn't just that they weren't fun

01:48:31 ◼   ► It was just that you every time you I would use those kinds of apps

01:48:34 ◼   ► I would think like I don't understand who this is for and I've yeah

01:48:37 ◼   ► I've used igloo and like you understand it you go in there you turn on the stuff you need turn off the stuff you don't

01:48:42 ◼   ► You get exactly what you want and it actually works and it is fun to use right? It's you know, it's to me

01:48:47 ◼   ► it's like the difference between like the old smartphones before the iPhone and it would

01:48:51 ◼   ► be all these things and I don't even know what this is. What is this? How do I even

01:48:55 ◼   ► make an event in the calendar? I don't even know how to get there. And then you got the

01:48:59 ◼   ► iPhone and it's like, "Well, I get it. I just tap this calendar and there's my calendar

01:49:03 ◼   ► and I hit this button. I go back to home." Well, Igloo is like that for team sharing.

01:49:08 ◼   ► Here's the thing that's amazing to me. Free to use with up to 10 people. So if you have

01:49:14 ◼   ► A small team that's less than 10 people, you just get to use it forever, like in perpetuity

01:49:19 ◼   ► going forward without even paying for it.

01:49:21 ◼   ► They're cool with that.

01:49:23 ◼   ► And if you are from a bigger organization, you can try it out with up to 10 people before

01:49:29 ◼   ► you spend a nickel to make sure that everything I'm telling you about it is true.

01:49:34 ◼   ► And then they have really great, you know, once you go past 10 people, they have really,

01:49:37 ◼   ► really great rates that are way less than you pay for competing, crappier internets.

01:49:43 ◼   ► Where do you go?

01:49:44 ◼   ► here's the address igloo software.com/the talk show igloo software.com/the talk show

01:49:54 ◼   ► and then they'll know you came right here from the show so my thanks to them

01:49:58 ◼   ► good people really good people MCM LXVI that's the year I was born what a mess

01:50:09 ◼   ► It's horrible.

01:50:14 ◼   ► I almost feel like it's one of those things like dropping in some casual Latin where it's

01:50:19 ◼   ► like--

01:50:20 ◼   ► It's exactly what it's like.

01:50:21 ◼   ► I'm specifically mentioning this because I'm pretty sure you won't know what it means.

01:50:24 ◼   ► Sui generis.

01:50:25 ◼   ► Right.

01:50:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:50:27 ◼   ► And I spend a lot of time learning it.

01:50:31 ◼   ► So now I'm going to--

01:50:32 ◼   ► I don't want to sound fancy per se.

01:50:35 ◼   ► Right.

01:50:36 ◼   ► Just dropping in some Roman numerals.

01:50:39 ◼   ► And what kept this Novus Ordo Cyclorum?

01:50:42 ◼   ► It's kind of a thing that's on my mind right now. How's your internet doing?

01:50:48 ◼   ► I think it's good. Nice.

01:50:53 ◼   ► Hey, so before we wrap this up.

01:50:56 ◼   ► I don't want to say anything. It's your show.

01:50:59 ◼   ► But I've noticed you had some length creep.

01:51:02 ◼   ► And I don't know if it's not just, it would be nice to think that it's just Syracuse who

01:51:07 ◼   ► I'm guessing broke your record.

01:51:09 ◼   ► But there's been a lot of leakage time wise lately.

01:51:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know what to do about that.

01:51:15 ◼   ► I'm not against it but I think, yeah, given that we're not talking about ecosystems, it's

01:51:19 ◼   ► probably better we keep this one short but, you know.

01:51:22 ◼   ► Well no, let's go meta on it though.

01:51:23 ◼   ► That is good though.

01:51:24 ◼   ► I do, I've absolutely posited, there's no denying it.

01:51:27 ◼   ► This show has gotten longer.

