The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Well, as it happens, I'm on my way up to the moon.

00:00:03 ◼   ► Are you by any chance going up to your base at Clavius?

00:00:06 ◼   ► Yes, as a matter of fact I am.

00:00:09 ◼   ► Is there any particular reason why you ask?

00:00:12 ◼   ► Well, Dr. Floyd, I hope you don't think I'm too inquisitive,

00:00:16 ◼   ► but perhaps you can clear up the mystery about what's been going on up there.

00:00:19 ◼   ► I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I know what you mean.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Well, it's just for the past two weeks there have been some extremely odd things happening at Clavius.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Really?

00:00:30 ◼   ► Yes, well, for one thing, whenever you phone the base, all you get is a recording which

00:00:34 ◼   ► repeats that the phone lines are temporarily out of order.

00:00:37 ◼   ► Well, I suppose they've been having a bit of trouble with some of the equipment.

00:00:41 ◼   ► Yes, well, at first we thought that was the explanation, but it's been going on for the

00:00:45 ◼   ► past ten days.

00:00:47 ◼   ► You mean you haven't been able to get anyone at the base for ten days?

00:00:49 ◼   ► That's right.

00:00:50 ◼   ► I see.

00:00:51 ◼   ► Another thing.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Two days ago, one of our rocket buses was denied permission for an emergency landing

00:00:57 ◼   ► at Clavius.

00:00:59 ◼   ► How did they manage to do that without any communication?

00:01:01 ◼   ► Well, Clavius' control came on the air just long enough to transmit their refusal.

00:01:06 ◼   ► Well, that does sound very odd.

00:01:08 ◼   ► Yes, I'm afraid there's going to be a bit of a row about it.

00:01:11 ◼   ► Denying the men permission to land was a direct violation of the IAS convention.

00:01:16 ◼   ► Yes.

00:01:17 ◼   ► Well, I hope the crew got back safely.

00:01:19 ◼   ► Fortunately they did.

00:01:20 ◼   ► Well, I'm glad about that.

00:01:22 ◼   ► Dr. Floyd, at the risk of pressing you on a point you seem reticent to discuss, may

00:01:27 ◼   ► May I ask you a straightforward question?

00:01:29 ◼   ► Certainly.

00:01:30 ◼   ► Quite frankly, we have some very reliable intelligence reports that a quite serious

00:01:35 ◼   ► epidemic has broken out at Clavius.

00:01:37 ◼   ► Something apparently of an unknown origin.

00:01:41 ◼   ► Is this in fact what has happened?

00:01:44 ◼   ► I'm sorry, Dr. Smeislov, but I'm really not at liberty to discuss this.

00:01:49 ◼   ► This epidemic could easily spread to our base, Dr. Floyd.

00:01:52 ◼   ► We should be given all the facts.

00:01:54 ◼   ► Dr. Smyslov, I'm not permitted to discuss this.

00:01:58 ◼   ► So I'm here in Chicago,

00:02:02 ◼   ► Kudol Partners World Headquarters,

00:02:04 ◼   ► with my good friend Jim Kudol.

00:02:07 ◼   ► Jim, welcome.

00:02:10 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:02:10 ◼   ► Last night we went to see a screening of 2001,

00:02:15 ◼   ► a space odyssey at the...

00:02:17 ◼   ► Music Box Theater.

00:02:18 ◼   ► Music Box Theater, 70mm print.

00:02:23 ◼   ► A couple years ago there was a new print of this movie that came out and we thought we

00:02:27 ◼   ► were going to go see it and it was a different older sort of scratched up 70mm print.

00:02:33 ◼   ► Yeah, we were going to go, we went to the Wexler Art Center at Ohio State University

00:02:38 ◼   ► because we had heard that they had the new print and as soon as it was sold out, it was

00:02:43 ◼   ► great to see it projected large, but as soon as it started rolling there's a ticking artifact

00:02:48 ◼   ► on the left side channel of the audio in the first section of the film and as soon as we

00:02:53 ◼   ► heard that ticking, we knew that we were watching that same old print. So if you

00:02:57 ◼   ► go to see 2001 in a 70 millimeter print you'll know you've got the right print

00:03:02 ◼   ► when the picture is absolutely gorgeous and there's no crazy audio thing on the

00:03:05 ◼   ► left side. Right, and in addition to the fact that we didn't have any audio errors

00:03:09 ◼   ► last night, it was a digital audio thing. It was not the analog audio on

00:03:16 ◼   ► the side of the film. Optical, yeah. Well we were lucky enough to meet to chat

00:03:20 ◼   ► with the projectionist last night during intermission. How's that? Intermission in a film. So cool.

00:03:25 ◼   ► And he said that originally the 70 millimeter prints were released with an optical audio

00:03:31 ◼   ► track that ran alongside the picture. And that after that, they used a strip of mag,

00:03:40 ◼   ► like magnetic tape that ran along the picture. But that now all that's alongside the picture

00:03:46 ◼   ► his time code and it slaves basically a CD player which has all the digital audio on it.

00:03:52 ◼   ► But even though the audio was perfectly clear it is an old track and I believe that it's mono

00:04:01 ◼   ► and we also noticed that there's very little bottom end. There's very little base in the track

00:04:07 ◼   ► and I think that's probably true of most of the films of that era. We're sort of spoiled now by

00:04:13 ◼   ► Transformers and everything else. These chest-thumping subwoofer

00:04:17 ◼   ► theatre sound experience. Exactly, although it did sound great and it did sound great.

00:04:21 ◼   ► It did sound great. Again, no bottom end, it was no heavy bass, but it

00:04:27 ◼   ► would, in addition to a truly, truly magnificent picture quality, it sounded

00:04:31 ◼   ► great. Yeah, yeah. It was, you know, my father took me to see 2001, I can't

00:04:38 ◼   ► figure out exactly when it was, but it was soon after it came out. That would

00:04:42 ◼   ► to put me about eight years old so I chose how old I am.

00:04:44 ◼   ► But, and I remember being enthralled

00:04:47 ◼   ► and confused by the film.

00:04:50 ◼   ► But this was certainly the best representation

00:04:54 ◼   ► of the film I've ever seen.

00:04:55 ◼   ► And we were sitting right in the second row

00:04:57 ◼   ► and that was the right place to be, I think.

00:05:00 ◼   ► So it's a full house, Stanley can still sell them out.

00:05:02 ◼   ► - Absolutely. - I think the film,

00:05:04 ◼   ► the film has been part of a 70 millimeter festival

00:05:06 ◼   ► that they're running and I think every seat

00:05:08 ◼   ► for every show sold out right away.

00:05:10 ◼   ► - Wow, that's pretty cool.

00:05:12 ◼   ► - So,

00:05:16 ◼   ► I think anybody who ever goes to see this movie,

00:05:20 ◼   ► you come out of it and you do exactly what I always think

00:05:23 ◼   ► I'm not gonna do, which is start talking about what it means.

00:05:26 ◼   ► - Well, we were with my 12-year-old son yesterday,

00:05:28 ◼   ► so we couldn't help you.

00:05:29 ◼   ► His first question is, "What was that?"

00:05:32 ◼   ► - I actually liked, I really thought that Spencer

00:05:36 ◼   ► had a truly fabulous interpretation

00:05:39 ◼   ► of the last shot of the movie, which is that it's Superman

00:05:43 ◼   ► floating over the Earth.

00:05:44 ◼   ► And I know he was kind of half joking,

00:05:46 ◼   ► but I actually think that's, you know,

00:05:49 ◼   ► that to me is the basic gist of the story as I see it,

00:05:52 ◼   ► is that four million years ago, whoever this is

00:05:56 ◼   ► behind the monoliths, used a monolith to turn

00:06:00 ◼   ► our ape-like ancestors into men.

00:06:04 ◼   ► How did we turn from apes to men?

00:06:06 ◼   ► It was with their help and that monolith.

00:06:08 ◼   ► And that now, four million years later,

00:06:11 ◼   ► through the same people's help,

00:06:14 ◼   ► Dave Bowman has become the first whatever's next after us.

00:06:18 ◼   ► Like going from humans to whatever is greater than humans,

00:06:23 ◼   ► Dave Bowman's the first one who's done it.

00:06:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I don't think Spencer was the first one

00:06:28 ◼   ► with that theory, but that's the best I can make of it.

00:06:31 ◼   ► You know, the more I learn about the film

00:06:34 ◼   ► and the more I see it, the less I care, sort of,

00:06:37 ◼   ► about what the actual specific meaning of that last reel of the film is.

00:06:42 ◼   ► You know, it's so interesting.

00:06:45 ◼   ► All the details in the middle section and the Jupiter discovery section,

00:06:50 ◼   ► all the details are like, everything takes forever,

00:06:52 ◼   ► and you see every little bit of everything.

00:06:54 ◼   ► And then we make these huge jumps.

00:06:59 ◼   ► Obviously the most famous cut in cinema history between the bone and the spaceship

00:07:03 ◼   ► and the spaceship is a jump and then, you know, we jump down that slit scan, acid-induced

00:07:09 ◼   ► sort of color section. Well, and it really is, right, there's these two fantastic leaps

00:07:15 ◼   ► in the movie. There's the one where you, the jump cut from four million years ago to

00:07:21 ◼   ► forty years in the future. I mean, I still think of it as the future, because even though

00:07:25 ◼   ► it's 11 years after, right?

00:07:28 ◼   ► But, I guess 12 years now, it's 2013.

00:07:31 ◼   ► But then that last reel is another jump like that.

00:07:36 ◼   ► Where, I mean, who knows when or where you are.

00:07:38 ◼   ► But the other thing that really struck me last night,

00:07:42 ◼   ► I mean, again, this is super obvious,

00:07:44 ◼   ► but up until that last reel, up until the slit scan,

00:07:49 ◼   ► I think of it like, I always thought

00:07:51 ◼   ► he was going through hyperspace or something.

00:07:53 ◼   ► That's where he's going to wherever the people who made the monolith are.

00:07:57 ◼   ► Right.

00:07:58 ◼   ► But at that moment, the movie shifts from two hours or so of being extremely, almost

00:08:06 ◼   ► pedantically scientific, like both from the caveman stuff through the space stuff, you

00:08:12 ◼   ► know, this sort of almost extraordinary precision and an attempt to do everything as

00:08:20 ◼   ► realistically as possible to a final reel, which every single second of it, who knows

00:08:29 ◼   ► if any of it is even real.

00:08:33 ◼   ► It's completely poetic.

00:08:35 ◼   ► Is it in Bowman's head?

00:08:38 ◼   ► Is it a wormhole through space?

00:08:44 ◼   ► Spencer's other theory was when the very old man wakes up at the end, he said, "Well, it

00:08:48 ◼   ► was all a dream, which is sort of a conventional Hollywood way to approach it.

00:08:52 ◼   ► If you have a chance to see this print, and we understand that this will be the

00:08:56 ◼   ► print that's circulating, so I would certainly encourage you

00:09:00 ◼   ► if you have a chance to see it, to see it, a little

00:09:04 ◼   ► bit about the technical thing of it. It's the first time I ever

00:09:08 ◼   ► saw the film where things started to feel fake.

00:09:12 ◼   ► And I don't mean that as an insult to the film, obviously it's

00:09:16 ◼   ► special effects and it's from 1968. But the, you mentioned last night and I think

00:09:23 ◼   ► the same thing, the 3D model stuff like of the Discovery still holds up really

00:09:27 ◼   ► well. But some of the scenes are actually 2D photo realistic paintings or

00:09:37 ◼   ► photographs that are moved across another 2D surface and the fidelity of

00:09:42 ◼   ► of the picture last night, put the lie to that a little bit.

00:09:47 ◼   ► - It looked flat.

00:09:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, right, right.

00:09:50 ◼   ► It didn't look bad, it just looked flat.

00:09:55 ◼   ► It's sort of interesting to see it projected.

00:09:59 ◼   ► It's such a different thing than to see even the DVD

00:10:01 ◼   ► on your big screen, flat screen at home or whatever.

00:10:04 ◼   ► - And some of this stuff, honestly, I don't think

00:10:07 ◼   ► that it's just me being an enormous fan of the movie.

00:10:10 ◼   ► Some of the special effects scenes still look as good

00:10:13 ◼   ► as anything you're ever gonna see

00:10:16 ◼   ► because it looks absolutely real.

