The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:22 ◼   ► I'm really great. I'm in a great mood.

00:00:25 ◼   ► You're kidding.

00:00:25 ◼   ► I'm in a particularly good mood.

00:00:27 ◼   ► I'm so glad.

00:00:29 ◼   ► You're not worried? You're talking about the snowpocalypse, right? Yeah, right.

00:00:33 ◼   ► The Joan-astrophe. Yeah, it's...

00:00:37 ◼   ► what do they call it? Winter Storm Jonas, which is obviously a big point of conversation here

00:00:42 ◼   ► at the Gruber household. Jonas is

00:00:46 ◼   ► a bit impressed. He's excited. He's like a hashtag on Twitter now.

00:00:51 ◼   ► So he's very excited about that. Your son is trending.

00:00:55 ◼   ► But he is

00:00:58 ◼   ► disappointed and slightly embarrassed by the fact that this is a big storm that

00:01:03 ◼   ► is coming on a Friday night, which is the worst possible time for a storm

00:01:10 ◼   ► to hit in terms of maybe getting a day off of school. Like it could not

00:01:14 ◼   ► possibly be worst time. Like there was no conversation whatsoever

00:01:22 ◼   ► about canceling school today in advance of the snowstorm because they're so

00:01:25 ◼   ► certain of when it that is not going to come until this evening that there was

00:01:29 ◼   ► no need to cancel school in advance. See at this point science is working against

00:01:33 ◼   ► children because when we were younger we did not have this kind of technology to

00:01:37 ◼   ► know we had a rough idea of what kind of thing would happen like in a given week

00:01:41 ◼   ► you know and and also I don't think there was that as much concern for like

00:01:45 ◼   ► makeup days like I feel like when I was a kid you'd only get into the makeup

00:01:50 ◼   ► days if you had like five or I don't know ten snow days and nowadays today

00:01:53 ◼   ► everything runs on such a tight schedule. Right, like maybe they'd go back.

00:01:57 ◼   ► After a bunch of snow days, they'd assign one of the school secretaries, "Hey, go

00:02:01 ◼   ► back and count just how many days we've had school." You know what? We should

00:02:04 ◼   ► probably write that down. Okay, somebody go ahead. Louise, can you go check that out for us?

00:02:08 ◼   ► No, I'm excited. Here's why I'm not excited, but I'm excited about this note,

00:02:13 ◼   ► but I'm happy. I'm in a good mood because I woke up terribly sick on

00:02:18 ◼   ► on Wednesday and just felt almost dead.

00:02:23 ◼   ► And then I felt a little better

00:02:25 ◼   ► but still definitely sick yesterday.

00:02:26 ◼   ► And today is the day where I feel,

00:02:28 ◼   ► I still feel I'm not like good,

00:02:30 ◼   ► but I'm on the upswing.

00:02:34 ◼   ► And to me, it's the best.

00:02:36 ◼   ► It's better than being at 100% health

00:02:38 ◼   ► is that day after you've had a bug for a couple of days

00:02:41 ◼   ► where you feel like, hey, I woke up feeling good today.

00:02:45 ◼   ► - Especially when you've had like a,

00:02:46 ◼   ► especially especially when you had a long cold and

00:02:50 ◼   ► you know maybe you just starting to get into the coughing phase or something you

00:02:52 ◼   ► know that kind of late end but the day you stop getting worse

00:02:55 ◼   ► is such a good day. The first day we were like, "Oh God, I might survive this."

00:02:59 ◼   ► You know you told me about that yesterday and I have to say you sound way

00:03:02 ◼   ► better than I expected but I was thinking like you're sick,

00:03:05 ◼   ► Marco's sick, Dan's had some kinda crazy

00:03:08 ◼   ► like stomach bug, there's so many... I was kinda just sitting there, you know when you're waking up and you get

00:03:12 ◼   ► paranoid

00:03:12 ◼   ► I was waking up and I was just thinking about like how many people I know are

00:03:15 ◼   ► sick right now

00:03:16 ◼   ► Is this a big East Coast thing? They say there's like this killer flu that is going around the East Coast.

00:03:20 ◼   ► Well, I want to ask you about this. I want to get your medical advice, honestly.

00:03:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I'd love to help.

00:03:26 ◼   ► Is that I think I had the flu. And Amy tells me, "No way did you have the flu, because nobody shakes the flu off in 48 hours. You obviously didn't have the flu. You had a cold."

00:03:36 ◼   ► But I know what a cold is like. And for me, a cold is entirely in my head and my throat.

00:03:41 ◼   ► It is in my nose, it's in my forehead.

00:03:44 ◼   ► Sometimes it's like pressure in my eyes

00:03:46 ◼   ► and it's always in my throat.

00:03:48 ◼   ► This was a whole body thing.

00:03:49 ◼   ► This is what happened.

00:03:50 ◼   ► Tuesday night, I felt perfect.

00:03:52 ◼   ► I felt 100% healthy.

00:03:54 ◼   ► Went to bed, woke up Wednesday morning

00:03:57 ◼   ► and I felt horrible.

00:04:00 ◼   ► I mean, just, I was like, I think I'm sick or something.

00:04:03 ◼   ► And my whole body felt like maybe I had signed up

00:04:06 ◼   ► for the gym the day before

00:04:07 ◼   ► and decided I would do everything.

00:04:10 ◼   ► - Oh, you had the overall body soreness and heaviness.

00:04:14 ◼   ► - Oh, without, I mean, real, real, I mean, like,

00:04:16 ◼   ► my legs hurt, I felt like I was, you know,

00:04:19 ◼   ► maybe I'd put on 100 pounds and my legs weren't suited

00:04:22 ◼   ► to carry this much weight up and down the stairs.

00:04:24 ◼   ► My arms hurt, everything that was, you know,

00:04:29 ◼   ► and muscle ache, you know, like I had gone to the gym,

00:04:32 ◼   ► you know, and worked out after never having lifted weights

00:04:35 ◼   ► in my life, and overall, every muscle in my body hurt.

00:04:38 ◼   ► a headache

00:04:42 ◼   ► a clearly I felt like I had a fever all the since that to me are not a cold

00:04:46 ◼   ► that like that's the flu mm-hmm I mean what are the other options I mean what

00:04:51 ◼   ► do they what are they calling me maybe

00:04:53 ◼   ► you can do differential differential diagnosis yeah

00:04:56 ◼   ► no I funny to say like for me I totally agree I

00:04:59 ◼   ► a like if something starts for me it always starts with an

00:05:02 ◼   ► a 0 in that up if I get a cold usually like

00:05:06 ◼   ► "Oh, my throat doesn't hurt exactly, but my throat feels weird."

00:05:10 ◼   ► That's the first thing. It's like swallowing doesn't hurt exactly, but I notice swallowing.

00:05:14 ◼   ► That's the first "uh-oh" red flag. But what you're describing, I had something really similar maybe

00:05:19 ◼   ► a month and a half ago, maybe a little longer, and I woke up and I was like, "Oh, I'm getting the flu.

00:05:26 ◼   ► I'm definitely getting the flu." And this was on like maybe like a Saturday or something or Friday.

00:05:30 ◼   ► Anyway, and then the thing was it kind of presented as being flu-like. I didn't have any of

00:05:36 ◼   ► of the tummy stuff, but I did feel really heavy, really tired.

00:05:44 ◼   ► And then it turned into what felt like, within a day, it felt like I was getting over a cold

00:05:48 ◼   ► within a day.

00:05:49 ◼   ► So I wonder if there's some kind of a new hybrid cold flu that might be out there.

00:05:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that sometimes you can get lucky and get a mild case of the flu.

00:05:56 ◼   ► I realize that if you really get whacked right in the bull's eye by the flu, that you're

00:06:02 ◼   ► down for two weeks, and that's terrible.

00:06:05 ◼   ► been years since I've had something like this, but this is clearly not a cold.

00:06:08 ◼   ► Do you really understand the difference? No, not really. I don't either. I say that,

00:06:12 ◼   ► or you say something, so when you self-diagnose, I love how you self-diagnose, and you go like,

00:06:16 ◼   ► "Oh, man, I think I'm getting a little cold." Or you go like, "Oh, man, I'm coming down with the

00:06:22 ◼   ► flu." Or you go like, "Eh, I probably got a 24-hour bug." I don't know what any of that actually

00:06:26 ◼   ► means, but I'll do it with my daughter, too, because with my daughter, I'm the house shaman.

00:06:30 ◼   ► Like, I'm the one who tries to predict, like, how much this is going to destroy, because, you know,

00:06:34 ◼   ► as soon as the kid gets sick, it's game over.

00:06:36 ◼   ► Everybody will get sick and it's going to be the worst.

00:06:39 ◼   ► And so I'll go like--

00:06:40 ◼   ► I'll come in with my rattles and my headdress and my beads.

00:06:43 ◼   ► And I'll be like, mm-hmm.

00:06:45 ◼   ► Eleanor will be fine by Sunday afternoon.

00:06:49 ◼   ► And I'll make a pronouncement.

00:06:51 ◼   ► It's rarely right, but then sometimes it is just weird.

00:06:53 ◼   ► I feel like colds and flus are changing.

00:06:55 ◼   ► I feel like it used to be you knew how long you

00:06:57 ◼   ► were going to get sick.

00:06:58 ◼   ► I think something has mutated and is changing.

00:07:00 ◼   ► It might be the water.

00:07:01 ◼   ► It could be meats.

00:07:03 ◼   ► but I think stuff is changing from when I was a kid.

00:07:04 ◼   ► I've always felt like it's the,

00:07:08 ◼   ► the difference between the two things. It's, you know, it's all nebulous to me.

00:07:14 ◼   ► It's a lot of the symptoms overlap, but I did, I Googled it again and you know,

00:07:17 ◼   ► here I am. I'm pretty well,

00:07:18 ◼   ► you're getting scientific about it.

00:07:20 ◼   ► Yeah, I Googled it. Uh, I mean,

00:07:23 ◼   ► there's no better way to get expert medical advice,

00:07:25 ◼   ► but there's like a checklist on the web MD and they're like a cold, uh,

00:07:28 ◼   ► you know, often comes on slowly. You know, like you said,

00:07:32 ◼   ► you get that heads up. You have that day where you're like, "Oh my god, I feel like there's

00:07:36 ◼   ► a 50% chance I'm going to be sick as shit tomorrow."

00:07:38 ◼   ► You feel like you're getting like 20%--no, you're getting like 8% worse every hour, like

00:07:43 ◼   ► fairly consistently.

00:07:44 ◼   ► Do you know what? I'll tell you what a big telltale sign of a cold for me is. A big telltale

00:07:48 ◼   ► sign, like the 24 hour advance notice. Like, "Here I am, wake up, feel fine, no suspicions,

00:07:54 ◼   ► no warning flags, whatever. I make some coffee, I'm reading some news, seeing what happened

00:07:59 ◼   ► overnight. And then I take a first sip of coffee and it

00:08:01 ◼   ► tastes like shit. Like terrible. Like how can anybody drink this?

00:08:05 ◼   ► And then I think that I and then I quick like run through did I

00:08:08 ◼   ► did I make it wrong? Did I not put enough beans in? And then I

00:08:12 ◼   ► think, Oh, shit, I'm good. Oh, you know what it is, buddy. You

00:08:15 ◼   ► know what it is. I'm getting sick. You're exactly you're

00:08:17 ◼   ► ignoring it. You're you're trying to throw yourself off the

00:08:19 ◼   ► scent. But that's probably as scientists, we can look at this

00:08:22 ◼   ► and say that's probably a little bit about scent. It's got to

00:08:24 ◼   ► have to do with your sense of smell. It might have to do with

00:08:27 ◼   ► like your throat not feeling so good, but your body is telling you, "Oh, you're gonna

00:08:30 ◼   ► get sick, buddy."

00:08:31 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's like something on my tongue, you know? And then the other thing in advance

00:08:37 ◼   ► is that something acidic like orange juice will start stinging the back of my throat.

00:08:42 ◼   ► Like I don't have a sore throat yet, but like something acidic like orange juice, it doesn't

00:08:45 ◼   ► go down, it isn't pleasurable as I swallow. And that to me is like, "Ooh, the next day."

00:08:52 ◼   ► See, and they say that's a cold, that a cold, you know, you have advanced warning, and that

00:08:55 ◼   ► cold seldom has a fever seldom has a headache I had a terrible fever I would I didn't take a

00:09:04 ◼   ► measurement of it I don't have a thermometer I would estimate my fever on on Wednesday and then

00:09:09 ◼   ► overnight going into tomorrow I would estimate it around 107 hmm that's pretty high well I tell you

00:09:17 ◼   ► what I but I think the reason I felt started feeling better yesterday I think I sweated it

00:09:21 ◼   ► I think I sweated this flu out of my body because I'll tell you what I woke up

00:09:25 ◼   ► I woke up yesterday morning, and it was like I was like a grease stain

00:09:29 ◼   ► Every single thing you're mentioning

00:09:32 ◼   ► I don't know if there's any basis in science or medicine for what you're describing

00:09:35 ◼   ► But I've thought all of those things when I was a little kid if you had a fever you had to stay in bed until you

00:09:40 ◼   ► Quote unquote sweated it out. Is that a thing? I think it is

00:09:43 ◼   ► I don't believe I I and I know it's different with small children with small children. You're worried. Oh, thank you. It's like 114

00:09:50 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, and you want to take care of that because I could you know, that's serious business

00:09:54 ◼   ► But I think as an adult you don't take I don't take anything to

00:09:58 ◼   ► Take you know, take the fever down or whatever

00:10:01 ◼   ► I feel like if your body wants to have a fever then let it go it, you know, you'll sweat this out

00:10:05 ◼   ► Let me ask you this. I think I don't speak for you

00:10:09 ◼   ► but I feel like anyone who has kids can agree that it's children that cause illness because

00:10:13 ◼   ► They're little disgusting sponges who touch everything they eat other kids boogers on a dare

00:10:17 ◼   ► and then they rub around on the playground and then they come home and

00:10:21 ◼   ► they bring that into your home. Do you have a sense, let me ask you this, this is a

00:10:25 ◼   ► factual question, do you know what your school's rule is for when you should or

00:10:30 ◼   ► should not send your kid to school? That's an excellent question. I don't. I

00:10:34 ◼   ► think Amy would probably know a little bit more, but it is in the modern age,

00:10:43 ◼   ► and you know, I mean this goes back decades, I think when you and I were kids

00:10:47 ◼   ► were at the pivot point of this. Clearly before our time there was a stay-at-home

00:10:53 ◼   ► parent in a lot of households, usually obviously the mother, and you know in

00:10:58 ◼   ► today's world there are you know there's not so many stay-at-home parents.

00:11:02 ◼   ► Also I mean like I can tell you our my my daughter is in you know enrichment

00:11:07 ◼   ► and aftercare until usually three or four every day but there are kids who

00:11:12 ◼   ► are there till dark. They're just six. Like the parents need those both parents

00:11:15 ◼   ► working. There is no one to take care of that kid unless someone doesn't get paid that day.

00:11:18 ◼   ► Right. And so I actually, I don't know the rules, but I know that a lot of kids go when they

00:11:22 ◼   ► probably shouldn't and probably when the parents kind of wish that they could leave them home,

00:11:25 ◼   ► but that it is such an enormous thing to untangle from to if you don't send the kid to school,

00:11:34 ◼   ► what do you do? And, you know, and a lot of times it pops up. It only pops up in the morning,

00:11:39 ◼   ► you know, when you wake up and it's, you know, you might have meetings, you have stuff. So I am super

00:11:44 ◼   ► sympathetic to that. I don't know, and I know that the school's rules for this is

00:11:48 ◼   ► not very... Well, I'll tell you what ours are. So, first of all, to your point, I

00:11:52 ◼   ► think the pendulum has swung. I think that there was a time, you

00:11:57 ◼   ► know, in the post, you know, Benjamin Spock era where we wanted to toughen up our

00:12:00 ◼   ► kids and not turn them into sissies and dancers, and so you send them to

00:12:03 ◼   ► school. You got to send them to school. You got to go to school. It doesn't matter how sick you are.

00:12:06 ◼   ► And then I think I feel like, for me in the last... I want to say, even when I

00:12:11 ◼   ► had a job in the 90s they made it very clear to people you know don't come to

00:12:14 ◼   ► work if you're sick because you'll make other people sick we never used to talk

00:12:18 ◼   ► about that used to just be you had to be home because you were ill but then there

00:12:21 ◼   ► was this sense of no let's be more you know the pendulum swings that way and

00:12:24 ◼   ► you say like oh no let's not make other people sick it's my understanding today

00:12:27 ◼   ► and I might get this wrong but I believe this is correct because I don't like

00:12:31 ◼   ► going to school and seeing a bunch of snot yeah freaks me out I hate those

00:12:34 ◼   ► kids who are just walking down the hallway and coughing I get all like

00:12:38 ◼   ► coward Hughes. I get all damn Benjamin when I see that. And so...

00:12:41 ◼   ► You know, and I hate to say it, and my kid's a bit fastidious, so

00:12:46 ◼   ► he is not this way, but there's a classic kid who just seems

00:12:50 ◼   ► completely ignorant of snot coming out of the nose. He's just used to it, and he doesn't

00:12:55 ◼   ► mind it.

00:12:55 ◼   ► You could see one, you know, the really classic pro-level snot kid

00:13:00 ◼   ► will have the crust around the rim,

00:13:04 ◼   ► and then the still kind of moist droplet, like pine tar falling.

00:13:07 ◼   ► And then, you know, it might take years for that one to fall, but it's there.

00:13:10 ◼   ► It almost looks like they're like one of those...

00:13:12 ◼   ► Like a stalactite.

00:13:13 ◼   ► Well, you know how, like, there's like two kinds of aliens in Star Wars.

00:13:17 ◼   ► There's the ones that look like totally, you know, like some kind of outlandish design.

00:13:21 ◼   ► And then there's the ones that are like mostly human, but have like a little thing different.

00:13:25 ◼   ► And like, it looks like, you know, maybe you're an alien who has like a crusty rock formation coming out where your nose should be.

00:13:32 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:13:34 ◼   ► Uh-huh. Here's what I think. This is what my wife said is, I think she... I might be getting this wrong,

00:13:39 ◼   ► but I feel like what she told me was, "You keep your kid home officially if they have a fever,

00:13:44 ◼   ► vomiting, and/or diarrhea. Otherwise, they're good to go. Your kid could be, like, literally have a

00:13:53 ◼   ► vein open, and as long as they're not vomiting and inconveniencing people, you just wheel them right in."

00:13:58 ◼   ► Isn't that nuts? Can you imagine that?

00:14:01 ◼   ► Honestly, whether it's official or not, it sounds...

00:14:05 ◼   ► it seems to me like that is, practically speaking,

00:14:10 ◼   ► the way it goes. And those are the things... The fever's the one where it's

00:14:14 ◼   ► like,

00:14:14 ◼   ► a kid with a fever is so miserable.

00:14:18 ◼   ► Because when you're little you feel it so much more. I hate having a fever,

00:14:23 ◼   ► but I remember the fevers, I still remember the ear aches and fevers of my

00:14:26 ◼   ► childhood title.

00:14:27 ◼   ► that still, in my mind, I feel like I still remember thinking,

00:14:31 ◼   ► maybe short of my first migraine, like this is the most excruciating thing I will ever feel,

00:14:35 ◼   ► is like the feeling of being out of your body

00:14:38 ◼   ► and yet incredibly connected to the pain in your body when you have a fever.

