September 9th, 2018 • 2h 9m
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good good good good good Adam
curry
Jhansi Devorah award-winning
nation
media assassination episode 67
this is
no agenda the Khan Valley live
the tape
I'm John Steve all right
[Music] John Steve all right
whoa so you're in Italy in fact
I am as
we speak I am probably nursing a
hangover from my sister's 25th
wedding
anniversary which is still
their lucky
it's Italian alcohol so it
should be
good yeah so what we've done
here is we
put together a couple of
interview shows
I did an interview with Scott
Adams and
Jasper alright so Dane Jesper
is the CEO
of sonic net which is a now
he's a he's
an independent guy he's kind of
David to
the the behemoth AT&T Goliath
no yeah
he's actually stringing fiber
just all
over the kind of parts of the
East Bay
in San Francisco and I think a
Santa
Rosa where this operation is
and they've
always been the like the
low-cost to
internet provider we've used
them as
backup here and why why not his
primary
are they it's just not business
quite as
fast right the old version the
old DSL
stuff was not as fast as
Comcast right
but this will be a lot faster
this is
gigabit fiber to the home of
tth baby
yeah so when that comes in
that'll make
a little I think they'll now I
have to
very high speed networks so I
don't
don't worry as much their
parent and the
price is gonna be like 50 bucks
a month
oh that's nice yeah that that's
very
competitive if that's in line
with the
well is he also gonna try and
sell TV
services life uses too if that
we touch
this morning oh good good good
good and
just kind of I mean I'm gonna
listen to
I'm listening I probably have
already
heard this by the time I get to
Italy
cuz of course I have a copy
listening
the plane
but has has it been a challenge
for him
with the behemoths has anyone
tried to I
just want a little tip there is
it and
one tried to buy him or muscled
him out
is not yet but apparently more
recently
they're trying to pass some
legislation
to make it tougher on the
little guys
well that's an American it's
very common
okay specifically if they were
chopping
down lines in our break-in
cable but no
there were no takers saboteurs
take us
into it well first of all we
got Scott
Adams the famous cartoonist
Bert we're
gonna talk about him in a
second after
the first interview the first
interview
is gonna be Scott Adams oh
you're gonna
do Scott Adams first yeah
interesting
choice okay I like it well talk
to me
about Scott Adams we all know
Scott
Adams he's a Dilbert guy and
he's does a
lot of stuff on periscope and
he's never
really been interviewed like
this and
I've known him long enough so I
could
ask some questions that I don't
think
other people would do now what
do you
mean he's never been
interviewed like
this really good interviews
where he
talks well you have to listen
to this
interview but there's a lot of
stuff
that he doesn't normally talk
about
first of all I don't think I've
ever
heard of all I don't think I've
ever
just a sit-down audio only
interview
with Scott Adams I don't think
I've ever
heard that audio only where you
focused
on just audio I don't think I
have
either yeah this may be the
first but I
seriously doubt it and this
took place
at his house yeah went to his
house all
right I'll tell you what rather
than
talk about it let's get into it
here's my interview with Scott
Adams all
right I'm here with Scott Adams
so
you've been cartoon you made
your money
as a cartoonist correct and I
met you 25
years ago at Pacific telephone
yeah you
were an engineer and you were
you were
actually the first guy who
showed me the
Internet the first guy who
showed me the
wow I didn't realize that yeah
we had a
loan not the internet by but
the web the
web right yeah yeah we had a
little lab
I was working that was my day
job and we
were showing people this this
thing
called the World Wide Web and
it was it
was the most one of the most
informative
times of my life
it was in 93 as I recall that
sounds
right yeah yeah and Dilbert was
out a
little had been announced but
not hadn't
heard out enough that I could
quit my
day job right but you were the
anyway
you showed it to me you were
impressed
but you obviously weren't blown
away so
much that you went out and
bought a
bunch of domain names like the
smart
money did no it's worse than
that
it's worse than that so we
would bring
customers in and we'd show them
all our
cool phone company stuff that
wasn't
interesting to anybody and they
were
just their eyes would glaze
over and
then at the end as just sort of
a
dessert we'd say oh and there's
this new
thing coming called
we call that the World Wide Web
then now
the Internet and there were
exactly two
websites you could get to
that's at the
Smithsonian and some other
thing and we
would show them that we could
see the
website at the Smithsonian and
look at a
couple of still pictures and
people
would commander their chairs
and they
say can I do that and we'd say
do what
you know touch the mouse and
make this
they needed to touch it they
stood up
their eyes got big and they
said how can
we get this and there was no
application
and and I remember thinking my
goodness
this is gonna be huge it has
that X
Factor where people want it
even though
it's terrible like early cell
phones
right everybody wanted a cell
phone but
they were terrible and I
cornered our
top engineer in the phone
company and I
said hey if I wanted to invest
in this
coming thing this worldwide web
internet
thing what's the one company I
should
put all my money in and he
looks at me
and he goes Cisco I go okay
what are the
other companies and he goes
Cisco
he goes everything's gonna be
Cisco for
the next 15 years or whatever
it was and
so I did not buy Cisco and it's
the
worst financial decision I've
ever made
huh well I didn't buy Cisco
either but I
didn't have some guy telling me
to buy
it it was pretty obvious in
hindsight
you can see what happened all
the all
the points you could
done that it could have done
that I
could have done this it's the
worst I
mean just if you had bought
Apple when
Steve Jobs first showed up and
kept the
stock right you'd be loaded
especially
about $10,000 with you making a
few
million dollars but that having
kind of
been involved in the stock
market over
the years the thing is you
can't hold
the stock that long you just
won't do it
you'll just say oh it's not
going to go
any higher than it because you
can't do
it it's impossible unless
somebody else
buys the stock and puts it into
trust
and you don't even know you
have it that
it's a very problematic so any
way that
you did leave eventually how
long were
you there at Pacific Bell well
eight
years there then before that
eight years
at a big bank and I was doing
Dilbert
for about six of those years
that I was
still at the phone company so I
was
doing two jobs and writing a
book at the
same time and we were working
day and
night you were getting your
inspiration
from the phone company yeah
that plus my
memories of the the bank so
that the big
aha of the the bank so that the
big
was when I when I moved from a
bank to a
phone company and you'd say to
yourself
well they have nothing in
common two
completely different companies
and then
you watch that the same
management
problems the same way people
think the
same way people treat you it
was just
shockingly similar and that was
really
the inspiration behind Dilbert
is the
realization that these things
were
universal and there were people
trapped
in jobs all over who probably
thought
there's nowhere else that this
is
happening as this could not be
happening
anywhere else it's impossible
it happens
everywhere else it's impossible
it happens
that was a GE well you had I
thought we
thought the comic strip was
genius
because it was the only one that
actually addressed kind of
day-to-day
work a day office working issues
everything else was you know
was like a
it didn't it was cowboy stuff
or just
stupid animals making
punchlines that
you know cracking up to or
trying to
crack you up with him one-liner
no III
don't want to claim genius and
inspiration totally because
I'll take a
little bit but I also have an
MBA
and one of the main things you
learn in
Business School is listen to the
customers give them what they
want
that's the sort of thing that
artists
don't do and when Dilbert came
out and
the email was coming out at
about the
same time or getting popular
about the
same time people started
emailing me
because I put my email address
between
the panel's of the strip and
they'd say
we we love your comic when dill
burrs in
the office we don't care for it
that
much when he's just at home
doing
generic things which is as you
said what
most comic strips were about
it's just
about whatever
Dagwood and so I listen to the
customers
and completely retooled the
strip to
make it a workplace trip so
that the
reason that Dilbert succeeded
and it's
very rare that a big comic will
break
out is that I applied business
techniques to the artistic
realm could
somebody else do a cartoon and
have a
breakout nowadays in this
market where
the syndication is different
maybe you'd
like one of the last actually
succeeded
before the door was closed well
you know
there's only one giant cartoon
every ten
years or so you know that's it's
actually very rare you know
there's you
can count on one hand the mega
cartoons
and if somebody were to start
down today
I'd probably tell them to start
on the
internet and see if they can
get an
audience and then if they can
try to
also get syndicated because for
those
who don't know us syndication
is you
sign a deal with a company
that's a
syndication company and then
you they
sell it to all the newspapers
so you
don't have to do all the
selling to the
individual newspapers so yeah I
would
start with the internet first
see if you
can get an audience refine your
art and
then try to get syndicated next
so it is
possible you think totally
possible but
you know the market is
shrinking in
terms of the physical newspapers
yeah but Dilbert's bigger than
it's ever
been because as long as there's
one big
newspaper in every market you
know it
runs in that paper and of
course the
internet market is growing
every day so
so it's growing there no matter
what
where'd you get your drawing
skills my
mother you get your drawing
skills my
was a landscape artist and my
father
doodled little cartoons that
were more
like stick figures but very
funny and
their own little weird way so I
think I
had you know a little bit of
genetic
advantage there but anybody
who's seen
Dilbert knows I'm not an artist
with any
kind of a capital A so it was
really
brute force and the the first
original
comics that I submitted if you
saw them
you'd say there's no way this
guy is
gonna get hired or syndicated
this is
looks like an inebriated monkey
with a
crayon what's what's going on
here but
it was just brute force I just
practiced
and until I could do it
ooh what do you what kind of
sense of
humor do you think you have well
probably it's a combination of
observational plus engineering
in other
words to make something a look
clever
you sometimes you have to look
at it as
an engineer as in what would be
the
weird way to accomplish this in
the in
the cartoon realm if you've got
a
character who's got a problem
and it's a
cartoon so they they can kind
of do
anything there's no real limits
what is
the funny engineering solution
and it
might involve you know killing
somebody
it might involve you know
aliens who
could involve anything so but
you have
to start as you said earlier was
something that everybody goes
oh that's
like I've been there if you
don't get
that part right it's hard to
get much
else right people have to
recognize and
identify with the situation
then you can
extend it but you got it you
got to get
them first I have a theory that
your
humor is absurdist this explain
absurdist and you spot the
absurdities
in the art and the office
environment
for example and most everything
every
punch line you deliver is based
on
something that's just it's it's
beyond
the pale and so far as pure
absurdity is
concerned I I'm gonna agree
with that
with different words I call it a
cognitive blind spots so I'm
looking for
places where otherwise more
people are
doing something that the
observers would say that
doesn't look
smart you know I know you went
to
college you know I know you're
smart why
are you doing that and that
explains you
know 75% of management and and
you know
the reason for that is that
people are
paid to manage but sometimes
there's
nothing to do or you don't know
what to
do and you end up just saying
well
what's the fad you know yeah I
worked in
the government so I know some
of that
from another perspective is
still the
same you were fired from packed
Pacific
telephone I'm gonna tell you
this story
that I was told by one of your
old
associates all right you
remember her
Nina yes yeah neither who was
the the
real-life model for my
character Alice
in the comic strip yes some
boneheads
came into the company on some
normal
kind of a well let's put this
guy in
because he can he's gonna reorg
this and
he's gonna do that it's gonna
straighten
things out and he was naive and
