00:00:14 ◼ ► Pingdom, Linode, Fully, and Ooni Pizza Ovens. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Mr. Jason Snell. Hello, Jason Snell!
00:00:27 ◼ ► Maybe everybody. #SnellTalkQuestion this week comes from Alex. We're a very podcast-focused episode today, lots of podcast talk,
00:00:35 ◼ ► so I thought I'd have a podcast-related Snell Talk. And Alex asks, "How do you feel about people referring to either an episode of a podcast or the podcast itself as a, quote, 'pod'?"
00:00:49 ◼ ► Um, it's not a phrase I use. I don't want to be one of those people who tells people what we're talking about.
00:00:57 ◼ ► I don't know what words to use. I don't know. I don't want to be one of those people who's like, "No, here's another person calling a pod again."
00:01:04 ◼ ► You know, I don't know who that person was, but they're very angry. And also, I don't know what.
00:01:13 ◼ ► So, do what you like. Call it what you like. Call it whatever. It's pretty arbitrary. I think calling an episode of the podcast a podcast is also confusing, but I do that all the time, right?
00:01:25 ◼ ► I gotta edit the podcast. Do I mean the episode? I mean, the right way to do it is there's podcasts and there are episodes.
00:01:37 ◼ ► Yeah. If you want to call it a pod, whatever, that's, you know, sometimes I say it as a joke,
00:01:43 ◼ ► I'll, you know, cast in the pods and all of that. It's fine. It's fine. I feel like people should say
00:01:52 ◼ ► My friend and cohost, Tom Gerhard, on the Thoroughly Considered podcast calls the podcast the PCAST.
00:02:12 ◼ ► On the waves. Thank you to Alex for sending in that question. You can send out a tweet with
00:02:17 ◼ ► the hashtag Snell Talk and it may be included for a future episode. We have a big media episode today.
00:02:22 ◼ ► There's a bunch of Apple TV Plus related news. We're going to talk about Spotify and Joe Rogan
00:02:28 ◼ ► and podcasting in general. And we have a mic at the movies at the end for Ferris Bueller.
00:02:37 ◼ ► That's right. We have like a list of things we have to talk about before we get to 300,
00:02:43 ◼ ► I wanted to sum it up, especially because of all the Apple TV Plus news. Upstream's going to be
00:02:54 ◼ ► shouldn't today because it's mostly Apple focused. I agree that people should never skip upstream.
00:03:02 ◼ ► Yeah. That's why we put the chapters in. It's up to you. But there's a lot of Apple TV Plus
00:03:10 ◼ ► For the record, episode 199, we took a deep dive into Apple's forthcoming video service
00:03:16 ◼ ► and we made predictions about what it will cost and how their content purchases would roll out.
00:03:22 ◼ ► Plus, Google gets back into podcasting. I think this is the time before the time where they most
00:03:31 ◼ ► Why does on the 99 episode, both Apple does a bunch of stuff in TV and then some company
00:03:43 ◼ ► Let's consult the sacred scrolls of antiquity. Episode 99, I got a new mechanical keyboard.
00:03:55 ◼ ► And Scrivener. And oh, the iPad keyboard that doesn't turn the iPad into a laptop. Fascinating.
00:04:08 ◼ ► That one's less parallels. It is episode 300 next week. We have a very upgrade topic planned,
00:04:25 ◼ ► It's a very upgrade topic. But also we wanted to do an extended Ask upgrade of next week.
00:04:35 ◼ ► So let's talk about the show a little bit. So if you have any questions about upgrade itself,
00:04:39 ◼ ► or kind of, I guess, especially about podcasting again, if there's stuff that you want to know,
00:04:49 ◼ ► you have questions about that, then just send them in. You can either tweet with the hashtag
00:04:53 ◼ ► #askupgrade or if in the Relay FM members Discord, just use the question mark, ask upgrade in the
00:04:59 ◼ ► message that you send and they will all be included in a spreadsheet that we collect to choose from.
00:05:07 ◼ ► I wanted to look at maybe some follow forward. I don't know. We're a month away from WWDC now.
00:05:13 ◼ ► So in like four episodes time or something will be the WWDC episode, which is both exciting and
00:05:21 ◼ ► interesting, but that was kind of what I wanted to bring up. I realized today it's kind of around
00:05:25 ◼ ► this time that I would be making lots of plans, you know, and I don't really have any to make
00:05:33 ◼ ► nor do I even really know how I'm going to handle the week. It's going to be very different.
00:05:37 ◼ ► I feel like I need to have a plan for how to handle everything that I don't currently have.
00:05:56 ◼ ► is I'm not really thinking about it, partly because it is so far away now. I think what's
00:06:01 ◼ ► going to happen is next week I'm going to feel weird about the fact that it's not happening
00:06:06 ◼ ► because that's been traditionally when it's happened the last few years, it's first week
00:06:10 ◼ ► in June. So that's going to feel a little bit strange. The other thing going into all this is
00:06:15 ◼ ► that, you know, I am physically present at almost every Apple event. And this is weird because,
00:06:23 ◼ ► you know, I have nothing. I don't know what I'm going to do. Like it's so different and outside
00:06:29 ◼ ► of my realm of experience, we have to actually figure out how we're going to cover it and
00:06:33 ◼ ► how we want to do that because we're all just sitting in our chairs at home watching this. So
00:06:48 ◼ ► you know, we have them working on all sorts of other things, other projects. They just released
00:06:53 ◼ ► the iOS version that's got the COVID-19 tracing API in it and things like that. So there's
00:06:59 ◼ ► a lot of other stuff going on and that makes it feel different. So I don't know. I'm not
00:07:04 ◼ ► super excited about it yet, but it does feel like we were turning to that time. And, you know,
00:07:13 ◼ ► I notice everybody's getting out in front of it with their, everybody had on their calendar for
00:07:18 ◼ ► late May to start doing their wishlist stories, which is funny because we've got a month to do
00:07:23 ◼ ► them, but people are like, "Well, nope, I'm doing it now. I'm doing it in May." So that is,
00:07:27 ◼ ► nothing puts you in the spirit of WWDC than everybody posting their wishlist on their blogs.
00:07:39 ◼ ► the biggest thing that iOS 13.5 included was the contact tracing API that health authorities could
00:07:45 ◼ ► take advantage of. It's not been met with great aplomb yet. There's been 22 countries are on board,
00:07:55 ◼ ► only a small handful of them are actually publicly known. It has not been stated which countries in
00:08:02 ◼ ► the complete list are on board. I think Germany is one of them. There was a small list, I'll put
00:08:09 ◼ ► a link in the show notes, and I see that you've put in a note that you saw Switzerland had a
00:08:13 ◼ ► test go out, right? - Yeah, apparently, Switzerland is working using the API and somebody tweeted us
00:08:20 ◼ ► earlier today saying that it's a test, but they're actually on the case of using the Google
00:08:25 ◼ ► Apple API. - Right. Yeah, Germany, Switzerland, Latvia, and Estonia are currently the countries
00:08:31 ◼ ► that are named to have actually... This came from a report from Reuters. They're the only countries
00:08:36 ◼ ► that have publicly said that they're doing it. And there are four states in the US that are on board.
00:08:43 ◼ ► More states in America have actively stated they will not adopt it, which is 17, than they're
00:08:49 ◼ ► currently stating to adopt. There's still a lot up in the air about this, and I still stand kind of
00:08:55 ◼ ► firm in my thinking that a lot of decisions will be changed. A lot of decisions that seem to have
00:09:01 ◼ ► been made or have been made will be changed. A lot of countries are not ready with an application
00:09:07 ◼ ► like my own, super late. So that might be one reason why there hasn't been a ton of uptake yet.
00:09:13 ◼ ► And I also think a lot of countries are going to wait until the second movement of this, where it's
00:09:20 ◼ ► even more just built into the system as opposed to you needing to adopt the API into your application.
00:09:26 ◼ ► So we'll see. I mean, it's slow going. It's an incredibly political issue. But hopefully we'll see...
00:09:34 ◼ ► I think I still stand in my thinking on this, and hopefully a lot of countries will still adopt this
00:09:39 ◼ ► technology because it's available to them and it's probably a better option than them doing it
00:09:44 ◼ ► themselves. So that's that. Apple is apparently, according to a report in Bloomberg from Lucas
00:09:52 ◼ ► Shaw and Mark Gurman, looking to buy and have apparently already made some deals to get back
00:09:57 ◼ ► catalog content for Apple TV+. According to the report, Apple wants to buy up content to increase
00:10:04 ◼ ► the catalog of their service for probably some very obvious reasons right now that stuff is
00:10:09 ◼ ► not being made. And they have not only been taking pictures from studios, but according to this report,
00:10:16 ◼ ► have done some deals. We don't have any details about what they've bought or who they're buying
00:10:21 ◼ ► it from yet. But this is an interesting move. Obviously, there is a halt on TV production right
00:10:27 ◼ ► now, which would be a clear indicator as to why you might want to give more to your customers,
00:10:37 ◼ ► There's the pipeline, right, where there are things that have been shot that are in post-production,
00:10:45 ◼ ► and we've talked about how that's slower than usual because people are at home, but there is
00:10:49 ◼ ► a pipeline for it. And then there's like this gap of no live action stuff being shot. And what's
00:10:58 ◼ ► really funny is behind that, there is writing. There is a lot of writing going on because the
00:11:03 ◼ ► writing has continued during this period of everybody being locked down, but the shooting
00:11:08 ◼ ► hasn't. And the shooting is going to come back now, but there's going to be a delay. There's going
00:11:14 ◼ ► to be a gap. And it's not going to be the stuff that comes out in the next four months, right?
00:11:20 ◼ ► Three months. It's going to be the stuff that comes out right after that, because the stuff
00:11:24 ◼ ► that's going to come out in the next few months was already shot. So that's what everybody,
00:11:30 ◼ ► I think, who's involved in scripted content is fearing, is if you don't have a lot of it,
00:11:34 ◼ ► especially like Apple, if you're Netflix, you could probably just rearrange the launch dates
00:11:39 ◼ ► a little bit and stretch things out and make everything a little bit thinner and get through
00:11:43 ◼ ► it. But if you're Apple, you may find yourself with some unfortunate shortfalls. And it's
00:11:49 ◼ ► an even more of an issue for Apple than maybe some of their competitors because later on this year,
00:11:57 ◼ ► they have to convince people to start paying for this. Because apparently, according to this
00:12:02 ◼ ► Bloomberg report, 10 million people have signed up with 5 million actively using the service.
00:12:08 ◼ ► And I wonder how many of those 5 million are not paying any money for it right now. I reckon pretty
00:12:14 ◼ ► much all of them. And if Apple don't have content and you would expect that they were hoping to say
00:12:21 ◼ ► in November, "Hey, season two of For All Mankind and the morning show, they're starting." But
00:12:28 ◼ ► that's probably not going to happen, right? I can't imagine that they have enough there or will have
00:12:32 ◼ ► enough there to put those shows in front of people. And even if they do, my understanding is that they
00:12:37 ◼ ► were in the midst of shooting For All Mankind and I think maybe Morning Show, I don't even know.
00:12:41 ◼ ► So even if they do, they probably are going to have to do something like do part one of season two
00:12:48 ◼ ► and do five episodes and then stop. And then you'll have the second half and that's not great
00:12:54 ◼ ► either. Because it's like, again, 10 million doesn't even seem... It doesn't seem like a
00:13:00 ◼ ► huge amount of people for what Apple have available to them. Especially if only 5 million... I mean,
00:13:06 ◼ ► I also want to actively using means like I haven't watched an Apple TV Plus show in a while, but
00:13:10 ◼ ► I will. I'm keeping it and I would be paying for it now because there's content that I will want.
00:13:15 ◼ ► There's stuff on my list. I still want to see Mythic Quest, especially because everyone's
00:13:19 ◼ ► been really praising the quarantine episode. I've seen unilateral praise for that. So I want to watch
00:13:24 ◼ ► the whole show and the quarantine Zoom episode that they did. Sorry, group FaceTime, I'm sure.
00:13:29 ◼ ► I can't imagine it was actually Zoom that they were using, but we'll see. But you've got to
00:13:35 ◼ ► assume that Apple are feeling a pressure of getting people to sign up for this service.
00:13:42 ◼ ► They do not want that to go away. They want to continue offering something which is of use and
00:13:48 ◼ ► back catalogue content seems like a good option. They didn't do it before, I think for reasons
00:13:54 ◼ ► just like, no, we want to just be HBO. We build prestige television of our own, right? But they
00:14:00 ◼ ► didn't want to do the back catalogue stuff. But now, what's available now? This is the question,
00:14:07 ◼ ► right? If they would have started out, maybe they could have got some interesting stuff, right?
00:14:11 ◼ ► Maybe they could have put in the bid for Seinfeld or whatever, right? But I feel like at this point,
00:14:16 ◼ ► most of the bingeable popular shows, they're tied up somewhere. Look, there's a bigger issue here.
00:14:23 ◼ ► I talked about this a little bit on TV Talk Machine last week. It's actually the last episode
00:14:28 ◼ ► of the current iteration of TV Talk Machine because Tim Goodman, who is my co-host for that,
00:14:32 ◼ ► is a TV critic and he retired from being a TV critic and he's doing something else now and
00:14:36 ◼ ► doesn't want to talk about TV, which I totally understand, but it makes it hard to do a TV
00:15:08 ◼ ► really decide if it's in or if it's out and it has, it has played it. I know they're spending
00:15:12 ◼ ► billions of dollars on content and they did this big launch, but Apple, I think is still hedging
00:15:18 ◼ ► on whether it really wants to do this or not. If it really wants to be a content provider,
00:15:24 ◼ ► or if it just wants to be an ecosystem and a kind of channel provider for other people's content.