01:51:29 ◼   ► I used to try to keep it to be an hour because I thought an hour is what a show

01:51:33 ◼   ► should be. I did. I've never done anything for an hour. I've never done anything physical for

01:51:40 ◼   ► more than an hour and I've never done anything involving talking for less than

01:51:44 ◼   ► an hour. I almost never hit that hour but by trying to keep it an

01:51:54 ◼   ► hour I felt like it would you know it would keep it from going to two hours

01:52:01 ◼   ► and then you know it would be like an hour and 37 minutes or an hour and 45

01:52:05 ◼   ► minutes and now it just blows past the two-hour mark every show and a lot of

01:52:10 ◼   ► people love it and here's the funny thing too I and I think part of it comes

01:52:15 ◼   ► to the fact that that podcasting is still like a nascent medium like nobody

01:52:22 ◼   ► We're still

01:52:24 ◼   ► It's still it is it our our idea of what they should be and when people will listen to them how often they'll listen to

01:52:33 ◼   ► Them has it. It's still liquid, you know

01:52:36 ◼   ► And I think online videos where when I first started I did this thing briefly called the Merlin show

01:52:40 ◼   ► Which is an interview show I did for a while

01:52:42 ◼   ► It was a tremendous amount of work for what we ended up getting but everything I heard from people was you can't put this thing

01:52:48 ◼   ► Up, you can't have a YouTube video. That's more than 10 minutes long

01:52:51 ◼   ► There is nobody in the entire world that will watch a video ten minutes, really

01:52:55 ◼   ► That's like the stairway to heaven of online videos and it's like I don't know

01:52:59 ◼   ► I think a 15-minute interview is not that much to expect with somebody but people just shake their heads data for podcasts

01:53:04 ◼   ► I don't know if you remember this but a lot of the advice I heard early on was never go past 30 minutes

01:53:09 ◼   ► Just because the files are so big and nobody will listen to anything for that long

01:53:13 ◼   ► there's a

01:53:15 ◼   ► There there are technical factors like how long it takes to download and how much it costs to distribute and you know

01:53:23 ◼   ► multiply the length of the show by the number of people doing it and

01:53:27 ◼   ► The quality of the audio, you know, especially back when we were everybody was hosting it themselves with metered bandwidth

01:53:33 ◼   ► I mean that was those were created in the pre-libsyn days. I was and this is not that long ago

01:53:37 ◼   ► I mean we're talking like five six years ago. Yeah, like five six seven years ago

01:53:43 ◼   ► It was a huge when when Dan and I first started doing the talk show

01:53:47 ◼   ► It was just the download cost was a huge thing. It really was well if you think about it. It was closer in

01:53:53 ◼   ► Relatively speaking in the in the grand scheme of things

01:53:57 ◼   ► It was closer in time to the days of postage stamp size QuickTime videos then of like like I just watched

01:54:02 ◼   ► Tim and Eric's Totino's commercial in 1080p and I watched it like five times and I don't think they're gonna be hurting because I did that

01:54:09 ◼   ► YouTube can handle that but really seriously when podcast started and I went and got my first Libsyn account

01:54:13 ◼   ► It was the first thing I knew of I mean, you know

01:54:15 ◼   ► You can get this to an extent with Squarespace Libsyn was the first one I knew of that had unmetered bandwidth

01:54:19 ◼   ► Which seemed completely untenable because it was so expensive if you had it on your hosted account just sitting there

01:54:26 ◼   ► Your bandwidth would be gone in an hour. Even if your show wasn't that popular you're done

01:54:30 ◼   ► Yeah, you couldn't have a 30 meg file that more than a few people downloaded

01:54:34 ◼   ► yeah, and there's things to like

01:54:39 ◼   ► the fact that people listen using different apps.

01:54:43 ◼   ► So one person might have two or three downloads of the show

01:54:47 ◼   ► because they've got one in iTunes at their work

01:54:50 ◼   ► and they've got one in iTunes at their home

01:54:52 ◼   ► and one in Overcast on their phone.