he said
I guess he went through one
I've seen
this happen a different
operation
somebody goes in there they
start doing
a checklist what does this guy
do
who's this who is this guy
Scott Adams
what does he do and nobody was
there and
I've seen this happen recently
to other
in other companies where
somebody's
actually very important to a
company you
were at the time important the
way it
was told to me to the
salespeople
because the comic strip was
popular
enough that they would drag you
out on
sales calls as a lure which
happens with
any company that's got any
brains right
bring a lure in and oh you get
to meet
Scott Adams and by the way you
can buy
some of these some of the gear
or some
services and this bonehead came
in and
he just unceremoniously got rid
of you
and some sort of a cleanup very
much
like you see in that movie the
office
and you didn't make a fuss or
object or
anything you left and then they
found
out about it they their upper
two people
that knew better they wanted
you to come
back and you said you know I
don't need
to come back I'm gonna stay I'm
gonna
stay gone and that was the end
of it
that that's pretty close all I
did a
little little context to it my
co-workers once I started
getting famous
and started to get a little bit
of money
with Dilbert it was obvious
that I was
going to
leave and it didn't make sense
to keep
my day job but they wanted me
to stay
like as you as you said that
was good
for sales customers would would
come in
and they were Dilbert fans and
so I
helped and they actually made
me an
offer and they actually made me
an
Anita the one that I just
mentioned the
real-life Alice from the comic
strip
said how about this deal I'll
go to our
management and I'll say you
don't even
have to show up unless you
don't want to
except for these sales calls and
otherwise we'll do your work
you know
we'll do the engineering stuff
that was
your main work and my
co-workers said
yeah we're up for that we'll do
the work
you just come in for the the
times you
want to basically and I said so
you're
like a fellow without being
without
having the designation right in
the
sense and so Anita took that to
the boss
you're talking about and made
that deal
and he said I'm okay with that
and he
checked with me and I said yeah
that's
I'm okay with the two but
here's the
thing I don't want to be a
burden so the
day that you need that budget
you're
paying me for something else
you just
have to ask and I'll leave the
same day
and one day he was he had some
other
project that he thought was more
important and he called me in
and said
you know this would be a good
day and I
said okay that's the deal you
just have
to ask I don't I don't need a
reason you
just have to ask
and so I I left peacefully and
yes I did
get a call from I believe it
was the CEO
CEO were president I think it
was a CEO
at the time who was surprised
to find
out that I had been asked to
leave ah
well it's your version is
obviously more
accurate than mine but mine's
still good
here's a good yeah you were 90%
there
yeah i when it happened I since
I knew
at the time I thought well this
is gonna
be interesting because it's
because how
is he gonna because I thought
that
cartoon was derivative from the
work
experience and you're getting
daily
material just by going to work
showing
up and I was wondering how you
were
gonna handle that and you've
handled it
quite nicely I don't see any
difference
actually well I was getting
literally
thousands of emails a day in the
beginning with
suggestions and it was a huge
burden to
respond to I tried to respond
to all of
them back in those days and
there was
just material coming in and it
would
always remind me of something I
had
experienced so I was always
looking for
that if somebody suggested
something I'd
never heard of that usually
didn't work
for me but if I said oh yeah
that
happened to me then it was a
cartoon
where I don't see a lot of
stuff from
you is a convention life you
know I
there's there's a cartooning
reason you
don't see Dilbert go to
conventions a
lot and the reason is I don't
like
drawing backgrounds okay to
draw the
convention stuff in the back
you either
have to be I don't want to
interrupt you
but since you're now doing
everything on
the computer can you have like
a stock
couple of backgrounds you just
drop in
so you don't have to do it now
that any
of that work well people would
notice
the stock backgrounds I do do a
stock
exterior building that I reuse
but yeah
I'd have to draw it in the
first place
and I'd have to change it every
time you
know but you're right it's a
lot easier
now with the computer when did
you
switch I switched let's see if
I could
remember the year it was
probably in
that 2004 ish range give or
take II hear
and it was because I had a
problem with
my drawing hand I had spasms in
my pinky
when I tried to draw from
overuse it's a
weird thing called a focal
dystonia and
went to the doctor and said
what's this
what's going on with my pinky I
can't
draw anymore and by pure luck
the world
expert literally the world
expert on
this specific condition lived
in my town
and was in my my HMO at Kaiser
and you
know my doctor knew him and and
and next
thing I know I'm talking to the
world
expert on this problem and I
said what's
the cure and he said we don't
have one
you know basically changed jobs
so I
agreed to be part of
you know the test group they
were trying
different things to see if they
could
make some progress but in the
meantime I
thought well I'm done unless I
can
figure out a solution for
drawing and so
I drew left-handed for a while
which I
can do but it's slower I'm
slightly
ambidextrous but not terribly
in a bit
dexterous and then I thought
you know
I'll bet there's by now
something you
can draw on the computer that
maybe my
hand would act differently yeah
cuz the
the weird thing about this hand
problem
is that it was actually a
mental problem
that expressed itself in the
hand so the
hand was fine and the reason I
knew that
is when I drew with my left
hand my
right hand would spasm because
my brain
would say hey you're drawing
again spasm
spasm spasm and the you know
the expert
I mentioned confirmed that it's
more of
a brain problem than a hand
problem and
so when I drew on the computer
even
though the drawing looks just
like
drawing it's just you're
drawing on a
screen and you're using a
stylus the my
brain did not recognize it as
drawing
for whatever reason it just
didn't
trigger that very specific
response and
then over time I learned
through the
hand exercises and gradually
building up
to using my hand with a regular
pencil
just very very quick tests you
know hold
the pencil down for a quarter
of a
second and release it before
the spasm
until I could do a second than
two
seconds and I did that for
months until
I believe I'm the first person
who's
ever remediated or solved that
problem
focal dystonia I think I'm in
the
literature my doctor told me oh
well
that's good and bad I guess
yeah it did
move you over to the computer
which
probably eventually sped up you
what
work talk about you know
lemonade out of
lemons it probably cut my work
load by
at least over fifty percent yeah
and that's been just a huge
advantage in
my life as you can imagine yeah
well
most artists I know personally
have all
they all switch or the confused
one way
or another except for one I
know that's
always been a computer artist
but
they've always benefited from
the
there's a
the two-edged sword they
benefited from
the productivity because you
know
especially graphics guys
couldn't change
the backgrounds you really
quickly they
don't that we do everything but
then
there became so much
computer-generated
stuff that came out to compete
with them
they're all singing the blues
and men
even had to quit then that it
was weird
to watch the Deaf UNAM anon do
you have
Tourette's I do not why do you
ask
because you have elements of it
almost
identical to Adam Curry who who
talks
about his Tourette's constantly
we
talked about on our show quite
a bit
maybe I do what what are the
symptoms I
thought I should be swearing
out loud
for no no no that nobody had
yeah I
think in my whole life I've run
into one
person that has that form of
Tourette's
really and he was on an
airplane being
dragged off it was terrible I
felt bad
for the guy
well you dragged me off an
airplane not
give you some of that guy no he
was
cussing before they drugged him
off but
it's mostly twitches oh I have
lots of
twitches yeah that's Tourette's
well
it's nice to know I got that
too well I
don't want it yeah well you've
got all
these ailments I hate to bring
it up but
the reason I say that is
because there's
a commonality with all
Tourette's even
the most minor of Tourette's
sufferers
and I know people that have you
know
they they have all kinds of
twitches
Adam fights it because he has
to used to
TV a lot so he had to when he
was at MTV
he had to fight it but everyone
who's
ever had even a little bit of
Tourette's
neat-freak really I can't say
I'm a knee
freak that says Adam says the
same thing
but he is yeah I would soar you
I'm here
at your house that's where
we're doing
this you saw me picking up
stuff off the
floor when we got here yeah
true stories
I wanted to bring it back the
Braga's
met you just mentioned him you
know you
might want to look into it you
did have
some ailment that was
disconcerning
though where you couldn't talk
for a
month or something like that
yeah so the
voice problem was also a spasm
of the
vocal cords and I lost my voice
for
three and a half years I
couldn't speak
oh it was three it was it was
that long
yeah for three and a half years
I
couldn't have a conversation or
be
understood on the telephone or
give a
speech or anything
and it turns out the focal
dystonia and
the voice problem are actually
related
because they're both brain
problems
they're not they're not the
hand and
they're not the vocal cords
they're just
that's just where the spasm is
and but
it's well known that they
travel in
pairs so if you have one of
those
problems it's not unusual that
you might
have a second one in some other
place on
your body but Tourette's never
came up
so maybe you don't have
Tourette's but
if I just saw you on the street
didn't
know who you were now I think I
do so
thanks for that so what
happened and
that this I just don't want to
get in no
way all that whole up now if I
do I have
an excuse to swear up people
for no
reason Adam does that too but
he neither
you or him have that form of
Tourette's
that is according to you that's
a that's
a very specific until I start
doing it
and then I've got it get I
don't want to
do all in this but did three
years yeah
three and a half years I could
make
noise but we couldn't
understand that
what what happened what when
did was the
breakthrough what was that like
when you
came out of it well the the
quick
version a lot of people have
heard this
story so let me give me the
fast version
so it took a long time to
figure out
what it was because regular
general
practitioners have never seen
it you
know it's very rare it's called
a
spasmodic dysphonia and how do
you
explain it to anybody
well so I'm trying to tell
people that
I've got this problem and they
hear it
the first things that people
think are
that you have a mental problem
because
if one of the odd
characteristics is
that you can talk okay when
you're alone
oh wow
so if you imagine that imagine
telling
your doctor or can talk fine as
long as
nobody's listening but if
people are
listening it's like this now
that's a
bad impression of me trying to
talk so
obviously they're gonna say ok
mental
you're you're getting too
worked up
because of people or something
like that
but I was sure that wasn't it
because I
didn't feel like that right I
didn't
feel any different talking to
people and
so I rejected you know valium
and I I
tried some Botox shots there
was a
treatment where they give you a
Botox
shot through the front of your
neck
this needle that you don't even
want to
hear about it it's an ugly
process and
you have to do it every month
or so but
that didn't work too well for
me and so
I said a Google Alert for the
spasmodic
dysphonia once I'd figured out
it was
what it was which I figured out
also
from Google because I had the
hand
problem so I I said oh the hand
problem
is called a focal dystonia I
wonder if
there's something called a voice
dystonia so I put in that
search that
search keywords and it popped
up with
spasmodic dysphonia because
that was
close enough so Google actually
diagnosed me and showed me a
video of
somebody who had exactly the
same
problem so now I had a name for
it
so I took that name put it into
a Google
Alert while I was talking to
doctors one
after another getting my head
scanned
and all kinds of things and
finding you
know no nothing nothing and one
day I
get an alert that says there's
some
doctor in Japan who's got a
surgery to
fix it I tracked down the top
doctors
you know I was a stanford at
first they
said hey is this real he said I
don't
know if that's real but we get
some
exaggerated complaint or
exaggerated
claims from that particular
doctor maybe
you should talk to this other
guy at USC
he's doing something I talked
to him dr.