00:14:42 ◼   ► And then also like having the same dream over and over.

00:14:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:14:45 ◼   ► - Let's go to school, let's do some geography today, Jon.

00:14:47 ◼   ► - I remember, the thing I remember about having a fever as a kid

00:14:51 ◼   ► was how severe the chills were.

00:14:54 ◼   ► And what a great name for the symptom that is. I mean, it's kind of obvious, but it sounds like a Stephen King novel.

00:15:00 ◼   ► And when you're a kid having the chills, for me at least, I remember it vividly, there was nothing you could do.

00:15:06 ◼   ► You could douse me in lighter fluid and light me on fire and it wouldn't warm me up.

00:15:11 ◼   ► Even though I had a fever.

00:15:13 ◼   ► My torso and trunk would feel like they were in a walk-in freezer.

00:15:16 ◼   ► And my head might feel like it was in a microwave at the same time.

00:15:19 ◼   ► And I could not stand anything touching my skin.

00:15:22 ◼   ► Right. And like you're like, "Hey, Candel, the bike is not helping me."

00:15:25 ◼   ► Right. And like the real life, like, you know, I think it's only like 20 degrees here in

00:15:30 ◼   ► Philadelphia today. It's...

00:15:31 ◼   ► 26.

00:15:32 ◼   ► 26 earlier.

00:15:33 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:15:34 ◼   ► You go out in weather like that and it's unpleasant, but eventually your skin starts to burn. You

00:15:38 ◼   ► know, there's like a... I don't know. There's some kind of way that your nerves sort of

00:15:41 ◼   ► compensate for this and they're like, "All right, we got to just real cold. We're going

00:15:43 ◼   ► to, you know, even this out." When you have the chills, especially as a kid, like you

00:15:47 ◼   ► said it's so much more sensitive. The cold just never stops. It's the worst.

00:15:53 ◼   ► Well, it's like, you know, I haven't had time to Google this, so I'm just going to guess.

00:15:58 ◼   ► But what is that? Something's happening. Something's telling you your body is way out of whack.

00:16:03 ◼   ► And I think what a fever is doing is whatever it is that is causing the fever, it's trying

00:16:07 ◼   ► to raise your body temperature to kill that thing. Is that what it is?

00:16:10 ◼   ► Yeah, to sweat it out.

00:16:11 ◼   ► To sweat it out. That's ultimately...

00:16:13 ◼   ► That's what happened. I didn't fight the fever and then last, not this night, not Thursday night going into today, but Wednesday night going into Thursday, I sweated it out.

00:16:21 ◼   ► I woke up as a breathing grease stain.

00:16:24 ◼   ► So Wednesday, so it's Friday as we record this, but like let's say around, if you can remember, in your state, around lunchtime Wednesday, what was your prognosis?

00:16:34 ◼   ► Did you feel like, "Oh, this is going to be something I get over, or this is going to be like a two-weaker, or is this going to be, you know, what's this going to be?"

00:16:40 ◼   ► gonna be? I never had, I well I shouldn't say never knock on wood, but I haven't

00:16:45 ◼   ► been sick for like more than a handful of days in years. I am you know I have to

00:16:49 ◼   ► say I'm fortunate to have overall very good health. You know how to sweat it out.

00:16:53 ◼   ► Yeah. I but I wouldn't have guessed that I would feel as good as I do today. I

00:16:59 ◼   ► thought I was looking at it maybe like through the weekend type thing. Let me

00:17:03 ◼   ► tell you this. What a pathetic thing as an adult that like the high point of

00:17:06 ◼   ► your week is you don't feel sick anymore I love it let me tell you that here's not

00:17:12 ◼   ► like I got a free model or something or I got I get to go to Disney World here's

00:17:15 ◼   ► hey I don't feel as bad here's my Wednesday my Wednesday is I had no idea

00:17:19 ◼   ► I was getting sick I woke up and and actually I should say when I woke up I

00:17:27 ◼   ► didn't really even think that I was sick I just felt sore and I thought you know

00:17:31 ◼   ► that boy I'm really in bad shape because I'd you know run some errands or you

00:17:34 ◼   ► like Monday and Tuesday, walked a couple miles.

00:17:38 ◼   ► And my legs felt so sore.

00:17:39 ◼   ► I was like, that is pathetic that my legs feel so sore

00:17:42 ◼   ► after just normal urban walking.

00:17:46 ◼   ► And then I started thinking a little bit more

00:17:50 ◼   ► about how I felt and I was like, you know what, I'm sick.

00:17:52 ◼   ► And I'm like, oh, I'm hot.

00:17:53 ◼   ► And it's like, the heat's not on high.

00:17:55 ◼   ► I've got a fever.

00:17:57 ◼   ► And then I realized I was just parched with thirst.

00:17:59 ◼   ► And I was like, this isn't good.

00:18:00 ◼   ► And I realized, it just dawned on me very slowly.

00:18:03 ◼   ► like I've got the flu or something.

00:18:05 ◼   ► And I thought I'm parched with thirst.

00:18:07 ◼   ► I cannot, I just need something cold to drink.

00:18:12 ◼   ► But I really want, it had to be bubbly.

00:18:14 ◼   ► I needed fizzy water because the idea of drinking

00:18:17 ◼   ► still water was absolutely disgusting to me.

00:18:20 ◼   ► It just felt like it would,

00:18:21 ◼   ► I normally don't like to drink still water,

00:18:23 ◼   ► but at this moment, getting sick--

00:18:25 ◼   ► - Once you really get into fizzy water,

00:18:26 ◼   ► there's something slightly revolting

00:18:28 ◼   ► about room temperature flat water.

00:18:30 ◼   ► - And it's exaggerated when I'm sick.

00:18:31 ◼   ► In the same way that coffee doesn't taste good

00:18:33 ◼   ► when I'm sick, only something fizzy tastes good.

00:18:37 ◼   ► It's like, it's the way my tongue feels.

00:18:39 ◼   ► I need the bubbles to like kind of burn the sick

00:18:41 ◼   ► off the tongue or something.

00:18:42 ◼   ► So I go downstairs and all of my,

00:18:45 ◼   ► all of my SodaStream bottles are empty.

00:18:47 ◼   ► Now that's my own fault because I'm the only one

00:18:50 ◼   ► in the house who drinks this stuff.

00:18:51 ◼   ► It's not like I can't blame anybody else

00:18:53 ◼   ► because nobody else drinks it.

00:18:55 ◼   ► So I go to fill one up and I put it in the penguin

00:18:58 ◼   ► and I start pumping it and it makes that sick sound

00:19:00 ◼   ► when the canisters empty.

00:19:03 ◼   ► So the CO2 canisters empty.

00:19:05 ◼   ► Now, months ago, I had switched

00:19:08 ◼   ► from keeping the spare canisters under the sink

00:19:10 ◼   ► to keeping them down on our first floor,

00:19:12 ◼   ► which is sort of a basement garage level.

00:19:14 ◼   ► There's no living area down there,

00:19:16 ◼   ► but it's not really a basement

00:19:17 ◼   ► 'cause it's sort of street level,

00:19:19 ◼   ► but it's ground level

00:19:20 ◼   ► and we have like a storeroom down there.

00:19:22 ◼   ► I keep them there as a courtesy to Amy

00:19:25 ◼   ► to not take up space under the sink

00:19:27 ◼   ► with my own fizzy water thing

00:19:29 ◼   ► that I only have to replace every couple weeks. So I go downstairs and I'm barefoot, but it's

00:19:34 ◼   ► only like 20 degrees outside and it's like a tile floor. And it's just so cold. I couldn't

00:19:41 ◼   ► take it. So I'm down on the first floor and it's a stone... I don't know. I would say

00:19:45 ◼   ► that the floor was around negative 30 or 40 degrees.

00:19:50 ◼   ► That's pretty cold.

00:19:51 ◼   ► And I go back to where I keep...

00:19:52 ◼   ► Well, that's one of the properties. Is it like a concrete? Kind of just like cement?

00:19:54 ◼   ► Eh, it's not concrete. It's tile. It's some kind of...

00:19:57 ◼   ► - [

00:20:05 ◼   ► and where they are. And I reached it. I got to get down on the floor to find these things.

00:20:09 ◼   ► And all three of the ones I have there, they're all empty already.

00:20:13 ◼   ► Oh, no.

00:20:14 ◼   ► So apparently at some point, my system is I have four... I keep four canisters of the

00:20:18 ◼   ► CO2. And when I have three empties, I go to the Williams-Sonoma across town and, you know,

00:20:25 ◼   ► swap the three old ones out for three new ones. And then I've, you know, my fourth is

00:20:28 ◼   ► the one that... So apparently I screwed that up whenever I swapped the last one out. But

00:20:33 ◼   ► And so I'm left with nothing. I've got nothing and I'm already down there on this cold floor.

00:20:37 ◼   ► Oh no.

00:20:38 ◼   ► And I've got no fizzy water, but I need something fizzy. So I had a beer.

00:20:43 ◼   ► Oh, good for you. And that's got the performance characteristics.

00:20:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:48 ◼   ► Yeah, it's fizzy. And so the beer doesn't freeze when it's sitting... Was it outside

00:20:54 ◼   ► or was it in a downstairs refrigerator?

00:20:55 ◼   ► No, it was in a refrigerator.

00:20:56 ◼   ► Your regular refrigerator, your primary refrigerator.

00:20:58 ◼   ► Yeah. So I had a beer and I went back to bed, but I had four flights of stairs.

00:21:00 ◼   ► I think any doctor's gonna tell you that's totally permissible because you're hydrating,

00:21:03 ◼   ► you're helping to sweat it out, and you're getting the fizziness that would prevent you

00:21:06 ◼   ► from being disgusted by flat water.

00:21:08 ◼   ► Right.

00:21:09 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:21:10 ◼   ► So then I woke back up around noon.

00:21:11 ◼   ► Did they help you sleep at all?

00:21:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:21:15 ◼   ► Well, it was about an hour.

00:21:16 ◼   ► Then I took a shower, which is the best I felt.

00:21:19 ◼   ► Do you feel good when you're sick?

00:21:20 ◼   ► Do you feel good when you take a shower?

00:21:22 ◼   ► Six a day when I'm sick.

00:21:23 ◼   ► It's the best, right?

00:21:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:21:25 ◼   ► It's like some–

00:21:26 ◼   ► Drought, schmout.

00:21:27 ◼   ► I'm in there for six hours.

00:21:28 ◼   ► No, it's literally the only thing, and it will give me relief or make me feel like,

00:21:33 ◼   ► make me feel less awful for a little while, and then even for a little while after I get out,

00:21:39 ◼   ► I'll continue to feel like less awful. It's the only relief.

00:21:41 ◼   ► And if you have a cold and if you're stuffy in some way, the steam, you know,

00:21:45 ◼   ► it temporarily opens you up and stuff like that. It just feels good. So I felt,

00:21:48 ◼   ► I started feeling better again. I got dressed, put some nice clean clothes on,

00:21:52 ◼   ► and I was gonna go out and buy. I couldn't make it far enough away. There's no way.

00:21:58 ◼   ► I in my state I was going to make it far enough to get the CO2 cartridges I was going to buy

00:22:04 ◼   ► some Pellegrino or some Perrier or something that the you know just a block or two away

00:22:11 ◼   ► and so I I went to the store and we didn't have any orange juice in the house either

00:22:16 ◼   ► so I went to the store and the only stuff I wanted to buy I wanted to buy fizzy bottles

00:22:20 ◼   ► of fizzy water some orange juice and I forget what else something else oh those little cans

00:22:26 ◼   ► of San Pellegrino, the orange ones, you know what I mean?

00:22:29 ◼   ► Oh yeah, those are nice with the little wrapper on them?

00:22:32 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly, with the little wrapper on them. It's sort of like a cross between fizzy water and soda.

00:22:36 ◼   ► You know, there's... It was like the heaviest stuff you can possibly buy from a market.

00:22:42 ◼   ► And I realized that I... I realized exactly who I felt like, what my posture looked like,

00:22:48 ◼   ► and the pace that I was walking at, and my capabilities of carrying these groceries,

00:22:53 ◼   ► groceries is I was C Montgomery Burns.

00:22:56 ◼   ► Hey, you look like a question mark.

00:22:59 ◼   ► I didn't have the strength to keep my back straight.

00:23:04 ◼   ► And you're you're a tall fella. So you you bet that was pretty pronounced as you

00:23:11 ◼   ► walk home with a little orange sodas. Oh, that's so sad.

00:23:15 ◼   ► But here I am on Friday and I feel

00:23:18 ◼   ► you're not you're not. You got the instacart there in Philadelphia.

00:23:23 ◼   ► Yeah. See, I don't know how that works. Oh my God.

00:23:25 ◼   ► I can't believe you're not using this. And I was,

00:23:28 ◼   ► it would it get it to me within an hour? Uh, well in San Francisco,

00:23:32 ◼   ► it's usually two hours depending on how busy they are. It's two hours,

00:23:34 ◼   ► but sometimes they have one hour availability. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

00:23:38 ◼   ► And they'll bring it right out to you. But no, but uh, yeah, I just,

00:23:41 ◼   ► it's just to me like just the dread of even leaving the house in a situation

00:23:44 ◼   ► like that. This just can't do it.

00:23:47 ◼   ► I will add that Amy was busy at the time. She, I forget where she was,

00:23:50 ◼   ► but she was out of the house and and so it wasn't as though Amy was there

00:23:54 ◼   ► and wasn't willing to help me. I needed to help myself or remained completely

00:23:58 ◼   ► parched.

00:23:59 ◼   ► Just keep telling yourself that. I think she saw that I was getting sick and got the

00:24:03 ◼   ► hell out.

00:24:04 ◼   ► Anyway, you're right about the kids

00:24:08 ◼   ► as the source. I feel like if we could now, I mean we don't wanna kill all the

00:24:12 ◼   ► children,

00:24:12 ◼   ► but if we could... Not immediately, no. If we could isolate them, if we could just collect

00:24:16 ◼   ► all the children of the world

00:24:18 ◼   ► and, you know, lords of the fly them, like, let's send them to Australia, because I think

00:24:22 ◼   ► there's plenty of land down there. Put them all in Australia for maybe like an 18-month stretch.

00:24:26 ◼   ► -Mm-hmm. So some of them, obviously, will be killed by spiders?

00:24:30 ◼   ► -I'd-- well, I mean, that's inevitable down there. -Is that a stereotype, John?

00:24:34 ◼   ► -That there's spiders in Australia? -But there's giant deadly spiders?

00:24:38 ◼   ► -Yeah, I feel like-- yeah, I would say Australia-- most of Australia is pretty much like that room in

00:24:44 ◼   ► Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. That's kind of what I imagine, like not...

00:24:48 ◼   ► and maybe a little better lit. But yeah, yeah, absolutely.

00:24:51 ◼   ► Huh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you got? You got probably howler monkeys.

00:24:55 ◼   ► You got, you got killer wombats. Like, it's just

00:24:58 ◼   ► people with big knives. I don't know. It sounds like a pretty rough place.

00:25:02 ◼   ► I'm just picking a place that's isolated, you know. But you... but yeah.

00:25:06 ◼   ► If we could just eliminate children for about a year and a half.

00:25:10 ◼   ► Isolate children for a year. Oh, somewhere... especially somewhere dry where they could

00:25:13 ◼   ► sweat it out. You got a year to be sick, get it out of your system.

00:25:18 ◼   ► We would eradicate every contagious disease known to man, maybe other than STDs, in the

00:25:27 ◼   ► rest of the world.

00:25:28 ◼   ► Let's hope they don't discover them.

00:25:29 ◼   ► Right.

00:25:30 ◼   ► Australia, it really makes you a little wild.

00:25:33 ◼   ► It popped into my head that STDs might not be helped by this, but in terms of diseases

00:25:38 ◼   ► like colds and flus, if we could get rid of the

00:25:43 ◼   ► children for about a year and a half just to let these things they would just

00:25:46 ◼   ► die right out if we just spent one day a week during that you're scrubbing

00:25:49 ◼   ► everything you know well here's the thing and I'm not gonna shut up about

00:25:53 ◼   ► this I think the hand-washing thing makes a huge difference at my kids

00:25:56 ◼   ► preschool they washed hands you wash hands when you like grown-ups and kids

00:26:00 ◼   ► you wash hands when you arrive at school you wash hands when you leave school and

00:26:04 ◼   ► you go and you wash hands at every transition point throughout the day and

00:26:07 ◼   ► I'm not a hand-washing lunatic except that I have seen the difference and I I

00:26:12 ◼   ► I know what a difference it makes. It won't stop your kid from getting sick, but it makes

00:26:17 ◼   ► a huge difference. Because you just think about it. We go downtown, we ride public transit,

00:26:22 ◼   ► we go to the movies, and then my kid grabs some popcorn and sticks it in her mouth. I'm

00:26:26 ◼   ► like, "Are you kidding? Do you have any idea where your hand has been? Do you know how

00:26:29 ◼   ► much of San Francisco is on your hand right now?"

00:26:31 ◼   ► It's true.

00:26:33 ◼   ► Yeah. I mean, she sits on the floor on public transit. It's like, "Don't do that. What

00:26:38 ◼   ► are you doing?" "No, at her school now?" "No, no, they're real busy. They're real busy.

00:26:42 ◼   ► You can't wash hands all the time." And so she gets sick a lot more.

00:26:48 ◼   ► I realize, I see the logic of the legislation. You know, the employees must wash hands. There

00:26:55 ◼   ► must be a sign that states those exact words in every restaurant.

00:26:58 ◼   ► Yeah, I think you have to put up the sign. I don't know if you have to enforce the actual

00:27:02 ◼   ► hand washing.

00:27:03 ◼   ► But the thing that always gets me about those signs is the idea that if you're not an employee,

00:27:08 ◼   ► whatever you want to do yeah but conversely also you kind of love the

00:27:14 ◼   ► idea of somebody who works in a kitchen that has to be reminded to wash their

00:27:18 ◼   ► hands after taking the shit or just touching the door no I know we started

00:27:30 ◼   ► watching kitchen nightmares now I don't eat out anymore oh it shows terrible I

00:27:35 ◼   ► I don't want to watch a show like that.

00:27:37 ◼   ► What have you done to this avocado?

00:27:40 ◼   ► Who's the host of that show?

00:27:42 ◼   ► That Gordon Ramsay.

00:27:44 ◼   ► That's what I thought. Yeah. You know what?

00:27:46 ◼   ► Jonas and Amy like to watch that show.

00:27:48 ◼   ► I'd choose not to.

00:27:50 ◼   ► You should not. He also does Hotel Hell,

00:27:53 ◼   ► which is similar. It's with hotels.

00:27:55 ◼   ► He seems like he's a pretty smart guy.

00:27:58 ◼   ► It seems like, I feel like every episode,

00:28:00 ◼   ► he seems like a guy who probably wants to do a little less coke than he does.

00:28:03 ◼   ► He's very, very animated.

00:28:05 ◼   ► Kind of a hair trigger, but you know, it's formulaic, you know, comfort food.

00:28:11 ◼   ► How would we get the kids to Australia?

00:28:13 ◼   ► Would it be by like a ship or how would that work?