00:10:18 ◼   ► Like there's some shots where the camera

00:10:20 ◼   ► is sort of stationary in space, outer space,

00:10:23 ◼   ► and the discovery is passing over it.

00:10:26 ◼   ► And it looks, I don't think it can ever be surpassed

00:10:30 ◼   ► because it really looks like what it would look like

00:10:32 ◼   ► if you put a 70 millimeter camera in outer space

00:10:35 ◼   ► and built a real discovery and flew it over the camera.

00:10:38 ◼   ► - Right, right, right.

00:10:39 ◼   ► And every flyby of the camera of every spaceship since 1968

00:10:44 ◼   ► owes its existence to that particular opening scene.

00:10:49 ◼   ► - And a lot of the interiors--

00:10:51 ◼   ► - Opening scene of the discovery of the Jupiter section.

00:10:55 ◼   ► - The interiors really hold up just remarkably well.

00:10:59 ◼   ► Just in terms of does that feel like this could be

00:11:02 ◼   ► a real pod-based station in a starship.

00:11:06 ◼   ► And it just feels absolutely real.

00:11:08 ◼   ► And actually, the scientist's wardrobe is sort of right back in style right now.

00:11:12 ◼   ► The cut of the suits and everything is very contemporary.

00:11:18 ◼   ► I guess we've got to get on them to do Barry Lyndon next, right?

00:11:22 ◼   ► Oh, that would be a great pick.

00:11:23 ◼   ► Because that's another one where I would just love to see it on a big screen.

00:11:27 ◼   ► Yeah, me too.

00:11:28 ◼   ► Of all of the other films, I think that would be the one.

00:11:31 ◼   ► Just talking about "Seen You Projected," that would be the next one I'd want to see

00:11:35 ◼   ► projected, I think.

00:11:36 ◼   ► I was at the Kubrick exhibit in Amsterdam, and that was sort of interesting.

00:11:41 ◼   ► It's now in LA.

00:11:42 ◼   ► I don't know how long it is.

00:11:43 ◼   ► It's the same exhibit.

00:11:44 ◼   ► It's the same exhibit.

00:11:45 ◼   ► They had this big space at the new film museum right on the water there, a really great building.

00:11:51 ◼   ► The space was divided up by the movie.

00:11:53 ◼   ► So there was one section that was Dr. Strangelove, and there was another section that was 2001,

00:11:58 ◼   ► and there was another section that was Paths of Glory.

00:12:01 ◼   ► The really cool thing was they were showing a projection of long sequences from the film

00:12:08 ◼   ► on large screens in each of the sections, but the sections of the exhibit were not separated

00:12:13 ◼   ► from each other.

00:12:14 ◼   ► So while you were watching Alex in Clockwork, you could hear Hal at the other side of the

00:12:21 ◼   ► room and you could hear Merkin Muffley talking to the Russian premier from Strangelove.

00:12:28 ◼   ► It was like your head, the net effect of it was maybe what it might have been to be like

00:12:34 ◼   ► Kubrick, because you had all these ideas floating around in your head at one time.

00:12:37 ◼   ► There's a great app for that exhibit, too.

00:12:40 ◼   ► Have you seen that?

00:12:41 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:12:42 ◼   ► And it's got photos I've never seen anywhere before in that app.

00:12:45 ◼   ► In fact, photos are in that app that aren't even in the exhibit.

00:12:47 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:12:48 ◼   ► Yeah, so anybody out there is vaguely interested in Kubrick, and if you're not, you've probably

00:12:52 ◼   ► already stopped the podcast.

00:12:54 ◼   ► But you've got to go to the app store.

00:12:56 ◼   ► - Go to the app store and just search for Kubrick,

00:12:58 ◼   ► and I think that's actually just the name of the app,

00:13:00 ◼   ► it's just Kubrick, but yeah, it's like a great ebook,

00:13:04 ◼   ► really, like a coffee table book type thing.

00:13:06 ◼   ► - It's really cool.

00:13:08 ◼   ► - There was another thing, just like a random thing

00:13:10 ◼   ► that stuck out to me last night,

00:13:11 ◼   ► I mentioned this to you last night after the film,

00:13:13 ◼   ► but I'd never thought about it before,

00:13:15 ◼   ► but it really stuck out to me,

00:13:17 ◼   ► was in the caveman sequence, in the prehistoric sequence,

00:13:21 ◼   ► there's a scene where a cheetah is up a bunnet,

00:13:26 ◼   ► on like a little small cliff above the tribe

00:13:31 ◼   ► and pounces and attacks one of the tribe's people.

00:13:36 ◼   ► And I don't know how they shot that

00:13:37 ◼   ► because I realized like it's,

00:13:39 ◼   ► and it wasn't all diced up with cuts, it was like--

00:13:42 ◼   ► - It was one cut, one shot I believe.

00:13:45 ◼   ► - I think it cut when it jumped,

00:13:46 ◼   ► it cut when the cheetah jumped

00:13:48 ◼   ► and then the rest of it is just,

00:13:50 ◼   ► it holds on a shot, like kind of a long shot

00:13:52 ◼   ► of a guy, not really a guy, but one of these,

00:13:57 ◼   ► what do you want to call them, cavemen,

00:14:01 ◼   ► I call them cavemen, whatever.

00:14:02 ◼   ► - Monkeys, whatever you call them.

00:14:03 ◼   ► - Right, fighting a cheetah, and everybody knows

00:14:07 ◼   ► that it was people in suits doing this.

00:14:10 ◼   ► So they had a guy in a suit fighting an actual cheetah.

00:14:14 ◼   ► - Against a front projection glass screen

00:14:17 ◼   ► showing the Sahara Desert.

00:14:19 ◼   ► I noticed that scene too, but not for that,

00:14:22 ◼   ► It didn't occur to me, I guess I'm so immune to Hollywood special effects.

00:14:28 ◼   ► One of the Oscar nominated films is a boy and a tiger in a boat for God's sake.

00:14:33 ◼   ► Maybe it didn't occur to me that, God that cat's actually attacking that guy.

00:14:37 ◼   ► The thing that occurred to me in that scene is that the color correction was off in that

00:14:41 ◼   ► scene relative to the scenes before and after it.

00:14:44 ◼   ► It made me think, I've seen this movie too many times, but it made me think I bet they

00:14:49 ◼   ► only got that once.

00:14:51 ◼   ► They only got the action they wanted once and maybe the lighting wasn't correct, but

00:14:55 ◼   ► the fact was that they needed the action so they had to do what they could with the color

00:15:00 ◼   ► correction to make it sort of fit with the scene that came before and after it.

00:15:04 ◼   ► I agree with that.

00:15:05 ◼   ► There is something off about the lighting.

00:15:07 ◼   ► I love the scene where the leopard turns into the camera and the front projection light

00:15:12 ◼   ► is reflected in his eyes.

00:15:14 ◼   ► For me that's like a really awesome scene, which probably wouldn't happen in nature,

00:15:18 ◼   ► but in a way.

00:15:20 ◼   ► Let's talk about one other thing.

00:15:21 ◼   ► It's a lot of scenes.

00:15:22 ◼   ► It got a good big laugh in the movie.

00:15:23 ◼   ► It always gets a big laugh when you see the movie.

00:15:25 ◼   ► It's the zero gravity toilet instruction scene.

00:15:29 ◼   ► - Right, on the Pan Am shuttle.

00:15:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, to Clavius. - That Heywood Floyd is on.

00:15:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, that he's going, to Clavius?

00:15:35 ◼   ► - No, I think it's on his way to the space station.

00:15:37 ◼   ► - It's on the way to the space station.

00:15:38 ◼   ► And it's like paragraphs and paragraphs of text.

00:15:43 ◼   ► And I believe it's all real text.

00:15:44 ◼   ► It's not like Lorem Ipsum Dolar.

00:15:46 ◼   ► And that comes up and Heywood Floyd's looking at it

00:15:49 ◼   ► and he's like puzzled by it.

00:15:50 ◼   ► And I sort of think that that scene is like maybe the only scene of the film that actually doesn't fit.

00:15:56 ◼   ► That's actually there just as a gag.

00:15:58 ◼   ► Because, as you said, he's been flying around the galaxy for a long time.

00:16:06 ◼   ► He's been on these ships before.

00:16:07 ◼   ► I find it hard to believe he hadn't had to go to the bathroom before.

00:16:10 ◼   ► And secondly, if everyone who ever flew on these ships used the zero gravity toilet,

00:16:17 ◼   ► would they have to have like all of these instructions?

00:16:20 ◼   ► I mean it's clearly a joke for the contemporary audience watching the film.

00:16:26 ◼   ► Right.

00:16:26 ◼   ► Which there's really very little of that. The other thing is that the stewardesses,

00:16:30 ◼   ► I think we can call them a stewardess because they're not really a flight attack.

00:16:33 ◼   ► The stewardesses shoes which have some velcro on the bottom to keep her from,

00:16:38 ◼   ► to allow her to walk in zero gravity, it said grip shoes on the side.

00:16:43 ◼   ► Right.

00:16:43 ◼   ► And for me that, and it looked cool, it was almost like an Adidas looking thing,

00:16:47 ◼   ► But for me that was another thing like a thing for the audience because if everybody wore those shoes

00:16:52 ◼   ► You wouldn't put grip to it doesn't say tennis shoes on the side of my shoes, you know

00:16:57 ◼   ► It doesn't you know, like so it was sort of a way to give out some scientific information

00:17:03 ◼   ► Yeah, it was almost as though they they did like

00:17:05 ◼   ► It was almost the equivalent of putting a graphic on screen with an arrow

00:17:09 ◼   ► You know like a pop-up graphic right that like labels it or explains it or like you do and you know

00:17:15 ◼   ► Like some comic books will explain, you know, like like the old Dick Tracy comics, right?

00:17:20 ◼   ► Would draw like a little arrow to his watch and say two-way wrist radio, right?

00:17:24 ◼   ► It's almost proof of how smart we are about the future, right?

00:17:27 ◼   ► You know and I do kind of miss Pan Am now now after seeing it again, you know

00:17:32 ◼   ► Is there any more Pan Am airline? No, no, and they were gonna be the ones that made it to the future

00:17:36 ◼   ► But they didn't I guess yeah, it's weird. We don't really do that. It was still good, right?

00:17:43 ◼   ► - Right, Hilton's still there. - Hilton's still there.

00:17:44 ◼   ► It was Ma Bell, AT&T, I guess.

00:17:47 ◼   ► I don't know what it was exactly,

00:17:48 ◼   ► but anyhow, interesting on that.

00:17:51 ◼   ► Great time.

00:17:52 ◼   ► - I do, and I, there's so many scenes that I love,

00:17:55 ◼   ► but the scene in Hilton, to me, is one of my favorites.

00:17:59 ◼   ► It's-- - The one we did.

00:18:00 ◼   ► - Right. - Yeah, right.

00:18:01 ◼   ► - The one we did a read-through here for the opening.

00:18:04 ◼   ► And there's something about the way

00:18:07 ◼   ► that the guy who plays Haywood Floyd,

00:18:09 ◼   ► I don't know, I don't remember his name as an actor.

00:18:12 ◼   ► as far as I know he's never been in anything

00:18:13 ◼   ► I've seen since, but he's so deadpan

00:18:16 ◼   ► in terms of, he obviously knows,

00:18:19 ◼   ► but he's not underplaying it, he's not overplaying it,

00:18:22 ◼   ► he's just stone-faced about it.

00:18:24 ◼   ► And he's not tight-lipped about it.

00:18:28 ◼   ► He seems like exactly the sort of guy

00:18:30 ◼   ► who you'd want in the government to trust

00:18:33 ◼   ► with the single greatest secret the government's ever had.

00:18:36 ◼   ► He really does seem like the perfect guy.

00:18:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, and then he does the presentation later

00:18:41 ◼   ► where he doesn't really say anything to anyone.

00:18:43 ◼   ► - Right.

00:18:44 ◼   ► - He's like perfect government scientific bureaucrat.

00:18:47 ◼   ► - Right.

00:18:48 ◼   ► He's still really the only guy who knows

00:18:50 ◼   ► what the hell's going on, even in the presentation, yeah.

00:18:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, right.