Gerald Burke and he was doing
an exam
what new / experimental surgery
in which
they would rewire some of the
nerves in
your neck they split they cut
them so
therefore I know two months or
something
you can't speak because your
brain is no
longer connected to your vocal
cords
it's the weirdest thing you
can't you
can try but just nothing
happens and
then the Rees placed root kicks
in after
about eight weeks I might have
the weeks
wrong but something like that
and then
you can talk or it doesn't work
those
the - oh great
right it's either gonna work or
just
doesn't work and then there
wasn't there
was a moment almost exactly on
the day
that they predicted that the
nerves
could grow back together
because they
they know what rate they grow
at that I
could talk very weakly and
did you have the cutting done
yes I had
the surgery and took a couple
weeks to
recover from the surgery and
then I
could talk just faintly and
just for a
little while before being sort
of
exhausted by it and then it
took a few
years to get you know full
fluency back
because you also lose fluency
if you
don't speak for three and a
half years
you actually can't form
sentences you
know all the words but you
can't do it
effortlessly so talking is
actually
difficult for years and only I
would say
in the last two or three years
maybe I
feel like I'm back to top
fluency yeah I
wouldn't know the difference I
mean from
you 20 years ago or 93 which is
I guess
2025 years ago you sound the
same well
that's a that's an ordeal we
will won't
continue do you exercise
I do yeah I'm quite committed to
exercise I'm a lifelong
exerciser and I
try to do it five times a week
and be
active on the other two days
when did
you become a Republican I am
NOT a
Republican I'm not either
so never I guess I am a I've
went from
Democrat to Republican with
Reagan to
independent and then there I
didn't
realize a better one than that
which is
unaffiliated which is what I am
now when
I was a young man I thought I
know
enough about politics I'm gonna
register
and I'm gonna vote and I cast
my vote
proudly for Jimmy Carter and a
few Lee a
few years later I said to
myself I
shouldn't be voting what I'm
not adding
to this I'm not adding to the
intelligence of the vote you
know I like
that I can vote I'm glad to
other people
do it but I'm not adding
anything to the
intelligence of the outcome and
I don't
think that's changed but I like
the
topic of politics I'm sorry I
voted one
Carter - I wasn't McGovern
supporter if
you didn't believe in that yeah
so I'm I
vote and I am not a member of a
party oh
you don't vote at all but you
you do
like to give your opinions and
you seem
to be a I don't know if your if
you
would want to take this as the
as a
descriptor a Trump apologist I
hate that
phrase a Trump apologist I hate
that
yeah well I'm called one too
and I'm not
I don't consider myself to be
one yeah
the the the reason I hated it
is like it
assumes that you would support
him no
matter what he did and that
you're just
sort of always always on the
team in my
case most of my writing and
talking
about President Trump started
during the
campaign and mostly I talked
about his
persuasion skills because
that's another
area that I have a lot of
experience I'm
an I'm a trained hypnotist when
did that
happen would you become a
trained
hypnotist my early twenties I
thought
hey is this some kind of
superpower that
I could just learn and so I
learned it I
was influenced by my mother who
had been
hypnotized by her family doctor
in my
small town and my mother gave
birth to
my little sister and reports
that she
was awake and took no
painkillers and
didn't feel pain mmm
now that's unusual you can't
most people
would not have that experience
but about
two and 5-wood or one in five
and it
made me think what is this
thing you
know what is this power that
you could
you can do that kind of thing
and so I
learned it and sure enough it
is a
superpower like nothing I've
ever seen
it changes your entire
worldview and
that's the biggest change it
changes how
you perceive the world and and
you stop
perceiving people as rational
once you
can reprogram them so easily
you realize
that they're they're rational
minds are
not really running the show and
that's
just an illusion so you've
gotten
philosophical about it yeah I
guess it's
philosophical in the sense that
my
worldview changed by how easily
I could
reprogram other people using a
set of
tools that are pretty well
understood
and that I've been studying
persuasion
in all of its forms from you
know
selling to marketing to design
even
anywhere I can find that
on it for 30 years probably as
part of
writing as part of creating the
comic
it's it's an important element
so you
saw Trump as some sort of do
you think
he is a genius or a savant what
I saw is
that he used the tools of
persuasion
more effectively than I've ever
seen it
done now part of the reason
he's so
effective is that he seems
immune to
shame he's he's willing to say
or do
anything and generally I
believe that
you know he's aiming his
impulses at
least you know his public office
impulses at legitimately
legitimately
making the country a better
place in his
view of how that how that looks
and so his he'll cut some
corners he'll
do some things people don't
like he'll
ignore the facts if it's
convenient but
he tends to persuade in the
right
direction meaning that if
you're someone
who likes the borders to be
tight if you
like a strong military and you
don't
have to by the way I'm not
telling you
you should like those things
but if you
do and lots of people do he's
he's
certainly the the right person
for that
you think he's trained like you
are you
think it's just a part of his
being a
Salesman all his life because
during
sales training if you were ever
a
Salesman you end up picking up
a lot of
a lot of persuasion persuading
personal
persuading gimmicks well keep
in mind he
wrote the book or or at least
he read it
the the book the art of the
deal yeah
and so if your brand is
negotiating
that's really persuasion and or
a
special form of it so we know
that he's
at least has an interest in it
and that
would be enough over the years
if that's
what you're if you're always
dealing in
that domain you would pick up a
lot of
stuff because the thing with
persuasion
is it's not hard to learn you
just have
to be paying attention to it and
absorbing it where you can but
he also
had this is a weird little
tidbit his
pastor when he was a kid his
family
pastor for the church
they went to was norman vincent
peale
funny I remember that vaguely
yes yeah
and norman vincent peale was
one of the
most famous american authors
and he
wrote the power of positive
thinking
right and probably is the
person most
responsible for popularizing
the idea
that the way you're thinking
about your
situation can have a huge
influence on
your success so if you think
right
you're gonna get better results
than if
you're thinking wrong and you
we just
watched Trump think his way
into the
presidency in the sense I mean
the the
optimism the positive thinking
the the
inability to be swayed by any
problem is
seemed like he was just
completely
unaffected at least in public
by you
know things that would have
killed most
people yeah and so there's that
influence but you when you see
the
technique you see how often he
uses
visual imagery you see how
often when
it's available he'll use fear
persuasion
you know the the terrorists are
coming
to get you the you know there's
crime
criminal coming across the
border etc
and you see him talking past
the sale
which is one of his most common
tricks
so if you're talking about how
the the
wall will be built and how it
will be
funded and those things you're
already
talking past the decision of is
it going
to be a wall so he does this a
lot of
topics he'll make you engage on
the
details of the thing before
you've
decided there will be a thing
and that's
a classic persuasion technique
and you
don't see other people doing it
as
consistently as he does you
don't see
them use visual stuff you don't
see him
pick emotional topics he knows
where the
emotion is and he can read a
crowd like
like nobody his presentations
are I
don't know how many of the
speeches
you've watched a few yeah I
probably
watched three complete from the
early
ones which we couldn't carry an
hour he
could do about thirty five
minutes of
material and then he would
start to
repeat himself then he got when
he got
to the hour he was
role in his speeches I think are
phenomenal they really controls
the
audience and he gets a lot of
people in
the guys you know you were a
public
speaker the bigger audience is
the
better audience yeah
the small audience is hard you
can't
meet the six people right
they're not
gonna laugh they're not gonna do
anything but you've got ten
thousand
people or twenty or thirty in
his case
you have you you can have a lot
of fun
yeah I think history will
record that
you know he's not everybody's
cup of tea
so he's sort of a love him or
hate him
thing but in terms of his public
speaking best ever
uh well it depends on your
definition of
best ever
well best everything most
effective yes
being able to hold the crowd and
entertain them make them want
to come
back make them talk about it
make them
maybe people make people focus
on the
topics he wants you to focus on
to
control the headlines for a
week it's
all there he's got some I only
read this
once I don't know exactly but
he has a
personality disorder of some
sort that
makes him only knee like three
to four
hours sleep a night
that's a personality disorder
well
apparently it is by today's
standards
and I thought you would say
it's an
advantage but he's a very
interesting
character I have to agree and
people
have you found that because you
look
like you are the truck and I'll
use the
term again Trump apologist that
you've
lost any business whatsoever oh
sure
yeah probably forty percent of
my income
evaporated and 75 percent of my
social
circle yeah I'm quite an
outcast and my
and I I don't do public
speaking anymore
because it's too dangerous
you know I wouldn't feel
comfortable if
there was any publicity and you
put me
in front of a big crowd right
now
because it only takes one
person to say
that guy said something good
about the
president's persuasion skills
he must
die so I don't think it's safe
to be in
public when people like you are
branding
me a Trump apologist that's not
me I
will say this that I ran into
you when
it when I first met you did
make some
assertion when I first met you
did make some
you wanted to become a public
speaker
because you thought that was
just some
really cool goal I ran into you
on the
road at the same speaking event
I was a
speaker and you were a speaker
to some
event this was I don't know if
you
remember this but I do because
you were
grousing and I'm HEA grousing
yes
possible is unbelievable
and you had run into the same
phenomenon
that I had run into which is
part of
actually what you discuss in
the cartoon
more or less which is the
boneheads that
put together these events and
then they
hire you to be a speaker and
then you
for something you say something
you do
something and you insulted the
CEO
somehow vises by making some
offhanded
remark good did I do that that
day I
think so well apparently
they've never
seen Dilbert if they hired me
and didn't
expect me to insult their CEO
indirectly
or directly it's I thought it
was
getting to the point where you
stopped
doing public speaking at that
point
no I I've sort of pulled back
from it a
few times for just because I
was busy
with other stuff but at the
moment you
know I and then I had to stop
when I
lost my voice for a few years
but at the
moment is just not safe yeah huh
I was wondering if that was
gonna affect
you at all affected our podcast
by I
think about 40 percent 30 to 40
maybe in
terms of fall-off people just
don't want
to listen anymore they they're
they're
too happy being kind of
hypnotized by
mania can you cook
I can Bluff my way through some
things
it's not my favorite thing to
do would
it happen to your investments
in the
restaurants well the I can't
tell you
the real story because there's
actually
there are a variety of legal
problems
that you end up running into if
you own
a restaurant and you have deep
pockets
meaning that unscrupulous
people will
find reasons to go after you
that you've
never even heard of and I mean
literally
you've never even heard of them
and I'm
pretty worldly you know I've
been
involved in lots of businesses
as I said I've got an MBA
worked at big
companies I know a lot of stuff
I've
heard of a lot of stuff but the
problems
that I had legally are things I
had
never heard of and and if I
were and I
can't tell you because you make
settlements and you agree not
to talk
about him right but I had to
settle a
few and it looked like there
was going
to be no end to it like
literally there
would just be no end to it the
additional ones that could come
and I
made a business decision to dig
it down
now the first restaurant was
wildly
popular we built the second one
at the
peak of the market literally I
signed
the lease the day that the twin
towers
were coming down it was 9/11
timing yeah
timing and when that happened
the
economy fell apart and the
place for the
second restaurant was in a
place that
big companies that agreed to
move into
it was just going to be a gold
mine it
was the greatest location and
they all
pulled out they all pulled out
because
of the economy well that was a
bad era I
mean you first had the dot-com
crash and
then you had the y2k fiasco and
then as
if things were straightening
out boom
you have the twin towers I
still want
you to punch so I signed the
lease at
the literal top of the the
market I got
the most expensive leash you
could ever
possibly get at the same time
that the
economy went to its lowest
point in in a
long time you became a vegan no
vegetarian I'm a pescetarian at
the
moment a fish eater yeah eat a
fish if I
have to I don't love it but
it's good
for me have you used the vagin
character
and your cartoon ever I feel
like I have
I know I had a vegetarian
character at
least once
based on me I don't know if
I've had a
vegan don't remember
opportunity I'll
work that it you did a thing
you're
promoting this thing called the
blight
Authority yes which is your one
of your
pet projects yeah so bill
pulled a is
he's the founder and primary
mover of
this and blight spelled BL IG HT
just refers to it generally in
this
context anyway in urban area
where it's
all run down and it's just
crime and
abandoned buildings and stuff
and so
what bill does is he finds
funding to go
in and just clear it out and
just you