00:28:18 ◼   ► Well, see, my friend John Roderick and I have talked about is how useful it would be like

00:28:25 ◼   ► instead in lieu of like middle school, you send kids out to work in a national park for

00:28:31 ◼   ► like three years because just to first of all get them away from us get it out

00:28:35 ◼   ► of society and get them somewhere where they can really be exhausted they'd have

00:28:38 ◼   ► to make their own clothes from things that they find while they're working

00:28:40 ◼   ► during the day you know it would be kind of like what it'd be like you know

00:28:45 ◼   ► Hunger Games meets Lord of the Flies which is I guess already kind of Lord of

00:28:51 ◼   ► the Flies but yeah be good for everybody be good for them you become strong you

00:28:56 ◼   ► get a tan you learn how to make a bunk bed maybe what we could do instead

00:29:01 ◼   ► Those are all very good ideas. What we could do instead is maybe pick one of the states here in the US and make it a no children state.

00:29:10 ◼   ► And then we'd have subsidies so all the children who are already there...

00:29:14 ◼   ► Sort of like a smoking area in restaurants.

00:29:16 ◼   ► Exactly. Exactly what I'm thinking. But we'll do the whole state.

00:29:20 ◼   ► We'll have some kind of subsidy system set up so that everybody who already has children will be able to move somewhere. Nice.

00:29:28 ◼   ► And then we'll let's just see what happens to the remaining adults in that state how frequently they they get the colder flu and I'll

00:29:36 ◼   ► Bet that they don't get it at all

00:29:38 ◼   ► Plus they can afford to retire except for the ones and then and then we'd have to have something in place for

00:29:42 ◼   ► You know, what do you what do you call it when you quarantine a quarantine for anybody who?

00:29:48 ◼   ► Leaves and goes to like say Disney World or something like that. You'd have to oh, I see that have to pass through a zone

00:29:55 ◼   ► and we make sure that they haven't brought any kid germs with them.

00:29:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:29:58 ◼   ► Oh, that's pretty good. I think a lot of people would love that. Based on the

00:30:00 ◼   ► glares that we get when we eat out, I think a lot of people would be happy

00:30:03 ◼   ► with that state. Yeah, maybe there could be a state just

00:30:07 ◼   ► for people who don't want to be around kids or have

00:30:10 ◼   ► kids or just even know kids exist. And then there could be, well, I guess

00:30:14 ◼   ► technically it would be San Francisco's Noe Valley.

00:30:16 ◼   ► It would be a place that's dedicated just to people who are way too into

00:30:19 ◼   ► their kids. You know what I mean? It would be like,

00:30:22 ◼   ► It'll be like the first time you go to a parent's meeting for a school and you're like, "Ugh! Yikes!"

00:30:28 ◼   ► You're like, "I'm really glad I'm not any of the people who are here. I don't like the way anybody here is raising their kids."

00:30:36 ◼   ► Tyler! Tyler Marie! Tyler Marie! Have you done your Mandarin?

00:30:43 ◼   ► Shut up. Just shut up.

00:30:46 ◼   ► What percentage of children today are named Skylar?

00:30:49 ◼   ► Oh, you got Skylar and you got Tyler.

00:30:51 ◼   ► Uh...

00:30:52 ◼   ► I think Skylar might have been hot a while back.

00:30:55 ◼   ► There's a lot of Annabelas.

00:30:57 ◼   ► We get a lot of...

00:30:59 ◼   ► What do you get there?

00:31:00 ◼   ► I've lost track. I used to keep track.

00:31:02 ◼   ► That was a real thing of mine when Jonah started school,

00:31:05 ◼   ► and I've since lost track.

00:31:07 ◼   ► And the worst part is, I could really see Amy doing this.

00:31:10 ◼   ► The problem for me is, I start...

00:31:12 ◼   ► I have an explosion of laughter

00:31:15 ◼   ► before I even have a second to realize

00:31:17 ◼   ► how awful it is to laugh at a child's name. We'll just go, "Bwah!"

00:31:20 ◼   ► I feel so bad.

00:31:24 ◼   ► Anastasia helicopter. Or like, my daughter has a friend whose little sister's

00:31:29 ◼   ► name is Daenerys.

00:31:29 ◼   ► And I can't decide, it's kind of a super cool name. It's kinda pretty weird.

00:31:34 ◼   ► But it's cool. Like, Daenerys, that's a cool name. It's a... what is that? What's that?

00:31:37 ◼   ► Game of houses? House of Games? House of Cards. Yeah, exactly.

00:31:40 ◼   ► It's from that show. It's the Lady with the Dragons. No spoilers. That's kind of a cool name,

00:31:44 ◼   ► but now she's got like a Welsh name. She's got a spell to people for the rest of her life.

00:31:47 ◼   ► life. I don't know. You try-- you see, the thing is everybody suffers from this

00:31:51 ◼   ► because you try and get ahead of it. I bet this happened to you. When we picked

00:31:54 ◼   ► our kid's name, it was not like a super popular name, and it seemed like-- this is

00:31:59 ◼   ► one of those John Siracusa things where, like, you think you're doing this thing

00:32:01 ◼   ► outside of the culture and the evolution, and then like a year later, your kid

00:32:05 ◼   ► has the same name as everybody. And you're like, "How did that happen?"

00:32:08 ◼   ► Well, now they're naming tropicals or winter storms after after my kid.

00:32:12 ◼   ► That's so embarrassing. You know, if they've got like stuff like t-shirts, you

00:32:16 ◼   ► should buy him I'm sorry about his party that's such a bummer we you know what

00:32:26 ◼   ► Amy likes to do I'll tell you she's as happy as a pig on a poke today what she

00:32:29 ◼   ► likes to do she this is like a holiday for her is that she likes to watch when

00:32:34 ◼   ► there's a big snowstorm coming and they know it's coming she likes to watch the

00:32:38 ◼   ► local news oh yeah because the local news oh this is boy this is they've been

00:32:45 ◼   ► waiting all year for this day, maybe a few years for this day.

00:32:48 ◼   ► There's a local Philadelphia news channel, and they had a live report. She called me

00:32:55 ◼   ► in to see it. She re-rounded on the TiVo. She's like, "You have to see this right before

00:32:58 ◼   ► we started recording." They had a live report from a hardware store in Virginia that was

00:33:07 ◼   ► rationing shovels and salt.

00:33:13 ◼   ► Some people want to buy 10 shovels.

00:33:15 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:33:16 ◼   ► No, that is panic.

00:33:17 ◼   ► Two shovels per customer limit.

00:33:20 ◼   ► What if I break five of these?

00:33:24 ◼   ► That's really, really odd.

00:33:25 ◼   ► There's so many odd things about that.

00:33:27 ◼   ► Why Virginia?

00:33:29 ◼   ► Why that problem?

00:33:30 ◼   ► Why report it?

00:33:32 ◼   ► What were the stories that they rejected to decide that that was the right one to show

00:33:36 ◼   ► in Philadelphia?

00:33:37 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:33:38 ◼   ► I sent you the link here.

00:33:40 ◼   ► I'm looking at the page.

00:33:41 ◼   ► I don't know if this is still your old address maybe, but

00:33:43 ◼   ► essential link there to a forecast. So right now you got, you know, God, you got 21 to 28 Fahrenheit today.

00:33:50 ◼   ► Five to eight inches of snow starting in the evening. Tomorrow, there's that tomorrow's the big day, right?

00:33:56 ◼   ► Yeah, tomorrow's supposed to be the big day. So it's your Saturday. You get 12 to 18 inches throughout the day and windy until evening.

00:34:03 ◼   ► Is that right? You're gonna, you might get like a foot and a half of snow?

00:34:06 ◼   ► That's what they're saying and honestly,

00:34:08 ◼   ► What makes me think it's gonna be bad is that it's actually...

00:34:12 ◼   ► it's gone up. Usually they give you the worst, you know, like 48,

00:34:16 ◼   ► 72 hours in advance. They make a terrible prediction

00:34:20 ◼   ► to get everybody, you know, to

00:34:23 ◼   ► get everybody hysterical. And then it gets closer and closer and then

00:34:27 ◼   ► they dial it down. This one, it was like they were talking about like

00:34:30 ◼   ► 8 to 10 inches a day or two ago. Now they're talking...

00:34:33 ◼   ► Jeez, look at that. What is it?

00:34:36 ◼   ► It'd be what, like 17 to 23 inches total.

00:34:39 ◼   ► Oh, God.

00:34:40 ◼   ► Uh, all the things that we've benefited from with cord cutting.

00:34:45 ◼   ► One of my favorites is we just don't get localness anymore.

00:34:47 ◼   ► We don't watch it ordinarily, but when we do it, isn't it Philly culture shock?

00:34:53 ◼   ► Yeah, it really does.

00:34:54 ◼   ► And it's not so much that it's changed.

00:34:56 ◼   ► It's just that it's no longer seems normal to me.

00:34:59 ◼   ► And so that the way that they handled stories, whether that's like this or

00:35:03 ◼   ► whether it's just like an average day, the stuff that they decide to highlight and the

00:35:09 ◼   ► way that they do it really stands out.

00:35:11 ◼   ► And the way that I feel like in some ways it has not, the actual format and style of

00:35:18 ◼   ► local TV news like evening and nighttime news has not changed that much since I was a kid,

00:35:25 ◼   ► but it's changed enough in a couple of ways. I mean, I don't know how this started, but

00:35:29 ◼   ► whatever it became the tradition to have like top of the hour news, you got news, sports

00:35:32 ◼   ► in weather. And you always put weather... is that still the case? Isn't that still how they do it?

00:35:35 ◼   ► Oh yeah. And you put weather last because you want people to watch. All they're really there for is to find out

00:35:39 ◼   ► whether to wear a coat tomorrow or what coat to wear. But they give you just a tease in the first 30 seconds.

00:35:44 ◼   ► That's right. Yeah, exactly. So... There's some surprising weather news that you have got to...

00:35:49 ◼   ► you've got to wait for this. Every day. Every single day, 365 days a year, there is some surprising and

00:35:57 ◼   ► important weather related news and Kathy is going to tell you about it later in the broadcast.

00:36:02 ◼   ► Coming up right after Magnum PI. Are deadly fecal bacteria living on your

00:36:07 ◼   ► doorknob? Right. Like in the first three minutes of the broadcast, Kathy will come on

00:36:12 ◼   ► and all she's gonna say is, "Jim, just wait until you hear this." You're not gonna fucking believe this. Oh my god, this is... we better wait though. Let's get a couple of...

00:36:22 ◼   ► let's talk about this apartment fire first. Yeah, exactly. But the way I feel like it has

00:36:27 ◼   ► change is that as much as it felt very glossy when I was a kid in the 1970s, oh my goodness,

00:36:33 ◼   ► everything the motion graphics, everything, it was so much glossier now and it just really

00:36:38 ◼   ► seems like they've gotten it down to a science where it's extremely professional chipper

00:36:45 ◼   ► people reporting horrible, horrible things, like horrible dangerous things. I mean, I'm

00:36:50 ◼   ► far from the first person to say this, but I'm always struck when I watch it that so

00:36:54 ◼   ► So much more about American culture and society makes sense to me when I watch local news.

00:36:58 ◼   ► Because I think like, wow, if you really did watch this as your one of your primary sources

00:37:03 ◼   ► of information about the world, I'd be losing my mind too. I'd be like, I'd be stocking

00:37:06 ◼   ► up on guns and snow shovels as well. It's like you just you really feel like like people

00:37:11 ◼   ► like everybody is getting killed. Everybody. Everybody's getting killed or they're dying

00:37:16 ◼   ► from something they can't prevent.

00:37:17 ◼   ► I think it's why I've said this to Amy before, like most of our family lives within an hour

00:37:22 ◼   ► of Philadelphia, overwhelming majority of our family, and nobody ever wants to come

00:37:28 ◼   ► see us here.

00:37:29 ◼   ► And I think it's because of TV news, because they think if you travel in the city, you're

00:37:35 ◼   ► either going to get shot or the building you're in is going to catch fire.

00:37:38 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:37:39 ◼   ► [0:14]

00:37:40 ◼   ► Steve McLaughlin You're going to get one of those increasingly

00:37:44 ◼   ► all too common fire stabbings that they have in Philadelphia.

00:37:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

00:37:49 ◼   ► Gosh, I hope it goes okay now.

00:37:51 ◼   ► who's, you know, down where Casey List is, down there in the Virginia, they're getting

00:37:55 ◼   ► it even worse, right? Oh yeah, that's like the epicenter. Yeah, that's the epicenter.

00:37:59 ◼   ► And DC, yeah, the whole, what do they call it down there, Beltway. Sure. I'll tell you

00:38:04 ◼   ► what, I got to point this out about the TV news before we move off it. I got it.

00:38:08 ◼   ► The thing that strikes me when I watch it now, and I grew up with it, and they

00:38:12 ◼   ► certainly did the same thing back then, but I just accepted it as that's how you

00:38:15 ◼   ► do TV news, is the way that the correspondence, you know, there's the

00:38:20 ◼   ► anchor person at the desk. Maybe there's two, maybe there's a man and a woman. But you know,

00:38:24 ◼   ► there's, you know, an anchor person or two at a desk in the studio who lead the broadcast and

00:38:28 ◼   ► introduce every story and then they go to a correspondent. And no matter what the story is,

00:38:32 ◼   ► no matter no matter what sense it makes, the correspondent needs to be out doors somewhere

00:38:43 ◼   ► in the in the TV broadcast area. And it doesn't matter what the story is, they could just be on

00:38:50 ◼   ► some random street corner but they have to be reporting, for example, they might be doing

00:38:54 ◼   ► something about

00:38:55 ◼   ► like a Federal Reserve report for that matter but they've got to be outside somewhere

00:38:59 ◼   ► like outside a Walmart in order to like

00:39:01 ◼   ► deliver that. And then they absolutely positively must find

00:39:06 ◼   ► someone walking by

00:39:08 ◼   ► who will stop and talk to them for 10 seconds about the story.

00:39:11 ◼   ► Yeah, I think

00:39:15 ◼   ► increasingly you've got to have at least two or three people and I think

00:39:19 ◼   ► I think that one way that becomes so addictive to watch is there's always something happening,

00:39:24 ◼   ► there's always another transition coming, there's always another thing you're looking

00:39:27 ◼   ► forward to happening.

00:39:29 ◼   ► You're teasing the next thing, you throw to the other person, the motion graphic goes

00:39:32 ◼   ► on.

00:39:33 ◼   ► When I watch CNN to me it feels like a demo reel for a motion graphic company.

00:39:37 ◼   ► It doesn't feel like there's really anything very substantial to learn.

00:39:40 ◼   ► You could get it down to three bullets, basically what half an hour of CNN does.

00:39:44 ◼   ► But I think the style of it is very engrossing to people.

00:39:47 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let me take a break here and tell you about our good friends at backplace backplace is online backup for your Mac. They have over 150 petabytes of data backed up. A few months ago, they told me how much a petabyte is. And it doesn't even matter. It's ridiculous. Go look it up on Wikipedia, if you want, but it's ridiculous. It's an enormous amount of data that they have backed up. They have restored over 10 billion files for their customers. Now I've been telling you about backplace forever.

00:40:17 ◼   ► It could not be more simple. Here's how it works. You download their software, you install it on your Mac.

00:40:21 ◼   ► Your interface to it is just a system preferences panel. You don't have to touch anything.

00:40:26 ◼   ► You just create an account and you can create this account for the free demo period without any credit card or anything.

00:40:32 ◼   ► You create an account and then it just uploads all of your stuff to their servers in the cloud.

00:40:38 ◼   ► And that's it. You don't have to do anything. Now it might take a while. I actually just added to my desktop Mac here

00:40:45 ◼   ► an external storage drive where I keep all my old movies and video files and

00:40:49 ◼   ► stuff like that.

00:40:50 ◼   ► I think it has like a terabyte of data on it.

00:40:53 ◼   ► And I don't have a very good connection. It took like two weeks for this thing

00:40:57 ◼   ► to upload. The first one took me, I think, over a month.

00:41:02 ◼   ► But after that it's all incremental and it just goes.

00:41:06 ◼   ► It took like two weeks, but now I've got this whole terabyte drive

00:41:09 ◼   ► backed up to the cloud in addition to all my regular stuff which has been

00:41:13 ◼   ► backed up on backplays

00:41:14 ◼   ► for a long time. There is no limit. They don't have any limit. If you have

00:41:17 ◼   ► a 4 terabyte drive, you can just

00:41:21 ◼   ► upload that. It might take a while. Maybe you have fast internet. Maybe it won't take a while.

00:41:24 ◼   ► Doesn't matter. Can I jump in to make a suggestion here? Yeah. Because I love this product.

00:41:28 ◼   ► I sent you a link right now. Don't run this test right now, but go to this... If you all are out

00:41:32 ◼   ► there, go to backplays.com/speedtest, and they will tell you a little bit about how the

00:41:36 ◼   ► throttling works. Throttling... You can choose to have automatic or manual throttling. So if you want

00:41:40 ◼   ► to not have it be disruptive to what you're doing on your local network, you can tell it that.

00:41:44 ◼   ► You can say do that automatically, you can do it, or you can just say open this sucker all the way up.

00:41:49 ◼   ► Because I really want this stuff to get to the cloud.

00:41:50 ◼   ► The reason I mention this, you go to this page and it will run a speed test on your connection

00:41:55 ◼   ► and let you know exactly how much stuff you will be able to upload per day.

00:41:59 ◼   ► So you get an idea how long it will actually take.

00:42:01 ◼   ► You won't be wondering like when will this be done.

00:42:03 ◼   ► They make that easy for you.

00:42:04 ◼   ► And if you can afford to leave that thing wide open and you don't get dinged by your provider by Cable Town,

00:42:08 ◼   ► that stuff will just flow straight into the cloud.

00:42:10 ◼   ► I think that the cable town dinged me when I was uploading that terabyte drive.

00:42:14 ◼   ► Did they give you the slowdown?

00:42:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I think they did. But it's hard for me to tell because the cable town's always dinged me.

00:42:20 ◼   ► Anyway, the backblaze, it works great. That's it. That's it. You just install this thing,

00:42:25 ◼   ► you create an account, and then your stuff is there in the cloud. And if you ever need it,

00:42:28 ◼   ► you can get all of your stuff put on a USB drive and they will, you know, ship it by UPS or FedEx

00:42:35 ◼   ► or something like that if a catastrophe hits. But most of the time when people restore stuff from

00:42:39 ◼   ► Backblaze, it's just like one file at a time. If you just need that one file and

00:42:42 ◼   ► you're away from your computer, you can use their iOS app from your phone to get

00:42:47 ◼   ► to any of the files that you have backed up in Backblaze, get that file and send

00:42:50 ◼   ► an email to whoever you want to send it to right there from your phone, right

00:42:53 ◼   ► there. It is such a relief. This is the thing I always emphasize with

00:42:57 ◼   ► Backblaze, is when you know that everything you have is backed up in some

00:43:00 ◼   ► other way in addition to whatever else you're doing locally in your office, you

00:43:05 ◼   ► know, like with super duper clones or whatever else you might be doing, to know

00:43:08 ◼   ► that you've got your stuff backed up in the cloud, off with somebody you can trust. It's

00:43:14 ◼   ► such a relief. Really is. I can't recommend them highly enough. Where do you go to find

00:43:19 ◼   ► out more if you haven't signed up already? Which I can't believe that there are still

00:43:23 ◼   ► listeners to this show who haven't, but apparently not.