00:15:30 ◼ ► I don't know if Apple, Apple has been splitting the difference on that. And I think the challenge
00:15:35 ◼ ► is they may need to decide what they want to be. I mean, they are an ecosystem and a channel provider
00:15:39 ◼ ► because of who they are, but do they also want to be this other thing? And Amazon has taken that
00:15:45 ◼ ► path. Although Amazon product is different, but it's similar in that it's not a pure product.
00:15:49 ◼ ► That's just like Netflix, right? Amazon is prime and it's a whole bunch of different stuff.
00:15:53 ◼ ► And they've got a catalog and they've got originals. Apple, it similarly has an ecosystem
00:15:59 ◼ ► and the TV app works, whether you have Apple TV plus or not. And they're, they've given them
00:16:03 ◼ ► the gifts of Apple TV to a bunch of people who buy their products and who knows, maybe that will
00:16:08 ◼ ► continue, especially given the pandemic. Who knows? Oh, that's an interesting point, right?
00:16:12 ◼ ► That's like, oh, we're not going to make the money. What we could do is give them another year.
00:16:17 ◼ ► Give them another gift. Yeah. That's a really good point, Jason. I haven't thought of that.
00:16:20 ◼ ► For six months or a year or whatever. Because then the money won't go down on the earnings reports
00:16:26 ◼ ► because they'll continue doing the accounting for it. Exactly. And they can say something about how
00:16:30 ◼ ► with the, with production issues and the pandemic, they'll extend it, but it doesn't change this,
00:16:38 ◼ ► we want to continue giving everybody good content at home, right? They'll spin it that way. Yeah.
00:16:42 ◼ ► We want to give them gifts and thank them because it's very important. But the truth is that it's
00:16:46 ◼ ► the pandemic and that, so here's the thing. Apple could have bought the catalog stuff. They didn't,
00:16:52 ◼ ► they're like, well, we don't really want to do that. You know, and their approach to content
00:16:56 ◼ ► has been more like HBO. We want to be HBO. It's just a few things, but they're curated and they're
00:17:00 ◼ ► very nice. But HBO had a catalog. HBO had a huge catalog of movies and had built a big back catalog
00:17:06 ◼ ► of originals and Apple has none of that. And they, they, so they deferred, they deferred. Now they're
00:17:10 ◼ ► apparently doing this according to this report to buy original or to buy a catalog content. It's
00:17:16 ◼ ► going to be weird. Like, what does it mean? What are they? And then the big problem I see is the
00:17:21 ◼ ► TV app. And everybody's got their favorite thing that they hate about the TV app. I'm not talking
00:17:26 ◼ ► about that. I'm talking about how when you use the TV app, I know that Apple gives itself some extra
00:17:31 ◼ ► promotional space, but the bottom line is when you go to the TV app, the Apple TV plus service is like
00:17:38 ◼ ► a peer to every other streaming service. And, and to get to Apple TV plus content, you can, like,
00:17:47 ◼ ► I use my Apple TV and I've got a Netflix app and a Hulu app and an Amazon app. And I know that you
00:17:53 ◼ ► can get some of that stuff through the TV app, but a lot of it, you can't Netflix like is not,
00:17:59 ◼ ► doesn't play ball with that. So I use the apps. I actually am one of those people where the future
00:18:03 ◼ ► of TV, it turned out it was apps sort of. But, but there's no Apple TV plus app, which means that the
00:18:10 ◼ ► one service that requires me to open an app and then go find it is Apple TV plus it's the platform
00:18:17 ◼ ► owner and it's, and, and on one level, I want to applaud Apple for saying, you know, we are a
00:18:23 ◼ ► conduit to all services and we're not going to overly favor our service. And yet on another level,
00:18:29 ◼ ► it's like, guys, if you're serious about this, there should be an Apple TV plus app at the top
00:18:33 ◼ ► of the screen, not an Apple TV app, TV plus service app that takes you directly to a place that is
00:18:40 ◼ ► completely devoted to that. And the top level of the TV app isn't. And it's, and I think it's all
00:18:46 ◼ ► of a piece, which is they can't decide, are they the ecosystem? Is this just a little fun add on?
00:18:51 ◼ ► And they're not really trying to compete in which case they're spending billions of dollars on a
00:18:55 ◼ ► little kind of fun add on, or are they really trying to massively grow the subscriber base,
00:19:01 ◼ ► the paying subscriber base of Apple TV plus. And I don't think this is an interesting indicator.
00:19:12 ◼ ► but it will, I think the sign that this actually happens is a purchase. I think we'll know if Apple
00:19:19 ◼ ► is really in on this, if they buy something and they don't, it doesn't necessarily mean that they
00:19:24 ◼ ► need to buy CBS Viacom, although they could, or Sony entertainment, if it's for sale or
00:19:31 ◼ ► something else, a movie studio or something like that, a small movie studio. But I think that,
00:19:40 ◼ ► but I think that that would be the clearest sign that they're in on it is a realization that they
00:19:44 ◼ ► need to step up their library and their original game a lot. And maybe it's not the right decision.
00:19:50 ◼ ► Maybe the right decision for Apple is to back off or just have, maybe they want the middle ground,
00:19:57 ◼ ► maybe they want to be present, but not really compete with the others. I don't know. I bet you
00:20:05 ◼ ► that the people they hired to work on Apple TV plus all over the world, not just in LA,
00:20:10 ◼ ► but all over the world did not get hired to be a, you know, a loss leader, adjunct to a TV app
00:20:19 ◼ ► streaming strategy. I'm not sure the billions of dollars that they're spending on content
00:20:31 ◼ ► So it's a weird for me, I still am in this place where I think Apple strategy here is very strange.
00:20:36 ◼ ► We're like, if you're going to spend the money, it's almost like if you're going to spend the
00:20:39 ◼ ► money, you got to spend lots more money. Otherwise, why are you spending the money at all?
00:20:42 ◼ ► - They have been spending lots and lots of more money though, right? Like, I think that
00:20:58 ◼ ► HBO now, Peacock is coming, uh, Amazon prime. Like you can tick off all of the media giants
00:21:05 ◼ ► that are also doing this. And I don't, even though I know Apple is spending billions of
00:21:10 ◼ ► dollars in making deals, but are they really competing? You look at the numbers that have
00:21:17 ◼ ► been reported for Apple TV plus, like they're giving it away and they don't, they, they don't
00:21:34 ◼ ► it's possible for them to do it because they're spending the money, right? Like, again, I agree,
00:21:39 ◼ ► it's not as much as, but they're not spending nothing. And I think for them, what it looks like
00:21:45 ◼ ► they've been doing over the last six to eight months is getting first look deals in with
00:21:51 ◼ ► everybody, right? So there is the possibility that they are getting ready to spend a ton of money,
00:21:58 ◼ ► but they're waiting for the scripts, but they're trying to lock people down. I don't know.
00:22:23 ◼ ► There's no doubt about it because you don't, they don't have the bench that Netflix has.
00:22:28 ◼ ► Where like, you know, Netflix has, how many originals does Netflix release in an average
00:22:32 ◼ ► week? It's a ridiculous number. It's very easy for Netflix to look at what it's planning. And
00:22:37 ◼ ► they've said, like, it's not going to be a problem for us. And, you know, it really isn't because
00:22:40 ◼ ► it's like an accordion or something. You can just take the summer and just go, and now it goes to
00:22:44 ◼ ► the end of the year, right? They can just do that. Apple can't do that, right? Apple is going to hit
00:22:57 ◼ ► - Yeah. I'd be fascinated to see what they've bought. Like, I'm really intrigued to see if
00:23:24 ◼ ► - And it gives you that HBO vibe. I do believe that the old HBO, which is going away now sort
00:23:30 ◼ ► of with the HBO Max thing, that the old HBO approach is kind of Apple's guiding star. That
00:23:35 ◼ ► they want to be high quality, lower volume, but talked about and prestigious. And HBO also had a
00:23:42 ◼ ► movie library. So it's like you throw that in and there are a bunch of movies that you can get.
00:23:45 ◼ ► And you can imagine them integrating that into their apps and stuff, where if you go to a movie
00:23:50 ◼ ► or search for a movie or even featured in their movies interface when you're looking to rent a
00:23:54 ◼ ► movie and they've got the ones that are just free, like what Amazon does with Prime, where there are
00:23:59 ◼ ► movies you can rent and buy, and there are also movies that are just free and you can browse those.
00:24:04 ◼ ► So that would be my guess. My other theory that I had back when we were 100 episodes ago,
00:24:09 ◼ ► when we were debating this is they could do a thing where it's like things that are thematically
00:24:13 ◼ ► linked to their originals. So can you get, I don't know, West Wing and pair it with The Morning Show
00:24:20 ◼ ► or get That'll Start Galactica and pair it with For All Mankind, because they're kind of
00:24:27 ◼ ► thematically similar or they share some connective tissue of some sort. But my guess is that it's
00:24:34 ◼ ► movies. Although, again, I will say I think that they should just seriously consider buying
00:24:39 ◼ ► something that I know it would be very dramatic. Like CBS, like CBS Viacom, yeah. Or Viacom CBS,
00:24:47 ◼ ► I guess is what they are. Because then they get Comedy Central and they get MTV and they get
00:24:51 ◼ ► CBS and they get all the Star Trek stuff and they get The Good Wife and The Good Fight and all that.
00:25:04 ◼ ► MATT: Yep. You get live football. You get, I mean, you also get TV stations that they don't want.
00:25:09 ◼ ► But times are weird, right? Maybe you just, I mean, actually there's a precedence with Fox,
00:25:18 ◼ ► MATT FESTA They could also buy all the pieces and leave the broadcast stations just sitting out
00:25:24 ◼ ► there and the news division and they just sit out there and they're part of some other company that
00:25:29 ◼ ► is not owned by Apple. I think they could do that. I don't think they will, but I think they could.
00:25:33 ◼ ► And it just feels to me like if they really want to go all in on this, that's what they need to do.
00:25:51 ◼ ► MATT FESTA I don't know. I don't know. That's a weird business. That whole story about them
00:26:02 ◼ ► you've mentioned ViacomCBS on this show a bunch of times as like, that's probably the one, right?
00:26:09 ◼ ► MATT FESTA Well, it's the biggest one that's kind of freestanding and is not owned. And none of the
00:26:14 ◼ ► other big players can buy it because of, you know, of regulations. There's no way they would be
00:26:18 ◼ ► allowed to buy it. PETER LUBBERS Right. Comcast, AT&T, they can't come in and be like, "We'll have
00:26:26 ◼ ► PETER LUBBERS Apple did buy something. It's a movie by Tom Hanks. It's called Greyhound. It's
00:26:35 ◼ ► PETER LUBBERS It was supposed to be released on Father's Day in the theaters. And it was decided
00:26:41 ◼ ► that it wouldn't be. And then it got shopped around. And Apple put up the $70 million needed
00:26:49 ◼ ► to get 15 years' worth of rights. This was from Sony. And it now is the first Tom Hanks movie to
00:26:55 ◼ ► debut on streaming. MATT FESTA Yeah. It's -- think about it this way. $70 million reportedly for this.
00:27:00 ◼ ► That's basically Apple saying, "Well, do you think you're going to get $70 million at the
00:27:05 ◼ ► box office for this movie in a normal world? And what do you think you're going to get now?"
00:27:08 ◼ ► Which is nothing. And Sony wants to sell it because Sony doesn't have room in its schedule
00:27:14 ◼ ► for it. And they go to Tom Hanks and Tom Hanks is like, "All right, we'll do it." And it's a
00:27:17 ◼ ► funny world because this is probably more money for everybody involved in this movie than they
00:27:23 ◼ ► would have gotten in the normal world, I think, if it got released. But fewer people will see it,
00:27:30 ◼ ► which is interesting. Also, it's Oscar eligible because it had a scheduled release date, but it
00:27:38 ◼ ► didn't get released. So it's Oscar-bait. And you know what? Tom Hanks World War II movie? I didn't
00:27:46 ◼ ► even know this movie existed. And I will watch this movie. I think that sounds great. I love
00:27:51 ◼ ► Tom Hanks. And he has made some very -- I mean, he wrote this. He cares very much about certain
00:27:56 ◼ ► subjects and pours his heart into them. You saw it with From the Earth to the Moon and with the
00:28:02 ◼ ► Steven Spielberg World War II series, what, the Pacific, he produced that. And Band of Brothers,
00:28:09 ◼ ► which was right on the heels of Safe and Private Ryan. I mean, there's -- you know, this is a
00:28:13 ◼ ► passion project for him that also I think is right in his wheelhouse. So I'm looking forward to
00:28:17 ◼ ► seeing it. And I guess I'll watch it on Apple TV+, which is -- that's good. There's a lot of this
00:28:23 ◼ ► going on right now. I think the question is, is this the new world or is this just contingency
00:28:26 ◼ ► planning because of the old world ending? And we don't know yet because we don't really know what
00:28:31 ◼ ► theatrical is going to look like in the future. Is there stuff like this that's not tied to a
00:28:36 ◼ ► franchise and isn't an enormous budget movie, was already kind of on its last legs in movie theaters?
00:28:41 ◼ ► And, you know, even when movie theaters come back, this stuff may not do that, especially when you've
00:28:46 ◼ ► got streamers who are really hungry for content. And the people who are more likely to watch
00:28:50 ◼ ► streaming are probably demographically a better match for these kind of movies because they're
00:28:56 ◼ ► a little bit older and they're not going to movie theaters as much. So that's, for me, is the big
00:29:02 ◼ ► question is, I'm not sure whether this is the new way things are going to be or if it's just a weird
00:29:09 ◼ ► bump because of the situation we're in right now. My gut says yes and no to that. Yeah, I was going
00:29:16 ◼ ► to say a little -- my gut says a little bit of both, right? Like, this isn't exactly how it will
00:29:20 ◼ ► be, but it'll be more like this than it was before. Also as well, like, I don't mean this to be weird,
00:29:25 ◼ ► but like, Tom Hanks is a good person to have right now because the whole world loves him even more.