know bulldoze it and wreck it
and bring
it down to dirt so that the
crime goes
away but then there's also an
opportunity opportunity to build
something there and so where
I'm helping
the most is helping him try to
get the
word out that there's this
opportunity
there's this land available
there can be
more of it because you know
there's lots
more blight that can be knocked
down and
I'm helping him just publicize
the the
possibilities so the website
blight
Authority calm as in ideas and
forum
section where people are
suggesting
ideas and funding and things
that could
be done with those areas and
you'll see
more about that we're going to
do a lot
more talking about that did you
get a
degree in engineering no but I
played an
engineer at Pacific Bell
because they
ran out of engineers that's
true story
they've literally had a hiring
freeze
they needed engineers for the
project I
ended up working on something
called
ISDN for those people old
enough to
remember that and they just had
a line
yeah and my boss just said well
you're
not a you're not an engineer
but can you
connect computers to equipment
with
cables and figuring out the
software and
I was like well probably if I
have help
so I worked in a technology lab
the most
incompetent employee who ever
worked in
in a laboratory but a lot of
help so the
the smart people I worked with
covered
for me were you funny at school
oh maybe only in my own opinion
I did
doodles of my teachers and and
my fellow
students they were of course
whatever's
the obscene version of the 12
year old
doodle most of them were
obscene in some
way or another were you a good
student
you think did you get high
grades a
species as you go to what
college did
you go to I was a valedictorian
oh but
you gave us
I did and that sounds more
impressive
than it really is you have to
understand
there were only 40 people in my
graduating class still another
40 yeah
one out of 40 and then I went to
Hartwick College for my
undergraduate
degree in economics and then
later when
I was working I went at night
and had my
company paid for it and I got
my MBA at
Berkeley I'm going to I want to
get some
opinions from you I'm gonna go
down a
list and name somebody and then
you're
just gonna say if you have
anything to
say about them people yeah all
right
maybe a couple of things - can
I slander
them yeah of course it's fine
good so
podcast and whoa yeah why
wouldn't I
pence fence and ideal
vice-president you
know I've said my book when
Bigley I
talked about how pence was an
inspired
choice because you want a vice
president
that is solid you know he's got
the
resume so he looks like he
could take
over if you need it but he's
the boring
version of the number one you
know
candidate and if you stand
pence next to
Trump Trump is like the you
know the
full color of multimedia circus
and
pence is like whatever you have
left
after you take all the
interesting
things away from Trump you know
if you
started with Trump and
subtracted
everything that makes him
interesting
you'd have pence yeah so he's a
perfect
choice as the Emergencies spare
the
backup you think he could win
if you ran
for president and Trump wasn't
running
no no I don't but as a he just
he
doesn't have the personality
for it but
because if you look at what
trauma had
to do to break through the
field I mean
it was his outrageousness he is
his
willingness to take positions
that were
further than other people were
talking
about those are all the things
that
helped him you know well it
also helped
him get about a 1 to 2 billion
dollars
worth of media attention
yeah which they're still worked
about
but they keep continuing this
process of
giving him media attention he
found he
found the weakness in the model
which is
if it's interesting they can't
not cover
it yeah so you just make sure
he's the
most interesting story I think
they
could have covered Bernie more
I mean
they because he was kinda
interesting ok
another name Kellyanne Conway
well I
don't I don't know her by the
way I
didn't meet the president he
did invite
me oh yes you did they did
invite me
into the Oval Office few weeks
ago and
what was the point of that way
he was he
you know he actually didn't say
except I
guess my book when Bigley was
popular
among people at the White House
and I
think it was just August and
Congress
was in recess and he was just
sort of
working supporters you know it
was just
solidifying his base if he will
especially the people who
talked about
him write about him and but I
don't know
Kellyanne Kellyanne Kellyanne
Conway
except what I watch on
television but I
did feel I remember when
Hillary lost
and people were so sad that you
know hey
we could have had a woman
president and
I was thinking well what about
you know
Kelly I'm didn't run for
president but
she just you know helped the
president
get elected like why are we
ignoring
that so in terms of her skill
level very
high and she's she's stuck it
out with
the president so loyalty level
looks
very high so I only know what I
see on
TV but I like what I see back
to the
president meeting do you think
he read
your book Bigley did he was any
because
usually people that they read
your book
to have some reference them
they'll make
he was familiar with the
content enough
that that we could you know
that I knew
that he knew what I was writing
about
that's all I know for sure did
you have
fun did you get a free lunch is
your
lunch we didn't have lunch uh
it was it
was probably the experience
I'll never
be able to top in terms of the
most
interesting matchbooks home
they had
these match books you can take
home oh
yeah I was just loading my
pockets with
everything there wasn't no I
didn't take
anything there wasn't no I
didn't take
I didn't record it on my secret
phone in
my pocket or anything actually
I didn't
have a phone with me and they
take your
phone away you know if you're a
visitor
you don't get to bring the
phone into
the yeah I don't want anything
you
record competing with with the
CIA's
recording for all the bugs in
the rent
right so yeah it was just the
most
interesting thing I have ever
done he's
very engaging very charismatic
and just
talking to him for a few
minutes was
like a life life experience huh
well it
sounds like fun
what do you think as another
one another
name Rachel Maddow Rachel
Maddow is
insanely smart and talented and
really
good at what she does now if
you don't
like that political bent then
you know
you wonder you know off the air
and her
critics will howl so I don't
agree with
her politics or a point of view
and a
lot of things but you can't
deny the
talent the talent is
extraordinary yeah
she was she's done to most with
anyone
over there once that Olbermann
left
what about MSNBC in general
they they
seemed to me like the the
version of CNN
that went too far like like
whenever you
see something on CNN that seems
like
well they're there they're
taking that
opinion a little too far or
well you
know that feels a little biased
and then
you turn on MSNBC and you go oh
what is
this what fresh hell is this so
they
just seem like the exaggerated
version
of CNN Jerry Brown
I really don't follow local or
California politics
he's been the governor most of
your life
yeah and I haven't followed it
at all
too bad so I guess I have yeah
I can't
form a coherent opinion of him
here's a
generality what do you think of
Silicon
Valley billionaires well one of
the
weird aspects of my job and I
think you
is aspects of my job and I
think you
say the same as you end up
meeting a lot
of billionaires yeah I was
thinking the
other day how many billionaires
do I
know personally it was like 20
billionaires well you know if I
wanted
to I could you know get a hold
of them
with an email and it's hard to
meet a
billionaire who isn't
interesting that
that's that's the first thing
and I
don't know if it's because I'm
aware of
they're billionaires or that or
whatever
made them a billionaire is what
also
makes them interesting but you
you talk
personally and privately to a
billionaire and you walk away
thinking I
think I learn something almost
every
time I think you might be right
I never
thought of him as being
interesting
I think mode I think yeah they
are
interesting most almost every
one of
them most almost every one of
many of them are very focused
which is
the thing that you see with a
couple of
these guys I mean Bill Gates
for example
the most focus guy he's got
supposedly a
form of autism that makes him
that way
you must have the good one yes
it's a
considered one I'll give you an
example
Marc Benioff yeah founder of
Salesforce
so I did give us before I lost
my voice
I gave a talk there and I hung
out for
maybe you know half an hour
because we
were killing time before the
event
started and I got to chat with
him at
some depth privately and I'll
tell you I
have never met anybody like him
like
he's just not like other people
and I'm
gonna explain that I mean that
in a good
way he seems to be operating on
this
whole other level of he uses
the word
intention and you know without
getting
to whoo about it he seems to
have just a
superior grasp of how it all
works and
when I say how it all works I
mean how
it all works he just seems to be
operating on a different level
that's
what I took from that and so
this the
interesting exchange
I probably shouldn't talk about
it but
since it makes it him look good
I will
anyway where one of his top
lieutenants
was talking about a slide show
he goes
hey I've got this slide show
we're gonna
show he looks at it Marc
Benioff and he
looks at the first page and he
goes
you know put something on the
first page
here about you know our
philanthropic
you know that 1% thing where
they they
give away one percent of their
profits
and try to spend one percent of
their
time on philanthropic things
charitable
things he says put that in the
first
page and there's lieutenant
pushes back
it's like well you know I've
got that
it's it's it's in the body of
the thing
he goes no move it up to the
first page
and then the lieutenant pushes
back
again and he goes now move it
to the
first page and he pushed out of
it again
and he just looked at it was
like first
page it was like he was so and
so clear
on what mattered right and in
representing the company with
that first
really mattered those kind of
guys were
sure CEOs liked and there's a
lot of
them and a lot of Mart
billionaires they
still have these
characteristics so
they're the guys who are really
kind of
an meta quality control
they're the ones who you know I
felt
this way when they fired John
Lasseter
from Pixar who was who was the
creative
genius I was fired for hugging
too much
I'm it was part of the me to
movement
and I think that he was the guy
who was
saying no no no put it on the
front page
that's the same kind of a guy
and there
I think they're into all office
environments you know and when
they you
lose that guy whether he's the
CEO
usually they are the company
just kind
of just falls apart yeah and
and just to
be clear it wasn't about the
quality of
the slide deck he wasn't
talking about
that it was it was it was as
much about
training this this lieutenant
what's
important and how to how to put
it
forward okay another one why do
you
think the Silicon Valley
billionaires
are all Democrats well they're
not all
Democrats but you got your
you've got
your people who are willing to
tell you
about their politics and you
got your
people who may be a no yeah
there are
three no there don't like to
talk about
anything because they know
because they
know the majority are Democrats
right
which still begs the question
why do you
think there's so many Democrats
and in a
place where there's so much
wealth it
doesn't it doesn't support it's
not
supposed to add up that way
yeah I don't know I think you'd
have to
get inside their heads to know
that I
don't know what the filtering
mechanism
is that got us to that point
good
question I don't know what's
your
favorite TV show do you watch
much TV
favorite TV show the really the
only one
I record at this point is the
five on
Fox News and also the Greg
Gutfeld show
in part because I know Greg but
the five
is probably the best the best
produced
show with the best characters
and the
most consistently entertaining
really
because the the the model that
they
built of these engaging
characters sort
of teasing each other and
talking about
the news is it's just the best
thing on
TV huh well that's a shocker to
me
didn't see that coming no I
sure did not
I mean I like my game of
Thrones but
they're not on now so what
about books
what do you like to read
besides persuasion books um I
hate to
say it but I don't read a lot
of books
there are many years I've
written more
books than I've read and that's
literally true part of it is
that you
can glean the essence of most
books
pretty quickly you know it from
other
sources but part of it is also
that I
don't enjoy fiction so so pure
fiction
and I can now give you the the
real
reason for that so for years I
couldn't
tell people the real reason I
didn't
like fiction there's a lot of
people
that don't like fiction so
let's start
with that well that's good to
know
basing not alone if you're my
dog
running around the background
there that
scan your spare noise the
things that I
can imagine just by closing my
eyes
because I am a professional
creative I
believe that every human
capability has
this big range you know where
most
people are average and some
people are
terrible and some people are
great so in
the same way that I'm terrible
at music
let's say I have no musical ear
whatsoever my ability to
imagine is
probably hard too hard to know
for sure
but probably extraordinary just
based on the volume of new
ideas I
created any in any moment and
I'm a very
visual visual imaginer and so I
can
create my own fiction in my
head just by
closing my eyes and it's better
and more
interesting more tuned to me
than a book
and books are work I'm closing
my eyes
is not and I get exactly what I
want
anytime I want
now I feel sorry for anybody
who can't
sort of build an entire story
in her
head instantly but I can you
started
with with the ISDN crowd but
you were
kind of a techie or do you
think that
you're never worried techie i I
was a
programmer at a very low level
in other
words I did it professionally
but when
we what were you programming in
usually
just well basic and doing easy
things
for the the deck you know the
VAX back
in the day so programming a
basic was
just for internal you know
financial
reports and easy stuff and I
built a few
utility programs they got used
and I
built some video games and in
my own
time actual you know graphic
video games
but it took me so long to build