01:54:56 ◼   ► And it really, really adds up at some point,

01:54:59 ◼   ► but in today's world, the bandwidth is effectively free,

01:55:03 ◼   ► which is crazy.

01:55:06 ◼   ► I used to get we used to get complaints a lot when we went over an hour people would say man

01:55:11 ◼   ► I love your show, but you got to keep it under an hour on the show with Dan

01:55:15 ◼   ► Yeah, and this this version

01:55:18 ◼   ► No, not this version. Yeah by the time because this version I think is it coming up on two years?

01:55:24 ◼   ► I think it's coming up on I mean like like I'm off the top of my head

01:55:27 ◼   ► Syracuse a guy English readers

01:55:30 ◼   ► Stratechery guy like those all three of those were really good episodes

01:55:34 ◼   ► They were really good talk show episodes and I bet not one of them was under two hours

01:55:37 ◼   ► No, no, I think Syracuse was over three hours. Yeah, sir. Cusa was like 303. Those are all three and really good and it was for

01:55:45 ◼   ► You know and Dave Whiskas actually literally does edit the show and a lot of times they the the version that gets published is a little

01:55:53 ◼   ► shorter than what is recorded but

01:55:56 ◼   ► The Syracuse this show we recorded the day before this cocoa conference in Philly was gonna happen

01:56:03 ◼   ► Coco love which actually was a remarkably good. It was just a little 150 person indie Mac developer conference here in Philly

01:56:09 ◼   ► It was really really great. I can't believe it was the first instance of it. That's great. It was that that's great to hear

01:56:17 ◼   ► That's still thriving, you know, I've been to first conferences and they're never they're always they're cool like the first singleton

01:56:25 ◼   ► Was great, but like the second Singleton was way better because they had like, you know, they knew like 15 things to do better

01:56:31 ◼   ► They knew to get a better venue everything this Coco love conference

01:56:35 ◼   ► I can't believe it was the first one because it was like a really great venue and everything ran on time and really great

01:56:41 ◼   ► But anyway, Dave was speaking at it

01:56:44 ◼   ► And Brent Simmons was flying in so and he needed you know

01:56:49 ◼   ► He was gonna spend but I really wanted the show to come out that day Friday

01:56:52 ◼   ► So Syracuse and I recorded knowing we better not screw up. Hopefully we won't you know, we don't want to have any kind of necessary edits

01:56:59 ◼   ► so 303 was like

01:57:03 ◼   ► That was I don't think I don't think Dave would have cut anything though, but we you know, it was a very tight show

01:57:09 ◼   ► He's a he's very compact. I mean you'll remember that when he and Dan talked about

01:57:13 ◼   ► Goodfellas, I mean was an hour longer than the movie

01:57:17 ◼   ► crazy

01:57:20 ◼   ► but awesome

01:57:21 ◼   ► if there ever if ever you know, sir, I

01:57:24 ◼   ► it sounds crazy that your discussion of a movie would be longer than the movie, but if it happened with us and

01:57:30 ◼   ► What was the one we did Glengarry Glen Ross? It's actually easier than you think

01:57:34 ◼   ► Yeah, well because you can you know, if it's a really if it's truly a good movie there are details

01:57:40 ◼   ► There's little things that go by like this in the movie, you know in a snap

01:57:44 ◼   ► but that if you really stop and think about are worth a

01:57:48 ◼   ► lengthy discussion especially if you're somebody like Siracusa with that movie

01:57:51 ◼   ► or me with Glengarry Glen Ross maybe maybe like another one for me would be

01:57:54 ◼   ► like Big Lebowski or there's certain movies where it isn't just that I like

01:57:58 ◼   ► them it isn't just that I think they're really good it isn't just that I have

01:58:01 ◼   ► things to say about them it's just that there's so many things nobody's ever

01:58:04 ◼   ► bothered to ask me about that I thought yeah I know you're like this there's so

01:58:08 ◼   ► many things I've been thinking about about this thing for years that no one

01:58:11 ◼   ► has ever asked me about and this is the only chance in the entire world I'm

01:58:13 ◼   ► I'm gonna get to talk about this unified field theory about like, you know

01:58:17 ◼   ► In your case like a single point perspective with Stanley Kubrick

01:58:21 ◼   ► Like how many times when I get to talk about that?