00:29:29 ◼ ► Exactly. Also, he already had the coronavirus, so he's invulnerable. He can shoot any movie now,
00:29:36 ◼ ► right now, anywhere. But like, genuinely, like, he's in the zeitgeist again even more than before
00:29:43 ◼ ► because he is very newsworthy at the moment and I think everyone has remembered how much they love
00:29:48 ◼ ► Tom Hanks, except for Max Temkin. He doesn't like Tom Hanks, I found out a few weeks ago, but
00:29:52 ◼ ► yeah, everybody else is a monster. That's fine. Everybody else loves Tom Hanks. So like, it's,
00:29:57 ◼ ► you know, but I actually, I can't wait to see this movie because Tom Hanks is one of my favorite
00:30:01 ◼ ► actors. Like, I think he's amazing. I love him and everything. So I will watch this. I would not have
00:30:05 ◼ ► gone to the cinema to see this movie though. So this might be a bit of a trolls thing for them,
00:30:11 ◼ ► right? Where it's like, oh, lots of people have seen this movie because it's available to them.
00:30:16 ◼ ► I wonder how Apple's going to market this, if at all. That's what I'm interested about. Like,
00:30:22 ◼ ► am I going to get an email from Apple telling me to activate my TV+ description to watch Greyhound,
00:30:35 ◼ ► But you would expect, I mean, let's be real, Father's Day was a very good weekend for that
00:30:39 ◼ ► movie to open. And maybe they just go for that, right? Like, that's my guess is that it will be
00:30:46 ◼ ► a Father's Day release. They'll just literally release it at the same time. But they already
00:30:52 ◼ ► have that Father's Day thing. Movie documentary about dads, which, oh, who is it? Do you remember
00:30:59 ◼ ► that? It was, yeah. Oh, here it is. I found it. Dads, June 19th. It's Bryce Dallas Howard.
00:31:06 ◼ ► Yeah, that's it. That's Ron Howard is who you were thinking of. Who worked with Tom Hanks
00:31:11 ◼ ► on Apollo 13. See, it's all connected. And yes, dads, June 21st. You know, that Central Park
00:31:19 ◼ ► series is coming this week. The Bob's Burgers. It's this week. Yeah, we're going to have to do
00:31:24 ◼ ► an Apple TV content update pretty soon because they are rolling out a bunch of new stuff.
00:31:28 ◼ ► Oh, they also, this is really weird. This one's weird. Apple TV Plus is in early development of a
00:32:01 ◼ ► Their developing scripts about the controversial media company are going to give a quote from Joe
00:32:06 ◼ ► Pompeo at Vanity Fair. Jefferson and Reed declined to comment so details are scant, but the series
00:32:10 ◼ ► has described to me as a dramedy about Gawker's ascent and its impact on the media landscape
00:32:15 ◼ ► as it transformed from an insider gossip blog into a major force in the type of journalism
00:32:21 ◼ ► that skews celebrities in the powerful. Interesting. I wonder if they'll do an iPhone 4
00:32:28 ◼ ► Like seriously. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine Apple paying money to produce an episode
00:32:35 ◼ ► that talks about finding an iPhone 4 in a bar? And Steve Jobs secret police call, right? Like,
00:32:42 ◼ ► I would love that. They won't do it. I'd love it. This felt to me like Apple trying to find
00:32:50 ◼ ► that typical Netflix-like show. They're also doing a show about WeWork, right? They bought
00:32:57 ◼ ► a podcast. I think they want some of that based on real events style. That type of like very
00:33:05 ◼ ► meme-y content gets people talking. They also just signed a deal this week with the creators
00:33:09 ◼ ► of the, I think this was the HBO docuseries McMillions, which is about McDonald's, for a
00:33:14 ◼ ► four-part docuseries. Their only details are that the series is about a "unbelievable true
00:33:20 ◼ ► story of one of the largest scams in government history." So it seems like they're going for
00:33:26 ◼ ► some content which they don't currently have, but will. And it's a lot of this like scandalous
00:33:33 ◼ ► real world stuff that we're making into a drama. Which I don't know what that makes me think of,
00:33:42 ◼ ► And there's a, you know, you can't make one kind of show and everybody has learned this,
00:33:48 ◼ ► right? Like you can't just make a prestige drama. You also need to make comedies and you need to
00:33:51 ◼ ► make docuseries and you need to make things that appeal to different demographic groups. And all of
00:33:55 ◼ ► those things are going on because like Tiger King and The Last Dance now, these are long-form
00:34:02 ◼ ► documentaries that are buzzworthy during everybody being locked down. And I've said this before,
00:34:08 ◼ ► but like you imagine saying in the future, everybody will be talking about 10 hour long
00:34:22 ◼ ► going to sit at home when they have all sorts of other choices. And they're just going to watch
00:34:26 ◼ ► a 10 hour documentary. I don't care whether that's about some guy who maybe murdered tigers or some
00:34:35 ◼ ► other guy who, you know, who won a bunch of championships in Chicago. Whatever, nobody's
00:34:42 ◼ ► going to do that. And the fact is they are. So you got to cover all the bases. You got to have your
00:34:46 ◼ ► snarky based on true story series and you got to have your prestige drama and you got to have your
00:34:52 ◼ ► docuseries and you got to have your kids stuff. And like, and that is a game that Apple is playing
00:35:01 ◼ ► >> HBO Max launches this week in the US, which I'm jealous about. I would like that content.
00:35:08 ◼ ► But something that I thought would be interesting, which I just wanted to note is that they announced
00:35:12 ◼ ► that they're going to be releasing the Snyder cut of Justice League. In case you don't know what
00:35:17 ◼ ► this means. So Zack Snyder had to depart the movie production of Justice League because of a family
00:35:25 ◼ ► tragedy. So Joss Whedon stepped in to finish it. The movie came out. It wasn't good. And everybody
00:35:31 ◼ ► blamed Joss Whedon. An online campaign began to #releasethesnidercut. Some positive, mostly toxic
00:35:48 ◼ ► Zack Snyder to recut the movie, edit the movie. >> I just want to be clear here. One of the
00:35:54 ◼ ► reasons that a lot of us rolled our eyes at the release of the Snyder cut people is because there
00:35:58 ◼ ► was this conspiracy theory that there was this amazing Zack Snyder version of Justice League,
00:36:03 ◼ ► and it was the movie that the studio didn't want you to see. And the truth is, he left in the
00:36:09 ◼ ► middle of production. They were going to do reshoots, but there was also the original stuff.
00:36:13 ◼ ► He did do an early cut that was like four hours long, but then he cut. They wanted a shorter movie.
00:36:18 ◼ ► But like, it wasn't like the real movie was sitting in a vault and then they conspired to
00:36:23 ◼ ► take the movie away from him and bring in Joss Whedon. It was much more like they were working
00:36:27 ◼ ► on the typical back and forth, and then Zack Snyder and his wife lost a child, and they had to
00:36:37 ◼ ► go do that, deal with their personal tragedy. They brought in Joss Whedon, who did The Avengers, to
00:36:43 ◼ ► finish the movie. And people didn't like it, so they're like, "Boy, I hear that Zack Snyder
00:36:49 ◼ ► had this original thing. That might be something." But what they're going to need to do is spend 20
00:36:54 ◼ ► or 30 million dollars making it happen. So there's nothing releasing the Snyder cut is essentially
00:37:00 ◼ ► finishing the Snyder cut. But Warner Brothers and HBO Max, they're desperate for more HBO Max
00:37:14 ◼ ► mostly shot anyway, that they can throw some money to out of their HBO Max development budget.
00:37:20 ◼ ► They get some good publicity for it. They've got this grassroots group of people who are convinced
00:37:26 ◼ ► that this is going to be great, and they've got a tent pole kind of thing that they can launch when
00:37:32 ◼ ► it comes out. And in fact, they're already talking about how they're maybe not going to release this
00:37:35 ◼ ► as a movie, but as a mini-series. So you can imagine the marketing wheels are already turning.
00:37:41 ◼ ► So it's an interesting story. I think it's a one-of-a-kind series of events that led to it
00:37:46 ◼ ► happening. But it is, I think, a very canny case of Warner Brothers and HBO Max saying,
00:38:03 ◼ ► - I'm not sure about the precedent that this could set. I don't know how I feel about it.
00:38:13 ◼ ► big company listening to its fans. The other is you make enough noise and you get what you want.
00:38:19 ◼ ► - Yeah, this is the... So my favorite TV show of all time from when I was a kid was the original
00:38:25 ◼ ► Star Trek. And of course, it got saved twice by letter writing campaigns and Save Our Show
00:38:30 ◼ ► campaigns. It was the original Save Our Show campaign. And I'm very glad that Star Trek exists.
00:38:52 ◼ ► there's going to be... Every time a director leaves a movie, I can't wait for all the Josh
00:38:56 ◼ ► Trank fans out there to say, "Fantastic Four, release the Trank cut." Right? They're probably
00:39:02 ◼ ► already out there, aren't they? Right? Because he had to change that movie and they brought in
00:39:06 ◼ ► somebody like... That's going to just happen again and again. Why don't we do a Dumbledore
00:39:09 ◼ ► truthers thing where everybody starts with like a hashtag that they want to CGI a version...
00:39:17 ◼ ► They get Michael Gambon back and have him replace the original Dumbledore in the early movies so
00:39:23 ◼ ► that there's continuity. Why don't we do that? Like start that as a thing. It's just going to...
00:39:27 ◼ ► It goes on and on and on. So, you know, that part makes me kind of roll my eyes. But I think as a
00:39:32 ◼ ► business thing, it's a fascinating development. And my guess is that the reality of it won't be
00:39:39 ◼ ► as good as the dream because that's how life works. But more power to them. We'll see how it
00:39:45 ◼ ► is. We'll see unfettered Zack Snyder at last. - And do you want to just rejoice about the Hulu
00:39:55 ◼ ► - Yeah. The Hulu app was really bad. The Hulu app got updated last week. The Hulu app is way
00:39:59 ◼ ► better now. And I am actually watching more Hulu than almost any other streaming service. Maybe the
00:40:04 ◼ ► most of any streaming service in this current pandemic. The FX stuff... So Disney owning Hulu
00:40:10 ◼ ► now and pouring all of the stuff from FX networks onto it. And that stuff is really good creatively.
00:40:16 ◼ ► And that stuff's all poured in there. Plus Hulu originals, plus their catalog. It's pretty good.
00:40:23 ◼ ► It's a pretty good service. I really am spending a lot of time in Hulu. But their interface was
00:40:27 ◼ ► terrible. And now it's better. So hooray for that. It's not even that I would say it's good. I would
00:40:34 ◼ ► just say it's like every other TV app interface now. And that's good enough. Because it was way
00:40:39 ◼ ► below that before. - Now all we need to do is get Now TV updated. And then I can be happy. Because
00:40:43 ◼ ► that is the real true terrible, terrible interface. - Hulu's old interface had two side scrolling
00:40:50 ◼ ► tabs on top of each other. And the one that was selected, by the way, that you could see,
00:40:55 ◼ ► it was because there was a line above the text. It was like an over line. And you didn't really
00:41:00 ◼ ► know which was selected. And how do I get all the way up to the top bar? Or am I just in the middle
00:41:05 ◼ ► bar? It was, it was really bad, but it's gone now. So there's only one, there's only one navigation
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00:42:48 ◼ ► "Are they gonna send me one? Are they gonna send me one? I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it,
00:42:50 ◼ ► I want it." Myke, stop, hold me back, hold me back. I need to get this. Should I buy it? And
00:42:58 ◼ ► I like pizza and I like making pizza. I've been making pizza for like 25 years now, my own pizza.
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00:43:15 ◼ ► another one of those, but we ran out and I just moved it from one to the other. It heats up really
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00:43:30 ◼ ► space. Yeah, I've got it on my patio. I put it on my patio when I want to cook. It arrived in
00:43:37 ◼ ► a box. I didn't have to assemble it. I had to slide in the pizza stone kind of thing that's
00:43:41 ◼ ► the base of it. But otherwise, it's just, there it is. It's the oven. You flip down the legs and
00:43:46 ◼ ► there it is. And because it's so hot, it cooks really quickly. So you slide the dough on and then
00:43:53 ◼ ► I have the little turning peel and it cooks the crust and then you kind of like spin it around in
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00:44:21 ◼ ► I've only done it, I think three sessions so far. So I've got a lot to learn. Only three sessions.
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00:45:11 ◼ ► Joe Rogan is being hired by Spotify to make his show exclusive to their platform. You may have
00:45:20 ◼ ► heard about this in some of your favorite shows the last week or so. And it was obvious that we
00:45:25 ◼ ► were going to talk about this topic here today because it fits so nicely in the Venn diagram
00:45:30 ◼ ► and stuff that we talk about on Upgrade. Both the audio and video versions of this show are joining
00:45:35 ◼ ► Spotify and by the end of 2020 Spotify will be the only place that you can get the Joe Rogan
00:45:42 ◼ ► experience. That's not a pun. That's the name of the show. We don't know the price of this deal yet.