one that
the entire industry had moved
to so far
in the six months it would take
me to
build one that no longer look
like like
a game anybody would ever buy
so I
couldn't I couldn't keep up
with the
companies that we're doing so I
was tech
to go that way but I I think
I'm more
I'm more about the talent stack
which I
talked about the the idea of
building
lots of different talents and
stacking
until you have something that's
unique
even if even if you're not
great at any
of those things so I'm
certainly not
great or even really good at
anything in
technology but I'm pretty
comfortable
around it you know when you
came you saw
me working with a bunch of new
equipment
put together a new studio set
up for
myself and I like that stuff
yeah right
so you have kept up but you're
a seem to
be a Mac head at the moment
I've gone
back and forth for most of my
career I
was a double platform guy
because you
just needed you just always
needed the
other needed you just always
needed the
you know if you're doing a lot
of
licensing and working with
people around
the world you can't have one
platform
but at the moment the Mac
pretty much
gives me everything I need so I
abandoned Windows and you use
the iPhone
exclusively yeah I like the
whole you
know I want to start stop you
there
because you already credited
Google with
pretty much saving your life
when it
came to the research on this
dysphonia
yeah and now you end up turning
your
back on them and going with an
iPhone
well Apple does a real good job
of
making all my all my devices
work
together and you know somewhat
seamlessly Google also does but
just a
little less user interface love
so that
makes a big difference to me
what kind
of car do you drive
I've got a 2011 x5 BMW and an
SUV ah
that's it you don't have a
second car
low why do I need two cars just
me get
bored yeah I don't like cars
I'm not a
car guy oh so if you go out to
dinner
what kind of what level of
restaurant do
you go to you go to a high-end
place
low-end place a hamburger place
what do
you like if I'm your gourmet
you collect
wine I don't drink at all and
when I did
I didn't drink wine I'm not an
alcoholic
I know you you're thinking that
you're
all thinking that right now
aren't you
did he stop because he's an
alcoholic
no I developed I developed a
some kind
of weird reaction to it and
then I just
stopped and realized hey I
don't need
this I feel better if I just
never have
a drink I'm just hello there it
would
save money if we went to
high-end
restaurants I can tell you that
so the
answer your question is my
girlfriend
Christina and I have tried a
bunch of
you know top restaurants just
for the
experience of it and they
weren't really
that good I got to say they
weren't
better than a mid-level
restaurant I
don't know why people go to
these top
Michelin star restaurants I
won't name
names why not they were they
were not
impressive but I will tell you
that the
French Laundry was impressive
that just
knocked my socks off yeah but
other than
that my socks off yeah but
other than
now I like a good a good Italian
tablecloths restaurant and I'm
happy so
I went through a whole couple
sheets
here and I hate to do this but
I'm gonna
do it anyway it's because of I
had this
theory about interviewing I was
working
on it would it it was mainly to
preclude
what I'm gonna ask next which
is what
should I've asked you that I
didn't ask
well you haven't asked me about
my
startup which well let's do
that so that
the startup the name of the
company is
when hub when hub all one word
and the
app were focusing on right now
is called
interface by went up and if you
can
imagine it's like a tinder for
experts
meaning that it's people who
are online
and available right now for a
video call
and it could be any topic so
anybody can
sign up for an expert anybody
can use it
to make a connection and it's a
dating
app and no it's not a dating OS
for
experts it's for anybody who
wants to
charge for their time on a
video call so
it could be a consultant it
could be an
expert on some technology but
it could
also be some psychologist it
could be
your you know just somebody
who's
visiting your grandmother who's
who
needs some medical care and
maybe the
kids want to call in and the
professional just takes the
call and
says yeah I'm checking on your
grandmother she's taking her
pills it
could be any kind of medical
financial
any realm
it could be just somebody who
wants to
spend time with somebody while
they're
eating because they're lonely
you know
somebody might just say I just
need
somebody to talk to you and
anybody can
set their price and the experts
will be
determined by you know ratings
just like
any other any other service
you'll get a
star rating from the people who
use you
and we think it could change
everything
from education to health care
to you
know could help people with
PTSD if they
have somebody to talk to you
could
reduce suicide because you've
got
somebody to talk to you it
could be
quite transformative who's we
we is the
the team
and whose idea was this to
begin with or
you just the money guy so I'm
more than
the money guy and it's the
third product
that the same team has
developed so
we've done our pivoting this
specific
idea was Nick Galliani who's
our CTO and
co-founder and he initially had
the idea
and we refined it from there
but I get I
get pretty involved in the the
look in
the field and the business end
of it
when this began I think we're
about
three years into it the new
product is
only just the same out yeah
it's it's
been in stores the original
version was
crypto only in other words you
had to
pay in our own crypto it was an
ICO
still as an IC oh by the way
and now
we're on an exchange or two and
where we
can take credit cards now
what's the
crypto called is the when whe N
and L a
token the exchange you can you
can buy
that now you a fan of crypto Oh
fan is
probably too strong a word
I think the blockchain is
probably here
to stay or whatever it evolves
to but
I'm no blockchain expert and I
think it
has this use we'll we'll see
the battle
between you know government
control and
people who want to you know be
free of
government control we'll see
who wins
it'll be interesting the
government
always wins it feels like it
feels like
that's how it's gonna go yeah I
don't
see any any other alternative
because
otherwise you have chaos not
that I'm
rooting for the government
anyway I
think that I'll do it I think
we've got
everything covered unless you
get
something else you didn't want
to throw
in there cuz it's free
well free air timing probably
promoted a
book Bigley and you got any new
books
you're working on like a
cartoon book
maybe something new do Dilbert
compilations so there's there's
always a
new Dilbert compilation the
latest one
is cubicles that make you envy
the dead
it's reprints and Dilbert
calendar will
be coming out and
months and there's always
something I
got to buy what's the dog goober
characters little devil where'd
that
come from
the dogbert's you have a you
have a
devil character oh well that
looks like
dogbert's oh you're thinking of
cat
birth the in the in the comic
the cat
bird is the director of human
resources
and I made that character a cat
because
your human resources director
doesn't
care if you live or die just
likes
playing with you okay well on
that note
we'll end I want to thank you
for
letting us letting me interview
you
well thanks for coming all the
way out
here and it was fun
yes great catching up we'll
talk again
[Music] great catching up we'll
talk again
imagine all the people who
could do
[Music] all the people who
could do
no no no stop bow take a bow oh
yeah a
bow that was fantastic I mean
there's
stuff in there that he isn't
I've never
heard him talk about that so
that's
because as far as I know he
never has it
does I decided a couple of
things I
think he doesn't even like to
talk about
but he was very relaxed and he
was very
meaningful to chatting about
everything
what I liked knowing that we
both have
Tourette's it makes me feel very
confident and very good about
myself and
my friend Scott my brother from
another
mother my shaken brother from
another
mother my shaken brother from
another
yeah as he said in there he
says now I
can use it as the way you do as
you hike
us on purpose and you say it's
the
Tourette's just to try you know
when a
sister estimated beside the
point
we don't have an interviewer
I'm sorry
we don't have a donation
segment because
this has been taped in advance
so we
want to mention everybody who
helped us
out on this particular show
that your
donations will be moved to the
next show
and you'll be credited then on
an extra
long segment on us on Thursday
yes and I
love that we're just keeping
our streak
going this seems to be the new
way for
us we've done different things
in the
past when we took a day off
like wow we
took a day off and I think this
is good
you know it's it's this is this
is
another side of us of the show
which i
think is very complimentary and
I'd like
these I like the people you
chose and
let me just remind everybody
that to
support our show and this work
that goes
on please remember us at let's
go to the
interview with Dane hey Jon hey
Dane so
much network you have to be
here we have
you know still have to turn
that all the
time but half the town is poles
and the
circle certainly a lot of
interest in it
there's a lot of respondent so
let's
start with discussing what you
guys are
doing at Zhan
in terms of rolling out this
fiber and
it's fiber-to-the-home
yeah we're building primarily
fiber to
the home networks we also do
connections
to schools and libraries
municipalities
and and smart city and traffic
signal
applications and we build to
cell towers
but those are all kind of the
applications layered on top of
the base
foundation which is the fiber
to the
home network
now before you when you just
around the
time you guys announces and
what is the
monthly charge for this fiber
to the
home so the fiber to home
service is
it's $40 a month for the first
year
after that introductory time it
goes up
by 10 as the month-to-month
rate is 50
currently so and this is gigabit
symmetric so 1,000 megabits
down and up
to the home along with a home
telephone
line with all of the voice
features like
you know caller ID and voicemail
we've even integrated Robo call
blocking
which is a real annoyance and
unlimited
nationwide calling and
unlimited calling
to fix lines in 66 countries so
if you
have business or relatives in
you know
England South Africa Japan etc
your
calls to those countries are
are no
charge as well so it's it's a
you know I
think a really innovative well
it's
probably all in Christ's point
compared
to everything else and the only
and I'd
like don't mind you going on
and on
about because one of the
purposes of
conversation like this is to
inform
people that this sort of deal
I'm
assuming you're not losing your
but on
this when it's finally when all
said and
done it and as you cost it out
over time
or you wouldn't be doing it at
all yeah
I mean what's what's exciting
for me
about the business is that you
know the
delivery of Internet and of
telephone
service the costs of of those
have
really declined substantially
although
consumption particularly of
Internet is
climbing but the cost of
delivering it
are declining
and but most consumers you know
you're
moving into a new place you
bought a
house you're renting a new
apartment and
you kind of have this moment
where you
go oh shoot I got a call the
cable
company and get my internet and
then
they railroad you into a big
bundle of a
bunch of TV you know linear
conventional
TV offerings and you know you
end up
spending you know maybe it's
you know 70
80 $100 the first year but in
the long
run I think the average
household on you
know Internet telecom TV they're
spending over $200 you know
set-top box
rentals regional sports
networks local
broadcast fees I mean this is
really an
archaic way to do this and we
see a
really interesting and
disruptive
opportunity and you know people
want
really fast internet you know no
nonsense a couple of companies
around
the country and in Canada and
Canada for
example to cows has been
rolling out a
which was usually a very old
internet
company that was involved with
shareware
and I'm the Downloads and they
had a
stock I acquired some of their
stock by
accident when it was $3 uh-huh
it was $3
because it's accidentally well
I was
accidental because I was I had
a company
that was sold to somebody else's
somebody else I have this shot
these
shares you know how it goes and
so it
skyrocketed to about $60 Oh and
I
couldn't figure out why they
were you
know they were selling to I
guess ISP
web addresses or you know yeah
domain
registry right and then all of
a sudden
but when they started
skyrockets when
they started putting in fiber
they
started putting in fiber and I
think
it's fiber-to-the-home it's the
same
thing now yep so I have to
assume this
there's a lot of potential here
not
before I get into the details
of the
technology I want to ask about
the about
the wiring itself in Albany and
Berkeley
and I guess you're putting some
in San
Francisco in the neighborhoods
where
you're putting this there's two
or three
things I've noticed one you
have a lot
of trucks and the trucks are
very well
Brandon I might add I've seen
examples
of that not being the case with
other
companies so on the side of all
the
trucks you have it has the
sonic logo
and the price yep it's actually
quite
funny it's like a bad billboard
and it
is and so they're floating
around and
they're stringing because we
have
telephone poles around most of
this area
there's some underground but
most of its
telephone poles and it's like
now these
there's so much stuff hanging
from these
poles and what you guys are
stirring it
looks heavy so yeah what are you
stringing it so I'm gonna ask
what are
you stringing up to place is it
do you
have to pay a fee to the pole
companies
what kind of wire is this is it
a big
heavy glass cable with a bunch
of fibers
in it is it plastic what yeah
so yeah
it's you touched on a lot of
areas there
and let me try and dive into
some of
that stuff we are building
mostly in
residential locations where the
utilities are Ariel that is
overhead on
wood utility poles and if you
look at
those poles traditionally
they've hosted
you know electricity up at the
top and
then cut in the middle of the
pole
telecommunications you know big
old
heavy copper telephone wires
and then
typically about a foot above
that
slightly smaller coaxial cable
you know copper television
cable wires
amplifiers taps all the
components of
the coax television network and