00:43:24 ◼   ► CURTIS LENOX - Shame on them, John. Shame on them.

00:43:26 ◼   ► JOHN HARRISON - Shame on them. This is a sponsor who I would like to get rid of. I would like

00:43:31 ◼   ► to get rid of by having everybody who listens to this show sign up and use them, and then

00:43:35 ◼   ► And Backblaze would say, this is great.

00:43:37 ◼   ► We love the response.

00:43:38 ◼   ► But now nobody else is signing up

00:43:39 ◼   ► because everybody's already signed up.

00:43:41 ◼   ► And that would make me feel great

00:43:43 ◼   ► because it would make me feel good to know that everybody out

00:43:45 ◼   ► there, you guys are backing up to somewhere in the cloud.

00:43:48 ◼   ► Go here.

00:43:48 ◼   ► Get a no credit card required trial.

00:43:51 ◼   ► Go to backblaze.com/daringfireball.

00:43:55 ◼   ► That's all you have to do.

00:43:56 ◼   ► Backblaze.com/daringfireball.

00:44:01 ◼   ► I think years ago--

00:44:02 ◼   ► I think I mispronounced it.

00:44:03 ◼   ► I think I said years ago on Backblaze read,

00:44:07 ◼   ► I called them Blackbaze or something, Blackblaze,

00:44:10 ◼   ► and they went and registered the domain.

00:44:12 ◼   ► Blackbaze, Black-- hm.

00:44:15 ◼   ► That's interesting.

00:44:16 ◼   ► Let me see if they've still got it.

00:44:18 ◼   ► No, not Blackbaze.

00:44:19 ◼   ► Maybe Blackblaze.

00:44:22 ◼   ► Something mispronounced.

00:44:23 ◼   ► Sounds kind of dirty.

00:44:24 ◼   ► Yeah, it does.

00:44:25 ◼   ► A little bit.

00:44:25 ◼   ► Oh, yep, go to Blackblaze.

00:44:27 ◼   ► Go to blackblaze.com.

00:44:29 ◼   ► I love that.

00:44:29 ◼   ► Do it.

00:44:30 ◼   ► Go to blackblaze.com.

00:44:33 ◼   ► I believe that they registered it because of a mispronunciation that I did on their show.

00:44:38 ◼   ► Oh yeah, totally redirects. That's great. Oh my god. So my thanks to Black Blaze.

00:44:45 ◼   ► For doing the evil. That's the evil twin of Backblaze. It's the one that's got the

00:44:52 ◼   ► handlebar mustache. Yeah, otherwise identical. Jet black, a jet black handlebar mustache.

00:44:59 ◼   ► Now I'm looking, I googled snow on the internet and with the news section.

00:45:05 ◼   ► A lot of pictures of empty grocery shelves and people in line waiting to buy things.

00:45:12 ◼   ► Here's the thing. I've said this before in years past.

00:45:15 ◼   ► I understand the need to stock up on groceries. We've done it. We've already gone and we've

00:45:20 ◼   ► bought some staples to make sure that we've got not just food to eat but maybe actually

00:45:27 ◼   ► meals that we have in the house ready to prepare. Sure, and some 1.75 liter sized bottles. But it

00:45:33 ◼   ► still boggles my mind the way that there are certain staples that literally sell out. Like,

00:45:40 ◼   ► I would guarantee you that when we finish recording this show today, if I go to the

00:45:45 ◼   ► ACME down the street, that there's gonna be no bread. No bread. No bread. Because all the,

00:45:51 ◼   ► because you know, when you're really, really getting attacked by snow, you're gonna want

00:45:55 ◼   ► I want to have some bread.

00:45:56 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:45:58 ◼   ► Oh my God, we're out of bread.

00:46:01 ◼   ► - But ordinarily there's so much bread in that supermarket

00:46:04 ◼   ► that there's--

00:46:05 ◼   ► - So much bread, it's like, it's ridiculous.

00:46:08 ◼   ► You don't realize how big that section is

00:46:10 ◼   ► until it's been totally cleared out during a snowstorm.

00:46:12 ◼   ► - Right, and when it's cleared out,

00:46:14 ◼   ► you realize that all the weird bread is gone too.

00:46:17 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:46:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, all that kind of dark bread,

00:46:20 ◼   ► only like your older relatives like.

00:46:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:46:23 ◼   ► - Right.

00:46:24 ◼   ► so dark stuff with weird seeds that you don't know what the weird seeds yeah

00:46:29 ◼   ► exactly oh my goodness we make we make light but I you know this well that's

00:46:35 ◼   ► probably well this this won't come out until the damage is done right we should

00:46:40 ◼   ► probably watch our ass it might come out it'll probably come out tomorrow oh good

00:46:44 ◼   ► oh it could come out later today could come out later today never know no what

00:46:47 ◼   ► happened oh god I don't know what else do people buy they buy eggs that's

00:46:53 ◼   ► That's another one too, where it's good to have eggs in the house.

00:46:55 ◼   ► I enjoy eggs.

00:46:56 ◼   ► I feel like maybe there was some brochure that went around from the '50s to the '70s

00:47:01 ◼   ► and it's the same shit everybody buys.

00:47:02 ◼   ► You buy canned soup.

00:47:04 ◼   ► You buy bread.

00:47:06 ◼   ► You got to have non-perishable items.

00:47:08 ◼   ► You got to have things that you could make over the hot plate that you don't actually

00:47:11 ◼   ► own.

00:47:12 ◼   ► There's all the things that you would need, but you go into this lizard brain thing where

00:47:14 ◼   ► you just click and your brain goes into buy stuff at the grocery store mode.

00:47:19 ◼   ► And then, of course, it's like the stock market.

00:47:21 ◼   ► It's just like trading places.

00:47:22 ◼   ► You go in there and you see everybody freaking out and that makes you freak out.

00:47:26 ◼   ► I think that's exactly it.

00:47:28 ◼   ► It's I think that maybe you go in there and you think, "Well, I want to get bread because

00:47:31 ◼   ► I'm supposed to get bread."

00:47:32 ◼   ► "I'll just go pick up a loaf of bread.

00:47:34 ◼   ► Oh my God!"

00:47:35 ◼   ► And you see that the guy next to you is taking two loaves of bread and you think, "I better

00:47:41 ◼   ► get…"

00:47:42 ◼   ► I see you're punching some lady in the neck because she's touching your butter top.

00:47:45 ◼   ► Right.

00:47:46 ◼   ► And then all of a sudden you're buying three loaves of Wonder Bread.

00:47:49 ◼   ► I've never bought this before.

00:47:52 ◼   ► But you feel like if you don't buy these three loaves of Wonder Bread, you won't be able

00:47:55 ◼   ► to get it an hour from now.

00:47:57 ◼   ► Yeah, like it seems like you should probably buy crappier stuff than you normally buy,

00:48:01 ◼   ► because maybe it'll last longer.

00:48:02 ◼   ► Like, don't get the Progresso.

00:48:03 ◼   ► Like, get the generic brand suit.

00:48:05 ◼   ► Make that, that'll be better when you go into your theoretical bunker.

00:48:08 ◼   ► You know, bring that along.

00:48:09 ◼   ► Hey, that's probably...

00:48:10 ◼   ► Yeah, there's, there's shelves here that are, that have been totally wiped clean of all

00:48:13 ◼   ► lettuce.

00:48:14 ◼   ► So maybe this is a big salad event.

00:48:16 ◼   ► Maybe you have like a lock-in and you make some Caesar salad.

00:48:19 ◼   ► You guys, you don't get snow in San Francisco.

00:48:21 ◼   ► No, I just get a lot of weird weather but snow is snow is not something you guys have to deal with we get

00:48:27 ◼   ► Our climate it's our clothes not our weather. It's our climate

00:48:31 ◼   ► Our climate is very unconventional and the short version is as you probably know is that?

00:48:35 ◼   ► we have

00:48:37 ◼   ► because of our proximity to you know

00:48:40 ◼   ► What is called the Golden Gate like we San Francisco sits astride a big hole in California

00:48:45 ◼   ► And so basically the cold air over the ocean

00:48:47 ◼   ► There's a cold air over the ocean and there's the very hot air over the basin like where they grow a lot of the vegetables and

00:48:52 ◼   ► That causes some very strange things for one thing our air is incredibly clean because it's basically being washed every day

00:48:57 ◼   ► It's being moved out and in every day

00:48:59 ◼   ► But it also means stuff like you know

00:49:01 ◼   ► You might start out at a certain temperature in the morning and then it gets colder

00:49:05 ◼   ► Then it gets warmer for an hour from three to four and then it plummets again at night

00:49:10 ◼   ► And explain stuff like why we have it's cold in the wind and the in the summer. It's cold here

00:49:15 ◼   ► It's warm in October and then it rains for most of

00:49:19 ◼   ► mmm late December January February my favorite evergreen

00:49:24 ◼   ► WWDC joke WWDC is almost always held in June is you know hey first-timers. It's

00:49:31 ◼   ► It's sunny, California. Don't bother taking a jacket or jeans

00:49:34 ◼   ► Yeah, you know German tourists. It's it's it's just evergreen source of humor

00:49:39 ◼   ► They the poor bastards to go I'm coming to dos California, and it's like yeah

00:49:43 ◼   ► Yeah, it's going to be like 50 every day.

00:49:46 ◼   ► Well, they used to give out backpacks.

00:49:47 ◼   ► That was for attendees.

00:49:48 ◼   ► They'd give out backpacks or laptop bags of some sort and embroidered with WWDC and then

00:49:53 ◼   ► the two digits of the year.

00:49:55 ◼   ► And then like three or four years ago, they started giving out jackets.

00:49:57 ◼   ► And they've done jackets ever since.

00:50:01 ◼   ► And I asked somebody at Apple once, is that because so many people-- and you see people

00:50:04 ◼   ► wearing them.

00:50:05 ◼   ► Is it because so many people come and they need them?

00:50:07 ◼   ► And they're like, yeah, exactly.

00:50:09 ◼   ► That's exactly it.

00:50:10 ◼   ► and that people, you know, attendees come up and they say, like, I can't do the German accent, but

00:50:15 ◼   ► the German accent, thank you for this jacket, I'd be dead without it.

00:50:21 ◼   ► Donka. Yeah, you ever go up to Twin Peaks?

00:50:26 ◼   ► No.

00:50:26 ◼   ► Oh, it's really, you should do it sometime, it's pretty cool. There's not that many things I

00:50:29 ◼   ► recommend about San Francisco, but you drive up in, near the, somewhat near the geographical

00:50:36 ◼   ► center of town, basically at the end of Market Street. So, Market Street begins at the Embarcadero,

00:50:41 ◼   ► the Ferry Building. There's the part of Market Street you're familiar with by Moscone. And

00:50:44 ◼   ► then if you go all the way to the end of Market Street, essentially it mostly ends, it ends

00:50:48 ◼   ► at the Castro, and then you'll see this big mountain. And so anyway, you go up this big

00:50:52 ◼   ► hill to get to my neighborhood, and Twin Peaks are these two big mountains in the middle

00:50:56 ◼   ► of San Francisco. And it's where that big tower is, that robot-looking tower you see.

00:51:03 ◼   ► But if you go up there, man, and it's clear, you get this amazing view of the city.

00:51:08 ◼   ► It's really, really beautiful.

00:51:09 ◼   ► One of the very few actually nice things in San Francisco.

00:51:12 ◼   ► But of course, you go up a mountain in San Francisco, and it's like 10 to 20 degrees

00:51:17 ◼   ► colder than it was where you were, plus it's incredibly windy.

00:51:21 ◼   ► So you just see these little ladies up there just like selling sweatshirts.

00:51:24 ◼   ► They go up there at 8 in the morning and they just sell sweatshirts all day long.

00:51:28 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I want to see that view from the Twin Peaks.

00:51:33 ◼   ► I feel like I probably, maybe even a majority of the people who listen to my show have been

00:51:38 ◼   ► to San Francisco at least once. I mean, I feel like it's, you know, it's probably an

00:51:42 ◼   ► awful lot. I know that an awful lot of people who read my stuff and listen to it or, you

00:51:46 ◼   ► know, work out there. And, you know, if you work anywhere, even vaguely Northern California,

00:51:50 ◼   ► of course, you've been to San Francisco. But for you know, there's probably a lot of people

00:51:53 ◼   ► who, you know, just have never had reason to go. I feel like you can hear these stories

00:51:58 ◼   ► about how the weather in San Francisco is incredibly isolated, you know, from the area

00:52:02 ◼   ► around it. But you just can't...

00:52:04 ◼   ► Well, you walk around within two blocks, you could change, you know, basically be a different

00:52:08 ◼   ► climate for reasons that are very unclear.

00:52:10 ◼   ► Why is it cold here? I've just moved... I've just gone from Union Square down to, you know...

00:52:17 ◼   ► How is the wind blowing from both directions?

00:52:21 ◼   ► Like all of a sudden you're down by, what are they called, AT&T Park, wherever the Giants

00:52:25 ◼   ► play.

00:52:26 ◼   ► Yeah, sure, sure.

00:52:27 ◼   ► I know I know it's bananas, right? Yeah

00:52:30 ◼   ► Hope it all goes. I hope it all goes well for you, you know, god bless you

00:52:35 ◼   ► I hope I hope it's I hope it's it's fun now

00:52:38 ◼   ► Do you face I don't want to make this the whole show but I mean like do you face much in the way like of damage?

00:52:42 ◼   ► Like when I was in Florida and there's a hurricane coming there's all kinds of stuff

00:52:45 ◼   ► You got to do depend all the way from tape up the windows to like board over the windows

00:52:50 ◼   ► Like do you have to do any special preparation? No, you know big snow is coming. No

00:52:55 ◼   ► No, except stock up on bread.

00:52:57 ◼   ► No, you know, you know what, we as a family have it very easy and I understand, again,

00:53:04 ◼   ► this is just, it's just like kids getting sick.

00:53:07 ◼   ► If you have a job where you've got a, it's important that you be there, snowstorm is

00:53:12 ◼   ► an enormous pain in the ass.

00:53:14 ◼   ► And the fact that it's coming on a weekend could be good news for a lot of people, but

00:53:17 ◼   ► there's still some people who have jobs that it's essential that they be there.

00:53:21 ◼   ► Huge pain in the ass.

00:53:22 ◼   ► Well, I guess where my office is, it's right downstairs.

00:53:24 ◼   ► So the fact that we can easily and work-wise, you know, a snowstorm is often indistinguishable

00:53:31 ◼   ► from a normal day for us.

00:53:32 ◼   ► It's actually kind of nice.

00:53:33 ◼   ► You're very fortunate.

00:53:35 ◼   ► In any other generation, the idea of having your bedroom, your office, and your bar be

00:53:41 ◼   ► essentially the same room, you know, that's powerful.

00:53:45 ◼   ► You got everything you need right there.

00:53:47 ◼   ► You know what?

00:53:48 ◼   ► You're like your own personal food court.

00:53:49 ◼   ► Everything you need is right there.

00:53:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:53:51 ◼   ► it and sometimes it's really it's just so nice in the city to have the big snow come and have

00:53:56 ◼   ► very few cars on the road and it's you can go out right and before the snow turns all gray and black

00:54:02 ◼   ► from the cars that eventually get back on the road everything looks beautiful and it's quiet it is

00:54:08 ◼   ► quiet in a way that you can't believe that the city could ever be this quiet because in addition

00:54:13 ◼   ► to the fact that there's no or very few cars on the road the snow is like a what would you call

00:54:18 ◼   ► it a sound dampening soft substance it absorbs. It's hard to even describe that

00:54:23 ◼   ► sound but it's even when I lived in the suburbs in Ohio it's it's a very special

00:54:27 ◼   ► winter feeling to go outside and it's very it's very crisp it's very quiet and

00:54:31 ◼   ► it's very still it just feels like everything has slowed down. Yeah I

00:54:35 ◼   ► remember a couple years ago it's very vivid in my mind it was Michael Lop my

00:54:40 ◼   ► friend Michael Lop of Rans and Repose was in town for a conference of some

00:54:44 ◼   ► sort or somebody had paid him for a it was like a paid speaking kid I don't

00:54:47 ◼   ► it was a conference or a corporate thing, but he was in town. And a huge snowstorm hit.

00:54:52 ◼   ► One of these, you know, at least a foot of snow type things. And we went out to dinner,

00:54:56 ◼   ► just the two of us. And there was nobody on the street. And, you know, steakhouse was

00:55:03 ◼   ► open and there was only like one other table that was taken. Only like two or three waiters

00:55:07 ◼   ► were on shift. And we asked the waiter, you know, like, "Hey, was this like a huge painting?"

00:55:11 ◼   ► He asked, he was like, "I live in the city. What else am I going to do tonight? I don't

00:55:14 ◼   ► So it was like empty steakhouse, super quiet, great meal.

00:55:19 ◼   ► And I feel like it's because whoever was in the kitchen, it was like, well, what are we...

00:55:22 ◼   ► you know, we're only cooking like three things, might as well make it perfect.

00:55:25 ◼   ► Great meal. And then we just went out and just walked back

00:55:28 ◼   ► to his hotel and then I walked home and it was... it was like we were the only two

00:55:31 ◼   ► people in the whole city of Philadelphia.

00:55:33 ◼   ► It was amazing. It was like you can't make that up.

00:55:37 ◼   ► That's such a great feeling. Yeah, you know, something that

00:55:41 ◼   ► Syracuse and I have ended up talking about on the show that we do is I'm

00:55:45 ◼   ► always interested in what I would call like seam exposing events, right? And like

00:55:50 ◼   ► the kinds of things where you don't realize how fragile something is until

00:55:54 ◼   ► some complexity or difficulty is introduced and that's when the seams get

00:55:58 ◼   ► exposed. And that's the thing I feel bad about with a city is if you look at a

00:56:01 ◼   ► city like, you know, a city like Atlanta which is already so on the edge in terms

00:56:06 ◼   ► of, you know, I think it has something like them, you know, in the aggregate the

00:56:10 ◼   ► most commuted miles per day. Oh, without question. Yeah, there was a

00:56:13 ◼   ► New Yorker story about it a few years ago. It's ridiculous. People drive...

00:56:17 ◼   ► It's actually shockingly bad in its scale and the amount of time, right? I mean

00:56:21 ◼   ► it's pretty bad. Most people commute like an hour or something like that.

00:56:23 ◼   ► Yeah. Is that right? It's something like that. Something like that. But then you

00:56:26 ◼   ► introduce rain or, God forbid, you introduce snow to that or even the

00:56:30 ◼   ► smallest bit of snow. Like, they don't... there's not many accommodations that the

00:56:36 ◼   ► city of Atlanta can make for snow. And that's the part where it starts to feel

00:56:39 ◼   ► like they say, the apocalypse, you know?

00:56:41 ◼   ► Or you think about so many places,

00:56:42 ◼   ► like what happens in California when it rains a lot,

00:56:45 ◼   ► this happens everywhere.

00:56:46 ◼   ► Like the first time it rains,

00:56:47 ◼   ► after it hasn't rained for a long time,

00:56:48 ◼   ► there's all this oil and, you know, various detritus,

00:56:52 ◼   ► like just sitting there on the streets.