00:18:54 ◼   ► Yeah, he's just trying to keep them in line, so to speak.

00:18:58 ◼   ► - Sort of like, it's almost like just a formality,

00:19:03 ◼   ► like just good manners that I'm not gonna not address you,

00:19:07 ◼   ► but I'm not going to tell you anything

00:19:09 ◼   ► when I do address you.

00:19:10 ◼   ► - Right, and you have to keep up the charade of the epidemic.

00:19:13 ◼   ► - Right, but that's a beautiful Kubrickian thing too,

00:19:15 ◼   ► is that he sets up the scene with Smyslov in the Hilton.

00:19:18 ◼   ► And the end of that scene that we just kind of went through

00:19:23 ◼   ► is where he accuses Floyd of hiding the fact

00:19:27 ◼   ► that there's an epidemic on the clavian base.

00:19:29 ◼   ► And then later he makes the presentation

00:19:32 ◼   ► and he talks about what's going on in the base

00:19:34 ◼   ► and at the end of the presentation he says,

00:19:35 ◼   ► "And that's why it's so important

00:19:36 ◼   ► that we keep up the appearance of an epidemic at the base.

00:19:40 ◼   ► So at the moment when we first saw Floyd,

00:19:44 ◼   ► we didn't know what he thought about this idea

00:19:47 ◼   ► of an epidemic and later we find out what a cool cat he is

00:19:50 ◼   ► because he's orchestrated this entire cover story.

00:19:53 ◼   ► It's a good exposition by Kubrick

00:19:55 ◼   ► because we know as little as the people in the scene know.

00:19:59 ◼   ► We are like the Russians in the first scene

00:20:01 ◼   ► and in the second scene of the presentation,

00:20:04 ◼   ► we are like the ignorant other officials

00:20:06 ◼   ► from the other area, so it's nice.

00:20:08 ◼   ► It's like the film we learn as characters

00:20:13 ◼   ► in the film learn, sort of.

00:20:15 ◼   ► Like Heywood's got one over on us, too.

00:20:18 ◼   ► - Right.

00:20:19 ◼   ► And then there's the, you pointed it out,

00:20:22 ◼   ► that on the next shuttle, the smaller one

00:20:24 ◼   ► that goes from the space station to Clavius,

00:20:27 ◼   ► where they're wearing actual astronaut suits.

00:20:30 ◼   ► - When they're having sandwiches.

00:20:31 ◼   ► - And they're eating sandwiches.

00:20:32 ◼   ► And the one guy is like, great presentation.

00:20:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, you really bucked up the truth.

00:20:36 ◼   ► You didn't do anything.

00:20:37 ◼   ► You did nothing of this sort.

00:20:39 ◼   ► - Right, really.

00:20:40 ◼   ► - I mean, unless there were some other speech he gave

00:20:42 ◼   ► that we didn't see.

00:20:44 ◼   ► - I don't, well, maybe, but I don't think so.

00:20:46 ◼   ► I think it was in reference to that presentation,

00:20:48 ◼   ► and I think he was just trying to be complimentary

00:20:50 ◼   ► to clearly, you know--

00:20:51 ◼   ► - Kissing up to him.

00:20:52 ◼   ► - To the highest ranking guy

00:20:53 ◼   ► that he's probably ever gonna encounter in his career.

00:20:56 ◼   ► - But that guy knew what was going on at Clavius.

00:20:58 ◼   ► - Right.

00:20:59 ◼   ► - So he was one of the guys at the meeting, you know, so.

00:21:02 ◼   ► I don't know, "Clevius," good place for a mystery.

00:21:05 ◼   ► - So that, you know, and clearly,

00:21:07 ◼   ► for people who aren't a fan of the movie, the--

00:21:09 ◼   ► - Well, they certainly would have hit pause by now.

00:21:12 ◼   ► - Right.

00:21:13 ◼   ► - On this podcast.

00:21:14 ◼   ► - Well, the complaint, and it has merit, really,

00:21:18 ◼   ► is that the film is tedious.

00:21:20 ◼   ► It's tedious deliberately, though, right?

00:21:23 ◼   ► - It's glacial.

00:21:24 ◼   ► - Right. - Yeah, yeah.

00:21:25 ◼   ► - There's, yeah, there's extended sequences

00:21:28 ◼   ► of people doing truly mundane things,

00:21:31 ◼   ► And the point of it, it's almost like a deliberation

00:21:34 ◼   ► on what the mundane aspects of the future are going to be.

00:21:39 ◼   ► It's like almost like a painstakingly detailed,

00:21:44 ◼   ► we've thought of every single thing

00:21:46 ◼   ► and we're gonna show it to you.

00:21:47 ◼   ► And the pacing of it, it does,

00:21:50 ◼   ► it always puts me in a certain mindset

00:21:52 ◼   ► where it does, it zones me out.

00:21:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that, and Dave's, and Bob's breathing too,

00:21:59 ◼   ► like the whole thing has sort of a zen sort of a quantity,

00:22:03 ◼   ► quality to it. Like when he opens,

00:22:06 ◼   ► when he's going to use the explosive bolts to get back into the discovery,

00:22:10 ◼   ► when he opens that hand crank door,

00:22:13 ◼   ► it takes forever. Like he just turns it and turns it and turns it and turns it.

00:22:19 ◼   ► And we're waiting and we're waiting and we're waiting and the tension is

00:22:21 ◼   ► building and building and building. I mean, it's just beautiful.

00:22:24 ◼   ► And the whole film is, I mean,

00:22:25 ◼   ► The whole middle section of that film is the most anti-science fiction, science fiction

00:22:30 ◼   ► film ever made.

00:22:32 ◼   ► In the time it took him to open that door, in most science fiction films, civilizations

00:22:37 ◼   ► will have born, lived, and died in the same time it took Dave to open the door.

00:22:42 ◼   ► New generations of weapons will be developed to counter the weapons that would have been

00:22:46 ◼   ► shown 15 minutes ago.

00:22:49 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:22:51 ◼   ► It is a science fiction movie, but it's...

00:22:53 ◼   ► Our idea of what a science fiction movie is now is a lot different than it was in 1968,

00:22:57 ◼   ► too.

00:22:58 ◼   ► I think there's...

00:22:59 ◼   ► And most of them owe everything to it, I would say.

00:23:03 ◼   ► One of the little oddities about it is that it's a G-rated movie, and surely the only

00:23:09 ◼   ► G-rated movie Stanley Kubrick ever made.

00:23:13 ◼   ► Which I think, A, is a little weird because it just seems to me like a murderous robot

00:23:22 ◼   ► is maybe PG already.

00:23:25 ◼   ► Four people get murdered, including Frank Poole, who I think kind of gets murdered in

00:23:32 ◼   ► one of the most terrifying ways imaginable.

00:23:35 ◼   ► It's maybe even worse than drowning, right?

00:23:38 ◼   ► Just to be in a suit knowing that you've been cut.

00:23:41 ◼   ► know he had a couple seconds there before he died where he knew well I'm

00:23:44 ◼   ► gonna die right I'm gonna float away into truly oblivion yeah and of course

00:23:49 ◼   ► the actual act takes place off-screen right which is so interesting since we

00:23:53 ◼   ► they've spent their time to be spent his time showing us every little detail of

00:23:57 ◼   ► every little thing except for the most crucial moment in that reel of the film

00:24:00 ◼   ► that happens off-frame on a frame and the murder of the three crew members who

00:24:07 ◼   ► who are hibernating is something too, yeah.

00:24:10 ◼   ► If it was a murderous robot, it would have been PG-13,

00:24:15 ◼   ► but it's a murderous mainframe.

00:24:17 ◼   ► That's a little different.

00:24:18 ◼   ► - Right, and I do think that that might be why

00:24:20 ◼   ► that they didn't see it that way,

00:24:22 ◼   ► because HAL's physical instantiation isn't a robot,

00:24:26 ◼   ► isn't a humanoid type C-3PO thing.

00:24:29 ◼   ► - Right. - It's really just

00:24:30 ◼   ► a presence on the ship.

00:24:31 ◼   ► He's a camera, you know, he's a series of red cameras

00:24:34 ◼   ► and a voice, and that's it.

00:24:36 ◼   ► Like if you want to think about it, it's almost like he's the ship.

00:24:40 ◼   ► Right.

00:24:41 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like when we think of being killed by machines, generally we imagine them marching

00:24:45 ◼   ► at us with lasers, you know what I mean?

00:24:50 ◼   ► Not turning off the power to our hibernation cocoons.

00:24:54 ◼   ► And that whole sequence after Hal kills Frank Poole and his body is going out into oblivion.

00:25:04 ◼   ► And what Dave Bowman does then is never explain.

00:25:09 ◼   ► He doesn't say anything,

00:25:10 ◼   ► 'cause the only person he would talk to would be Hal.

00:25:13 ◼   ► And he clearly knows, I guess, it seems realistic to me,

00:25:15 ◼   ► it seems, you know, but it also seems like

00:25:18 ◼   ► unlike most Hollywood movies where he never, you know,

00:25:22 ◼   ► does like a shakes his fist at Hal and swears revenge

00:25:25 ◼   ► and screams at him and says,

00:25:27 ◼   ► "Well, I'm gonna go get his body or something like that.

00:25:30 ◼   ► "I'm not gonna let him,

00:25:33 ◼   ► I'm not gonna let him go like that.

00:25:35 ◼   ► I mean, clearly he knew he was dead.

00:25:37 ◼   ► I think the only reason he went to get him

00:25:39 ◼   ► is out of respect for his friend and clearly,

00:25:41 ◼   ► it wasn't like he thought

00:25:42 ◼   ► he had any hope of saving his life.

00:25:44 ◼   ► He just, he went out to retrieve his body

00:25:49 ◼   ► and it's minutes long.

00:25:51 ◼   ► I mean, I wonder how long that scene is.

00:25:54 ◼   ► That's one of those things where I wouldn't be surprised

00:25:55 ◼   ► if somebody told me it was actually 20 minutes long.

00:25:58 ◼   ► I don't even know, it might be 20 minutes

00:26:00 ◼   ► before he gets down the steps,

00:26:02 ◼   ► gets into a... From the time he leaves until the time he blows through the

00:26:07 ◼   ► explosive bolts to get back in that is a long and again glacial

00:26:12 ◼   ► and quiet sort of a sequence. You know like even when he blows the bolts

00:26:17 ◼   ► you don't even hear the explosion. It's sort of like the Ridley Scott line right?

00:26:20 ◼   ► In space no one can hear you scream. Like there's no sound of the explosion.

00:26:24 ◼   ► The only sound comes as as he closes the door and air starts to rush back into the

00:26:28 ◼   ► airlock. Sort of interesting choice there. And that is one of the

00:26:32 ◼   ► when I say it's like super scientific, one of the ways that the film is is when the camera is

00:26:37 ◼   ► exterior in space, there is no sound. Spaceships don't make any whooshing sound. It's just pure

00:26:43 ◼   ► silence. And the sound, some of the sounds in the movie, it was so loud in the theater.

00:26:47 ◼   ► The silence really pops. The silence, it's like, you know, in great visual, in graphic design,

00:26:53 ◼   ► where if you make truly great use of white space, it's striking. But then the only time he ever

00:27:00 ◼   ► interrupts that would be to use the breathing of an astronaut and sort of it

00:27:05 ◼   ► almost like audio audio wise puts you in a first-person perspective yes yes as the

00:27:11 ◼   ► same way of a point-of-view camera that's exact I mean that's exactly it

00:27:14 ◼   ► every time you're the breathing you are Dave like in a way you know what I mean

00:27:17 ◼   ► you are booming so it almost makes my face feel hot like I can feel my own hot

00:27:23 ◼   ► breath in a glass you know and closed helmet right

00:27:28 ◼   ► - So did we waste enough time talking about 2001 yet?

00:27:32 ◼   ► - Well, I could never waste enough time.

00:27:33 ◼   ► - I know.

00:27:33 ◼   ► - Here's my question for you is if Hal killed me

00:27:37 ◼   ► and my body was floating out into the middle of nowhere

00:27:41 ◼   ► between Jupiter and Mars, would you get in a pod

00:27:44 ◼   ► and come out and rescue my body?

00:27:45 ◼   ► - Yes, because I, at that moment,

00:27:48 ◼   ► I did not know that Hal knew.