those
two networks have then been
adapted to
deliver in addition to phone
and TV
they've been adapted to deliver
the
Internet as well now what we're
building
is an all-new all optical
end-to-end
network so this is dielectric
cable so
it's plastic and glass it's
smaller
diameter and lighter weight
than the
copper infrastructure the metal
infrastructure that's up there
but it
starts with a metal what's
called a
messenger cable so there's a
stainless
steel cable that runs from pole
to pole
and then the fiber cables
themselves are
lashed to that with it with a
lashing
wire and then all of that is
spliced up
at convergence points cabinets
where
where we split the the light to
the
different homes in each
neighborhood and
then adjacent to your home on
the pole
closest to your home there'll
be a
little terminal that comes off
with a
set of plugs at the bottom of
it and
those then are equipped with a
drop
cable that comes to your house
now one
of the complaints we have
gotten has
been that you know this
infrastructure
is ugly and I think you know
what's
happening is it sort of has
been ignored
for a long time and you know if
you look
up there there is a lot of
pre-existing
telephone and cable
infrastructure and
then we come along and put up a
new
cable maybe is only one of them
and
maybe it's smaller diameter
than what's
already up there but it draws
the
attention to the fact that you
know
there's more cables going up
there and
so it does create some practical
considerations about you know
how many
times can this be done how much
infrastructure can we put up
that
without this getting too
unsightly now
AT&T K well the poles are
unsightly
anyway but they're also kind of
pleasant
there because you know that if
somebody
runs into one there it's not
like you
know these underground cables
will think
when they break or something
bad happens
it could take days to get them
fixed
yeah maintenance is maintenance
is
easier there's pros and cons
fixing
things that break is faster but
aerial
cables are more exposed to
damage you
know fires sometimes the
transformers on
the poles will light on fire
hole and
burrow up yeah that happens and
then
when they blow up then all the
oil it's
not transform runs down the
pole that
oil ignites and the pole
incinerates
we've seen electrical fires
from street
lights on poles damage cables
and we
have issues with squirrels I
had that I
have comcast linemen I bet your
hours
have two systems because what I
do
happen and I was having nothing
but
trouble was you defect the
reason I went
to Sonic in the first place was
to
because the Comcast line was
really
flaky and it took about a year
until the
right guy came out and he found
that the
cave guy came out and he found
that the
had been attacked by a squirrel
yep they
brought it well and there's it
it's
interesting because copper
networks when
you have issues with with you
know
rodents in the ground squirrels
up in
the air there's water incursion
and the
problem is that the issues can
really be
transitory and insidious and
really hard
to troubleshoot and so you end
up with
experiences like yours with
fiber it's
pretty much either fine or it's
broken
and there's no concept of sort
of the
the the attenuation that's
caused by
water on a metallic signaling
system and
so fiber has much higher
reliability and
better failure modes that that
lead to
you know one of things that we
see in
our in our customer service
center is
customers that are on copper
technologies like you know VDSL
and
adsl2 plus and Potts voice
they'll call technical support
much more
frequently because cuz there's
issues
with those copper wires and we
have to
dispatch much more frequently
with fiber
it's way more reliable so what
you'll
find you know you're you're
getting the
fiber service installed the
cable will
become your backup and you'll
find that
the fiber is so reliable you
shouldn't
need to utilize the cable and I
just I
just saw a tweet from one of our
customers and he said he posted
some
stats out of his home network
where he
monitors latency and DNS
performance and
he says hey can you see what
day I
switch to Sonic and there's a
it's got
this sort of widely variable
latency on
his commercial cable connection
at home
and then a move to Sonic fiber
and it's
just this rock-solid low
latency and so
you'll enjoy the fiber
connection it's
really the right technology for
for
broadband access my partner at
the no
agenda show Adam curry has a
fiber I
think as AT&T or Verizon I know
who's at
who it is it's in Austin Texas
and early
AT&T or Google it
in Google he would Google guys
were
flaky and Google seems to be
losing
interest you might want to
comment on
that but we he was having we
were having
trouble and it turned out that
he was
losing packets and he's got a
very high
speed internet and he had to
disable
turns out that we looked up and
did a
lot of research and it turns
out you
disable ipv6 it yeah they it is
they
begin this yeah I was gonna say
I don't
know you know what would be
wrong with
the ipv6 we have seen in some
cases you
know ipv6 is unfortunately I
mean it's
not new but its new from an
implementation perspective for
many
vendors and you know sometimes
you'll
see ipv6 implementation issues
in a
router in a Wi-Fi access point
or even
in a client device workstation
and an
Ethernet interface and so ipv6
kind of
brings out some you know it
shouldn't be
new it's been a long time but
sometimes
brings out bugs that expose
themselves
because of it's sort of newness
and then
the other issue where you will
experience issues is in Wi-Fi
so you get
this great connection of the
house
but then if your Wi-Fi is poor
if you
don't have a good access point
and a
router configuration then the
Wi-Fi
becomes the weak link what's
neat for me
is in the past the wide area
network the
uplink to the Internet
was always the slowest
connection you
think back to the days of
dial-up and
computers were mighty slow back
then but
they were way faster than these
you know
ultra slow dial-up connections
we had
man computers get faster DSL
came along
cable came along but until you
get to
gigabit you know ethernet
connected
Internet at full gigabit speeds
the the
internet connection was always
the
bottleneck and the local area
network
whether it was the ethernet of
the Wi-Fi
was generally not a problem
well now we
deliver a gigabit symmetric to
the house
and you know people are saying
well you
know why is it going 150
megabits on
this computer and it turns out
they're
using computer and it turns out
they're
a USB 2.0 Ethernet dongle or
why is it
going you know
only 300 megabits over here
well you
know you've got a Wi-Fi
capacity issue
or you've reached the capacity
possible
with that Wi-Fi spectrum so
interesting
new problems I'm happy that you
know the
wide area network and the
technology the
fiber and the protocols in G
pond and
Ethernet that we run over it
aren't
generally not the bottleneck
anymore and
that's transformative in my
opinion well
I will say a couple of things
in your
behalf even though for the most
part I'd
say 90% of the people listening
to this
conversation can't get sonic
there in
other parts of the country but
you guys
actually have a real customer
service
operation where if I call I
usually get
some guy who's not only helpful
but very
knowledgeable yeah so I'm
assuming these
guys aren't in India no we do
everything
here in the San Francisco Bay
Area
so our headquarters are in the
North Bay
all of our call center customer
service
dispatch fleet you know yard
field force
everything is is local folks
and you
know I think one of the things
that is
very infuriating particularly
to those
of us that are a little bit more
technically minded is when you
call for
customer service and you reach
somebody
who knows very little they've
had little
training and they're equipped
primarily
with a script and somebody sat
down and
figured out that you know these
are the
thing these are the top 10
reasons for
problems so we're gonna make
everybody
go through this but yeah it's
frustrating it's infuriating
and you
know from our perspective we
don't equip
our staff with scripts we we
give them a
lot of training in the the
concepts of
troubleshooting you know
listening to
what the customer has already
tried and
hearing the customers theories
about
what might be wrong because
often they
know and and then beginning to
isolate
the problem well how do we
split this
problem in half and figure out
what was
the problem in your Wi-Fi or is
the
problem in your
routers the problem in your
router is it
in the connection the internet
you know
where do these problems exist
is it a
site you're trying to access is
a
protocol like you know you've
got issues
of things that are over ipv6
and ipv4
and so investing in kind patient
articulate people who will just
hear out
the consumer and collaborate
with them
to find a solution is really a
refreshing experience and we've
had I
had a customer reach out to me
and he
said you know will you please
like start
a credit-card company over 80
if if you
could start a transmission shop
that
would be great because the
customer
service experience that people
have
especially with companies that
are
providing telephone customer
service
which is is generally you know
outsource
to a large call center the
experience is
not an enjoyable one and and
quickly I
think that these companies
benefit from
that if you don't call because
you know
that the experience is going to
be
negative they save the dollars
that they
would spend on the labor for
that phone
call and if you instead try to
solve the
problem yourself you know or
ask your
nephew for help or something
like that
McCall and you know if they
create an
experience that's painful it
reduces
costs well that works for them
in an
environment of monopoly and and
unfortunately when it comes to
internet
access in America I think most
folks are
subject to at best a duopoly
and and
that smells like an opportunity
to me
and and that's that's exciting
but we
need to do more than just
present you
know faster better cheaper more
reliable
product we also pair that up
with the
right values around privacy
neutrality
and the right values around
customer
service and and the integrity
of the
organization and you know that
is in a
lot of ways the opposite of
much of the
way that our industry has been
performing and consumers really
really
react well to that and love that
they then tell all their
neighbors and
that's good business those
neighbors
then sign up so you know it's
not just
about the values it's also the
business
around here I don't understand
why
everybody on the Block doesn't
get the
system because it's crazy not
to if you
yet unless you don't use the
internet or
you don't care but you know
that's just
me now yeah back on the
technical
aspects of this so now you had
now what
what kind of gear what kind of
what kind
of what piece of equipment at
your head
end let's call it sits there
that does
this in the first place who
makes this
and and what is it yeah so that
the
technology that we deploy and
and I
think this is pretty uniform
for for
carriers building
fiber-to-the-home
in the u.s. the technology is
called
gigabit passive optical
networking or
Jeep on and a a pawn or passive
optical
network brings a dedicated
fiber to your
house that Fiber goes up the
street to
the you know head of your
neighborhood
and goes into a passive
splitter and
that passive splitter combines
the the
light from your home and
typically 32
others onto one fiber-optic
strand that
goes to a central point a
cabinet or
central officer data center
facility and
in that facility we have a
optical line
terminal or olt which uses the
jeep on
protocol to talk to a customer
premise
device an optical network
terminal think
of it as a modem basically that
that
outputs it as a modem basically
that that
symmetric Gigabit Ethernet and
sometimes
this is integrated with or
what's called
a residential gateway that will
do the
routing and network address
translation
firewalling Wi-Fi and and those
make up
the components the vendors that
make
this equipment you know as a
variety we
use equipment from ad Tran
in most of our network but
there are
other vendors like calyx and
Nokia and
an Ericsson that make equipment
that
that does this and this allows
us to
deliver you know a true
symmetric
gigabit to to the customers and
it's
it's neat technology you know
if when it
comes into the here it goes
into one of
the what what is the device
that the
fiber goes into then it
delivers a
Ethernet cable out to me yep so
that's
the optical network terminal so
think of
it as the modem or converter
box fiber
from from the pole or the
street outside
is dropped to the home we drill
a hole
in the house we cock up the
hole so it
doesn't leak we bring the fiber
into the
home and that fiber is
terminated and
plugged in to the optical
network
terminal that outputs Gigabit
Ethernet
and the couple of things is
that the
fastest way is there any chance
of going
to ten gigs well funny you
should ask
we we just began offering for
commercial
customers a two gigabit product
and so
it delivers multiple one gigabit
ethernet ports and a total of
two
gigabits of aggregate
throughput and so
for customers that are you know
we we
would think of them as you know
small
business or home office
customers they
can now opt for a two gigabit
connection
a little more costly it's
ninety dollars
a month but but that's pretty
amazing
frankly for a couple couple
gigabits
connectivity the technologies
are
evolving a G pawn it was this
successor
to what's called broadband pawn
or beep
on b-pawn had basically the
capacity to
deliver nominally about 20
megabits to
each household on a 600
megabits shared
segment Jeep on delivers a
gigabit on a
2.4 gigabit
a segment there are upcoming
technologies XTS pawn and ng
pawn to
which can deliver from 10
gigabits to 40
gigabits to the premise and
these will
be adopted first to serve
businesses
that have greater than 1
gigabit needs
and then as the economies of
scale ramp
and the equipment becomes more
cost-effective you'll see those
technologies come into
residential
deployment now what's great is
that we
change that the optical line
terminal in
the cabinet or central office
and we
change the optical network
terminal the
equipment in the home but the
fiber
network itself which is the most
expensive part by far do you
mean the
why is yes yes the fiber cables
that
we're placing out on poles are I
hesitate to say future proof
but but
they are future proof with
regards to em
easier no increasing capacity
over time
and so what you'll see is you
know we're
today one gigabit is a typical