00:56:54 ◼   ► And so once you start, you know, zooming around on there,

00:56:57 ◼   ► that water basically, I don't know, I'm not a scientist,

00:56:58 ◼   ► but like that makes the roads very slippery.

00:57:00 ◼   ► Or the drains, you know, the ground can't absorb

00:57:04 ◼   ► all the water 'cause it's been so dry.

00:57:06 ◼   ► It's just, I don't know.

00:57:07 ◼   ► I always brace for the first big snow, the first big

00:57:11 ◼   ► rainstorm. Will, can we take this?

00:57:15 ◼   ► I was talking to Dan Fromer about it on this show

00:57:18 ◼   ► last time, it was a good episode. And in Vegas when it rains, the

00:57:23 ◼   ► cars are terrible, people don't know how to drive, and a couple of Vegas residents said

00:57:26 ◼   ► it's

00:57:27 ◼   ► you know in addition to the fact that people here don't really know how to

00:57:29 ◼   ► drive with wet roads,

00:57:30 ◼   ► it really is actually worse than typical wet roads because we get so little rain

00:57:35 ◼   ► that there is like a coating of oil on

00:57:37 ◼   ► on the tarmac. For somebody who claims to like CES,

00:57:42 ◼   ► wow, he really... I feel like

00:57:46 ◼   ► every impulse I've ever had to go to CES, I'm really glad I didn't listen.

00:57:50 ◼   ► That sounds so awful. You and I should go together.

00:57:54 ◼   ► It sounds like you're committed for next year. Do you think we should go and do some

00:57:58 ◼   ► reporting?

00:57:58 ◼   ► I think we should. I think that within a

00:58:02 ◼   ► couple of weeks I'll just file that away and do another show next year

00:58:05 ◼   ► where I say, "I'll go next year."

00:58:07 ◼   ► - Well, knowing your record with this,

00:58:09 ◼   ► I'll make you this mostly promise.

00:58:11 ◼   ► I'll go if you go, but I don't think you're gonna go,

00:58:13 ◼   ► so I'm not worried.

00:58:14 ◼   ► I don't wanna go.

00:58:15 ◼   ► Oh my goodness.

00:58:17 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:58:18 ◼   ► That description of the shuttle buses,

00:58:21 ◼   ► like how long it took to go somewhere in a shuttle bus.

00:58:23 ◼   ► Like, I walk everywhere in Las Vegas.

00:58:25 ◼   ► I can't imagine driving.

00:58:26 ◼   ► If it's anywhere on the strip, you walk there.

00:58:28 ◼   ► I mean, what's the worst thing that happens?

00:58:30 ◼   ► You get an alcoholic beverage and walk.

00:58:33 ◼   ► It's not hard.

00:58:34 ◼   ► but like, oh my God.

00:58:36 ◼   ► And I'll imagine all of those people who are like us being there at the same

00:58:38 ◼   ► time, how miserable that would be.

00:58:40 ◼   ► Oh yeah, that's part of it.

00:58:41 ◼   ► I remember one time I was in Vegas and it was just by coincidence at the end of

00:58:45 ◼   ► some massive convention, you know, I don't even know what it was, but it was,

00:58:49 ◼   ► it must've been like CES sized or close thereabouts. And, um,

00:58:54 ◼   ► we were like waiting for a cab somewhere and it was like taking forever and we're

00:58:59 ◼   ► like, ah, screw it. We'll just walk. And then it somehow came up that like, we,

00:59:03 ◼   ► we heard it that they said that at the Venetian,

00:59:06 ◼   ► that there was a three hour wait for cabs.

00:59:09 ◼   ► A three hour wait for cabs? Because it was the end of this massive convention

00:59:13 ◼   ► and everybody was leaving.

00:59:15 ◼   ► Yeah, but think about that. Like, who leaves for the airport three hours in advance?

00:59:19 ◼   ► Nobody.

00:59:20 ◼   ► So in other words, when they tell you it's a three hour wait to get to the

00:59:22 ◼   ► airport, that means you're missing your flight.

00:59:25 ◼   ► Oh no. And that's a thing you can't walk to.

00:59:29 ◼   ► No! And the thing is, that airport is not that big.

00:59:32 ◼   ► In other words, it doesn't have that much tolerance for needing to expand.

00:59:37 ◼   ► Right. But so, like, there are times when Vegas is, you know, as much as they can support

00:59:43 ◼   ► truly massive conventions, conferences, whatever you want to call it, there are times when

00:59:48 ◼   ► it still is, you know, 10 pounds of shit in a five-pound bag.

00:59:53 ◼   ► Well, you know, it's interesting if you think about, you know, I don't know, it's an interesting

00:59:58 ◼   ► kind of a planned community in some ways because there seems to be even as much as Las Vegas

01:00:04 ◼   ► has pivoted toward more or less family friendly or more up or down scale.

01:00:10 ◼   ► Everybody's still mostly been marching in the same direction with Las Vegas since what,

01:00:15 ◼   ► the 40s, right?

01:00:17 ◼   ► I mean, the basic idea of what Las Vegas is for has not changed that much.

01:00:21 ◼   ► And I have to imagine like the infrastructure to support that, it mainly needs to grow and

01:00:26 ◼   ► get bigger, but does it need to change that much? You're always going to need prime rib,

01:00:30 ◼   ► shrimp, liquor, and chips. It's not like you're suddenly going to need like, you know, I guess

01:00:37 ◼   ► you get live animals occasionally. Like if a white tiger dies, you get a fresh one. But

01:00:40 ◼   ► like other than that, I mean, it's got to be a pretty steady supply train for making

01:00:43 ◼   ► that place run. And I bet it's pretty easily disruptable.

01:00:46 ◼   ► Part of the problem is that they have a monorail that goes up and down the strip, but it's

01:00:50 ◼   ► terrible. And Dan was saying on the show that at one point it was like an hour long wait

01:00:55 ◼   ► thinking on the monorail. But the monorail is is terribly,

01:00:59 ◼   ► terribly located. It's like way behind the strip. I remember the

01:01:04 ◼   ► first time I tried to take it was like, this is great. We'll

01:01:06 ◼   ► get out of these expensive cab rides, we'll take the monorail

01:01:08 ◼   ► down. And then it they're like these signs like monorail this

01:01:11 ◼   ► way and you start you go through this casino and they're like,

01:01:14 ◼   ► you know, keep looking for signs that say where the monorail is.

01:01:16 ◼   ► And it's like, Oh, yeah, keep going. Keep going. Keep going.

01:01:20 ◼   ► Now you're going through the employee parking lot. And it's

01:01:23 ◼   ► monorail this way and you're like, wait a minute,

01:01:26 ◼   ► the monorail. And then you still get to get there and find out it's an hour

01:01:31 ◼   ► wait. It's ridiculous. But really, I mean the big,

01:01:33 ◼   ► one of the big problems with Vegas is that they really are in desperate need of

01:01:37 ◼   ► some public transportation just, and it wouldn't be that complicated.

01:01:41 ◼   ► It really just up and down the strip. Uh, and they don't have it. I've,

01:01:45 ◼   ► I've often thought, what do you do if you're, you're staying at the Venetian,

01:01:48 ◼   ► your conference is over,

01:01:49 ◼   ► you have a three o'clock flight

01:01:51 ◼   ► and it's one in the afternoon and you think you're doing a responsible thing

01:01:54 ◼   ► by leaving two hours. It's not far. If you want you're in a cab. No, it's like as soon as you

01:01:58 ◼   ► pull out from the airport you can already see the strip. It feels very very close.

01:02:02 ◼   ► Like anything in a desert it's kind of difficult to tell how far away

01:02:05 ◼   ► something is. Yeah, traffic permitting it's usually ten or fifteen minute cab ride.

01:02:09 ◼   ► So it's two hours in advance and then they tell you

01:02:11 ◼   ► it's gonna be three hours until you get a cab. What do you do?

01:02:15 ◼   ► Oh my god. What do you do?

01:02:17 ◼   ► You know, in another time, you know, even probably 20 years ago, I would say you call up the airline and try to reschedule it and pay what used to be, I'm going to say a $75 fee, something like that.

01:02:26 ◼   ► It used to be that flights were more expensive, but you could do more with them. I think nowadays, almost everybody buys, I'm pulling this out of my ass, but you know, like nowadays, almost everybody buys refundable or non-refundable tickets, right?

01:02:38 ◼   ► Right. You always buy the least expensive thing. But like, you know, certainly back

01:02:42 ◼   ► when my dad was flying, back when there were three different classes on every plane, and

01:02:46 ◼   ► you know, they were costly, but you could do a lot more with them. I feel like even

01:02:49 ◼   ► 20 years ago, most airlines for 75, 100 bucks, you could change your flight. I don't know

01:02:54 ◼   ► what you do in that case. Because it's sort of a can't get there from here situation.

01:02:58 ◼   ► What are you going to do? You're going to hire a local car? I mean, what are you going

01:03:00 ◼   ► to do?

01:03:01 ◼   ► Well, the local, the local, they're not local, the modern day thing, the thing that you can

01:03:05 ◼   ► do now is that you have a cell phone where maybe you can start stabbing your finger at

01:03:10 ◼   ► your airline's website and see if there's something you can do right there, right now.

01:03:14 ◼   ► You could just do it right now.

01:03:15 ◼   ► The other thing I thought you could do is if you're in that situation is take your suitcases

01:03:20 ◼   ► and schlep them not to the airport but maybe see if you can walk across the street to a

01:03:25 ◼   ► different hotel and see if you can get a cab there.

01:03:27 ◼   ► But my thought would be, wait, if there's a big line here, there's probably going to

01:03:31 ◼   ► be a big line at every hotel that is nearby because the nearby ones are the

01:03:37 ◼   ► same ones that the same people have been at.

01:03:39 ◼   ► Yeah, that's one of those things, I'm so interested in these sorts of things,

01:03:41 ◼   ► something that feels like a cause but is actually an effect. Like in that

01:03:45 ◼   ► instance, the fact that there's a lineup for cabs is not the source of the

01:03:49 ◼   ► problem, it's the result of the problem.

01:03:51 ◼   ► You know what I mean? It could just be that everybody's trying to get a cab

01:03:53 ◼   ► right now.

01:03:54 ◼   ► So let's see here. You stay at the Wynn, is that right?

01:03:58 ◼   ► well usually. Okay I'm just trying to look here. So yeah my god look at that!

01:04:03 ◼   ► So you can see like Mandalay Bay and Luxor

01:04:06 ◼   ► practically from the airport. Yeah.

01:04:10 ◼   ► It looks so close. Ooh the Mob Museum.

01:04:13 ◼   ► Wow.

01:04:17 ◼   ► Sorry I get the sneezes. You might have caught something from me here on this.

01:04:21 ◼   ► You know what? I wasn't going to say anything but I was feeling fine when I got on this call.

01:04:25 ◼   ► I even wash my hands.

01:04:28 ◼   ► When Las Vegas, is that what you stay at?

01:04:31 ◼   ► Yeah, that's where I usually stay.

01:04:32 ◼   ► Okay, then you got the Palazzo, the Venetian, the Mirage, Treasure Island.

01:04:36 ◼   ► There's the Flamingo, okay. And that's that big corner. So that's the corner of Las Vegas and

01:04:41 ◼   ► Flamingo

01:04:42 ◼   ► is that big corner. Every time my daughter took her first step at the Bellagio...

01:04:46 ◼   ► I think I told you that story. I don't know.

01:04:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I was doing a talk to the senior management

01:04:54 ◼   ► at the founder of Cirque du Soleil's very purple house in Las Vegas.

01:04:58 ◼   ► Well, I got a call from my wife that in our room at the Bellagio,

01:05:03 ◼   ► our exactly one-year-old daughter had taken her first step.

01:05:06 ◼   ► Oh, by the way, did I mention it was her first birthday?

01:05:07 ◼   ► Cover your nose, honey. We have to get through the casino to get to our room.

01:05:13 ◼   ► I feel like, depending on how our life turns out, they could either just be an amusing anecdote.

01:05:19 ◼   ► How many therapists will have to hear that story over the years?

01:05:23 ◼   ► It's either going to be a very amusing anecdote like, "Well, that's quite a story." Or it's going

01:05:30 ◼   ► to be, "Well, of course." It all started out as so simple. It seemed like such a joke. What else

01:05:41 ◼   ► is going on? Well, I could take another break and thank you. Tell me about something you like,

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01:07:53 ◼   ► service. Takes an enormous problem off your hands and it gives you the

01:07:57 ◼   ► flexibility to host your mail the way you want it, how you want it, without

01:08:00 ◼   ► worrying about how your mail server deals with spam because they just take

01:08:05 ◼   ► it right out. Where do you go to find out more? Go to their domain.

01:08:08 ◼   ► here it is. It's mailroute.net/tts. mailroute.net/tts, the initials of the show, the talk show/tts.

01:08:18 ◼   ► Or if you want to, you can even email them and ask questions. Just email them at sales@mailroute.net.

01:08:25 ◼   ► If you have questions before you sign up, you get a 30-day free trial, so you can try

01:08:30 ◼   ► it for 30 days without spending a dime. And if you use that URL, mailroute.net/tts, you

01:08:37 ◼   ► get 10% off for the lifetime of the account. So if you use it for 20 years, you'll save

01:08:43 ◼   ► 10% for the whole time. Couldn't be a better deal. So go to mailroute.net/tts and get rid

01:08:51 ◼   ► of spam and viruses.

01:08:54 ◼   ► I've heard more than one success story. Actually, Dan Medjeman was just talking about this,

01:08:59 ◼   ► but I've heard lots of people say this, where they've had a domain where, what, 10 years

01:09:04 ◼   ► ago, even 10 years ago, they were like, "You know what? This one is out there. There is

01:09:09 ◼   ► just too much spam at every conceivable user at this. I will never get this back. God bless

01:09:14 ◼   ► it. Gmail couldn't help this." And you're done. And I've heard people go in and attach

01:09:18 ◼   ► mail route to that domain, and it's like a miracle. It's like something from an infomercial

01:09:23 ◼   ► where actually suddenly they've got that domain back. It's so good at getting the spam with

01:09:28 ◼   ► a scalpel that you get your own domain back. And what more can you say?

01:09:32 ◼   ► I used to talk about some of the techniques that Melrath uses.

01:09:36 ◼   ► I feel like it's like, so it's not even worth it anymore. Like this,

01:09:40 ◼   ► it's their problem to worry about the details of how they do it, but it is,

01:09:45 ◼   ► it's amazing. Surgical is a good way to describe it. Yeah. Yeah. You know,

01:09:49 ◼   ► you don't hear about Dan Benjamin on the show as much as he used to.

01:09:51 ◼   ► Is that right? Yeah. On this particular show? Yeah. On the talk show.

01:09:55 ◼   ► You mean like for example, like when he was the cohost?

01:09:57 ◼   ► Exactly. Well, technically this is, this is Mark three.

01:10:02 ◼   ► How do you refer to it? First of all, for anybody who's listening in, it's the talk show.

01:10:06 ◼   ► Right.

01:10:07 ◼   ► Right? We should be clear about that.

01:10:09 ◼   ► Right.

01:10:09 ◼   ► I always have it.

01:10:10 ◼   ► Yeah, clearly Mark 3.

01:10:11 ◼   ► And this is Mark 3?

01:10:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:13 ◼   ► Hmm.

01:10:14 ◼   ► Do you ever think about the future of the talk show? What Mark 4 would look like?

01:10:17 ◼   ► Would you bring Jonas on, maybe?

01:10:18 ◼   ► Hmm.

01:10:21 ◼   ► It's kind of the same show.

01:10:23 ◼   ► The biggest change in the talk show, well obviously when you and Dan weren't doing it together anymore, was quite different.

01:10:28 ◼   ► But like, you know, I like, for example,

01:10:32 ◼   ► Lonely Sandwich loved the original version of the talk show that you two did.

01:10:35 ◼   ► I could never get into it.

01:10:36 ◼   ► I could never get into it.

01:10:37 ◼   ► It was when you and Dan were doing it that I really liked it.

01:10:39 ◼   ► But yeah, yeah.

01:10:42 ◼   ► What do you, like when you think about that, that must seem pretty weird.

01:10:44 ◼   ► That's a lot of change over time.

01:10:46 ◼   ► Uh, it does.

01:10:48 ◼   ► It's weird for me because it never,

01:10:51 ◼   ► it, it, it creeped up on me as a,

01:10:53 ◼   ► as a serious part of my, uh, I don't know.

01:10:57 ◼   ► we don't want to call it business income, you know, it's, you know, your job. Yeah,

01:11:02 ◼   ► it's part of your job. Now, it always seemed like I was a guy who wrote a website or what

01:11:05 ◼   ► I even at the point when like the first incarnation, I mean, what were the dates on that? The first

01:11:10 ◼   ► incarnation? You could still see it. What is that the talk show dotnet? So those are

01:11:20 ◼   ► the first... You guys had done it for a while. Wow, look at that. No, wait, 2007, huh? Yeah,

01:11:27 ◼   ► so that goes back to 2007. And when the hell did I start doing this shit full time? 2006?

01:11:33 ◼   ► So it's, you know, it was close to, it was within a year of when I started doing Daring Fireball

01:11:39 ◼   ► full time. I always, you know, Daring Fireball was a career and doing a podcast was, you know,

01:11:48 ◼   ► well something you could do on the side and something that the nature of

01:11:52 ◼   ► writing a blog as a full-time job that I would easily have time to

01:11:56 ◼   ► Fit in look at the episode lengths 34 minutes

01:12:00 ◼   ► 29 minutes

01:12:03 ◼   ► 37 minutes

01:12:05 ◼   ► 36 minutes 30 minutes some of them are over an hour, but most of them are like under 45

01:12:11 ◼   ► Episode 8 is 19 minutes

01:12:15 ◼   ► 28 seconds.

01:12:16 ◼   ► My god.

01:12:17 ◼   ► We spent that on white bread today.

01:12:19 ◼   ► A half-size episode with our predictions

01:12:21 ◼   ► for the upcoming Apple announcement later today.

01:12:23 ◼   ► Wow, wow, wow.

01:12:27 ◼   ► This is amazing.

01:12:30 ◼   ► This is a time travel.

01:12:33 ◼   ► You know what?

01:12:35 ◼   ► It just snuck up over time that it is podcasting.

01:12:38 ◼   ► I mean, you know this.

01:12:39 ◼   ► You do a couple of shows.

01:12:45 ◼   ► doing a podcast in 2000, even through the end of the run of this first one,

01:12:49 ◼   ► which was what, the last episode was 29th October

01:12:53 ◼   ► 2009, that was ahead of the time of

01:12:57 ◼   ► for podcasts. There just weren't enough people. I'd say even at that point

01:13:01 ◼   ► still, I mean it still feels like there's an

01:13:04 ◼   ► article every month or so that's essentially about

01:13:08 ◼   ► how podcasts are finally becoming a thing,

01:13:10 ◼   ► you know, and it's become, I mean it's a tired bit for those of us.

01:13:14 ◼   ► it's even a, it's even a, a bit as a bit at this point to joke about this,

01:13:18 ◼   ► because it's been for five, for what feels like five years now,

01:13:21 ◼   ► everybody who's been doing podcasts since the mid two thousands is saying like,

01:13:25 ◼   ► Oh, that's great. It sounds like that's another, uh, you know,

01:13:28 ◼   ► it's a meta joke because it's like, once again, someone says, Oh, you know,

01:13:31 ◼   ► have you heard about this thing? Serial podcasts,

01:13:33 ◼   ► which are like this and this and this are going to really be a thing. And Oh,

01:13:37 ◼   ► you know, the mid roll puts out another press release.