00:27:52 ◼   ► Remember, Hal doesn't reveal that he had read his lips

00:27:55 ◼   ► until after.

00:27:56 ◼   ► So I, you get the feeling though

00:28:01 ◼   ► that Bowman is suspicious beyond the fact

00:28:04 ◼   ► of just, just from the look on his face.

00:28:07 ◼   ► But yeah, of course I'd come and get you, Jon.

00:28:10 ◼   ► - All right, good to know, Jim.

00:28:11 ◼   ► - But then when I got back and I couldn't get in,

00:28:13 ◼   ► I'd have to let you float away.

00:28:15 ◼   ► - I think Bowman at that point is angry,

00:28:18 ◼   ► 'cause I think he knows it's Hal's fault,

00:28:20 ◼   ► but that he's only unsure whether it's Hal is malfunctioning

00:28:26 ◼   ► - Or malevolent. - Or malevolent.

00:28:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, right, right. - Right.

00:28:29 ◼   ► And so I think, though, and I think he's so

00:28:32 ◼   ► in a state of shock, because, you know,

00:28:34 ◼   ► I mean, obviously he was good, he was his friend,

00:28:36 ◼   ► the only guy he's talked to in the last year or something.

00:28:38 ◼   ► I don't know how long he'd been up there, but--

00:28:40 ◼   ► - A long time. - It's an 18-month mission,

00:28:41 ◼   ► and it seems like they're pretty far along in it.

00:28:43 ◼   ► - Well, it's mostly almost there,

00:28:45 ◼   ► because he sees the video transmission from Floyd

00:28:50 ◼   ► when he's disconnecting Hal, and that means--

00:28:53 ◼   ► - That's when he's up there. - And he says,

00:28:55 ◼   ► "We're only going to give you this message now that you're in reach of Jupiter."

00:28:59 ◼   ► - Jupiter, right.

00:29:00 ◼   ► Yeah, so it must be like 18 months.

00:29:01 ◼   ► So in like 18 months, he's the only guy he's known.

00:29:05 ◼   ► He's in a state of shock.

00:29:06 ◼   ► He forgets his helmet.

00:29:09 ◼   ► But whether he completely forgot the helmet or just made the assumption that I don't really

00:29:13 ◼   ► need it because I'm not going out of the pod, I'm just going to use the arms to get Frank

00:29:17 ◼   ► and then Hal will let me back in here, just never even occurred to him that Hal wouldn't

00:29:22 ◼   ► let him back in.

00:29:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's the answer, I think.

00:29:25 ◼   ► And then there's, you know, you go into that whole sequence of the slitscreen camera and

00:29:33 ◼   ► everything that goes into there.

00:29:34 ◼   ► Now there's two ways this movie can go, really.

00:29:37 ◼   ► One way is if you stay on the same path, you wind up in the room with the white floors

00:29:42 ◼   ► and Dave Bowman and the changing of time and the space baby.

00:29:47 ◼   ► But if you make a little left-hand turn right there, you run right into Terrence Malick's

00:29:51 ◼   ► Tree of Life.

00:29:52 ◼   ► And then that movie takes over from there.

00:29:54 ◼   ► So that's the primordial ooze from which interesting movies come or something.

00:30:02 ◼   ► Although you can't make Tree of Life into a science fiction movie.

00:30:05 ◼   ► That would be a hell of a double feature.

00:30:07 ◼   ► Yeah, you better drink some coffee.

00:30:11 ◼   ► That would be like six hours.

00:30:14 ◼   ► I could stand it.

00:30:15 ◼   ► I don't know if anybody else could.

00:30:16 ◼   ► I don't think Spencer could.

00:30:17 ◼   ► I don't think my son could.

00:30:19 ◼   ► I don't know what kind of state of mind you'd be in by the end of that, too.

00:30:24 ◼   ► All right, well, that was good.

00:30:25 ◼   ► Let me do the first sponsor read.

00:30:27 ◼   ► I want to thank Squarespace.

00:30:30 ◼   ► Squarespace is back on board this week to sponsor the show.

00:30:34 ◼   ► You guys know who Squarespace is.

00:30:35 ◼   ► It's a beautiful, intuitive website platform that allows anyone to easily create professional

00:30:41 ◼   ► webpages, blogs, online stores, galleries.

00:30:46 ◼   ► It's all on a single platform.

00:30:48 ◼   ► You log in and you get to choose which parts of those things you want for your site.

00:30:54 ◼   ► You simply start with one of their designs.

00:30:56 ◼   ► You can start with one of their designs.

00:30:58 ◼   ► You add your own images and content, anything you want to sell.

00:31:02 ◼   ► You connect your social accounts, your Twitter account, your Facebook account, that sort

00:31:05 ◼   ► of thing.

00:31:06 ◼   ► And you'll have a website that looks great on every device because one of the things

00:31:09 ◼   ► Squarespace has in all of their templates is that responsive design where the same thing,

00:31:15 ◼   ► The same URL is optimized for the iPad, it's optimized for your iPhone or your smartphone,

00:31:20 ◼   ► and it looks great on a big desktop monitor.

00:31:24 ◼   ► All Squarespace accounts come with their award-winning 24/7 technical support, their cloud hosting,

00:31:31 ◼   ► they take care of all the hosting needs, they do domain name registration, they have real-time

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00:31:41 ◼   ► And if you sign up for a year, they even give you a free domain name.

00:31:46 ◼   ► The new thing they have, this is the new thing, is this integrated store.

00:31:51 ◼   ► They call it Squarespace Commerce.

00:31:53 ◼   ► And you can add a fully integrated store to your website and start accepting payments

00:31:57 ◼   ► and like everything else in Squarespace, literally in just minutes.

00:32:01 ◼   ► You can sell anything.

00:32:02 ◼   ► You can add a store and you get to set up what type of objects you're selling.

00:32:08 ◼   ► easy store management and great options for payment.

00:32:12 ◼   ► I think that they – I think it's Stripe.

00:32:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's their primary.

00:32:15 ◼   ► That's their primary.

00:32:16 ◼   ► Yeah, and everybody knows Stripe is just – it's the best way to do online commerce.

00:32:20 ◼   ► So I mean it really took something that's a huge pain in the ass.

00:32:24 ◼   ► I mean and Jim and I both know that setting up an online store and have made it really,

00:32:29 ◼   ► really easy.

00:32:30 ◼   ► So check them out.

00:32:32 ◼   ► The URL is squarespace.com/thetalkshow.

00:32:37 ◼   ► dot com slash the talk show that way they'll know you're coming here from the show but

00:32:42 ◼   ► check them out especially if you've got something you've been thinking about setting up an online

00:32:46 ◼   ► store that's new so check out what they have to offer before you make a mistake and go

00:32:50 ◼   ► with someone else. Yeah I mean just brand new I think it's brand new and it's a whole

00:32:54 ◼   ► suite of e-commerce features that are loaded into your account so it looks cool I've been

00:33:00 ◼   ► playing around with it a little bit so it looks cool. They're a sponsor on the deck

00:33:03 ◼   ► They are. They're a long time sponsor of the deck. Like other smart companies. Very smart

00:33:10 ◼   ► companies. Let's talk about the deck. So when, how long have we been doing this?

00:33:15 ◼   ► The deck's been going since about 2007, 2008, was kind of in its infancy and then really

00:33:24 ◼   ► started getting going in 2009. So it kind of, it ran as a small text ad service as a

00:33:32 ◼   ► sort of a proof of concept and originally just ran on Kudol.com and then after that

00:33:36 ◼   ► it got we sort of got serious about it so I think it was 2009 was when we we might have run a little

00:33:42 ◼   ► at the end of 2008 but 2009 would have been the first year of the deck I guess and here we are in

00:33:47 ◼   ► 13 so are you sure you don't have the years wrong on that I thought it was sooner I mean or older

00:33:52 ◼   ► I thought it was no I don't think it's much older than that we happen to be sitting in my office so

00:33:57 ◼   ► so I can just look on my computer and see.

00:33:59 ◼   ► - What I remember is that it first launched

00:34:01 ◼   ► with you and 37signals and Zeldin.

00:34:05 ◼   ► - That is correct.

00:34:06 ◼   ► You are correct.

00:34:09 ◼   ► - And you guys, the Jewelboxing, I think.

00:34:13 ◼   ► - Yes, 2006 and 2007, 2008 and 2009.

00:34:18 ◼   ► - That makes sense 'cause it really sort of coincides

00:34:20 ◼   ► with when I took Darren Fireball full time.

00:34:22 ◼   ► And prior to that--

00:34:24 ◼   ► - Man, it's a long time ago now.

00:34:26 ◼   ► - Feels like it.

00:34:27 ◼   ► But prior to that, I'd been selling my own totally text ads.

00:34:31 ◼   ► Same spot where the deck ads are on Daring Fireball.

00:34:34 ◼   ► - Right, I remember that, yeah.

00:34:35 ◼   ► - It was just text.

00:34:36 ◼   ► And similar model where it was sort of like

00:34:38 ◼   ► my RSS sponsorship still are,

00:34:39 ◼   ► where it's one spot a week.

00:34:41 ◼   ► One sponsor a week.

00:34:43 ◼   ► And you were buying those spots occasionally

00:34:47 ◼   ► for Jewel Boxing.

00:34:49 ◼   ► - Right.

00:34:50 ◼   ► - And I don't think Field Notes existed then.

00:34:51 ◼   ► - No, it was just starting 2007.

00:34:53 ◼   ► - I think it was Jewel Boxing.

00:34:55 ◼   ► 'cause back then people actually needed

00:34:56 ◼   ► jewel boxes for discs.

00:34:58 ◼   ► I mean, that's how old we are now.

00:34:59 ◼   ► - Despite everything, some people still do.

00:35:03 ◼   ► Business, jewel boxes still selling.

00:35:04 ◼   ► Not very many compared to the old days.

00:35:06 ◼   ► - And I was gonna go,

00:35:10 ◼   ► when I wanted to take Daring Farboul full-time,

00:35:12 ◼   ► I needed somebody else to sell the ads.

00:35:14 ◼   ► I needed bigger and better ads.

00:35:16 ◼   ► I needed some more money from it.

00:35:18 ◼   ► And so I just emailed you to say,

00:35:19 ◼   ► "Hey, thanks for all of the jewel boxing things

00:35:22 ◼   ► "you've sponsored here,

00:35:23 ◼   ► "but I'm going to start looking for something else for ads."

00:35:28 ◼   ► And you were like, "Hold that thought, John.

00:35:30 ◼   ► "Give me a week."

00:35:32 ◼   ► And then the next week you were like,

00:35:34 ◼   ► "All right, you want to be in the deck."

00:35:35 ◼   ► - Right, well we had done,

00:35:37 ◼   ► I was always convinced it would work,

00:35:39 ◼   ► and I believe it was at South By in 2006

00:35:43 ◼   ► where it was easy to talk Jason Fried into it

00:35:45 ◼   ► because we shared an office.

00:35:47 ◼   ► So I'm like, "Jason, I'm going to do this ad thing.

00:35:48 ◼   ► "Come and do it with me."

00:35:49 ◼   ► And then I talked Jeffrey Zeldman into it

00:35:53 ◼   ► a list apart. And then it ran with us three as the only place where the ads appeared for

00:35:57 ◼   ► a little bit, for a while. I believe you were next or maybe Andy. You were Andy. I don't

00:36:03 ◼   ► know who was next.

00:36:04 ◼   ► It was really close between me and Andy Baio's waxy.org.

00:36:07 ◼   ► And then it started. Then it grew fairly quickly. Now it's growing slowly. But that's how we

00:36:12 ◼   ► want it to be. At that point, it was relatively easy to... There were different concerns about

00:36:21 ◼   ► getting new affiliates at that point.

00:36:23 ◼   ► Now we're looking for exactly the right affiliate and one that the ads work well for the audience

00:36:28 ◼   ► and that is designed properly, whatever.

00:36:30 ◼   ► But back then, nobody was carrying ads.

00:36:34 ◼   ► And when you put the ads on your site or Jason Kotke did or we did, there was some concern

00:36:42 ◼   ► that our readers would see that as a betrayal, which seems kind of funny now, doesn't it?

00:36:47 ◼   ► Like to be so worried about that.