00:45:48 ◼ ► We may find out later. It's estimated to be north of $100 million, but there could be bonuses,
00:45:54 ◼ ► goals and all that kind of stuff for a multi-year exclusivity deal. This is not an acquisition like
00:46:01 ◼ ► Spotify have done with the Ringer and Gimlet. They signed Rogan up to a deal. In fact, effectively,
00:46:09 ◼ ► Rogan works for Spotify now for as long as this deal lasts, but he still owns the show. So if at
00:46:17 ◼ ► the end of the deal he wants to leave, go somewhere else, he can. So that's there's some slight
00:46:23 ◼ ► differences to say like the Gimlet deal, which we may be more familiar with on this show where they
00:46:28 ◼ ► acquired the company and all of the assets. So if everybody leaves Gimlet, Spotify still own all
00:46:34 ◼ ► that. It's not the case with Joe Rogan. For a little bit of context, in case you don't know,
00:46:39 ◼ ► the Joe Rogan experience is easily the biggest podcast in the world right now. Apparently
00:46:45 ◼ ► approximately 200 million downloads a month, which seems completely accurate, but also millions of
00:46:50 ◼ ► views on YouTube as well. So it's video and audio. So you can see it battling out against this
00:46:57 ◼ ► American Life and Serial and shows like that, but they don't also have this massive YouTube presence.
00:47:03 ◼ ► So huge deal here, right? What is your take kind of top level, Jason? What did you originally feel
00:47:11 ◼ ► when you saw this news? Well, I mean, it's huge and it's bad for open podcasting. That was my
00:47:17 ◼ ► immediate take. A lot of people brush off Joe Rogan. If you're not in the Joe Rogan sphere
00:47:22 ◼ ► of influence, you're like, who is this guy? But seriously, it's either the biggest or second
00:47:29 ◼ ► biggest podcast in the world, right? Like it's depending on who's measuring and all that, but
00:47:34 ◼ ► it's huge. And what this deal really is, it's not about even being behind a paywall since it's going
00:47:42 ◼ ► to be free on Spotify. What it really is, is about forcing people to use Spotify to hear his show.
00:47:48 ◼ ► And it's going to get Spotify a bunch of new users because it's the only way they're going to be able
00:47:54 ◼ ► to hear the show. And then they're in Spotify's ecosystem. So at that point, it's more convenient
00:48:00 ◼ ► to have all your podcasts in one place. So maybe they listen, they add all their other podcasts in
00:48:04 ◼ ► Spotify, and now they're in the Spotify ecosystem. They're not in the open web ecosystem. If you want
00:48:09 ◼ ► to use, or the open podcast ecosystem, if you want to use Overcast or PocketCasts or Castro or
00:48:19 ◼ ► - You can't. Or YouTube, which they posted Joe Rogan's show on YouTube too, right? Like,
00:48:38 ◼ ► and they said, "Now it's only available in our app." It's kind of like that, where we're taking
00:48:46 ◼ ► our ball and going home. If you want to read it in a web browser, you can't. We're not going to
00:48:50 ◼ ► let you do that. And while you can read it in an app, and a lot of people do that, you can also
00:48:56 ◼ ► read it on the website. And Spotify is like, "Nuh-uh, you have to be in our app in order to
00:49:01 ◼ ► get it." And it's quite a power move. They're spending a lot of money. I read somewhere,
00:49:05 ◼ ► like, how much money this would be an equivalent of how they pay musical artists for their
00:49:10 ◼ ► subscription service. And it's a lot. Music artists are really angry because Spotify doesn't
00:49:16 ◼ ► want to pay them very much, but they're happy to pay Joe Rogan. The difference is that this is an
00:49:20 ◼ ► ad play, right? This is an ecosystem play, people using our app. And it's free, so they're going to
00:49:27 ◼ ► try to create a sales infrastructure where they're inserting ads in this stuff. And presumably,
00:49:34 ◼ ► the deal is something like, they're getting the exclusive, and then they are going to try to make
00:49:39 ◼ ► up some of that money by selling ads into it. But like, it's a, so it's a, you know, I think it's
00:49:44 ◼ ► a huge deal. Well, I've seen reports that like, Joe Rogan is able to continue selling his own ads
00:49:49 ◼ ► in the show and will continue to get their money. Interesting. I haven't seen that confirmed, but...
00:49:53 ◼ ► And again, the amount that they're spending, it's all part of the negotiation, right? Does he get to
00:49:57 ◼ ► keep all the ad revenue or some of the ad revenue? If they take the ad revenue, then it's more like
00:50:01 ◼ ► a guarantee, which a lot of podcast ad networks do, where they'll say, "I'm going to write you
00:50:06 ◼ ► a check for this much money, and then it's up to us to sell the ads, but you just get the money and
00:50:12 ◼ ► don't have to worry about our ad sales." But, you know, if they walked away with all his ad revenue,
00:50:18 ◼ ► they'd probably have had to pay him more, right? So they paid him less for the license, but he gets
00:50:23 ◼ ► to keep ad revenue. The difference is he will lose some listeners, right? Because some people will
00:50:28 ◼ ► just not follow him. Although I think most people will. I think he's going to lose more viewers than
00:50:34 ◼ ► listeners. I think there will be a much bigger hit to the YouTube audience side, the video side,
00:50:39 ◼ ► than the audio. The power of YouTube. Absolutely, absolutely the case. I've never watched Joe Rogan,
00:50:46 ◼ ► really, like I've seen clips, but I was recommended a Joe Rogan video on YouTube two days ago, and I
00:50:52 ◼ ► watched it. It was like a 15-minute clip of Robert Downey Jr. and I was like, "Oh, I want to..." I
00:50:57 ◼ ► can't remember what it was like about some roles that he's taken and whether he regrets them or
00:51:03 ◼ ► not. And I was like, "Oh, I like Robert Downey Jr. I'll watch this." But that kind of shows,
00:51:06 ◼ ► and that video had 17 million views on it. It was a 15-minute clip. Because this is the other thing,
00:51:12 ◼ ► they do lots of clips, so they don't just have the full version. They have another channel with
00:51:16 ◼ ► clips, and those clips get massive amounts of views because they're like a 10-minute thing.
00:51:20 ◼ ► It's more YouTubey, right? All of that's gone. That, I honestly believe, is going to be the bigger
00:51:27 ◼ ► hit. Because the YouTube numbers are always going to be bigger than the podcast numbers because
00:51:31 ◼ ► YouTube is just so much bigger. And there's a lot of people that think, "Oh, Rogan's had problems
00:51:39 ◼ ► with YouTube monetization." Right? "Oh, YouTube's been demonetizing him and it's one of the reasons
00:51:45 ◼ ► he wanted to leave." A few things on this. One, that YouTube money is nothing compared to what
00:51:50 ◼ ► he's getting from the ads, which he's including the YouTube numbers in when he's selling them.
00:51:59 ◼ ► they're not just saying, "Oh, we're only going to sell you the five million podcast listeners
00:52:06 ◼ ► we have." No, they're also saying, "And there's another seven million people here on YouTube that
00:52:11 ◼ ► will see this," or whatever. Right? They're selling the whole thing together. So the ads that are in
00:52:15 ◼ ► the shows, it's all getting bumped up by YouTube. Right? So yes, he may be losing YouTube ad revenue
00:52:22 ◼ ► from demonetization, but it's not that much of a problem because the rising tide lifts all ships,
00:52:29 ◼ ► right? Because he has that access to a large audience. But some people think that, "Oh,
00:52:35 ◼ ► he's making the jump because he gets in trouble with YouTube and they demonetize him." Because the
00:52:40 ◼ ► thing about Rogan is he will interview anyone. It's one of the things people like about his show is he
00:52:45 ◼ ► could be quite controversial and he'll interview Bernie Sanders, but also Ben Shapiro. Right? He'll
00:52:52 ◼ ► do everyone. Right? He'll interview anyone. But I don't see how he is not in a worse position when
00:52:59 ◼ ► it comes to this now because he didn't work for YouTube. He didn't work for Google. They don't
00:53:05 ◼ ► care. They'll just take his money away if they don't like the content. He is now an employee of
00:53:09 ◼ ► Spotify. Anything he does reflect... I've seen people say that he is, but irrespective.
00:53:26 ◼ ► Like he has much more of a reflection on Spotify and him are much more tied together than him and
00:53:34 ◼ ► Google are. Right? Because if he does something that is incredibly controversial, he is monetarily
00:53:41 ◼ ► linked to Spotify. Like if there are any PR crises, it affects them. Right? Much more than it ever
00:53:49 ◼ ► would have affected Google because Google were like, "We have nothing to do with it." But you've
00:53:54 ◼ ► got to assume that he has a contract with Spotify that lists this kind of stuff in it about, you
00:54:02 ◼ ► know, these kinds of issues if he is being too controversial. It's like I just... My point here
00:54:07 ◼ ► is, irrespective of the details, the idea about him doing this so he finally gets out from under
00:54:12 ◼ ► the thumb of YouTube, that's insane. That's really just a wrong argument. Like I can't see that.
00:54:19 ◼ ► Right? Are you following me? Yeah. Like this is not a play of like, "Oh, I need my independence."
00:54:24 ◼ ► No, it's not that. He's less independent now because he works for Spotify in some instances.
00:54:30 ◼ ► Anyway, that's just a point that I wanted to make. Do you think that his listeners will follow him
00:54:35 ◼ ► along? Like, do you think that this is going to be worth it for Spotify? Like ultimately?
00:54:39 ◼ ► - Yeah. In the short term, I do. I think it's a multi-stage thing, right? Like they're going
00:54:49 ◼ ► to get an influx of users who've never tried Spotify for podcasts before. That's step one.
00:54:59 ◼ ► It's not without risk, right? Like if Joe Rogan does stuff that's really controversial,
00:55:04 ◼ ► Spotify is going to have to kind of like live it down and deal with it. And there's a non-zero
00:55:10 ◼ ► chance that they are going to have to terminate this agreement, right? Like a non-zero chance
00:55:15 ◼ ► that it becomes such a black eye that they have to walk away. I'm not saying that will happen,
00:55:19 ◼ ► but it could happen. - Because especially if they start doing a big ad thing and those ads are being
00:55:24 ◼ ► sold on Joe Rogan and he does something that people turn against him for and start campaigning to the
00:55:30 ◼ ► advertisers to come off Joe Rogan, right? Like these are the flows you end up going through.
00:55:41 ◼ ► and there's the ad play, right? They want to build an ad network. This is the one that I've seen a
00:55:46 ◼ ► lot of people talk about. They want to be YouTube, right? They want to be YouTube. And what that
00:55:54 ◼ ► That they can sell ads into programmatically. And what you'll get is worse ads for less money,
00:56:00 ◼ ► but you make it up in volume. Great for Spotify, bad for podcasters, most podcasters, unless you've
00:56:12 ◼ ► advertising, if you're not in Spotify using their ad system, you're basically out of luck and that
00:56:18 ◼ ► will potentially harm, I'm not gonna say kill, but that will harm the outside of Spotify podcast
00:56:24 ◼ ► ecosystem. And you could even end up in a scenario where everybody has to use Spotify's ad system,
00:56:31 ◼ ► even if they're not in Spotify or not just in Spotify, because they also have some podcasts
00:56:38 ◼ ► that are not in Spotify, but if they're ad supported, Spotify wants to be the ones to sell
00:56:43 ◼ ► them. So that's really the risk here is that talk to a YouTube creator about the incredible amount
00:56:48 ◼ ► of leverage that YouTube has over their lives. Why do you think so many YouTube creators now do
00:56:51 ◼ ► Patreons? Like CGP Grey is a good example of that, but there are lots. It's like, well, that's a
00:56:56 ◼ ► direct connection with their audience where the money goes from the audience to the creator.
00:57:01 ◼ ► Whereas on YouTube, like there's a lot of money to be made if you've got a lot of followers with
00:57:06 ◼ ► their ad system, but anything that Google wants to do to you, you have to accept because they own
00:57:14 ◼ ► you because everything is on YouTube and Spotify looks at that and says, that's great. We want to
00:57:19 ◼ ► have that control over podcasters. Yeah. I want to dig into that a little bit more, that whole ad
00:57:24 ◼ ► thing, because if there's a thing I know podcast advertising, this is your business. So I believe
00:57:32 ◼ ► that like many, right? Like, I don't know how much of this is new thinking, but I want to add the
00:57:38 ◼ ► detail that I have. So I genuinely believe Spotify slicing and dicing the ad business. That's what
00:57:44 ◼ ► all of this is for. It's what the whole thing's been for. They want an additional large revenue
00:57:48 ◼ ► stream and they want to make a monetization platform for audio like YouTube have for video,
00:57:53 ◼ ► as Jason said, like so, but there is, this isn't just like, Oh, I think this is the case. This is
00:57:58 ◼ ► true. So one, they count these large deals in their ad business financially. They actually adjusted
00:58:06 ◼ ► some previous records to move the acquisition of Gimlet from their content arm financially to their
00:58:14 ◼ ► ad business financially, because that's where they're going to make money. So they're saying,
00:58:18 ◼ ► Oh, this is a cost for that part of the business. This doesn't affect anyone, but it's important to
00:58:23 ◼ ► see that because you can see how they value it. They've also spoken on conference calls,
00:58:28 ◼ ► Daniel Ek, the CEO of Spotify said the following, no, there, there has been no innovation in podcast
00:58:34 ◼ ► advertising, and we're working hard on building digital adsourcing technology. And we'll use that
00:58:44 ◼ ► I think advertisers alike are very eager for us to get into the space with all of the measurability
00:58:49 ◼ ► tools and all of those things that we're bringing to the industry. To me, I can only read this as we
00:58:56 ◼ ► want to do what YouTube is doing, but for podcasts. And what that means is, so that ad I just did for
00:59:03 ◼ ► Ooni, that's not what you're going to hear. You may hear an ad, like an ad, right? In that place,
00:59:10 ◼ ► if that's, if I'm in the Spotify system, but it won't be me reading it. You're not going to hear
00:59:14 ◼ ► about Jason's experience making the pizzas. You're going to hear some prerecorded thing that maybe I
00:59:19 ◼ ► did, but probably somebody else did, like YouTube, right? They want to put ads into shows. And also
00:59:25 ◼ ► those ads may be about a local business to you because they're going to chuck them in there.