01:13:40 ◼   ► So somebody does an article about it and it's, you know,

01:13:43 ◼   ► I don't have that much... It doesn't frustrate me that much except that it is

01:13:47 ◼   ► it is funny. It frustrates other people much more than it does me.

01:13:50 ◼   ► Because I think it is this is still so

01:13:53 ◼   ► very much the earliest of days. I mean this to me is like as something like

01:13:57 ◼   ► Ernie Kovacs was to TV.

01:13:59 ◼   ► Or like you may never see another Ernie Kovacs again because Ernie Kovacs could

01:14:02 ◼   ► only have been Ernie Kovacs at that time.

01:14:05 ◼   ► You know? Or for that matter I mean you think about any of those weird shows that were on the

01:14:08 ◼   ► forties before they really knew what TV was gonna be.

01:14:11 ◼   ► Think about, I mean, go back even further. What was a movie? Well,

01:14:13 ◼   ► a movie was a mostly a camera sitting still and filming a bunch of people

01:14:17 ◼   ► performing a play without sound. Right. I mean, it was, you know,

01:14:21 ◼   ► I don't know if he gets the appropriate amount of credit,

01:14:24 ◼   ► but somebody like D.W. Griffith not only had much more ambition in how you can

01:14:28 ◼   ► tell a story with film,

01:14:29 ◼   ► but what you could do with the camera as its own artifice or as its own,

01:14:33 ◼   ► you know, tool. And then introducing like, you know, doing more than, you know,

01:14:37 ◼   ► having things like closeups and then getting into things like editing.

01:14:39 ◼   ► Think about the dimensions of editing that we just take for granted today.

01:14:42 ◼   ► But there was probably what, 10 or 15 years of filmmaking that went on where people were

01:14:45 ◼   ► just walking around going, "I guess this is a movie."

01:14:49 ◼   ► So we think about those and we might have nostalgia for watching The Sneeze or The Kiss

01:14:53 ◼   ► or something like that, but it didn't take 15, 20 years before we go, "Oh, no, there

01:14:58 ◼   ► really is a vocabulary.

01:15:00 ◼   ► There's the 180 degree rule eventually."

01:15:02 ◼   ► There's all these different things of conventions of understanding how we splice time and tell

01:15:07 ◼   ► a story with film.

01:15:08 ◼   ► I still think it's really early days for podcasts.

01:15:10 ◼   ► It's not anything as sexy or sophisticated as film,

01:15:13 ◼   ► but I think it's still very early days.

01:15:15 ◼   ► Well, the thing I've- it's the only part of my racket that's still growing.

01:15:20 ◼   ► Like the website does not- any of the measurements that I can use,

01:15:25 ◼   ► RSS subscribers or page views or whatever,

01:15:27 ◼   ► it peaked a while ago.

01:15:29 ◼   ► I think I was talking about- I forget how I was talking about this one.

01:15:32 ◼   ► You were talking with Dan last week about it.

01:15:33 ◼   ► Yeah, about how once Google Reader went away,

01:15:37 ◼   ► Actually the numbers all went down and never really recovered and I don't again

01:15:41 ◼   ► I don't think that who knows like how much like it's not necessarily that that was the thing

01:15:46 ◼   ► But there was probably a zeitgeist there was a variety different things coming together to create a certain zeitgeist around that time, right?

01:15:52 ◼   ► And it broke including the ascendance of I have to be honest with you. I

01:15:56 ◼   ► Couple people on Twitter had been mentioning a talk

01:15:59 ◼   ► We did at South by Southwest in 2009 and it's not look back and listen to it once a year or so

01:16:03 ◼   ► And I'm still proud of it as something that we did

01:16:06 ◼   ► And I love that people still like listening to it.

01:16:09 ◼   ► And so that's 2009.

01:16:12 ◼   ► Even then, we're there talking about the rise of things like Gawker or the rise of things

01:16:17 ◼   ► like TechCrunch.

01:16:18 ◼   ► Even the TechCrunch at that point is what, four years old, five years old.

01:16:21 ◼   ► But you just think about at that point, Facebook was big, but Facebook was not what Facebook

01:16:26 ◼   ► is today.

01:16:27 ◼   ► No.

01:16:28 ◼   ► I don't even--

01:16:29 ◼   ► It wasn't so much--that was still the time when we were still feeling a little miffed

01:16:32 ◼   ► about how much people got their news from aggregation sites rather than the sources

01:16:35 ◼   ► that were writing them, which now today seems relatively quaint in comparison.

01:16:42 ◼   ► Facebook didn't even have their IPO until 2012, which seems crazy because we just talk

01:16:47 ◼   ► about them as like a pillar of the tech industry, you know.

01:16:51 ◼   ► Well, we weren't more than a few years off of MySpace, kind of being the big thing.

01:16:56 ◼   ► I mean, that's a throwaway line now, but at a talk I did at South by Southwest the year

01:17:02 ◼   ► before that, I made mention of MySpace.

01:17:05 ◼   ► I mentioned MySpace in the inbox zero talk from 2006.

01:17:10 ◼   ► So, you know, that seemed like the unvanquishable,

01:17:16 ◼   ► big player for a long time,

01:17:17 ◼   ► which now everybody looks at it and laughs,

01:17:18 ◼   ► but like, no, no, honestly,

01:17:20 ◼   ► MySpace really was the thing for a long time.

01:17:24 ◼   ► And it just seemed like Facebook was gonna be a,

01:17:27 ◼   ► have nicer typography and be, you know, whatever.

01:17:29 ◼   ► I'm not gonna be like a dork about it,

01:17:31 ◼   ► but Facebook seemed like the next MySpace.

01:17:33 ◼   ► It didn't seem like,

01:17:34 ◼   ► I'm pretty impressed with how much it has stuck around and grown in that

01:17:38 ◼   ► amount of time.

01:17:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I wouldn't have predicted it.

01:17:40 ◼   ► But for you, so with your, where you are with during Fireball, this is probably a

01:17:46 ◼   ► little bit inside baseball, but is it that has the size of your slice stayed the

01:17:53 ◼   ► same and the pie has gotten smaller?

01:17:56 ◼   ► That would be my gut.

01:17:58 ◼   ► I, you still seem like very influential in the same circles you were influential in

01:18:01 ◼   ► five years ago, but maybe it's a smaller pie.

01:18:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's something like that.

01:18:07 ◼   ► And I think that if you polled people and said, "Who's influential writing about Apple?"

01:18:13 ◼   ► I probably do better now than I did then, but I have fewer page views per month than

01:18:18 ◼   ► I did then.

01:18:21 ◼   ► And I think it just all hits on an argument.

01:18:23 ◼   ► Everybody does, right?

01:18:24 ◼   ► And it fits very well with my career-long argument that page views are a terrible way

01:18:32 ◼   ► to measure anything other than how busy your version of Apache is.

01:18:38 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:18:40 ◼   ► Do people still use Apache?

01:18:41 ◼   ► I use Apache.

01:18:42 ◼   ► Imagine.

01:18:43 ◼   ► Apache?

01:18:44 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:18:45 ◼   ► You don't even know if Apache's out.

01:18:47 ◼   ► But think about something like, and again, you always got to give me a little bit of

01:18:52 ◼   ► a pass.

01:18:53 ◼   ► I don't follow all this stuff super carefully.

01:18:54 ◼   ► I read your site.

01:18:55 ◼   ► I read Six Colors.

01:18:56 ◼   ► I read iMore and Macworld.

01:18:58 ◼   ► I'm not an Apple follower.

01:19:01 ◼   ► I'm a user. I'm a super user, but I'm not I don't follow the business. But with that said I

01:19:06 ◼   ► Mean could you have guessed what four years ago that Mark Gurman?

01:19:11 ◼   ► Would have risen in a sentence the way that he has now that still feels like a story that's not done being told

01:19:16 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, definitely

01:19:18 ◼   ► I mean I've noticed I feel like I've noticed a change in how you talk or think about him you had didn't you have on

01:19:23 ◼   ► The show one time at least once maybe twice

01:19:25 ◼   ► I think it was twice least once but like wasn't there a time when you well put this way

01:19:29 ◼   ► I would lump all of those idiots into the same group of like who cares? Why are you talking about rumor stuff?

01:19:35 ◼   ► but he has been

01:19:37 ◼   ► It seems to me unique in his ability to get to the right sources that he is true

01:19:43 ◼   ► He is he does know about stuff before other people and he finds a way to make it into a story in a way that

01:19:49 ◼   ► A lot of other folks haven't where it doesn't really just feel like a blown-up forum site about rumors. You know what I mean?

01:19:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I think he's he's changed that particular game a little bit. Oh, definitely

01:19:58 ◼   ► So I've had him on twice. I had him on last June. He seems like a pretty smart guy.

01:20:03 ◼   ► And then I had him when this show, this incarnation of the show was

01:20:06 ◼   ► hosted over at Mule. He was on episode 79 in 2014. Yeah, you know, and I, he's the

01:20:18 ◼   ► most successful rumor, Apple rumor reporter ever, in my opinion. Just in

01:20:25 ◼   ► terms that it seems like a like a gig that burns people out. But also just the

01:20:30 ◼   ► fact that he seems to be he gets good information what seems like a lot more

01:20:34 ◼   ► often than other people. I mean I don't care whether he has the most popular

01:20:37 ◼   ► site it's just that the accuracy of what he's gotten right not just by throwing a

01:20:41 ◼   ► million darts at the board but by saying this this this and this and most of

01:20:44 ◼   ► that's true I think it would be hard to argue that he's been the most successful

01:20:47 ◼   ► in terms of track record. Yeah he's definitely not a darts at the board type

01:20:52 ◼   ► person you know you do you know which is it which is to say that what if you

01:20:57 ◼   ► predict anything and everything and then you know one of them is bound to hit and

01:21:03 ◼   ► then you're good you ever hear about this I somebody told me about I think

01:21:07 ◼   ► our friend Paul kafasas told me about this a couple of weeks ago that I guess

01:21:12 ◼   ► I have to put it in the show notes and find it but during the last soccer World

01:21:15 ◼   ► Cup, which I guess was what like two years ago. Somebody, what they did is they

01:21:24 ◼   ► started pointing to these tweets from this account that was called like FIFA

01:21:32 ◼   ► corruption. FIFA is the world soccer organization. Right, that's the

01:21:37 ◼   ► Sepp Blatter guy? Yeah, well so these tweets had all the scores in advance of

01:21:45 ◼   ► the game right right and it was like Germany Germany's Germany will beat Sweden two to one

01:21:51 ◼   ► and you know so-and-so kicks a kicks a goal late you know in a extra time to to as the you know

01:21:57 ◼   ► to break the one one tie and that it would the timestamp on the tweet is before the game and

01:22:03 ◼   ► here that's exactly what happened and it went super viral it was like holy shit this guy whoever

01:22:10 ◼   ► this anonymous person tweeting these things in is, you know, all of his tweets are exactly right and

01:22:15 ◼   ► they're all, you know, they've all got the scores right. So it's obviously these matches are all

01:22:21 ◼   ► fixed. But what the guy did was brilliant was he tweeted like hundreds and hundreds of tweets with

01:22:27 ◼   ► all sorts of--and soccer scores aren't that hard to get. Yeah, it's not going to be like 135 to 7.

01:22:34 ◼   ► Right, it's, you know, it's going to be three to one nil. So he tweeted hundreds and hundreds of

01:22:39 ◼   ► these tweets with these possible things, very plausible things that would happen, and hadn't

01:22:45 ◼   ► publicized the Twitter account at all, then went and deleted all the ones that didn't

01:22:49 ◼   ► come true, leaving only the ones that happened and then started publicizing the Twitter account.

01:22:56 ◼   ► Well, that's the way a lot of rumor blogging works, and Germin definitely isn't that style.

01:23:01 ◼   ► I mean, you can't go back and delete it, but certainly these financial analysts and stuff

01:23:06 ◼   ► like that, they do it all the time.

01:23:07 ◼   ► say, you know, 10 different things. Nine of them are ridiculous, but one of them hit,

01:23:11 ◼   ► and then they just point to the one that hit, and they're like, "See?"

01:23:14 ◼   ► Yeah, that's so interesting when you think of it that way, and it's—there are reputations

01:23:19 ◼   ► that end up getting made that—it's almost like, you know, imagine if you had to sit

01:23:23 ◼   ► down in a Google spreadsheet and, you know, like, remember there's a website for a while

01:23:27 ◼   ► where you could make a bet about anything that could happen in the future, and, you

01:23:30 ◼   ► know, I forget what it was called, but the idea is the artfulness is coming up with what

01:23:34 ◼   ► actually constitutes the bet. Like you can't say like, oh computers will get

01:23:37 ◼   ► faster within the next year. Like okay thanks that doesn't really help us. You

01:23:40 ◼   ► have to have something very specific and quantifiable. If you were, if you were,

01:23:43 ◼   ► and obviously you would never be this person if you're a rumor monger, but like

01:23:47 ◼   ► if you had to like make that say that by this date the following kind of thing

01:23:51 ◼   ► will happen. My level of certainty is this much and basically the number of

01:23:55 ◼   ► chips I'll put on the table is this much. Right? You know what I'm saying? Like I'm

01:23:59 ◼   ► like I'm gonna give this in I'm gonna give this a you know five out of ten on

01:24:03 ◼   ► on how much I'm pretty sure it's gonna happen,

01:24:05 ◼   ► and I'm gonna bet this many chips that it would happen.

01:24:07 ◼   ► So it'd be sort of like odds.

01:24:09 ◼   ► You know, it would be really interesting to go back

01:24:11 ◼   ► over somebody's career and be able to look at those.

01:24:13 ◼   ► I bet it would be, especially for some of these

01:24:15 ◼   ► ding-a-ling analysts, can you imagine

01:24:16 ◼   ► what that would be like?

01:24:18 ◼   ► And not just your trip-child-re types,

01:24:19 ◼   ► but like just any of these folks out there

01:24:21 ◼   ► who have some kind of speculative half-reckon

01:24:24 ◼   ► about something that might happen.

01:24:26 ◼   ► It's like doing a cold reading, you know?

01:24:28 ◼   ► Like, you know, you walk up to anybody

01:24:31 ◼   ► who can speak English and say,

01:24:32 ◼   ► Do you have an uneasy feeling about an older man in your life right now?

01:24:37 ◼   ► It's like almost everybody does.

01:24:39 ◼   ► It'd be like going, do you sometimes feel like you might be

01:24:41 ◼   ► slightly more intelligent than a lot of the people around you?

01:24:44 ◼   ► Like, "Oh, yeah, actually I do."

01:24:46 ◼   ► Interesting, interesting, interesting.

01:24:48 ◼   ► Have you had a loss in your life in the last one?

01:24:51 ◼   ► That's the thing where it really feels like a cold reading to just some of this stuff.

01:24:57 ◼   ► Apple is going to make a bigger phone,

01:24:59 ◼   ► Apple is going to make a smaller phone.

01:25:01 ◼   ► "Well, congratulations! You just covered the entire board."

01:25:04 ◼   ► Like, thanks. That's great. That's really useful.

01:25:06 ◼   ► You know what? This reminds me of a very specific rumor that is, you know,

01:25:10 ◼   ► somewhat recent, super widespread.

01:25:14 ◼   ► And I wanted to bring it up with you.

01:25:17 ◼   ► I didn't write it down. I kept it in my head. But now I remember.

01:25:20 ◼   ► Otherwise, I would have forgotten it.

01:25:22 ◼   ► I'm fascinated by this rumor that the next iPhone is going to get rid of the headphone jack.

01:25:27 ◼   ► Not particularly because of the practical consequences of living with an iPhone that doesn't have a standard headphone jack,

01:25:35 ◼   ► but the way that tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people have reacted to the news.

01:25:42 ◼   ► There's a petition that somebody put together that apparently...

01:25:46 ◼   ► And everybody knows how effective online petitions are.

01:25:49 ◼   ► Especially for things that haven't been announced as a reality yet.

01:25:52 ◼   ► It's like being mad about a speculative change of wardrobe by the cartoon character Tinkerbell.

01:25:58 ◼   ► It's like, "Well, that's not anything we actually thought about, but sure, give us your petition."

01:26:03 ◼   ► So what are people saying? What is the nature of their demand?

01:26:07 ◼   ► That they not get rid of the audio jack, or what's the specific beef?

01:26:11 ◼   ► To me, that's what's interesting. The ramifications of this are extremely interesting.

01:26:18 ◼   ► really interesting because there are a lot of things that this will screw up a

01:26:21 ◼   ► lot of things that it will allow and just a whole bunch of stuff that it'll

01:26:24 ◼   ► change and it all comes down to these little implementation details to like

01:26:28 ◼   ► what this means in the near term and I find that incredibly fascinating here it

01:26:32 ◼   ► is it's a here's an online head online petition that has two hundred ninety one

01:26:38 ◼   ► thousand eight hundred forty eight signees and their goal is three hundred

01:26:41 ◼   ► thousand so they're actually a little short of their goal here I'll send you

01:26:47 ◼   ► link. I'll just read it to you though. This is the way the petition reads.

01:26:53 ◼   ► I think it's very... I think the way it's read... I'm gonna... I'll try to use my voice

01:27:01 ◼   ► to put the bulb. There's a lot of bulb. Oh my goodness there is. Apple is about...

01:27:08 ◼   ► Maybe you should read it. Maybe you should read it. So Apple is about to rip

01:27:13 ◼   ► off every one of its customers again.

01:27:18 ◼   ► Forbes and Fast Company are reporting that Apple plans to ditch the standard 3.5mm headphone

01:27:23 ◼   ► jack when it releases iPhone 7 later this year.

01:27:25 ◼   ► Only a massive - who are these people?

01:27:28 ◼   ► Have they been to - have they finished high school?

01:27:31 ◼   ► Only a massive international campaign could force Apple to change course now.

01:27:35 ◼   ► Really?

01:27:36 ◼   ► Is that the only thing that can cause it to happen?

01:27:37 ◼   ► That seems like a very odd thing to just guess.

01:27:39 ◼   ► Oh my god, this is horrible.

01:27:41 ◼   ► only will this force iPhone users to dole out additional cash to replace their

01:27:45 ◼   ► Hi-Fi headphones, their Hi-Fi headphones, it will single-handedly create mountains

01:27:49 ◼   ► of electronic waste that likely won't get recycled after an em dash. According

01:27:55 ◼   ► to the United Nations, up to 90% of this... oh my god this is so horrible. This is,

01:28:01 ◼   ► and further down, this is right out of the Apple corporate playbook. Did you know

01:28:05 ◼   ► that you know that, Jon? Did you know that they have a corporate playbook out of

01:28:09 ◼   ► which things are right taken. A few years ago it swapped out the original...

01:28:13 ◼   ► sounds like John Roderick wrote it, except John would never write this poorly. A few years ago it

01:28:18 ◼   ► swapped out the original iPod dock connector with the new one, making countless

01:28:22 ◼   ► cords, cables, and chargers obsolete. Further down, tell Apple to keep the

01:28:28 ◼   ► standard headphone jack and ditch planned obsolescence! Exclamation point.