01:58:22 ◼   ► How many times you get to talk about the way Steven Spielberg uses thirds of the screen?

01:58:27 ◼   ► It's like I'm probably the only person ever noticed this but like I got a lot to say about it

01:58:30 ◼   ► Absolutely, I you know and

01:58:35 ◼   ► Like I said rewind a little bit in the early days

01:58:38 ◼   ► We used to get complaints when we go over an hour

01:58:40 ◼   ► from some people and I understood it because I totally see like I you know it and I don't want to be

01:58:46 ◼   ► corny about this but it is

01:58:49 ◼   ► In a way that it's an honor that people read my stuff and read my writing

01:58:54 ◼   ► It's in some ways even more of an honor that

01:58:56 ◼   ► People listen to this show or when I appear on other people's podcasts because it's even more of your time

01:59:02 ◼   ► It takes longer to listen to a podcast just jump in and sip a little bit off of a 300 word blog post

01:59:08 ◼   ► I mean if you're gonna sit down to an interview if you're gonna tuck into a Syracuse interview, you better bring a sandwich

01:59:13 ◼   ► You really a lot of people

01:59:15 ◼   ► Jonas was just saying to me about how when he notices when he plays video games like Nintendo games and they put

01:59:22 ◼   ► again the cutscenes and they're the characters on screen talk and they put the

01:59:27 ◼   ► Subtitles underneath that he always reads them even though, you know

01:59:31 ◼   ► They're talking and I said, you know why I said I do the same thing

01:59:35 ◼   ► And I kind of don't like and I said, you know why I think it's because you read faster than you can listen

01:59:39 ◼   ► And he's like, yeah, that's true

01:59:40 ◼   ► Like you've already read the dialogue before they're even halfway through the sentence and it's like, you know

01:59:45 ◼   ► So people can read Daring Fireball way faster than they can listen to the show

01:59:48 ◼   ► So it's a real honor and so when people would complain that the show is too long

01:59:51 ◼   ► I'd think well, you know

01:59:52 ◼   ► You have a very good point because it's a privilege that you're giving me even an hour of your time

01:59:56 ◼   ► But I don't get any complaints anymore

01:59:59 ◼   ► I don't know if there are people out there listening right now who?

02:00:02 ◼   ► Silently hate that this show has expanded in time

02:00:05 ◼   ► You should write to me and let me know because you know, I'd be interested to know that

02:00:09 ◼   ► But what I've been hearing lately is people who love it, you know, well my feelings on this have really

02:00:16 ◼   ► Evolved I don't want to say I've gone full circle, but they've gone something very very near to full circle circle

02:00:21 ◼   ► And the short version is I think it depends a lot on what kind of show it is

02:00:26 ◼   ► You know think about it this I mean think about like if you listen to like I've just started listening to this show on slate

02:00:31 ◼   ► I think it's called a cultural gab fest and it's something like about a half hour long

02:00:35 ◼   ► And I it's just perfect perfect in length because it's a you know, it's almost like a radio show

02:00:39 ◼   ► It's like professional journalists talking in an organized way and it makes a lot of sense and you wouldn't want it to go on for

02:00:43 ◼   ► Four hours if it's an if it's an you know part of the thing when you're listening to like well

02:00:49 ◼   ► I'll be you know brave enough to toss myself in here

02:00:51 ◼   ► But like a show like this a show like definitely ATP and I'll even say a show like Roderick on the line

02:00:57 ◼   ► You're there because you want to see how this unfolds. You're not gonna skip any of this

02:01:01 ◼   ► Like you want to see here's where it started what happens next. Where's it gonna go from now?