00:59:35 ◼ ► DAI did like insertion. So the ads by tracking and they will insert stuff in. And because you're
00:59:41 ◼ ► using Spotify's closed platform, they're going to collect more data about you, right? That's going
00:59:47 ◼ ► to be a thing that they're going to do because they have the ability to do that. They can get
00:59:51 ◼ ► more information about you. Like Spotify already have some tools like this in place. Like relay.fm
00:59:58 ◼ ► shows are in Spotify, right? We did that because we're a business. It'd be wild not to. We want to
01:00:03 ◼ ► try and make our stuff available where we can. When we looked at the deal with them, the terms
01:00:08 ◼ ► were good. We review the terms. If the terms change, you know, we may not be in Spotify anymore.
01:00:12 ◼ ► I don't know. But Spotify have a closed platform and they have data that other places don't have,
01:00:18 ◼ ► right? Like they have breakdowns of age. They have breakdowns of gender. They can tell me,
01:00:23 ◼ ► I don't know how this is useful, but people don't listen to upgrade. What type of music do they like?
01:00:28 ◼ ► I don't know why that would be useful to me, but Spotify have a platform that can tell me that.
01:00:32 ◼ ► So they have more and they will do everything they can to get more and more data about you so
01:00:45 ◼ ► if they stay just in the Spotify ecosystem because they would need a lot more of the market than they
01:00:52 ◼ ► already have. And they even would have by bringing Joe Rogan in to make sweeping changes to the
01:00:57 ◼ ► business model that affects everybody, right? They can't push in and be YouTube unless they
01:01:02 ◼ ► come up with a system, which was what Jason was saying, where if you listen in Apple Podcasts,
01:01:08 ◼ ► they also make money. But they can do that. They own Anchor, a podcast distribution hosting company
01:01:16 ◼ ► that has the advertising technology created that they're probably using, right? That's what they'll
01:01:21 ◼ ► use, where they can have ads put into shows. Anchor have this system. They made it, I believe,
01:01:32 ◼ ► And I would believe that what Spotify want to do is try and get everyone to use the Spotify branded
01:01:39 ◼ ► podcast creation system so they can put ads in and tell you that you'll make money, right? That
01:01:46 ◼ ► everyone can make money podcasting now because they're going to spread the ads across everyone.
01:01:51 ◼ ► I don't think this is a good idea for a reason I get into in a minute, but I also would expect
01:01:56 ◼ ► that if you use this system, you obviously have to be on Spotify as well as everywhere else,
01:02:02 ◼ ► but I think some of the terms may say stuff like, "You should tell your listeners only to listen on
01:02:07 ◼ ► Spotify," right? Don't mention Apple Places. And for example, on the Gimlet shows right now,
01:02:15 ◼ ► they are saying, "The best place to listen to these shows is on Spotify." And obviously,
01:02:20 ◼ ► they're being told to say that because it doesn't make any sense. Spotify doesn't offer any
01:02:23 ◼ ► additional functionality, but they are being told to do that. So my wife, Adina, listens to a show
01:02:29 ◼ ► called Science Vs. and they had a little ad. It was kind of funny, but there's a little bit of
01:02:33 ◼ ► rebellion to it. So it's a science-based show and the host is saying, "You should listen on Spotify.
01:02:37 ◼ ► It's the best place to listen to this podcast." And then the producer jumps in and says, "Do you
01:02:41 ◼ ► have any scientific data for that?" And she says, "No." Right? So they're kind of making a funny
01:02:46 ◼ ► joke about it, but that's because their boss told them, "You have to say this now," because their
01:02:50 ◼ ► boss told them. So this is the kind of stuff that will be like, "They will allow you to use this
01:02:56 ◼ ► technology potentially in other places, but you have to say, 'Listen on Spotify.'" Again,
01:03:01 ◼ ► all of this is just my feeling about this, like my read on it. Now, if they can siphon off enough
01:03:07 ◼ ► large players, so advertising agencies, so there are agencies that recruit smaller companies,
01:03:13 ◼ ► right? So you have a few big agencies. You also have big companies like Squarespace, who,
01:03:21 ◼ ► But then you have advertising agencies who work directly with companies like us, and they work
01:03:26 ◼ ► with smaller companies that want to advertise on podcasts but don't have their own teams to do it,
01:03:37 ◼ ► buying companies to work directly with them, that's the big risk. And I feel like that risk
01:03:43 ◼ ► is there right now. Like, because Spotify can walk in and say that they can be more effective,
01:03:49 ◼ ► they can have better data, and they'll have cheaper prices because they will push the market down.
01:03:53 ◼ ► - So the biggest name in podcasting right now is still Apple because they have the huge directory
01:04:00 ◼ ► and they have the most popular podcast client. But their approach to this, they are not Spotify.
01:04:06 ◼ ► Their approach to this is very different. I'm wondering what, if Apple looks at this and says,
01:04:12 ◼ ► "This isn't good. We don't like this," and they may or may not do that, what would their response
01:04:20 ◼ ► - I mean, I have a suggestion, but I don't think they'll do it because I think what we've seen is
01:04:24 ◼ ► podcasting is a very... Apple is a huge fish in podcasting. They're big. They are the big fish in
01:04:32 ◼ ► the small pond. But within Apple podcasting is the tiny little fish in the enormous ocean. Like,
01:04:38 ◼ ► if that follows, Apple is very important to podcasting. Podcasting isn't very important
01:04:47 ◼ ► But they're a very small group in a division that is not... I mean, well, it is a more important
01:04:54 ◼ ► division than it used to be, but it's a very small group. It's not a core part of Apple's strategy
01:05:04 ◼ ► - No, it mostly is there because it helps make the iPhone the best place to listen to podcasts.
01:05:11 ◼ ► product. And that's essentially... And it dates from 2005 and decisions made when Steve Jobs
01:05:17 ◼ ► rolled out that new version of GarageBand and put podcast directories in iTunes and stuff like that.
01:05:21 ◼ ► It's a legacy, but it turned into this accidental success for Apple, and they still have it.
01:05:28 ◼ ► I don't think that they're going to do much. There are some rumors that they're doing some stuff.
01:05:33 ◼ ► We've talked about the possibility of them doing Apple original podcasts, but they're really for
01:05:37 ◼ ► their Apple TV+ shows. There are some rumors that... - There was another report from Bloomberg that
01:05:43 ◼ ► they are doing this. They have podcasts focusing on their TV shows, and they're also buying podcasts
01:05:49 ◼ ► that they think they could turn into TV+ shows. Very different play to Spotify's purely content,
01:06:06 ◼ ► Let's also mention that. Spotify keeps calling out Apple and saying that Apple is anti-competitive
01:06:10 ◼ ► and that they should be a choice on the HomePod and in Siri and all these things. They have had a
01:06:18 ◼ ► prickly relationship, these two companies. If I'm Apple, I don't know. I feel like there's not a lot
01:06:25 ◼ ► I can do, but if I really want to spite Spotify attempting to take its ball and go home, I would
01:06:33 ◼ ► try to identify some of the most popular podcasts that remain and sign a licensing deal with them
01:06:42 ◼ ► that keeps them in an RSS feed. Which is a weird deal, right? But it's almost like you want to sign
01:06:52 ◼ ► a deal that they will be featured on Apple Podcasts or something and basically give them
01:06:58 ◼ ► money to not go to Spotify, but not lock them inside the Apple Podcasts app. Because I don't
01:07:04 ◼ ► think Apple's strategy is to make a silo inside the Podcasts app. I really don't think so.
01:07:15 ◼ ► not trying to put it behind a paywall. They just want to put it in their app. So Apple,
01:07:28 ◼ ► don't put their podcast anywhere that isn't an open RSS feed?" And we'll call it like "featured in
01:07:35 ◼ ► Apple Podcasts," but what it really means is you can't go to Spotify. That's a weird thing,
01:07:48 ◼ ► that's the move here. That's the counter move that somebody would have to do, and it would have to be
01:07:53 ◼ ► Apple, is say, "We want you on our platform, and we want to make sure you don't leave podcasts to go
01:08:02 ◼ ► to Spotify, and so let's make a deal." I don't—yeah, like, that's the best I could come up with.
01:08:14 ◼ ► I have a hard time imagining it. All the rumors about Apple Podcasts, original podcasts,
01:08:20 ◼ ► and things like that are, "It'll be for subscribers of Apple News or News+ or TV+ or Apple Music," or
01:08:27 ◼ ► like, there are all of these stories out there that kind of speculate about, like, where does
01:08:33 ◼ ► this stuff go if it exists? And those all make more sense financially because they're kind of
01:08:39 ◼ ► going to the bottom line of some service, whereas Apple Podcasts doesn't generate—like,
01:08:46 ◼ ► it's not a service. It doesn't generate revenue, and if they wanted to create a service,
01:08:49 ◼ ► guess what? Now it's locked behind a paywall, and it's worse than what Spotify is doing with Joe
01:08:54 ◼ ► Rogan. But if Spotify are going to do—which is what I think they're going to do, which is mainly
01:09:00 ◼ ► build an advertising platform—it doesn't affect Apple because the shows will still be potentially
01:09:06 ◼ ► in open RSS feeds. I don't believe that Spotify are trying to lock the entire podcast ecosystem
01:09:14 ◼ ► behind their doors. I think that they like the idea of having that as part one of a two-part
01:09:20 ◼ ► plan, but the other part of that plan is building that monetization system. But if I'm Apple,
01:09:25 ◼ ► I don't care about part two. You're right, but I really care about part one because this is
01:09:28 ◼ ► Spotify making one of Apple's most popular podcasts leave Apple Podcasts and go to Spotify.
01:09:36 ◼ ► And that's—if I'm Apple, that's what I don't like. I don't like that now you can't get Joe
01:09:42 ◼ ► Rogan's show on Apple Podcasts. And how do I prevent that? How do I prevent that from happening?
01:09:49 ◼ ► I'm not sure there's a way to do it. But also, if you're Apple, it's like, "Well, they can't buy
01:09:54 ◼ ► all the shows." No, they can't. Spotify is going to run out of the money to spend on this stuff,
01:09:58 ◼ ► so you just kind of wait it out. That was the next point I was going to make, is maybe your strategy
01:10:02 ◼ ► as Apple is, "Hey, Spotify, we have way more money than you. Keep spending your money. You can't buy
01:10:08 ◼ ► all podcasts. So you've made a very good, clever investment here, but keep spending your money.
01:10:15 ◼ ► You're going to run out." And your ultimate—they would probably say, "We know what your step two is,
01:10:20 ◼ ► which is ads in open podcasts, too, and we don't care about that." And that's the most likely
01:10:28 ◼ ► scenario here, is that Apple continues to do what it has done all along with podcasts, which is be
01:10:34 ◼ ► sort of just take a hands-off attitude. They are incredibly powerful, but they do nothing.
01:10:49 ◼ ► Because of two things. One is Spotify, this platform that they're clearly building, because
01:10:57 ◼ ► it's going to change if it works and they get what they want and they do what I think they're
01:11:02 ◼ ► going to do, which is provide ads for everyone if they want them. It will change the way that
01:11:09 ◼ ► advertising works and sounds. I think that it's not going to sound as good, it's not going to
01:11:13 ◼ ► sound natural anymore. I think that the advertising rates will go down because they'll be offering
01:11:20 ◼ ► kind of a marketplace-like platform like Google, Facebook, YouTube do. And I believe that because
01:11:28 ◼ ► of the pandemic, there will be a lot more people willing to make moves that they wouldn't have made
01:11:35 ◼ ► before because the advertising industry is already in flux. And there may be a bit of desperation on
01:11:42 ◼ ► everyone's side from big companies in podcasting that will be like, "Oh, Spotify can make it more
01:11:48 ◼ ► effective and cost better for us. We should do it if we're going to get more results for less money."
01:11:54 ◼ ► And there may be some large publishers who are like, "Oh man, we're really struggling right now.
01:12:03 ◼ ► So, you know, I don't know how I feel about all of this, but I do feel like it is becoming much
01:12:12 ◼ ► more significant. I've been able to brush it off a little bit more before Jason, but I feel like that
01:12:21 ◼ ► the stripe has been lifted off of this advertising thing from Spotify. And I think that they are
01:12:26 ◼ ► going to become a very large juggernaut and it's going to become more and more difficult
01:12:32 ◼ ► for people to work out advertising on their own if Spotify are making promises that other people
01:12:39 ◼ ► simply cannot give. Right? Like it is not possible for any podcast company in the open system to
01:12:48 ◼ ► provide the data that Spotify will be able to provide. And if they make everybody believe that
01:12:55 ◼ ► that will make the ads better, which I don't think it will, then they'll buy. Everyone's going to buy,
01:13:10 ◼ ► this is where I think we're moving, or at least there is a much stronger chance of this happening
01:13:15 ◼ ► than there has been before. Also, I'll just throw out that advertising aside, I hate the idea of
01:13:22 ◼ ► walling off podcasts in separate apps because one of two things happens. Either you use that app,
01:13:30 ◼ ► at which point hopefully everything that you listen to can go in that app because some things
01:13:34 ◼ ► aren't in Spotify. You have to submit to go into Spotify. And that means Spotify controls your
01:13:39 ◼ ► whole interface. And if you don't like it, you don't have another choice. It is just what it is.