01:28:31 ◼   ► So I find it fascinating. This is incredible. I do realize that if it's true that the

01:28:37 ◼   ► headphone jack goes away, that it will be an inconvenience to people who have purchased

01:28:45 ◼   ► third-party headphones, and the more expensive they are, the more inconvenient it might be.

01:28:50 ◼   ► Does it have to be an inconvenience?

01:28:51 ◼   ► Well, I mean, you have to have an adapter or something like that, and the adapter's

01:28:55 ◼   ► going to stick out further than it did before.

01:28:57 ◼   ► I mean, it's, you know, it...

01:28:59 ◼   ► Yeah, it just, I mean, like, first of all, this has not been announced yet.

01:29:03 ◼   ► There's no way to know.

01:29:04 ◼   ► This is the class, this is one of those classic...

01:29:07 ◼   ► It's one of those classic examples of taking something that isn't a thing yet, taking even

01:29:12 ◼   ► - how do you begin with the idea of something that's not a thing yet, guess like two orders

01:29:16 ◼   ► of change away from that until you find something that makes you infuriated, and so where people

01:29:20 ◼   ► are extremely angry about something that hasn't happened.

01:29:23 ◼   ► So I don't know.

01:29:25 ◼   ► I guess I just feel like - I think it is interesting because it would - it could mean lots of different

01:29:32 ◼   ► stuff for the company, but if you watch Apple at all - and I'm not even saying this will

01:29:36 ◼   ► But if it does happen, I don't think this would be surprising at all, especially given

01:29:39 ◼   ► how much they want slimness and given how much they want might want this added functionality.

01:29:44 ◼   ► I don't think they're doing it to make you buy new headphones.

01:29:46 ◼   ► I think they're doing it because they think that's the future rather than the past.

01:29:49 ◼   ► Right.

01:29:50 ◼   ► And implicit in this line of argument is the idea that they should never get rid of this

01:29:55 ◼   ► headphone port and that devices that we buy 20, 30, 40 years from now should still have

01:30:00 ◼   ► the same headphone port because at any given point, if every device that could have headphones

01:30:08 ◼   ► uses the same port, there's never going to be a year where it's like, well, now's the

01:30:12 ◼   ► year when nobody's going to be put to any inconvenience whatsoever by this.

01:30:18 ◼   ► And the fact that they make mention of the 30-pin to lightning adapter thing is, to me,

01:30:24 ◼   ► it's like the people who signed this are still upset about that one.

01:30:29 ◼   ► It's like, yes, that was an inconvenience.

01:30:31 ◼   ► And I know, just from talking to people, one of the scenarios where that was really inconvenient

01:30:35 ◼   ► would be like, let's say that maybe you and your spouse are on every other year's schedules

01:30:43 ◼   ► getting new phones.

01:30:44 ◼   ► You each get one every two years, but one year for one, one year for the other.

01:30:48 ◼   ► So there was a year there where one of the household members had the old iPhone port

01:30:54 ◼   ► and the other had the new one.

01:30:55 ◼   ► Oh, it was the worst for a while, yeah.

01:30:58 ◼   ► And so it's not just as simple if, unless everybody in the house switches at once, it's

01:31:02 ◼   ► not as simple as just, "Well, just buy a couple of the new ones and leave them around."

01:31:06 ◼   ► But like if there's a charger in the kitchen or something like that, well, now you've got

01:31:09 ◼   ► to have a dongle or something.

01:31:12 ◼   ► But once, you know, give it a couple of years to work itself out.

01:31:15 ◼   ► And now it's a better world because we have a better port.

01:31:18 ◼   ► It's smaller.

01:31:19 ◼   ► It works bi-directionally.

01:31:20 ◼   ► Right.

01:31:21 ◼   ► In hindsight, it's like, "Wow, that really worked out well."

01:31:24 ◼   ► Well let me ask you an extremely carefully worded question or ask our listeners an extremely carefully worded question.

01:31:30 ◼   ► How many of you out there are using headphones that you bought over five years ago that you still use several times a week?

01:31:40 ◼   ► And do you intend to keep using them for the next two years?

01:31:45 ◼   ► Let's even say the next year.

01:31:46 ◼   ► How about this? Headphones you bought in the last four years that you still use more than one time a week.

01:31:53 ◼   ► several times a week. Maybe are there any that you bought over four years ago

01:31:56 ◼   ► that you're using every day with an iPhone, right? And do you intend to

01:32:00 ◼   ► use that for another year? Because here's the thing. That's when the Lightning

01:32:04 ◼   ► Adapter came out, was four years ago. Do you follow? Yeah. In the amount of time

01:32:09 ◼   ► since the Lightning Adapter has come out, I am not finding it difficult to deal

01:32:15 ◼   ► with not having a 30 pin USB jack anymore. It just doesn't come up. It comes

01:32:21 ◼   ► up a couple times a week, maybe, or maybe even less, because I have to charge my kids

01:32:26 ◼   ► ancient iPad 2. But that transition is well and truly over. With the exception of maybe

01:32:33 ◼   ► going into a hotel room and finding some places that still have those. Do you see my point

01:32:37 ◼   ► though? So what's the legacy problem here? Do you personally have any headphones that

01:32:42 ◼   ► you couldn't afford to replace that you've used for more than four years and need to

01:32:45 ◼   ► use for more than the next year or so? Because it's going to be at least a year, I'm going

01:32:49 ◼   ► guess until that happens. So to me, it all falls apart already because, you know, it's

01:32:54 ◼   ► not like you get a, it's not like getting your dad's Rolex. We're talking about headphones

01:32:58 ◼   ► that people probably buy every couple years anyway.

01:33:00 ◼   ► Yeah, and boy, an awful lot of people. I know, and it's nice at this point where we've got,

01:33:06 ◼   ► I don't know, I think if you did like a thorough, you know, comb, combing of our household and

01:33:14 ◼   ► and counted up all of the pairs of white apple earbuds

01:33:17 ◼   ► that are in this house.

01:33:19 ◼   ► I would not be surprised if the number of working pairs

01:33:22 ◼   ► of them was at least, I don't know, 12, maybe more,

01:33:27 ◼   ► maybe like 15, 20, wouldn't be surprised.

01:33:31 ◼   ► And it's nice, therefore, like I've got a pair here

01:33:33 ◼   ► at my desk and I think I've been using these for a while.

01:33:35 ◼   ► - Those are just my emergency travel headphones.

01:33:37 ◼   ► I hate them.

01:33:38 ◼   ► I hate them.

01:33:39 ◼   ► - They fit my ears pretty well, so I use them.

01:33:42 ◼   ► Amy doesn't really like them, but uses them.

01:33:45 ◼   ► And Jonas just goes--

01:33:46 ◼   ► Jonas likes them a lot, so Jonas uses them.

01:33:49 ◼   ► But it's nice if you misplace a pair,

01:33:51 ◼   ► you just find another pair, you pick it in.

01:33:52 ◼   ► So it'll be a pain, yes.

01:33:54 ◼   ► You'll get a new iPhone, presumably,

01:33:55 ◼   ► if it comes-- unless they go, who knows what they're

01:33:57 ◼   ► going to do?

01:33:58 ◼   ► That's the other thing that makes me so crazy about the--

01:34:01 ◼   ► or not crazy, but so--

01:34:03 ◼   ► what's wrong with you people?

01:34:05 ◼   ► We haven't heard the story yet.

01:34:07 ◼   ► If it's true, we haven't even heard

01:34:10 ◼   ► what Apple expects us to do.

01:34:11 ◼   ► Are they going to go entirely wireless?

01:34:13 ◼   ► Is it a new thing?

01:34:14 ◼   ► Is it going to be the Lightning port?

01:34:18 ◼   ► Let's just say, though, that they do include a pair of wired headphones

01:34:21 ◼   ► and they plug into the Lightning port.

01:34:24 ◼   ► Yes, it'll be mildly inconvenient that the 15 pairs of headphones

01:34:27 ◼   ► in the house already no longer work on this phone

01:34:29 ◼   ► and you have to use the one that came with your phone.

01:34:31 ◼   ► But they're going to give you a pair of headphones at work.

01:34:34 ◼   ► They're going to give you a pair of headphones that work.

01:34:35 ◼   ► And knowing Apple--

01:34:36 ◼   ► I mean, Apple has been fairly consistent about this.

01:34:39 ◼   ► I call it, personally, I call it the one-year warning shot, which is that Apple will give

01:34:43 ◼   ► you, if you're looking for it, you will notice a warning shot about what's going to go away

01:34:46 ◼   ► in a year, if you're paying attention.

01:34:49 ◼   ► That could be all kinds of different devices, but the classic for me is the scrolling direction.

01:34:52 ◼   ► I said, "Okay, from now on, we're changing the scrolling direction on OS X.

01:34:56 ◼   ► It's going to seem weird, but that's going to be..."

01:34:59 ◼   ► Here's the thing.

01:35:00 ◼   ► If it absolutely drives you crazy, you can go back and change it to the other way, like

01:35:04 ◼   ► an animal.

01:35:06 ◼   ► But we want you to know that this is the way we're moving, and if you want to move in the

01:35:09 ◼   ► direction Apple is moving I'm not saying this is good bad or indifferent you need

01:35:12 ◼   ► to listen for those warning shots and in the next year get your head around the

01:35:14 ◼   ► fact that this is going to change so yes I think they will give you if if this is

01:35:18 ◼   ► the change and I don't think there's evidence that there is but whatever if

01:35:21 ◼   ► there is they're gonna give the right headphones and you know what I'll bet

01:35:24 ◼   ► you you can find some kind of janky ass adapter that'll let you use your beloved

01:35:28 ◼   ► headphones but I don't think I think if they do this it's not gonna be because

01:35:34 ◼   ► it makes your life miserable it's because they want to do something really

01:35:37 ◼   ► new and that to me is super interesting what could you do with lightning

01:35:42 ◼   ► headphones there's so many things that are super interesting to me and thinking

01:35:45 ◼   ► about that and I'm thinking also about stuff like could you have like else you

01:35:49 ◼   ► had a charger pack it would it be conceivable to have a charger pack that

01:35:51 ◼   ► had just a slightly larger than usual chin on it where you could potentially

01:35:56 ◼   ► plug that in to the lightning and then have both the transmitter and off to the

01:36:01 ◼   ► side a dingus for plugging in old-style headphones I mean that's me that's not

01:36:05 ◼   ► beyond imagination.

01:36:06 ◼   ► Sure. You could do it. What would an adapter look like, you think?

01:36:09 ◼   ► Well, I mean, it might just be... just a straight adapter would just be like a

01:36:14 ◼   ► little,

01:36:15 ◼   ► you know... On a cord, probably.

01:36:18 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe it would be on a cord. Because otherwise you're gonna get that iPad Pro

01:36:22 ◼   ► Pencil problem if you've got this...

01:36:24 ◼   ► For the full-on, long iPhone jack, that's gonna be pretty long, accounting for what's

01:36:29 ◼   ► already inside the phone.

01:36:31 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe it should be on a little cord.

01:36:33 ◼   ► Because that way, in a little cord, if it was on a little, like, you know, like, inch,

01:36:37 ◼   ► two inch cable, then it wouldn't be like a Chris Brakey off-y thing in your pocket.

01:36:43 ◼   ► Like the size of one of those splitters, like where you want to split into two and you get

01:36:47 ◼   ► two separate cords coming out.

01:36:48 ◼   ► Something along those lines.

01:36:49 ◼   ► But like, that would fix the legacy problem.

01:36:52 ◼   ► Is it elegant?

01:36:53 ◼   ► No, but welcome to the future.

01:36:54 ◼   ► Like you're gonna buy new headphones anyway, especially, I don't know, it just seems like

01:36:58 ◼   ► a scratch.

01:36:59 ◼   ► use this old 3.5 millimeter port forever, forever, or...

01:37:05 ◼   ► On an infinite time scale.

01:37:06 ◼   ► Or eventually somebody is going to ship a product that doesn't use it. And so I don't

01:37:11 ◼   ► get it. I really do enjoy it though. So here's the thing though, I really do wonder if it's

01:37:16 ◼   ► true, I wonder if this actually is a rare case, in my opinion, of a deliberate leak

01:37:22 ◼   ► by Apple to vent a whole bunch of the anger almost an entire year in advance

01:37:29 ◼   ► so that when it is announced it doesn't come as a shock to nearly as many people.

01:37:35 ◼   ► Who has done the most significant and reliable reporting or you know

01:37:41 ◼   ► apparently reliable reporting on this? I guess the guy at Fast Company. Okay, okay.

01:37:48 ◼   ► I guess, and notably not Germin.

01:37:52 ◼   ► Or Forbes?

01:37:53 ◼   ► Yeah, Forbes and Fast Company is what the petition says.

01:37:56 ◼   ► Although they don't...

01:37:57 ◼   ► Oh no, they do have links to it at the bottom.

01:37:59 ◼   ► So if you go to that petition page...

01:38:01 ◼   ► I don't think Forbes will let me look at their page anymore.

01:38:03 ◼   ► iPhone 7 leaks, quote, "Confirm Apple-abanding headphone jack."

01:38:09 ◼   ► Oh my god, it's like they've got a different dictionary.

01:38:12 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:38:14 ◼   ► Well, they did put the word "Confirm" in quotes.

01:38:17 ◼   ► That's great. That's great. That's just a little better than putting "proves" in quotation marks.

01:38:26 ◼   ► It's like reality, but maybe not?

01:38:29 ◼   ► The Fast Company headline is "It's true, colon, Apple will drop headphone jack to make the iPhone 7 slimmer, comma, says source."

01:38:36 ◼   ► I would say that the Fast Company one is probably the most reliable.

01:38:42 ◼   ► So, okay, so I didn't exactly ask you this. Do you think this will happen?

01:38:46 ◼   ► I do. Because I feel like it has to happen eventually,

01:38:51 ◼   ► and so why not now?

01:38:54 ◼   ► What are some of the benefits? I guess the most obvious one

01:38:58 ◼   ► apparently is that it is the gating factor

01:39:01 ◼   ► for getting the phone any thinner. Well, maybe.

01:39:05 ◼   ► The counter argument to that is that the current iPod

01:39:08 ◼   ► touches are significantly thinner

01:39:11 ◼   ► than the iPhone, the current iPhone, and so, and they still have the standard

01:39:15 ◼   ► headphone

01:39:16 ◼   ► jack and there are iPods, other regular non-iOS iPods that are even thinner still that still

01:39:25 ◼   ► have that port. But like on the iPods that are thinner that have that port, there's like

01:39:32 ◼   ► a chin area where the inserted part of the headphone jack doesn't actually go underneath

01:39:39 ◼   ► the display, which makes it easier engineering-wise.

01:39:43 ◼   ► On the iPod Touch, it does.

01:39:46 ◼   ► You could make a significantly thinner iPhone

01:39:49 ◼   ► and keep this port.

01:39:51 ◼   ► But without question, every port you remove

01:39:54 ◼   ► has got to make the device smaller and lighter.

01:39:58 ◼   ► Yeah, well, it's also--

01:39:59 ◼   ► I mean, it just seems like there's several--

01:40:01 ◼   ► I'm not an engineer, obviously.

01:40:02 ◼   ► But it's--

01:40:03 ◼   ► Common sense, though, that if you just take the port out

01:40:06 ◼   ► and don't even replace it with another port of any kind,

01:40:08 ◼   ► But every dingus you can take off of there, it could mean all kinds of things.

01:40:13 ◼   ► It means more space to do anything with that area, including what components you could put there in its place.

01:40:17 ◼   ► Remember also we're talking about at least what, three quarters of an inch of depth?

01:40:20 ◼   ► You've got to engineer around with that.

01:40:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's the depth.

01:40:23 ◼   ► Aside from this thing that's already got that depth accounted for.

01:40:25 ◼   ► I actually think if you could pick the brains of a hardware engineer at Apple who works specifically on these problems of

01:40:33 ◼   ► How do we cram all the stuff we absolutely need and get the biggest possible battery that we can,

01:40:38 ◼   ► given the insane thinness that Johnny Ive's team is saying we're supposed to build this at?

01:40:44 ◼   ► I would bet that if you talk to one of the engineers who works on that,

01:40:50 ◼   ► here's what Johnny's team says we're supposed to be able to build. How do we make this reality,

01:40:54 ◼   ► that the depth of the jack into the device is actually a bigger problem than the 3.5 millimeter

01:41:02 ◼   ► diameter. As well as I'm gonna I don't think I don't know electronics but I'm

01:41:05 ◼   ► as well as I'm guessing being one of the most difficult parts in terms of

01:41:09 ◼   ► moisture. The lightning I don't know I feel like did I talk to you about my

01:41:14 ◼   ► weird lightning thing last year where one particular pin on my lightning

01:41:19 ◼   ► cable had turned like a bluish green on all of my chargers? No! The exact same pin

01:41:26 ◼   ► on both sides and I wondered if it was a hardware virus but basically and

01:41:34 ◼   ► then all sudden all my devices weren't charging as well and it looked like

01:41:37 ◼   ► basically an aquamarine... is that the kind of dark blue green? Yeah. Like a dark

01:41:42 ◼   ► blue green crayon had been very lightly smudged on the same pin of six

01:41:47 ◼   ► different lightning jacks. Isn't that insane? But it must... I'll bet the problem

01:41:52 ◼   ► must have been with the device, that you had a device where the internal pin...

01:41:56 ◼   ► What caused what is the question? Do you remember Jeff Veen talking about the hardware virus

01:42:00 ◼   ► at Google? Did you ever hear about that?

01:42:01 ◼   ► No, I don't think I have.

01:42:03 ◼   ► I love this story. They had a hardware virus. I'm going to give you a minute to mull that

01:42:07 ◼   ► over in your head. They had a hardware virus at Google where basically people's DVI jack...

01:42:14 ◼   ► What do you call the female on the laptop? The jack?

01:42:17 ◼   ► I think it's the jack.

01:42:18 ◼   ► The port stopped working, and they all had this same...

01:42:25 ◼   ► People would notice that they would go in, they would plug into the projector, it didn't work, they'd go and look.

01:42:30 ◼   ► And this one pin had gotten basically bent and distorted inside all these different people's laptops.

01:42:39 ◼   ► So you would go, and if you were in whatever room you were in, you'd look at the plug, and that plug was messed up, your laptop is messed up.

01:42:46 ◼   ► suddenly everybody's noticing all the laptops and all the plugs are messed up,

01:42:50 ◼   ► and you can figure out why, right?

01:42:51 ◼   ► It all started with one slide projector having a broken pin and passing that

01:42:55 ◼   ► defect onto any piece of hardware it plugged into.

01:42:59 ◼   ► And then consequently each piece of hardware that plugged into that computer,

01:43:04 ◼   ► then got it too, which would then pass it on to everybody else.

01:43:06 ◼   ► That's insane.

01:43:08 ◼   ► It's incredible. What an amazing idea. I've never heard of that before.

01:43:12 ◼   ► And now it's kind of amazing. It doesn't happen more often.

01:43:14 ◼   ► So that was my first thought. Isn't that how Skynet started?

01:43:17 ◼   ► Is that the one in RoboCop? Terminator. Oh, sorry.