02:01:05 ◼   ► You know what I mean? And I think that's really different from the topic obsessed

02:01:10 ◼   ► Outline driven show that a lot of people have come up with it. It can be very tight

02:01:16 ◼   ► So here's how my feelings evolved

02:01:17 ◼   ► I mean the joke I used to make when I first started doing a podcast for 43 folders in something like 2005

02:01:21 ◼   ► So it's a pretty long time ago. That's a long. Yeah. Yeah, so 2005 2000 then I started doing you know

02:01:27 ◼   ► MacBreak Weekly not too long after that. But anyhow back then the joke I always made was like

02:01:33 ◼   ► nobody wants to listen to like three guys talk about Unix for three hours because that's what podcasts used to seem like. They were totally

02:01:39 ◼   ► unedited. They were, I mean, I'm being very general here, but they were they weren't edited.

02:01:43 ◼   ► They weren't well recorded and a lot of times it was people who were not used to having

02:01:48 ◼   ► heard what their voice sounds like for a long time and they would just drone on and on. And so for me at

02:01:53 ◼   ► First it was like the 43 floors podcast like it was rarely more than like seven or eight minutes

02:01:57 ◼   ► Because I had internalized that like that's how long this should be people are gonna put this on their iPod

02:02:03 ◼   ► I guess that's a big file keep these small. I changed a little bit over time like you look nice today

02:02:07 ◼   ► I don't know if there's any look nice today's that are longer than an hour. They're usually like 35 minutes

02:02:13 ◼   ► Yeah, that was it was very

02:02:15 ◼   ► Sitcom like I want to listen to one for the first time in a long time went listen to one the other day

02:02:19 ◼   ► For election day was that who voted went back and listen to that one

02:02:23 ◼   ► And I cannot believe how fast it went by I was like that was it

02:02:26 ◼   ► Like I'm just settling in for the first sponsor break on talk show by this point, you know

02:02:30 ◼   ► But now today I have to say a show like yours like I don't find myself check on my watch or you know a show like

02:02:37 ◼   ► What's the prompt called now connected shows like that shows like ATP ATP could be two hours long and I'm totally fine with it

02:02:44 ◼   ► I'm just there to listen for however long it is at normal speed

02:02:47 ◼   ► I do the overcast thing where I do the automatically, you know clip out pauses part

02:02:52 ◼   ► But I never listen it artificially high speeds. Oh, you don't pump it up a little bit

02:02:57 ◼   ► I pump it up a little bit like a 1.1 and 1.5

02:03:00 ◼   ► Yeah, like a 1.2 or so let's podcast end up being about 1.1 or so. I think with

02:03:06 ◼   ► Overcast but yeah, you know if you get used to it, it's no problem, but certain shows where there's lots of music

02:03:12 ◼   ► I turn that off because that drives me crazy. I'm not I'm not gonna audio file. But anyway, all I'm saying is bottom line

02:03:17 ◼   ► Yes, it has changed a lot. I think for almost everybody

02:03:20 ◼   ► If people like your show and they I mean we used to use on Mac break weekly and frankly at that time it drove me

02:03:25 ◼   ► Nuts because they would be like, oh because it once it got to like an hour hour and 15 minutes

02:03:30 ◼   ► I'd be like, I've really got a pee and this show is getting way too long

02:03:33 ◼   ► But people would be like well good

02:03:35 ◼   ► Please record everything from every second that you're ever on the air and put it out

02:03:38 ◼   ► I was like you've got to be kidding me like after you've worked without a Melissa Gore that is that is a state of mind

02:03:43 ◼   ► It's kind of hard to grok

02:03:44 ◼   ► But you know, I honestly I mean you you're not a huge podcast listener

02:03:48 ◼   ► Are you know because I think the there's so many that I I like but I just don't have the time in my week

02:03:56 ◼   ► Yeah, and that's because I don't I don't commute you go to Vegas a lot. That's

02:03:59 ◼   ► Yeah, but how would that help me with podcast point?