consumer
product for fiber networks I
think
you'll see that advance to
higher speeds
in the future and what's great
is that
we don't have to swap out and
rewire the
optical network and and just
like the
you know the telephone the
twisted-pair
telephone network you know it's
had a
life of over you know in
specific cables
over 50 years the coax network
there's
coax cable that's delivering
gigabit
with Doc's s31 today that was
placed
15-20 years ago and you'll see
the fiber
optic network with a you know
realistically you know 4050 year
lifespan you know where cables
last at
least that long and and were
able to
simply iterate the equipment's
on the
ends now AT&T came along just
before you
guys started this program
door-to-door
with sales guys who were like
bros I
don't know if you know this and
they
went door-to-door around here
anyplace
where you guys were headed to
pre-sell
some something some fiber was
fiber they
emphasize fiber and I said is
it fiber
to the home and there's no no
no no it's
this fiber to the curb one of
the
limitations of that and by the
way it
wasn't anything
the offer was mediocre I was
very
disappointed in the offer I
thought it
was not because I thought maybe
good
good backup or something but I
found it
not to be the case a Comcast is
better
deal yeah what what a number of
incumbent carriers are
deploying is
fibre to the node technology so
sometimes it's called fiber the
curb but
it's generally not your curb
it's more
typically a cabinet that serves
a
neighborhood and it might be
anywhere
from you know a thousand feet
to three
thousand feet from your home
and then
vdsl2 is used over the copper
pairs okay
so you know next generation
faster DSL
is used to deliver typically
anywhere
from 12 to 75 megabits
yeah they were claiming 50 as
though I
was going to jump at that yeah
and you
know that's exciting when you
have leave
me if I was missing if I was
out in the
middle of nowhere Kansas I'd be
very
happy with that well and what's
frustrating about it is when
they go
door-to-door and they say we're
bringing
fiber to your neighborhood
would you
like to sign up for this
package that is
you know television internet
and phone
and so on and would you like
mobile
while you're at it and the the
lead end
of the conversation is we're
bringing
fiber to your neighborhood
that's not
tribal to the home that's just
moving
the decimal access multiplexer
that that
previously was in the central
office now
it's moved a bit closer it's in
a
cabinet you know a sort of lawn
fridge
that some unfortunate person
has on
their front lawn in order to
deliver
faster DSL service but it's not
transformative in the same way
that
fiber all the way to the
premises you
have caps on the gigabits
no we don't we've got a
reasonable use
provision it's a residential
product so
we don't allow folks to resell
it and so
it wouldn't be okay for
somebody to like
set up a wireless ISP off their
roof and
you know so the intention is
reasonable
household use but there's no
caps on
that consumption and if I want
to put a
server on it because you got so
much up
speed is that allowable it isn't
permitted in the the way that
we've set
the terms up because we'd
consider that
a commercial use and you know
frankly
for forty dollars a month we
can't have
we can't cover costs if a lot
of our
customers deploy servers that
output
you know half a gigabit gigabit
consistent peak traffic and
there is a
you know there is a reliance in
the in
the pricing when you're selling
a forty
dollar month product the
assumption is
people are gonna use it in the
way that
a typical household uses it
they're
gonna stream a bunch of 4k TV
they're
gonna have a bunch of connected
devices
they're gonna download you know
movies
and big updates they're gonna
upload a
certain amount of video and
photos and
so on but you kind of build your
business model around
assumptions about
consumer behavior if somebody
sets up
three racks and a data center
in their
garage and starts pushing out a
lot of
traffic then that breaks the
business
model for us so we put some you
know
reasonably used provisions in
there it's
not a Kappas to any specific
amount of
use it's basically that you
can't resell
it and so a commercial use like
hosting
or becoming a Wireless ISP
would you
know basically saturate those
connections and we'd look at
that go hey
wait a minute what's this
what's this
fellow John doing what if you
take 290
dollar deal the same the ninety
dollar
deal is a you know it's a it's
a small
office home office
configuration so it's
intended for consumption so
intent is
tended to be mostly used for
downloading
why don't you just capped or
not cap but
why don't you just
make the whole system
asymmetrical are
people that desirous of gigabit
up most
you know that sucked down
gigabit let
alone you know you could push
it up but
it's going to go to a slower
downloading
you know that environment the
upstream
speed and moving away from a
symmetric
connection is actually really
really
useful in a household being
able to you
know take a bunch of videos and
pictures
with your cell phone at you
know in an
event and then come home and
your cell
phone connects to the Wi-Fi and
quickly
uploads all that content you
know to to
be able to back up your home
network and
all of your home computers on a
regular
basis to a cloud backup service
you know
having a lot of outbound
capacity
enables a lot of interesting
uses and
you know what we see is you
know these
days with the availability of
AWS and
and cloud services for hosting
and for
people starting a business you
know we
don't see a whole lot of demand
for or
abuse of the they upload
capacity do you
and so that's that's the goal
do you contemplate ever did
maybe for
your customers having a
cloud-based
backup program somewhere cuz
you know
before you go on though because
you do
have I know what the out with
your
former system I have not fully
utilized
it but everyone's why play
around with
it and I'm not that interested
in
putting up a server because it's
actually a lot of work but you
do have a
say you do have a website
capability at
the home office where I can
have a
domain put there and I can
serve pages
and do some miscellaneous
chores from
the from sonic net yeah one of
our you
know one of the things that
we've
pursued is to try to you know
how can we
add more value to what we're
delivering
and so every customer gets a
domain name
so we cover the registration
for the
first year
they get hosting they had a
whole bunch
of email boxes we've tried
everybody
with an electronic fax line so
there's
like a ridiculous amount of
capability
that we load in and these are
all things
that for us are very low cost
to add and
and that we've layered into the
product
but on the other side we don't
have to
solve every problem there's a
lot of
great services out there on the
Internet
and there are some things like
for
example cloud backup well there
are some
great solutions for cloud
backup and I
you know I use personally for
all of my
data I use Dropbox to
synchronize all my
systems and I really enjoy that
and it's
a great solution
I don't think sonic can or
should try to
replicate a service like that
and you
know the the bottleneck the
problem that
really really needs to be
solved is
building new infrastructure in
the last
mile to every single home on
business
and to the degree that we can
add
services to our product you
know add
features to our product which
you know
reduce costs or increase
usability that
are not too hard for us to add
we do
when they get complex we say
well you
know there's there's a lot of
great X
out there on the internet we
don't need
to be that I mean a big one is
television you know we do not
have an
IPTV product in a conventional
way and
that was an interesting
decision that we
made a few years ago and we
said where
is the television industry
going well
it's it's going to become
Internet TV
you know you're going to choose
between
YouTube TV and Hulu TV and
sling you
know subscription video
on-demand
services like Netflix and prime
and so
we shouldn't be in the
television
business shouldn't be in the
television
it's a look backwards and so
with each
feature capability we kind of
run them
through a set of filters and
say well is
this something we can do
yeah well should we do it is
there
someone else doing it can we do
it you
know at low cost and add value
and and
that's the the decision maker
we engage
in the the decision maker we
engage
now saying that guys are
actually gonna
ask you about the television
part of
this equation which is there
are third
parties out there that would
come in and
say well you know we can do all
that
work and it will cost you $10 a
subscriber and we charge them
20 or you
charge them 20 and then we take
10 from
that kind of thing like a micro
services
architecture on a bigger scale
this is
that possible
you know the challenge in in
television
is twofold
you know one is the cost of
content you
know consumers want 150 200 250
channels
that's going to clewd ESPN and
Disney
and and regional sports nets
and those
things are costly and they're
particularly costly for buyers
who are
not buying at scale so a
disruptive new
market entrant is gaining a
foothold
struggles with content costs
that are
very high compared to an
entrenched
incumbent and then on the other
side is
you look at the technology
platforms
like you know direct TVs Genie
and dishes hopper and Comcast's
x1
they're good platforms base
they invest
a substantial amount of
resources in
differentiating those platforms
making
them really really good and for
a for a
carrier like us the field of
potential
sort of set-top boxes and
interfaces the
software the middleware that
runs on the
set-top boxes they're not great
and and
as you as you look at the cost
of
content the quality of the
experience
and then more importantly you
look at
where is the industry going
where do
consumers want to be and I
would say
that you know you look at
Millennials
today and they've never had a
conventional cable subscription
the idea
that you would pay they don't
even know
how to turn on the antenna and
mostly
their sets well true yeah off
the air
isn't a whole nother topic but
the you
know a whole nother topic but
the you
point is that that industry is
changing
a lot and the way that it is
inevitably
going to go is over the Internet
there is so much more choice
and the
idea that you would buy a
bundle that
would have a big teeth big
heavy weight
TV package and you might commit
for one
or two years to that product is
really
going to be supplanted with a
set of
apps you know one that brings
you a big
channel lineup that you like
maybe
that's Sony's view product or
YouTube TV
product then piecemeal you
might add
things well you know you want
to watch
Handmaid's Tale you're gonna
subscribe
to Hulu you want to watch some
of the
Amazon Prime originals you
might be a
prime subscriber and you know
Smart TVs
are getting easier and cheaper
equipment
like the Apple TV and the Roku
or making
this easier for normal less
technical
individuals and and that's
where you
know entertainment is going is
towards
streaming and so we don't do a
conventional television
solution over
the fiber today for that reason
now we
do have customers that you know
they
they have cable TV today they
would like
a conventional television
experience and
we really see two solutions one
is keep
the cable for TV but get a fiber
internet connection dump the
the slower
less reliable cable internet
and then
the other is we're happy to
sell a
customer a satellite dish T
maybe
subscription if they would like
that and
it's a bit less than 10% of our
new
customers take that but you
know almost
one out of ten yeah almost one
out of
ten new sonic fiber customers
choose
this to also add dish to that
and in
doing that they get a bundle
discount
they save about $10 a month and
and they
get to do the conventional sort
of video
experience and you know for
some people
that's what they are what they
want
others are kind of ready to cut
the cord
and the fast new broadband pipe
becomes
an impetus to help them cut the
cord so
I'm gonna wire up
I've been switching all my
cabling
internal cabling even Nikhil
into cat
seven do you guys advise any of
these
because you know there's a huge
difference in these at least
the style
of these cables I mean cat
seven is like
it's a it's a more seems like
much more
formidable there's a fire yeah
now we're
you know we're deploying cats X
in in
some corporate environments but
for
Gigabit cat 5e which has been
you know
widely deployed for more than a
decade
cat 5e can deliver Gigabit
Ethernet and
and is it's more craft friendly
we would
say it's easier to work with
then then
the products that can deliver
higher
bandwidth I guess the question
is in
your home do you anticipate a
need to
deliver faster than one gigabit
and you
know you will see some sort of
flex
speeds where it you know
traditionally
Ethernet was 10 Meg hunter mag
one gig
10 gig well there's some flex
speeds
where you'll see two and a half
gigabits
or five gigabits delivered at
different
distances over cat 5e and if
you're
wearing a house with and you
want to
invest in you know the absolute
best
cable you know you could do a
cat 6
deployment and for some
locations and at
the right distances and if you
did the
terminations right and you have
all the
right end bits and you have the
right
switch in the middle and you
could
deliver 10 gigabit within the
home but
then you have to figure out
well do I
need 10 gigabit to my smart TV
you know
if it's going to do 4k TV in
three
dimensions you know that might
be 25
megabits worth of streaming and
so there
comes some point where you have
to be
pragmatic about what you deploy
and so
generally we see cat 5e with
gigabit
delivered ubiquitously being
adequate I
think unfortunately you know
many
households are moving the other
direction which is to unwire
virtually
everything yes
noticing that too and I thought
everybody who has hooked to a
Wi-Fi
repeater works and yeah
and and so what you know what
you'll see
in the household is that the
nest
thermostat and the you know
peloton bike
and the Roku plugged into the TV
upstairs etc all end up being
Wi-Fi and
why if I is just so easy and
unfortunately it's less
reliable than a
hardwire and it's necessary for
a device
that moves around right the the
phone in
your pocket the tablet you sit
on the
couch with those devices have
to be
wireless but the devices that
can be
wired you know that Roku on
your you
know behind your Smart TV the
the
computer that doesn't move I
certainly
encourage folks to consider
wiring the