01:13:43 ◼ ► And having had this experience, which we did talk about on a previous episode with an Audible
01:13:47 ◼ ► original, which is what Audible calls their, essentially, podcasts that are behind the Audible
01:13:53 ◼ ► paywall, or you can get to some of them with a Prime account. But I got so frustrated with
01:13:59 ◼ ► a show I wanted to listen to because the Audible interface was frustrating. It was hard to figure
01:14:05 ◼ ► out how to queue up episodes, and it was totally separate from everything else I was listening to.
01:14:09 ◼ ► And it's a worse experience. I mean, it's great if you use Spotify all the time and love it and
01:14:14 ◼ ► everything you want to listen to is in Spotify. But for a lot of people, it's now adding complexity
01:14:32 ◼ ► Everything's changing. And we'll see what happens. This episode is also brought to you by our friends
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01:15:54 ◼ ► Stitch on the RelayFM members Discord asked, "What are some of your favorite segments that
01:16:02 ◼ ► you hear on other podcasts?" Not necessarily that you should do it, but kind of ones that you wish
01:16:12 ◼ ► Um, the podcast I listen to that has the most segments is the Poscast with Joe Posnansky and
01:16:21 ◼ ► Michael Schur and Friends, which is a podcast from The Athletic that they make available on
01:16:26 ◼ ► all podcasting platforms. Thank you very much so I can listen to it. And one of their segments is
01:16:39 ◼ ► random things that they do at the end of the show. And it's got a theme song and it's delightful,
01:16:44 ◼ ► and I like silly segments. So that's my favorite. We do love a silly segment around here. One of my
01:16:49 ◼ ► favorites are the ones that I'm kind of most jealous of as a producer of podcasts is On My
01:16:54 ◼ ► Brother, My Brother and Me. When they do their ads, it's called The Money Zone. And they take
01:17:00 ◼ ► their ad break by saying, "Shall we go to the money zone?" And then they have a little song
01:17:03 ◼ ► that plays them into the ads. And I mean, their ads are just like so funny and just also really
01:17:10 ◼ ► good content, which I also just like so jealous of comedy podcasts. I think we said that before,
01:17:15 ◼ ► right? That like comedy podcasts seem to be able to do whatever they want when it comes to ads,
01:17:25 ◼ ► It's just so smart and is a nice bridge and it like perfectly fits the themes of their shows. So
01:17:35 ◼ ► I actually really enjoy the ads. So there you go. Mark asks, "When is the last time you set up a Mac
01:17:42 ◼ ► iPad/iPhone from scratch? Do you prefer this to using data migration?" What about you, Jason?
01:17:49 ◼ ► Um, I decided to take the 13-inch review unit that I got, the 13-inch MacBook Pro review unit,
01:17:55 ◼ ► and not do any migration. It's such a pain though, because if I want to use it as a real computer
01:18:00 ◼ ► with all my stuff on it, I need to actually migrate. And I don't have a good place to migrate
01:18:06 ◼ ► from right now because the only laptop I have is my old MacBook Air and it's kind of an out-of-date
01:18:13 ◼ ► bad choice for this. So I keep meaning to set up one of my review laptops the way I like it
01:18:21 ◼ ► and then like time machine back up that laptop so that I can keep that and do a migration assistant
01:18:28 ◼ ► restore from that backup every time I review a laptop. But I haven't done it. So I end up
01:18:36 ◼ ► mostly just doing it from nothing and it's so frustrating to do that. But I also set up
01:18:44 ◼ ► new laptops more often than most people, right? Because I review them. But I prefer migration
01:18:52 ◼ ► assistant and I use that basically whenever possible. But it does take a while. And if you
01:18:58 ◼ ► want to get started, you can just bite the bullet. You get started with nothing. And then every time
01:19:02 ◼ ► you want to use something, you go, "God, that's not here." And then you have to install it. And
01:19:10 ◼ ► to get the password or the serial number for this thing. But that is on Dropbox. So I also need to
01:19:17 ◼ ► install." And you realize you got to install like five things to do the thing you want. And that is
01:19:21 ◼ ► not my favorite. - I never do this for my own stuff. Like I always will migrate from something
01:19:28 ◼ ► because I don't want to spend multiple days getting everything right. The 16-inch MacBook Pro
01:19:35 ◼ ► review unit that Apple gave me a while ago, I did just set it up from scratch because I wanted to
01:19:41 ◼ ► just get to use it. I didn't want to wait for like two days to transfer it over. And it's a nice
01:19:48 ◼ ► enough experience to like tinker around or reboot it from scratch. What do I need? What do I not
01:19:53 ◼ ► need? But I would never do this for like every product that I bought. It was nice to do as a
01:19:59 ◼ ► one-off thing. But when I do eventually buy a laptop for the studio, I will migrate it from
01:20:08 ◼ ► my current MacBook Pro. That's what I'll do for my own stuff. Because I'm moving so much data. Like
01:20:13 ◼ ► I don't want to re-download everything from my Dropbox again. Like I don't want to do that.
01:20:18 ◼ ► So I don't know how people do that for all the devices that they get. I know people do it and
01:20:23 ◼ ► they like to do it and like more power to you if that's your thing. But it would drive me bananas
01:20:28 ◼ ► to do it. Zaza also in the Relay FM members Discord asks, "How would I go about becoming
01:20:34 ◼ ► a tech writer for some of the sites that I love? Is there anything specific in a portfolio that
01:20:42 ◼ ► I wanted to ask you about this because you've I guess come from multiple worlds when it comes
01:20:46 ◼ ► to stuff like this. From Macworld to now what you are at Six Colors. And I want to see if you
01:20:51 ◼ ► had any advice. I have no idea. The advice I always give is that the best thing to have is what we
01:20:59 ◼ ► used to call clips, which is samples of your work. And it used to be very hard to get samples of your
01:21:07 ◼ ► finished work because it means you have to it's a chicken and egg thing. You now have to find a
01:21:11 ◼ ► place to publish your work. Yeah, you have to have been published to be published. And it ends up
01:21:17 ◼ ► there's like a chain of things where you have to start someplace small that will take an unpublished
01:21:21 ◼ ► person and you have to have samples maybe that you've written that you show them that say,
01:21:24 ◼ ► "Well, you know, here's a sample of something that I've written." I always used to say for people
01:21:28 ◼ ► who are students like get on your student whatever it is and your newspaper, magazine, whatever,
01:21:33 ◼ ► and write there and then you can use those as an example for the internship you're applying for,
01:21:39 ◼ ► the job you're applying for. Like, look, well, I don't have any. At one point we were taking
01:21:44 ◼ ► applicants for an editor job at Macworld and we got somebody who was just out of college and we
01:21:48 ◼ ► asked them for writing samples and they said, "Well, did you do anything for your newspaper or
01:21:54 ◼ ► magazine or in a class or something?" I'm like, "No." And I thought, "I'm not going to hire you
01:21:59 ◼ ► because you showed no interest in writing publicly in college and now you suddenly want to be a
01:22:05 ◼ ► writer or editor?" It's like seems that was a red flag for me. All that is to say that today you
01:22:13 ◼ ► could just write in public yourself. So I would say first thing to do is set up a site, you know,
01:22:30 ◼ ► - Yeah, I guess. I mean, if you're just trying to get a job, I don't think it matters. But
01:22:34 ◼ ► whatever is easiest, set something up and write things that are like the things you want to write.
01:22:40 ◼ ► Just write them. And not only will you get better at writing, but you will have a thing on the
01:22:44 ◼ ► internet to point people to and say, "Oh, this is a sample of stuff." And then you have to approach
01:22:48 ◼ ► people you'd like to write for and one of the challenges there is that it needs to be a place
01:22:55 ◼ ► that has multiple writers. I remember when Dan Morin came to me and I didn't know who he was
01:23:01 ◼ ► and he said, "I would like to write." I said, "Talk to tidbits," because tidbits often would use
01:23:11 ◼ ► unpublished writers, new writers, and they didn't pay those writers, but it was like visibility
01:23:19 ◼ ► and it was a start. Today, I don't know, it's a much harder, more complicated world, but I think
01:23:26 ◼ ► it's got to start with your words in public. So that's really my advice is maybe write some stuff
01:23:34 ◼ ► that is the stuff you'd like to write in your own place and then go to whomever those sites are that
01:23:41 ◼ ► you love and say, "This is the kind of stuff I write. I would love to write something for you
01:23:45 ◼ ► and see if they give you a shot." But as somebody on the other side of it, I really wanted to see
01:23:50 ◼ ► examples and public examples, something that you put out there is the best. And obviously, public
01:23:56 ◼ ► examples at a website that has editors that have chosen to work with you and they published your
01:23:59 ◼ ► work is better, but if you don't have that, start somewhere and put your best work forward and maybe
01:24:07 ◼ ► even work at it for a little while and get better at it before showing that to those people who work
01:24:12 ◼ ► at the sites that you love. Andrew asks, "Do you think it would work if Apple made a virtual touch
01:24:18 ◼ ► bar on the bottom of the iPad screen for when you were using the Magic Keyboard to replace a function
01:24:23 ◼ ► row?" Well, so there's already that kind of Magic Smart Bar quick type thingy that's down there,
01:24:33 ◼ ► which is super buggy, especially when you're using a keyboard. Some apps bring it up and some apps
01:24:38 ◼ ► don't. I kind of feel like it's taking up space that I wish it didn't, but I would say that that's
01:24:46 ◼ ► the precedent. If Apple wanted to make that bar do more stuff when you've got an external keyboard
01:24:52 ◼ ► attached, they could. And this is the case—that's like a potential iOS 14 feature, right? Now that
01:24:57 ◼ ► they've really embraced even more the idea of this laptop configuration—and they already have the
01:25:02 ◼ ► Smart Keyboard, but with the Magic Keyboard, they've done it even more so—they could throw some love
01:25:09 ◼ ► that direction and make that a more refined interface element. Is that the touch bar? Well,
01:25:16 ◼ ► no, but it could be something like that. I don't have a lot of hope for it because that current
01:25:22 ◼ ► feature is kind of a mess, so I'm not sure. It could use a lot of work and get a lot of love,
01:25:28 ◼ ► it deserves that, but I'm not sure they're going to give it to it. Yeah, it would be—I mean,
01:25:32 ◼ ► there's a couple of buttons there for like "Copy/Paste," but that's it, right? It would be fun
01:25:37 ◼ ► to do something with that space if we're going to keep using it. There could be some more contextual
01:25:42 ◼ ► stuff to do. Especially if a keyboard's attached, right? It could be a completely different thing
01:25:48 ◼ ► when there's a keyboard attached. Yep, I would like that. That's not a bad idea. Eric asks,
01:25:57 ◼ ► pressure-sensitive stems, to regular AirPods? The regular ones fit me better by the Mr. Controls?"
01:26:03 ◼ ► I think they will. I hadn't thought of this before, but I wouldn't be surprised if AirPods 2
01:26:09 ◼ ► included that little—I mean, it would just be like for play/pause and stuff like that, but
01:26:13 ◼ ► it seems logical to me. Like, it feels like the typical way that Apple will do things. Pro product
01:26:19 ◼ ► gets a new feature, and eventually it goes to the regular product, and then the Pro product version
01:26:23 ◼ ► 2 gets another new feature. Do you think so? I think Apple prefers the squeeze thing to tapping
01:26:31 ◼ ► your ear. They should, because it's so much better. Right, so my guess is that, yes, at some point
01:26:39 ◼ ► they'll do that, but that doesn't feel like as big a differentiating feature, so if they decide to
01:26:46 ◼ ► make changes and actually redesign the AirPods and not just leave them as they are, but actually
01:26:52 ◼ ► change them physically, I would think that they would change to that approach. I think they would
01:26:56 ◼ ► do that. I think the next version will get smaller, like the regular AirPods will get a bit smaller.
01:27:00 ◼ ► Because I don't think—it's the Pro differentiator. I think it's more just like a feature that they
01:27:05 ◼ ► added to the Pro product, but I think the noise cancelling and stuff is really the differentiator.
01:27:10 ◼ ► So the squeezing instead of tapping your head in order to do stuff, I think as a matter of course,
01:27:16 ◼ ► they'd probably try to add if they did a redesign. But that's the question, is when are they going to
01:27:21 ◼ ► actually redesign that product? Because they've got, you know, maybe they just figure it's good
01:27:25 ◼ ► enough and they're going to keep it the way it is. Who knows? And Glenn asks, "What's the best time
01:27:32 ◼ ► for a cup of tea?" I mean, any time. Oh, that's why I knew you were going to say that. I only
01:27:38 ◼ ► put this question in here because I knew you were going to say any time. But I did want to ask you.
01:27:41 ◼ ► But I mostly have it in the morning. It's mostly in the morning and, you know, first thing in the
01:27:46 ◼ ► morning, cup of tea and my breakfast and that's the best. I only ever have tea at bedtime, so it
01:27:51 ◼ ► becomes a mild tea if I need to get a bit sleepy. But I drink coffee and I drink coffee in the
01:27:57 ◼ ► morning and then I'll have some coffee in the afternoon. I typically only have like, what would
01:28:02 ◼ ► be in total four shots of espresso a day. So I'll typically have a double shot espresso drink in the
01:28:09 ◼ ► morning and I always put phone milk and that kind of stuff, cappuccino, that kind of deal.
01:28:13 ◼ ► And then I will have either in the afternoon a second double shot drink or I will have two
01:28:20 ◼ ► single shots depending on the show breakup that I'm doing. I'll typically have my second coffee
01:28:26 ◼ ► before I start recording a show. So I had one before upgrade. But on some days, like Wednesdays,
01:28:32 ◼ ► when I record two shows, I'll have one at three o'clock and one at six o'clock. So I have a bit
01:28:50 ◼ ► or the question mark #AskUpgrade command in the Relay FM members Discord. I will mention again
01:28:56 ◼ ► at this point before we go into our break and talk about Myke at the movies, the Ferris Bueller.