02:04:02 ◼   ► But but they are you can be very time consuming and if you want to jump in something like the flophouse

02:04:08 ◼   ► You know to fully appreciate the flophouse

02:04:10 ◼   ► You've got to really go back and listen for Roderick on the line

02:04:12 ◼   ► If I could say it pays to go back and listen from a ways back

02:04:15 ◼   ► But even with a new show you get two shows that are two hours a week

02:04:18 ◼   ► I mean that's half a workday

02:04:20 ◼   ► No people you did this idea

02:04:22 ◼   ► I have no hesitation letting you

02:04:24 ◼   ► Put Roderick on the line out there as an example of that this type of show that people the people who love that like that

02:04:30 ◼   ► Show love that. Yeah, like I always see people say like it's a common thing on Twitter

02:04:36 ◼   ► Where if there's somebody who's on this show, you know my show that they really like they'll say I

02:04:41 ◼   ► Would love a Roderick on the line style show between you and insert that person every week

02:04:47 ◼   ► Wow, that's such a huge compliment like the people who most like I have somebody said it was Syracuse it with the last episode

02:04:53 ◼   ► But I see you know, there's other people like it when you know, Joanna Stern is on with me

02:04:58 ◼   ► Our show man, she's so good

02:05:02 ◼   ► But we and we do I do I always think when I record with her

02:05:05 ◼   ► I think man, we have a pretty good chemistry on the show together

02:05:07 ◼   ► but people will say like I would just love like a Roderick on the line style show like it's a

02:05:13 ◼   ► Style, you know, it is a thing. Well, that's really cool. I had noticed it

02:05:17 ◼   ► I have gotten that with you look nice today in the past

02:05:19 ◼   ► Because I think we really were one genre defining three white guys talking about nothing shows

02:05:24 ◼   ► alright, but

02:05:26 ◼   ► But no, it was funny though because well the the editing aesthetic of you look nice day and that show was super tightly edited

02:05:32 ◼   ► Oh ridiculously ridiculously edited. Yeah, right like behind the scenes it

02:05:38 ◼   ► It was like like you're going into like the dark room and it's there's thousands of strips of film

02:05:44 ◼   ► floor and you know, you know, I guess Adam used to do a lot of the editing original Adam was an editor

02:05:51 ◼   ► I mean until he got super busy at the end. He always edited it

02:05:54 ◼   ► It wasn't right and I came back that Claude was doing it, but it was always Adam

02:05:58 ◼   ► He would write us would touch it. All right, but the thing that Adam would come out with was this

02:06:04 ◼   ► 35 minute thing that sounded as though it was scripted a

02:06:08 ◼   ► Lot of people thought a lot of people were like how do you guys would you guys write together to use Google Docs?

02:06:13 ◼   ► Are you kidding me?

02:06:15 ◼   ► Estelle Getty playing playing testicles. I mean like we wrote that

02:06:20 ◼   ► It but it also it did feel

02:06:24 ◼   ► Yeah, it felt written. But yeah also felt so easy, you know

02:06:30 ◼   ► There was an easiness to it felt like you guys could just sit down and in 40 minutes come up with a 35 minute

02:06:37 ◼   ► You look nice today just right off the cuff. Yeah

02:06:40 ◼   ► That's this I appreciate you saying that and it's you know, so much of it was Adams work and you know

02:06:44 ◼   ► I would go back and I

02:06:46 ◼   ► Didn't do this. I

02:06:48 ◼   ► Guess most of the time I would listen to the raw version and then listen to the edited version

02:06:52 ◼   ► Especially later on and it's amazing because he would take stuff and change the order of it

02:06:55 ◼   ► He would duck stuff so that we weren't talking over each other

02:06:57 ◼   ► I mean, I guess everybody, all the Jason Snells of the world.