00:36:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:50 ◼   ► And that is definitely true.

00:36:51 ◼   ► were in those, you know, I've been doing Daring Fireball

00:36:54 ◼   ► for 10 years, so we can talk about it

00:36:56 ◼   ► as a little bit over 10 years now, but as a decade.

00:36:58 ◼   ► And in that first half, the 2002, 2003, 2004 years,

00:37:03 ◼   ► nobody had ads on their weblogs.

00:37:06 ◼   ► Nobody had any kind of ads.

00:37:08 ◼   ► And then Google had the AdSense thing,

00:37:13 ◼   ► but that was still just text, and it was all pay-per-click.

00:37:16 ◼   ► And that was, I mean, it really was controversial

00:37:19 ◼   ► and people would just add like a single Google text thing.

00:37:22 ◼   ► It was like a, I don't know, a complete aversion

00:37:24 ◼   ► to advertising at all in this.

00:37:26 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:37:27 ◼   ► We were more altruistic back in our young days, I guess.

00:37:30 ◼   ► - But at the same time, there were,

00:37:33 ◼   ► I've always been, other websites, the CNETs,

00:37:35 ◼   ► the New York Times is the ones that were not personal

00:37:39 ◼   ► but somehow, I don't know what you want to call them,

00:37:42 ◼   ► institutionalized news sites had the worst ads.

00:37:47 ◼   ► I mean, ads that are worse than the ones you even see today.

00:37:49 ◼   ► I mean, I think like about 10, eight, nine years ago,

00:37:53 ◼   ► advertising online was absolutely at like the bottom.

00:37:57 ◼   ► - Right.

00:37:58 ◼   ► - Punch the Monkey, you remember that?

00:38:00 ◼   ► They would have these ads that--

00:38:02 ◼   ► - There's plenty of bad shit out there now too though.

00:38:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe I just don't see it

00:38:05 ◼   ► 'cause I have flash turned off on my computer.

00:38:07 ◼   ► I don't know, maybe I shouldn't say that.

00:38:09 ◼   ► - Would you think, should I, I mean,

00:38:10 ◼   ► the idea of the deck was, just to go over the basics

00:38:13 ◼   ► if you know this, I'm sorry to repeat,

00:38:14 ◼   ► but the idea of the deck was we thought

00:38:16 ◼   ► there was probably a better way to do display advertising that would provide benefits for

00:38:22 ◼   ► all three people in the advertising equation.

00:38:24 ◼   ► By the three people in the equation, I mean the publisher, the advertiser, and the reader.

00:38:30 ◼   ► If we felt like when we made the deck, if we could come up with a concept for delivering

00:38:34 ◼   ► advertiser that would be beneficial to all three of those people, then it would work.

00:38:38 ◼   ► Up until that point, it was for the advertiser, it was for the publisher, it was for the publisher,

00:38:45 ◼   ► It was for the reader, whatever.

00:38:47 ◼   ► Our concept was if we put together a confederation of like-minded sites that we displayed a single

00:38:57 ◼   ► ad from an advertiser that was truly relevant to the readership that everybody could benefit.

00:39:05 ◼   ► We've never said that if an ad is in the deck, we endorse its business, but it's sort of

00:39:10 ◼   ► an implied endorsement since we turn down ads all the time.

00:39:14 ◼   ► Since we're fairly low-fi and low-tech, and we're serving up, I mean the deck is not any

00:39:20 ◼   ► whiz-bang programming thing, and we're serving up these ads, we have very low overhead on

00:39:25 ◼   ► the network, and so we deliver a lot of impressions for a relatively good cost.

00:39:31 ◼   ► So lots of people want to buy on the deck, but we don't want the ads from lots of people.

00:39:35 ◼   ► We want ads from people who have products and services that appeal to our audience in

00:39:39 ◼   ► a real way, not just in a sort of, you know.

00:39:43 ◼   ► I'm unconvinced that an algorithm can ever really choose relevance for advertising to

00:39:50 ◼   ► a marketplace.

00:39:51 ◼   ► I mean, maybe someday I can.

00:39:52 ◼   ► The other thing that's not really of direct concern to people who read sites that are

00:39:57 ◼   ► on the deck, people who read Daring Fireball or who read Kaki, they don't need to understand

00:40:02 ◼   ► this and it doesn't matter.

00:40:05 ◼   ► But the fact is the deck has never paid by the page view ever.

00:40:08 ◼   ► In fact, that was part of the concept of this.

00:40:12 ◼   ► It's better for everybody if we do it this way, where advertisers just paid the deck

00:40:17 ◼   ► a set fee and they run for the month.

00:40:23 ◼   ► It's not that we don't give them traffic numbers and we tell them collectively we tend to do

00:40:29 ◼   ► this many page views a month or whatever, but if we happen to do more, we do a little

00:40:33 ◼   ► less in a month, it doesn't affect it.

00:40:38 ◼   ► That's to me the biggest thing.

00:40:39 ◼   ► To me, that's even bigger than the unobtrusiveness of the actual physical format of the ad on

00:40:43 ◼   ► the page is that it takes away any sort of impetus to trump up your page views.

00:40:48 ◼   ► There is no reason.

00:40:49 ◼   ► And so you don't see, there's nobody I know of on the deck who takes long articles and

00:40:53 ◼   ► breaks them into six pages, which is truly just, it's just a scam.

00:40:57 ◼   ► I mean, and I don't even use that word lightly.

00:41:00 ◼   ► It's a scam to get your page views up.

00:41:03 ◼   ► And that works against nobody.

00:41:06 ◼   ► So the pay-per-view model that most of the rest of online advertising uses is bad for

00:41:11 ◼   ► everybody because it's bad for the advertiser because they're getting these numbers that

00:41:17 ◼   ► don't correlate to people.

00:41:18 ◼   ► They correlate to people clicking on web pages, right?

00:41:21 ◼   ► So when you go through and the worst of it now, the way that that's sort of bottomed

00:41:25 ◼   ► out are the slideshows, right?

00:41:28 ◼   ► Here's 20 ways that Apple could screw up the iWatch.

00:41:34 ◼   ► And then you've got to click 20 times and it counts as 20 pages.

00:41:37 ◼   ► But that's no good for the advertiser.

00:41:39 ◼   ► Right.

00:41:40 ◼   ► Because each one of those advertisers, let's say there's four advertisers in the slide

00:41:43 ◼   ► view, they're all being charged the full price of a page view when it goes without saying

00:41:48 ◼   ► that if I'm clicking through to 20 pictures and not seeing 20 pictures on one page, what's

00:41:51 ◼   ► a more valuable impression?

00:41:55 ◼   ► If I'm involved in an article, I'm reading it at Fireball or I'm reading a post from

00:42:00 ◼   ► from TNet, Swiss Miss, or a long thread on MetaFilter,

00:42:04 ◼   ► I'm involved in the ad is there.

00:42:06 ◼   ► If I have to click through and see four ads,

00:42:09 ◼   ► sure, we'll get four more impressions,

00:42:11 ◼   ► but are those four impressions equal

00:42:13 ◼   ► to the single impression?

00:42:14 ◼   ► No, of course not.

00:42:15 ◼   ► - Right.

00:42:15 ◼   ► It's even worse for the reader.

00:42:17 ◼   ► I mean, nobody ever in the history of the world has said,

00:42:19 ◼   ► "You know what I like to do is I like to click 20 times

00:42:21 ◼   ► "to see all 20 ideas you have about the--"

00:42:24 ◼   ► - All the Kate Upton pictures I can handle, right?

00:42:26 ◼   ► Whatever it is, yeah.

00:42:28 ◼   ► And it's no good for the sites themselves,

00:42:30 ◼   ► because then they're busy themselves

00:42:32 ◼   ► with trumped up SEO headlines.

00:42:36 ◼   ► Who feels good about taking a nice long article

00:42:39 ◼   ► that's really a good read and chopping it up into bits,

00:42:42 ◼   ► where you know that each one of those times

00:42:44 ◼   ► where you make asking the reader to click the thing,

00:42:46 ◼   ► you know that half of them are gonna just drop out.

00:42:48 ◼   ► - And some are gonna drop away, yeah.

00:42:49 ◼   ► - Right, it's almost heartbreaking to know

00:42:51 ◼   ► that if you've written something that really is good,

00:42:53 ◼   ► like a real nice 2,000 word piece,

00:42:55 ◼   ► It's almost heartbreaking to think that two thirds of the readers only go to the first

00:43:00 ◼   ► seven hundred words because they just closed the window.

00:43:03 ◼   ► So it doesn't work for anybody.

00:43:04 ◼   ► And yet it's like entrenched.

00:43:06 ◼   ► Right.

00:43:07 ◼   ► And it's not just that.

00:43:08 ◼   ► It's the idea of displaying five ads on a page and counting them all as an you don't

00:43:15 ◼   ► count each of those as somehow for some reason you don't count each of those as a fifth of

00:43:19 ◼   ► an impression.

00:43:20 ◼   ► Right.

00:43:21 ◼   ► You count them all as a full impression.

00:43:22 ◼   ► So I don't know, maybe we're over-delivering, but the dirty little secret of the deck is

00:43:26 ◼   ► for the right advertiser, it works very well.

00:43:28 ◼   ► Most of our advertisers renew.

00:43:30 ◼   ► Advertisers that have the service or a product that fits with the mindset of the affiliates

00:43:34 ◼   ► that are in the deck do very well.

00:43:36 ◼   ► So we don't have to change all the advertising on the web.

00:43:39 ◼   ► We just have to keep going.

00:43:41 ◼   ► The equivalent, and it's hard to equate the ads in any one medium to another.

00:43:46 ◼   ► How is a TV commercial like a magazine ad?

00:43:50 ◼   ► It's hard to draw the comparison.

00:43:52 ◼   ► But to me, the way that there's five ads on a page at the Washington Post or something

00:43:58 ◼   ► like that, and they sell them all as separate page views, to me it's like selling a full-page

00:44:01 ◼   ► ad in the newspaper or magazine, but putting five ads on the page.

00:44:06 ◼   ► Right.

00:44:07 ◼   ► That's the point I was trying to make.

00:44:08 ◼   ► That's a good way to put it.

00:44:09 ◼   ► But you know what it is?

00:44:10 ◼   ► I often think that buying a slot on the deck, which buys you one slot on the deck, buys

00:44:17 ◼   ► you 3% of all the impressions across all the sites and services in the network for a calendar

00:44:25 ◼   ► month and that works out to somewhere between 2 and 3 million impressions.

00:44:29 ◼   ► But buying that, currently it does, but buying that is most akin to buying a full page in

00:44:35 ◼   ► the New Yorker in a magazine.

00:44:36 ◼   ► It's more like a magazine ad because you're buying a monthly thing.

00:44:41 ◼   ► Your ad is by itself.

00:44:44 ◼   ► It is adjacent to content but it is not adjacent to other ads.

00:44:48 ◼   ► It's a very difficult thing to quantify the results that you get for it but if you

00:44:54 ◼   ► buy the ad in the New Yorker and your sales go up, you probably renew the ad and you can

00:44:59 ◼   ► track who saw it in the New Yorker.

00:45:00 ◼   ► Well, it's the same thing with the deck.

00:45:02 ◼   ► So I think the deck, if it's like anything in old media, it's more like a full page

00:45:08 ◼   ► magazine ad in a magazine than it is like a TV commercial or like a traditional banner

00:45:13 ◼   ► ad. I just wish the deck could just take over all the pages on the affiliates. The deck

00:45:19 ◼   ► ad could get really big and blot out all the content. I think the readers and the advertisers

00:45:23 ◼   ► would appreciate that.

00:45:24 ◼   ► Yeah, or if you could use a little JavaScript to make the ad march over the page and you

00:45:29 ◼   ► have to shoot it before it and it'll go back to the spot that it was in.

00:45:34 ◼   ► And then it puts up a dialogue that says,

00:45:36 ◼   ► do you really want to leave this ad?

00:45:38 ◼   ► I love those.

00:45:39 ◼   ► But it's like, yes, you're trying to leave this page.

00:45:40 ◼   ► Now you don't know what to click

00:45:41 ◼   ► 'cause you feel like you're in the spammer's embrace already

00:45:44 ◼   ► like, and so if you click, no, I don't want to leave,

00:45:46 ◼   ► you're saying, yes, I appreciate your takeover ad.