devices that aren't moving but
it's hard
to justify investing a lot of
dollars in
doing that thankfully a lot of
homes are
pre-wired you know they'll have
some
existing Ethernet and can hook
up some
devices wired you can also use
the wires
as a basis for the Wi-Fi so you
mentioned use a repeater a Wi-Fi
repeater that's then connected
to the
Roku that's a good
configuration to
where you might have a number
of access
points in the home that are
themselves
wired that gives you a great
foundation
for a good wireless experience
at the
edge yeah it does seem to work
so is
there anything you think I
should be
discussing that people what is
the thing
that most people don't know
about at all
when it comes to putting fiber
in their
environment you know I I think
we see
folks at two ends of the
spectrum I mean
on the one side we've got
people who
have followed the developments
in the
technology they understand the
regulatory and infrastructure
and
deployment challenges and
they're
they're sort of shut up take my
money
kind of mode and when and and
that is
about of mode and when and and
that is
out of ten households today you
know
they here we're coming there
sign up
before we can say a word and
and then
there's a a big group of folks
who you
know they use the Internet
the Internet's important to
them they
understand that slow internet is
frustrating but they don't
really have a
good understanding of the
technology and
they don't understand or care
and nor
maybe should they about the
differences
between you know fibers of the
node and
DOCSIS cable and jeep on fiber
and and
so the challenge for us I guess
is you
know convincing those for whom
technology and the Internet is
it's not
something that they think about
every
day that this is just a better
experience you know a good you
know in
our case a great company
delivering good
customer service a fair price a
well
priced product but also a really
reliable consistent real you
know snappy
performing product and so
that's a
bridge we have to we really
worked work
to get to a gap we worked a
bridge yeah
I considered a failure in the
part of
the technology writing
community to keep
everyone up to speed on all
this sort of
things so they would just
immediately
jump to it and so it's a fail
the way I
see it that and it's the most
people are
they don't know what this is
all about
because again like I said if
you had
somebody stringing fiber-optic
cable in
your neighborhood and they
offering
fiber to the home it's a very
low price
why would you not be asking
going
outside and knocking on the
door trucks
doors window and and asking
what's going
on because you'd like to get
involved in
this yeah some and we do yeah
and we do
it's kind of the it's the one
out of ten
people or like eager for it
they'll
chase our guys down the street
literally
and say hey is it coming yet I
live
right over there I went when
can I get
hooked up and we we really
appreciate
that enthusiasm those early
adopters
those are the people that those
who are
less technical look to for
answers Welsh
should I get this new thing
I've heard
about it why would I want that
and then
that person says oh yeah I've
had it for
months it's been great I had a
great
experience it's faster better
cheaper
more reliable whatever the
outcomes are
and you know I mean you say
it's a
failure of the technology
writing
community I mean you know I
don't I
don't follow
you know all of the hobbies and
interests that there's such a
diversity
you know whether it's cars or
bass
fishing or fiber-optic networks
you know
everybody's got an interest and
but at
the end of the day the internet
and use
of Internet and fast reliable
smooth
internet in the home and you
know the
vast majority of people do want
that and
do understand that it's been
interesting
to see though you know it used
to be
consumers understood the modem
and
router and Ethernet and Wi-Fi
and sort
of how things were plugged in
and today
people just say my Wi-Fi like
they don't
talk about internet or Ethernet
anymore
it's just you know what's the
Wi-Fi
how's the Wi-Fi my Wi-Fi is up
my Wi-Fi
is down
ya know but that's just the way
it is
and and I try not to place a
judgement
on that
and and say you know it's
become um this
you know ubiquitous important
integrated
piece of technology and you
know it's
our job as a service writer to
try to
make that as simple as we
possibly can
so that the experience is well
I don't
know much about my cable
connection or
how it's connected but I know
that this
new fiber connection is way less
expensive fiber connection is
way less
I've heard from my neighbors
that it's
way faster way more reliable so
I'm
going to make that switch and
I'll say
we're really benefit from the
fact that
you know America's cable
companies in
particular some of the most
hated
companies people really despise
the
business practices pricing
policies you
know they're really abusive
practices
that come from the abuse of
that near
monopoly and so we get a
certain amount
of and so we get a certain
amount
you know it even from those who
don't
understand the technology they
say wait
there's something that I've
heard is a
little better and it's not the
darn
cable company great sign me up
why do
you think Google's kind of like
lost
interest they started putting
fiber in
here and there and actually
affecting
property values around the
country with
fiber networks going into
neighborhoods
that mostly obscure ones yeah
you know I
I you know my observations from
the
outside and my speculation is
that you
know they may have found it to
be harder
more expensive slower going
than they
expected and and they may also
have been
have found that the realities of
consumer adoption you know
convincing
people that they should switch
to this
it it is a a real tough pull
now you
know they you know Google has
continued
to to build out in the cities
that they
were committed to they sort of
paused
and that's they've had some
changes in
leadership but I I don't think
that they
the story is done and I think
whether
it's Google Fiber or two cows
Tinh building fiber socket
Internet in
in Missouri Gorge net in in
Oregon or
Sonic in California and
hopefully beyond
you know I think you're gonna
see new
market entrants
you know building new networks
and
disrupting you know cable and
telco
incumbents in the coming years
and I'm
very optimistic about that what
is afoot
of the fiber cable cost oh it
depends on
the the the strand count but
you know
the the in-home the sort of
single
strand stuff at the end you
know you
might be spending it over six
seven
cents a foot so really really
cheap the
outside plant stuff you know
we're
stringing we did a signaling
system for
a railroad and put in a bunch
of ribbon
eyes for thirty-two and that
that cable
ends up being you know between
three and
four dollars per foot and then
you'll
spend another you know two or
three
dollars per foot to place the
cable
nevermind you know getting
conduit in
the ground which can be you
know tens
you know 10 20 30 even $50 per
foot in
San Francisco you know our
budget per
foot for underground
construction in San
Francisco is nearly $500 per
foot and as
a result we do very little of
that but
this is I mean it's very
interesting
because I'm a I'm a technology
person
and I'm interested in product
and
customer service and and
disrupting the
market but we've you know over
the span
of the last you know seven
eight years
learned a lot about
construction and
underground and areal
construction the
process of construction cost
optimization it's it's a whole
nother
fascinating you know business
though
that we've we've become and a
question I
asked at the beginning would
wasn't
fully answer is what it what do
you do
to get access to actually use
these
poles you have to buy access
yeah
licensing yeah well so polls
you know
utility poles are there in the
public
utilities easement right so the
infrastructure of your community
incorporates you know water and
sewer
and gas and power and
communications
lines those all live in in
easement
space it's private property but
then the
utilities have a right to the
flow in
that easement and so when would
utility
poles are placed by an electric
utility
they the poles are either split
jointly
owned with telecommunications
utilities
or rented spaces rented to
telecommunications utilities so
generally speaking we are
renting one
foot of vertical space on a
wood utility
pole outside your home for
example and
we spend about seven dollars
per year to
rent that that one foot of
space on that
one pole and and that and cable
maintenance you know dealing
with
somebody knocks a pole down or a
squirrel two's a cable those
are the
primary costs of running the the
infrastructure the network hmm
interesting the network hmm
well I'm wishing you nothing
but luck
and all these other little
companies out
there and I guess there's more
than a
few used names
them that are stringing cable
to just
bypass the the old
infrastructure which
is it looks like a cost-benefit
to me
I want to thank thank you for
the
interview now I do want to ask
when I
get this thing when they
finally put it
in they're gonna have the box
downstairs
they're gonna run up a piece of
ethernet
cable up to my office and then
I and
then I'll have a device that I
plug it
into that strings out the it's
like a
router I suppose yeah so will
there say
there's a video on youtube if
you search
for Sonic gigabit fiber
installation on
YouTube you should find one of
our
videos and there's one that we
shot in
San Francisco and it shows the
process
of deployment when utilities
are aerial
and then there's another one we
shot in
Brentwood that shows the
process when
the utilities are underground
but yes
once it comes into your house
we bring
the fiber into the house we may
extend
the fiber some distance in the
house or
may stop it in the garage or in
a home
office location then we deploy
that
optical network terminal and
then we'll
extend Ethernet or use existing
Ethernet
cable if you have it to connect
to the
router the residential gateway
that does
the the Ethernet and Wi-Fi and
so that's
a typical configuration and I
think is
that your router or mine you
can do
either we supply a router and
and we
certainly encourage customers
to use the
router that we supply you know
critically it's capable of full
gigabit
speed and most routers aren't
and so you
need to have a you need to have
a good
router to to deliver gigabit
performance
and so if we supply the router
then one
of the advantages also is that
we take
responsibility for it so it
allows us to
give an experience which is
sort of the
Wi-Fi on the couch to the Wi-Fi
router
that we have remote management
of the
the ethernet to the optical
network
terminal the entire optical
network
so sonic can maintain
responsibility for
all those components and keep
them up to
date as well and obviously
you're aware
of things like VPN filter and
and and
the sort of recent security
issues that
we've seen with consumer
routers yeah
and so you know for the
majority of
consumers I encourage them to
use the
service provider router which is
remotely managed it's patched
security
updated if there are issues
with it it
can be swapped at no cost to the
consumer be swapped at no cost
to the
now there's another category of
consumers that enjoys managing
their own
network they're going to deploy
their
own firewall they might have a
PF sense
box or you know a Raspberry Pi
system
that does ad blocking they
might run
their own Ethernet switch they
might run
multiple access points around
their
house there's a category of
consumer
that that really enjoys
building their
own local area network and we
certainly
don't mind them doing that
obviously
then support doesn't have
access to the
router can't see the Wi-Fi
devices
connected to it and so we can't
really
help all the way to the
connected device
we can only help you know to
the edge of
the demarcation which at that
point
becomes the optical network
term unless
we say well your your network
connections up yeah it's not
working
over here well maybe it's your
network
and yeah you're on your own
after that
you're on your own
exactly okay well it's good to
have the
option ah I think that covers
everything
I needed to ask and besides
maybe
slamming some other companies
but it is
not easy to do that so so
thanks Dane of
course thank you very much John
for show
time okay bye so is there such
a thing
as a lifetime free account or
the sonic
interesting guy I'd like guys
like this
who just screw it I'm just
gonna go do
it I mean I've always enjoyed
him he's
got a good take on fire though
and we're
gonna be back next Thursday who
are this
upcoming Thursday for the
Regular Show
you're gonna be coming in from
Europe
which will goes always
some insight yes yes yes we're
gonna the
newspapers and getting a
feeling for
things yes and of course I will
have
just spoken to all the family
at the at
the anniversary everyone's
coming in for
this then the keeper and I are
going to
see Clooney and the mall at
Lake Como
just before we head off to the
Large
Hadron Collider which I promise
we will
not go there until after
Thursday's show
so we can contact Roman in
before he
gets sucked into the black hole
very
excited about it we want to
thank both
Dane and Scott for taking part
in this
show usually thank you very much
appreciate it yes we'd like
that and
thank you John thanks for doing
that
that was good and you know and
I think
it's good you get out of the
house yeah
I got out of the house I could
just hear
me me on my voicemail hey let's
have
John do more of those he needs
to get
out of the house that is what
we do even
more on vacation we don't just
bring
your reruns
we either bring you brand new
fresh
mixes done by professionals or
stuff
like this interviews with
interesting
people done by professionals
who've been
around for a while
enjoy it because it won't be
here
forever it because it won't be
here
and on that note remember us
for our
next show
partially coming to you from the
European Union's and from
northern
Silicon Valley that will be on
Thursday
and I certainly will have the
breakdown
with Camilla Harris and Sheryl
Sandberg
about the face bag money you
could just
count on it you know I love it
coming to
you from downtown or coming to
you from
somewhere in the middle of
Italy in the
morning everybody I'm Adam
curry man
from Northern Silicon Valley
where I
remain I'm John seed for AK we
return
with our live show on Thursday
until
then adios mofos
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maybe I
should write a book on how to
get by on
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