02:07:00 ◼   ► I mean, can you believe Jason Snell,

02:07:01 ◼   ► like can you believe how many things,

02:07:02 ◼   ► or Dave for that matter,

02:07:03 ◼   ► like can you imagine sitting there

02:07:04 ◼   ► and having to listen to this bullshit

02:07:06 ◼   ► and then have to figure out where to duck?

02:07:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, I can't, I'd be terrible.

02:07:09 ◼   ► - I would never do that in a million years.

02:07:10 ◼   ► That would drive me completely crazy.

02:07:12 ◼   ► But I don't wanna do that.

02:07:12 ◼   ► And then you go, well, here's a place

02:07:13 ◼   ► where we could drop in some music

02:07:14 ◼   ► or a sound cue or something.

02:07:16 ◼   ► And you know, it really,

02:07:19 ◼   ► you know, I think there's, especially as the show went on,

02:07:21 ◼   ► not to reminisce, but it got,

02:07:24 ◼   ► once we had heard our own show edited,

02:07:27 ◼   ► It became clear what show to do while we were recording it, which sounds silly

02:07:30 ◼   ► But like I think they probably needed strictly speaking less editing as we went but that just gave out a more fuel to like

02:07:36 ◼   ► You know make something interesting out of it. All right, but I yeah, I

02:07:40 ◼   ► one of my theories on why the launch shows longer shows are getting more palatable is that

02:07:47 ◼   ► People are better able to listen wherever whenever

02:07:53 ◼   ► Right like we didn't have you know when you you say you know what was the show you started in 2005?

02:07:58 ◼   ► There's 43 folders and then Mac break weekly right so there were you didn't even have a phone that could play

02:08:04 ◼   ► No, no no right let alone an 8 gigabyte phone that you could easily fill up

02:08:10 ◼   ► It's like it was like filling a grocery bag that you then had to carry around all day

02:08:13 ◼   ► It was it was an effort even with the iPod pet iPod

02:08:17 ◼   ► there was still a fair amount of effort to keeping that up to date and

02:08:20 ◼   ► You know now and you would you could run out of like who puts

02:08:24 ◼   ► Like I when I go in and I have to clear out space

02:08:26 ◼   ► I always go in and start with something like instacast or overcast because I have four gigs of audio files in there

02:08:31 ◼   ► I mean think about that think about how crazy that is and like back then that was you know

02:08:36 ◼   ► Substantial part of your your iPod could be filled up in no time. So yeah, you're right and

02:08:41 ◼   ► You know, it's it's commuting

02:08:44 ◼   ► It's people who take trains and use headphones and people with cars that have some sort of Bluetooth, you know connectivity

02:08:50 ◼   ► so, you know you load up your overcast with a bunch of shows and

02:08:54 ◼   ► They're always there. You don't have to do the stupid thing where you have to download it to your computer first and then

02:09:00 ◼   ► I gotta say that untethering from iTunes is huge. It's absolutely huge

02:09:05 ◼   ► It's actually one of the most fundamental things when I that changed iOS was when you did not have to be hooked up to a Mac

02:09:12 ◼   ► It seems like like a feature, you know improvement in retrospect

02:09:16 ◼   ► But like to me in retrospect, like that's when everything changed is when you can do

02:09:20 ◼   ► everything over the air.

02:09:21 ◼   ► I think it's largely responsible for the fact that podcasts are like a real part of my career

02:09:28 ◼   ► now.

02:09:29 ◼   ► I mean, there's like a significant portion of what I make at Daring Fireball comes from

02:09:35 ◼   ► this show.

02:09:36 ◼   ► And it's I think it's entirely directly corresponds to when iPhones got untethered from the computer

02:09:44 ◼   ► when they became full peers.

02:09:45 ◼   ► >> The Venn diagram of that, podcast growing, interesting doing Fireball.

02:09:49 ◼   ► Yeah, it's interesting that your timing is good for that.