00:45:49 ◼   ► But if you say, I want to leave,

00:45:50 ◼   ► you think maybe that they're smart enough

00:45:52 ◼   ► to make that the default that sends you

00:45:54 ◼   ► to the Florida property page or whatever,

00:45:56 ◼   ► whoever the advertiser is or something more nefarious.

00:45:59 ◼   ► - Have you noticed that Netflix still does pop under ads?

00:46:04 ◼   ► I don't see them. I don't know why. Maybe it's because Safari's good at getting rid of them. I don't know.

00:46:08 ◼   ► It's like a cat and mouse game, I think, between the browsers and the rotten thieves who are trying to circumvent the anti-popup thing.

00:46:16 ◼   ► But every once in a while--and I still see them from Netflix. And every time I see one--

00:46:21 ◼   ► I've been a happy Netflix customer for years, and I still am. But every time I see a pop-under from Netflix,

00:46:26 ◼   ► it puts the idea in my head that maybe I should unsubscribe from Netflix just because they're using some of the money to do pop-under ads.

00:46:32 ◼   ► which are the worst.

00:46:33 ◼   ► - Right, so it's not working.

00:46:36 ◼   ► The advertisers are not working.

00:46:37 ◼   ► In fact, it's counterproductive on you.

00:46:39 ◼   ► I don't know who's, I don't see them.

00:46:41 ◼   ► I don't know, maybe I must have some settings

00:46:42 ◼   ► set up or something.

00:46:43 ◼   ► - I don't see many.

00:46:44 ◼   ► I do have to admit that I use Safari.

00:46:46 ◼   ► I have to admit they're pretty good at blocking.

00:46:49 ◼   ► - Right, so if you are like Squarespace

00:46:52 ◼   ► and you have a product or service that could benefit

00:46:55 ◼   ► by being in front of millions of creative, intelligent,

00:46:59 ◼   ► curious, and good looking people, you should go to the deck

00:47:02 ◼   ► and give us a holler.

00:47:03 ◼   ► Let me ask you about another subject.

00:47:05 ◼   ► - All right.

00:47:05 ◼   ► - Tell me about Webstock.

00:47:07 ◼   ► You and I were both in New Zealand,

00:47:08 ◼   ► so tell me about that.

00:47:09 ◼   ► - We were there a week ago, as we're recording today,

00:47:12 ◼   ► Friday, February 22nd, a week ago we were together,

00:47:15 ◼   ► except instead of being in Chicago,

00:47:16 ◼   ► we were in Wellington, New Zealand.

00:47:18 ◼   ► - Just about this time you were doing your presentation.

00:47:21 ◼   ► - I think that's probably about right.

00:47:22 ◼   ► - A week ago.

00:47:23 ◼   ► - Although--

00:47:24 ◼   ► - Well, the time difference was--

00:47:25 ◼   ► - Right, which is mind-blowing, right?

00:47:26 ◼   ► And there's this whole thing where

00:47:28 ◼   ► the international date line, you cross,

00:47:30 ◼   ► So they're in tomorrow already.

00:47:33 ◼   ► - Right.

00:47:34 ◼   ► Well, it's not good.

00:47:35 ◼   ► That's sort of like the end of 2001,

00:47:39 ◼   ► the end of the day.

00:47:39 ◼   ► You just can't really understand it.

00:47:40 ◼   ► - You know what?

00:47:41 ◼   ► I should have had though that our friend,

00:47:42 ◼   ► our mutual great friend, Michael Lop,

00:47:44 ◼   ► had a birthday and he...

00:47:47 ◼   ► - He left California on the 9th on the airplane

00:47:51 ◼   ► from San Francisco.

00:47:51 ◼   ► I was on the plane with him.

00:47:52 ◼   ► We arrived in Wellington, New Zealand on the 11th.

00:47:56 ◼   ► Michael's birthday's the 10th,

00:47:57 ◼   ► so he got gypped out of a birthday.

00:47:58 ◼   ► - Right, he had no birthday.

00:47:59 ◼   ► Or maybe it's a positive, because maybe it doesn't have to count.

00:48:01 ◼   ► - Right, now maybe, yeah, does it legally count

00:48:04 ◼   ► as being a year older than when you weren't around

00:48:06 ◼   ► on your birthday?

00:48:07 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:48:08 ◼   ► Talk about, it's a great conference.

00:48:10 ◼   ► What did you think of it?

00:48:11 ◼   ► - I really, I went back, I was there two years ago,

00:48:15 ◼   ► and it was such a long flight, and as soon as I came back,

00:48:17 ◼   ► I thought, well, that was great, but never again,

00:48:19 ◼   ► because the flight was too long.

00:48:20 ◼   ► And then I think it's like the way that, I don't know,

00:48:23 ◼   ► they say with, you know, like childbearing,

00:48:25 ◼   ► where it hurts, and then women say,

00:48:27 ◼   ► well, never gonna do it again.

00:48:28 ◼   ► But then you're engineered to forget how painful it was.

00:48:31 ◼   ► It's like, the flight's not that bad.

00:48:34 ◼   ► But I remember it was such a great conference two years ago,

00:48:37 ◼   ► and so I jumped at the chance to go back.

00:48:39 ◼   ► And I thought the same thing, that it was, man,

00:48:41 ◼   ► I would have loved to have been here even if I wasn't speaking,

00:48:44 ◼   ► just to see these talks.

00:48:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:48:46 ◼   ► It's the best conference I've ever-- I've even put on conferences,

00:48:49 ◼   ► and I never did that good.

00:48:50 ◼   ► I mean, it's the best conference I've ever been to.

00:48:52 ◼   ► Maybe only rivaled by 2007, 2008, South By,

00:48:57 ◼   ► before it turned into the monster that took over the world.

00:49:00 ◼   ► The thing, it's a single track with a small exception.

00:49:04 ◼   ► It's a single track concept.

00:49:05 ◼   ► So there's about 850 people there,

00:49:07 ◼   ► and everybody sees all the same talks.

00:49:08 ◼   ► In the middle of the day, half the people who are more

00:49:11 ◼   ► developers go one way, and half the people who are more

00:49:13 ◼   ► designers go the other way.

00:49:14 ◼   ► But by and large, it's a single track conference.

00:49:16 ◼   ► And I have never been to a conference

00:49:19 ◼   ► where more of the speakers sat and rooted

00:49:21 ◼   ► for the other speakers.

00:49:22 ◼   ► I mean, for me, that really said what

00:49:24 ◼   ► interesting and well-programmed conference it was is that I wanted to

00:49:30 ◼   ► see all the other speakers and not just because I knew some of them but but

00:49:33 ◼   ► because and many of them I didn't know at all or only know now and that was

00:49:37 ◼   ► sort of interesting and it's in a cool place Wellington's a cool place it's a

00:49:41 ◼   ► very cool place and it's nice it is a really nice tree and I was every speaker

00:49:46 ◼   ► from North America well or your yeah but I think we're all from the northern

00:49:52 ◼   ► hemisphere. I don't think they had any, what do you call them, antipodes?

00:49:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know. It depends on where you count Craig Modis from being from.

00:50:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:50:00 ◼   ► If he's from San Francisco, he's one thing, but he's also from Tokyo.

00:50:04 ◼   ► I don't know. Yeah. But it's really nice to go from mid-February northern hemisphere to

00:50:12 ◼   ► mid-February southern hemisphere. I guess, what is that? That's the equivalent of August?

00:50:17 ◼   ► Yeah. It's like summer, mid-summer.

00:50:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's not real hot.

00:50:22 ◼   ► It was, I don't know, 70 every day.

00:50:25 ◼   ► It was like 70 and sunny every day.

00:50:27 ◼   ► - Which apparently is not the case in Wellington

00:50:29 ◼   ► most of the time.

00:50:30 ◼   ► It's very windy and it rains quite a bit,

00:50:32 ◼   ► but we didn't see any of that.

00:50:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, we had more rain too.

00:50:34 ◼   ► - It could be that sort of thing where they tell everybody

00:50:35 ◼   ► it's windy and rainy all the time to keep people away.

00:50:38 ◼   ► Like they don't want to share their space

00:50:39 ◼   ► with everybody else.

00:50:40 ◼   ► It might be that.

00:50:41 ◼   ► - I think the single-track nature of Webstock,

00:50:46 ◼   ► I mean, and there's certainly other single-track conferences,

00:50:48 ◼   ► But a lot of the other single-track conferences

00:50:50 ◼   ► that I go to or have been to are significantly smaller.

00:50:54 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:50:55 ◼   ► - The new one, Singleton, which has gone on two years

00:50:59 ◼   ► in a row in October in Montreal is about 100,

00:51:02 ◼   ► I think the two years have been 100 and 125 people or so.

00:51:06 ◼   ► And C4 here in Chicago before that,

00:51:10 ◼   ► it was like a 2006 to '10 thing.

00:51:11 ◼   ► - Are those both nerdier?

00:51:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, those are more specifically focused

00:51:17 ◼   ► on Apple developers.

00:51:18 ◼   ► Used to be Mac developers, but now clearly Mac and iOS,

00:51:22 ◼   ► Coke developers, if you will.

00:51:23 ◼   ► - I mean, there was some nerdiness of WebStack,

00:51:27 ◼   ► but it was more of a general developer-designer,

00:51:31 ◼   ► broadened your mind a little bit.

00:51:33 ◼   ► Like, for example, Craig talked about what he called,

00:51:36 ◼   ► what does he call the publishing, the subcompact publishing,

00:51:40 ◼   ► talking about Marco a little bit, and the magazine,

00:51:42 ◼   ► but also sort of general trends.

00:51:45 ◼   ► It was more like that.

00:51:47 ◼   ► It was more like big idea and then let's break it down

00:51:50 ◼   ► as opposed to this is how you code a shopping cart

00:51:53 ◼   ► and rails or whatever.

00:51:55 ◼   ► - Right, and Craig, his Craig Mod's talk

00:51:58 ◼   ► is probably a perfect example of that

00:51:59 ◼   ► where I feel like they, I mean,

00:52:01 ◼   ► the name of the conference, Webstock, implies its roots,

00:52:04 ◼   ► which was people making websites.

00:52:06 ◼   ► You know, back, I think this was the seventh year

00:52:07 ◼   ► that they ran the conference, seventh grade.

00:52:09 ◼   ► And I think originally it was more specific

00:52:12 ◼   ► about designing and building websites

00:52:14 ◼   ► and now they've gotten away from that.

00:52:16 ◼   ► I mean, that's certainly part of it.

00:52:18 ◼   ► But I think Craig's talk exemplified

00:52:19 ◼   ► why they're getting away from that,

00:52:21 ◼   ► because there's not that much of a difference.

00:52:22 ◼   ► And if you're gonna do an online publication,

00:52:25 ◼   ► you're gonna need web stuff and app stuff.

00:52:30 ◼   ► - Right. - You know, I did a show

00:52:31 ◼   ► of hands in my talk, 'cause I was curious,

00:52:32 ◼   ► 'cause I remember two years ago I did the same thing.

00:52:35 ◼   ► You know, what are the people in the audience working on?

00:52:37 ◼   ► And it was overwhelmingly websites, web stuff.

00:52:39 ◼   ► And I asked this year how many people were working on apps.

00:52:42 ◼   ► And I'd say easily over half the hands went up.

00:52:45 ◼   ► And the most hands went up were the ones when you said how many are working on both.

00:52:48 ◼   ► Right.

00:52:48 ◼   ► You said you're working on websites and mobile apps and like the whole crowd.

00:52:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:52:54 ◼   ► Everything went up and that's, you know, I even put my hand up and I'm not working on any of that.

00:52:57 ◼   ► I just got caught up in the emotion of the whole thing.

00:53:00 ◼   ► And I think that, but I think that that, I think it speaks to the strength of the programming of the conference that Dave sort of adjusted instead of trying to replay what Webstock was in 2007.

00:53:12 ◼   ► it's they've really sort of got their finger on the pulse of what are these people working on today.

00:53:17 ◼   ► Or even if it's not what they're working on, it's what issues, what larger issues in design and

00:53:26 ◼   ► development can we discuss that will benefit your work. And the other thing they do is they have the

00:53:32 ◼   ► first two days of the conference are workshops. So you can go to a half-day workshop with Cragmod,

00:53:37 ◼   ► for example, about subcompact publishing.