01:29:01 ◼ ► If you want to become a Relay FM member, we'd really, really appreciate it. You can click a
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01:30:47 ◼ ► Myke at the movies time. And this is a rare Myke at the movies for a couple of reasons. One,
01:30:54 ◼ ► I've seen the movie before many times and love the movie. And another rarity is I've seen the movie
01:31:00 ◼ ► more than Jason has. Way, way more times than way more times. I've maybe seen this movie like five
01:31:06 ◼ ► or six times. I think this was Jason's second time. Second. Yeah. So, I mean, I'll just say
01:31:10 ◼ ► straight off the top, like I absolutely love Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Like the reason we picked it
01:31:15 ◼ ► is because we're like, oh, let's do a Myke at the movies. Uh, let's pick something fun. And I find
01:31:20 ◼ ► this movie very fun. But the real reason I love Ferris Bueller is there are absolutely no stakes
01:31:25 ◼ ► in this movie. It is the most easy watching movie that I can think of. Uh, nothing that can happen
01:31:31 ◼ ► to anyone in this movie by and large will affect their life that much. Um, everyone is kind of,
01:31:39 ◼ ► you feel like not only in a better place by the end of the movie, but any drama that happens to
01:31:43 ◼ ► them is resolved pretty quickly. Um, and that's one of the reasons that I love this movie.
01:31:48 ◼ ► I mean, other than, other than Cameron in the car and his dad. But he's like super fine about it,
01:31:53 ◼ ► like immediately. Right. Like he thinks it's a good thing that happens when the car is destroyed.
01:31:57 ◼ ► Right. Like to him, it's like, brilliant. This is exactly what I wanted. Um, and so like,
01:32:02 ◼ ► and, and everything else in the movie where, you know, he's like, things seem to be affecting him.
01:32:07 ◼ ► You look at it like it's not really affecting him that much. Right. Like there isn't any
01:32:10 ◼ ► drama in his life until that point where the car is destroyed, but he is the one who starts the car
01:32:15 ◼ ► destruction anyway. It was his choice, you know? Right. Um, David Schwab in the discord has said
01:32:21 ◼ ► about Totoro. Totoro is a good movie where, well, it's a chill movie until everyone thinks that the
01:32:28 ◼ ► young daughters died. Right. So like that's, you know, like it gets pretty serious there.
01:32:33 ◼ ► Uh, and yet she's fine. Totoro and, uh, Kiki's Delivery Service are both movies where there's
01:32:40 ◼ ► no villain. Kiki is more chill than Totoro. Yeah. But that's the difference here, right? Is there
01:32:47 ◼ ► is a villain in this. Oh, by the way, having seen, having never seen Home Alone and Ferris
01:32:53 ◼ ► Bueller's Day Off through the eighties and the nineties. It is funny having seen them both now,
01:33:00 ◼ ► for Myke at the Movies no less. Um, oh my goodness. They are absolutely from the same person,
01:33:06 ◼ ► right? Like it is, I kept, I kept waiting for more wet bandits things to happen to the Dean as he
01:33:11 ◼ ► entered the house. Right. Like there's definitely a lot of moments where you're like, oh, oh yeah,
01:33:16 ◼ ► it's Home Alone. I see. I see it now. And it's like, oh, why is this movie in Chicago? Because
01:33:21 ◼ ► John Hughes would only make movies in Chicago. That's why. Exactly. It's like funny. It's like
01:33:26 ◼ ► a funny thing. That is kind of weird, right? Like in Myke at the Movies lore that John Hughes movies,
01:33:31 ◼ ► I've seen to bring these movies, like just randomly. I never saw John Hughes movies when I
01:33:36 ◼ ► was a teenager. I never did. Which is funny because my wife, her boyfriend in high school
01:33:43 ◼ ► worked at a movie theater. So she literally saw every movie that was released in the eighties. So
01:33:47 ◼ ► she has this amazing catalog of knowledge of eighties movies that I don't have. Huh? Yeah.
01:33:53 ◼ ► Including all the John Hughes stuff. I just, but so anyway, I watched it and it's fun. And,
01:34:00 ◼ ► Oh yeah. That's all I got. This is yes. But even though there is a villain, he's a laughable
01:34:11 ◼ ► villain. We watched this last night with my son. Who's 15. We're like, you'd like this movie.
01:34:18 ◼ ► And what he said about five minutes in is, okay, either this is going to be one of those movies
01:34:29 ◼ ► just everything goes bad, or it's going to be one of those movies where in the end, everything is
01:34:34 ◼ ► fine and nothing goes bad and it's super happy. But he's like, and I was like, you're right kid.
01:34:39 ◼ ► It is definitely going to be one of those things. I never really thought of it in those terms.
01:34:43 ◼ ► And he said, and there's a, maybe a chance that everything looks like it's going to go horribly
01:34:47 ◼ ► bad, but at the very last minute, it's all resolved and it's all fine. And I, and I'm sitting there
01:34:51 ◼ ► thinking, no, it's the one where everything is fine. That's what this movie is. It's that's the
01:34:56 ◼ ► kind of movie it is. And he appreciated it, but he was right. That, that there is a moment 30 minutes
01:35:01 ◼ ► in where you're like, either this is about to go disastrously wrong, or it's never going to go
01:35:06 ◼ ► wrong. And this is the kind of movie, which is why we picked it because it's a movie that is just
01:35:11 ◼ ► kind of fun and happy. Uh, and, and absurd things happen. And, uh, although there are some character
01:35:17 ◼ ► moments that are stressful in the end, it's pretty much a sunny, again, it's a sunny, warm day.
01:35:23 ◼ ► The weather's nice. Why would you, why would you be inside? You know, it's like, it just wants to
01:35:29 ◼ ► have the best day you can possibly give Cameron. Right. Like that's what it ends up being, which is
01:35:33 ◼ ► like, yes, this very sweet thing, which you find out. Cause it seems like, you know, there are
01:35:37 ◼ ► points in the movie where you're like, Ferris is cool, but he's kind of a bully towards his best
01:35:47 ◼ ► Cameron doesn't want to do, but there is like this dual thing of like one, you can see the
01:35:51 ◼ ► Cameron's kind of getting stuck in a rut a little bit and needs to be like, he needs some shaking
01:35:56 ◼ ► up. Right. And his friends trying to help him out by like shaking him out of his funk. Right.
01:36:02 ◼ ► But also they're about to go off to college and he is going to miss his best friend who he's
01:36:08 ◼ ► probably grown up with. Right. You assume like they've been friends forever kind of thing,
01:36:12 ◼ ► and he's going to miss him. So he wants to give Cameron the best day he can. And by the end of it,
01:36:18 ◼ ► he has right. Like Cameron's like the most senior year kind of movie ever. Right. Because it is that
01:36:24 ◼ ► impending end. Right. That they're, they're seniors. So they kind of don't care. Even though
01:36:29 ◼ ► the Dean's like, aha, I can make you not graduate, which is dumb. But, uh, but he has to say that
01:36:33 ◼ ► cause he's the Dean and it's his job, but you know, they're, they're going to leave and they're
01:36:37 ◼ ► going to go off to college and there's the, you know, none of them are probably going to be able
01:36:42 ◼ ► to spend any time, substantial time together. Like soon, it's going to happen soon that this is the
01:36:48 ◼ ► end and it's all just kind of hovering over this. And it, you know, it's just, that is definitely
01:36:54 ◼ ► very specific time of life. Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in
01:36:59 ◼ ► a while, you might miss it. This is so funny coming from like a teenager, right? Like it's
01:37:03 ◼ ► one of the great things that whenever he breaks the fourth wall, which is a lot in this movie,
01:37:20 ◼ ► right? Like just plays it so well. He's so cool. Um, but like the, he, he speaks with like such
01:37:27 ◼ ► experience in his life, which is just so brilliant and so funny. Like, I love it. And there are so
01:37:33 ◼ ► many elements of this throughout, but like, even when he is talking later on about like the fact
01:37:38 ◼ ► that, you know, he knows that we're gonna, we're gonna move away from each other. And then he's
01:37:43 ◼ ► talking about Sloan played by Mia Sara and is like, I'm going to marry her, but we're going to
01:37:49 ◼ ► be, she's, she's a, she's got one more year of high school. What are we going to do? It's just
01:37:54 ◼ ► like, all these things are just so funny to me. Like, cause in his world, he, you know, this is
01:37:59 ◼ ► everything that he knows, right? And he's the oldest he's been and he's had all this experience.
01:38:04 ◼ ► So he's got it all figured out, right? Ferris. And it's just so lovely like that. It's just that
01:38:10 ◼ ► feeling of being that age when ever you're still a kid, but adult things are happening to you and
01:38:16 ◼ ► people are starting to treat you more like an adult and you feel like you've grown up way faster than
01:38:22 ◼ ► you actually have or then, or you feel like you're way more grown up than you really are because
01:38:26 ◼ ► these things start happening to you and you just think you got it all figured out. It's great.
01:38:30 ◼ ► And there are so many wonderful moments in this movie. Um, you know, like there are so many iconic
01:38:38 ◼ ► moments, right? Like Bueller, Bueller, Bueller. Right. Ben Stein, who, who apparently I knew that
01:38:43 ◼ ► Ben Stein's background was in economics. And so when he's talking about the Laffer curve and voodoo
01:38:47 ◼ ► economics and all of that, apparently originally he was going to be on off screen, like a Charlie
01:38:51 ◼ ► Brown kind of adult where you'd hear his voice off screen, but not see him. But they thought he was
01:38:55 ◼ ► hilarious. And they, he, that whole boring economics thing, which I love because I love all
01:39:00 ◼ ► the reaction shots of the kids sitting in the desks. He, that's all just him. He, he wrote that
01:39:06 ◼ ► himself, uh, just listing off economic things to do a boring economic lecture. And it's, it's so,
01:39:14 ◼ ► it's so good. Cause you know, all the students just don't, everybody else is out there. Our friends
01:39:20 ◼ ► are out there outside in the sun having a good time and they are having their souls sucked out
01:39:24 ◼ ► of their bodies. And he does that great teacher thing of he'll like say a thing and then finish
01:39:30 ◼ ► the sentence and be like, anybody, and no one says anything. And he just carries on it every single
01:39:34 ◼ ► time. Right. And we call this anybody the Laffer curve, right. It's like the whole, like, it's so
01:39:40 ◼ ► presented so well and it goes on so much longer than it should, which makes it better. Um, I,
01:39:46 ◼ ► I love everything about Sloan being broken out of school. Right. Oh my God. Everything about that,
01:39:53 ◼ ► like 10 minutes is excellent. Right. Starting with the phone call, right. When, when, uh,
01:40:00 ◼ ► Rooney, the Dean is like losing his mind at who he thinks is Ferris on the phone. And then Ferris
01:40:06 ◼ ► calls on the other line. Right. But it's actually Cameron pretending to be Mr. Peterson. Right.
01:40:12 ◼ ► Which we didn't know that we didn't know that Cameron was finally all in on the plan. Now
01:40:16 ◼ ► here he, here he is and he's all in on the plan, but then he makes the mistake of saying that we'll
01:40:21 ◼ ► pick her up. And so how are we going to do that? So then they have to get the car and, and, uh,
01:40:26 ◼ ► two parts about the Sloan breaking out part, like of her one is as soon as the nurse comes in the
01:40:31 ◼ ► room, she starts putting on a jacket because she knows that Ferris is must be doing something.
01:40:36 ◼ ► And then the next part when, cause then, uh, Ferris has to like, so they steal the car, right. So it
01:40:41 ◼ ► looks like he's an adult and he dresses up as a, I don't know, like a private eye or something.
01:40:46 ◼ ► Yeah. He's basically inspector gadget or something at that point. Yeah. So, uh, uh, yeah. I wanted
01:40:52 ◼ ► to talk about the thing that struck me this time. Just one, one last part about it. Just about that
01:40:56 ◼ ► one part, just a very throwaway line where Sloan goes, I guess that's my dad. Yeah. Right.
01:41:02 ◼ ► That was just, so it's that kind of family. Oh yeah. So good. So good. The thing that I noticed
01:41:11 ◼ ► this time that I really appreciated is Ferris call the Ferris cult. Yes. Yes. And it's so good
01:41:19 ◼ ► because they show it in a limited number of scenes. But one of the genius things that Ferris Bueller
01:41:25 ◼ ► does is, is he, it's not just that he's cool because yeah, he's kind of cool, but he has
01:41:33 ◼ ► created this cult of popularity about himself and he's done it. He's manipulated the school
01:41:42 ◼ ► into believing he is a cult figure. So everybody knows him or knows of him. Everybody knows about
01:41:48 ◼ ► him. And there's that amazing scene where he calls the payphone and he's basically talking to
01:41:52 ◼ ► freshmen. And then he talks to the girl and he's just trying to get these stories seated. So that
01:41:59 ◼ ► later we keep seeing more stories coming back about, Oh, I heard Ferris did this. I heard
01:42:04 ◼ ► Ferris did that. We're pulling for you. Um, it all, it, it culminates in just laugh out loud
01:42:10 ◼ ► moments where there's save Ferris outside Wrigley field on the billboard. There's a save Ferris on a
01:42:15 ◼ ► water tower. It's so amazing. And the, and the, uh, we're all thinking of you. And how everybody
01:42:21 ◼ ► mentions it, the flowers. Oh yes. We're, we're really pulling for your son. We hope he gets
01:42:25 ◼ ► better. And they're like, what? Oh, I guess he's sick. So, and they just move on. It is so amazing.