02:09:53 ◼   ► >> Yeah, and I think that's also why the longer shows are seemingly palatable.

02:09:57 ◼   ► Maybe the people who hate them have given up and stopped listening, I don't know.

02:10:00 ◼   ► But I think it's because you always have it with you.

02:10:02 ◼   ► And even if you don't have a two hour chunk to listen to this all at once,

02:10:05 ◼   ► you just listen to the hour, first hour.

02:10:08 ◼   ► It's like one time when Marco was on a couple months ago,

02:10:11 ◼   ► it went real crazy long like this over two hours.

02:10:14 ◼   ► And so I literally broke it up into two episodes.

02:10:16 ◼   ► - Oh God, I remember that.

02:10:17 ◼   ► That was with Overcast.

02:10:18 ◼   ► That was when he put out Overcast.

02:10:20 ◼   ► - Yeah. - That's right.

02:10:21 ◼   ► You had like four hours.

02:10:23 ◼   ► - Right.

02:10:24 ◼   ► I think it was like four hours.

02:10:26 ◼   ► I think it had to be broken up.

02:10:27 ◼   ► But it helped because I was behind on the sponsor things

02:10:32 ◼   ► and more on that in a second.

02:10:36 ◼   ► But I'd fallen behind the schedule.

02:10:39 ◼   ► And it just, I don't know, just something--

02:10:41 ◼   ► - You were behind in the sponsor count?

02:10:42 ◼   ► Yeah, well it's because, you know, I don't have a regular, that's the other thing too.

02:10:47 ◼   ► I mean it probably would help if I got more regular. I used to try to record every Thursday

02:10:51 ◼   ► which is what we're doing this week. But no matter what I do, it seems like I don't, I

02:10:56 ◼   ► never record more than 40 episodes a year. Like in theory I would do 52, but it's pretty

02:11:03 ◼   ► consistent that it comes out to 40. Because sometimes I just, for a show that I don't

02:11:10 ◼   ► really prepare for I just come and do it I find it mentally exhausting like by

02:11:14 ◼   ► the time I'm done talking to you here I'm going to be that's the thing we're

02:11:17 ◼   ► not allowed to say I feel the same way I can't believe I feel tired after after

02:11:22 ◼   ► recording a podcast sometimes all right and I I've told you this before my

02:11:26 ◼   ► mother's father was a coal miner he is a coal miner and he worked in a black and

02:11:35 ◼   ► He died he died of a disease called black lung

02:11:38 ◼   ► Like at the age of 70 he died of black. I'm talking about computers for two hours

02:11:43 ◼   ► Right, but I remember you know what though, but I remember him

02:11:49 ◼   ► He was a very kind man and you know, I was only in first grade when he died

02:11:53 ◼   ► But he was he was everything you'd ever want in a pop-up, you know

02:11:58 ◼   ► He he always had like a secret stash of cookies that you know

02:12:01 ◼   ► He he let on that only I knew you know that my mom and dad didn't have to know that I knew where he kept

02:12:06 ◼   ► them

02:12:07 ◼   ► pop

02:12:08 ◼   ► Yeah, peppered farm sugar cookies, which is what it would a great name for cookies sugar cookies

02:12:14 ◼   ► Let's let

02:12:17 ◼   ► Let's sugar. No, actually, let's go ahead and sugarcoat this. This is literally sugar cookies, right?

02:12:22 ◼   ► But this is me complaining about the exhaust how exhausting is to talk to one of my best best and dearest friends for two hours

02:12:28 ◼   ► and Skype

02:12:30 ◼   ► And you know, I'm two generations removed from a man who went into a dangerous dark black hole

02:12:38 ◼   ► black dust

02:12:40 ◼   ► Breathing black dust that would eventually kill him

02:12:44 ◼   ► I don't even edit the show Dave Whiskas does and I'm

02:12:51 ◼   ► Complaining here for everybody about how hard it is, but I do I find it, you know