00:53:40 ◼   ► And I think they actually, with their iPhones, published a book to Amazon

00:53:45 ◼   ► in their half-day conference of photography.

00:53:47 ◼   ► So, I mean, there was, I think the more practical sort of things like

00:53:52 ◼   ► Karen McGrane's talks, and they wound up in the workshops where people could

00:53:57 ◼   ► really get their hands on the stuff.

00:53:59 ◼   ► And the more conceptual stuff wound up in the main presentations, I think.

00:54:05 ◼   ► But I would encourage anybody who is interested in going to New Zealand to go to the next

00:54:12 ◼   ► Web Stock.

00:54:13 ◼   ► I hope they're all sold out.

00:54:16 ◼   ► It's one of those things where I guess no matter how effusive our praise is of the conference,

00:54:22 ◼   ► anybody who's listening from North America, even on the West Coast where you're already

00:54:26 ◼   ► closer is still going to roll their eyes and think, "Well, I'm not going all the way to

00:54:30 ◼   ► New Zealand for a conference."

00:54:32 ◼   ► But if you've ever thought about going to New Zealand or maybe some kind of combined

00:54:36 ◼   ► two-week trip where you'd go to Australia too or something like that, and you could

00:54:43 ◼   ► work it out schedule-wise to do it with web stock in the middle, boy, that would be worth

00:54:47 ◼   ► it.

00:54:48 ◼   ► I mean, it really is the best.

00:54:49 ◼   ► It's the best conference I know of that's going on right now.

00:54:51 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:54:52 ◼   ► And we'll see because it's in this beautiful hall.

00:54:55 ◼   ► The main presentations are what's called the Wellington Town Hall, which was from 1906

00:54:58 ◼   ► or something.

00:55:00 ◼   ► And it's this big, beautiful old building.

00:55:02 ◼   ► The Beatles played there, the Talking Heads played there, and all this other stuff happened

00:55:06 ◼   ► there.

00:55:07 ◼   ► It's quite an imposing stage for a speaker.

00:55:09 ◼   ► But with the big earthquake in Christchurch a year ago, two years ago, they have made

00:55:18 ◼   ► much stronger regulations about how buildings have to be supported.

00:55:22 ◼   ► So the town hall is going to be closed for two years while they reinforce it.

00:55:26 ◼   ► So I don't know what's going to happen with Webstock.

00:55:29 ◼   ► For me, it's hard to imagine that happening without that beautiful building, but I suppose

00:55:32 ◼   ► it could happen anywhere.

00:55:33 ◼   ► I'll have to see what happens.

00:55:35 ◼   ► My story on the earthquake was that it happened, and again, I certainly didn't suffer for it.

00:55:41 ◼   ► You caused it.

00:55:42 ◼   ► Right.

00:55:43 ◼   ► But it happened two or three hours after our plane took off from Auckland, the 12-hour flight

00:55:49 ◼   ► from Auckland to SFO.

00:55:51 ◼   ► So we were in Auckland and there was no earthquake.

00:55:54 ◼   ► we got on an airplane two or three hours later

00:55:55 ◼   ► is when this truly horrifying earthquake,

00:55:58 ◼   ► I mean, and again, I don't think it's hyperbole,

00:56:02 ◼   ► devastated the city of Christchurch.

00:56:03 ◼   ► And it was major, major world news.

00:56:07 ◼   ► And so, like, mine and Amy's family saw this thing,

00:56:11 ◼   ► major earthquake in New Zealand,

00:56:13 ◼   ► and they didn't know what city,

00:56:14 ◼   ► all they knew was we said we're going to New Zealand

00:56:16 ◼   ► for a conference, and they, you know,

00:56:17 ◼   ► blah, blah, blah, Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch.

00:56:19 ◼   ► They didn't know.

00:56:20 ◼   ► For all I knew, we were in Christchurch.

00:56:22 ◼   ► And so they all tried calling us,

00:56:24 ◼   ► and of course we couldn't get a call

00:56:25 ◼   ► because we were only two or three,

00:56:27 ◼   ► we had nine hours to go before we land in SFO.

00:56:30 ◼   ► So when we landed in SFO, our phones,

00:56:32 ◼   ► and we turned our phones on, it was like,

00:56:34 ◼   ► voicemail, voicemail, voicemail, voicemail.

00:56:36 ◼   ► Are you all right, are you all right, are you all right?

00:56:38 ◼   ► And my first thought was, it's the way you always,

00:56:41 ◼   ► when you get bad news and you just instantly blank

00:56:43 ◼   ► and go into denial almost, and I was like,

00:56:46 ◼   ► there was no earthquake in New Zealand.

00:56:48 ◼   ► 'Cause I was just there and there was no earthquake.

00:56:51 ◼   ► It doesn't occur to you that something like that

00:56:52 ◼   ► happen when you're flying over the Pacific.

00:56:54 ◼   ► Right, especially when the other thing about that is remember when you fly from

00:56:58 ◼   ► Auckland to San Francisco you pretty much arrive

00:57:01 ◼   ► at the same time you left because of the international dateline so actually

00:57:04 ◼   ► there's no time you know right if you leave there at three in the afternoon

00:57:07 ◼   ► you get to San Francisco at about three in the afternoon it's almost like

00:57:10 ◼   ► it's a free 24 hours. So of course it didn't happen.

00:57:14 ◼   ► Yeah so if if if Lop's birthday had been a week later

00:57:17 ◼   ► you would have had two birthdays, right?

00:57:20 ◼   ► - You could have had two, oh yes,

00:57:23 ◼   ► you could have had your birthday

00:57:24 ◼   ► and then had your birthday again.

00:57:25 ◼   ► - Right, except you would have spent

00:57:26 ◼   ► the whole time on an airplane.

00:57:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, which is not anybody's idea

00:57:29 ◼   ► of a great birthday, I don't think.

00:57:30 ◼   ► - All right, let me do the second sponsor.

00:57:31 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:57:32 ◼   ► - New sponsor, and this is really,

00:57:34 ◼   ► I'd say this not because of the sponsor,

00:57:37 ◼   ► but because I'm really impressed by what they've built.

00:57:39 ◼   ► It's Everpix, E-V-E-R-P-I-X.

00:57:43 ◼   ► Everpix is a smart photo platform

00:57:46 ◼   ► that helps you make sense of your growing

00:57:47 ◼   ► photo collection. They have no storage limit, so you have all your photos anywhere, everywhere,

00:57:54 ◼   ► organized automatically in the cloud. Really, the bottom line, long story short, is that

00:57:59 ◼   ► they're aiming to replace something like iPhoto or Lightroom as your canonical file store.

00:58:07 ◼   ► Four photos. Four photos. And the problem that they're trying to solve is that they

00:58:13 ◼   ► They think and I believe that the modern photographer is simply casual photographer is overwhelmed

00:58:21 ◼   ► by the number of photos that they take.

00:58:23 ◼   ► You take hundreds a month, thousands in a year and you end up, we've all had digital

00:58:28 ◼   ► cameras now for probably like 10 years.

00:58:30 ◼   ► We have libraries of 10 or more thousand files and nobody organizes them and let's not pretend

00:58:38 ◼   ► that you're going to when you get back from your vacation and that you're going to take

00:58:40 ◼   ► those 300 photos and put tags on all of them and name them all.

00:58:44 ◼   ► So they have done all this algorithmically.

00:58:47 ◼   ► It's really, really smart stuff from a really smart team.

00:58:50 ◼   ► And they have a great iPhone app and iPad app for navigating these libraries.

00:58:55 ◼   ► On the Mac, you can still use something like iPhoto or Lightroom to suck the photos off

00:59:01 ◼   ► your card and to make color corrections and delete the ones that are no good and eyes

00:59:04 ◼   ► are closed.

00:59:06 ◼   ► But then instead of organizing them into albums or anything like that, just go through and

00:59:10 ◼   ► iPhoto you tell Everpix's Mac client, it's sort of like Dropbox, it's just a simple little

00:59:17 ◼   ► faceless thing that runs in the background, you get to pick which known file locations,

00:59:22 ◼   ► whether you just pick a folder or you pick your iPhoto library, it uploads them to your

00:59:26 ◼   ► account in the cloud. And everything else happens after that. The app is really, really

00:59:32 ◼   ► impressive. By default, it just groups everything by date into events. It's really, really smart

00:59:37 ◼   ► about detecting the interesting parts of a photo.

00:59:40 ◼   ► So when it puts them together in a collage on screen

00:59:42 ◼   ► for you to pick from and scroll through,

00:59:45 ◼   ► it shows you just great little thumbnails

00:59:47 ◼   ► and it's very fast, very beautiful.

00:59:51 ◼   ► You can try it for free.

00:59:54 ◼   ► The apps are all free, the software's free,

00:59:56 ◼   ► and you can do a 30-day free trial

00:59:58 ◼   ► just to see how it works.

01:00:00 ◼   ► If you like it, you pay.

01:00:02 ◼   ► I think it's $40 a month, or $40 a year, I'm sorry,

01:00:06 ◼   ► or $5 a month, very reasonable, unlimited storage.

01:00:11 ◼   ► And again, I was doubtful at the beginning.

01:00:16 ◼   ► And I wasn't quite sure what it was.

01:00:17 ◼   ► What it's not, it's not a replacement for Flickr,

01:00:19 ◼   ► it's not Instagram, it's not photo sharing.

01:00:22 ◼   ► It's your personal library, backed in the cloud,

01:00:25 ◼   ► available on all of your devices all the time.

01:00:28 ◼   ► I'm using it, I really couldn't be happier with it.

01:00:31 ◼   ► I'm really impressed.

01:00:32 ◼   ► I just, just before we recorded the show,

01:00:34 ◼   ► I was showing Jim I was getting all maudlin and showing baby pictures of Jonas when he was a

01:00:39 ◼   ► Year old the pictures. I haven't seen in forever and it was it was just great

01:00:44 ◼   ► So ever picks what you want to do is go to ever picks dot-com

01:00:49 ◼   ► Eevee er pix calm and check it out. My thanks to them for sponsoring the show. I will check it out, too

01:00:57 ◼   ► Because I had said the other day that I hope that there's actually there is reincarnation

01:01:02 ◼   ► Because then I will be able to organize my digital photos

01:01:04 ◼   ► Because otherwise it's never gonna happen. Yeah, I think it's a great premise

01:01:09 ◼   ► I really do the premise is you're never going to organize them just give them to us and we'll organize them for you

01:01:14 ◼   ► Right, right that long story short. That's the gist of the app

01:01:16 ◼   ► And it's it's I think that they've got it

01:01:19 ◼   ► Do people even delete you still delete photos and say that's not a good like I think I know it's just there's so much

01:01:24 ◼   ► It's like I do that when I shoot with my real camera

01:01:28 ◼   ► I do because I shoot so many pictures.

01:01:30 ◼   ► But I used to do like a two pass thing

01:01:33 ◼   ► where the first pass is go through,

01:01:35 ◼   ► like with Webstock, I took, I don't know,

01:01:36 ◼   ► 300 pictures down there.

01:01:38 ◼   ► First pass is just go through

01:01:40 ◼   ► and pick out anything that's just awful,

01:01:43 ◼   ► you know, out of focus or the lights way off

01:01:46 ◼   ► or somebody's eyes are closed.

01:01:48 ◼   ► And then if there's one where I took like,

01:01:50 ◼   ► let's say four pictures of the same thing,

01:01:52 ◼   ► I'll quick make a snap decision

01:01:55 ◼   ► which one's the good one and go on.

01:01:56 ◼   ► - And delete the other three.

01:01:57 ◼   ► And then the old way, then what I used to do years ago,

01:02:00 ◼   ► and I still do every once in a while,

01:02:02 ◼   ► but I have to admit I just never get around to it

01:02:04 ◼   ► with most events, then I would go through

01:02:07 ◼   ► and really start thinking about which ones are good

01:02:09 ◼   ► and giving a four star ranking to this one

01:02:11 ◼   ► and five star to this one and stuff like that.

01:02:14 ◼   ► Giving them titles or putting names and stuff.

01:02:18 ◼   ► - I mean, I don't do anything.

01:02:20 ◼   ► I don't delete, I don't title, I don't organize.