01:42:30 ◼ ► And it's all, it's all him. It's all, he wants to have this out there because he knows that if
01:42:37 ◼ ► he seeds disinformation, basically propaganda, that it helps him because his enemy, the Dean,
01:42:45 ◼ ► is going to be more confused and he doesn't know exactly how it's going to go, but that doesn't
01:42:49 ◼ ► really matter. He just needs to churn the water a little bit and make it all a little confusing.
01:42:59 ◼ ► after we watched it, I said, you know, it would be hashtag save Ferris now. Oh my gosh. Yes. And,
01:43:04 ◼ ► and, but it is, it is brilliant and I love it. So that's, that's actually the, my favorite thing
01:43:09 ◼ ► this time is just how perfectly he, uh, he creates his own image of Ferris Bueller. Uh, and then he
01:43:19 ◼ ► can use that to his advantage. It's spectacular. And that is a part of this movie that gets better
01:43:24 ◼ ► on rewatching because a lot of them, especially the one on Wrigley Field, you miss that. If you're
01:43:31 ◼ ► not like, you can very easily miss the save Ferris on that side. And it's amazing. And you've,
01:43:35 ◼ ► and you've just seen the most amazing scene, maybe my favorite scene in the whole movie,
01:43:39 ◼ ► which is where the Dean looks away at the moment that Ferris catches the foul ball and Ferris
01:43:45 ◼ ► and Cameron are on the TV in, uh, in, in the sandwich place or wherever it is and Sloan.
01:43:57 ◼ ► you have the equivalent of this because most soccer matches, football matches in the UK,
01:44:10 ◼ ► You call in sick to work or school and you go to the baseball game in a day. And then there's this
01:44:14 ◼ ► like urban legend of, but then they were on the TV or they were on the big screen and their boss
01:44:18 ◼ ► saw them and then they were in trouble. And so it's, that is what's happening here, except that
01:44:23 ◼ ► the Dean just doesn't look at the TV. It's so amazing. It's part where he's about to get found
01:44:30 ◼ ► out, right? He's like Ferris, Nope. He just slides that one by. It's amazing. So I love, I love that.
01:44:37 ◼ ► And one of my favorite parts is at the end of the movie, all of the flowers in the hallway,
01:44:41 ◼ ► which they, you barely see cause you're at the end of the hallway and you just see it in the distance,
01:44:46 ◼ ► but as all of the flower arrangements that have been delivered because Ferris is dying.
01:44:56 ◼ ► about every time I watch this movie is that Jennifer Grey is in this movie. I always forget
01:45:00 ◼ ► that Jennifer Grey is in this movie. I know Ferris has a sister and, but I never remember that it's,
01:45:05 ◼ ► that it's baby right from Dirty Dancing. And one of my favorite things about this movie is the fact
01:45:11 ◼ ► that Jeannie, who she plays is never in class. Jeannie is so mad that Ferris skipped school,
01:45:17 ◼ ► but every clip of her, she's never in class. She's in the hallway at the school. She's going
01:45:23 ◼ ► to complain to another teacher. She's driving past the gym class, complaining about the fact
01:45:28 ◼ ► that Ferris isn't there, even though she's not at school. It's so good. And like the whole dynamic
01:45:35 ◼ ► between her and Ferris is so great because like she is so wronged, right? Because Ferris is like,
01:45:43 ◼ ► clearly is Ferris is the favorite child, right? Because they think he can do no wrong. And like,
01:45:48 ◼ ► there's that moment at the end where like, because Jeannie, she got arrested, right? Because she
01:45:54 ◼ ► called for the- Arrested for making a false police report about the Dean breaking into their house,
01:45:59 ◼ ► which she did. And he left his wallet on the floor and yet she doesn't point that out to the cops,
01:46:06 ◼ ► I guess. But the whole idea here is that Ferris can do no wrong and she can do no right. But then
01:46:11 ◼ ► there's that moment, right, where like, she's then messed up the mom's deal and then outside,
01:46:16 ◼ ► he's like, "What are we going to do with Jeannie?" And the dad's like, "We're going to shoot her,
01:46:24 ◼ ► but it's the idea of like, she's the problem child. She is the problem child. She is disfavored
01:46:29 ◼ ► and everybody loves Ferris. But like her, the anger that she has is so funny, right? And yet
01:46:35 ◼ ► she doesn't, in the end, she doesn't rat him out. She actually, she helps him succeed. Which is so
01:46:40 ◼ ► nice, right? Because it's like, even though she hates him, it's that brother-sister hate,
01:46:44 ◼ ► it's not the real hate. Her role in this movie is so good. She plays it so well. And then the
01:46:52 ◼ ► whole thing with Charlie Sheen is just fantastic, right? That he's like the bad boy in the police
01:46:56 ◼ ► station. But the best part of this movie, my favorite part of this movie, is the parade.
01:47:07 ◼ ► Are there no good, are there no good weekends? Maybe this is a real Chicago thing, I don't know,
01:47:12 ◼ ► but I think it's weird that the German-American parade is being forced to happen on a weekday.
01:47:25 ◼ ► They lose track of him. Oh, he's up there. He sings Dankeschon, which he does throughout the
01:47:32 ◼ ► movie, that song appears. And then Twist and Shout, of course. Famous German anthem, Twist and Shout.
01:47:39 ◼ ► One of my favorite scenes in all movies because it looked like it must have been so fun to make.
01:47:59 ◼ ► right, that's happening. But like when they finish the song and everyone just starts screaming and
01:48:03 ◼ ► cheering, you can see like he's a little flush because it must have just been this absolute rush
01:48:09 ◼ ► to be in that moment. It is a fantastic scene, and it must have just been so good to make.
01:48:17 ◼ ► The amount of extras. I can't even think of a movie where I've seen that many people in a
01:48:25 ◼ ► scene before. It's such a small space. It's really just so good. Something super weird that I wanted
01:48:51 ◼ ► The Space Odyssey theme would have made more sense to me in that moment. It just felt super
01:49:03 ◼ ► Yeah, it's a great piece of music, but I don't know if it's the one that I would have picked.
01:49:17 ◼ ► Yes, which I got to explain to Julian that this is the scene that's being referenced in Spider-Man
01:49:32 ◼ ► you've seen this scene before. It is one of the parodied scenes, the great parodied scenes.
01:49:55 ◼ ► He is a classic 80s movie villain. He's less... He's awful, but he's kind of less offensively
01:50:04 ◼ ► awful than something like a William Atherton villain in Real Genius and Die Hard. I think
01:50:22 ◼ ► The White Out, yeah. But Jeffrey Jones, he is... I think a large portion of my delight of this movie
01:50:31 ◼ ► is seeing him get thwarted at every turn and knowing that even when he gets the goods on
01:50:38 ◼ ► Ferris, he can't do it. It's always ruined. And he ends up riding on the school bus with one shoe and
01:50:49 ◼ ► his thing torn and all of that at the end and sits in the next to last row. I love that performance.
01:50:58 ◼ ► It gives the movie some drive because they have... He can't all be just lying about who they are,
01:51:04 ◼ ► the sausage king, at the dinner or at the lunch. It can't all be that. They need to have some sort
01:51:11 ◼ ► of pursuit happening. But it's a ludicrous pursuit. Like you said, the stakes are pretty low.
01:51:20 ◼ ► Theoretically, Ferris could get thrown out of school or have to repeat his senior year or
01:51:24 ◼ ► something like that. But really, it's not going to happen. But it's good to have him there as
01:51:31 ◼ ► this kind of cartoonish villain to continue to just be thwarted. It very much is a cartoon
01:51:36 ◼ ► villain, right? Like in Home Alone, you delight in him just constantly being destroyed.
01:51:42 ◼ ► And I love just how hard he's trying. It is completely unnecessary to break into the house.
01:51:52 ◼ ► He leaves on personal business because he's got a vendetta against Ferris Bueller. He has to get
01:51:59 ◼ ► Fer... Get that. I gotta get that guy. Right? Like it doesn't have... It's not logical in any way.
01:52:04 ◼ ► Especially the breaking into the house. What is he expecting to achieve by breaking into the house?
01:52:20 ◼ ► You know, he clearly knows he's villain. He knows that like Ferris has everyone for him.
01:52:27 ◼ ► The way I read it is that... And I think there's a fine line you have to walk with this character.
01:52:38 ◼ ► He's going to pursue this vendetta. Even if he has to commit crimes, he's going to pursue this.
01:52:42 ◼ ► He's completely lost it. And yet at the same time, you don't want it to be like too far
01:52:47 ◼ ► that direction because then I think it would get weird. So it needs to be realistic-ish
01:53:01 ◼ ► I think that's a good... That's the good line to walk because that makes it kind of a cat and mouse
01:53:05 ◼ ► game, but it also makes it kind of fun to watch him because we know that he's completely lost it
01:53:23 ◼ ► It's a lot of fun. It's just a shot of delight. And I can say as somebody who lived through the 80s,
01:53:29 ◼ ► did it look like that? Oh yeah, it did. Yeah, it did. That Jennifer Grey and Mia Sarah.
01:53:35 ◼ ► And right then like the girl in the arcade or the pizza place or whatever it is who turns around,
01:53:40 ◼ ► who looks like Ferris from the back. Like, oh my God, that is what people look like and what
01:53:46 ◼ ► the stuff people wore. And the moms blonde hair with the dark roots and all that. It's like, yes,
01:53:57 ◼ ► I would love to see a modern day Ferris Bueller. I don't know if it could be done well enough,
01:54:03 ◼ ► but I would love to see someone try. With like Tom Holland. I feel like Tom Holland would do
01:54:07 ◼ ► such a good job as Ferris Bueller. They would never... It would never be better. And there
01:54:26 ◼ ► somebody try to make a movie that felt like this though. Right? Okay. Yeah. Okay. That's what I
01:54:32 ◼ ► would like to see is it doesn't, you don't need to call a Ferris Bueller's day off. I mean, you could
01:54:35 ◼ ► if you wanted to, but like I would love to see a movie that feels like this in terms of just being
01:54:40 ◼ ► kind of like sunny and fun and about kind of rebelling, but in a kind of positive fun way
01:54:48 ◼ ► and having low stakes and having a sort of silly opponent who doesn't really threaten you.
01:54:55 ◼ ► That's like make more movies like this. Wow. Jennifer Aniston played Genie in the TV series.
01:55:02 ◼ ► Wow. I'd never heard of this before. That's wild. Yeah. It was not successful. They did. They got
01:55:11 ◼ ► their first 13 episode order and then they were out. And most of it got burned off or no,
01:55:16 ◼ ► I guess some of it got burned off in the summer one episode of it. So yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. So
01:55:21 ◼ ► they did that. That was a bad idea. That's hilarious. And I don't think Ferris Bueller as a
01:55:29 ◼ ► series works, right? Because I mean, I could see it maybe as like a Netflix series or something,
01:55:36 ◼ ► but as a sitcom, I can't see it because it's his same schtick every time I would think. Yeah. And
01:55:44 ◼ ► you lose the magic of the movie. Because eventually you'd have to have something bad happen to him,
01:55:48 ◼ ► which would undo the good feeling. So here's, yeah, here's my pitch. Here's my pitch for my
01:55:52 ◼ ► Netflix series of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which is, you know, Money Heist? I'm familiar with it.
01:55:59 ◼ ► Have you seen that? It's like a bank robbery that happens over a bunch of episodes. And it's like a
01:56:05 ◼ ► whole like heist over a whole many seasons in a continuing story. It's like, I want to do that
01:56:12 ◼ ► for Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I want it to be, we can do a season, maybe two seasons, but it's all
01:56:26 ◼ ► there's the episode where we get Cameron. It's like 24, but for Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
01:56:30 ◼ ► Yeah. Well, I mean, because that's Money Heist is basically like 24 for a bank robbery, right? So
01:56:35 ◼ ► yes, that's, that's my pitch is I don't want to leave the day. Maybe it goes into like the
01:56:41 ◼ ► weekend or something at the end, but I don't want to leave the day. I want it to be that day.
01:56:47 ◼ ► And I want it to be like, let's detail in and we can have characters cross each other. So there can
01:56:52 ◼ ► be other shenanigans happening. You know, we'll have Cameron is doing something over here and
01:56:57 ◼ ► Ferris is doing something over here and Sloan is doing something over here and the sister is doing
01:57:01 ◼ ► something here. And they're all going to be like crossing each other. And you're going to have
01:57:05 ◼ ► those moments like you have in the movie where it's like, wait, is that? And then you look again,
01:57:09 ◼ ► it's like, no, no, that wasn't Ferris. Of course it wasn't. And, and you do one episode that's
01:57:15 ◼ ► just in the high school and it's all about what people know about Ferris that they don't know.
01:57:18 ◼ ► Like that's how I would pitch it if it was like a Ferris Bueller TV series, but don't make it
01:57:24 ◼ ► because it's the movie is great and you're never going to surpass it. But that would be my pitch.
01:57:30 ◼ ► Yeah. Call me. Call me and, and my good friend, Matthew Broderick. And we will work out something.
01:57:52 ◼ ► Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. Next week's episode, 300.
01:57:56 ◼ ► Don't forget, send in your meta Ask Upgrade questions. You can send them out with a tweet
01:58:02 ◼ ► with the hashtag Ask Upgrade or question Mark Ask Upgrade in the Relay FM discord. If you want to
01:58:07 ◼ ► find the show notes for this week's episode, you can find them in your podcast app of choice or on
01:58:11 ◼ ► the web at relay.fm/upgrade/299. Thanks again to our wonderful sponsors for their support of this
01:58:17 ◼ ► show. That is Ooni Pizza Ovens, Linode, Pingdom and Fully. If you want to find Jason online,