01:43:21 ◼   ► Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's how that started. Uh, so I don't,

01:43:26 ◼   ► I don't know much about that. You know,

01:43:29 ◼   ► what's funny is like I can't believe I'm living in an age where my phone feels

01:43:33 ◼   ► too thin and my touch ID seems too fast.

01:43:36 ◼   ► Like when I take the naked robotic core out of the leather case and I hold it in

01:43:39 ◼   ► my hand, I have to tell you,

01:43:40 ◼   ► my six S prime feels like a little too thin.

01:43:45 ◼   ► It's not that comfortable to me. I don't think I'd want it to be any thinner.

01:43:49 ◼   ► Yeah. Well, and I wish I now to get like right now,

01:43:52 ◼   ► I want to see if I have any messages.

01:43:53 ◼   ► I use my pinky now because I want to be able to see the lock screen before it

01:43:58 ◼   ► turns on. It's so impossibly fast now.

01:44:01 ◼   ► Could you ever imagine that that'd be something a grown man would bitch about?

01:44:04 ◼   ► Yeah. It still gets me when I want to take a photo, like something is happening,

01:44:07 ◼   ► like, Oh my God, I gotta get a picture of this. Right.

01:44:09 ◼   ► And I developed the habit a few years ago when they added the feature where there's

01:44:13 ◼   ► a camera shortcut on the lock screen.

01:44:15 ◼   ► I'm just swipe up.

01:44:16 ◼   ► Remembering that.

01:44:18 ◼   ► But when I'm normally using the phone, I'm getting better at if I really do want to see

01:44:24 ◼   ► the lock screen, I know to use the side button to wake it up instead of the fingerprint button.

01:44:29 ◼   ► Oh, that's good.

01:44:30 ◼   ► Yeah, but when I'm in like that emergency, holy cow, there's a squirrel eating a, you

01:44:37 ◼   ► know...

01:44:38 ◼   ► Eating a duck.

01:44:39 ◼   ► There's a squirrel eating a duck.

01:44:41 ◼   ► I don't have time to think.

01:44:43 ◼   ► I have to think to use that side button.

01:44:45 ◼   ► I just instantly go to the home button, and then I'm--

01:44:48 ◼   ► That's like muscle reflex.

01:44:50 ◼   ► And now I'm looking around for, oh, man, now--

01:44:52 ◼   ► [QUACKING]

01:44:53 ◼   ► Yeah, and now it's like my Twitter client is open,

01:44:56 ◼   ► and I'm like, oh, look at this on Twitter.

01:44:58 ◼   ► You start shaking like an old man.

01:44:59 ◼   ► You're like, oh, wait a minute.

01:45:01 ◼   ► I want to get back to the screen I was on.

01:45:02 ◼   ► By the way, I'm thinking about writing about this,

01:45:05 ◼   ► but I actually looked up.

01:45:06 ◼   ► I had the same problem you just went through verbally

01:45:08 ◼   ► minute or two ago there about the the word jack and is Jack when you talk

01:45:12 ◼   ► about the headphone jack is the jack the the male or is it the female it ends up

01:45:17 ◼   ► here's the deck different dictionary definition oh good good a socket with

01:45:21 ◼   ► two or more pairs of terminals designed to receive a jack plug so it is the

01:45:27 ◼   ► female but in the dictionary this is the Apple dictionary which is what like

01:45:32 ◼   ► American heritage or something they describe it as needing two or more pairs

01:45:37 ◼   ► of terminals. So like, I feel like the dictionary is wrong on that case, because

01:45:41 ◼   ► every, you know, it doesn't seem like they have a definition that would work with

01:45:44 ◼   ► headphone jack where there's just one terminal.

01:45:48 ◼   ► But that's jack or socket?

01:45:50 ◼   ► Jack. J-A-C-K. Jack. A socket with two or more pairs of terminals designed to receive a

01:45:57 ◼   ► jack plug.

01:45:58 ◼   ► So that's the female headphone dingus? Is it jack?

01:46:01 ◼   ► They're saying that the female--

01:46:02 ◼   ► They should call that a jill.

01:46:03 ◼   ► They're saying they should. I've thought of that.

01:46:06 ◼   ► It does seem like maybe the jack.

01:46:09 ◼   ► What about airplane fluid?

01:46:12 ◼   ► Socket jack.

01:46:13 ◼   ► So they're saying it's a jack is the socket and the jack plug is the plug.

01:46:19 ◼   ► Oh, okay. Then what do you call the pig face thing that you get 110

01:46:25 ◼   ► electricity out of in your house? Is that an outlet? You call it an outlet?

01:46:29 ◼   ► I would normally call it an outlet, but I might call it...

01:46:32 ◼   ► When you jack your plug into the socket, you call that an outlet?

01:46:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I might call it a jack casually.

01:46:36 ◼   ► I would prefer to call it a jack, because I feel like jack is a pretty good word.

01:46:40 ◼   ► Uh-huh, uh-huh.

01:46:41 ◼   ► I feel like with headphones and casual speaking,

01:46:44 ◼   ► it doesn't make any logical sense,

01:46:46 ◼   ► but that you can get away with calling the male and the female a jack.

01:46:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:46:50 ◼   ► If you've got your headphones,

01:46:51 ◼   ► just take the jack and plug it into the jack.

01:46:54 ◼   ► Jack into the jack.

01:46:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:46:55 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely.

01:46:57 ◼   ► Take the headphone jack and just plug it right into the jack on your phone.

01:47:00 ◼   ► Why-- what do you, um, what do you make of the apparent obsession with increasing thinness?

01:47:09 ◼   ► What do you make of that?

01:47:10 ◼   ► I mean, I want to say what do you make of that?

01:47:13 ◼   ► Do you like that? Do you feel that it is useful and important?

01:47:17 ◼   ► And why in particular do you think it seems like such an obsession inside the white room to make things thinner?

01:47:24 ◼   ► And is that a thing? Because it feels like a thing.

01:47:28 ◼   ► I don't know anybody, I don't know, I can't think of anybody I know

01:47:31 ◼   ► who's top of the list, even their top five would be "I want a thinner phone."

01:47:35 ◼   ► Pretty much everybody I know says I would, and who knows this could be at cross

01:47:38 ◼   ► purposes like

01:47:39 ◼   ► with your thinking fast mind, your thinking slow mind, but like everybody I

01:47:43 ◼   ► know says they would like to get more battery.

01:47:44 ◼   ► I don't know anybody that says I want a thinner phone. I asked

01:47:48 ◼   ► Schiller about that when he was on the show at WWDC and he gave

01:47:51 ◼   ► a good answer, at least at the time I was like, "Damn, that's a good answer."

01:47:55 ◼   ► and damned if I can remember it.

01:47:57 ◼   ► - I was backstage.

01:47:59 ◼   ► I was backstage drinking, I don't remember.

01:48:01 ◼   ► - Damned if I can remember it.

01:48:04 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:48:05 ◼   ► I don't know what to make of it

01:48:07 ◼   ► because it's gone past the point where I care.

01:48:10 ◼   ► Like I'm impressed now,

01:48:12 ◼   ► like when I go to one of these Apple events

01:48:16 ◼   ► and it's the year when you get a new form factor

01:48:19 ◼   ► and then they have them on a, you know,

01:48:21 ◼   ► Apple table backstage and you get to touch them

01:48:24 ◼   ► see how thin they are and it's like wow that is thin but I think honestly even

01:48:31 ◼   ► starting I honestly I don't think that the thinness of the thing has ever

01:48:34 ◼   ► really mattered to me I liked the original iPhone I didn't think it was

01:48:38 ◼   ► too thick and I think starting somewhere around the four yeah the four and the

01:48:45 ◼   ► four s the one that had the glass back the glass front glass back I still that's

01:48:50 ◼   ► still my favorite. The 4S is still my favorite form factor.

01:48:54 ◼   ► At that point, I thought, "This is fantastic. This feels so great in my pocket. This is

01:49:03 ◼   ► great." Then when they made the next one even thinner, I was like, "Wow, that's amazing,"

01:49:09 ◼   ► but I didn't think this is better for me. They could have stopped at the thinness of

01:49:13 ◼   ► the 4 4S, and I'd be happy if they just packed it with battery.

01:49:17 ◼   ► Well, you know, I like that... I don't wanna sound like an idiot, obviously. I'm glad to see enhancements to the phone.

01:49:21 ◼   ► I like that it's faster, I like that it's bigger, it's all that kind of stuff.

01:49:23 ◼   ► But, like, to me the 4S design still... you know, the whole, like, chamfered edges or whatever they called it,

01:49:29 ◼   ► that still feels so classic to me.

01:49:31 ◼   ► No, that was the 5 and 5S.

01:49:32 ◼   ► Was that the 5 and the 5S?

01:49:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:49:34 ◼   ► But that has... wait, no, what was the 4?

01:49:35 ◼   ► That was the one that had the glass back.

01:49:38 ◼   ► And it just had metal sides. They were like... it wasn't chamfered, though. It was...

01:49:43 ◼   ► All right. Ah, see, but that, that, yeah, I guess in my head I think of that. Yes.

01:49:46 ◼   ► I see what you're saying. Yeah. But I still think of that as like,

01:49:49 ◼   ► I'll remember that as the classic iPhone look, I think. Yeah. I don't know.

01:49:53 ◼   ► I like the rounded ish edges. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. I misspoke. Yeah.

01:49:57 ◼   ► This one looks like a Mophie before there was a Mophie. Right.

01:50:00 ◼   ► It's got that with that metal edge. Was this the antenna gate phone? Yes. Yeah.

01:50:05 ◼   ► Right. God, look at, I'm looking at just what the OS look like. Oh my goodness.

01:50:08 ◼   ► Oh my gosh. It's so, I don't hate it though.

01:50:12 ◼   ► I'm not going to blanket party on forest all like I think I don't know man.

01:50:16 ◼   ► It's, it's when the iPhone got good, you know,

01:50:19 ◼   ► he was still there running the show. Um, so thinness.

01:50:24 ◼   ► Yeah. So I don't know. I don't know. And you know, again,

01:50:26 ◼   ► it's I have to always in my head discount the fact that, you know,

01:50:29 ◼   ► the way that we, you know, that book I'm talking about, that Kahneman book, uh,

01:50:32 ◼   ► thinking fast and slow. It's, it's, yeah, it's an amazing book. But you know,

01:50:36 ◼   ► there are the ways that when we stop and think and meta think about what we're

01:50:39 ◼   ► doing. That's actually very different from the way that we think from day to

01:50:42 ◼   ► day. There's just, I mean, setting aside the research, there's just the

01:50:46 ◼   ► anecdotes, there's so much stuff about like what we think we want versus what

01:50:50 ◼   ► we actually do and how what we actually use and how we actually process

01:50:53 ◼   ► information. If you ask anyone who's a gambler whether gambling is a good way

01:50:57 ◼   ► to make lots of money and you say to them, they will say no, it's not. It's

01:51:01 ◼   ► dumb that I do this. It's dumb that I drink. It's dumb that I gamble. It's dumb

01:51:04 ◼   ► that I do these things. It doesn't change the fact that we still do it. So I have

01:51:07 ◼   ► to guess that there's something going on on a sub rosa level here where there

01:51:11 ◼   ► they are there's some reason that they are making these things the way they are

01:51:16 ◼   ► making them and it may not exactly comport with the way that my brain

01:51:19 ◼   ► thinks that these things should be made but they must have their reasons right

01:51:22 ◼   ► that's what I try to think I try to I try to remain unemotional about it like

01:51:28 ◼   ► I don't see it and I don't get it but I feel like it's of a it's of a part with

01:51:32 ◼   ► the outrage over the headphone jack yeah where I don't want to be the one who's

01:51:36 ◼   ► outrades that they've made this the next iPhone even thinner and the battery life

01:51:41 ◼   ► isn't any better you know when obviously if they had you know kept it the same

01:51:47 ◼   ► thickness and just added a little more battery they could have made battery

01:51:50 ◼   ► better that sounds good better to me and I know that there's these you know

01:51:55 ◼   ► literal laws of physics that affect image quality of the camera where the

01:52:00 ◼   ► longer the distance you have between the lens and the sensor it helps to have a

01:52:03 ◼   ► bigger sensor with bigger pixels and therefore get better image quality.

01:52:08 ◼   ► I understand that. I don't get it. It seems to me, my look at it as common sense is if they kept the

01:52:16 ◼   ► thinness the same at this point, then they could have more battery, which would increase battery

01:52:21 ◼   ► life, and they could have better image quality on the camera, which are like the two things that

01:52:24 ◼   ► I care about most, using the camera and the battery. Instead, they keep making it thinner.

01:52:30 ◼   ► I don't get it, but I don't assume that there's no good reason for it, or that the only reason is

01:52:36 ◼   ► uh, like, Johnny Ive's personal obsession with the thinness. I get that there must be something,

01:52:43 ◼   ► I just don't see it. Right, right, and I think for folks who are technologically inclined,

01:52:48 ◼   ► scientifically inclined, or even rationally inclined, you might want to look at something

01:52:53 ◼   ► like, you know, in this case the thinness of the phone, and you can come up with half a dozen

01:52:58 ◼   ► reasons why making it thinner is not a good idea or you know or is not the first good idea but at

01:53:03 ◼   ► the same time you could look at stuff like the skeuomorphism that goes into automobiles you know

01:53:08 ◼   ► in terms of like making this sporty wheel look even more sporty than it needs to look for the

01:53:13 ◼   ► sportiness of it like does that actually help make it a better car not not in the usual sense but it

01:53:19 ◼   ► makes it more attractive to people having it create more like making it make more engine noise than it

01:53:24 ◼   ► it needs to make.

01:53:25 ◼   ► Does that make it a better car?

01:53:27 ◼   ► Not really, not in an engineering sense,

01:53:29 ◼   ► but there's a reason.

01:53:30 ◼   ► There's reasons for all of this stuff.

01:53:32 ◼   ► It goes beyond simply fashion, but there's

01:53:34 ◼   ► something about when you're using it,

01:53:36 ◼   ► this makes you feel a certain way.

01:53:38 ◼   ► And that's why people keep going back and buying

01:53:40 ◼   ► these same brands over and over.

01:53:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:53:44 ◼   ► I'll try to channel my inner Siracusa here.

01:53:46 ◼   ► And I feel like Siracusa, if he's listening,

01:53:49 ◼   ► is championing at the bit here.

01:53:51 ◼   ► Because I feel like he could explain this best.

01:53:54 ◼   ► But like the end result eventually is that these phones are just going to be pieces of glass.

01:53:59 ◼   ► You know, like remember, did you see the movie Looper?

01:54:02 ◼   ► Yeah, like those are basically, it's like, or even in Parks and Rec,

01:54:06 ◼   ► it's basically going to be like a, it'll be like a clear floating screen kind of thing.

01:54:09 ◼   ► Just, yeah, just the piece of glass, or maybe it's not glass, maybe it's a polycarbonate,

01:54:15 ◼   ► but just the screen. And when it's off, maybe it's even translucent, and everything is built into it.

01:54:21 ◼   ► to get from here to there they have to keep making everything thinner

01:54:25 ◼   ► and that they know that that's where it's going and in the meantime

01:54:29 ◼   ► they have to keep pressing the gas pedal on making these things thinner

01:54:33 ◼   ► even though it's at the expense of trying to also... it's working counter to

01:54:38 ◼   ► making battery life better and counter to making the camera better

01:54:41 ◼   ► they have to keep working on all three because that's inevitable and if they

01:54:44 ◼   ► don't do it somebody else will

01:54:46 ◼   ► because we're still thinking about a power device as relying on the kind of

01:54:50 ◼   ► of power with the kind of constraints that we do right now. In the same way, think about

01:54:54 ◼   ► the leap from CRT to LED. Making that mental model, that leap from what a TV is, what a

01:55:01 ◼   ► TV looks like, how is it that within less than 10 years, you went from a TV being what?

01:55:08 ◼   ► An 80-pound box into being almost like a plane, right? That takes an entire quantum leap.

01:55:17 ◼   ► Whereas if you ever opened up a TV or opened up a stereo, like a crappily made stereo system,

01:55:21 ◼   ► it's all air inside.

01:55:22 ◼   ► There's no reason for any of that.

01:55:24 ◼   ► It's just cheapest to make that way with stock components.

01:55:27 ◼   ► So that's kind of what you're saying, right?

01:55:28 ◼   ► If we look at this as more than one axis changing in the future, you can't help but think that

01:55:32 ◼   ► there's going to be some changes we don't immediately understand.

01:55:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:55:38 ◼   ► I also wonder if there might not be a very practical near-term product marketing angle

01:55:45 ◼   ► on it which is that Apple and other companies as well might know that if they made the device,

01:55:54 ◼   ► let's just say that the iPhone 7 coming out, the new iPhone is called the iPhone 7, it's

01:55:59 ◼   ► coming out later this year and it's thinner than the iPhone 6. That's probably, everything

01:56:05 ◼   ► I just said is what I guess is going to happen because it's what's been happening for years

01:56:09 ◼   ► now. I don't have anybody, I don't know any sources who've told me that but it's a very

01:56:12 ◼   ► logical guess. Apple might know that if they made the iPhone 7 the same thickness as the

01:56:19 ◼   ► iPhone 6, even though they could make it thinner, but if they made it thicker and used that

01:56:25 ◼   ► extra thickness to increase the battery life and maybe get rid of the—maybe if image

01:56:31 ◼   ► quality isn't even better than it would be otherwise, but there's no—the camera lens

01:56:37 ◼   ► doesn't stick out from the back, which would make me very happy.

01:56:41 ◼   ► They might know that in the long run that would make people happy, but that in the short

01:56:45 ◼   ► run if they did that and then people go into a Verizon or AT&T store and side-by-side with

01:56:52 ◼   ► a Samsung that is thinner, even if it's at the expense of battery life, that they have

01:56:59 ◼   ► a reasonable reason to believe that X number of people will then pick that Samsung because,

01:57:04 ◼   ► "Wow, look how thin this is," and walk out of it,

01:57:06 ◼   ► even though in the long run they might have been happier

01:57:08 ◼   ► with the thicker phone that gets better battery life.

01:57:10 ◼   ► But at the point of sale, that thinness will help.

01:57:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, the thinness has curve appeal over bullet stats.

01:57:17 ◼   ► - Right.

01:57:19 ◼   ► - And in that sense of,

01:57:21 ◼   ► that's a really interesting way to put it.

01:57:22 ◼   ► You think about what you buy

01:57:25 ◼   ► when you just walk into the store,

01:57:27 ◼   ► and how it makes you feel in the moment.

01:57:29 ◼   ► That could actually have a huge impact.

01:57:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I really, and it's a little,

01:57:33 ◼   ► I know that there aren't the nerds out there, the people who either do think more logically

01:57:38 ◼   ► than most people or at least like to think that they think a lot more logically than

01:57:43 ◼   ► most other people.

01:57:44 ◼   ► I suspect there's a lot of people listening to us right now who that applies to.

01:57:47 ◼   ► I think, "That makes me angry because I'm so logical.

01:57:50 ◼   ► That would never fool me."

01:57:53 ◼   ► A, you might be fooling yourself about just how emotional, the emotional context of buying

01:58:00 ◼   ► it.

01:58:02 ◼   ► Even if you do have a good point because you pre-order your phones and you buy your new

01:58:05 ◼   ► iPhone before you've ever even seen it in person, you can't underestimate that when