01:02:23 ◼   ► And it's not that I don't want to,

01:02:27 ◼   ► it's just that I, it's just so much.

01:02:29 ◼   ► - It just never seems like there's a right time.

01:02:31 ◼   ► When you really want to take two hours and go through.

01:02:33 ◼   ► And it's, you know, once you've fallen behind,

01:02:35 ◼   ► now you've got, you know, a year worth of photos.

01:02:38 ◼   ► - Well, CJ said, who we met, who I met,

01:02:40 ◼   ► you've met before CJ at Webstock,

01:02:42 ◼   ► said that an eight hour layover in Singapore

01:02:45 ◼   ► is a good time to organize photos.

01:02:47 ◼   ► (both laughing)

01:02:48 ◼   ► So that seems like a long layover to me.

01:02:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, hanging out with CJ at Webstock

01:02:53 ◼   ► made me feel great about my New Zealand to Philadelphia

01:02:58 ◼   ► by way of Auckland and LAX.

01:03:01 ◼   ► I went through LAX, but there's no difference really

01:03:05 ◼   ► than going through SFO.

01:03:06 ◼   ► It made me feel a lot better

01:03:07 ◼   ► 'cause he was going home to Sweden

01:03:09 ◼   ► and he was flying, instead of flying east,

01:03:12 ◼   ► he was flying west.

01:03:12 ◼   ► So it was like New Zealand to Australia to Singapore

01:03:16 ◼   ► to God knows where, Timbuktu.

01:03:19 ◼   ► Right, it was like one of the Indiana Jones trip, you know dot the picture of the little plane on the map on the sepia tone map

01:03:26 ◼   ► So what would you go back to web stock I would I think I mean I would hope to be invited again

01:03:34 ◼   ► But I but you know what I would like to do and we should get we should talk to Mike Monteiro

01:03:39 ◼   ► Because he did it a little bit is I would like to go for longer

01:03:41 ◼   ► go to web stock and then take a car around the South Island because everybody said that's like

01:03:46 ◼   ► That's the place and that's where a lot of them there are some locations around Wellington from the the Lord of the Rings movie

01:03:54 ◼   ► That's sort of like their cottage industry. Yeah

01:03:56 ◼   ► Tourist pitch anyhow is is go there and see the Lord of the Rings

01:04:01 ◼   ► Sites and stuff like that and the studio isn't right the studio is in Wellington. The was it weta. Yeah. Yeah, WTA right? Yeah

01:04:09 ◼   ► I'll take a guess and I'll assume I'm wrong that it's weta. Yeah, but it is I really

01:04:16 ◼   ► - Really?

01:04:17 ◼   ► See now everybody will be surprised

01:04:18 ◼   ► 'cause whenever I have to guess at the pronunciation

01:04:20 ◼   ► of something, I always guess.

01:04:22 ◼   ► - I just what the cab driver said,

01:04:23 ◼   ► so maybe he was wrong, so I don't know.

01:04:25 ◼   ► - There's some locations on the North Island,

01:04:28 ◼   ► which is the one with Auckland and Wellington,

01:04:31 ◼   ► but the South Island is the one where it's apparently

01:04:33 ◼   ► a little bit more--

01:04:34 ◼   ► - A lot more scenic.

01:04:35 ◼   ► There's a lot more.

01:04:36 ◼   ► There's a lot less population,

01:04:37 ◼   ► a lot more public ground is supposed to be.

01:04:39 ◼   ► So I think that would be, you know,

01:04:42 ◼   ► I think I would like to go to Webstock again.

01:04:45 ◼   ► I would also like to see more of New Zealand.

01:04:48 ◼   ► So maybe we can work those two things together

01:04:50 ◼   ► at some point.

01:04:51 ◼   ► What else?

01:04:57 ◼   ► What talk did you think at Webstock

01:05:01 ◼   ► was most gratifying or most illuminating?

01:05:07 ◼   ► - That's a good question.

01:05:12 ◼   ► There were a bunch that were really good.

01:05:14 ◼   ► - I'm drawing a blank on his name.

01:05:15 ◼   ► The guy who wrote the novel, Mr. Penumbra's--

01:05:17 ◼   ► - Sloan, Robin Sloan. - Robin Sloan.

01:05:19 ◼   ► - That was a great talk, yeah.

01:05:20 ◼   ► - Gave a great talk on the way we,

01:05:25 ◼   ► I don't wanna butcher it by summarizing it the wrong way,

01:05:29 ◼   ► but part of it was about the way

01:05:31 ◼   ► that we don't really understand any new medium

01:05:34 ◼   ► until decades after it comes out.

01:05:36 ◼   ► And one of the ways he proved that was

01:05:39 ◼   ► by going back to the turn of the last century

01:05:42 ◼   ► and how when movies first became a thing,

01:05:46 ◼   ► people put like sarcastic quotes around the word movies.

01:05:49 ◼   ► That it was, you know, movies with quotes around it.

01:05:53 ◼   ► And that that lasted for decades,

01:05:55 ◼   ► like even up through like the 20s,

01:05:57 ◼   ► even until like the 1930s,

01:05:59 ◼   ► when people in newspapers wrote about movies,

01:06:01 ◼   ► they put the word in quotes,

01:06:03 ◼   ► like it was sort of not a real thing

01:06:05 ◼   ► or a valid art form.

01:06:06 ◼   ► - Right, or passing fancy of some sort, right, right.

01:06:09 ◼   ► - Right.

01:06:12 ◼   ► His talk reminded me of one thing.

01:06:13 ◼   ► I don't remember who said it, maybe,

01:06:15 ◼   ► I don't know where the quote is,

01:06:16 ◼   ► but when they first shown a movie for the first time,

01:06:21 ◼   ► somewhere in India or somewhere,

01:06:24 ◼   ► the audience didn't know whether they should look

01:06:27 ◼   ► at the screen or the light moving through the air,

01:06:30 ◼   ► like from the projection booth,

01:06:32 ◼   ► like they didn't know what was the most interesting thing.

01:06:34 ◼   ► I thought that's sort of funny.

01:06:35 ◼   ► So which way do you turn your chair?

01:06:36 ◼   ► - What was the best one for you?

01:06:40 ◼   ► What was your favorite?

01:06:41 ◼   ► I think that one was very entertaining.

01:06:45 ◼   ► I sort of enjoyed Jason Kotke's talk about building Stellar,

01:06:49 ◼   ► which I don't want to-- and I believe all the Web Stock

01:06:51 ◼   ► videos go up online, right?

01:06:53 ◼   ► So I'm not going to sort of spoil what it's about,

01:06:55 ◼   ► but it was a surprising--

01:06:58 ◼   ► it was a very typical talk about one guy building a web app that

01:07:02 ◼   ► took an interesting and surprising turn.

01:07:06 ◼   ► It was very human and emotional and also very informative.

01:07:09 ◼   ► So I like that.

01:07:10 ◼   ► And then I saw Kelly Anderson's talk about design

01:07:15 ◼   ► in everyday life, which really was great.

01:07:19 ◼   ► Some super interesting projects and a lot of really

01:07:22 ◼   ► terrific work presented in a entertaining

01:07:25 ◼   ► and intelligent way.

01:07:26 ◼   ► If you get a chance to see her speak, I would do that.

01:07:29 ◼   ► I think those two maybe were--

01:07:31 ◼   ► - Unsurprisingly, I have the same taste as you.

01:07:34 ◼   ► But yeah, Kottke's was great and very personal

01:07:39 ◼   ► in a very Jason way.

01:07:41 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:07:42 ◼   ► Every one of the room was surprised at one point in it.

01:07:47 ◼   ► Let's put it that way.

01:07:48 ◼   ► - Right, and I know he doesn't speak a lot,

01:07:49 ◼   ► so there's probably a lot of people out there listening

01:07:51 ◼   ► who certainly know his sight, probably daily,

01:07:54 ◼   ► but maybe don't know what he's like in person.

01:07:59 ◼   ► But I think he is a lot like what you think he is

01:08:01 ◼   ► from his sight.

01:08:02 ◼   ► You know, it's not quiet, but he's--

01:08:05 ◼   ► - Thoughtful and observant.

01:08:07 ◼   ► - Right.

01:08:09 ◼   ► Not a shouter.

01:08:09 ◼   ► - Sneaky funny.

01:08:10 ◼   ► - Right.

01:08:11 ◼   ► - That doesn't mean he's not funny,

01:08:12 ◼   ► it just means it's quiet funny, like smart funny.

01:08:16 ◼   ► - His talk and the way he gave it was really him,

01:08:19 ◼   ► I thought, in a way that I can't do.

01:08:22 ◼   ► I don't know, there's like a stage John Gruber that's,

01:08:26 ◼   ► I don't think it's, I'm disingenuous on stage,

01:08:29 ◼   ► but I don't know, I know that I'm not as

01:08:32 ◼   ► broadly personal as he was.

01:08:35 ◼   ► And I really enjoyed that.

01:08:36 ◼   ► And Kelly's, again, was great.

01:08:37 ◼   ► Kelly's one of those ones, like you said,

01:08:39 ◼   ► where I had never, I wasn't familiar with her work before.

01:08:42 ◼   ► I'd never met her before and now would consider her a friend

01:08:46 ◼   ► and blown away by the quality of her work.

01:08:49 ◼   ► - And then Mike brought the house down.

01:08:52 ◼   ► Mike Montero brought the house down.

01:08:53 ◼   ► He was the last speech on the last day

01:08:55 ◼   ► and he talked about designers' responsibility

01:08:58 ◼   ► to their work and to what's right and to their craft.

01:09:03 ◼   ► And it was, I don't know what you call that.

01:09:07 ◼   ► It brought the house down.

01:09:10 ◼   ► Everybody was, everybody was,

01:09:11 ◼   ► and it was powerful and positive,

01:09:14 ◼   ► and it was also a bit of a lecture,

01:09:17 ◼   ► so, but you know, but good, in a good way.

01:09:19 ◼   ► - And it was, boy, was that the right audience

01:09:22 ◼   ► for that talk, right?

01:09:23 ◼   ► I mean, like, in terms of actually him giving,

01:09:26 ◼   ► you know, hey, if you're doing it this way,

01:09:27 ◼   ► you're doing it wrong, and you should do it this way,

01:09:30 ◼   ► and not just for yourself, but really, literally,

01:09:32 ◼   ► he meant it for the world.

01:09:34 ◼   ► And the people in the audience are the people who,

01:09:36 ◼   ► You know and you know what a lot of speakers swear a lot right for effect

01:09:41 ◼   ► But he's the man nobody swears like fun to like in a speech like that, which is a highly structured well-rehearsed, right?

01:09:49 ◼   ► intellectually rigorous presentation

01:09:51 ◼   ► He is his his his profanity is powerful. I will say in a good way. So

01:09:59 ◼   ► Yeah, his use of profanity is about as eloquent

01:10:04 ◼   ► Well, what is the title of his most famous speech online fuck you pay me fuck you pay me, right?

01:10:11 ◼   ► So he's also good at making this time. This was called how designers destroyed the world, right? He's good with titles. He is good

01:10:17 ◼   ► It was a good way to end web stock

01:10:21 ◼   ► It's probably a good way to end the show. It probably is. Well, thanks for having me on

01:10:25 ◼   ► Yeah, thanks. I'm listening first time caller as they say

01:10:30 ◼   ► And if you have a chance to see the new 70 millimeter print of 2001, travel all the way

01:10:35 ◼   ► from Philadelphia to Chicago if you have to, it's worth it.

01:10:37 ◼   ► You know what this means, of course.

01:10:39 ◼   ► You know that they're going to schedule a 70 millimeter, a screening of this print in

01:10:42 ◼   ► Philly, probably while I'm flying home.

01:10:44 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe.

01:10:45 ◼   ► That's right.

01:10:46 ◼   ► Right.

01:10:47 ◼   ► Well, keep our eyes open for Barry Lyndon.

01:10:48 ◼   ► We'll go back to Ohio State.

01:10:49 ◼   ► We could tell the story about the countdown bar at some point, but we'll have to do that

01:10:52 ◼   ► on a future episode.

01:10:53 ◼   ► Yeah, we'll save that one.

01:10:54 ◼   ► All right.

01:10:55 ◼   ► Thanks, John.